Joseph
Ettor was born in Brooklyn, New York,
in 1885. Raised in San Francisco,
he worked as a waterboy on a railroad, a saw filer in a lumber mill,
a shipbuilder's assistant and a stringer in a cigar factory before
joining the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) in 1906.
Ettor helped lead strikes of Portland lumber and sawmill workers (1907),
Pennsylvania steelworkers (1907), Brooklyn shoeworkers (1910-11) and
New York City Western Union messenger boys (1912).
In January 1912 Ettor went to Lawrence,
Massachusetts, to help organize the workers involved in the textile
industry strike. The American Woolen Company had reduced the wages
of its workers. This caused a walk-out and the IWW,
who had been busy recruiting workers into the union, took control
of the dispute.
Ettor's main role in Lawrence was to help organize relief. A network
of soup kitchens and food distribution stations were set up and striking
families received from $2 to $5 cash a week. He was also a fine orator
and it was hoped he would be able to persuade the workers from going
back to work until the union demands of a 15 per cent increase in
wages, double-time for overtime work and a 55 hour week, had been
granted.
The governor of Massachusetts ordered out the state militia and during
one demonstration, a woman striker, Anna LoPizzo was shot dead. The
union claimed that she had been killed by a police officer, but Joseph
Caruso, a striker, was charged with her murder. Ettor and Arturo
Giovannitti, who were three miles away speaking at a strike meeting,
were arrested and charged as "accessories to the murder".
On 12th March, 1912, the American Woolen Company acceded to all the
strikers' demands. By the end of the month, the rest of the other
textile companies in Lawrence also agreed to pay the higher wages.
However, Ettor, Giovannitti and Caruso were kept in prison for five
months without trial.
After demonstrations and
protests the trial finally took place in Salem, Massachusetts, on
26th November, 1912. The prisoners appeared each day fettered together
in an iron cage. However, there was virtually no evidence against
the men and they were all acquitted.
In 1916 Ettor, along with Arturo Giovannitti
and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, were expelled
from the IWW over a disagreement about the
handling of a strike of iron-ore workers in Mesabi, Minnesota.
Joseph
Ettor,
who spent his last years running a fruit orchard near San Clemente,
California, died in 1948.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
