Arturo Giovannitti

On January 1, 1912, in accordance with a new state law, the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, posted new rules limiting the hours of workers to 54 a week, down from the previous 56.

His most noted address was his "Sermon on the Common," which modified Jesus's Beatitudes to decidedly less passive stances, such as "Blessed are the rebels, for they shall reconquer the earth.

Giovannitti's poem "The Walker," in which he recounted the tormented footsteps of a prisoner, brought him comparisons to Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.

[4]The imprisonment of Ettor and Giovannitti became a cause célèbre, attracting nationwide attention and inspiring activists who called for the guaranteeing of free speech.

[5] The trial of Ettor, Giovannitti, and the co-defendant accused of actually firing the shot that killed the picketer, began on September 30, 1912, in Salem, Massachusetts, before Judge Joseph F. Quinn.

"[7] Yet defense witnesses testified without contradiction that Ettor and Giovannitti were miles away from the scene of the murder while Joseph Caruso, the third defendant in the case, was at home eating supper at the time of the killing.

[9]Yet if allowed to go free, he added, Let me tell you that the first strike that breaks again in this Commonwealth or any other place in America where the work and the help and the intelligence of Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti will be needed and necessary, there we shall go again regardless of any fear and any threat.

In an introduction to the book, Helen Keller wrote: "Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt against the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance which too many of us accept.

Giovannitti's papers, including a typescript play called The Alpha and the Omega (In Memory of a very Rich Holy Man), are housed at the University of Minnesota.