The Everett Mills

With this addition the company employed 2,100 people (over half of whom were female), operated 4,728 looms and produced 1.2 million yards of cotton cloth every week.

The hard-won labor laws that went into effect as a result of the Bread And Roses strike made it cheaper to manufacture textiles in the unregulated Southern United States and Lawrence fell into decline.

Shortly after the purchase it was revealed that Bert’s mother had briefly worked in the Everett Mill in the very early 1920s as a newly arrived immigrant named Frances Gidansky.

[10] The Everett Mills currently houses social advocacy groups, health care services, light manufacturing, warehousing, high tech firms and a cafe.

Originating with female Polish weavers at the Everett Mills who revolted upon receiving pay reduced by thirty-two cents, soon 20,000 millworkers were on strike.

Helped by the Industrial Workers of the World labor union who organized meetings with representatives from all affected ethnic communities, fundraisers to support the millworkers while they were on strike, and highly visible protests meant to arouse nationwide support and outrage at national labor norms, the workers won pay increases and time-and-a-quarter for overtime work.

The strike had far reaching consequences across the country when mill owners in other cities and states voluntarily raised pay in fear of similar uprisings by their own workers.