Page "Bread and Roses" Paragraph 3

The 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, which united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, was led to a large extent by women.

The popular mythology of the strike includes signs being carried by women reading " We want bread, but we want roses, too!

", though the image is probably ahistorical.

A 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair, is the first known source to attribute the phrase to the Lawrence strikers.

A republication of Oppenheim's poem in 1912, following the strike, attributed it to " Chicago Women Trade Unionists ".

To circumvent an injunction against loitering in front of the mills, the strikers formed the first moving picket line in the US.