Joseph Ettor | Joseph J. Ettor, who had been arrested in 1912, giving a speech to barbers on strike The IWW's efforts were met with violent reactions from all levels of government, from company management and their agents, and from groups of citizens functioning as vigilantes.

1913 photo of Paterson silk strike of 1913 | Paterson silk strike leaders Patrick Quinlan ( activist ) | Patrick Quinlan, Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Adolph Lessig, and Bill HaywoodTresca joined the revolutionary syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) in 1912, when he was invited by the union to Lawrence, Massachusetts to help mobilize the Italian workers during a campaign to free strike leaders Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, jailed on false murder charges.

Joseph Ettor of the IWW had been organizing in Lawrence for some time before the strike ; he and Arturo Giovannitti of the Italian Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America quickly assumed leadership of the strike, forming a strike committee made up of two representatives from each ethnic group in the mills, which took responsibility for all major decisions.

These leaders, members of the strike committee, were able to communicate the message of Joseph Ettor to stage only peaceful demonstrations.

When the trial of Ettor, Giovannitti, and an unnamed co-defendant accused of firing the shot that killed the picketer, began in September 1912 in Salem, Massachusetts before Judge Joseph F. Quinn, the three defendants were kept in metal cages in the courtroom.

J. J. Ettor ( center ), flanked by Joseph Caruso and Arturo Giovannitti, his co-defendants in the 1912 Lawrence trial.

Joseph James " Smiling Joe " Ettor ( 1886 – 1948 ) was an Italian-American trade union organizer who, in the middle-1910s, was one of the leading public faces of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Joseph James Ettor, known to his friends as " Joe " or " Smiling Joe ," was born on October 6, 1885 in New York City, the son of a laborer who had emigrated to America from Italy.

Joseph Caruso was charged with the murder and Ettor and Giovannitti, both of whom were giving speechs several miles away from the crime scene, were arrested as accomplices.

: resoconto stenografico del contradittorio tra Joseph J. Ettor ed Arturo Caroti.

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

" 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.

" 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.

With Joseph J. Ettor.