================================================================== | | | | Total strike | No. | Aggregate | No. of | No. of expenditures. | involved. | duration. | arrests. | convictions. -----------------+-----------+-----------+----------+------------- $101,504.05 | 75,152 | 74 weeks. | 1,446 | 577 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Up to the beginning of the strike [says the Federal report just quoted] there was little or no effective organization among the employees, taken as a whole. A few of the skilled crafts, composed principally of English-speaking workers, had their own separate organizations, but the 10 crafts thus organized had at the time of the strike only approximately 2,500 members. The Industrial Workers of the World had also some years before this established an organization in Lawrence. At the beginning of the strike they claimed a membership of approximately 1,000. They had at different times names on their rolls in excess of this number, but it is estimated by active members of the organization that at the beginning of January, 1912, there were not more than 300 paid-up members on the rolls of the Industrial Workers.[563] This statement of the situation is borne out by Mr. John Golden's testimony before the House Committee on Rules. He said that when the strike broke out, "according to the official books of the Industrial Workers of the World, they had 287 members."[564] During the period of the strike there were many violent demonstrations and numerous acts of violence on the part of deputies, police, and militiamen, as well as on the part of the strikers. Early in the strike, Joseph J. Ettor and Wm. D. Haywood, both I. W. W. officials, came to Lawrence and thereafter figured prominently in the conduct of the strike, preaching "solidarity," "passive resistance," "direct action," and "sabotage" as means to victory. The daily press reports of the strike greatly exaggerated the violence of the strikers and almost uniformly neglected to mention acts of violence on the other side. In the I. W. W. press the situation was reversed, and the lawlessness of the constituted authorities greatly overdrawn. A writer who is, at any rate, not sympathetic with the I. W. W. describes the strike activities. He says that shortly after five o'clock (a.m., January 29, 1912), when it was still dark, an attack was made upon the street-cars, during which the trolleys were pulled off the feed-wire, the windows smashed with chunks of ice, the motormen and conductors driven off, and the passengers in some cases not allowed to leave the cars, and in others, pulled from the cars and thrown into the streets.[565] And while conferences were still going on, according to the same authority, the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World