Lyrics Victory at Lawrence - Andy Irvine

Victory at Lawrence

No work, no work, and the future bleak and grey
Posters in our town appeared showing Lawrence USA
Woolen mills and bags of gold, a chance we could not ignore
From Europe we all sailed away — bound for New England’s shore
Come with me now to Lawrence in the year of nineteen twelve
These back to back damp tenements house many like ourselves
And early in the icy dawn hear the factory whistles blow
And me and my wif and our eldest girl — to the wooln mills must go
We can’t afford warm overcoats, so meagre is our pay
In the greatest woolen centre of — the mighty USA
We workers wrote to William Wood to tell of our distress
And the answer that he gave us was to pay us even less
«Short pay!
Short pay!»
the Polish women weavers all cried
As they left their looms and went downstairs, walked out side by side
When we opened up our envelopes and found they’d cut our wage
We Italians ran from room to room, you’d never seen such rage!
We stopped the motors, tore the cloth and cut the belts with knives
By the end of that day there were ten thousand out on strike
Next day the Poles, Italians too
Belgian weavers in their wooden shoes
Armenians, Turks, Gentiles and Jews
Met at the City Hall
And the speakers ranted, raged and roared
In languages I never heard before
‘Til smiling Joe Ettor took the floor
And spoke in my native tongue
«I'm here to counsel and advise
To win a strike you must be organised
Four members each you will provide
From fourteen nationalities.»
When Ettor spoke, he seemed to glow
Like a beacon shining on a dark night, oh
How the workers loved you, smiling Joe!
But Father Riley was so irate
He told the Irish «Don't participate!
The poor must learn to endure their fate.»
The Governor sent the militia
Two thousand men were deployed
They beat our pregnant women
And they stabbed a young Syrian boy
«You khaki thugs on horseback
With your bayonets and your guns
You arrogant Harvard puppies
See what you have done!»
On Common Street they shot and killed
Poor Anna LoPizzo
They arrested our brave leaders
Giovannitti and smiling Joe
They laid the blame upon them
Though they were three miles away
A policeman pulled that trigger
My wife saw it, plain as day!
The anger that we mourners felt
I scarcely can relate
As we carried poor Anna’s coffin
To the cemetery gates
Where Father Riley blocked our way
With a frown on his pious face
And he says «You cannot bury her
In this holy place»
Well, Big Bill Haywood came in on a train
Our excitement we could not contain
When we heard his fog-horn voice proclaim:
«Fellow workers don’t forget
To the mill owners' great regret
You can’t weave cloth with a bayonet!»
And Gurley Flynn, the bosses' nightmare
With her Irish eyes and her coal black hair —
She says «This is class warfare!»
We stood together nine long weeks
And the bosses gave in
We assembled on the Common
Men, children and women
Where thirty thousand voted
To end this bloody feud
And we sang The Internationale
In every tongue we knew
Well, Joe Ettor and Giovannitti
They were tried for murder in the first degree
And the jury found them «Not guilty»
So Sammy Gompers and your A.F. of L.,
You can take Johnny Golden and go to hell
Craft unionism has an ugly smell
No one knew, and no one cared
How the unskilled foreign worker fared
‘Til the I.W.W.
double-dared!
Fellow workers, never forget
We are the ones that toil and sweat
And we have not spoken — yet!