children heading to Philadelphia. But the attack backfired when newspapers reported on the bloodthirsty assault.

Through the course of the strike, workers gained unheard-of confidence to take on the bosses and the police. As author Meredith Tax explains in The Rising of the Women:

No one developed more during the Lawrence strike or came forward faster than those who had been most underdeveloped, most in the background--the women of Lawrence. About half of the Lawrence strikers were women and, along with the wives and children of the male strikers, their role in street actions was noticeable from the beginning. One of the first instances of striker "violence" occurred when a group of Italian women caught a policeman alone on the bridge. They took his gun, club and star, and werebeginning to remove his pants before throwing him into the river, when the cavalry charged and rescued him.

The IWW paid special attention to women's role as strike leaders. As Elizabeth Gurley Flynn explained:

The IWW appeals to women to organize side by side with their men folks, in the union that shall increasingly determine its own rules of work and wages--until its solidarity and power shall the world command... Women can be the most militant or most conservative element in a strike, in proportion to their comprehension of its purposes. The IWW has been accused of putting the women in the front. The truth is, the IWW does not keep them in the back, and they go to the front.

AFTER NEARLY 10 weeks on the picket line, the strikers