streets to march to another mill, rush the gates, shut off the power and call the workers out.

By the end of the week, 10,000 workers had joined the strike.

IF THEY were to win, strikers had to develop their own organizations, such as a strike committee and strike support auxiliaries, and their own tactics, like the mass picket, to take on the assault by employers and their allies in the police.

The strikers would get no help from official trade union organizations like the American Federation of Labor (AFL), whose leaders refused to organize among unskilled workers, especially the women and immigrants who made up the majority of Lawrence's workforce. In fact, the initial response to the strike by John Golden of the AFL's United Textile Workers was to keephis craft union members at work.

Instead, socialists, anarchists and other radicals in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) would help play a leading role in the strike, offering an alternative to the top-down and sectional organizing of the AFL. They embraced militant actions to build solidarity among the strikers and inspire fear in the Lawrence bosses and their hired goons.

Experienced IWW organizers, including Joseph Ettor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Arturo Giovannitti and Big Bill Haywood, came to Lawrence to be part of the struggle.

The strike was organized from the bottom up, with workers attending weekly mass meetings about the direction of the struggle. A strike committee was elected to make decisions in between the mass meetings.

The workers at Lawrence were made up of some 25 different nationalities and