The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-02-11

Europe to run their plants? The respon- sibility which the mill owners manifest for the welfare of these employees is summed up in clean, light and airy rooms 1t stops there with one exception-a day nursery where the children of the women operators are kept while their mothers work.
 As to what the city itself has been do- ing through public or private organiza- tions. l learned social settlements were unknown in Lawrence and that the only experiment. of the kind was made a year ago by a group of Andover school boys who opened club rooms for few of the foreign workers. The new Y. M C. A. is doing considerable educational work but 1t is said that only one mill has con tributed to the fund for a new building All the mills are heavy supporters of the hospital. Fairgrounds are few and un- equipped with apparatus. The Lawrence Industrial school which, under the state law. is half supported by the common wealth. has demonstrated it's usefulness The Lawrence City mission which serves as Charity Organization society is hand somely supported by the mills. If the statement made by the strikers that the average wage of unskilled labor is only about s6 it would seem that the Law renee City mission would have it's hands full.
 Tn a dingy back room of an Italian house I saw over fifty empty pay en- velopes which had been returned to the bank as representing the average wage of men employees. Of these the highest which was for one week of drawing and doffing, was s7.05. The mill owners have said that the pay envelopes produced for the strikers were selected for the good of the cause" and that the average wage of the operators is over g. The state ment issued from the Pacific mills is 10 the effect that out of 6,O00 hands only IS received less than S and of the eigh- teen were children.
 At first the mill owners refused to CO., operate with any committee of strikers. Then the employers agreed to meet com mittees in each mill, but nothing carue from the proposal as Ettor said that the demands of the strikers must be consid- cred collectively. Through the action of Mayor Scanlon. Colonel Swetzer Chair man Barney, the citizens committee and the state board of arbitration a Joint conference was later arranged but :he manufacturers refused to go into it on the grounds that Ettor and William B. Hay wood appeared among the representatives of the strikers and they would deal only with their own men.
 In the interval since the first outbreak on January 20 public opinion has sym- pathetic turn towards the strikers Even the most conservative Boston newspapers now believe that the story about ouanti- ties of dynamite discovered in Lawrence was a plant and Ettor has won the sympathy of many of his critics. What ever the immediate result, the strike may we'll usher in a new era in the mills of Lawrence. Heretofore the owners have never been obliged to deal with any com mittee that represented more than one mill or department of one mill The unskilled were practically unorganized, but they have already received some rec ognition from the manufacturers who, to quote Ettor, 'were beginning to see that we are something more than mere textile workers