Bread and Roses, Too

Clarion Books

215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

Copyright © 2006 by Minna Murra, Inc.

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print version as follows:

Paterson, Katherine.

Bread and roses, too / by Katherine Paterson.

p. cm.

Summary: Jake and Rosa, two children, form an unlikely friendship as they try to survive and understand the 1912 Bread and Roses strike of mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

[1. Strikes and lockouts—Textile workers—Fiction. 2. Labor unions—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Textile workers—Fiction. 5. Immigrants—Fiction. 6. Emigration and immigration—Fiction 7. Lawrence (Mass.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.P273Bq 2006

[Fic]—dc22 2005031702

ISBN: 978-0-618-65479-6 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-547-07651-5 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-48875-2

v3.0715

For Karen Lane, Barre’s extraordinary librarian,

with gratitude and affection

and in memory of Vermont’s premier labor historian,

Dr. Richard Hathaway

and in honor of all those in our society who,

despite their labor, receive less than a living wage

This was more than a union. It was a crusade for a united people—for ‘Bread and Roses.’

—Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography

One

Shoe Girl

THE TENEMENTS LOOMED toward the sky on either side of the alley like glowering giants, but they’d keep the wind off. There was plenty of trash in the narrow space between them. It stank to high heaven, but, then, so did he. He began to burrow into the heap like a rat. A number of rodents squawked and scrambled away. Hell’s bells! He hoped they wouldn’t bite him while he was asleep. Rat bites hurt like fury For a moment he stopped digging, but the freezing air drove him farther in. He tried to warm himself by cursing his Pa. The words inside his head were hot as flaming hades, but they didn’t fool his hands and feet, which ached from the cold.

He’d heard of people freezing to death in their sleep. It happened to drunks all the time. He sometimes wished it would happen to his pa, although he knew it was wicked to wish your own Pa dead. But how could Jake be expected to care whether the brute lived or died? The man did nothing but beat him. Dead, he wouldn’t beat me or steal all my pay for drink—and then beat me for not earning more.

He was keeping himself agitated, if not warm, with hateful thoughts of the old man when he heard light footsteps close by. He willed himself motionless.

It was a small person from the sound, and coming right for his pile. You can’t have my pile. This one’s mine. I already claimed it. I chased the rats for it. I made my nest in it. . . . He began to growl.

Who’s there? It was the frightened voice of a child—a girl, if he wasn’t mistaken.

What do you want? He stuck his head out of the pile.

The girl jumped back with a little shriek.

Stupid little mouse.

Who are you? she asked, her voice shaking.

It’s my pile. Go away.

I don’t want your pile. Really, I don’t. She was shaking so hard, her whole body was quivering. I—I just need to look in it—to find something.

In here?

I think so. I’m not sure.

He was interested in spite of himself. What did you lose?

My—my shoes, she said.

How could you lose your shoes?

I guess I sort of hid them.

"You what?"

I know, she said. He could tell she was about to bawl. It was stupid. I really need new ones. But Mamma said Anna had to stand up all day on the line and she needed shoes worse than me. I thought if I lost mine . . . It was stupid, I know. She began to cry in earnest.

Okay, okay, which pile? He stood up, old bottles, cans, and papers cascading from his shoulders.

She put her left foot on top of her right, to keep at least one stockinged foot from touching the frozen ground. You smell awful, she said.

Shut up. You want help or not?

Please, she said. I’m sorry.

They dug about in the dark. At length, Jake found the first shoe, and then the girl found the other. She nodded gratefully, slipped them on her feet, and bent over to tie what was left of the laces.

You didn’t lose them so good.

No. I guess I knew all along I’d have to find them. She gave a little sigh. But thank you. She was very polite. He figured she went to school even in shoes that were more holes than leather. You can’t sleep in a garbage heap, she said.

And why not?

You’ll freeze to death is why. Somehow with her shoes found, she didn’t seem like a scared mouse after all.

I done it before. Besides, where else am I gonna go?

You might—you can sleep in our kitchen. She blurted the words out, and then put her hand quickly to her mouth.

Your folks might notice, he said. Besides I stink. You said so.

We all stink. She grabbed his arm. Come on before I change my mind.

They went in the alley door of one of the buildings and climbed to the third floor. Shh, she said before she opened the door. They’re all asleep.

She led him between the beds in the first room and then into the kitchen. There was no fire in the stove, but the room was warmer than a trash pile.

You can lie down here, she said. We don’t have an extra bed—not even a quilt. I’m sorry.

I’ll be okay, he said. He could hardly make out her features in the dark room, but he could tell that she was smaller than he and very thin, with hair that hung to her shoulders.

I’ll be up before your Pa wakes, he said.

He’s dead. Nobody will throw you out.

Still, the first stirring in the back room woke him the next morning. A kid was crying out and a woman’s voice was trying to shush it, though Jake reckoned it to be a hunger cry that could not be hushed with words.

He got silently to his feet. There was a box on the table. He opened it to find a half loaf of bread. He tore off a chunk, telling himself they’d never miss it. Then he stole back through the front room, where someone was snoring like thunder, and out the door and down the stairs and on down the hill to the mill and to work. No danger of freezing there. He never stopped moving. Why, even on these frigid winter mornings, he was sweating like a pig by ten o’clock.

Later he remembered that he hadn’t even asked the girl her name or told her his.

Two

Short Pay! All Out!

SHORT PAY! It was one of the Italians. Halfway back in the line waiting for his pay envelope, Jake felt a thrill of fear or excitement, he couldn’t have said which. All week the men had talked of a strike. The Italians had passed around a petition. If you signed it, you were promising to walk out if the threatened pay cut came through in Friday’s envelope. None of the Irish, who were mostly management or skilled, nor any of the other native-born, had signed it. But Jake had put his X on it, mostly because his Pa had threatened to kill him if he went out on strike with those wops, and Jake, as usual, had been furious with him. The sot had drunk up all of Jake’s last pay envelope so that he had had to spend the past two weeks stealing food and sleeping in garbage dumps just to stay alive.

At first the non-Italian workers seemed confused. Should they walk out or stay put? Several started back toward their stations, then changed their minds and followed the Italians. Paddy Parker, the Irish floor boss, had planted himself at the head of the escalator, trying to block anyone’s attempted exit with his huge body. Billy Wood, owner of half the mills in town, was uncommonly proud of that escalator. It got the workers from the ground floor to the upper stories of the mill in record time. That, with the speeded-up machines, was swelling the profit margin at the Wood Mill.

Strike! Strike! another worker cried, racing back and forth between the rows of spindle frames. Someone pulled a switch, and the belts slowed and stopped.

Strike! Strike! And then, pandemonium. Jake heard his own voice join the roar. Short pay! All out! He heard the sound of wood shattering and saw knives slashing across the great belts. He grabbed a fire bucket and threw the filthy water on the gleaming white thread. The smell of wet wool filled his nostrils. He took the empty bucket and heaved it against the line of spindles, breaking three of them. The power of it filled him like cheap wine. He smashed three more, then another two before someone—Angelo Corti, as it turned out—grabbed him by the back of his shirt. Come on, boy, everyone’s getting out!

Jake bashed another three or four spindles before dropping the bucket. The big man’s hand still held tight to his shirt. He tried to shake it away, but Angelo yanked him the length of the floor, past Paddy Parker, and down the nonworking escalator. Someone had obviously broken Mr. Wood’s pride and joy, or at least shut it off.

The iron gates to the mill yard were locked—it was only eleven forty-five in the morning—but several large Italians found the gatekeeper and persuaded him, none too gently, to unlock it.

Short pay! All out!

It was spitting snow. Jake had no jacket, and his thin cotton pants and shirt were no protection against the wind. Once outside the gates, he planned to hightail it east for the shelter of his shack near the river. He could have easily weaseled his way through the chanting mob. Angelo had let go his shirt the moment they passed the big front doors, but he couldn’t make himself leave.

Short pay! All out! Short pay! All out!

He crossed the bridge as though hypnotized and allowed himself to be carried by the mob from the Wood to the other mills—to the Ayer, the Washington, and on to the Atlantic and the three Pacific mills—gathering men and women and children strikers at each place. The city riot bells had commenced a frenzied clanging, and whistles screamed at them from the top of every mill as they passed. The workers chanted louder to drown out the panicked alarms of the authorities.

As storm winds gather power, so did the mass of strikers. There must have been hundreds of them—no, thousands—all chanting, Short pay! All out! And the workers were pouring out of the mills as they passed each gate. Not only the Italians but all those strange people from other parts of the world—Poles and Lithuanians and Russians and Syrians and Jews and Greeks and Portuguese and Armenians and countries and languages he’d never heard of, taking up the cry, in maybe the only words of English they knew: Short pay! All out!

He patted his pocket. His pay envelope was still there—less twenty-five cents, the cost of a week of beer for himself. But enough to pay the rent on the shack and buy him food for the next two weeks if he could keep it away from his Pa. Or he could just give the old man half and tell him that short pay meant half of what he got last payday. Maybe on the way home he should stop by and buy a bottle. If the old man had a few swigs, he might believe the lie.

Pa would be raging mad about the strike. Best not to tell him he’d joined up. It couldn’t last long—probably be over by Monday or so. Nobody could afford to stay out long in the wintertime. They’d freeze before they starved.

How you feeling, Jake? It was Angelo, slapping him on the back, treating him like a man, something his own father never did.

Swell, he said, joining the chant again: Short pay! All out! Kids were hanging out the schoolhouse windows staring at him—envying him, he reckoned. He stood up straighter and chanted louder.

When the marchers got to the Plains neighborhood, where most of the workers lived in mill-owned tenements, they began to separate. Some of the men were talking of forming a picket line around the mills to keep scabs from returning after the dinner hour. Others were talking about strike meetings that night to plan strategy, but Jake could catch only the English words dropped into the foreigners’ talk—words like scab and strike. Angelo turned to him. I guess you native-born got no strike organization, he said, a big smile on his face.

Jake shook his head. He had yet to see a regular American or an Irishman in the crowd.

You wanna join us Italians tonight? Be a good meeting, I promise you.

Yeah, sure, Jake said. Anything to postpone the strapping he was sure to get when he went home.

Meantime, said Angelo. I got money in my pocket. How about some grub? My treat.

The tavern was full of Italians spraying tomato sauce as they jabbered excitedly at each other. Angelo told Jake to sit down, and then he disappeared across the crowded, smoky room. Soon he returned, bringing two huge platters of spaghetti to the table. He set one of them in front of Jake. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. The tomato sauce even sported a few bits of greasy sausage. Jake forgot the crowd around him, forgot the strike, forgot the menace that waited for him in the shack, and fell to, his nose almost in the steaming plate. He hadn’t had a full platter of food to himself in his entire thirteen years of life.

Hey, hey, take a breath, boy. Enjoy! Angelo said, plunking down a glass of red wine in front of Jake. He sat down on the bench next to him, but before long he was jawing with his pals—eating and drinking at the same time—just like everyone around them.

The talk was all in Italian. Jake knew only a few words; most of them he suspected were cusses, because he often heard them muttered behind Paddy Parker’s back. Then, seemingly without warning, the men around him jumped to their feet.

We’re going down to picket, Jake boy, Angelo said. Try to keep the blasted scabs from coming back in after the noon hour. You wanna come?

Jake shrugged. It was the end of free food and drink, so he might as well join them. It was better than the leather strap waiting for him at the shack. He grabbed his glass and drained the last few warming drops.

They marched down Union Street in a body, chanting, Short pay! All out! and blocking the street entirely so that no one, much less a wagon or buggy or auto, could get past. When the mills lining Canal Street came in view, the roar grew louder. It wasn’t just men and boys—there were women and girls as well, maybe more of them than men. The women were smiling and laughing, as though heading out on a gigantic picnic. Some of the crowd stopped to surround the gate at the Everett, others broke off at Canal to cut off entry into the Washington, the Atlantic, and the Pacific mills. Jake followed Angelo toward the bridge across the Merrimack, back to the Wood Mill, which they’d left less than an hour earlier.

Scab! Scab! they yelled at anyone trying to muscle his or her way through their midst. Make a line! Make a line! someone shouted. Angelo grabbed Jake’s arm, and then, grasping hands, the crowd of marchers spread out in a line that kept anyone from crossing the bridge and entering the gates of the Wood.

Jake was watching Angelo, so when the icy water came gushing down on his head, he looked up to see if it could be pouring rain in the middle of January.

Fire hoses! Angelo yelled. They’re setting the blasted fire hoses on us!

Some of the women and girls screamed. They were all soaked through before they could get out of range of the hoses. A few hardy souls, including Angelo, started for the bridge. Jake ran to catch up with him, but then a stream of water hit him in the chest and knocked him flat on his back.

It’s no good! Angelo yelled over the racket of water and human cries, grabbing Jake’s hand and pulling him to his feet. They break our bones and freeze us to death if we stay. Go home, he said to the departing backs of the workers, and almost to himself. Yes, go home, it’s all right. Then he shouted, though no one on the other side of the bridge could have heard him over the sound made by the torrents of water, We be back! You see, Mr. Billy Wood. We don’t give up!

It seemed to Jake, shivering in the freezing gray afternoon, that they had given up. They’d all run as soon as the water hit them. Not that he had stayed. He wasn’t a fool.

You got more clothes, Jake boy?

Jake shook his head. It don’t matter.

You got fire at home?

Naw, it don’t matter.

You come to Angelo’s and get warm. Can’t have you sick. We got too much to do now.

Three

The Best Student

ROSA WAS SITTING quietly at her desk, her eyes on her history book, when the riot bells began to ring. All the children were suddenly roused out of sleep or stupor. The bells did not sound like any they had ever heard; it was as though madmen had been let loose in the city hall tower.

Rosa looked at her teacher, Miss Finch, who was sitting perfectly erect at her desk, her eyes wide like those of an animal who has been startled and is too frightened to flee. Rosa watched as the teacher slowly rose to her feet and walked over to the window. It was grimy and the sill sooty, so she was careful not