Editing Lawrence, Massachusetts (section)

===Founding and rise as a textile center===
{{See also|1922 New England Textile Strike}}[[Image:New England factory life -- 'Bell-time.' (Boston Public Library).jpg|thumb|Washington Mills in Lawrence (1868), by [[Winslow Homer]]]]
[[Image:1876 map Lawrence Massachusetts by Bailey and Hazen BPL 10363.png|thumb|Map of Lawrence, 1876]]
[[File:Thumbs abbott-lawrence-painting-after.jpg|thumb|upright|Ambassador [[Abbott Lawrence]], by [[George Peter Alexander Healy]]]]
[[Image:1912 Lawrence Textile Strike 1.jpg|thumb|Massachusetts National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets surround a parade of strikers during [[1912 Lawrence textile strike]]]]

Europeans first settled the Haverhill area in 1640, colonists from Newbury following the [[Merrimack River]] in from the coast.<ref>Joseph Sidney Howe, ''Historical sketch of the town of Methuen: from its settlement to the year 1876'' (1876), p.4</ref> The area that would become Lawrence was then part of Methuen and Andover. The first settlement within present-day city limits came in 1655 with the establishment of a [[blockhouse]] in Shawsheen Fields, now South Lawrence.

The future site of the city (formerly parts of [[Andover, Massachusetts|Andover]] and [[Methuen, Massachusetts|Methuen]]), was purchased by a consortium of local industrialists. The Water Power Association members: [[Abbott Lawrence]], Edmund Bartlett, [[Thomas Hopkinson]] of [[Lowell, Massachusetts|Lowell]], [[John Nesmith]] and [[Saunders family#Daniel Saunders, Sr.|Daniel Saunders]], had purchased control of Peter's Falls on the Merrimack River and hence controlled Bodwell's Falls the site of the present [[Great Stone Dam]]. The group allotted fifty thousand dollars to buy land along the river to develop.<ref name=Hayes>Jonathan Franklin Chesley Hayes, ''History of the City of Lawrence'' (1868)</ref>{{rp|11}} In 1844, the group petitioned the legislature to act as a corporation, known as the [[Essex Company]], which incorporated on April 16, 1845. The first excavations for the Great Stone Dam to harness the Merrimack River's water power were done on August 1, 1845.<ref name=Hayes/>{{rp|17}} The Essex Company would sell the water power to corporations such as the [[Arlington Mills]], as well as organize the construction of mills and build to suit. Until 1847, when the state legislature recognized the community as a town, it was called interchangeably the "New City", "Essex" or "Merrimac".<ref name=Hayes/>{{rp|23}} The post office, built in 1846, used the designation "Merrimac". The city was incorporated in 1853, and named for Abbott Lawrence.

Canals were dug on both the north and the south banks to provide power to the factories that would soon be built on its banks as both mill owners and workers from across the city and the world flocked to the city in droves; many were Irish laborers who had experience with similar building work. The work was dangerous: injuries and even death were common.<ref>Skulski, Ken. ''The History of Lawrence Massachusetts, Volume 2'', page 7.</ref>

====Bread and Roses Strike of 1912====
{{Main|1912 Lawrence textile strike}}
The [[Pemberton Mill]] collapse occurred on January 10, 1860, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The five-story textile mill, built in 1853, was a major employer, particularly for Irish immigrants, many of whom were women and children. At the time of the collapse, around 600–800 workers were inside, though exact numbers vary. The official death toll was 88, with estimates of 116–145 deaths and hundreds injured, many permanently disabled. The disaster was one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history.  Investigations pinned the collapse on substandard construction, specifically defective cast-iron columns that were too weak to support the mill’s weight. Poor oversight, cost-cutting by owners, and overloading the structure with heavy machinery exacerbated the issue. The mill was known to vibrate heavily during operation, a warning sign ignored.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9902E6DC1638E533A2575BC1A9629C94679FD7CF |title=The Fall of the Pemberton Mill |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=April 18, 1886 }}</ref> As immigrants flooded into the United States in the mid to late 19th century, the population of Lawrence abounded with skilled and unskilled workers from several countries. Protesting conditions, in 1912 they walked out of the mills. The action, sometimes celebrated as the [[Bread and Roses]] Strike, was one of the more important, widely reported, labor struggles in American history.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Klein|first=Christopher|title=The Strike That Shook America|url=https://www.history.com/news/the-strike-that-shook-america|access-date=2020-01-13|website=HISTORY|date=26 November 2019 |language=en}}</ref>

The [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (the "One Big Union", the "Wobblies") defied the common wisdom that a largely female and ethnically divided workforce could not be organized, and the strike held through two bitterly cold winter months. The young 15-year mill hand [[Fred Beal]], who was drawn by the experience into a lifetime of labor organizing, recalls that contrary to expectations, it was the most recent immigrant groups, "the Italians, Poles, Syrians [Lebanese] and [[Walloons|Franco-Belgians]]", who "kept it alive.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last=Beal|first=Fred Erwin|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b332369&view=1up&seq=11&skin=2021|title=Proletarian journey: New England, Gastonia, Moscow.|date=1937|publisher=Hillman-Curl|location=New York|pages=52}}</ref>

After hundreds of the strikers' hungry children had been sent to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, and the U.S. Congress was induced to hold hearings, the mill owners decided to settle, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England raises of up to 20 percent.<ref name="weir">{{cite book|last=Watson|first=Bruce|title=Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream|publisher=Penguin Group|year=2005|location=New York|page=12}}</ref> However, as a young Massachusetts Senator, [[John F. Kennedy]] was later to record, in the decades that followed the mill owners moved their capital and employment out of Lawrence and the region to the non-union South.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kennedy|first=John F.|date=1954-01-01|title=New England and the South|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1954/01/new-england-and-the-south/376244/|access-date=2022-01-10|website=The Atlantic|language=en}}</ref>