"Bread and Roses" 🥖🌹 New England Labor Song [View all]

"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan referring to the necessity for basic human rights (Bread) and the dignity of a free life (Roses). The phrase and works surrounding it are heavily associated with the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike, also referred to as the "Bread and Roses strike", in which tens of thousands of workers protested in the freezing winter for two months against a hidden cut in women's wages.

The strike triggered a violent response from the Massachusetts National Guard, and resulted in the deaths of 3 workers, but was ultimately successful and helped raise wages from dozens of textile companies across New England by up to 20 percent.
The strike was organized by the leaders of the IWW, Bill Haywood of Salt Lake, Utah, and Elizabeth G. Flynn of Concord, New Hampshire.

However, the phrase itself preceded the strike, with the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim, which this song is adapted from, being published two months before the strike began.