In 1913.....

In June 1913, 1,100 Polish and Greek workers at the Brown Stocking Mills here in Ipswich, went out on strike.  The mill owners and police responded by emptying their company-owned housing and dumping all their belongings on the street. And by going to the docks in Boston to hire new immigrants to replace them.   There were riots and ultimately the police fired into the crowd and killed a young Greek woman, who was not on strike but was just leaving work to go home.  Ultimately the strike was a failure. After 3 weeks people moved back into their houses and carried on.  No one was ever disciplined for killing Nicholetta Paudelopoulou. When the mill closed 16 years later, the houses were sold the the workers living in them.

Reading about this today, I encountered this wonderful page from the Binghampton NY Press and Leader.  It's full of history - suffragettes and the Unwholesomeness of Veal and President Wilson's projected visit to the under-construction Panama Canal and a $15,000 barn built for 9 cows etc.

So, if you click here, you can read it for yourself.  Worth spending a few minutes to see how much the world has changed and how much it has stayed the same.