I love protest songs, of all kinds, all eras, all genres, pretty much all the time. Like many here, I'm particularly fond of protest songs from the 60s & 70s; I'm such a folkie, it's embarrassing. I have no expertise but lots of enthusiasm, and I so hope you'd contribute some of your knowledge and experiences of the songs. First, what is a protest song? Phil Ochs has the best definition of them all. Please see below.

That does get it said. Well, enough about academics, let's look at more closely at the protest song "Bread And Roses." I'd be surprised if JayRae hasn't covered this material long before, but I hope there's also some new stuff here.

More on the song itself below. Here's some popular versions:

Judy Collins

From her same-titled 1964 album
https://youtu.be/HKEr5U8ERgc

Joan Baez

With her sister Mimi Farina, who wrote the most popularly used score of the poem
https://youtu.be/LWkVcaAGCi0

Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco

From their album Fellow Workers (Cooking Vinyl/Righteous Babe Records, 1999) with Utah's great introduction telling the story of the Bread and Roses strike.
https://youtu.be/VoEi_2N1TFk

Perhaps you have a favourite version? Or a memory of hearing it sung somewhere.

What lies behind this powerful song? What gave rise to it? It arose out of a huge strike in 1912 in Lawrence, MA, one that transformed the labour movement in the great textile region of New England. Hundreds of thousands of workers participated in the struggle in a powerful example of democratic mass mobilization. The textile strike also tied into the women's movement and their struggle for democratic and human rights. The phrase had been born as a political slogan from a line in a speech by Rose Schneiderman, a socialist, feminist, and labour leader of those times. She had said, "The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too."

Source: By http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/women/manscrpt.html / http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/women/schneid.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1895945

You could read more about Rose Schneiderman's remarkable life and career at good old wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Schneiderman
She touched so many aspects of American life during her 90 years. When you read about her, she sounds more like Bernie than Bernie :=) We see Bernie today as a heroic, but lonely, progressive leader, fighting for human rights, justice, democracy and the common good alone among today's wretched politicians. It is enlightening to read about the many heroic socialist leaders, such as Rose Schneiderman, of the post-Civil War to WW1 era. JayRae has done a remarkable job over a long time in collecting stories about these folks and their struggles, which are also our struggles today. We would do well to join Bernie's story to the old stories of The Hellraisers Journal, for they are the same story. So what was the Bread and Roses strike about?

Here's a 21-minute video about the 1912 Textile Strike.
https://youtu.be/RdbP67NWnLg

You can find a written history of the 1912 strike in Lawrence, MA here: http://www.folkarchive.de/breadrose.html

In 1912, in the great woolen center of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 20,000 workers walked out of the mills in spontaneous protest against a cut in their weekly pay. Workers had been averaging $8.76 for a 56-hour work week when a state law made 54 hours the maximum for women and for minors under 18. The companies reduced all hours to 54 but refused to raise wage rates to make up for the average loss of 31 cents per week suffered by each worker because of the reduction in hours.

This caused the walkout which rocked the great New England textile industry. Under the aggressive leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World the strike became front-page news throughout the country. This is how IWW leader Bill Haywood described the Lawrence strike in his autobiography, Bill Haywood's Book:

"It was a wonderful strike, the most significant strike, the greatest strike that has ever been carried on in this country or any other country. And the most significant part of that strike was that it was a democracy. The strikers had a committee of 56, representing 27 different languages. The boss would have to see all the committee to do any business with them. And immediately behind that committee was a substitute committee of another 56 prepared in the event of the original committee's being arrested. Every official in touch with affairs at Lawrence had a substitute selected to take his place in the event of being thrown in jail."

After ten weeks the strikers won important concessions from the woolen companies, not only for themselves but also for 250,000 textile workers throughout New England.

During one of the many parades conducted by the strikers some young girls carried a banner with the slogan: "We want bread and roses too." This inspired James Oppenheim to write his poem, "Bread and Roses," which was (first) set to music by Caroline Kohlsaat,

This information from the Union Song website was taken from a wonderful book called Songs of Work and Protest by Jay Glazer and Edith Fowkes, p.71

Here are the Oppenheim lyrics:

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

The two joined images summarize our longing for a world where our twin human needs of food and love would be met. We work for a society that would nourish our bodies and our spirits, meet both our biological and our cultural needs, feed both our hearts and minds.

Mimi Farina wrote the most commonly used music for the song. Here's Judy Collins reflecting on the origins of her version of "Bread and Roses."
http://breadandroses.org/blog/judy-collins-recalls-origin-of-bread-and-r...

In Singing Lessons: A Memoir of Love, Loss, Hope and Healing (c. 1998 p. 174) Judy Collins recalls looking for songs for an album project in 1976.

“After the death of her husband, Dick Fariña, Mimi Fariña, Joan Baez’s younger sister, had started a nonprofit organization in San Francisco called Bread & Roses, to provide free entertainment for people in homes, jails and hospitals in the Bay Area. She wrote the “Bread and Roses” melody to a poem by James Oppenheim and I recorded it, using a choir of voices in a church in New York.”

In her liner notes for the album, also titled Bread & Roses Judy said: “Songs come from many places, unexpectedly, amazingly.” She relayed how Mimi had sent her a copy of the “Bread and Roses” poem. She thought it so beautiful that she asked her to set it to music. Her sister Holly Ann then designed a Bread and Roses tapestry piece featuring a single rose and wove it using hand-dyed yarns which was then used as the art for the inside album cover.

You'll notice that the extract comes from the organization http://breadandroses.org/, which is all about hope and healing through live music.

What does "Bread and Roses" mean for you this Saturday morning?

Peace be with us, if we work for it with peaceful hearts,
gerrit