The Poetic Claim of Labor Law: Bread and Roses as a Living Symbol of Workers’ Struggles

Abstract

While different approaches to law have mobilized the role of emotions in legal study, and while the Law and Literature movement has carved out a privileged space for analyzing Law as Literature and Law in Literature, the vibrant artistic string of emotional expression remains too often overlooked. This string—resonating as much through books as through songs, including protest songs—bears the kaleidoscopic name of Poetry. In this article, I propose to use poetry as an analytical key, as an approach to a major historical event in U.S. labor law: the strike of immigrant women in Lawrence in 1912. This strike is considered not only an important victory for the advancement of social rights of workers but also as a feminist inspiration, with the particularity of bearing a highly symbolic name: Bread and Roses. This name—whose attribution remains mysterious—is drawn from a poem by James Oppenheim, which became a popular success after being set to music in the 1960s and 1970s. By taking this poem, and the legacy of its living symbols in particular, as resonant chords of claims and metaphorical struggles, I aim to answer this question: In what ways has “Bread and Roses” acted not only as a historical slogan of labor enforcement, but as a poetic vehicle for the symbolic transmission of rights across disciplines, movements, and generations—and what does this suggest about the use of poetry as a method to approach law?