Child Labor

Hellraisers Journal: Fatherless Children, Child Labor and State Laws for Mothers' Pensions

There are no limits to which powers of privilege
will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday April 23, 1916
The Labor World: "The Widow's Mite"

Widow's Mite, Child Poverty, Labor World, Apr 22, 1916.png

Hellraisers Journal: Little Children of the Poor Securing Wealth from Mine and Mill

Little children of the poor,
Pearls for trampling swine,
Cast and mired that they secure
The wealth from mill and mine.
-Ellis B Harris
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Sunday April 16, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: Little Child of the Mines

UMWJ, Child at Mine, Apr 13, 1916.png

Hellraisers Journal: Part II: "Mother Jones & Her Methods -Personality & Power of This Aged Woman"


I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hellraiser!
-Mother Jones

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Thursday March 22, 1906
From The Boston Herald Archives: Report from 1904 on the Early Life of Mother Jones

The correspondent who travelled recently to West Virginia with Mother Jones, and whose report of that trip was featured in Tuesday's edition of Hellraisers, has reminded us of a similar report which was published in the Boston Herald's "Sunday Herald" of September 11, 1904. Hellraisers published part one of that article yesterday, continues with part two today and will republish part three in tomorrow's edition.

From the Sunday Herald of September 11, 1904:

Mother Jones, Boston Herald, Sept 11, 1904.png

Hellraisers Journal: Review of John Spargo's "The Bitter Cry of the Children,” Enslaved at Ages 4 & 5!


Capital has neither morals nor ideals; its interests are always
and everywhere expressible in terms of cash profits.
Capital in the United states in the twentieth century calls for children
as loudly as it called in England a century ago.
-John Spargo

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Friday March 16, 1906
From The New York Times: "The Children of the Poor," Part II

In its March 3rd edition, the Times published an in-depth review of the newly published book by John Spargo which documents the suffering of the millions of children who are born and reared in poverty within our great American prosperity. Yesterday we present part one of that review, entitled "Children of the Poor." We conclude the article today with part two.

CHILDREN OF THE POOR [Part II]
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A Passionless but Terrible Description of
Their Condition in This Country.*
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Bitter Cry, Spargo, Little Tenement Toilers, Feb 1906.png

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones: We stand in the dawn of war between the robbed and robbers.

If they force us to shoot they will find
that they never struck such a band of fighters
as the American workingmen.
-Mother Jones

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Wednesday March 14, 1906
New York, New York - Socialists and Trade Unionists Rally to Defense of Moyer and Haywood

Mother Jones, Miners Angel .jpg

Two thousand Socialists and trade unionists, watched over by one thousand bluecoats, gathered in the city of New York last night to protest the arrests and attempted judicial murder of Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood, officers of the Western Federation of Miners. One of the speakers was Mother Jones who stated:

We stand in the dawn of the world's greatest war...It will be the war between the robbed and the robbers, and the robbers will go down. When they talk of hanging Moyer and Haywood, now why didn't they talk of hanging the men who shot down innocent working men in Virginia? Why don't they talk of hanging the commercial pirates who are murdering the little children in the mills of the South?.....

If they force us to shoot they will find that they never struck such a band of fighters as the American workingmen.

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Declares Child Labor Is Murder, Dwarfing Little Minds and Bodies

"Of such is the kingdom of Heaven," said the great teacher.
Well, if Heaven is full of undersized, round shouldered, hollow-eyed,
listless, sleepy little angel children,
I want to go to the other place with the bad little boys and girls.
-Mother Jones

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Sunday February 11, 1906
Greensboro, North Carolina - Mother Jones Speaks on Child Labor

From the Greensboro Daily Industrial News of February 9th:

Mother Jones.jpg

"MOTHER JONES" ON CHILD LABOR
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Socialist Declares That Factories Are Responsible
for Mental Degenerates
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LABOR AND CAPITAL ARE DULY COMPARED
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Laboring Man's Champion Speaks to a Small Audience
in Labor Union Hall But Holds Her
Hearers' Interest to the End.
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Mother Jones talked in Labor Union Hall last night to an audience made unfortunately small by the inclemency of the weather. But the few people who were there were profoundly interested and were besides very greatly taken with the "spunky" little woman who tried to stir up in them the revolutionary spirit and to implant in them a firm purpose to benefit their brothers and help them forward to a higher civilization.

Mother Jones related first the history of the tool, told how it had become a machine, and how its change, and its ownership by the few had brought about the present economic conditions. She told about how young men used to go West to escape the servitude of labor, but now, she said, the conditions were the same everywhere.

Cuba appealed for relief from Spain, said she, and could have had it without war, but in the interests of capital war was brought about. Then capital went on to the Philippines, to work up that country. In the Far East, before the gates of Pekin, Militarism and Capitalism for the first time in history, joined their interests and worked together. The whole thing means that we are face to face with a competition as the world has never known it before.

Calls Child Labor Murder.

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones on Child Labor & Children "shriveled and old before their time."

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Saturday February 10, 1906
Greensboro, North Carolina - Mother Jones Interviewed, Tells of Children in the Mills

The following is an interview with Mother Jones which was published in the February 8th edition of the Greensboro Daily Industrial News:


NO STRIKE COMING SAYS MOTHER JONES
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Noted Socialist Thinks General Uprising
Will Be Avoided by Both Sides.
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SPEAKS OF CHILD LABOR AND
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
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Amusing Anecdotes Related By Her Show Her Fearlessness and
Sense of Humor as Well as Her Lack of "Respect of Persons."
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Mother Jones March of the Mill Children, 1903.png
Mother Jones leading the March of the Mill Children, 1903
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Hellraisers Journal: Child Suicides from Overwork, May Beals Reproves Church of Mine & Mill Owners

Even capitalism cannot grind profits out of a dead child.
-May Beals

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Sunday February 4, 1906
From the Montana News: Mary Beals on Child Suicide and Heartless Churches

child labor 3 girls.jpg

Readers of Hellraisers might remember a story from the Montana News, written by May Beals, about the suicide of a young cotton mill worker who was too worn out from her labors to go on living. The child sought the sure rest of the grave where her slumbers could not be interrupted by the factory whistle blowing at an early hour. That was a fictional story, but, in a letter to the News, Miss Beals claims that suicides among children who labor in the mines and mills are increasing, especially obvious in France where statistics on child suicide are available.

Writes Miss Beals:

Notice that it is "poor children"—the disinherited—who have no share in the earth, who take themselves out of it. Some good people say that the rapid increase in France is due to the spread of free thought—the decay of religion.

If the function of religion is to hold children in a life of torment, that nothing else can force them to endure, the sooner it decays the better. Truly religion is worth more to the masters than either the constable or the hangman if he can keep the children alive while they are being despoiled. Even capitalism cannot grind profits out of a dead child.

Hellraisers Journal: How land-owning farmers of the southwest are turned into "shiftless renters."

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Thursday January 13, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: The Life of the Tenant Farmer

In this month's edition of the Review, W. W. Pannell describes the life of the tenant farmer, how tenant farmers are manufactured, and the deep pit of debt in which they and their families struggle to survive:

Tenant Farming in the United States

By W. W. PANNELL
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Steward Family, Tenant Farmers, LOC.png
Tenant Farmers Levi and Beulah Stewart with children,
CIR Hearings at Dallas, March 1915
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