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

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.

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Friday December 29, 1905
From the Montana News: A Story of the Crushing of a Child's Spirit by May Beals

From the December 27th edition of Montana's leading Socialist newspaper comes this story by May Beals:

Story by May Beals
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The Wheels that Cheated the Wheels of the Mill-
Atrocities on Helpless Children.
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All night she had walked back and forth between flying spindles. The roar of the machinery was still numbing her tired brain as she sat down by the road to rest a minute for the long walk homeward. She was a very little girl-one of those who are ceremoniously bundled out of the mill while the inspector is being entertained in the office; one of those whose pitiful and well proven wrongs would take many men from legislative halls and the pews of fashionable churches to spend long terms behind prison bars if our laws were enforced against the rich as they are enforced against the poor.

But the child knew nothing of this. She could not understand, she could only feel, the injustice that was crushing the life from her frail little body. Her blindness and ignorance caused the worst of her suffering.

For she was not yet past suffering the sharp mental anguish that is so much worse than any physical pain. You can work a child until it grows incapable of thought-incapable of any feeling save physical sensations. She had not worked long enough for that.