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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.

From the Montana News of January 3, 1906:

CHILD SUICIDES FROM OVERWORK

May Beals Reproves Wealthy Church for Its Heartlessness-Asks
Congregation If Christ Would Have Spent Millions for
Luxurious Churches.

We print the following letter from May Beals in regard to her cotton mill story:

Dear Comrade: Please tell them in a footnote to my story, or an editorial or something, that the number of child suicides is increasing all the time. In France in 1901 there were four hundred and seventy-six children who committed suicide. All the cases recorded were among the poor. I haven't been able to find the United States statistics on the subject. I don't think any record is kept separate from adult cases, for I wrote to a friend in Washington who has exceptional facilities for finding out things.

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.

Once, in the richest church—one of the richest churches I ever was in—they had raised a great many thousand dollars to finish paying for it and the pastor praised them for it-patted them on the back and made them feel virtuous—and I knew then that I MUST, but I waited till he had finished his sermon and then I went up in front and stood on the steps of the pulpit and told them that in that same city there were so many disinherited that the Y. W. C. A. had to have a policeman to keep order among the horde that applied for relief in the winter. They couldn't help all who came, only those who were absolutely unable to help themselves. And I asked them—those hypocrites who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers—if they thought that Christ would build such a house for himself while his brothers were suffering so.

I didn't call them hypocrites, but that was because I didn't know that the coal mine owners and cotton mill men belonged to that church. I called them my poor blind brothers and sisters, but I wouldn't have claimed kin with them if I had known as much about them then as I do now.

Yours for the revolution,
MAY BEALS

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[Photograph added.]

From the Duluth Labor World of January 27, 1906:

CHILD LABOR INCREASING.

Before the supplemental session of the national child labor committee at Chicago, Dr. Felix Adler declared that the evil of child labor was growing in the nation as a whole, although it was on the decrease in Illinois....

SOURCES

Montana News
(Socialist Party Newspaper)
(Helena, Montana)
-Jan 3, 1906
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1906-01-03/ed-1/seq-1/

The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Jan 27, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/49584784/

IMAGES

Child Labor, Three little oyster shuckers
http://www.old-picture.com/united-states-history-1900s---1930s/shuckers-...

May Beals, Fort Wayne (IN) Jr-Gz, May 27, 1906
http://www.newspapers.com/image/29293183/
Note: This is the best photograph that I could find of Mary Beals,
and I fixed it up to the best of my ability. Hopefully a better photo will yet be found.

Child Labor, Indiana glass works, 1906, Lewis Hine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Child_Labor_Committee

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: The Spirit of a Little Child Crushed by the Wheels of the Mill-by May Beals
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-spirit-little-chi...

The Rebel at Large
-by May Beals
Charles H Kerr & Company, 1906
https://books.google.com/books?id=MX5YAAAAMAAJ
Also here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/fiction/beals/

The Bitter Cry of the Children
-by John Spargo
Macmillan, 1906
https://books.google.com/books?id=5qSXMJQG6E4C

The National Child Labor Committee
http://www.nationalchildlabor.org/

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