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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" 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.

Concerning child labor, Mother Jones said that the crushing of childish natures in mills, the dwarfing of their mentality of the children, and their physical deterioration, constituted murder on the part of those who made the system. No nation ever murdered children for greed but it payed the penalty in the degeneracy of the whole race. And as long as fathers vote for the system that makes these things possible they are the children's slayers. In all the history of slavery there is no instance of a colored parent bringing a child for sale, but when a white mother takes her child to the factory there to be dwarfed mentally, and crushed physically, she is doing worse than selling it into slavery.

[Said Mother Jones:]

I have known...of children working fourteen hours a day for twenty-five cents a week.

With the onward march of capital organization begins. The capitalists say there is no need of labor organizing but the fact that they themselves are continually organizing shows their real beliefs. The capitalists want the most labor for the least money; the laborers want the most money for the least labor.

Workers produce wealth and build the world's palaces, but they neither use the wealth nor dwell in the palaces. Many of the rich say, "but the working class is not intelligent enough for management," but small brains are needed for theft-small brains are needed for wholesale stealing such as is practiced by the great corporations.

If you would only realize that you hold the solution of the whole problem in your own hands you could settle the whole question easily. If, for instance, instead of striking in small groups, every industry in America were to hold up the capitalists would be obliged to yield to any and all demands, for the world could simply not go on.

A most earnest plea was made that the working body obviate all necessity for such trouble-entailing measures as a general strike, by studying and solving the problem with intellectual instead of brute force. Let the change come peacefully, she pleaded, let us take the children away from this God-cursed labor and put them out in the fresh air and sunshine where they may develop into a nobler race of men and women and build up the ideal civilization with peace and good will. If we overthrow feudalism we are [able to?] overthrow capitalism.

The speaker told of the beginning of socialism with the Carpenter of Galilee who came with the revolutionary doctrine of the equal sonship of all men under the Father. She told how his doctrine was kept down by the powers of the time until it had permeated the people and then there was no more keeping it under and the upper classes themselves saw the wisdom and necessity of adopting it.

Mother Jones made an ardent plea for the larger education of woman, pointing out most clearly that mankind cannot possibly improve until the mother and educator of mankind is greater than he. No government can be free that has enslaved or subjected women, for the government of any country must in the very nature of the case be the reflection of the women who mothered the governors and rulers.

Mother Jones concluded with the assurance that the doing away with competition would not mean the doing away with ambition.

[She said:]

As there is but one Father...we must all be brothers of necessity. So let your ambitions be for the grand dawn of a fraternal civilization, for a riper and stronger manhood, a purer and nobler womanhood, for with these things all the strife brought about by the greed of men and the dwarfishness of their natures will die a natural death, and the noblest ideal of civilization will have been reached.

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[Photographs added.]

SOURCE
Daily Industrial News
(Greensboro, North Carolina)
-Feb 9, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/63398308/

IMAGES
Mother Mary Harris Jones Standing, 1902
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005688160/
Three little oyster shuckers
http://www.old-picture.com/united-states-history-1900s---1930s/shuckers-...

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Battle Hymn Of The Republic - Odetta
Lyrics by Julia Ward Howe, 1861
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal";
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.