Odetta

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.