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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 4, 1904
Mother Jones Describes the March of the Mill Children of July 1903
From The Co-operator of September 1904:
The March of the Children.
Lena Morrow Lewis, in The Socialist, Seattle, Washington, June 19th, 1904. From notes by Mother Jones.
PHILADELPHIA is famed far and wide as the ” City of Brotherly Love.” Churches abound everywhere, and her people look with holy awe upon the sins and vices of their sister city on Long Island Sound. And an unsuspecting and unobserving public has been quite ready to accept without question all that the City of Brotherly Love has claimed for herself.
It has remained for the wicked labor agitator to ferret out and unearth the criminal conditions that exist in this quiet, peaceful church- going city of Philadelphia, and it is only in a Socialist paper that these facts are permitted to see the light of day.
The writer is indebted to “Mother” Jones for the items contained therein.
Last summer the textile workers of Philadelphia, 125,000 men, women and children, went on a strike. They demanded shorter hours, an increase of wages and better sanitary conditions. Filthy closets and a defective sewerage system produced a very unwholesome atmosphere in which to work. Meanwhile the rest of the world wagged merrily on, and no one seemed to know or care anything about the strike, except a few labor cranks and Socialists and the owners whose profits were being affected. Not a daily newspaper mentioned the cause of the strike, nor the fact that among the strikers were a large number of children. During this time “Mother” Jones “happened” to drop into town and, as is her custom, she began to stir up matters. The public should be forced to know what these people were striking for. But strikes were such common affairs and it would require drastic measures to arouse an indifferent public.
At last she hit upon a plan. She would marshal all the children between the ages of ten and fourteen and take them on a thirty-mile march and they were to stop at every town within that radius and tell the people the story of their wrongs. Many of these children had worked in the factory since they were seven years of age and had never been inside a school room. When they were gone about forty miles they decided to go over to Oyster Bay and present their case to President Roosevelt. There was some risk connected with a project of this kind. If any of the children had sickened or died on the way, that fact would have been heralded all over the country, and “Mother” Jones proclaimed a murderer. The mills could maim and disfigure and kill scores of children annually and no mention be made of the fact. However, “Mother” Jones felt that they could afford to take chances and proceeded with the children.
As they journeyed from town to town, members of the working class provided them with food and shelter.
The children marched thru the streets of the towns, held meetings and, thru their leaders, told the story of their wrongs. Every child was keyed up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Every step northward was taking them farther away from Philadelphia. Some of their fathers had voted for President Roosevelt; in their eyes he was the greatest man in the United States and so they went hopefully and merrily on. When they reached Bristol the leader sent a request on behalf of the children for a permit to hold a street meeting and, when it was learned that an army of children was coming into town, a squad of policemen armed with guns were ordered to stand guard on the bridge to protect the city against the children.
The only place where they were not permitted to march was in Trenton, N. J. The mayor was a good Democrat, elected by the votes of workingmen on the ground that he was a great friend of labor. Had it been a company of trust magnates instead of striking wage-slave children, they would have been given the freedom of the city and treated with the most gracious hospitality. The mayor knew he could well afford to treat children in this way, for, by the time another election rolled around the men would have forgotten all about it, and would march to the polls and vote for the “friends of labor.”
When the officials of New York City heard that an army of children were coming into New York, the inspector of police notified “Mother” Jones that they would not be permitted to march thru the streets nor hold a meeting. But “Mother” Jones and her army of children were not to be kept out by “notifications,” and she proceeded at once to see “His Honor the Mayor,” and when the little white-haired woman dropped into his office there was nothing for him to do but listen to her request. She reminded the mayor that Congress had voted $45,000 to wine and dine the brother of the German Emperor who visited this country some twelve months previous; and that New York City had spared neither pains nor means to honor this foreign prince; and now when an army of native-born American children, who have been helping to produce the wealth of the nation, ask for the freedom of the city to march and hold a meeting, they are refused. The mayor began to see things differently and, after a few moments consideration, called up the inspector and persuaded him that the best thing to do would be to grant the permit for a meeting and provide policemen to keep the crowd in order.
That a city with a police force like New York should tremble at the approach of an army of little children seems ridiculous, but these very officials realized far better than members of the working class have done that these children were living witnesses of the inhuman and brutal side of the present capitalistic system which they were elected to protect and maintain and they did not want the meeting held. However, they knew that if they refused the children the right to hold a meeting in New York, that fact would be heralded all over the country and of two evils they chose what seemed to them to be the lesser.
The meeting produced no riots, occasioned no bomb-throwing, but it did set many people thinking.
From New York they advanced to Oyster Bay. The news of their coming had preceded them and orders had been given to deny them admission to the grounds; but “while the enemy slept” they quietly stole into the city thru an unguarded avenue. How the feat was accomplished still remains a mystery to the Oyster Bay officials. A committee waited upon the President [Roosevelt] and asked him to give the children a hearing. He excused himself on the ground of being very busy, but assured the committee that his sympathies were with the children and cited the fact of his having signed the child labor bill while governor of New York State as evidence of his great interest in the child workers. “Mother” Jones reminded him that while governor of New York he had sent out the militia to Croton Dam to shoot down the fathers of the children of the state because they would not accept $1.00 a day instead of $1.50, for which they had contracted.
During this very time, when these striking children were being denied an audience with the president, he found time to entertain Sir Thomas Lipton, a foreigner, but a representative of the class which President Roosevelt was elected to serve and therefore had a more just claim to the attention of the President than the working children of America. The President had time also to confer with a committee of politicians from Wilkesbarre to lay plans to blind the coal miners of Pennsylvania as to their real interests.
On their way back they stopped at Manhattan Island and called upon Senator Platt. It was in the morning and they invited themselves to breakfast with Senator Platt at the Oriental Hotel. As the children were playing their band in front of the hotel, the patrons were greatly disturbed and sent for a special police force to drive them away.
The trip proved to be a great benefit to the children. They gained in flesh, a healthy color came back to their cheeks, they had tasted a little of the life of children and had received a liberal education. In fact they had learned more in the few weeks they were out on the march than they had in all the rest of their lives.
As the leaders turned their faces southward the children began to protest. They begged to be kept out a whole year. They did not want to go back to work, but they had nothing else to do. They were victims of the present profit system and returned to grind out their young lives to make profit for the aristocracy of America and Europe.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones to TR, These Little Children,
Phl No Am July 16, 1903, Foner p552
https://books.google.com/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22john+lopez%22+%22philadelphia+north+american%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=theodore+roosevelt+elizabeth
The Co-operator
-published by The Co-operative Brotherhood
-Sept 1904
Burley, Washington
(search: “mother jones”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZBk1AQAAMAAJ
IMAGES
Mother Jones w Army, March of Mill Children, AZ Rpbn p1, July 18, 1903
Mother Jones in Wagon, March of Mill Children, AZ Rpbn p1, July 18, 1903
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020558/1903-07-18/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
The Socialist
(Seattle, Washington)
-June 19, 1904, page 3
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/040619-seattlesocialist-w202.pdf
Lena Morrow Lewis
Martha Lena Morrow Lewis (1868–1950)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Morrow_Lewis
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles Kerr, 1925
Chapter 10 – The March of the Mill Children
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/10/
The Croton Dam, History
https://www.crotononhudson-ny.gov/historical-society/pages/croton-dam
Search: April 1900, Croton Dam, New York
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?date1=04%2F01%2F1900&date2=04%2F30%2F1900&searchType=advanced&language=&proxdistance=5&state=New+York&rows=50&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=croton+dam&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1&sort=date#tab=tab_advanced_search
Category: March of the Mill Children 1903
https://weneverforget.org/category/march-of-the-mill-children-1903/
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