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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 9, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Interview with Mother Jones
From the Philadelphia North American of July 7, 1903:
“Mother” Jones Will Lead Textile Child Workers
Through Country to Win Sympathy.
———-Army of 400 Boys and Girls in Living Appeal for Aid.
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“Mother ” Jones will lead a second “children’s crusade” from this city today. It will be composed of 400 striking juvenile textile workers and an equal number of adult strikers. It starts from the Kensington Labor Lyceum, Second Street, above Cambria, at 11 o’clock this morning.
The object of the “crusade” is to appeal to the people of the country to support the 75,000 textile strikers in their “demand” for a 55-hour-work-week. Sufficient money to support the strikers indefinitely is expected to come in as a result of taking the children throughout the country. So far as possible, parents will accompany their children. Two members of the strikers’ executive board and their wives will help in caring for the “crusaders.”
“Mother” Jones, as commander-in-chief, has full charge of the campaign. After at first opposing it, the strike leaders have become convinced that it is an excellent plan to stir up the workers and the general public of the United States to lend a hand in the fight for shorter hours. “Mother” Jones spoke about the project to this reporter last night:
I desire the textile strikers of Philadelphia to win their fight for shorter hours, so that more leisure may be obtained, especially for children and women.
The herding of young children of both sexes in textile mills is the cause of great immorality.
As the result of the competitive and the factory systems, the nation is being stunted, physically, morally, and mentally.
I do not blame the manufacturers individually, but I do blame the community at large for making no effort to abolish these evils.
The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.
I am going to rouse the Christian fathers and mothers of this country if there is human blood in their veins.
If the manufacturers cannot afford to give their employees a living wage and shorter hours of work, then the system of making goods for profit is wrong and must give way to making goods for use.
The sight of little children at work in mills when they ought to be at school or at play always rouses me. I found the conditions in this city deplorable, and I resolved to do what I could to shorten the hours of toil of the striking textile workers so as to gain more liberty for the children and women. I led a parade of children through the city-the cradle of Liberty-but the citizens were not moved to pity by the object lesson.
The curse of greed so pressed on their hearts that they could not pause to express their pity for future men and women who are being stunted mentally, morally, and physically, so that they cannot possibly become good citizens. I cannot believe that the public conscience is so callous that it will not respond. I am going out of Phiadelphia to see if there are people with human blood in their veins.
When I think of the present and future I fear for my country. The criminal classes keep increasing. Large sums of money are being poured out for almshouses, prisons, churches, souphouses, insane asylums, inebriates’ homes, houses of refuge, reformatories, and schools for defectives, but they are only a drop in the bucket. The disease cannot be cured unless the cause is removed. Keen unrestrained competition, rivalry for commercial supremacy, and lust for wealth tramples on humanity and feels no remorse.
I am going to picture capitalism and caricature the money-mad. I am going to show Wall Street the flesh and blood from which it squeezes its wealth. I am going to show President Roosevelt the poor little things on which the boasted commercial greatness of country is built. One single Philadelphia minister of Christ’s Gospel has so much as touched on the textile strike in this city. I shall endeavor to arouse sleeping Christians to a sense of their duty towards the poor little ones.
I have seen mothers in Philadelphia beating their children to make them go to work in the mills in this strike as strikebreakers, and I have seen formen bodily throwing the children through the factory doors when the little tots were late. The herding together of boys and girls in the mills is the cause of the breeding of grossest immorality. The textile mills of Philadelphia are making slums and slum dwellers faster than reformers can unmake them.
Understand me. I do not blame the manufacturers individually. They are, I repeat, victims of the competitive system. But I do blame society for allowing such evils to exist and to grow without an effort to destroy them. God help the nation if something is not done, for a day of reckoning will surely come and with it bloody revolution.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of July 8, 1903:
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones re Little Children Build Nation’s Commercial Greatness
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
p487, Interview July 7, 1903 with Philadelphia North American
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
-July 8, 1903
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168750167/
IMAGES
July 8, 1903, New York Evening World
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1903-07-08/ed-1/seq-3/
July 8, 1903, Philadelphia Inquirer
-Textile Strikers Start on Long March to New York
Part I
Part II
See also:
Note: July 7th, Day One: the Army marched 11 miles
from Kensington, Philadelphia, to Torresdale Park, Philadelphia.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Kensington,+Philadelphia,+PA+19133/Torresdale,+Philadelphia,+PA/@40.0140985,-75.0979267,12z/data=!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c6c8180fc1c2af:0x44252e978701419d!2m2!1d-75.1318788!2d39.9859405!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c6b49d3ef27e4d:0xb301bf96cbed2a7e!2m2!1d-75.0011908!2d40.0572408?authuser=0&entry=ttu
Tag: March of the Mill Children
https://weneverforget.org/tag/march-of-the-mill-children/
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This documentary won 3rd at state and was alternate to nationals for National History Day 2013. The theme was Turning Points. Many thanks to Dr. Charles Lumpkins for his interview!