It is not enough to say that something good,
something beautiful is being born.
We must help it become a
reality-not a dream.
-Ella Reeve Bloor
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 8, 1907
Child Labor in America: An Army of Little Factory Children
From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:
Killing Children for Profits.
Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, of Philadelphia, writer and lecturer on industrial topics, who is investigating child labor conditions in the factories of western Pennsylvania, declares that hundreds of little children under the legal age are employed in a chimney factory at Charleroi, Pa.
[Said Mrs. Bloor:]
An army of little girls came flocking from all directions to the factories this morning. They work from 7 a. m. until 6 p. m., when little boys take their places and work until 2 a.m. The little fellows are afraid to go home at that hour and many boys of 10 and 11 years carry revolvers to and from their work. I believe the condition of child labor in Pennsylvania is as bad as it is in the south.
To show you how the glass manufacturers disobey the law, I will state that I have secured 6,300 convictions in six years of my office. One large factory covering 640 acres in Alton, Ill., has two gates for inspectors to get in and lots of holes for kids to get out.-Edgar T. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois.
———-
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Oct 5, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587019/
IMAGE
Ella Reeve Bloor, Albuquerque Evening Citizen, June 5, 1906
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020615/1906-06-05/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Reeve_Bloor
National Child Labor Committee
Child Labor and the Republic
Proceedings of Third Annual Meeting
-pub’d in New York, 1907
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=bPJHAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP7
“Difficulties of a Factory Inspector
By Hon. Edgar T. Davies,
Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=bPJHAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA125
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the NCLC
-held Cincinnati, Ohio, December 13-15, 1906
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=bPJHAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA183
The Bitter Cry of the Children
-by John Spargo
Macmillan, 1906
https://books.google.com/books?id=5qSXMJQG6E4C
For more on Mother Bloor & the 1906 Inspection of Packing Houses:
Physical Culture, Volume 23
(New York, New York)
-Jan to June 1910
(search separately: bloor; jungle’s aftermath; sinclair)
Physical Culture Publishing Company, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=5zigAAAAMAAJ
From the June 1910 edition:
“The Jungle’s Aftermath” by Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor
(This series was continued in the July edition which, sadly, I could not find online.)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5zigAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA547
Photo of Bloor as Packingtown Worker
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5zigAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA548
Meat Inspection Act of 1906
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Meat-Inspection-Act
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Meat_Inspection_Act