If you’ll give us justice we won’t need charity.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 9, 1905
From the Albuquerque Evening Citizen:
Rich of Gotham Frolic While Children Stand in Breadline One Block Away
In an article which appeared yesterday in the Albuquerque Evening Citizen, Mother Jones describes the ostentatious display of wealth at a Madison Square Garden horse show while the children of the poor queued up for stale bread one block away.
Mother describes the Rich Spectators:
Hundreds of men and women, dressed in the height of what they called fashion, were seated in boxes, facing a circle, where well-bred horses, beautifully kept, beautifully fed, beautifully groomed and carefully sheltered from the cold blast of a November evening, were prancing about on the tan bark.
The horse show was in progress. The great garden was hung with gay bunting, the air was oppressive with the perfume of cologne and flowers. Pecks of diamonds glistened at the ears and breasts of the women. Orchids, which I am told cost $5 apiece, were as common at the corsages of the society dames as are daisies in an uncultivated meadow in July.
Mother describes the Hungry Children of the Slums:
I walked a hundred paces east, toward the corner of 27th street, and Fourth avenue. A little army of children from the slums was drawn up before Cushman’s bakery. Those children are there every night at 6 o’clock, drawn up in a line of misery. They came for free bread-stale bread, something to hold together the bodies and souls of brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers.
From New Mexico’s Albuquerque Evening Citizen of December 8, 1905:
“MOTHER JONES” FINDS TRAGEDY WHERE
EXTREMES MEET IN GOTHAM
—–
WITHIN THE SPACE OF A CITY BLOCK SHE SEES
THE EXCLUSIVE HORSE SHOW CROWD
AND THE FAMOUS BREAD LINE OF THE PINCHED
LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE SLUMS.
—–
(Mrs. M. Jones, nationally known as “Mother Jones,” famous as a labor leader and organizer, was commissioned by this newspaper to give her impressions of the New York horse show, the brilliant society spectacle of the social season in the metropolis.)
BY MOTHER JONES.
The Angel of the Coal Miners.For the benefit of my country women, who know nothing and care less of the frightful tragedies being enacted about us on every side today, I would like to recount the impression made upon me by a picture that represented the very extremes of our social system:
The Fashion Line.I went to Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of men and women, dressed in the height of what they called fashion, were seated in boxes, facing a circle, where well-bred horses, beautifully kept, beautifully fed, beautifully groomed and carefully sheltered from the cold blast of a November evening, were prancing about on the tan bark.
The horse show was in progress. The great garden was hung with gay bunting, the air was oppressive with the perfume of cologne and flowers. Pecks of diamonds glistened at the ears and breasts of the women. Orchids, which I am told cost $5 apiece, were as common at the corsages of the society dames as are daisies in an uncultivated meadow in July.
A friend told me that the hats that some of the women wore cost as much as $200 or $300. One woman wore a sable coat that represented at least $800. There were silks and satins and rare laces enough to pave Broadway for two miles.
When a rotten prince of royalty came to attend the show the band played the national anthem and society buckled up like hairpins before his royal highness. Millions of dollars worth of clothes rustled as the prince passed around the circles. Males, in evening clothes, with hands that looked like the show window of a jewelry store, took off their hats. It was a grand sight.
—–The Bread Line.I walked a hundred paces east, toward the corner of 27th street, and Fourth avenue. A little army of children from the slums was drawn up before Cushman’s bakery. Those children are there every night at 6 o’clock, drawn up in a line of misery. They came for free bread-stale bread, something to hold together the bodies and souls of brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers.
What a picture to turn to after the bright spectacle of wealth just witnessed! Here were a hundred little souls who had never known God’s sunshine. Little tender ones whose parents had worked in the dingy cellars and garrets of New York, and were now out of work, plagued by disease, unsuccessful in some way or other. The children had gone out to pick up the stale crumbs that fell from rich men’s tables. Old dried bread was theirs, the charity donation of the humane owner of that bake shop.
I cannot adequately describe that emaciated, physically, mentally, and no doubt, morally, dwarfed, bread line of children. The night was cold. Their little hands were blue. They were not half dressed. Poor innocents, little did they realize the frightful tragedy they pictured in my mind. I saw them store the old bread away in their bags and baskets and dart off through the dark streets to their tenement homes.
—–My thoughts went back to Palestine. I thought of the Christ who climbed the hill of Calvary. From that day to this Christ’s children have been walking the bloody pathway of the nations, on, on, up to the Mount of Calvary.
Inside the garden those people had little thought or pity for the poor they knew to be but a block away. True, they have their charities, associations, reform schools, college extensions, rescue homes and jails, but the children come every night for the bread. Our modern thieves in broadcloth do not stain their hands.
A judge before whom I was once on trial for the alleged offense of inciting riot, told me I was a good old woman, meant well and asked me why I did not go into charity.
[I told him:]
I don’t believe in charity…If I had my way about it I would tear down every charitable institution in the world. I want justice, no more, no less. If you’ll give us justice we won’t need charity.
Alas, how sad is the fate of the ninety and nine of the army of poor children of New York – the kind of children I have described. Some will go forth into the slave pens of our illustrious system. When they protest the butterflies of the horse show will rise up to crush them.
[Emphasis added.]
SOURCE
Albuquerque Evening Citizen
(Albuquerque, New Mexico)
Dec 8, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/image/76525927/
IMAGES
Mother Jones, Mar 11, 1905, Appeal to Reason
http://www.newspapers.com/image/66992169/
Mother Jones, 1905 article, Rich at Horse Show,
Poor Children on Breadline
http://www.newspapers.com/image/76525927/
See also:
The Bitter Cry of the Children
-by John Spargo, with intro by Robert Hunter
(Copyright, 1906)
The Macmillan co., 1916
https://archive.org/stream/bittercryofthech029787mbp#page/n9/mode/2up
Jack Herranen and the Lower 9th Ward –
We have fed you all for a thousand years
Lyrics by “Unknown Proletarian” April 1908
Music by Rudolph von Liebich, 1916
http://www.hobonickels.org/iwwsongs.htm#17
We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed
Though there’s never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers dead
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool
But if blood be the price of all your wealth
Good God we have paid in full!