Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 16, 1903 Mrs. Cremler Educates the President on “Race Suicide.”
President Teddy Roosevelt espouses some interesting theories on the subject of “race suicide.” It seems the President is greatly disturb by the increase in immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and alarmed by the large families that these immigrants bring with them. He recently wrote a letter to Mrs. Van Vorst deploring the insufficient number of babies produced by women of the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic races, referring to this sad lack of reproduction as “race suicide.” Learning of this letter, Mrs. Cremler was prompted to write the President and explain her failure to produce more babies.
From the Appeal to Reason of August 15, 1903:
Mr. President -A month or two ago you wrote a letter to Mrs. Van Vorst in which you deplored the tendency to “race suicide.” I did not see it for sometime, as we do not take any newspapers or magazines, for reasonsthat will appear hereafter. But I have a sister who is a teacher in one of our city schools, who is not married, as it is the understanding that a married woman is very likely to lose her place as a teacher; and aside from that the position of teacher appears to be naturally incompatible with that of prolific motherhood. That is one thing that tends toward “race suicide.”
My sister takes a monthly magazine, which she lets me read; and that isthe way I happened to see your letter to Mrs. Van Vorst.
Permit me to suggest that you appear to have overlooked one matter of great importance. I will try to explain what I mean by reference to my own household.
Our family consists of my husband, myself, three children (between six and twelve years of age), and my mother, 65 years of age. My mother is useful about the house, but she is too old and feeble to work out for pay, so her support comes out of my husband’s wages.
I read in that magazine of my sister’s that the average earnings of the laborers in all the manufacturing establishments of the United States, according to the last census, were less than $450 per year. My husband earned a little more than that. His wages were $1.50 a day. He fortunately was in excellent health, and worked every day except Sundays and holidays-306 days-and his income was $459.
I had our eldest daughter, as practice in arithmetic, as a matter of business training, and to see to it that we did not run in debt, keep an exact account of our expenditures They were as follows:
The sum total paid out for food materials was $328. That was a fraction less than 90 cents per day-15 cents for each of six persons, or not quite 5 cents a meal. I economized in every way to reduce the expense below that figure, but could not. A pint cup of bread and milk for one of the children costs more than that.
Our family occupies a three room house in the outskirts of the city. Of course we are badly cramped for space. There must be a bed in each room. Fortunately we have not much other furniture. We are always in a cluttered up condition, from the fact that we have no cellar. I do not see how we could get along with any smaller house. For this we pay $7 a month-$84 per year.
Our clothing, including hats, shoes, everything for summer and winter, cost a total of $30: an average of not quite $4.50 each. I cannot see how we could have got along for less.
We have but one stove in the house-an old broken concern that was second hand when we bought it. In the winter my mother lies abed considerable of the time to keep warm and give the rest of us a chance at the fire. I do not see how we could have been more economical than we were in the use of fuel, but it cost us $18 during the year.
Light costs us comparatively little. Sometimes-in summer-we used none whatever, for several evenings in succession. Probably we felt the deprivation less than we would if we had anything about the house read. But in the winter, when darkness came early, I was sorry that the children had to go to school with lessons unlearned, which they might have learned if there had been lamplight by which to study them. Light cost us on an average of three-quarters of a cent a day-$2.75 for the year.
Last winter, because of getting my feet wet while wearing unmended shoes and sitting in a cold room, I was taken down with pneumonia, and was sick for a fortnight.
As our house sits down flat on the damp ground my mother has become afflicted with rheumatism. However, we both get along without a doctor, or we would have had to add his bill to our other outlay.
To sum up, the year’s expenses were as follows:
You see, the very best we could do we expended a little more than my husband’s earnings. And his work was not interrupted by sickness. There was no doctor bill to be paid for any of us. The furniture we bought the first year after our marriage, before we had any children, is wearing out, but we have bought none to replace it; my husband spent not a cent for tobacco nor intoxicating drinks; he walked to his work every morning, even through the rain, without spending a cent for street car tickets; we have not been to church this year, for we will not occupy anybody else’s pew, nor the pauper pew, and sit like a bump on a log when the contribution plate is pushed under our noses; we have not gone out on picnics, nor excursions, nor attended any entertainment of any kind. How could we? Few slaves on a southern plantation ever worked harder, or had less in the way of amusement or recreation in the course of the year, than we.
Dividing $459 by 6 gives $76.50 as the average annual expense for each member of our family-less than 21 cents a day. Our county board of supervisors allows our sheriff 25 cents a day for feeding prisoners in the county jail; and the same allowance is made for the paupers in the county alms house. It seems to me it is as much as I ought to be required to do to support our family-food, rent, clothing, fuel, everything-on less than is paid out for food alone for paupers and criminals.
Our house rent can not be crowded down a cent; the landlord must have his pay, and that in advance, no matter what else may happen. Most of the other items of expense, as you see, are already at their lowest limit. If we expend anything for furniture, books, newspapers, entertainments, preachers, doctors, funerals, or other incidentals, it must come out of our food bill. For instance, by eating only 3 cents worth of victuals at breakfast this morning, instead of five, I saved 2 cents with which to buy the paper on which I am writing this letter. By eating a 3-cent dinner I save 2 cents with which to buy a postage stamp to mail it. The pen and ink I have borrowed from a neighbor.
I find in that magazine of my sister’s the statement, deduced from the census reports and the bulletins of the Labor Bureau, that more than twelve millions of the citizens of the United States-men, women, and children, the families of laborers-are living on even a less amount per day than we.
But to come back to my own family. You will observe that $76.50 is the average annual expense for each of us now, when there is no extra medical attendance on account of the advent of another child into the household. That would certainly mean more than $25 additional.
Now, Mr. President, I submit to your candid judgment whether it would not be the height of folly-worse than that, criminal recklessness-for us to make family arrangements that would necessarily involve us in an expense next year, and for indefinite years to come, of from $75 to $100 a year more than we have any reason to expect my husband’s income will be, even in case he keeps his health, and work remains plentiful, and prosperity continues to reign?
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 13, 1903 Cripple Creek District of Colorado – Miners to Begin Strike Monday August 10th
Official Strike Call from the Western Federation of Miners
This is a copy of the official strike notice issued by the Western Federation of Miners which called the miners out on strike beginning Monday morning August 10th.
The Call
All members of the Western Federation of Miners and all employees in and about the mines of the Cripple Creek district are hereby requested not to report for wok Monday morning, August 10, 1903, except on properties shipping ore to the Economic mill, the Dorcas mill at Florence and the Cyanide mills of the district. BY ORDER OF DISTRICT UNION NO. 1.
The W.F. of M. issued the following statement regarding the necessity of calling the miners out on strike:
Manger MacNeil’s refusal to treat with us left us nothing to do but to order a strike and in so doing we adopted the only plan which promises certain success. In our proposals to him no mention was made of his failure to re-employ men who went out in the former strike, as he had agreed. we confined ourselves strictly to the question as to whether he was willing to pay the union wages demanded by his striking employees, and when he absolutely refused to do so or to recognize us in any way, our mission was ended.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 7, 1903 Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part III
From The International Socialist Review of August 1903
A Foretaste of the Orient
[-by John Murray Jr.]
[III of III]
The San Francisco Call March 28, 1903
Frightened at the turn [the strike] had now taken, Major Driffel, of the Beet Sugar Company, asked for a joint meeting of committees from the unions, the farmers and the company. The first day’s conference came to nothing, but at the second meeting the employers realized that they were facing a labor trust that had cornered all the available labor power in the valley, and so the men’s scale of prices was agreed to, with an additional pledge that all the idle union men would be immediately employed.
Twice, after this, the company tried to import a carload of scabs from Los Angeles-even going so far as to lock the last shipment in its car and receive them at the station with armed guards-but each time the new men joined the union as soon as they reached Oxnard-the last lot escaping from the car windows.
At this juncture, the Los Angeles County Council of Labor passed resolutions favoring the organization of all Asiatics now in California. This was done upon the recommendation of Comrade F. C. Wheeler, organizer for the A. F. of L. in Southern California, who had visited Oxnard, organized the two unions, and was much impressed by their fighting qualities.
So far everything was well with the beet thinners, the company whipped in the first battle of the local class-war and the field hands unionized. But a most unexpected and disheartening blow capped the climax of their struggles-a blow from behind. Samuel Gompers, while granting the Mexicans all rights and privileges, refused to grant the Japanese union a charter, and in his letter to Secretary Lizarraras made the following remarkable statement:
It is further understood that in issuing this charter to your union, it will under no circumstance accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese. The laws of our country prohibit Chinese workmen or laborers from entering the United States, and propositions for the extension of the exclusion laws to the Japanese have been made on several occasions.
In making such an extraordinary ruling, President Gompers has violated the expressed principles of the A. F. of L., which states that race, color, religion or nationality, shall be no bar to fellowship in the American Federation of Labor.
California, alone, contains over forty thousand Japanese who, if unorganized, will be a continuous menace to union men.
“Better go to hell with your family than to heaven by your self,”said the speaker whose stirring words decided the Mexican union to send back its charter to President Gompers, along with the following letter:
Oxnard, Cal., June 8, 1903.
Mr. Samuel Gompers, Pres. American Federation of Labor, Washington, D. C. Dear Sir: Your letter of May 13, in which you say: “The admission with us of the Japanese Sugar Beet & Farm Laborers into the American Federation of Labor cannot be considered,” is received. We beg to say in reply that our Japanese brothers, here, were the first to recognize the importance of co-operating and uniting in demanding a fair wage scale. They are composed mostly of men without families, unlike the Mexicans in this respect. They were not only just with us, but they were generous. When one of our men was murdered by hired assassins of the oppressors of labor, they gave expression of their sympathy in a very substantial form. In the past we have counciled, fought and lived on very short rations with our Japanese brothers, and toiled with them in the fields, and they have been uniformly kind and considerate. We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of Unionism if we, now, accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them. We are going to stand by men who stood by us in the long, hard fight which ended in a victory over the enemy. We therefore respectfully petition the A. F. of L. to grant us a charter under which we can unite all the Sugar Beet & Field Laborers of Oxnard, without regard to their color or race. We will refuse any other kind of charter, except one which will wipe out race prejudices and recognize our fellow workers as being as good as ourselves. “I am ordered by the Mexican union to write this letter to you and they fully approve its words.
J. M. Lizarraras, Sec’y S. B. & F. L. Union, Oxnard.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 6, 1903 Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part II
From The International Socialist Review of August 1903
A Foretaste of the Orient
[-by John Murray Jr.]
[II of III]
The San Francisco Call March 27, 1903
[After the murder of Louis Vasquez] the unarmed union men were horrified but not frightened. They pursued and captured the fleeing Arnold, and, after disarming him, handed him over to the police. Sheriff McMartin himself told me that if it were not for the protection afforded by the union leaders, Arnold would have been hung on the spot. In twenty minutes the whole affair was over. No arrests were made, because none but “strike breakers” were guilty of assault, and the next day the daily press all over the country broke out with scare heads telling of the “Riot in Oxnard.”
Proof of the complicity of the town and county officials was quick to follow. The place of holding the inquest was twice changed from one town to another-making the summoning of witnesses a most difficult feat-and the dead man’s body hurriedly given to the unions on two hours notice in such a decayed condition that immediate burial was necessary, thereby attempting to prevent the public demonstration of a big funeral. But in spite of this most vile scheme, nearly a thousand men escorted the body to its grave. Japanese and Mexicans, side by side, dumb through lack of a common speech, yet eloquent in expressions of fraternity, marched with uncovered heads through the streets of Oxnard. On the hearse was a strange symbol to Western eyes, a huge lotus flower-an offering from the Japanese union.
From the highest to the lowest, the officials of the county acted as one man in their attempts to suppress public investigation, the final proof of which culminated in the act of the district attorney, Selby, who refused to hold a preliminary examination of Deputy Constable Arnold, although nearly a dozen witnesses testified, at the inquest, that Arnold shot an unresisting union man in the neck and precipitated the killing.
The worth of the Japanese and Mexicans as labor organizers was now put to proof. At the Japanese headquarters there was system like that of a railroad office or an army in the field. They had a well-trained corps of officers-secretaries, interpreters, captains of squads, messengers, and most complete system of information. A map of the valley hung on the wall, with the location of the different camps of beet thinners plainly marked. Yards upon yards of brown paper placards were constantly being tacked up, giving in picturesque Japanese lettering the latest bulletins, directions or orders.
Meetings of the executive committees from the two unions were constantly being held for agreement as to mutual action. I was intensely interested at the manner in which they got over the difficulties of language at the conferences. The joint committees would gather around a long table-at opposite ends sat the respective presidents, secretaries and interpreters-and first the question to be discussed would be started in English, then each nationality in turn would listen to an explanation of the affair in its own language and come to the conclusion; then the results would be again stated in English and the final agreement recorded by the secretaries. Respect for order was a marked feature of these meetings, each nationality keeping politely silent while the other had the matter before it for discussion and decision. The innate courtesy, which is always found in Spanish blood, was fully equaled by the decorum of the Japanese.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 5, 1903 Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part I
From The International Socialist Review of August 1903
A Foretaste of the Orient
[-by John Murray Jr.]
[I of III]
The San Francisco Call March 25, 1903
The town of Oxnard is in Ventura county, about sixty miles north of Los Angeles, and was founded by the American Beet Sugar Company, in which Henry T. Oxnard is the central figure. On the evening of March 24, of the present year, the Associated Press dispatches announced that there was “riot” in Oxnard — that the Japanese and Mexican unions were terrorizing the town, shooting and killing peaceable non-union men, whose only desire was to exercise the right of American citizens and work for any wage they chose.
Being within a few hours’ ride of the place, the next morning’s train carried me to the gates of the sugar factory. My only companions on the car were a parcel of drummers, who were quite naturally anxious to know just how peaceful a state the town might now be in. To this end anyone who might know, and especially the conductor, was cross-questioned in a most thorough manner:
“How many men were killed-could the sheriff control the situation-was it safe for a traveling man to go about his business on the streets?” were some of the queries that received apparently confusing replies.
“Yes, there was a man killed and four others wounded-all union men-and the town is now quiet.”
“How’s that,” said a salesman for a wholesale hardware firm, “union men start a riot and only union men shot? Something queer about that! I know a house that shipped revolvers here last week-who bought ’em, that’s what I’d like to know. Couldn’t have been the unions if all the dead men are on the other side,”-which was without doubt a common sense conclusion from a purely business point of view.
Certainly the town seemed quiet, as I walked up from the station, the only noticeable thing being a little squad of Japanese union pickets that met the train and were easily recognized by their white buttons labeled “J. M. L. A.” (Japanese-Mexican Labor Association) over the insignia of a rising sun and clasped hands. Oxnard was full of those white buttons-and when the first thousand of them had been distributed, and no more obtainable, hundreds of beet thinners put red buttons in their button holes to show that they were union men.
On the presentation of my blue card, I was warmly welcomed at headquarters by J. M. Lizarraras and Y. Yamagachi, secretaries of the Mexican and Japanese unions. They had a plain tale to tell, and one which I found was fully borne out by facts known to all the towns folk-for even the petty merchants, strange to say, freely acknowledged that the men had been bullied, swindled and shot down, without reason or provocation.
The Beet Sugar Company had fostered the organization of a scab contracting company-known as the Western Agricultural Contracting Company-whose double purpose was to reduce the price of thinning beets from five to as low as four and a quarter dollars an acre, and at the same time undermine and destroy the unions. Not content with the lowering of wages, they also forced the men to accept store orders instead of cash payments, with its usual accompaniment of extortionate prices for the merchandise sold. These tricks, of course, are as old as the hills, and consequently when the men rebelled there was a great surprise among the labor skinners, who had no idea that Japanese and Mexicans would ever have wit enough to unite for mutual protection, or that if they did temporarily unite, their organization could possibly last for any length of time, with the obstacles of different tongues, temperaments and social environments to bring speedy wreck to such a union. But the men did organize, did hang together-in spite of the rain of bullets which were poured down upon them — and finally whipped Oxnard’s beet sugar company, with its backing of millions.
To Socialists it is needless to point out that to whip a capitalist to-day means nothing more than that you must fight him again to-morrow, but the significance of this particular skirmish, in the great class war, lies in the fact that workers from the Occident and Orient, strangers in tongues, manners and customs, gathered together in a little western village, should so clearly see their class interest rise above all racial feelings of distrust.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 3, 1903 “Child slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation.”
From The Comrade of August 1903:
Child Slaves of Philadelphia
By J. Spargo
CHILD slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation. But nowhere to a more alarming extent than in the City of Philadelphia. The great textile industries rest upon the enslavement of children and women. Not even in the South are conditions worse than here. At present the majority of the mills are idle owing to a strike for shorter hours of labor, and the children, or those of them who have not been cowed into submission, being on strike they are free to enjoy the fresh air. But when the mills are working the boys and girls are caged up for sixty hours a week in the unhealthy atmosphere common to these industrial hells.
The present strike in an effort on the part of the textile workers to obtain a reduction of the working hours to fifty- five per week. Although wages are miserably low they are willing to forfeit five hours’ pay if only they can obtain the desired reduction of hours.
In 1892, the year of the great panic, wages in the textile industry fell enormously.The Dingley Tariff of 1894 was to restore wages and improve conditions all round. So the workers voted for “Protection.” They continue to vote for “Protection” despite the fact that wages are still lower than in 1892, and that women and children-especially children-are employed in ever increasing numbers.
The law fixes the minimum age at which children may be employed in factories at thirteen years.The cold, calculating brutality of men deliberately passing a law permitting boys and girls of thirteen to be employed sixty hours a week is even more disgraceful than neglect of the question altogether would be. It is certain, however, that the law has very little effect so far as maintaining even the minimum is concerned.
There are said to be sixteen thousand children at work in the textile industries of Philadelphia,and it is certain that thousands of these are below the legal age. Factory inspection is of the most perfunctory kind: false certificates are not difficult to obtain, and it is easy to use certificates of older children to cover any “suspects.” Moreover, the parents themselves are, in too many cases, ignorant enough-or poor enough-to swear falsely as to the ages of their children. In thousands of cases this is exactly what happens. No one who knows anything whatever about the subject doubts that there are thousands of children between the ages of ten and twelve employed in the textile industries of this city in normal times.
On the morning before “Mother” Jones started to march to New York with her little “army of crusaders” from the Kensington Labor Lyceum, early in July, I saw a number of such children of both sexes. Whenever “Mother” or myself asked one of them his or her age we got the stereotyped reply “Thirteen!” But even if one could believe they spoke the truth, the fact remains that not a few of them had been employed for periods ranging from a few months to two years or even more. One little fellow told me how, in the factory where he worked, when the inspector came round, the smallest of them were either hidden or sent out to play. In not a few cases the “inspection” of the factory all takes place in the employer’s office as every intelligent mill worker knows.
One of the effects of child labor, the illiteracy of adults, I have observed here and in the surrounding towns and villages to a much greater extent than anywhere else in this country. It is by no means an uncommon thing to meet native born Americans of twenty-five years of age, or over, unable to read or write even their own names! What a terrible price to pay for the folly and crime of child labor!
Of course, the first break in the ranks of the strikers took place among the children. Poor children! they entered upon the strike with light hearts. To them it meant a chance to rest; to straighten their little backs. But they were in most cases easily browbeaten by the brutal bosses or their agents. I heard of several cases where mothers took their children-literally dragged them-to the mill gates and forced them inside to “scab.”One little fellow I heard of was dragged and beaten by his mother right up to the mill door when he was roughly pulled inside by a bully of a foreman who hurled a volley of curses at the cowering child.And the burden of the little fellow’s cry was “Don’t make me scab! I’ll die first! Don’t make me scab!”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 2, 1903 New York, New York – Mother Jones Holds Street Meeting, Pens Letter to President
From the Brooklyn Standard Union of July 31, 1903:
From the Philadelphia North American of July 31, 1903 -letter from Mother Jones to President Theodore Roosevelt:
New York, July 30.
The Hon. Theodore Roosevelt President of the United States Oyster Bay, Long Island
Your Excellency-
Twice before have I written to you requesting an audience, that I might lay my mission before you and have your advice in a matter which bears upon the welfare of the whole nation.
I speak of the emancipation from the mills and factories of the hundreds of thousands of young children who are yielding up their lives for the commercial supremacy of the nation.
Failing to receive a reply to either of the letters, I went yesterday to Oyster Bay, taking with me three of these children that they might plead to you personally. Secretary Barnes informed us that before we might hope for an interview with you we must first lay the whole matter before you in a letter. He assured me of its delivery to you personally, and also that it would receive your attention.
I have espoused the cause of the laboring class in general, and of suffering childhood in particular. It was for them that our march of principle was begun. We sought to draw the attention of the public to these little ones, so that sentiment would be aroused and ultimately the children freed from the workshop and sent to schools. I know of no question of to-day that demands from those who have at heart the perpetuity of this republic more attention.
The child of to-day is the man or woman of to-morrow, the one the citizen and the other the mother of still future citizens. I ask, Mr. President, what kind of citizen will be the child who toils twelve hours a day in an unsanitary atmosphere, stunted mentally and physically, and surrounded with often immoral influences. Denied education, he cannot assume the duties of true citizenship, and enfeebled physically he falls a ready victim to the perverting influences which our present economic conditions have created.
I grant you, Mr. President, that there are State laws which should regulate these matters, but results have proved that they are inadequate. In my little band are three boys, the eldest 11 years of age, who have worked in the mills a year or more, without interference from the authorities. All efforts to bring about reform have failed.
I have been moved to this, Mr. President, because of actual experience in the mills. I have seen little children without the first rudiments of education and no prospect of acquiring any. I have seen little children with hands, fingers and other parts of their bodies mutilated because of their childish ignorance of machinery.
I feel that no nation can be truly great while such conditions exist without attempted remedy.
It is to be hoped that our crusade on behalf of enslaved childhood will stir up a general sentiment and secure the enforcement of the present laws.
But that is not sufficient as this is not alone a question of separate States, but of the whole nation. We come to you as the chief representative of that nation. I believe Federal laws should be passed and enforced governing this evil and including a penalty for violation.
If this is practicable, and I believe you will agree that it is, surely you can advise me of the necessary steps to pursue.
I have with me three children who have walked one hundred miles, serving as living proof of the truth of what I say.
If you decide to see these children, I will bring them before you at any time you may set.
Secretary Barnes has assured me on an early reply, and this should be sent care of the Ashland House, New York City.
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