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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 27, 1908
Mother Jones Visits Girard; Reports on Child Labor in Alabama
From the Appeal to Reason of October 24, 1908:
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When Mother Jones returned from her recent trip to Alabama she stopped in Girard long enough to write the following story of her experience for the Appeal and its readers, and then hurried on to other fields to continue her work of agitating and organizing workers to battle for their emancipation.
T HAD been thirteen years since I bid farewell to the workers in Alabama and went forth to other fields to fight their bitter battles. I returned again in 1908 to see what they were doing for the welfare of their children. Governor Comer, being the chief star of the State, I went out to Avondale, on the out skirts of Birmingham, to take a glance at his slave pen. I found there some where between five and six hundred slaves. The governor, who in his generous nature could provide money for Jesus, reduced the wages of his slaves first 10 per cent, and then 16.
As the wretches were already up against starvation, a few of them struck, and I accompanied an organizer and the editor of the Labor Advocate to help organize the slaves into a union of their craft. I addressed the body, and after I got through quite a large number became members of the Textile Workers’ Union. I returned again inside of an other week, held another meeting with them and another large number joined. I was also going to complete my work on Monday, the 12th, but I had to leave for southern Illinois. He has not yet discharged any of them nor has he threatened to call an extra session of the legislature to pass the vagrancy bill in case they struck against the last reduction. Of all the God-cursed conditions that surround any gathering of slaves, or slave pen, Comer’s mill district beats them all. As you look at them you immediately conclude they have been lashed into fear, but they still have some spirit of revolt in them. They work all of thirteen hours a day. They are supposed to go in at 6 in the morning, but the machinery starts up soon after five, and they have to be there. They are supposed to get forty-five minutes for dinner, but the machinery starts up again after they are out for twenty minutes and they have to be at their post.
