Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 3, 1902 “Child Labor in Free America” by John Spargo, Illustrated by Ryan Walker
From The Comrade of July 1902:
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Mocking the stately phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the proud boast enshrined in our national songs, is the terrible reality of child-slavery. From the far South comes a cry from children that know no childhood and upon whose degradation the great edifice of our commercial supremacy is being raised. Not since the early years of the last century when the great and good Robert Owen, Michael Sadler and the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury (then Lord Ashley) gave voice to the terrible condition of the mere babes who languished and toiled in British mills and factories, has such a terrible story of shame been told as that which is told of Alabama, Georgia, and the two Carolinas to-day. Little boys and girls of five, six, seven, and eight years, toiling in factories ten, and even twelve, hours a day, all unconsciously mock our “civilization” and imperil the very life of the nation.
But it is not alone in these States that child labor prevails. From almost every State in the Union the cry of the child toiler for rest, for childhood, for life, is heard. In the North no less than the South; East no less than the West, the same great problem exists-the problem of child labor co-existing side by side with a permanent army of unemployed adults. In the textile mills of the South it is estimated that there are at least 20,000children at work under fourteen years of age. In Alabama alone there are some twelve hundred children employed, being a proportion of between six and seven per cent of all the operatives. In Georgia the proportion of children under twelve to grown persons employed in the mills is stated to be not less than 14 per cent, and in SouthCarolina it is at least nine per cent. The ages of these children thus classified as “under twelve” run all the way down to six and even five years!
Let those who prate of our “glorious progress,” and boast of our ascendant commercial power, reflect upon the terrible fact that little children, scarcely more than babies, can be found by the thousand in these southern mills working 12 and 12½ hours every day at the spinning frames for wages that range from ten to twenty cents a day. Here is a terrible account of this child slavery, written by a special correspondent of Cincinnati Post, which should be sufficient of itself to shame the people of this country, and to rouse them to vigorous action. He says:
I secured entrance to the People’s mills of Montgomery, (Alabama) which manufacture sheeting for the China trade. In the spinning room, where most of the children are employed, there were 125 persons of all ages at work. Of that number between 40 and 50 were children less than 12 years old. Those who had ever been in a school house were rare exceptions. In this room I saw boys and girls so small that their efforts to perform their work were absolutely pitiful. In reaching up to join the ends of the broken threads they were obliged to strain and stretch every muscle and sinew of their frail bodies and some were so small that they were compelled to stand on their tiptoes. This was repeated every five minutes or oftener for twelve long hours. I called the foreman’s attention to several little ones who I was sure could not be over six years old and was told “they are not working,” which meant that they were not on the pay-roll, but were helping the parent or older brother or sister, or learning the machines, so as to be able to take their place in that mill.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 16, 1912 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1911, Part II Found in Los Angeles, Interviewed by Estelle Lawton Lindsey
From The Los Angeles Record of December 21, 1911:
“MOTHER JONES” PREDICTS BRIGHTER DAY; MEN NATURALLY GOOD IS HER BELIEF
By Estelle Lawton Lindsey.
“Some day men will go into the bowels of the earth and bring out lead to be made into type to enlighten the minds of their fellows, instead of bullets to brutalize. In that day we shall be civilized.”
The speaker was Mrs. Mary Jones, known through this land as “Mother Jones,” saint or revolutionist according to your point of view, a woman loved to adoration by 400,000 organized miners of the U. S., and who has been described as “the walking wrath of God.”
In conversation this woman, who will be 80 years old the first day of next May, and looks like a well-preserved and vigorous woman of 50, speaks little of wrath and much of love, understanding and education.
WOMEN MUST UNDERSTAND
My work is to prevent violence, to settle, peaceably, differences between employer and employed. Wherever there are strikes, wherever there may be violence—which I abhor—wherever feelings of revenge are rampant, there I go. My work is to teach men the causes of their difficulties, to show them how to remedy conditions by changing the laws and the system. My field of activity is the world.
The trouble with the average woman is that she is a sentimentalist. She is ignorant of the causes of our industrial disturbance. She cannot realize that as long as we have oppression we shall have violent reaction in the minds and feelings of the oppressed; and that such feelings are the root of violence. The thinker who understands the cause knows all violence can be done away with. Soon women will understand, then they will give the world better men.
My work is to keep people from getting into conflicts to get them to think instead of fighting; and to show others how to think. I believe in education; and through education I believe we can so change our forms of government that feelings of revenge will die of inanition.
In that day we will not devote millions, wrung from those least able to pay, to chaining human beings like beasts for being what the government has made them.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 10, 1912 Cartoon by Ryan Walker: “The Necklace of Pearls”
From The Coming Nation of January 6, 1912:
The $500,000 PEARL NECKLACE, 20 YEARS IN COLLECTING Yes, the steel workers have contributed everything to that $500,000 pearl necklace that ex-Judge Gary of the steel trust has given his wife.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 4, 1911 Big Bill Haywood Lectures on Class Struggle Around the World
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
William D. Haywood
PAGES TORN FROM “THE CLASS STRUGGLE” AND OTHER HAYWOOD LECTURES
You will all remember with me the 22d of Jan., 1905. It is recorded in history as Bloody Sunday. On that day there occurred a terrible massacre in St Petersburg, Russia. It seems that the people of that country had been ground down to such terrible conditions that they could no longer stand it. Families were living in single roomed huts or hovels, sleeping on the bare floor. Bedding and clothing were scant. They ate out of a common bowl. Their only food
was a coarse mush. To improve theses conditions they determined to appeal to their Little White Father. They called the Czar of Russia their Little Father. But these peasants thad never learned to write. So it must needs be a living petition.
The word went forth and thousands upon thousands of them gathered in the city of St. Petersburg. They marched toward the winter palace and as they marched they carried aloft the holy Cross of Christ. They bore upon their breasts their sacred icons. They were singing religious hymns. They were a religious people. They came within a hundred feet or less of the palace gates when a volley rang forth from the guns in the hands of the Czar’s ‘s soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of these peaceful supplicants fell dead in the snow, their warm red blood mingling with and melting the white mantle that covers Darkest Russia at that season of the year. And when you heard the echo of that volley you heard the echo of the world wide class struggle.
When you heard the echo of the volley that killed the Russian peasants at St. Petersburg you heard the shrieks and groans of the Russian girls exiled from home who were burned to death in that terrible factory fire in New York City last winter. The same people, the same conditions, the same anguish the same struggle everywhere.
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Across the sea from Russia in Finland our comrades are protesting because the constitution of their country has been abrogated by the authorities of Russia. They are protesting because the youth of that land are compelled to serve as soldiers in the Czar’s army or to pay a tribute in gold. Their protest is a voice in the class struggle!
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It has only been a few years ago since the unions of this country were sending money to assist the workers of Sweden who were involved in a great general strike. I visited Sweden while across the water and while there met many who took part in that great struggle. The workers who were on strike were not asking for an increase in wages or a reduction in hours. They had ceased to work in sympathy with thousands of their members who had been locked out because they dared to organize. They were opposed by the employers’ association who were backed up by the capitalists of the continent and the world. The Swedish workers were beaten to their knees. Women and children were compelled to subsist on black bread and water but they were not vanquished. As I was leving Stockholm they said to me:
“Comrade Haywood when you return to America, tell the workers of your country that we will be fighting with them in the vanguard until the working class of the world are victorious!”
They are doing their part in the class struggle!
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From Sweden I went to the Latin countries and while there learned something of the conditions in Spain. It seems that certain French capitalists had made investments in the gold mines of the Riff Country. It is well known that the capitalist class does not confine its operations within the borderlines of any nation. The capitalist goes to any locality where he can make profit out of the sweat, blood and tears of the workers. The capitalist has no country, no flag, no patriotism, no honor and no god but Gold. His emblem is the dollar mark. His ensign is the black flag of commercial piracy. His symbol is the skull and cross bones of little children that are ground up in the mill. And the pass word of Capitalism is graft.
The Moors objected to their lands being exploited by capitalists, so the French bankers called upon the King of Spain to protect them in their vested interests. The king of Spain being one of the ruling class and a capitalist himself, called upon the young men of his country to go to war and he called upon the people of Spain to furnish the sinews of war. At this period, the Socialists combining with the labor unions of Spain declared a campaign against war. The Socialists of all countries are opposed to war and when we get just a little stronger in Spain, just a little stronger in the United States, just a little stronger in the nations of the world, the time will forever have passed when one workingman will shoot down another workingman in the interest of the capitalist class. And so declared the workers of Spain.
The building trades of Barcelona declared a general strike against war. At that time there lived in Spain a great educationalist. One of the formost men of letters in the world. Like all humanitatians, he was opposed to war. He wrote, he spoke, he contributed a little money toward the general strike. And because of this, he was arrested as a revolutionist. They called him an anarchist. He was thrown into prison. His trial was a travesty upon justice. He had no lawyer. He was allowed no witness. He neither heard nor saw the witnesses that testified against him. In site of these conditions, he was convicted and sentenced to be executed. As this brave man stood at the open ditch that was to be his grave, he looked the twelve that were to take his life square in the eye and said:
“Long live the modern school,”
When the volley rang out that sounded the death knell of Francisco Ferrer, it sounded the death knell of Capitalism in Spain.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 14, 1901 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1901, Part III Found Writing on Behalf of Working Class Men, Women, and Children
From the International Socialist Review of September 1901:
A Picture of American Freedom in West Virginia ———-
[By Mother Jones]
SOME months ago a little group of miners from the State of Illinois decided to face the storm and go to the assistance of their fellow-workmen in the old slave state of West Virginia. They hoped that they might somehow lend a hand to break at least one link in the horrible corporation chains with which the miners of that state are bound. Wherever the condition of these poor slaves of the caves is worst there is where I always seek to be, and so I accompanied the boys to West Virginia.
They billed a meeting for me at Mt. Carbon, where the Tianawha Coal and Coke Company have their works. The moment I alighted from the train the corporation dogs set up a howl. They wired for the “squire” to come at once. He soon arrived with a constable and said : “Tell that woman she cannot speak here to night; if she tries it I will jail her.” If you come from Illinois you are a foreigner in West Virginia and are entitled to no protection or rights under the law—that is if you are interested in the welfare of your oppressed fellow beings. If you come in the interest of a band of English parasites you are a genuine American citizen and the whole state is at your disposal. So the squire notified me that if I attempted to speak there would be trouble. I replied that I was not hunting for trouble, but that if it came in that way I would not run away from it. I told him that the soil of Virginia had been stained with the blood of the men who marched with Washington and Lafayette to found a government where the right of free speech should always exist.
“I am going to speak here to-night,” I continued. “When I violate the law, and not until then will you have any right to interfere.” At this point he and the constable started out for the county seat with the remark that he would find out what the law was on that point. For all I have been able to hear they are still hunting for the law, for I have never heard from them since. The company having called off their dogs of war I held my meeting to a large crowd of miners.
But after all the company came out ahead. They notified the hotel not to take any of us in or give us anything to eat. There upon a miner and his wife gave me shelter for the night. The next morning they were notified to leave their miserable little shack which belonged to the company.He was at once discharged and with his wife and babe went back to Illinois, where, as a result of a long and bitter struggle the miners have succeeded in regaining a little liberty.
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