Hellraisers Journal: From Socialist Woman: “Horrible Crime of Child Labor in America” by Josephine Conger-Kaneko

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Mother Jones Quote, Suffer Little Children, CIR May 14, 1915

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday March 5, 1908
Josephine Conger-Kaneko on Crime of Child Labor in America

From The Socialist Woman of March 1908:

THE HORRIBLE CRIME OF CHILD LABOR IN AMERICA.
—–
Josephine Conger-Kaneko.

“How long,” they say, “how long, Oh, cruel nation
Will you stand, to move the world on a child’s heart;
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?”

Socialist Woman, eds Kaneko and Josephine Conger, March 1908

A little over one hundred years ago the first act was passed by the British Parliament to abate the evils of child labor.

The workhouses of London at that time were crowded with pauper children to the extent that their managers were paying a premium to the manufacturers to take them off their hands. These puny, half-starved children whom nobody owned, orphans, deserted infants, who had become a burden on the tax payers, were sent by the hundreds and thousands to supply the demand for cheap labor which was springing up in factories on every hand. They were housed in barracks, were driven long hours at hand tasks by their overseers, were fed the coarsest of food, and died by scores from disease—bone rot, curvature of the spine, consumption, and other infections produced by their manner of living.

It was this state of things that brought about the first law regulating in any way the labor of the child. This law was passed in 1802. And it was but the merest beginning. The evils of child labor were so many, so varied and so persistent, that to this day there is no adequate child labor law in the whole world. In 1833 it was estimated that in England there were 56,000 children between nine and thirteen in factories. many of whom worked sixteen hours a day. The English Woman’s Journal of 1859 gives the following account of pauper children in London:

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones in Atlanta, Georgia, Where Legislation on Child Labor Is Pending, Gives Interview

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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday July 18, 1916
Atlanta, Georgia – Mother Jones in City for Short Stay

From The Atlanta Constitution of July 12, 1916:

Mother Jones, Atlanta Constitution, July 12, 1916


Mother Jones, Laborers’ Friend,
Confers With Local Leaders
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Picturesque Character Here on
Flying Visit-
Is Her Visit Inspired by Pending
Legislation Before General Assembly?
-She Will Not Answer.
—–

Mother Jones, known internationally for her defense of organized labor and for agitation for improved labor conditions generally, arrived in Atlanta early yesterday afternoon, direct from Washington, D. C., on a mission, the precise nature of which she declines to reveal. She is scheduled to leave the city this afternoon.

At the train Mother Jones was met by a delegation of union labor friends, headed by Jerome Jones, editor of The Atlanta Journal of Labor, and was taken at once to the Ansley hotel, where she is a guest. During the afternoon she visited the federal penitentiary.

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