Tag: Child Labor

Hellraisers Journal: Widows and Orphans of Monongah Crying for Bread; One-Half of Coal Camp’s Breadwinners Are Dead

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote, Paul U Kellogg, re Monongah, Labor World, Jan 11, 1908
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday January 16, 1908
Monongah, West Virginia – Hunger Reigns with Breadwinners Dead

Who among us could ever forget the following from journalist Dorothy Dale reporting from the devastated town after the great mine disaster:

Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money…Please you get something for me, I can do.

A little hand touched my arm. The curl-framed face of a girl of 10 years looked into mine.

[She said pitifully:]

You know mans all dead. Boys all dead. Only girls left to work.

From The Labor World of January 11, 1908:

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS CRYING FOR BREAD
—–
Entire Burden of Every Industrial Disaster Falls
Upon the Poor Wage-earners’ Family.
—–
Bread Winners Killed By Wilful Negligence of
Their Employers, the Union Smashers.
—–

Monongah MnDs, Tots Beg for Work, Ptt Prs, Dec 10, 1907

In the appeal issued by the Monongah Relief Committee it is stated that of the 3,000 inhabitants of Monongah the mine disaster destroyed one-half of the breadwinners. Two hundred and fifty wives, 1,000 children and many unborn children are left without means of support. The company has declared that the families occupying these houses may remain in them until other provision is made for them and in other ways has been generous in its attitude, but it states that operations cannot be resumed at the damaged mines until these houses are available for the new force. $200,000 is asked for by the Relief Committee to meet these needs. Commenting on the situation Paul U. Kellogg, special representative of Charities and The Commons, says:

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Hellraisers Journal: New York Tribune Article Paints Haywood as “American Bolsheviki” Bent on “Reign of Terror”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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The mine owners did not find the gold,
They did not mine the gold,
They did not mill the gold,
But by some weird alchemy
All the gold belonged to them!
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 31, 1917
New York, New York – Kept Press Waxes Hysterical on Big Bill

From the New York Tribune of December 30, 1917:

BBH American Bolsheviki Terror, NYTb p22, Dec 30, 1917

The article, authored by Theodore Knappen, is a long one and describes Fellow Worker Haywood’s long history of service to the working class as an effort to seek “the destruction of the existing system of government and industry by means of direct action.”

Interesting that the same author seems to hold no such outrage for the enslavement of children in mine and mill, for the thousands of men who perish each and every year in the mines, for the strikers and their wives and children murdered at Ludlow, Calumet, Roosevelt and other scenes of massacres too numerous to mention, nor for the millions thrown onto the scrap heap to face homelessness and starvation when they can no longer work or find work. One might conclude that such an “existing system” deserves to be replaced with a system which honors and respects the working men, women and children who provide the labor that keep it running.

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Hellraisers Journal: Monongah, West Virginia, “A Picture of Despair” by Dorothy Dale; 35 Boys Pulled from Mine

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Child Labor Man of Six Snuff Sniffer

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday December, 23, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – Women Weep for Husbands and Sons

From the Kansas Pittsburg Daily Headlight of December 21, 1907:

A PICTURE OF DESPAIR.
—–
Thirty Five Boys Among the
Fairmont Mine Victims.
—–
(By Dorothy Dale.)

Fairmont, W. Va., Dec. 21.-O God! It was the cry of supplication. It was the cry of horror. It was the cry of despair. It was the one, a comprehensive cry of mercy, which could be heard.

There is still some doubt about the exact number of lives snuffed out. But there is no doubt about the windows and orphans, to one who has seen Monongah the scene of the disaster.

“You’ll find it tough,” they said. I found it tough. Monongah at best is a little weather-beaten wooden village straggling in the mud of the West Virginia hills. It lies on two sides of the river, now known as the morgue side and the mine side. On the morgue side an endless chain of women and children pass all day past the coffins.

Monongah MnDs, Morgue, Dec 1907

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Hellraisers Journal: Little Girls, Orphans of Monongah, Beg for Work: “Please letta me work lady; gotta getta money.”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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“Oh, damn it, dagos are cheaper than props.”
-Mother Jones quoting a mine manager.

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday December 11, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – Little Orphan Girls Beg for Work

Journalist Dorothy Dale reports from the devastated town:

Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money…Please you get something for me, I can do.

A little hand touched my arm. The curl-framed face of a girl of 10 years looked into mine.

[She said pitifully:]

You know mans all dead. Boys all dead. Only girls left to work.

From The Pittsburgh Press of Dec 10, 1907:

Monongah MnDs, Tots Beg for Work, Ptt Prs, Dec 10, 1907

Fairmont, W. Va., December 10.-“Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money.”

It was the appeal on every side in Monongah on Tuesday and it came from little girls, many of them not 10 years old. It is the newest development in the mine horror. Girls-mind you-not boys!

The boys of Monongah lie sleeping under the coal-weighted hills. Early Tuesday the corpse of a slender child form was brought out of No. 6. It was identified as Johnny Yaconis, and taken to the tumble down shack up in Red Row, over the mine, where a stony faced little woman kissed it until her face was black from the charred flesh. Another body, that of the boy’s father, Franco Yaconis, is still concealed in one of those underground rooms.

Dominic, her boy of 15, lies in the company hospital, where his crushed leg was amputated. Only her Johnny had been brought to her. “Devil Johnny,” they called him, but there was nothing devilish about him. At the age of 12 years the stunted little overalled figure trudged every morning to the mines, where he was a trapper. At 13 years of age he died in those mines.

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Hellraisers Journal: Gilson Gardner Reports on the “Devil’s Kindergarten,” Midnight Visit to Molten Glass Works

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Child Labor Man of Six Snuff Sniffer

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Hellraisers Journal Wednesday October 30, 1907
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Boys Work Molten Glass at Midnight

The following account of young boys laboring late at night in the heat and glow of a Pittsburgh molten glass works comes from the October 29th edition of The Evening Star of Independence, Kansas:


“Devil’s Kindergarten,” Where Boys Toil
With Molten Glass All Night
—————

THE HORRORS INCIDENT TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF YOUNG
CHILDREN IN FACTORIES OR AT WORK ANYWHERE
ARE A BLOT ON CIVILIZATION.
-President Theo. Roosevelt.
—–

(By Gilson Gardner.)

Child Labor, Glass Works Midnight IN, Hine, LOC, Aug 1908
Glass Works at Midnight

Pittsburg. Pa., Oct. 29.-A visit to the Devil’s Kindergarten would help congress to understand. And to understand is, of course, what congress wants in the case of this child labor problem.

This merry place will be found in Pittsburg, and the way lies down along the river on the south side, where the smoke hangs heaviest and the night sky is lurid and the air is filled with the groans of tortured steel. It is the night effects which are important, for the kindergarten runs at night, and the visit must be made at midnight.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Union Bulletin: “Child Slavery in the South” by Gilson Gardner

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Suffer Little Children, CIR May 14, 1915

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 29, 1907
Gaston County, North Carolina – Child Slaves of the Cotton Mills

From The Industrial Union Bulletin of October 26, 1907:

Child Slavery in the South

Gilson Gardner in Chicago Journal.

Child Labor in South by G Gardner 1, W-B Ldr p7, Oct 5, 1907

—–

What about child labor in the south? Is it really true that small children work in cotton mills at night? or are those stories exaggerated?

I came here to see, because Gaston county has more mills then any county in a state that has more mills than any state in the south.

I find: Little girls, of an age to still care for dolls, working all night in the mills, pacing up and down between the long spinning frames, in a jar and roar of wheels. I find bright-faced little American girls, 8 to 12 years of age, toiling bare-footed in the heat and flying lint. These children tell me they can not read the words on my business card, because they have “most forgot” what they learned in the “second reader.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Maryland Canner Heartbroken for the “Husky” Little Children Whom He Can No Longer Work

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Of such is the kingdom of Heaven

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 9, 1917
Maryland Boss Has Heartache for Loss of Child Cannery Workers

From the Appeal to Reason of October 6, 1917:

“SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN–.”

Child Labor, Baltimore Cannery, Lewis Hine, July 1909, LOC

—–

W. E. Robinson, a Belair, Md., canner, is heartbroken because the Keating-Owen child labor law has forced him to employ men and women instead of the little children who formerly did the work in his factory. In a recent letter to a local newspaper he says:

Since the first of September [when the Keating-Owen Law became effective] I have not permitted these boys and girls to work in my factory. They are healthful, industrious youngsters, and the work they have been doing was very beneficial to them, mentally and physically. But my heart aches for them now. Their parents are all at work in the factory. Where are these husky boys and girls; what are they doing?

These unfortunate youngsters, bereft of their beloved jobs, exiled from the kindly shelter of Robinson’s cannery, their plight is indeed pitiful. Deprived of the life-giving labor, which was so “very beneficial to them, mentally and physically” doubtless their muscular little bodies are wasting away, and the once eager young minds have crumbled into mental and moral ruin.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Ella Reeve Bloor Describes Army of Little Factory Girls of Western Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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It is not enough to say that something good,
something beautiful is being born.
We must help it become a
reality-not a dream.
-Ella Reeve Bloor

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 8, 1907
Child Labor in America: An Army of Little Factory Children

From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:

Killing Children for Profits.

Ella Reeve Bloor, Packing Hse Invstg, Abq Eve Ctz, June 5, 1906

Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, of Philadelphia, writer and lecturer on industrial topics, who is investigating child labor conditions in the factories of western Pennsylvania, declares that hundreds of little children under the legal age are employed in a chimney factory at Charleroi, Pa.

[Said Mrs. Bloor:]

An army of little girls came flocking from all directions to the factories this morning. They work from 7 a. m. until 6 p. m., when little boys take their places and work until 2 a.m. The little fellows are afraid to go home at that hour and many boys of 10 and 11 years carry revolvers to and from their work. I believe the condition of child labor in Pennsylvania is as bad as it is in the south.

To show you how the glass manufacturers disobey the law, I will state that I have secured 6,300 convictions in six years of my office. One large factory covering 640 acres in Alton, Ill., has two gates for inspectors to get in and lots of holes for kids to get out.-Edgar T. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois.

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Hellraisers Journal: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Pleads Guilty to Good Speechmaking; Scores the Hysterical Helena Independent

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Ida Crouch Hazlett, Quote, MT Ns, Sept 26, 1907

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday September 27, 1907
From the Montana News: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Speaks

Socialist Editor Makes Her Voice Heard, September 26, 1907:

Guilty as Charged
—–

Mrs. Hazlett Fined by Spokane Judge
For Being Good Speaker-
Appealed to Superior Court

Ida Crouch-Hazlett, wiki, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904

Wednesday, Sept. 18, was the day set by Judge Hide for hearing the arguments of the attorneys upon my case, and rendering his decision. The trains are running so irregularly that to make sure of being in court at two o’clock, I was obliged to take the night train from Rathdrum after the meeting. It should have gone at 11 o’clock, but did not start out till three in the morning. So I was obliged to lose my night’s sleep, although I got several hours after reaching Spokane.

The court room was filled again, with policemen scattered through the working class audience. To be a working man is prima facie evidence of criminal tendencies according to capitalist jurisprudence.

The prosecuting attorney, a redheaded, sharp-eyed fellow with the stamp of a character on his face that must necessarily belong to one who would put in his time perpetrating injustice upon his helpless fellow creatures that are herded in a police court, said with much emphasis that I had violated a city ordinance against any one who would do anything that would have a tendency to obstruct the streets.

Our attorneys were A. Kirby and Comrade Pence. Mr. Kirby made the argument. He showed conclusively that by our 15 witnesses to the prosecution’s two neither the sidewalks nor streets were blockaded. He went over the constitutional right to hold meetings on the street where they were peaceably and interfering with no one. He quoted many authorities and made a fine argument.

After he had closed the prosecuting attorney pulled out from under the table where he had hidden them a steak of law books. So trivial are the silly tricks upon which the great structure of capitalist injustice depends that he acted as though that were the heavy part of his argument to perform a little, trifling schoolboy trick like that, as if perchance he might mystify the defense attorney. There was nothing to his argument whatever. He did not make a single definite point. He acted as though the whole thing were cut and dried anyhow, as it evidently was, and he was just talking to make a show.

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