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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 18, 1903
Mother Jones’ Army Marches from New Brunswick to Elizabeth, New Jersey
From the New York Tribune of July 15, 1903:
From the New York Tribune of July 16, 1903:
From The New York Times of July 16, 1903:
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 17, 1903
Elizabeth, New Jersey – Mother Jones Writes to President Roosevelt
From the Hazleton Plain Speaker (Pennsylvania) of July 16, 1903:
From the Philadelphia North American of July 16, 1903:
Elizabeth, New Jersey
July 15, 1903Theodore Roosevelt
President of the United States
Dear Sir:Being citizens of the United States of America, we, members of the textile industry, take the liberty of addressing this appeal to you. As Chief Executive of the United States, you are, in a sense, our father and leader, and as such we look to you for advice and guidance. Perhaps the crime of child slavery has never been forcibly brought to your notice.
Yet, as father of us all, surely the smallest detail must be of interest to you. In Philadelphia, Pa., there are ninety thousand (90,000) textile workers who are on strike, asking for a reduction from sixty to fifty-five hours a week. With machinery, Mr. President, we believe that forty-eight hours is sufficient.
If the United States Senate had passed the eight-hour bill, this strike might not have occurred. We also ask that the children be taken from the industrial prisons of this nation and given their right of attending schools so that in years to come better citizens will be given to this republic.
These little children, raked by cruel toil beneath the iron wheels of greed, are starving in this country which you have declared is in the height of prosperity-slaughtered, ten hours a day, every day in the week, every week in the month, every month in the year, that our manufacturing aristocracy may live to exploit more slaves as the years roll by.
We ask you, Mr. President, if our commercial greatness has not cost us too much by being built upon the quivering hearts of helpless children? We who know of these sufferings have taken up their cause and are now marching toward you in the hope that your tender heart will counsel with us to abolish this crime.
The manufacturers has threatened to starve these children, and we seek to show that no child shall die of hunger at the will of any manufacturer in this fair land. The clergy, whose work this really is, are silent on the crime of ages, and so we appeal to you.
It is in the hope that the words of Christ will be more clearly interpreted by you when he said “Suffer little children to come unto me.” Our destination is New York City, and after that Oyster Bay. As your children, may we hope to have the pleasure of an audience? We only ask that you advise us as to the best course.
In Philadelphia alone thousands of persons will wait upon your answer, while throughout the land, wherever there is organized labor, the people will anxiously await an expression of your sentiments toward suffering childhood.
On behalf of these people, we beg that you will reply and let us know whether we may expect an audience.
The reply should be addressed to “Mother” Jones’s Crusaders, en route according to the daily papers.
We are very respectfully yours,
“Mother” Jones, ChairmanCommittee–Charles Sweeney, Edward A Klingersmith, Emanuel Hanson, and Joseph Diamond.
[Emphasis added.]
Note: John Lopez was assigned by the Philadelphia North American to cover the March of the Mill Children, and he has been traveling with them every step of the way.
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 15, 1903
John Spargo on Kensington Textile Strike; Mother Jones’ Army Enters New Brunswick
From the New York Worker of July 12, 1903:
From The Washington Times of July 13, 1903:
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 14, 1903
Mother Jones and Her Army March from Trenton to Princeton, New Jersey
From The New York Times of July 10, 1903:
“MOTHER” JONES’ MARCHING ON
———-
Army of Mill Workers Camped Near Trenton
on Its Way to New York to Air Grievance.Special to The New York Times.
TRENTON, N. J., July 9.- Mother Jones and her textile army, composed of workers from the mills of Kensington, Penn., is encamped to-night on the Delaware River in Morrisville, Penn., just across from Trenton.
“Mother” Jones to-night visited the meeting of the Plumbers’ Union and made a speech. She received a donation. Her assistants visited other union meetings, and as Trenton is one of the most solid union cities in the United States quite a sum of money was collected to aid “the army” on its march to New York, where a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden is projected. “Mother” Jones expects to reach the metropolis by the end of the week.
Mayor Katzenbach of Trenton has granted a license for mass meeting be held here in the shadow of Battle Monument to-morrow night, when the grievances of the strikers will be aired and where Mother will tell her plans against the New York millionaires’ hearts and pocket books. This meeting will be preceded by a concert by the “army band.”
This morning at Bristol sixty men and girls deserted, going back to Philadelphia. There are about 280 left, however.
In the army are ten or twelve boys who are not more than thirteen years old. These little fellows stand up under the great heat and the hard march with commendable bravery. With the marchers there is a band comprised of six fifes, four snare drums, and a bass drum.
[Photograph and emphases added.]
From the New York Tribune of July 11, 1903:
ARMY CROSSES DELAWARE
———-YOUNG GIRLS SENT HOME
———-
“Mother” Jones Says Her Crusade Is Against Child Labor.[On the evening of July 10th the Army crossed the Delaware River and entered Trenton. Mother Jones spoke at a meeting of the Central Labor Union of Trenton, and later spoke at an open-air meeting near Battle Monument. On the afternoon of July 10th, a reporter visited the camp at Morrisville Point and described the meal served there. The boy-strikers, all under fifteen, were described by the reporter as “veritable little old men, with stooped shoulders and a serious expression of countenance far beyond their years.” The reporter was able to interview Mother Jones who described Kensington as “one of the worst places in the world for child labor.” She described the hard life of the girls working in “that hellhole.” Mother denied that there had been any “desertions,” stating that some would turn back at various points along the march.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 9, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Interview with Mother Jones
From the Philadelphia North American of July 7, 1903:
“Mother” Jones Will Lead Textile Child Workers
Through Country to Win Sympathy.
———-Army of 400 Boys and Girls in Living Appeal for Aid.
———-
“Mother ” Jones will lead a second “children’s crusade” from this city today. It will be composed of 400 striking juvenile textile workers and an equal number of adult strikers. It starts from the Kensington Labor Lyceum, Second Street, above Cambria, at 11 o’clock this morning.
The object of the “crusade” is to appeal to the people of the country to support the 75,000 textile strikers in their “demand” for a 55-hour-work-week. Sufficient money to support the strikers indefinitely is expected to come in as a result of taking the children throughout the country. So far as possible, parents will accompany their children. Two members of the strikers’ executive board and their wives will help in caring for the “crusaders.”
“Mother” Jones, as commander-in-chief, has full charge of the campaign. After at first opposing it, the strike leaders have become convinced that it is an excellent plan to stir up the workers and the general public of the United States to lend a hand in the fight for shorter hours. “Mother” Jones spoke about the project to this reporter last night:
I desire the textile strikers of Philadelphia to win their fight for shorter hours, so that more leisure may be obtained, especially for children and women.
The herding of young children of both sexes in textile mills is the cause of great immorality.
As the result of the competitive and the factory systems, the nation is being stunted, physically, morally, and mentally.
I do not blame the manufacturers individually, but I do blame the community at large for making no effort to abolish these evils.
The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society.
I am going to rouse the Christian fathers and mothers of this country if there is human blood in their veins.
If the manufacturers cannot afford to give their employees a living wage and shorter hours of work, then the system of making goods for profit is wrong and must give way to making goods for use.
The sight of little children at work in mills when they ought to be at school or at play always rouses me. I found the conditions in this city deplorable, and I resolved to do what I could to shorten the hours of toil of the striking textile workers so as to gain more liberty for the children and women. I led a parade of children through the city-the cradle of Liberty-but the citizens were not moved to pity by the object lesson.
The curse of greed so pressed on their hearts that they could not pause to express their pity for future men and women who are being stunted mentally, morally, and physically, so that they cannot possibly become good citizens. I cannot believe that the public conscience is so callous that it will not respond. I am going out of Phiadelphia to see if there are people with human blood in their veins.
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 29, 1903
Mother Jones Speaks to Philadelphia Textile Strikers
From the Duluth Labor World of June 27, 1903:
TENDER BABES IN LARGE PARADE.
———-BURNING DISGRACE OF PENNSYLVANIA
MANUFACTURERS.
———-TEXTILE WORKERS FIRM FOR 55 HOURS.
———-
Mother Jones Makes Many Impassioned Speeches
and Heartens Her Hearers.
———-
Philadelphia, June 26.- The events of the week here, in the textile strike, were the speeches of “Mother” Jones to crowds and the parade of the men, women and children who are heroically striving for a shorter work-day. In one day Mother Jones addressed three large meetings of textile workers, and she did much to put heart into the movement and cheer the men and women engaged in the struggle. Her impassioned addresses are just what these workers need. They hang on to her sentences, and one cannot listen to a group of strikers without hearing her terse sentences repeated.
To Strike is Honorable.
[She told them in one of her speeches:]
Americans are strikers by inheritance. The Pilgrim Fathers and the Colonists were strikers. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the great strikers of their day, and you workingmen and women of Philadelphia need not be ashamed to strive and struggle for what is yours by right, and what must be won by you if you expect to be worthy of the inheritance handed down by your fathers.
[She continued:]
This is a city of “Brotherly Love,” indeed. There’s a whole lot of that here. Rather, it’s a city of brotherly thieves! Yes; I came here to hammer you, and I am going to do it. It serves you right that you are on strike today to get a reduction in your working hours. You elect the same old crowd year after year.
I sat in the Senate Chamber in Washington not long ago, and in one hour seven bills were passed conferring still greater powers on railroad corporations. Compare that incident with the action of some of your own representatives when the poor miners went to them to see if they couldn’t do something for the cause of labor. You should have seen the looks of cold disdain with which they were treated. They were told plainly that it was no use for them to come there and were advised strongly to go back to work.
While 147,000 miners were strike in Pennsylvania and 40,000 in West Virginia the last Congress went into the pocket of the American workingman and took $45,000-think of it, $45,000-to defray the expenses of a six weeks’ tour of a prince around the country, just because he was of royal blood! How greatly Senators Quay and Penrose and all the rest of them venerate royal blood! Fifty thousand dollars offhand for the entertainment of a prince, but not a single piece of legislation that would be likely to better the condition of the American workingman.
But it’s your own fault. Whenever you get tired of these things you’ll remedy them.
Mother Jones closed by advising the strikers to remain idle until their demands had been granted.
[She said:]
You need not fear starvation. They thought to starve the miners out, but they didn’t succeed. You are going to have plenty to eat, even if you are on strike.
Thomas Fleming, chairman of the executive committee, who, with several other strike leaders, accompanied Mother Jones to Frankford, in introducing her referred to her as “the old lady.”
Mother Jones, in reply, said:
I am not so old that I do not expect to live long enough to see you and your wives and children live as free men should, not as slaves.
Parade of Striking Children.
The parade of the strikers, Wednesday, was an object lesson that will long be remembered by those who saw it. There may have been 25,000 in line, but this was not so remarkable as was the sight of regiment after regiment of little children, some of them so small that they had to be provided with conveyances, for they could not otherwise have been in the procession. All kinds of vehicles had been tendered from the stylish coupe to the common express wagon. Many of the poor little tots were not old enough to realize what all the excitement was about. They were the living representatives of a system so cruel and merciless that future generations will wonder what sort of beasts employers were in the beginning of the twentieth century that they could for a single moment allow their machinery to be manipulated by the wan and immature flesh of what were not much better than suckling babes.
Banners That Mean Something.
The transparencies carried were plentiful and appropriate. Many touched on the question of shorter hours and of child labor. One elderly man staggered along with a banner reading:
Let God’s curses dwell with employers or parents who consign
little children to the living death of factory life.
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 24, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Textile Strikers March to City Hall
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 18, 1903:
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 17, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrives to Support Textile Strikers
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 15, 1903:
—–
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 16, 1903:
[…..]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 10, 1913
Barnet Braverman and Paul Eldridge Address the Evil of Child Labor
From The Progressive Woman of June/July 1913:
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—–
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 3, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Bill Haywood on the General Strike of Silk Workers, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1913:
The Rip in the Silk Industry
By William D. Haywood
———-[Part II of II]
The Red Badge of Toil
In this connection it is worth while to relate an incident-one of the most dramatic of the strike. The Paterson bosses lost no time in injecting the “patriotic” issue after the fashion of Lawrence, Little Falls and Akron. The red flag, they howled, stood for blood, murder and anarchy-the Star Spangled Banner must be upheld, etc., etc. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was on the platform at a big strike meeting one day explaining the significance of the red flag when a striking dyer sprang up from the middle of the audience crying:
“I know ! Here is the red flag!”
And aloft he held his right hand-stained a permanent bloody crimson, gnarled from years of toil, and corroded by the scarlet dye which it was his business to put into the fabrics worn by the dainty lady of the capitalist class as well as by the fawning prostitute.
For an instant there was silence and then the hall was rent by cries from the husky throats as all realized this humble dyer indeed knew the meaning of the red badge of his class.
Ribbon weaving is largely done by men and women. In this department the bosses have developed a speeding up system with reductions in pay, overlooking no opportunity to introduce improved machinery. Thus they increase production, at the same time they lowered the pay, until the workers are now demanding a scale which 19 years ago was imposed upon them! That is, the weavers now ask a wage that prevailed two decades ago.
The significance of this demand makes it plain that in the evolution of industry and the introduction of new machinery the workers have obtained no benefit, while the bosses have reaped ever increasing profits.
Many children are employes in the silk industry, most of them being between the ages of 14 and 16. However there are few violations of the child labor law, not because. the manufacturers care anything about either the law or the children, but because the making of high grade silk requires the careful and efficient work that only adults can give. However the Paterson capitalists have begun to set up plants in the southern states as well as in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, installing there new style looms which can be operated by girls and children.
Meeting For Children
One of the best and most enthusiastic meetings held during the strike was that for the benefit of the children of the mills. They packed Turner Hall and listened eagerly and with appreciation as speakers outlined to them the development in the manufacture of silk from the cocoon to the completed fabric lying on the shelves of the rich department store.
