Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 1, 1922 “The Knight of the Round Belly” by Robert Minor -United State Supreme Court Rules Against Nation’s Child Workers
From The Liberator of July 1922:
January 1911, South Pittston Pennsylvania -Breaker Boys of Pennsylvania Coal Company by Lewis Hine
The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrates the utmost recesses of the boy’s lungs. A kind of slave driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 11, 1912 Big Bill Haywood Lectures for The Review, Elected to N. E. C. of Socialist Party
From the International Socialist Review of January 1912:
William D. Haywood
The Haywood Lectures. During the National Executive Committee election [of the Socialist Party of America] (not over as we go to press) [see below for results] there has arisen a sudden and peculiar misunderstanding with relation to the routing of Comrade William D. Haywood by this office. Friends may have imagined that Comrade Haywood has yielded to the repeated and urgent requests of former National Secretary Barnes, acting under instructions from the National Executive Committee, to become one of the authorized lecturers on the National Lyceum Lecture Bureau, as did Comrade Frank Bohn under similar pressure, but we are glad to announce that Haywood preferred to continue lecturing under the auspices of the REVIEW.
The statement has recently been published broadcast by Comrade Robert Hunter, that locals securing Haywood were compelled to pay the REVIEW $250 a night. We take pleasure in repeating here the terms we have made ever since Comrade Haywood began to lecture for us. Except in the West, where close dates cannot be arranged at this time, our terms for Haywood dates are the local’s guarantee to take 500 admission tickets to the lecture (each ticket being good for a three months’ REVIEW subscription at 25 cents each, amounting to $125.00.) Out of this sum we pay $25.00 hall rent, supply all advertising material, donate 200 copies of the current REVIEW and pay all Haywood’s expenses.
The State Committee of Ohio is arranging dates in Ohio for Haywood from Jan. 15 to Feb. 15. Arrangements for other states may be made through this office. It might be well if our friends, who believe in fair play, would ask Comrade Hunter upon what foundation he based his published statements in this regard.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From the Baltimore Sun of Jan 1, 1912:
SOCIALIST PARTY ELECTS ———- National Executive Committee And Secretary Are Named.
Chicago, Dec. 31.-A national executive committee and a national secretary for the Socialist party, elected by referendum, the votes being sent to Chicago, were announced yesterday. On the executive committee thus chosen are Victor Berger, Milwaukee; Job B. Harriman, Los Angeles; William D. Haywood. Denver; Morris Hillquit, New York; Alexander Irvine, Los Angeles; Kate Richard O’Hare, St. Louis, and John Spargo, Yonkers, N. Y. John M. Work, of Chicago, was elected national secretary.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 14, 1911 “The Blighting of the Babies” -from John Spargo’s Bitter Cry of the Children
From The Progressive Woman of September 1911:
THE BLIGHTING OF THE BABIES —————
(From “the Bitter Cry of the Children” by John Spargo)
Poverty and Death are grim companions.Wherever there is much poverty the death-rate is high and rises higher with every rise of the tide of want and misery. In London, Bethnal Green’s death-rate is nearly double that of Belgravia; in Paris, the poverty stricken district of Ménilmontant has a death -rate twice as high as that of the Elysée; in Chicago, the death-rate varies from about twelve per thousand in the wards where the well-to-do reside to thirty-seven per thousand in the tenement wards .
The ill developed bodies of the poor, underfed and overburdened with toil, have not the powers of resistance to disease possessed by the bodies of the more fortunate. As fire rages most fiercely and with greatest devastation among the ill-built, crowded tenements, so do the fierce flames of disease consume most readily the ill-built, fragile bodies which the tenements shelter. As we ascend the social scale the span of life lengthens and the death-rate gradually diminishes, the death-rate of the poorest class of workers being three and a half times as great as that of the well-to-do. It is estimated that among 10,000,000 persons of the latter class the annual deaths do not number more than 100,000, among the best paid of the working class the number is not less than 150,000, while among the poorest workers the number is at least 350,000.
This difference in the death-rates of the various social classes is even more strongly marked in the case of infants. Mortality in the first year of life differs enormously according to the circumstances of the parents and the amount of intelligent care bestowed upon the infants. In Boston’s “Back Bay” district the death-rate at all ages last year was 13.45 per thousand as compared with 18.45 in the Thirteenth Ward, which is a typical working class district, and of the total number of deaths the percentage under one year was 9.44 in the former as against 25.21 in the latter. Wolf , in his classic studies based upon the vital statistics of Erfurt for a period of twenty years, found that for every 1,000 children born in working-class families 505 died in the first year; among the middle classes 173, and among the higher classes only 89. Of every 1,000 illegitimate children registered-almost entirely of the poorer classes-352 died before the end of the first year.
Dr. Charles R. Drysdale, Senior Physician of the Metropolitan Free Hospital, London, declared some years ago that the death-rate of infants among the rich was not more than 8 per cent, while among the very poor it was often as high as 40 per cent.
Dr. Playfair says that 18 per cent of the children of the upper classes, 36 per cent of the tradesman class, and 55 per cent of those of the working-class die under the age of five years.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 6, 1910 Ohio Labor Investigation – Report on Sweatshops from 1893
From The Progressive Woman of November 1910:
THE SWEATING SYSTEM
MARY L. GEFFS Special Investigator for the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Ohio, 1893
Origin of Title.
It is not definitely known what gave the system its title, but it is safe to hazard a guess that it was the sheer aptness of the word ”sweating” to describe the condition. For many of the shops and tenements where the work is carried on are veritable bake ovens. They are often found in attic rooms where the summer sun beats down unmercifully upon the roof but a few feet above the toilers’ head, where the heat of charcoal stoves and the steam and heat of irons needed in pressing, together with a total lack of proper ventilation render anything less than sweating impossible. It may, therefore, be to the over-doing of the command said to have been given to the First Pair, “in the sweat of they face shalt thou eat bread,” that this title is due, but it might with equal fitness express the orthodox idea of the abode of the lost, for, in all the range of woman employing industries, not only are there few so hot, but fewer still so hard, so unremunerative, so slavish, nor whose baneful effects are so wide-spread and far-reaching as that known by the title of “The Sweating System.”
What it is and How It Operates.
This system is that by which garments are cut in the big factories and given out to be made in the shops or homes of the workers. The work is paid for by the piece or by weekly wages based on the piece, and prices are reckoned according to the iron law of wages. That is, as near as possible to the life limit; the lowest point at which the workers can live and continue to produce. They are so low that long hours must be put in every day in order that the workers may eke out a bare existence.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 1, 1910 Copenhagen – American Socialist Women Attend International
May Wood Simons, Luella Twining, and Lena Morrow Lewis are delegates at the International Socialist Congress, now in progress at Copenhagen. They also took part in the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference which proceeded it.
From The Progressive Woman of August 1910:
Our Women Delegates to the International
May Wood Simons.
Have you ever asked yourself who have entered into the modern opportunities for women most fully? I have, and my thought always turns to our Comrade May.
She has enjoyed the best the schools could give her, having done the work not only for a first degree, but for a doctor of philosophy at Chicago university. That she has kept in the scholarly habit was proven last year by the remarkable feat of winning the Harrison prize for an essay in economics over many men competitors and judged by the heads of the department of economics in five great western universities.
But many women have done admirable work in scholarship. Mrs. Simons has been able to use hers steadily in practical service in the greatest cause of the age. She has worked for Socialism as teacher, lecturer or writer constantly, for the past twelve years or more. At present and since the establishment of the Daily Socialist she has been associate editor of that paper. Her husband, A. M. Simons is editor-in-chief. Already her activities and influence are world-wide and after this summer her place in the international movement will be still more pronounced and effective.
But no women, or normal man, for that matter, is content with world service alone. Fortunately indeed, is one for whom home life and life work are inextricably blended. It is interesting to note that the woman who seems to me to have reaped the fullest harvest from the new ideals and possibilities of our time both in public and private life happens also to be the most devoted mother of my acquaintance.
The genuine good of old standards need never be lost in gaining the genuine good of new freedom and opportunity. It is a satisfaction to have this demonstrated in the self-effaced beautiful little woman who will help to represent American Socialists in the greatest organization the world has known.
The Red Special..is an inspiration,
and the trait it leaves
will blaze with Socialism that
can never be extinguished.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 22, 1908
Eastern Tour of Red Special Met with “Tremendous Ardor”
From the Montana News of October 15, 1908:
ENTHUSIASM UNRIVALED
——
TREMENDOUS ARDOR REMINDS OLD RESIDENTS
OF LINCOLN’S CAMPAIGN.
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RED FLAGS FLYING
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People Greet Debs as Social Deliverer
-Huge Masses Pack Streets
-Capitalist Papers Break Silence Acknowledging
the Popularity of Socialism.
—–
The “Red Special” of the socialists arrived in Buffalo October 1 after a campaign in the west, which Eugene V. Debs, candidate for president, says marks an epoch in the history of socialism.
“The biggest passenger engine in the world that draws the three cars composing the “Red Special,” tooted at the state crossing as it left Pennsylvania and entered New York on a tour which before it ends on October 21, will have embraced the eastern and southern states and covered since August 31 more than 20,000 miles.
More than 3,000 people greeted Debs when he appeared in Convention hall. It was an orderly, thoughtful assemblage, and cheers lasting three minutes were finally hushed by the uplifted hand of the socialist standard bearer.
He began the eastern campaign apparently well nurtured by the 18-cent meals served on the “red special.” His dinner consisted of tomato soup, roast lamb, baked potatoes, raisin biscuit, cheese for desert and black coffee. Debs was happy when he returned to the special and smoked a big cigar, the only smoke he permits himself in 24 hours.
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