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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:
Tag: Kensington PA Textile Strike 1903
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Marches On With Her Army of Striking Children from the Textile Mills of Kensington
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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.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones and the Mill Children March from Torresdale to Bristol and Parade Through the Town
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 10, 1903
Bristol, Pennsylvania – The Army of Mother Jones Parades With Banners Flying
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of July 9, 1903:
Crusaders Reorganized
When “Mother” Jones’ band of marching strikers, en route to New York, awoke in Torresdale Park yesterday morning [July 8th], Charles Sweeney and other members of the strikers’ Executive Committee decided that there should be a reorganization of the crusaders before the march was resumed. The twenty-two girls in the party and five of the boys were sent back to their homes in Kensington, as it was feared that they would not be able to withstand the rigors of the proposed advance upon New York. The strike leaders next turned their attention to the camp followers. After a half hour’s inspection seventy-five men and seven boys, the latter to act as a bodyguard to “Mother” Jones, were selected as most fitted to continue the march, to New York. The rest were sent home. Each man was equipped with a tin cup, dinner plate and a spoon and large supplies of pork and vegetables were placed in the wagon in which “Mother” Jones is making the journey. The marchers left Torresdale about 9 o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Bristol late in the afternoon, where they encamped.
Dinner in Camp
A dinner of corned beef and cabbage and vegetable soup was hastily cooked, and over a field on the outskirts of the town the marchers spread themselves as though they were on a picnic. With flags, banners and music furnished by the fife and drum corps that accompanied them from this city, the marchers, led by “Mother” Jones, paraded through the mill district of Bristol in the evening and then held an open-air meeting, at which “Mother” Jones delivered a lengthy address on the strike situation in Philadelphia. A tour of the town will be made this morning for the purpose of soliciting provisions and funds for the strikers. The marchers will then proceed toward Trenton, where they will try to hold a mass meeting of union workers in that city for the purpose of raising more funds for the striking textile workers. They will halt at various towns between Trenton and New York and hold similar meeting to arouse interest in their cause.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From Philadelphia North American: Mother Jones to Lead Child Workers on March to New York
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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.
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Leads Parade of Tender Babes in Philadelphia; Speech Heartens Textile Strikers
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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.
Hellraisers Journal: Textile Strikers of Philadelphia Gather for All-Day Picnic at Central Park; Mother Jones Speaks
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 25, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks to Textile Strikers at Central Park
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 23, 1903:
The opening of the fourth week of the big textile strike yesterday found no change in the conditions that have prevailed since June 1. From all sections of the city it was reported that the workers are still out in force, and there is every reason to believe that their ranks will remain unbroken until ordered back to the mills by the strike leaders.
The idle mill hands journeyed from all parts of the city yesterday to attend the all-day picnic and demonstration at Central Park, Fifth and Wyoming streets. More than a thousand of the strikers met at the headquarters of the executive committee, Kensington avenue and street, shortly after 9 o’clock in the morning and paraded to the picnic grounds. They carried banners and American flags, and as they marched up Fifth street to the park their ranks were almost doubled by the strikers dropping in line at various points. More than 5000 of the idle workers reached the park by noon, and when the mass meeting was opened in the afternoon it was difficult for all present to hear the speakers.
Mother Jones Gave Surprise
Thomas Fleming, chairman of the executive committee, was the first speaker, and announced that Mother Jones would not be present, as she had not yet returned from the coal regions. When the picturesque leader appeared at the park a few minutes later, however, she was given an ovation greater than any she has yet received since her arrival in the city.
The picnic lasted all day and the various unions played match base ball games. In addition to Mother Jones addresses were also made by F. Devlin, president of the Burlers and Menders’ Union, and D. L. Mulford.
The continuance of the strike has brought many Kensington families face to face with poverty and starvation. Although the unions are looking after their members many of the strikers are poorly organized and are dependent upon Ways and Means Committee of the Central Textile Union for support. The latter is greatly in need of funds, and the following appeal was issued yesterday:
The Ways and Means Committee, which is providing relief for the textile strikers who are in need, has had collectors in the field for more than a week, and although the response has been generous, still the amount of money received has barely exceeded the applications sent in. Therefore the Ways And Means Committee has decided to make a general appeal to the public of Philadelphia and vicinity.
There are upwards of 80,000 wage earners now idle in this city. A large proportion of these people are well organized and the various unions are taking care of them. But there are also a great number who have been recently organized and who have no funds in their treasuries, consequently they are unable to make any provision for their members. The various branches of the industry in which these recently organized people are employed are dependent upon the older organized branches, therefore when they stopped work the entire trade was at a standstill. Donations of any kind, either money, groceries or provisions, will be gratefully received by the Ways and Means Committee at the northeast corner of Third and Somerset streets.
JOHN J. PALMER,
Secretary and Treasurer.
Hellraisers Journal: Philadelphia Textile Strikers March to City Hall with Child Workers in the Lead; Mother Jones Speaks
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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:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in Kensington to Cheer Textile Strikers, Speaks to 3000 at Labor Lyceum
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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:
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From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 16, 1903:
[…..]
