Tag: March of the Mill Children

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones and the Mill Children March from Torresdale to Bristol and Parade Through the Town

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Quote Mother Jones, Blood of Children n Christian Society Women, Toledo Mar 24, 1903—————

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

Mother Jones and Mill Children March into Bristol Pa July 8th, NY Eve Wld p5, July 9, 1903

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.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From Philadelphia North American: Mother Jones to Lead Child Workers on March to New York

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Quote Mother Jones, Children Build Nations Commercial Greatness, Phl No Amn, Foner p487—————

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, March of Mill Children, NY Eve Wld p3, July 8, 1903

“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: Mother Jones Leads Parade of Tender Babes in Philadelphia; Speech Heartens Textile Strikers

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Mother Jones Quote ed, Suffer Little Children, CIR p10641, May 14, 1915—————

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.
———-

Mother Jones Leads Child Workers in March to City Hall, Phl Iq p2, June 18, 1903

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: Textile Strikers of Philadelphia Gather for All-Day Picnic at Central Park; Mother Jones Speaks

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Quote Mother Jones, Child Labor Silk Mills, WB Dly Ns p1, May 11, 1901—————

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:

Mother Jones Speaks to Philly Textile Strikers, Phl Iq p2, 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.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in Kensington to Cheer Textile Strikers, Speaks to 3000 at Labor Lyceum

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Mother Jones Stock in These Little Children, Quote, AB Chp 10—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 17, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrives to Support Textile Strikers

From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 15, 1903:

Mother Jones to Speak to Kensington Textile Strikers, Phil Iq p1, June 15, 1903—–Mother Jones at Kensington to Cheer Strikers, Phl Iq p11, June 15, 1903

From The Philadelphia Inquirer of June 16, 1903:

Mother Jones Speaks at Kensington Labor Lyceum PI, Phl Iq p4, June 16, 1903[…..]Mother Jones Speaks at Kensington Labor Lyceum PII, Phl Iq p4, June 16, 1903

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1912, Part II: Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine Described by Lawrence Todd

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Quote Mother Jones, No Abiding Place, WDC Hse Com Testimony, June 14, 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 28, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part II
The Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine by Lawrence Todd

From The Tacoma Times of February 14, 1912:

Four Score Hard Winters Has Mother Jones Seen,
and She Is a Heroine in Labor’s Ranks Still
———-

BY LAWRENCE TODD.

Mother Jones, Tacoma Tx p3, Feb 14, 1912

“Where do you live, ‘”Mother Jones?” asked the chairman of a Congressional investigating committee of a little old woman in rusty black.

She had kindly, determined Irish features and the most piercing and confusing of blue Irish eyes. Brave, kindly, faith-inspiring eyes the old woman had, and a motherly way of speaking when she was not aroused. But this chairman was trying to defend the steel barons from the charge of enslaving their men.

“I live in the United States, sorr,” she replied.

“But where-in what state have you a home?”

“Where the big thieves are wringing their dollars out of the blood and bone of my poor, miserable people, sorr,” came back the reply, in a voice like that of an accusing judge. “Sometimes it is among the slaves of the Alabama iron mines; sometimes with the gold and silver miners of Arizona, where the Southern Pacific has fastened itself on their throats; sometimes with the boys on the northern copper range, and often in the coal miners’ shacks in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Where you send your militia where men are shot and women driven from their homes at night by armed bullies, there I stay.”

“Mother” Jones is nearly 80 years of age. What she told the corporation congressman is literally true. For more than a generation she has been an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and for their brothers, the United Mine Workers. Strikes she has seen and taken a part in, since she was a little girl in a southern cotton mill. Once she led 1,500 women of the coal miners’ families against a Colorado sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff for once was driven back from the strikers picket line.

At another crisis, when the children of the Philadelphia factories were crying for protection, “Mother” Jones shocked the community by organizing a great parade of 7,000 crippled and maimed boys and girls, ragged and pale, underfed and haggard as factory children always become, to march through the streets of the fashionable shopping quarter. Always she is making a fight against social wrongs. Usually she is dramatic about it. Always her warm heart and her fearless tongue, and her white forehead that has more than once been pressed by the muzzle of a deputy’s gun, endear her to the wretched people who spend their days in factories and mines.

Just now the miners have lent “Mother” to the striking stoop employes of the Harriman railroads in the western country, where she is making appeals to the women to do picket duty. Incidentally she visited the convention of the California State Building Trades council at Fresno, and urged the delegates to stand by their officials, Tveitmoe and Johannsen, indicted in connection with the alleged dynamiting conspiracy.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for May 1920, Part II: Found Described by John D. Barry and Speaking in Streator, Illinois

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Quote Labor Unions for Humanity, Streator Dly Free Prs p3, May 24, 1920———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 20, 1920
-Mother Jones News for May 1920, Part II
Found Described by John D. Barry and Speaking in Streator, Illinois

From The Pacific Commercial Advertiser of May 15, 1920:

Ways of the World by John D Barry, Pacific Com Adv p4, May 15, 1920

AN EVENING WITH MOTHER JONES

BY JOHN D. BARRY

Mother Jones, NYC Dly Ns p12, May 7, 1920
The News
“New York’s Picture Newspaper”
May 7, 1920

A few months ago I heard someone say: “I wonder where Mother Jones is now. I suppose that, like many an other she has pulled in her horns and gone into retirement.”

I thought of those words as I listened to the old lady in Los Angeles recently, on her way to San Francisco, and heard her declare in that deep, strong voice of hers, the highly developed voice of the practiced orator, that she had passed her ninetieth milestone.

“You’ve got a lot of fight in you yet,” said a man who had himself long been a fighter for good cause.

[Mother Jones announced:]

Whenever there’s a fight for labor, I want to be there. I’m still in the ring.

I wondered if those fights hadn’t been the means of keeping her so well and young. She fulfilled the law emphasized by the psychologists, that life, to be a success, must mean persistent devotion to the ideals of the mind and the spirit. Her ideals had been high. They had exacted hard service. She had lived up to them devotedly.

* * *

She knew that a group of us had come to hear her talk and it was characteristic of her good humor to talk freely for our entertainment and enlightenment. She was evidently a born story teller. She had a dramatic quality that, under different circumstances, might have made her a great actress or a great playwright. Her memory was like a series of brilliant slides. Now she would give us one picture, now another.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for May 1910, Part II: Found Fighting for Milwaukee Brewery Girls and Mexican Revolutionaries

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Quote Mother Jones, Brutal Ruling Class, Cnc Pst p7, May 31, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part II:
-Found Continuing Fight for Milwaukee Brewery Girls and Mexican Comrades

From Missouri’s Scott County Kicker of May 14, 1910:

OF INTEREST TO WOMEN.

Mother Jones, ed Cameron Co PA Prs p1, Apr 7, 1910

Perhaps the noblest woman in America today is “Mother Jones.” From a school teacher she consecrated her life to the cause of oppressed humanity, and where-ever the fight is thickest, there is Mother Jones-some 70 years old. Jails have no terror for her. She champions the freedom of all the race-men and women alike. In a recent speech at Milwaukee she said to the women:

Put away your parlor airs and get out into the street and fight, fight, fight! It may not be ladylike, but it is womanly. God made woman; rotten society made the lady.

[Photograph added.]

From the Appeal to Reason of May 14, 1910:

Mexican Refugees Left to Their Fate

Mother Jones and others made strenuous efforts to secure an investigation of the cases of Magon, Villareal and other Mexicans imprisoned in American bastiles at the instance of the tyrant of Mexico and the interest of American investment in that land. Resolutions were introduced into congress asking for such investigation. Now the resolutions have been recommended unfavorably by the judiciary committee before which they went, and that with a pointed insult to American labor and patriotism.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1908-Part 2, Found at Girard, Kansas, at Third District Convention of Socialists

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Quote Mother Jones, Palaces and Jails, AtR, Feb 29, 1908

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 9, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1908, Part 2:
–Found Speaking at Girard, Kansas, at Socialist District Convention

Mother Jones, Mar 11, 1905, AtR

After February 19th, Mother Jones was found in the state of Kansas where she gave speeches in her usual rousing style on behalf of the Socialist Party. She was a special guest of the Appeal to Reason in Girard where she attended the Third District Convention and gave a speech which “aroused the audience to the wildest enthusiasm.”

The Dallas Morning News reported on February 28th that Mother had entered the state of Texas and was engaged to speak in Longview and in Dallas.

From the Appeal to Reason of February 29, 1908:

A GALA DAY FOR SOCIALISM
—–
The Third District Convention Stirs Things up in Girard
-Old Party Politicians Puzzled and Worried.
—–

Last Saturday, in the Girard court house, delegates from the Third district of Kansas met in convention and placed in nomination for congress Comrade Ben Wilson. Under the new primary law this nomination is merely an informal expression of the party’s desire and his name will necessarily have to be voted on at the regular primary in August. In the meantime a vigorous campaign will be carried on.

There were seventy-six regular delegates present, representing nearly every county in the district. There were several hundred out-of-town visitors at both afternoon and evening sessions, and the court house was crowded to the doors. Two years ago there were eleven delegates at our congressional convention in Parsons. The old party politicians viewed the assemblage with surprised wonder. They’ll be more surprised this fall.

The feature of the night session was a stirring address by Mother Jones. As usual, her clear, resonant voice, her earnest face, in its frame of silver hair, aroused the audience to the wildest enthusiasm. The air seemed electrified with the spirit of the revolution. Turning suddenly, as she pointed to Ben Wilson, she declared:

I’m coming back to the Third district this summer and fall and I’m going to help you fellows elect the first Socialist congressman. Then I’m going down to Washington, and when Ben and I get there you’ll see something doing.

—–

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1908-Part 1, Found Speaking to the Unemployed in Cincinnati

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Quote Mother Jones, Over produce and UE, Cnc Pst p3, Feb 3, 1908

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 8, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1908, Part 1:
–Found Speaking to Unemployed in Cincinnati, Fort Wayne & Racine

On March 2nd Mother Jones was found speaking to the unemployed in Cincinnati, where, it was reported, she was met by an enthusiastic audience.

From the Cincinnati Post of February 3, 1908:

MOTHER JONES STIRS HEARERS
—–

Mother Jones, Fort Worth Telegram, Apr 26, 1907

Have you ever stopped to think that for the $12, $15 or $18 you have been earning each week for the past five or ten years, you have been producing for the man who employed you four or five times that sum?

-was the question asked an enthusiastic audience of 1500 at Central Turner Hall Sunday [March 2nd] by “Mother” Jones, Socialist worker.

Did you know that he has been stocking up for years the overplus of your production, so that he can make a clean profit from it without the expense of paying you wages?

———-

[Photograph added.]

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