Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 12, 1903 Children of Pennsylvania’s Anthracite “Coal Shadow” -Part III of article by Francis H. Nichols, with illustrations by Frank E. Schoonover
From McClure’s Magazine of February 1903:
CHILDREN OF THE COAL SHADOW
BY FRANCIS H. NICHOLS
Illustrated by Frank E. Schoonover
[Part III of III]
Where the Daughters Work
While the miner’s son is working in the breaker or mine it is probable that his daughter is employed in a mill or factory. Sometimes in a mining town, sometimes in a remote part of the coal fields, one comes upon a large, substantial building of wood or brick. When the six o’clock whistle blows, its front door is opened, and out streams a procession of girls. Some of them are apparently seventeen or eighteen years old, the majority are from thirteen to sixteen, but quite a number would seem to be considerably less than thirteen. Such a building is one of the knitting mills or silk factories that during the last ten years have come into Anthracite…..
Through a district organizer I was enabled to interview under union auspices a number of little girls who were employed in a knitting mill.One girl of fifteen said that she was the oldest of seven children. She had worked in the mill since she was nine years old. Her father was a miner. As pay for “raveling” she received an amount between $2.50 and $3 every two weeks. Another thirteen-year-old raveler had worked since the death of her father, two years before, from miner’s asthma; her brother had been killed in the mine. The $3 she received every two weeks in her pay envelope supported her mother and her ten-year-old sister…..
The breaker boss finds at the mill or factory a counterpart in the “forelady.” This personage holds a prominent place in the civilization of Anthracite. It is taken for granted that the forelady must be habitually hateful, and in all controversies side with the proprietor against the rest of the girls. It is her duty to crush incipient strikes, and to do all in her power to “break” the union. She enjoys being hated by every one, and leads an isolated life of conscious rectitude for about $5 a week…..
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 11, 1903 Children of Pennsylvania’s Anthracite “Coal Shadow” -Part II of article by Francis H. Nichols, with illustrations by Frank E. Schoonover
From McClure’s Magazine of February 1903:
CHILDREN OF THE COAL SHADOW
BY FRANCIS H. NICHOLS
Illustrated by Frank E. Schoonover
[Part II of III]
The School of the “Breaker”
The company’s nurseries for boys of the coal shadow are the grim black buildings called breakers, where the lump coal from the blast is crushed into marketable sizes…..Between the [coal] chutes are boys. All day long their little fingers dip into the unending grimy steam that rolls past them…..
…..In front of the chutes is an open space reserved for the “breaker boss,” who watches the boys as intently as they watch the coal.
The boss is armed with a stick, with which he occasionally raps on the head and shoulders a boy who betrays lack of zeal…..
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 10, 1903 Children of Pennsylvania’s Anthracite “Coal Shadow” -Part I of article by Francis H. Nichols, with illustrations by Frank E. Schoonover
From McClure’s Magazine of February 1903:
Every child of the coal fields who to-day is ten years old has lived through at least two great strikes [Great Anthracite Strikes of 1900 and 1902]. During these periods the indefinite and sullen discontent takes a concrete and militant form. There is talk by idle men of “the rights of labor” and the “wickedness of riches.” Deputies armed with rifles are guarding the company’s property. A detachment of militia is encamped at the end of the street…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 16, 1900 Anthracite Coalfields of Pennsylvania – Hard Lot of Boys in the Mines
From the Duluth Labor World of November 10, 1900:
BOYS IN THE MINE ———-
HARD LOT OF THE YOUTHFUL SLATE PICKERS. ——-
Philadelphia Inquirer of September 30, 1900 —–
Miners Robbed That the Trust May Monopolize the Coalfields For All Time—At the Mercy of the Barons and Their Rake of Partners—The Public ls More Than Interested in Their Cause. ———-
D. L. Rhone, a resident of Wilkesbarre, Pa., writes as follows to the Philadelphia Times: The total number of employes of the anthracite mines in the year 1899 was 140,583, classified as follows:
In 1899 these 140,583 employes prepared for market 54,000,000 tons of coal. In 1898 it took 142,000 employes to prepare 47,000,000 tons for market, and in 1897 149,000 employes only prepared 47,000,000 tons. This shows a decrease in the number of employes of 7,000 from 1897 to 1899 inclusive and an increase of 7,000,000 tons of coal produced. The men are still going away.
The lot of the coal miner is hard indeed, and that of his laborer is still harder, while no one can uphold the lot of the little mule drivers, the runners and the slate pickers without a sigh of sympathy. The most appalling thing about the whole business is that there are 34,000 of these boys, ranging from 10 years of age upward. These 34,000 infants are confined for ten hours per day in the dark, damp mine chambers fighting, training and driving vicious mules, with no light but the greasy lamp on their caps, or for the same number of hours they are engaged in the roaring, smoking breaker, grabbing out the slate as it rattles over the iron bars.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 9, 1900 Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1900, Part I Found Visiting Jailed Strikers of Georges Creek Coal District
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of August 5, 1900:
STRIKE LEADER GOES TO PRISON
FOR SIX MONTHS
——-
Woman Sympathizer Creates a Sensation
in a Maryland Jail
Special to The Inquirer.
CUMBERLAND, Md., Aug. 4.-William Warner, the strike leader, was sentenced this afternoon to six months in the House of Correction, having been convicted of unlawful assembly during trouble which arose at an anti-strike meeting. Seventeen miners were also sentenced. They were visited at the jail this afternoon by Mother Jones, the woman labor organizer, who created a sensation by proposing three cheers in the jail for the strikers and three hisses “for the blacklegs.” She led the cheering, as well as the hissing. Warner, who is from Pittsburg, took an appeal.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 13, 1909
Silk Mills of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Region Investigated
From the Everett Labor Journal of February 11, 1909:
DISGUISED AS FACTORY GIRLS
That actual knowledge might be obtained of the conditions in the factories two graduates of Bryn Mawr College prominent in social circles in Philadelphia, Miss Fanny T. Cochran and Miss Florence L. Sanville, found employment in silk mills of the anthracite region of Pennsylvania.
In the itinerary of three weeks these college girls visited sixteen towns, and when the days’ work was done went home with the girls with whom they toiled and got glimpses into their life and the influences that surround them. The project was planned by Miss Cochran and Miss Sanville without consulting their friends.
This work was performed in the interest of the child labor bill, which has been prepared at the instance of the Consumers’ League, of which both young women are members and, of which Miss Sanville is executive secretary.
[Said Miss Cochran:]
What we wanted to get at was these four things: First, the workers; second, the wages paid; third, the hours of employment, and fourth, the environment of the girls in the factory. We visited twenty-eight factories, and in many of them the conditions were very bad.
About 60 per cent of the silk throwing mills are in the Pennsylvania anthracite region, and this is due to the cheap labor obtainable. I could not help being impressed by the youth of most of the girls. Most of them were under twenty years of age.
—————
—————
—————
———–
———-
———-