Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 3, 1903 “Child slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation.”
From The Comrade of August 1903:
Child Slaves of Philadelphia
By J. Spargo
CHILD slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation. But nowhere to a more alarming extent than in the City of Philadelphia. The great textile industries rest upon the enslavement of children and women. Not even in the South are conditions worse than here. At present the majority of the mills are idle owing to a strike for shorter hours of labor, and the children, or those of them who have not been cowed into submission, being on strike they are free to enjoy the fresh air. But when the mills are working the boys and girls are caged up for sixty hours a week in the unhealthy atmosphere common to these industrial hells.
The present strike in an effort on the part of the textile workers to obtain a reduction of the working hours to fifty- five per week. Although wages are miserably low they are willing to forfeit five hours’ pay if only they can obtain the desired reduction of hours.
In 1892, the year of the great panic, wages in the textile industry fell enormously.The Dingley Tariff of 1894 was to restore wages and improve conditions all round. So the workers voted for “Protection.” They continue to vote for “Protection” despite the fact that wages are still lower than in 1892, and that women and children-especially children-are employed in ever increasing numbers.
The law fixes the minimum age at which children may be employed in factories at thirteen years.The cold, calculating brutality of men deliberately passing a law permitting boys and girls of thirteen to be employed sixty hours a week is even more disgraceful than neglect of the question altogether would be. It is certain, however, that the law has very little effect so far as maintaining even the minimum is concerned.
There are said to be sixteen thousand children at work in the textile industries of Philadelphia,and it is certain that thousands of these are below the legal age. Factory inspection is of the most perfunctory kind: false certificates are not difficult to obtain, and it is easy to use certificates of older children to cover any “suspects.” Moreover, the parents themselves are, in too many cases, ignorant enough-or poor enough-to swear falsely as to the ages of their children. In thousands of cases this is exactly what happens. No one who knows anything whatever about the subject doubts that there are thousands of children between the ages of ten and twelve employed in the textile industries of this city in normal times.
On the morning before “Mother” Jones started to march to New York with her little “army of crusaders” from the Kensington Labor Lyceum, early in July, I saw a number of such children of both sexes. Whenever “Mother” or myself asked one of them his or her age we got the stereotyped reply “Thirteen!” But even if one could believe they spoke the truth, the fact remains that not a few of them had been employed for periods ranging from a few months to two years or even more. One little fellow told me how, in the factory where he worked, when the inspector came round, the smallest of them were either hidden or sent out to play. In not a few cases the “inspection” of the factory all takes place in the employer’s office as every intelligent mill worker knows.
One of the effects of child labor, the illiteracy of adults, I have observed here and in the surrounding towns and villages to a much greater extent than anywhere else in this country. It is by no means an uncommon thing to meet native born Americans of twenty-five years of age, or over, unable to read or write even their own names! What a terrible price to pay for the folly and crime of child labor!
Of course, the first break in the ranks of the strikers took place among the children. Poor children! they entered upon the strike with light hearts. To them it meant a chance to rest; to straighten their little backs. But they were in most cases easily browbeaten by the brutal bosses or their agents. I heard of several cases where mothers took their children-literally dragged them-to the mill gates and forced them inside to “scab.”One little fellow I heard of was dragged and beaten by his mother right up to the mill door when he was roughly pulled inside by a bully of a foreman who hurled a volley of curses at the cowering child.And the burden of the little fellow’s cry was “Don’t make me scab! I’ll die first! Don’t make me scab!”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 7, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail
From The Masses of June 1913:
“Speaking of Anarchy” by Art Young
[Part I of II]
There’s war in Paterson. But it’s a curious kind of war. All the violence is the work of one side—the Mill Owners. Their servants, the Police, club unresisting men and women and ride down law-abiding crowds on horseback. Their paid mercenaries, the armed Detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. Their newspapers, the Paterson Press and the Paterson Call, publish incendiary and crime-inciting appeals to mob-violence against the strike leaders. Their tool, Recorder Carroll, deals out heavy sentences to peaceful pickets that the police-net gathers up. They control absolutely the Police, the Press, the Courts.
Opposing them are about twenty-five thousand striking silk-workers, of whom perhaps ten thousand are active, and their weapon is the picket-line. Let me tell you what I saw in Paterson and then you will say which side of this struggle is “anarchistic” and “contrary to American ideals.”
At six o’clock in the morning a light rain was falling. Slate-grey and cold, the streets of Paterson were deserted. But soon came the Cops-twenty of them—strolling along with their nightsticks under their arms. We went ahead of them toward the mill district. Now we began to see workmen going in the same direction, coat collars turned up, hands in their pockets. We came into a long street, one side of which was lined with silk mills, the other side with the wooden tenement houses. In every doorway, at every window of the houses clustered foreign-faced men and women, laughing and chatting as if after breakfast on a holiday. There seemed no sense of expectancy, no strain or feeling of fear. The sidewalks were almost empty, only over in front of the mills a few couples—there couldn’t have been more than fifty-marched slowly up and down, dripping with the rain. Some were men, with here and there a man and woman together, or two young boys. As the warmer light of full day came the people drifted out of their houses and began to pace back and forth, gathering in little knots on the corners. They were quick with gesticulating hands, and low-voiced conversation. They looked often toward the corners of side streets.
Suddenly appeared a policeman, swinging his club. “Ah-h-h!” said the crowd softly.
Six men had taken shelter from the rain under the canopy of a saloon. “Come on! Get out of that!” yelled the policeman, advancing. The men quietly obeyed. “Get off this street! Go home, now! Don’t be standing here!” They gave way before him in silence, drifting back again when he turned away. Other policemen materialized, hustling, cursing, brutal, ineffectual. No one answered back. Nervous, bleary-eyed, unshaven, these officers were worn out with nine weeks’ incessant strike duty.
On the mill side of the street the picket-line had grown to about four hundred. Several policemen shouldered roughly among them, looking for trouble. A workman appeared, with a tin pail, escorted by two detectives. “Boo! Boo!” shouted a few scattered voices. Two Italian boys leaned against the mill fence and shouted a merry Irish threat, “Scab! Come outa here I knocka you’ head off!” A policeman grabbed the boys roughly by the shoulder. “Get to hell out of here!” he cried, jerking and pushing them violently to the corner, where he kicked them. Not a voice, not a movement from the crowd.
A little further along the street we saw a young woman with an umbrella, who had been picketing, suddenly confronted by a big policeman.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared. “God damn you, you go home!” and he jammed his club against her mouth. “I no go home!” she shrilled passionately, with blazing eyes. “You bigga stiff !”
Silently, steadfastly, solidly the picket-line grew. In groups or in couples the strikers patrolled the sidewalk. There was no more laughing. They looked on with eyes full of hate. These were fiery-blooded Italians, and the police were the same brutal thugs that had beaten them and insulted them for nine weeks. I wondered how long they could stand it.
It began to rain heavily. I asked a man’s permission to stand on the porch of his house. There was a policeman standing in front of it. His name, I afterwards discovered, was McCormack. I had to walk around him to mount the steps.
Suddenly he turned round, and shot at the owner: “Do all them fellows live in that house?” The man indicated the three other strikers and himself, and shook his head at me.
“Then you get to hell off of there!” said the cop, pointing his club at me.
“I have the permission of this gentleman to stand here,” I said. “He owns this house.”
“Never mind! Do what I tell you! Come off of there, and come off damn quick!”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
With that he leaped up the steps, seized my arm, and violently jerked me to the sidewalk. Another cop took my arm and they gave me a shove.
“Now you get to hell off this street!” said Officer McCormack.
“I won’t get off this street or any other street. If I’m breaking any law, you arrest me!”
Officer McCormack, who is doubtless a good, stupid Irishman in time of peace, is almost helpless in a situation that requires thinking. He was dreadfully troubled by my request. He didn’t want to arrest me, and said so with a great deal of profanity.
“I’ve got your number,” said I sweetly. “Now will you tell me your name?”
“Yes,” he bellowed, “an’ I got your number! I’ll arrest you.” He took me by the arm and marched me up the street.
He was sorry he had arrested me. There was no charge he could lodge against me. I hadn’t been doing anything. He felt he must make me say something that could be construed as a violation of the Law. To which end he God damned me harshly, loading me with abuse and obscenity, and threatened me with his night-stick, saying, “You big — — lug, I’d like to beat the hell out of you with this club.”
I returned airy persiflage to his threats.
Other officers came to the rescue, two of them, and supplied fresh epithets. I soon found them repeating themselves, however, and told them so. “I had to come all the way to Paterson to put one over on a cop !” I said. Eureka! They had at last found a crime! When I was arraigned in the Recorder’s Court that remark of mine was the charge against me!
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 10, 1912 Cartoon by Ryan Walker: “The Necklace of Pearls”
From The Coming Nation of January 6, 1912:
The $500,000 PEARL NECKLACE, 20 YEARS IN COLLECTING Yes, the steel workers have contributed everything to that $500,000 pearl necklace that ex-Judge Gary of the steel trust has given his wife.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 2, 1902 Guy H. and Theodocia Lockwood Travel in Wagon, Lecture for Socialism
From The Comrade of January 1902:
How to reach the vast population scattered in the towns and small cities-is certainly a problem worthy of any socialist consideration. To be sure, the Socialist movement in the United States has not as yet assumed that proportion in the large, industrial centers to make propaganda in the country a matter of pressing necessity. But the movement, although small, must from the very start take cognizance of all kinds of conditions and lay the foundations accordingly.
It is in this light that recognition must be given to Guy H. Lockwood and wife, who are at the head of a movement to build and equip automobile lecture wagons, designed to travel from town to town in the service of the socialist movement. To spread Socialism is, of course, the aim. The Lockwoods are convinced that much propaganda can be carried on among the farmers, provided socialism is presented to them in an “acceptable” form. The automobile, it is claimed, is the cheapest and most attractive means to accomplish the work.
Guy H. Lockwood is very enthusiastic over his scheme. He feels quite sure that it will be a success, and his experience during the past few years ought to count for much. Since 1897 he has been travelling in a wagon drawn by a pair of horses and preaching Socialism under great diversity of circumstances.
The “van method” of reaching the masses is not by any means original with the Lockwoods. In California the socialists have tried it with much success. Previous to his going East, Job Harriman, Vice-Presidential candidate of the S. D. P. in 1900, was in full charge of a well-equipped wagon mission, and his splendid work as speaker and organizer was a great factor in giving the socialists of the Golden State a handsome increase of votes in 1898.
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