THE MARCH OF THE MILL CHILDREN
In the spring of 1903 I went to Kensington, Pennsylvania, where
seventy-five thousand textile workers were on strike. Of this number at
least ten thousand were little children. The workers were striking for
more pay and shorter hours. Every day little children came into Union
Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing,
some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped little
things, round shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten
years of age, although the state law prohibited their working before
they were twelve years of age.
The law was poorly enforced and the mothers of these children often
swore falsely as to their children’s age. In a single block in
Kensington, fourteen women, mothers of twenty-two children all under
twelve, explained it was a question of starvation or perjury. That the
fathers had been killed or maimed at the mines.
I asked the newspaper men why they didn’t publish the facts about child
labor in Pennsylvania. They said they couldn’t because the mill owners
had stock in the papers.
“Well, I’ve got stock in these little children,” said I, “and I’ll
arrange a little publicity.”
We assembled a number of boys and girls one morning in Independence
Park and from there we arranged to parade with banners to the court
house where we would hold a meeting.
A great crowd gathered in the public square in front of the city hall.
I put the little boys with their fingers off and hands crushed and
maimed on a platform. I held up their mutilated hands and showed them
to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia’s mansions were
built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of
these children. That their little lives went out to make wealth for
others. That neither state or city officials paid any attention to
these wrongs. That they did not care that these children were to be the
future citizens of the nation.
The officials of the city hall were standing in the open windows. I
held the little ones of the mills high up above the heads of the crowd
and pointed to their puny arms and legs and hollow chests. They were
light to lift.
I called upon the millionaire manufacturers to cease their moral
murders, and I cried to the officials in the open windows opposite,
“Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when
we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit.”
The officials quickly closed the windows, just as they had closed their
eyes and hearts.
The reporters quoted my statement that Philadelphia mansions were built
on the broken bones and quivering hearts of children. The Philadelphia
papers and the New York papers got into a squabble with each other over
the question. The universities discussed it. Preachers began talking.
That was what I wanted. Public attention on the subject of child labor.
The matter quieted down for a while and I concluded the people needed
stirring up again. The Liberty Bell that a century ago rang out for
freedom against tyranny was touring the country and crowds were coming
to see it everywhere. That gave me an idea. These little children were
striking for some of the freedom that childhood ought to have, and I
decided that the children and I would go on a tour.
I asked some of the parents if they would let me have their little boys
and girls for a week or ten days, promising to bring them back safe and
sound. They consented. A man named Sweeny was marshal for our “army.” A
few men and women went with me to help with the children. They were on
strike and I thought they might as well have a little recreation.
The children carried knapsacks on their backs in which was a knife and
fork, a tin cup and plate. We took along a wash boiler in which to cook
the food on the road. One little fellow had a drum and another had a
fife. That was our band. We carried banners that said, “We want more
schools and less hospitals.” “We want time to play.” “Prosperity is
here. Where is ours?”
We started from Philadelphia where we held a great mass meeting. I
decided to go with the children to see President Roosevelt to ask him
to have Congress pass a law prohibiting the exploitation of childhood.
I thought that President Roosevelt might see these mill children and
compare them with his own little ones who were spending the summer on
the seashore at Oyster Bay. I thought, too, out of politeness, we might
call on Morgan in Wall Street who owned the mines where many of these
children’s fathers worked.
The children were very happy, having plenty to eat, taking baths in the
brooks and rivers every day. I thought when the strike is over and they
go back to the mills, they will never have another holiday like this.
All along the line of march the farmers drove out to meet us with wagon
loads of fruit and vegetables. Their wives brought the children clothes
and money. The interurban trainmen would stop their trains and give us
free rides.
Marshal Sweeny and I would go ahead to the towns and arrange sleeping
quarters for the children, and secure meeting halls. As we marched on,
it grew terribly hot. There was no rain and the roads were heavy with
dust. From time to time we had to send some of the children back to
their homes. They were too weak to stand the march.
We were on the outskirts of New Trenton, New Jersey, cooking our lunch
in the wash boiler, when the conductor on the interurban car stopped
and told us the police were coming down to notify us that we could not
enter the town. There were mills in the town and the mill owners didn’t
like our coming.
I said, “All right, the police will be just in time for lunch.”
Sure enough, the police came and we invited them to dine with us. They
looked at the little gathering of children with their tin plates and
cups around the wash boiler. They just smiled and spoke kindly to the
children, and said nothing at all about not going into the city.
We went in, held our meeting, and it was the wives of the police who
took the little children and cared for them that night, sending them
back in the morning with a nice lunch rolled up in paper napkins.
Everywhere we had meetings, showing up with living children, the
horrors of child labor.
At one town the mayor said we could not hold a meeting because he did
not have sufficient police protection. “These little children have
never known any sort of protection, your honor,” I said, “and they are
used to going without it.” He let us have our meeting.
One night in Princeton, New Jersey, we slept in the big cool barn on
Grover Cleveland’s great estate. The heat became intense. There was
much suffering in our ranks, for our little ones were not robust. The
proprietor of the leading hotel sent for me. “Mother,” he said, “order
what you want and all you want for your army, and there’s nothing to
pay.”
I called on the mayor of Princeton and asked for permission to speak
opposite the campus of the University. I said I wanted to speak on
higher education. The mayor gave me permission. A great crowd gathered,
professors and students and the people; and I told them that the rich
robbed these little children of any education of the lowest order that
they might send their sons and daughters to places of higher education.
That they used the hands and feet of little children that they might
buy automobiles for their wives and police dogs for their daughters
to talk French to. I said the mill owners take babies almost from the
cradle. And I showed those professors children in our army who could
scarcely read or write because they were working ten hours a day in the
silk mills of Pennsylvania.
“Here’s a text book on economics,” I said, pointing to a little chap,
James Ashworth, who was ten years old and who was stooped over like an
old man from carrying bundles of yarn that weighed seventy-five pounds.
“He gets three dollars a week and his sister who is fourteen gets
six dollars. They work in a carpet factory ten hours a day while the
children of the rich are getting their higher education.”
That night we camped on the banks of Stony Brook where years and
years before the ragged Revolutionary Army camped, Washington’s brave
soldiers that made their fight for freedom.
From Jersey City we marched to Hoboken. I sent a committee over to the
New York Chief of Police, Ebstein, asking for permission to march up
Fourth Avenue to Madison Square where I wanted to hold a meeting. The
chief refused and forbade our entrance to the city.
I went over myself to New York and saw Mayor Seth Low. The mayor
was most courteous but he said he would have to support the police
commissioner. I asked him what the reason was for refusing us entrance
to the city and he said that we were not citizens of New York.
“Oh, I think we will clear that up, Mr. Mayor,” I said. “Permit me to
call your attention to an incident which took place in this nation just
a year ago. A piece of rotten royalty came over here from Germany,
called Prince Henry. The Congress of the United States voted $45,000
to fill that fellow’s stomach for three weeks and to entertain him.
His brother was getting $4,000,000 dividends out of the blood of the
workers in this country. Was he a citizen of this land?”
“And it was reported, Mr. Mayor, that you and all the officials of New
York and the University Club entertained that chap.” And I repeated,
“Was he a citizen of New York?”
“No, Mother,” said the mayor, “he was not.”
“And a Chinaman called Lee Woo was also entertained by the officials of
New York. Was he a citizen of New York?”
“No, Mother, he was not.”
“Did they ever create any wealth for our nation?”
“No, Mother, they did not,” said he.
“Well, Mr. Mayor, these are the little citizens of the nation and they
also produce its wealth. Aren’t we entitled to enter your city?”
“Just wait,” says he, and he called the commissioner of police over to
his office.
Well, finally they decided to let the army come in. We marched up
Fourth Avenue to Madison Square and police officers, captains,
sergeants, roundsmen and reserves from three precincts accompanied us.
But the police would not let us hold a meeting in Madison Square. They
insisted that the meeting be held in Twentieth Street.
I pointed out to the captain that the single taxers were allowed to
hold meetings in the square. “Yes,” he said, “but they won’t have
twenty people and you might have twenty thousand.”
We marched to Twentieth Street. I told an immense crowd of the horrors
of child labor in the mills around the anthracite region and I showed
them some of the children. I showed them Eddie Dunphy, a little fellow
of twelve, whose job it was to sit all day on a high stool, handing in
the right thread to another worker. Eleven hours a day he sat on the
high stool with dangerous machinery all about him. All day long, winter
and summer, spring and fall, for three dollars a week.
And then I showed them Gussie Rangnew, a little girl from whom all the
childhood had gone. Her face was like an old woman’s. Gussie packed
stockings in a factory, eleven hours a day for a few cents a day.
We raised a lot of money for the strikers and hundreds of friends
offered their homes to the little ones while we were in the city.
The next day we went to Coney Island at the invitation of Mr. Bostick
who owned the wild animal show. The children had a wonderful day such
as they never had in all their lives. After the exhibition of the
trained animals, Mr. Bostick let me speak to the audience. There was a
back drop to the tiny stage of the Roman Colosseum with the audience
painted in and two Roman emperors down in front with their thumbs
down. Right in front of the emperors were the empty iron cages of the
animals. I put my little children in the cages and they clung to the
iron bars while I talked.
I told the crowd that the scene was typical of the aristocracy of
employers with their thumbs down to the little ones of the mills and
factories, and people sitting dumbly by.
“We want President Roosevelt to hear the wail of the children who
never have a chance to go to school but work eleven and twelve hours a
day in the textile mills of Pennsylvania; who weave the carpets that
he and you walk upon; and the lace curtains in your windows, and the
clothes of the people. Fifty years ago there was a cry against slavery
and men gave up their lives to stop the selling of black children on
the block. Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the
manufacturers. Fifty years ago the black babies were sold C. O. D.
Today the white baby is sold on the installment plan.
“In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they
have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about the little
children from whom all song is gone?
“I shall ask the president in the name of the aching hearts of these
little ones that he emancipate them from slavery. I will tell the
president that the prosperity he boasts of is the prosperity of the
rich wrung from the poor and the helpless.
“The trouble is that no one in Washington cares. I saw our legislators
in one hour pass three bills for the relief of the railways but when
labor cries for aid for the children they will not listen.
“I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said
he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad
he would be a United States Senator.
“We are told that every American boy has the chance of being president.
I tell you that these little boys in the iron cages would sell their
chance any day for good square meals and a chance to play. These little
toilers whom I have taken from the mills--deformed, dwarfed in body and
soul, with nothing but toil before them--have never heard that they
have a chance, the chance of every American male citizen, to become the
president.
“You see those monkeys in those cages over there.” I pointed to a side
cage. “The professors are trying to teach them to talk. The monkeys are
too wise for they fear that the manufacturers would buy them for slaves
in their factories.”
I saw a stylishly dressed young man down in the front of the audience.
Several times he grinned. I stopped speaking and pointing to him I
said, “Stop your smiling, young man! Leave this place! Go home and
beg the mother who bore you in pain, as the mothers of these little
children bore them, go home and beg her to give you brains and a heart.”
He rose and slunk out, followed by the eyes of the children in the
cage. The people sat stone still and out in the rear a lion roared.
The next day we left Coney Island for Manhattan Beach to visit Senator
Platt, who had made an appointment to see me at nine o’clock in the
morning. The children got stuck in the sand banks and I had a time
cleaning the sand off the littlest ones. So we started to walk on the
railroad track. I was told it was private property and we had to get
off. Finally a saloon keeper showed us a short cut into the sacred
grounds of the hotel and suddenly the army appeared in the lobby. The
little fellows played “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here” on their fifes
and drums, and Senator Platt when he saw the little army ran away
through the back door to New York.
I asked the manager if he would give the children breakfast and charge
it up to the Senator as we had an invitation to breakfast that morning
with him. He gave us a private room and he gave those children such a
breakfast as they had never had in all their lives. I had breakfast
too, and a reporter from one of the Hearst papers and I charged it all
up to Senator Platt.
We marched down to Oyster Bay but the president refused to see us and
he would not answer my letters. But our march had done its work. We
had drawn the attention of the nation to the crime of child labor. And
while the strike of the textile workers in Kensington was lost and
the children driven back to work, not long afterward the Pennsylvania
legislature passed a child labor law that sent thousands of children
home from the mills, and kept thousands of others from entering the
factory until they were fourteen years of age.