Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 26, 1909
New Orleans, Louisiana – Southern Child Labor Conference Deemed a Success
From Louisiana’s Reserve Le Meschacébé of April 17, 1909:
A PERMANENT ORGANIZATION
—–
CHILD LABOR CONFERENCE WILL BE
MAINTAINED AS A FIXTURE.
—–
Successful Opening Meeting Renders Members
Enthusiastic For Future.
—–
Doffer boys, ages 12 and 10. Gastonia, North Carolina —–
New Orleans.-The child labor conference of the Southern states, called by Governor J. Y. Sanders of Louisiana, came to a close after a three-days’ session, in which great things were accomplished, resolutions being adopted fixing age limit, working hours, etc., and permanent organization effected.
The convention was the second of its kind in the history of the new commercial South, but it will not be the last for already Memphis has been tacitly agreed upon as the next place of meeting, and in the twelve months which must elapse before that meeting the delegates are pledged to work mightily to create sentiment and mold opinion, so that even greater reforms than those suggested during the past few days may be gained for the “Child of the Man With the Hoe,” as Senator Colville so strikingly describes the work children. Eleven states were represented.
The chief work of the conference was the adoption of a resolution containing important provisions, to be embodied in a uniform child labor law to be proposed in the legislatures of all the states in the South…..
———-
[Photograph added is by Lewis Hine.]
From The Survey (formerly Charities and Commons) of April 17, 1909:
SOUTHERN CHILD LABOR CONFERENCE
—–
Smallest girl about 10 years old, has been in mill 2 years, 6 months at night. —–
In the contest over a better child labor law in the Louisiana Legislature last summer, the issue most warmly debated was whether a working day of nine hours or ten should be adopted for children under eighteen years of age, and for women. The Legislature decided upon the ten-hour day and Governor Sanders promised Miss Jean Gordon, who had led the fight for child labor reform, to call a conference in New Orleans to recommend a uniform child labor law for the southern states.
Governor Sanders wrote to all the southern governors asking them to attend the conference personally if possible and to send interested delegates: manufacturers, representatives of labor unions, and of different associations pledged to child labor reform. Delegates to the conference were appointed by all the southern governors except Governor Comer of Alabama, and Governor Campbell of Texas. Governor Comer’s reason for not appointing delegates—that Alabama had already the best child labor law in the country with the possible exception of Massachusetts, was so ridiculous that his action focused attention upon the deficiencies of the Alabama law, it being generally believed that these rather than the excellence of the law furnished the reason why the governor, himself a cotton manufacturer, deplored any further discussion or agitation of the subject in Alabama.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 28, 1908
Women Toiling at Poverty Wages, Driven to Desperation
From the Socialist Montana News of November 26, 1908:
“The Harlot’s Marching Song” by Joyce Kilmer
Young Girls, Cheap Labor, Pittsburg
SACRIFICING YOUNG GIRLS IN ROLLING MILLS.
In a Pittsburg foundry girls are employed to make simple cores for castings. A quick girl can make 10,000 a day, for which she receives $1. According to the investigator who reported to charities on “Pittsburg Women in the Metal Trades”, this work is carried on in clouds of drifting dust. As the cores are finished they are set on trays, which the women carry across the room to the ovens. A loaded tray weighs from ten to 25 pounds.
You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 10, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – 5,000 Children Go to School Hungry
From The Socialist Woman of November 1908:
American School Children Starving
Chicago Tribune of October 5, 1908
When we are talking of the number of men who are tramping the country looking for work—hungry, broken-spirited, abject creatures, who once thought themselves men, as good as any of their kind—let us not forget the women, and the little children of these men.
Last winter in Chicago after the first flurry of the panic, I had occasion to visit a number of the “homes” of those who had been thrown out of work. In every case the men were out, hunting feverishly for the chance to make even a little money by any kind of hard labor. And in every case my heart ached and my soul grew sick when I thought of the future of the women and children of those families.
“It is awful when the children cry for food, and we cant give it to them,” said one woman who had never before known what it was to be down and out. Another mother, about thirty, and strong and handsome, had to sit by and watch her seven-year-old daughter burning with fever, and without the care of a doctor because she had lost her job in a department store, and there was no money even to buy food. She had applied for work at all the large stores again and again. She had tried everywhere—and was told that they might need her during the holidays. But the holidays were weeks away. Already she had moved into a questionable quarter because rent was cheap. And unless that mother got work within two weeks, there was but one resource left her, if she would save herself and her child from death through starvation. And that was the sale of her body.
It was for a charitable institution I was working—and I knew that those institutions were crowded to their utmost with destitute cases.
Such, indeed, was the condition of the poor in Chicago last winter, that the superintendent of compulsory education, W. Lester Bodine, took up the case of hungry school children, followed his investigations for six months, and finally ascertained that there are 5,000 starving children, and 10,000 that are underfed, in the schools of the city.
And it’s what will I tell to my three little children?
And what will I tell his dear mother at home?
And it’s what will I tell to my poor heart that’s dying?
My heart that’s surely dying since my darling is gone.
-Jean Ritchie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 17, 1908
Monongah, West Virginia – A Town of Broken Hearted Women and Girls
New Graves for Half the Town’s Breadwinners
Within a recent edition of the “Weekly Journal of Philanthropy and Social Advance,” Charities and the Commons, we find a long article, written by Paul U. Kellogg and illustrated by Joseph Stella, which tells the heartbreaking story of Monongah in the aftermath of great mine disaster of December 6th of last year. Today we offer a brief example of the writing of Mr. Kellogg along with illustrations by Mr. Stella.
From Charities and the Commons of January 4, 1908:
Monongah
Paul U. Kellogg
…..That morning five priests had held mass in St. Stanislaus’s Church and over twenty coffins were ranged in the low-ceilinged room in the basement. They were the first of one hundred and ten whom Father Joseph Letston counted as lost. Many of his people had come early to the church, a-foot, with bowed heads, sorrowing in low voices, sometimes a woman half held up by her companions, to that basement where the coffin lids closed in on blistered, swollen faces and parts of men. Four or five widows wept convulsively. An older woman read from a religious book held to the flickering light of a candle at the head of a closed coffin. A peasant, ugly with her pitted face, but beautiful in her great sorrow, bent often and kissed the lips of her husband.
All of a sudden there was a cry more piercing than the others. It was from an old mother who had lost seven—her husband, a son, two sons-in-law and three nephews. She had come upon one of them, and the people with her could scarcely hold her. She threw her head on the casket, and spoke to the boy fondly, trying to caress the crumpled face with poor, wrinkled hands. She had moaned all the way that morning from her lonely house to the church door, giving infinite sorrow to those who heard, and here her grief had at last found vent.
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday January 16, 1908
Monongah, West Virginia – Hunger Reigns with Breadwinners Dead
Who among us could ever forget the following from journalist Dorothy Dale reporting from the devastated town after the great mine disaster:
Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money…Please you get something for me, I can do.
A little hand touched my arm. The curl-framed face of a girl of 10 years looked into mine.
[She said pitifully:]
You know mans all dead. Boys all dead. Only girls left to work.
From The Labor World of January 11, 1908:
WIDOWS AND ORPHANS CRYING FOR BREAD
—–
Entire Burden of Every Industrial Disaster Falls
Upon the Poor Wage-earners’ Family.
—–
Bread Winners Killed By Wilful Negligence of
Their Employers, the Union Smashers.
—–
In the appeal issued by the Monongah Relief Committee it is stated that of the 3,000 inhabitants of Monongah the mine disaster destroyed one-half of the breadwinners. Two hundred and fifty wives, 1,000 children and many unborn children are left without means of support. The company has declared that the families occupying these houses may remain in them until other provision is made for them and in other ways has been generous in its attitude, but it states that operations cannot be resumed at the damaged mines until these houses are available for the new force. $200,000 is asked for by the Relief Committee to meet these needs. Commenting on the situation Paul U. Kellogg, special representative of Charities and The Commons, says:
————————-
