MOTHER JONES CHILDREN'S CRUSADE
On this Mother's Day we remember Mother Jones and the Children's Crusade.
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was a fearless fighter for workers' rights. When she was mocked as the "grandmother of all agitators," in the U.S. Senate, Mother Jones replied that she would someday like to be called "the great-grandmother of all agitators." And she is. She taught us that movements are theatres of battle, that strategy matters, and that unions can be vehicles for workers' power, not just a contract.
At the age of 70, for 3 weeks, she led a procession of three hundred young textile workers on a "Children’s Crusade," marching from Philadelphia to New York, to raise awareness of exploitative child labor. Stopping at meetings along the way, she would introduce girls and boys with mutilated hands, "tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty who did an eight-hour shift for ten cents a day."
"We ask you, Mr. President, if our commercial greatness has not cost us too much by being built on the quivering hearts of helpless children. We are now marching toward you in the hope that your tender heart will counsel with us to abolish this crime."- Mother Jones, in a letter to President Roosevelt.
Though the official figures likely understate the
reality, they indicate that in 1900 at least 18% of America’s children were
employed. In southern cotton mills, 25% of the employees were under the age
of 15, and half of these children were younger than 12. [1900 U.S. Census]
"In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. What about 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.
I used to be a factory hand when things were moving slow,
When children worked in cotton mills, each morning had to go.
Every morning just at five the whistle blew on time
And called them babies out of bed at the age of eight and nine.
Come out of bed, little sleepy heads,
And get your bite to eat.
The factory whistle's calling you,
There's no more time to sleep.
The children all grew up unlearned, they never went to school.
They never learned to read and write. They learned to spin and spool.
Every time I close my eyes, I see that picture still.
When textile work was carried on with babies in the mill.
To their jobs those little ones was strictly forced to go.
Those babies had to be on time through rain and sleet and snow.
Many times when things went wrong their bosses often frowned.
Many times those little ones was kicked and shoved around.
Oldtimer can’t you see that scene back through the years gone by
Those babies all went on the job the same as you and I
I know you’re glad that things have changed while we have lots of fun
As we go in and do the jobs that babies used to run
~Babies in the Mill
The March of the Mill Children of 1903: Changing Public Perception of Child Labor
The march brought Mother Jones national attention. Within three years, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York passed the nation’s first child labor laws.
, "She has won her way into the hearts of the nation's toilers, and her name is revered at the altars of their humble firesides and will be lovingly remembered by their children and their children's children forever." - Eugene Debs
RESOURCES
Video - History Squirrel, Published on Aug 5, 2013
This documentary won 3rd at state and was alternate to nationals for National History Day 2013. The theme was Turning Points.
Mary Harris Jones, "March of the Mill Children," The Autobiography of Mother Jones, 1925.
http://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-235
Dorsey Dixon- Babies In The Mill
https://youtu.be/xNeBgpuNMSI
