You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday November 12, 1903
Chicago, Illinois - Great Strike of Street Car Workers Begins on City's Railway Lines
At 4 O'clock this morning a great strike against the Chicago City Railway Company began. The union is not interfering with mail cars, but crowds are preventing most trains from passing through the city. Newspapers across the country are reporting that "mobs" are in control of the streets of Chicago, and that the police have been unable to maintain law and order.
From the Pennsylvania Pittston Gazette:
The demands of the union were for a wage increase of 25 per cent, recognition of the union and several other minor concessions. The company requested a postponement of hostilities until Saturday, when a final answer would be given, but the men refused to delay action any longer and decided to quit work to enforce their demands.
The company had several hundred men in readiness to take the places of the strikers and are endeavoring to run the cars with nonunion men.
The Chicago City railway controls all the surface lines running on the south side of the city, making a total of over 220 miles of track.
SOURCE
Pittston Gazette
(Pittston, PA)
-of Nov 12, 1903
Note: The New York Times also reported on this story.
http://select.nytimes.com/...
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Wednesday November 12, 1913
From the Miners' Bulletin: "Little Children of the Poor" by Ellis B. Harris
Little children of the poor,
My heart goes out to you.
Little lives that must endure
Where miseries accrue;
In the factories and mills
There robbed of play and hearth
Suffering a world of ills
For parasites of wealth.
Little children of the poor,
You, tender, precious flowers,
Blooms for gardens sweet and pure,
Yet robbed of playtime hours.
Is it strange that blood runs wild
And hands are clenched in wrath
When we contemplate a child
Upon the thorn strewn path?
Little children of the poor,
Brave hearts shall place the blame
For the lives that you endure,
And point the nations's shame.
Boasting here of Freedom's reign
And scorning royal commands,
Forging them a master's chain
To shackle baby hands.
Little children of the poor,
Pearls for trampling swine,
Cast and mired that they secure
The wealth from mill and mine.
There are those who hear the call
From far off Galilee,
Heeding, until Mammon fall
And you, His Jewels, are free.
Little children of the poor,
A future day shall break,
When no one can e'er secure
Your lives for profit sake;
When the people's rule shall fill
The world with melody,
And childhood's joys and laughter thrill
The world with ecstasy.
SOURCE
Miners' Bulletin
(Official newspaper of the WFM
in the strike zone of MI's Copper Country)
-of Nov 11, 1913
Photo: Child Labor During the Industrial Revolution
http://child-labor-industrial.weebly.com/...
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Tuesday November 12, 2013
More on the poet, Ellis B Harris:
This is my first! introduction to this fine poet for the working class. Searches reveal little information, but I did find some poetry that he wrote for Eugene Victor Debs.
This poem is the preamble of a song that Harris wrote for Debs. There is a hand written note to Theodore Debs, the brother of EVD:
To my beloved Comrade, Theodore Debs,
4-1919
Ellis B. Harris
The song is titled "We Will Follow Brave Debs to the End" and is introduced with this poem:
To you, workers of all lands,
Of every color, race and creed,
Whose fertile minds and toiling hands
Have ever fed the powers of greed,
I dedicate love's melody,
Of one great soul, with flag unfurled,
Who gave his all to make men free
That you may sing it to the world.
The song-sheet, as published in Chicago with an introduction by Harris, is here:
(pdf!)http://debs.indstate.edu/...
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Set the Children Free-Larry McDonald & Toots Hibbert
Someday what the young ones have dreamed
Someday all you've hoped and believed
Will be, you will all understand
The longing placed inside every man
Overcomes the world and sets the children free
And I will come to set my children free
-Michael Whitaker Smith
& David Mullen