You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday October 1, 1904
From the Appeal to Reason: Roosevelt and the Great American Prosperity
During the March of the Mill Children, Mother Jones made a speech in which she said:
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.
Of course, we all remember that President Roosevelt refused to meet with Mother Jones and child-strikers of Pennsylvania's textile mills. They are not at all good examples of the Great American Prosperity of which the President so loves to boast.
Today's edition of the Appeal to Reason takes on President Roosevelt and his much vaunted Prosperity. On the front page, we found this example of justice in Roosevelt's America, a system of justice which varies greatly according to the prosperity of the criminal and the net worth of his crime:
And from the second page of today's Appeal:
A FEW MORE QUESTIONS, MR. PRESIDENT.
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The census department has just made public a document which shows that 1,750,178 children under the age of sixteen years are employed in "gainful" occupations. Gainful occupations means work in which profits are taken from the lives of these little children. The Washington Times points out that this means one child in every five. Think of if, you mothers and fathers, every fifth child in the United States under the age of sixteen is a bread winner. The child should be a happy care-free youth, imbibing knowledge at school and developing into vigorous young manhood and womanhood.
Mr. Roosevelt, is this the sort of prosperity your party brings to the working class? Stand up and answer.
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"The Bread Line." In New York City last Friday night, four hundred and ten men stood in a column, a block and one-half long, waiting their turn to get a loaf of bread handed out by employes of Fleishman's bakery. They were hungry, and poorly dressed. The World says the men did not bear the earmarks of the professional panhandler. The reporter talked to several of them. One said: "I am a plumber's helper and up to a few months ago was making a good living. There were a number of men laid off in my shop last spring because times were hard and there was not enough for all of us to do. It did not worry me, because I had always been able to make a living and expected I always would be. But I have tried all summer to get work at my trade, and outside of a few jobs I have been unable to earn anything."
Is this the standard of living for the workingman which Roosevelt's party is so anxious to uphold? Speak louder, Mr. Roosevelt, and answer.
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"Fair stenographer lived for three weeks in Central Park, New York. Unfortunate wanderer was too proud to ask aid of her friends." Under this heading the Associated Press dispatches tell the story of a pretty young woman. She lost her position as stenographer because of slack work. Unable to secure another her furniture was seized for rent and she was cast adrift. For three weeks, she subsisted on scraps, thrown away by picnickers. When arrested for vagrancy she was almost famished and slightly out of her mind. Is this the standard of living, Mr. President, you are so anxious to maintain for the working classes?
Stand up, Mr. Roosevelt, and answer. A Million young woman, who are forced to earn their daily bread, are anxiously awaiting your reply.
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Mr. Roosevelt's census bulletins, to which he points with so much pride, tell us that the textile workers in the United States receive an average wage of: Men, $7.68 per week; women, $5.30; children $2.75. In Fall River, Mass., the 25,000 textile workers are striking against a reduction of these meagre wages. Is this the "high standard of living" which the republican party proposes to maintain for the "working classes?"
Stand up, Mr. Roosevelt, the striking, starving, miserable wage slaves of the textile mills in Massachusetts are awaiting your reply.
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Eleven thousand families, representing over 50,000 persons, are being cared for by the city pauper department in Fall River, Mass. These miserable slaves struck against a reduction of their wages. Pauper diet! Is this the standard Mr. Roosevelt proposes to maintain during his next administration?
Stand up, Colonel, and let us have your answer.
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"Destroyed Individualism" by Ryan Walker
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SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of Oct 1, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
-ed by Mary Field Parton
Charles H Kerr, Chicago, 1925
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/...
Chapter X. The March of the Mill Children
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/...
IMAGES
The Chicken Thief and the Banker Thief
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Bread Line
http://www.newspapers.com/...
"Destroyed Individualism" by Ryan Walker with Text
http://www.newspapers.com/...
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We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years-Jack Herranen and the Lower 9th Ward
We have fed you all for a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike of a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share;
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God! We have bought it fair.
-by Unknown Proletarian, 1908
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