Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and
other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men.
-John Spargo
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Friday September 10, 1915
From the Everett Labor Journal: Citizens of Mt. Carmel Remember John R. Lawson
From the September 3rd edition of the Everett Labor Journal, Hellraisers is today pleased to republish an article about the boyhood town of John R. Lawson where the labor leader began his working life at the
age of nine as a little
breaker boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine
The citizens of Mt. Carmel remember him fondly from his former Sunday school teacher to the miners who sat beside him picking slate as little boys many long years ago.
In a cottage on the edge of town, his uncle, Thomas Ramage, 68, is bed-ridden with miners' lung:
Recounting the early life of Lawson visibly affects the elder Ramage, for Lawson in his teens was his ideal and for him he had always pictured a future filled with great achievements, Every night in the little Ramage home, mother and son gather around the bedside of stricken father and unite in prayer, that in the end Justice will triumph.
"I have only a short time to live," said Ramage, as tears overflowed his deep, sunken eyes, "but it is my prayer that before I bid my loved ones and friends good-bye that poor John will have gained his freedom."
From The Labor Journal of September 3, 1915:
CITIZENS OF MOUNT CARMEL, BOYHOOD TOWN OF JOHN R. LAWSON,
ARE PUTTING FORTH GREAT EFFORT TO SECURE FREEDOM
FOR "LITTLE JACK"
MT. CARMEL, PA.-Ask any old resident of Mount Carmel if they believe John R. Lawson guilty of killing the mine guard Nimmo during the recent Colorado strike, for which he now stands convicted with a life term as the sentence, and you'll find out things about Lawson from the time of his birth until he crossed the divide into manhood and departed from the town of his boyhood, to cast his fortunes in pastures new that will convince you that Lawson possesses the noble traits of mankind that make for better and brighter things in life, such as his latter day business associates and friends have proclaimed for him.
On the top of a great mountain just a few miles to the north of Mt. Carmel is located the little mining town of Bell's Tunnel. In a company house in this obscure village Lawson first opened his eyes to the light of day. Today a culm bank two hundred feet high and several hundred yards in width would greet Lawson should he visit his humble birthplace.
Just west of the city line and still in operation stands the Alaska breaker, the property of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal & Iron Co., where Lawson performed his first work in or about the mines, starting as a breaker boy at the tender age of nine. In the same colliery there are today several miners employed who picked slate with Lawson and who too were forced to start the weary grind of toil at an age that robbed them of childhood's happiness. Ask them about Lawson and they will tell you that "Little Jack," as they called him, was just the type of a boy that all of his workmates and playmates admired.
Religiously Inclined
Six weary shifts from ten to eleven hours each failed to dim Lawson's religious spirit and every Sunday, rain or shine, found him a deeply interested participator in the Sunday school services of the First Presbyterian church. His Sunday school teacher of that period, to whom he was devoted with all the love and admiration of a boy's heart, who is now the wife of ex-Judge Voris Auten, one of the best known and most prominent attorneys in the anthracite coal region, still remembers with a great degree of affection her little faithful worshipper and is ever willing, yes, even to make sacrifices to give testimony in his behalf. When interviewed at her beautiful home in Mt. Carmel, Mrs. Auten responded with an eagerness that removed all doubt of her esteem for the Colorado labor leader.
Asked for an expression as to Lawson's guilt or innocence, she said:
I, of course, have no personal knowledge of the facts of the case against him, but from my intimate acquaintance with him when a boy I can hardly believe it possible that he could be guilty of the crime of which he stands convicted. When a lad living in Mount Carmel, he was a member of my Sunday school class, and had strong religious inclinations and convictions. His manner was mild and disposition kind and gentle. He had a thirst for knowledge, and I frequently loaned him good, wholesome books, which, after reading, he would discuss in an intelligent manner. The trend of his mind was toward the peaceful, the moral and the elevated. I therefore cannot think that his disposition and inclinations have so far changed that he would deliberately conspire to commit a heinous crime.
Chief of Police Worked With Lawson
John Lawson with Louie Tikas at Ludlow.
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Nicholas Morgan, who played and worked with Lawson, is now chief of police of Mt. Carmel. He, in common with all other old residents who knew Lawson, is also loud in his praise of his sterling qualities
I do not believe that he is guilty of the crime of murder or any other wrong, and I believe time will demonstrate this fact.
Ask most any old-time mine superintendent, newspaper editor, lawyer, doctor or merchant on the street corner, in their home, or at their place of business about Lawson, who knew him and they will all pay the same splendid tribute to his name. And they are his friends ready and willing to go the full limit for him. They are keenly alive to the seriousness of his present position in his battle for simple justice. This was evidenced last week on the occasion of the visit of John P. White, president of the United Mine Workers, to Mount Carmel, when ten thousand cheered for fully ten minutes in response to a resolution introduced in Lawson's behalf, by White, appealing to President Wilson and Governor Carlson, of Colorado, to intervene and in some manner set aside the verdict or see to it that a trial was granted that would be conducted fair and impartially such as the law of the state contemplates.
Many Petitions from Mt. Carmel
For several weeks past many residents have voluntarily engaged in the work of circulating petitions in Mount Carmel and vicinity appealing to various nation and state officials to reverse the gang verdict. Practically every citizen for miles around has already signed these petitions. But the work will not stop with the mere completion of these petitions. Nay, nay, Mount Carmel folks plan to continue the campaign until Lawson's release from the clutches of the grasping forces who seek to destroy him is in every manner assured. The Rev. B. W. Spooner, pastor of the church where Lawson worshipped, gave expression to the support that could be expected from Mount Carmel when he said:
I stand ready and willing to go anywhere at any time and do every honorable thing that I can that will be of benefit to Lawson and his friends in securing his release. Why I will even gladly go and visit the President to plead his cause if necessary.
In a little cottage home located in the extreme west end of Mount Carmel, which represents the savings of a life time, lays, bed-stricken, Thomas Ramage, uncle of Lawson, aged 68, a victim of miners' asthma, the dreaded disease that has sapped the lives of so many men engaged in the anthracite coal industry. For months this poor old man has been unable to lift his head of his own strength from his pillow. Yet hardly an hour in the day passes that he does not inquire if there is anything new developed in the case. On a table near his head, piled two feet high, are papers and magazines from everywhere containing stories dealing with the Lawson case. Daily his good wife and son, Thomas, Jr., who is now the only support of the family, and who too has spent all his life in the coal mines, read to him the various articles.
Recounting the early life of Lawson visibly affects the elder Ramage, for Lawson in his teens was his ideal and for him he had always pictured a future filled with great achievements, Every night in the little Ramage home, mother and son gather around the bedside of stricken father and unite in prayer, that in the end Justice will triumph.
"I have only a short time to live," said Ramage, as tears overflowed his deep, sunken eyes, "but it is my prayer that before I bid my loved ones and friends good-bye that poor John will have gained his freedom."
Such is the interest being manifested in the Lawson case by Mount Carmel friends and relatives, the town of his boyhood.
[Photograph added.]
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The Labor Journal
(Everett, Washington)
-Sept 3, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Breaker Boys at Work from
Bitter Cry of Children by John Spargo
https://books.google.com/...
Breaker Boys
http://daysgoneby.me/...
John R Lawson with Louie Tikas during the strike.
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/...
Cover, Bitter Cry of the Children
by John Spargo, 1906 ed
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
The Bitter Cry of the Children
-by John Spargo
Macmillan, 1906
https://books.google.com/...
https://archive.org/...
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Babies in the Mill-Dorsey Dixon
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.
-Dorsey Dixon
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