SOURCE: Atkinson, Linda. “The Children.” In Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, pp. 114-33. New York: Crown Publishers, 1978.

[In the following excerpt, Atkinson discusses the work of American labor activist Mary (“Mother”) Jones on behalf of working children.]

Children at work, either beside their parents or at tasks which they could handle alone, was not a new thing in the nineteenth century. Children had always worked on the farm and in the home. But children at work in mines and factories from sunrise to sunset, children who were stoop-shouldered and ill by the time they were ten, and who were commonly crippled on the “job”—that was new, as new as the factory system itself. And in America in the last part of the nineteenth century that was the way over a million children spent their childhood.

These children did not play. They did not go to school. For almost all their waking hours, they worked, shut off from the outside world and cut off from one another. They saw the sky only at dawn as they walked to work, and at dusk as they walked home. These were the children Mary [Jones, known as “Mother Jones”] described as “little grey ghosts.” If you could see them at work, Mary said, you would see “the most heart-breaking spectacle in all of life.”

Mary had seen children at work in the textile factories of the South in the early 1890s. Later, in Pennsylvania, she saw children at work in the coal mines. Some worked as general runners and helpers in the mines. But most were “breaker boys,” who had to sift pieces of slate out of the coal as it came pouring down long, steep chutes. Seated on ladders beside the chutes, bent over all day long, their backs were round, their chests narrow. Cut, broken, and crushed fingers were common. If their attention wandered, they were struck across the knuckles by the long stick of the “breaker boss.” “The fingers of the little boys bled,” Mary said, “onto the coal.”

Mary knew how terribly the children of the poor suffered. And the young children who were themselves sent into the mines and mills to work haunted her most of all. In 1903, she thought she saw a chance to do something about it. In that year, in early June, a strike was called by the textile workers in the Kensington mills near Philadelphia. Mary went to help. Sixteen thousand children were counted among the 100,000 strikers. They came into union headquarters in Kensington every day, some with their hands off, some with their thumbs missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. Most of them were nine and ten years old.

Mary knew that a law already existed in Pennsylvania prohibiting anyone under the age of thirteen from working in the mills. But no attempt had ever been made to enforce it. Mill owners were happy to hire any child who was big enough to do a job. Children were easy to control, and they were cheap. Parents whose earnings were so low that an extra two or three dollars a week was a matter of importance sadly sent their children out to work.

The Textile Workers Union had been trying for years to get the Pennsylvania legislature to put some muscle into the law and to get another law passed which would shorten the work day for women and children of the legal age. In the union's formal phrase, a shorter day would “prevent their physical and mental deterioration.” But the legislature had taken no action.

A few days after Mary arrived at Kensington, she spoke to some newspaper reporters about the children. Why weren't they publicizing the situation, she wanted to know. They couldn't, one reporter responded. The mill owners were partial owners of the newspapers and had “strongly discouraged” them from writing such stories. Besides, he said, everyone knew about child labor. It wasn't really “news.”

The following night, at a meeting in union headquarters, Mary announced that she wanted to lead a parade of parents and mill children from Philadelphia's Independence Square to the courthouse lawn, a distance of less than a mile. There they would demonstrate against the mill owners, against child labor, against the do-nothing legislature. They would give the newspapers a story they would have to print.

Early on the morning of June 21, over 300 children and their parents, with Mary in the lead, marched to the courthouse lawn. Mary brought forward those who had been injured or maimed on the job.

“I held up their mutilated hands,” she wrote, “some with fingers off, some whose bones had been crushed—and made the statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children, that their little lives went out to make wealth for others. I called out to the millionaires to cease their moral murders.”

The windows in the huge city hall overlooking the lawn were open. From time to time, Mary could see officials looking out at the crowd. She held the children up for the officials to see. “They were light to lift,” she said. But the officials quickly closed their windows, “just as they had closed their hearts.” Still, Mary noted with satisfaction the reporters at the fringes of the crowd, hastily counting heads, wandering through the hordes of children, jotting down notes.

She had been right. She had created a newsworthy event. Papers as far away as New York covered the story in the next day's edition. Some even went beyond describing the demonstration itself to reflect—for a sentence or two—on the problem of child labor. But the day after that, the story was “old news,” and so was the issue of child labor.

Mary wanted publicity that would move the government to action. If enough people were concerned, she thought the government would have to do something. The Liberty Bell, usually kept on permanent display in Philadelphia, had just been taken on a tour of the country so that people everywhere could see it. The tour had been a great success, and that gave Mary an idea. She would make a tour of her own: a tour of the mill children. They would march from Kensington to the Long Island summer mansion of the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.

Early in the morning of July 5, at a huge meeting hall in Philadelphia, Mary spoke to the strikers. She told them about the march she wished to conduct, and asked the parents to let their children join it. She would take them to New York in easy stages, she said, averaging ten miles a day and walking only in the cool part of the day. They would bring tents with them, but the children would sleep in farmhouses whenever possible. The marchers would have the use of four wagons, three for provisions and one in which the children could ride if they chose to.

When they came to towns or cities, they would stop and hold demonstrations. Mary would explain who they were, what the strike was about, and where the children were going. Those who could, would play musical instruments. The rest would sing and dance “the usual dances”—the reel, the clog, and the jig. Afterwards, the children would present “little dramas” showing the luxurious and wasteful lives of the rich. Mary planned to take along a sack of fabrics, costume jewelry, and makeup for the children to use in their “theater.” And of course, they would “pass the hat” to raise money for the strike fund.

The men and women in the audience voted their approval of Mary's plan by a show of hands. A committee of union men volunteered to help with the preparations and with the march itself.

On the afternoon of July 7, the group set out, about 300 strong, almost 200 of them children between eight and eleven years of age. Most of the people did not plan to make the whole trip, but they wanted to participate in at least the start of the twenty-two-day journey.

Danny James, eight years old, led the parade out of Kensington. He carried a placard which said, “We Are Textile Workers.” Behind him marched one little boy playing a drum, another, a fife, and the rest of the children, who carried flags and posters. “We want more schools and less hospitals,” read one sign. “We want time to play,” said another. To the tune of “Marching Through Georgia” the group set out for the Bristol Turnpike. Charles Sweeney, a member of the TWU committee, added a touch of style as he marched alongside the children twirling his red, white, and blue baton.

The hot July sun baked the marchers as they walked along. The older people held up umbrellas to shield themselves from it, and the children took off their coats and hats and loosened their collars. By the time they reached the turnpike, the heat was blistering. Mary sent most of the girls ahead by trolley, and she rode on the wagon with some of the younger boys.

At six o'clock that night they all met, as planned, at Torresdale Park, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, about halfway between Kensington and Bristol. The grounds looked like the site of a “gigantic picnic,” as everyone rested, looking forward to the evening meal. The committee gave each marcher a tin cup, a dinner plate, and a spoon. The adults set out huge platters of bread and cheese which they had brought with them; bowls of fruit and vegetables were donated by local farmers.

One thousand people came to the park grounds later that night to meet the marchers and to hear Mary speak. A total of $76.40 was collected for the strike fund. Everything went well, and spirits were high—though there were a few unscheduled happenings. A man and a boy were expelled from the group for jumping a fence and chasing some chickens. Three eleven-year-old boys confessed that they had not actually received permission to join the march and were sent home.

The next morning, after a breakfast of sandwiches, coffee, and ice cream, the group assembled. Sweeney and Mary thought that the heat was more than some of the children could stand. Those children, along with other children and adults who had planned to come only this far, returned to Philadelphia. At eleven o'clock, the remaining marchers, now numbering fewer than 100, set off down the road. The farmers who had contributed food the day before saw them off.

By the middle of the afternoon they had arrived in Bristol. But the police kept them from entering the city until Mary persuaded them that the group was orderly and did not intend to cause a disturbance. After resting near a brook that ran outside the west end of town, the group entered the city proper. Band playing and banners waving, they marched through the streets giving out flyers which announced “A Speech to Be Given by Mother Jones, Entitled: The Abolition of Child Labor and the Causes of the Textile Workers Strike in Philadelphia.”

Two thousand people gathered that night to hear Mary speak. They cheered her warmly, and when a collection was taken up, they contributed generously. Mrs. Jennie Silbert of the Silbert Hotel invited Mary and the women and children to spend the night with her.

The next morning, some more adult members of the group departed for Kensington—one complaining about Mary's leadership and the others having lost interest in the march altogether. But the rest, refreshed and in good spirits, set out for Morrisville on the banks of the Delaware River. Just outside of town, a few of the boys “broke ranks” to bathe and swim in the fresh blue water. Soon dusty clothing and dust-covered banners hung from the branches of trees up and down the riverbank as the march came to an unscheduled but delightful stop. “I think,” Mary reported to union headquarters, “that never again will the children have a holiday to equal this. … They are very happy.”

The next day, the group pushed on for Trenton. But when they got to the Delaware River Bridge that led into the city, they were told that they would have to pay a toll of two cents per person. Mary lined the marchers up by twos, so they would be easier to count. They numbered fifty-two now, and Mary carefully paid out $1.04. Then she told the astonished bridge-keeper that she thought it was outrageous to charge people for crossing a bridge! (She also told him that she didn't blame him personally. She understood that he had his job to do, just like everyone else. But it was a shame that he had to be “an instrument of injustice.”)

From Trenton, where they were forbidden to play instruments as they marched along, the group moved on to Princeton. They were still on the road when a fierce rainstorm began. Chilled and miserable, they huddled in and under the wagons and among the trees. Fortunately, the storm passed as quickly as it had come, and in the high hot sun of the afternoon, the group's spirits revived.

Princeton University was nearby, and early the next morning, Mary received an invitation to speak to an economics class. She accepted the invitation and took with her James Ashworth, a ten-year-old boy.

“Here's a textbook in economics,” she said, pointing to the child. “He is stooped over because his spine is curved from carrying, day after day, bundles of yarn that weigh seventy-five pounds. He gets three dollars a week and his sister, who is fourteen, gets six dollars. They work in a carpet factory ten hours a day while the children of the rich”—she paused to look at the audience—“while the children of the rich are getting their higher education.”

By this time a number of children looked run-down and exhausted. She sent them home, accompanied by two of the women. The rest moved on to the Raritan River, across from New Brunswick, and set up camp on a hillside. On the second night, there was another heavy rainstorm—and some complaints from the adults. A New York Times reporter found them there. “They looked tired and disgusted with the whole thing,” he wrote. A half dozen men left the group, one of them complaining to the reporter, “It's all right for Mother Jones. She sleeps in a hotel. I would rather work sixty hours a day than endure this torture.”

Mary did not comment on the man's complaint. They all slept indoors when they could. It was true that shelter was offered Mary and the children more often than it was offered the men. But given her age and the rigors of the march, the complaint was petty and she could not take it seriously.

In Rahway the next evening, the group received permission to hold a meeting. A member of the TWU committee stood on a chair in the middle of the street which had been roped off for them and introduced Mary to a crowd of over 1,000 people.

She climbed onto the chair (“without any help,” a local newspaper thought it worth mentioning). “Friends and enemies,” she began, “for it is clear that the children have both.” To warm applause and cries of “Hear! Hear!” Mary accused the nation's industrialists of “crucifying little children,” employing them because they were cheap labor, and growing rich at their expense. She ended her speech by pledging to continue the march until the group reached the President's door. If something could be done for the children, she said, “it would be a blessing not only for them but for the whole nation.”

The next day, in Elizabeth, a friendly press welcomed the marchers and described Mary as “the greatest female agitator in the country … an intelligent woman, a great thinker and a forceful speaker.” That night a cheerful crowd greeted the children warmly and applauded Mary for several minutes when she got up to speak. (Midway through the speech, the “forceful speaker” interrupted herself to snap at a man in the front row who was puffing away on a cigar, sending clouds of smoke into her face. “Take that scab cigar out of your mug!” Mary demanded. He did.)

The next morning, two businessmen welcomed Mary and invited her to take an automobile ride. It was her first. She was delighted with the “contraption,” and the three toured the city in friendly high spirits. That afternoon, Mary wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, urging him to make a personal commitment to America's children. “We ask you, Mr. President,” she wrote, “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.”

Soon reports appeared in the newspapers describing the President's response to Mary's letter. According to his private secretary, William Barnes, the President “would probably be willing to meet Mother Jones if she made a request in the usual formal way,” but he objected to “having his castle stormed.” Barnes added that the President had ordered extra police to the mansion to prevent that from happening.

Mary was skeptical. She doubted whether Barnes's comments really reflected the President's thoughts. When reporters asked her if the group would continue to Oyster Bay, she replied that they would. What was more, she thought the President would see them—“if he is the President of all the people and not just of the industrialists.”

Meanwhile the group pushed on to Hoboken and then Passaic, just across the river from New York. There Mary received some news that deeply upset her. The President's Secret Service had been keeping the march under surveillance. Union officials as well as reporters confirmed the story, and Mary had to accept its truth. Nevertheless, she excused the President for any part he might have played. She told reporters that she believed he had not been shown her letter at all, but had just been told that “an old agitator named Mother Jones wanted to come and make a scene and plague him.” She wished the President to see the children, she said, because if he met them, and compared them with his own children who were spending the summer at play on the seashore, perhaps he would be moved to help them.

On July 22, the group held its last campfire on the Jersey City Heights. Mary had gone into New York early in the morning to apply for a parade permit. Turned away by the New York City police commissioner, she went over his head to the mayor, Seth Low. After much wrangling, during which Mary pointed out in heated tones that New York had given an honored welcome to Prince Henry of Germany, “a piece of rotten royalty,” the mayor granted the permit. The next morning, July 23, the marchers crossed the Hudson River into Manhattan on the Christopher Street Ferry. From there they walked to the headquarters of the Social Democratic party, at 64 East 4th Street, a six-story building in the heart of the tenement district. The Social Democratic party had given the marchers the use of their rooms for as long as they would be in the city.

In the evening, the group began its march to East 27th Street, one block from Madison Square, where they would hold a meeting.

Playing drums and fifes and carrying torches, the group, now about sixty strong, proceeded up Fourth Avenue. Hundreds of policemen lined the route, and thousands of New Yorkers cheered as the youngsters passed by. Mary walked at the head of the group, smiling and waving at the people, while the other adults brought up the rear. Almost 30,000 people had gathered at the intersection of Madison and 27th Street, where the group stopped. Mary and three of the children climbed aboard a wagon draped in red. The leader of the Social Democratic party addressed the people first. Then he introduced Mary, who came forward with the children. She introduced the audience to Gussie Rangnew and Joseph Ashford, children “from whom all the childhood has gone.” She introduced Eddie Dunphy, “a little fellow of twelve whose job is to sit all day on a high stool handing in the right thread to other workers, eleven hours a day, all day long, winter and summer, spring and fall, for three dollars a week.” The children sat down and Mary spoke softly to the huge crowd. “We are marching quietly to the President's home,” she said. “I believe he can do something for these children, though the press declares he cannot.”

The marchers' headquarters on East 4th Street attracted curious onlookers from all over the city. “East Side girls” came, Mary said, “with their short skirts, titled hats and iron-clad assurance.” Youngsters came, too, eager to see the children who were “being tooken to see Ruzevelt.” Mary herself was visited by some men who claimed to belong to the President's Secret Service. They told her not to go to Oyster Bay. She was skeptical of their credentials and told them so. In any case, she said, even if they did represent the U.S. government, she represented the Philadelphia textile workers. They had every right to see the President and she intended for them to do so.

That evening the group marched again to their meeting place on 27th Street and Madison Avenue. But this time the site was blocked by twelve police officers, headed by Inspector J. Walsh. As the group approached, Inspector Walsh stepped forward. He explained to Mary in friendly tones that he had been ordered to move the group to a site a few blocks farther east. Then he and a sergeant offered to walk arm in arm with Mary, as an escort of honor.

In her speech, Mary ad-libbed a bit more than usual to include a word about the New York police. She said that if things went well, and she got to see the President, she would tell him how hard the police had to work “to prevent the cries of a demoralized country.” And she would ask him to shorten their work day to eight hours. Then, returning to the main topic, she made two points at the same time. “If children weren't stultified by slavery and were sent to school instead,” she said, “you police officers wouldn't have so much work to do.”

The next day the group went to Coney Island as the guests of Mr. Frank Bostock, the owner of a wild animal show. The children swam in the ocean, played on the beach, and helped the animal keepers tend and feed the animals. One child told a reporter from The New York Times that he never wanted to go back to the mill. He wanted to stay and “live with the circus.”

That evening, a crowd gathered to hear Mary speak. “We want the President to hear the wail of the children who never have a chance to go to school but work from ten to twelve hours a day in the textile mills of Philadelphia, weaving the carpets you and he walk on. Fifty years ago,” she continued, “there was a cry against slavery and men gave up their lives to stop the selling of black children on the block. Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.”

When Mary finished speaking, she stepped back and took a seat beside the children while the hat was passed around. She was tired, and she knew the others were tired too. They had been on the road for almost four weeks, and though people everywhere had been kind and generous, the trip had taken its toll. Mary wanted them all to get a good night's rest, especially since the next day might find them at Oyster Bay. First, she said, they would stop at the Oriental Hotel in exclusive Manhattan Beach, a few miles away. New York's Senator Platt was staying there and had agreed to see them if they could come first thing in the morning. He might be persuaded to put in a good word about them to the President.

The group rose early and the children went swimming before starting out. It was a gay and noisy procession. Mary and the other men and women walked quietly enough, but the children crowded around an elephant which Bostock had given them for the trip. He had fitted the animal with a howdah and some of the children rode in it.

Perhaps the circus atmosphere frightened Senator Platt. Or perhaps he had already changed his mind and decided not to meet with the marchers. In any event, when the group arrived, Mary was told that the Senator had slipped out the back door “in a big rush.”

Though she was a bit amused at the thought of the dignified Senator fleeing, she was also very angry. She told the marchers and the reporters who had accompanied them from Coney Island to come inside. They all had breakfast, and on Mary's instructions, the waiters put the tab on the Senator's bill.

Afterwards, somewhat stymied, Mary led the group back to the beach where the children could play while she and the union committee decided what to do next. For the last leg of the journey, the trip to Oyster Bay itself, Mary said she wanted only three children to accompany her, and two union men and their wives. The President might refuse to see even so modest a delegation, but at least they would try. Those who would not be coming returned to Manhattan to wait while the others prepared to go to Oyster Bay.

The next day, the little group arrived at the President's mansion. They were stopped at the gate, where Secretary Barnes came out to speak to them.

The President would not see them. “He has nothing to do with child labor,” Barnes explained, and could not help them “in their struggle for better conditions.” He advised Mary to submit what she had to say “in writing.” With that he turned and walked away.

The group returned quietly to Manhattan.

By the end of the week, the others had made arrangements for the return trip to Philadelphia. Mary had decided to remain in New York for a while longer with the three children who had gone with her to Oyster Bay. She wrote to the President and did not want to leave until she received an answer. Perhaps the President would agree to see them after all.

In a few days, Mary got her answer. It was from Secretary Barnes. He said that the children had the President's sympathy, but that he had no power to do anything for them. The matter was in the hands of the individual states and of the Congress.

Mary was not surprised at the President's response, but she was deeply disappointed. His presence alone, the respect he commanded, could persuade people—citizens and lawmakers alike—to look more closely at the problem. Legislation would surely follow. But he had refused to consider the issue. He would not become involved. In that regard, the march had failed to accomplish what Mary had hoped it would.

In other ways, however, Mary knew that the march had done a great deal of good. No one who had seen the children would ever forget them. And the children themselves were aware, as they had not been before, that what was happening to them was not fair, not natural. It did not happen to all children. The seeds of reform had been planted. Someday soon they would surely begin to grow.