You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Tuesday August 4, 1903
New York City - New York - Mother Jones Receives an Answer from the President
Oyster Bay, N.Y.,
August 1, 1903
Mother Jones,
Ashland House,
New York, N.Y.
Dear Madam-
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 30th ult., and state that it has been brought to the President's attention.
The President, as was shown by his action while Governor of New York, has the heartiest sympathy with every effort to prevent child labor in factories, and on this matter no argument need be addressed to him, as his position has been announced again and again.
Under the constitution it is not at present seen how Congress has power to act in such a matter. It would seem that the States alone at present have the power to deal with the subject.
Very truly yours,
B.F. Barnes
Acting Secretary to the President
This letter was published in the Philadelphia
North American today. John Lopez, the paper's correspondent who has accompanied the Children's Crusade every step of the way, wrote about Mother's reaction to the President's response:
The allusion to the President's sympathy as shown by his action while Governor of New York refers to an anti-child labor law which was passed under his administration. But that does not by any means satisfy the "Mother."
She declares that labor has received as severe a blow in the face as though no letter had been received. "The President did not grant the interview, and that was what we asked for," she said.
"The letter drops us down, as they think, in a a manner which disarms us. But I serve notice that the matter is not dropped here. If President Roosevelt was in such hearty sympathy with the child slaves while he was Governor of New York, what has worked such a change that he will refuse to see three boys who represent thousands of other children who are wearing out their lives in the mills."
SOURCES
Mother Jones Speaks
-ed by Philip S Foner
NY, 1983
Foner's source:
Philadelphia North American
-of Aug 4, 1903
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
Steel' source:
Newark Daily Advertiser
-of Aug 5, 1903
Monday August 4, 1913
From The International Socialist Review: Comrade Thompson Replies to Debs
This is Part III of the response to Debs by Comrade W. H. Thompson, editor of Socialist and Labor Star of Huntington, West Virginia. See Hellraisers of August 1 for the article by Comrade Debs defending the National Committee's report on the West Virginia miners' strike. The West Virginia Socialist continue to condemn the report as a "whitewash" of Governor Hatfield.
Part III-Comparing the Report with the facts on the ground in West Virginia
Then Debs dramatically points to Mother Jones and John Brown as evidence that the Mine Workers' officials are straightforward and honest, or these two class-conscious comrades would not work for them. And I come right back with the assertion that both Mother Jones and Brown have worked, not for these officials whom he so vigorously defends, but for the rank and file of the workers.
Comrade Debs drags in this trouble between the miners and their officials in an attempt to cloud the real issue. The charges are that the West Virginia committee's report was unworthy of our party. And I ask him if either Mother Jones or Brown have endorsed that report? I will go further and state that they have denounced it — and will ask Comrade Debs if he classes them as "Chicago I. W. W.-ites"?
Comrade Debs concludes his article with, "So far as I am concerned the report stands. I have no apology for a word of it"; yet I have before me a communication from Comrade Debs, dated June 30, in which he says:
"When I said in my last letter to The Socialist and Labor Star that I would not change a word in our committee's report, I should have made the exception to the reference to the administration under which Mother Jones, Boswell, Brown and other comrades were tried by military court-martial." Evidently he is beginning to study that famous document and compare it with the facts in the case. I wish to ask the committee, and especially Comrade Debs, by just what line of reasoning they arrived at the conclusion to donate three-fifths of their report to exonerating Hatfield of charges which had never been made against him, and in passing so lightly over the fact that when they arrived here they found that he was illegally holding in prison sixty of their comrades, and had arbitrarily suppressed two of our papers?
W. H. Thompson,
Editor Socialist and Labor Star.
Huntington, W. Va., July 2, 1913.
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review
-of August 1913
http://archive.org/...
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Comrade Fred Merrick on the Betrayal of the West Virginia "Red Necks"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Sunday August 4, 2013
From In These Times: "A Bill of Rights for the Homeless"
This article by Amien Essif gives us some hope that people without homes could possibly be treated with some respect in some states:
After several years of unsuccessful attempts by advocacy organizations to define civil rights for the homeless at the federal level, Rhode Island became the first state to pass a Homeless Bill of Rights in June 2012, an amendment to its constitution that protects its residents against discrimination based on housing status. Now in Rhode Island, “no person’s rights, privileges, or access to public services may be denied or abridged solely because he or she is homeless.” And the law specifies where and when the homeless must be treated as any other Rhode Islander: in public parks, on public transportation, when seeking emergency medical care, when seeking employment, when registering to vote and when maintaining private records. What’s more, the personal property of the homeless must be treated “as personal property in a permanent residence.”
Read full article here:
http://inthesetimes.com/...
Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad-Elizabeth Cotten