I will tell the president that the prosperity he boasts of
is the prosperity of the rich wrung from the poor and the helpless.
-Mother Jones
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Friday January 13, 1905
New York, New York - Robert Hunter, Author of "Poverty" Speaks of Dire Conditions
Lower East Side Tenement
Mr. Robert Hunter, speaking yesterday in New York, commented on the dire conditions of hunger and want existing among the poor and unemployed across the nation. According to President Roosevelt, "The Nation continues to enjoy note worthy prosperity," but, according to Mr. Hunter:
There are 10,000,000 persons in the United States...who are in want, and of these 4,000,000 are paupers, while the other 6,000,000 try to provide for themselves by the hardest kind of toil.
In Chicago, Rabbi Hirsch, commenting on the book, "Poverty," stated that:
Mr. Hunter's statement [regarding poverty in America] is not surprising to one who has studied the economic conditions of this country."
From Lincoln, Nebraska, The Commoner of January 13, 1905:
Rabbi Emil Hirsch
Eureka (Ills.) Democrat-Journal: While President Roosevelt opens his message with the words-"The Nation continues to enjoy note worthy prosperity," Dr. Hirsch, the eminent Rabbi of Chicago, commenting on the estimate in Robert Hunter's book, "Poverty," that ten million of the American people are in want, tells us that "Mr. Hunter's statement is not surprising to one who has studied the economic conditions of this country." Has President Roosevelt really studied "the economic conditions of this country?" or does he mean by "the nation" only the rich people who shape policies to suit themselves?
[photograph added]
From The Cincinnati Enquirer of January 13, 1905:
HUNGER,
----------
Want and Dire Poverty
----------
The Lot of Millions of People
in the United States.
---------
Robert Hunter, the New York
Student and Worker,
----------
Paints an Appalling Picture of the Conditions
Among the Lower Classes.
----------
SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.
Mr. Robert Hunter
New York, January 12.-Speaking as one who has made a thorough study of poverty in all its phases Robert Hunter, former head of the University Settlement and still interested in work among the poor, to-day declared that there are 70,000 children in New York who go to school hungry each day.
[Said Mr. Hunter:]
These figures seem appalling even to me...and I have made a ten-year's study of poverty and ought by now be used to the conditions. But I cannot steel myself to the truth. It is there in all its glaring sordidness and cannot be denied. In New York alone there are 666,000 people in distress.
No one would believe...that one out of every ten in this city is buried in potter's field.
One way to measure the distress of a city is by its number of evictions. In 1904 landlords evicted 50,483 families in the borough of Manhattan alone.
APPALLING FIGURES.
It was when Mr. Hunter touched upon the country as a whole that the enormity of his figures is realized.
There are 10,000,000 persons in the United States...who are in want, and of these 4,000,000 are paupers, while the other 6,000,000 try to provide for themselves by the hardest kind of toil.
Almost 2,000,000 wage earners in this country are out of employment from four to six months of the year. Of course the conditions of want in this city and elsewhere are increased by the arrival every year of 500,000 male immigrants, who seek work in the very district where employment is most scarce.
Here comes the pathetic figures. Imagine 1,700,000 little children forced to become wage earners when they should be in school. Yet these are Mr. Hunter's figures.
Of the women he said that 5,000,000 find it necessary to work, of whom 2,000,000 are employed in factories and mills.
When statistics are presented...the question may be asked, "what is there in our boasted civilization or where is that generous fraternity that pulpit orators prate about?"
INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM AT FAULT.
Charity...will not settle the problem. A few crumbs from the banquet board of wealth will not satiate the growing cry for justice.
Our whole industrial system must be completely revolutionized so that no slave shall ask a master for the privilege of earning the means of life. But the day will come when men shall have an equal opportunity to live.
Mr. Hunter, since his marriage to Miss Caroline Phelps Stokes, and heiress to millions, has taken up his abode on Grove street.
We have come down here to live...in order to keep our lives simple. There isn't half the interest in the life of fashionable New York as is found in the kindly and homely circles of humbler folk. We want to live the true American life and continue to work for reforms in the conditions of the poor.
I don't mean to content myself with expressing an idle sympathy for the wretched children and their idle parents. I have written to Governor Higgins, explaining the misery and its causes existing in the slums and have suggested certain measures for their relief.
[photograph added]
MOTHER JONES SPEAKS IN ILLINOIS
The arrival of Mother Jones was heralded:
From the Freeport Journal-Standard January 11, 1905:
TELLS OF MINERS' TROUBLES
----------
"Mother" Jones Addresses Audience
at Y. M. C. A. Auditorium.
"Mother" Jones, as she is well known throughout the length and breadth of the land, delivered a very impressive lecture on the Colorado labor troubles last evening in the Y. M. C. A. auditorium under the auspices of the Socialist club.
Mrs. Jones is a woman of charming appearance, possessing none of the mannerisms of the mining camp from which she comes. In truth she bears all the evidences of a cultured and refined woman, who has given her subject considerable study.
"Mother" Jones is a convincing speaker, and while her audience was not a large one, her remarks elicited frequent and hearty applause from her hearers.
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[photograph added]
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SOURCES
The Commoner
(Lincoln, Nebraska)
-Jan 13, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Cincinnati Enquirer
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
-Jan 13, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Freeport Journal-Standard
(Freeport, Illinois)
-Jan 11, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Poverty
-by Robert Hunter
NY, 1905
https://archive.org/...
"A Book on Poverty"
by Edwin Markham
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Jan 7, 1905
pdf!http://query.nytimes.com/...
IMAGES
Tenement, Lower East Side New York City about 1900
http://immigrants1900.weebly.com/...
Rabbi Emil Hirsch of Chicago
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/...
Robert Hunter
http://en.wikipedia.org/..._(author)
Mother Jones, The Miners' Angel
http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.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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