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worked on all fours in the mines, and seldom left them except to give birth to a child of whose paternity they themselves were in doubt, and to be returned to the clay from whence they came.
In the early part of this century, when the organized workers made the first attempt to secure relief or a remedy for this brutal condition of affairs, the same cry went up from the faddists, theorists and effeminate men. Then, as now, even some of the dignitaries of the church held up their hands in holy horror, and denounced the attempt of the labor organizations to secure parliamentary relief, and declared that it was an attempt against the Divine Will to prevent these women from earning their bread. The conscience of England’s law makers was aroused and quickened by the mighty protest of the toiling masses of that country, and the barbarous practice was abolished.
In our own country, the attempt made years ago to save the women and children from the mines and mills and factories and workshops was met with the same hue and cry; and now we face the same protest, and from the same source, when we are attempting to save the children of the Southern states from the brutal greed and avarice of dividend maniacs, not only who are residing in the South, but particularly Northern and Eastern holders of securities in the Southern mills. The same crass ignorance and vile avarice prompted the Alabama legislature six years ago to repeal the law limiting the labor of children under twelve years of age to sixty hours a week.
The strike of the textile workers of Danville in 1901 for the maintenance of the 10-hour-a-day law of Virginia was resisted by all the powers that could be brought against the men and women there, when, in the language of that departed statesman, “all the resources of civilization” were brought into play, the finer art of slow and cruel starvation was used as the means of defeating those who stood for right and justice and for humanity.
In this world of ours those who do not make themselves heard have no grievance to redress. Those who are not willing to bear burdens and even temporary sacrifices in striking for their rights may be given a passing word of sympathy; books and essays may be written upon social inequalities, and the awful condition of the slums; but they are usually
