I asked a man in prison once how he happened to get there. I saw them last winter pass three railroad bills in one hour, but when labor cries for aid for the little ones they turn their backs and will not listen to her. The trouble is that the fellers in Washington don’t care. What about the little children from whom all song is gone? In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills, they have just passed a bill to protect song birds. We will ask him to recommend the passage of a bill by congress to protect children against the greed of the manufacturer. We want him to hear the wail of the children, who never have a chance to go to school, but work from ten to eleven hours a day in the textile mills of Philadelphia, weaving the carpets that he and you walk on, and the curtains and clothes of the people. Here are excerpts:Īfter a long and weary march, with more miles to travel, we are on our way to see President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. On July 7, 1903, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones began the March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, New York, to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work week.ĭuring this march, Jones delivered her famed “The Wail of the Children” speech. Mother Jones surrounded by striking child mill workers.
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