Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/132

Rh And mill owners declared dividends ranging from 50 per cent to 90.

"Child labor is docile," they say. "It does not strike. There are no labor troubles." Mill owners point to the lace curtains in the windows of the children's homes. To the luxuries they enjoy. "So much better than they had when as poor whites they worked on the farms!"

Cheap lace curtains are to offset the labor of children! Behind those luxuries we cannot see the little souls deadened by early labor; we cannot see the lusterless eyes in the dark circle looking out upon us. The tawdry lace curtains hang between us and the future of the child, who grows up in ignorance, body and mind and soul dwarfed, diseased.

I declare that their little lives are woven into the cotton goods they weave; that in the thread with which we sew our babies' clothes, the pure white confirmation dresses of our girls, our wedding gowns and dancing frocks, in that thread are twisted the tears and heart-ache of little children.

From the south, burdened with the terrible things I had seen, I came to New York and held several meetings to make known conditions as I had found them. I met the opposition of the press and of capital. For a long time after my southern experience, I could scarcely eat. Not alone my clothes, but my food, too, at times