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Kids' Corner: Unions and Kids Help Each Other Fight Injustice
Kids have always played a big part in changing the world for the better, and that's certainly been true in the labor movement.
This month, we want to tell you three stories about child laborers in the 1800s and 1900s who bravely stood up for their rights against greedy bosses who paid them little and demanded long, hard hours on the job.
The children featured and their quotes come from the book, "We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History." It tells the stories of more than 70 children who played important roles in our country's development.
Girls 'Turn Out'
At the Lowell, Mass., textile mill in 1830s, hundreds of girls as young as 10 stood for hours on end every day spinning fabric at dangerous, noisy machines. They worked from 5 in the morning until 7 at night with a 15-minute breakfast break and a half hour for lunch. They lived together in nearby boardinghouses.
To recruit girls, the company paid part of their rent. But in 1836, the company - believing it could easily bully its young workers - announced it was lowering both their wages and their housing allowance.
The workers were angry and began to talk about fighting back by "turning out," what they called a strike. Eleven-year-old Harriet Hanson took it to heart and, on the appointed day and time, waited eagerly for the girls in her spinning room to join workers on the upper floors who had poured out of the building, chanting and singing, "I will not be a slave."
But the workers with Harriet didn't budge. She was disgusted. "The girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, 'Would you?' or 'Shall we turn out?'" Harriet later wrote. So Harriet stood, alone, and walked out. Her courage led the others to follow.
"As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud than I have ever been since at any success I may have achieved," said Harriet, who never stopped fighting for justice.
Newsboy Strike: Read All About it!
At the turn of the century, two of America's richest and most powerful men were New York City newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They were also two of the greediest men, at least when it came to the children they counted on to sell their papers in the streets.
The newsboys - and some girls -were as young as 7 years old. They hawked papers for a penny each, hollering the headlines from busy street corners and subway stops. They kept 5 cents for every 10 they sold, pennies that helped support their poor families.
In the summer of 1899, sales were slow. So Hearst and Pulitzer decided to pass on the loss to their lowest-paid workers. They announced that papers would now cost the newsboys 60 cents per hundred, or 6 cents for 10.
The millionaire publishers thought there was nothing the newsboys could do about it. But almost immediately, hundreds of them banded together, formed a union and announced that they wouldn't sell the papers until the price went back up. The boys demonstrated at sites where delivery wagons dropped off bundles of papers. Many citizens, taking the boys' side, refused to buy papers from the men hired to replace them.
Their strike lasted two weeks and spread to other cities in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Hearst and Pulitzer began to lose money. "The people seem to be against us," one worried assistant said in a message to Pulitzer.
One night, about 5,000 newsboys showed up for a
rally in lower Manhattan. They cheered when their teenage leader, Kid Blink, approached the speakers platform. He raised his hands to silence the crowd, scratched his head and said, "I'm trying to figure out how 10 cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, and I can't see it."
When sales dropped by two-thirds, Hearst and Pulitzer gave in. They didn't lower the price of the papers, but they allowed newsboys to return unsold papers and get their money back - an even better deal.
Farm Workers Fight Back
Jessica Govea was still a teenager when she was one of the first people hired to work full time for Cesar Chavez's National Farm Workers Association. At 16, she already had years of union organizing experience and had spent nearly her entire life working in the hot, dry fields of Bakersfield, Calif.
She was just 4 years old when she spent her first summer in the fields, picking cotton with her mother. Later she picked prunes and grapes. The heat was almost unbearable and pesticides made her skin itch and burn.
In the 1960s, Chavez started a community service organization to help the migrant Mexican-American workers with food, housing and medical care. Jessica's father and Chavez began working together, urging workers to organize and to register to vote. At age 9, Jessica became her father's assistant, helping him produce flyers announcing meetings and sometimes speaking to big crowds. Soon she was president of a junior farm workers association.
The pay, hours and working conditions for migrant laborers were awful. They desperately wanted change, but were fearful because growers wouldn't hire them if they suspected they were union organizers.
But Chavez, Jessica and others fought on, ultimately leading grape pickers to strike. Once on Chavez's staff, Jessica started each morning at a field, urging workers to join her picket line. By 1970 almost all California grape growers had signed contracts with the farm workers' union, giving them higher wages, health benefits, a credit union and other services.
This month, we want to tell you three stories about child laborers in the 1800s and 1900s who bravely stood up for their rights against greedy bosses who paid them little and demanded long, hard hours on the job.
The children featured and their quotes come from the book, "We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History." It tells the stories of more than 70 children who played important roles in our country's development.
Girls 'Turn Out'
At the Lowell, Mass., textile mill in 1830s, hundreds of girls as young as 10 stood for hours on end every day spinning fabric at dangerous, noisy machines. They worked from 5 in the morning until 7 at night with a 15-minute breakfast break and a half hour for lunch. They lived together in nearby boardinghouses.
To recruit girls, the company paid part of their rent. But in 1836, the company - believing it could easily bully its young workers - announced it was lowering both their wages and their housing allowance.
The workers were angry and began to talk about fighting back by "turning out," what they called a strike. Eleven-year-old Harriet Hanson took it to heart and, on the appointed day and time, waited eagerly for the girls in her spinning room to join workers on the upper floors who had poured out of the building, chanting and singing, "I will not be a slave."
But the workers with Harriet didn't budge. She was disgusted. "The girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, 'Would you?' or 'Shall we turn out?'" Harriet later wrote. So Harriet stood, alone, and walked out. Her courage led the others to follow.
"As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud than I have ever been since at any success I may have achieved," said Harriet, who never stopped fighting for justice.
Newsboy Strike: Read All About it!
At the turn of the century, two of America's richest and most powerful men were New York City newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They were also two of the greediest men, at least when it came to the children they counted on to sell their papers in the streets.
The newsboys - and some girls -were as young as 7 years old. They hawked papers for a penny each, hollering the headlines from busy street corners and subway stops. They kept 5 cents for every 10 they sold, pennies that helped support their poor families.
In the summer of 1899, sales were slow. So Hearst and Pulitzer decided to pass on the loss to their lowest-paid workers. They announced that papers would now cost the newsboys 60 cents per hundred, or 6 cents for 10.
The millionaire publishers thought there was nothing the newsboys could do about it. But almost immediately, hundreds of them banded together, formed a union and announced that they wouldn't sell the papers until the price went back up. The boys demonstrated at sites where delivery wagons dropped off bundles of papers. Many citizens, taking the boys' side, refused to buy papers from the men hired to replace them.
Their strike lasted two weeks and spread to other cities in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Hearst and Pulitzer began to lose money. "The people seem to be against us," one worried assistant said in a message to Pulitzer.
One night, about 5,000 newsboys showed up for a
rally in lower Manhattan. They cheered when their teenage leader, Kid Blink, approached the speakers platform. He raised his hands to silence the crowd, scratched his head and said, "I'm trying to figure out how 10 cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, and I can't see it."
When sales dropped by two-thirds, Hearst and Pulitzer gave in. They didn't lower the price of the papers, but they allowed newsboys to return unsold papers and get their money back - an even better deal.
Farm Workers Fight Back
Jessica Govea was still a teenager when she was one of the first people hired to work full time for Cesar Chavez's National Farm Workers Association. At 16, she already had years of union organizing experience and had spent nearly her entire life working in the hot, dry fields of Bakersfield, Calif.
She was just 4 years old when she spent her first summer in the fields, picking cotton with her mother. Later she picked prunes and grapes. The heat was almost unbearable and pesticides made her skin itch and burn.
In the 1960s, Chavez started a community service organization to help the migrant Mexican-American workers with food, housing and medical care. Jessica's father and Chavez began working together, urging workers to organize and to register to vote. At age 9, Jessica became her father's assistant, helping him produce flyers announcing meetings and sometimes speaking to big crowds. Soon she was president of a junior farm workers association.
The pay, hours and working conditions for migrant laborers were awful. They desperately wanted change, but were fearful because growers wouldn't hire them if they suspected they were union organizers.
But Chavez, Jessica and others fought on, ultimately leading grape pickers to strike. Once on Chavez's staff, Jessica started each morning at a field, urging workers to join her picket line. By 1970 almost all California grape growers had signed contracts with the farm workers' union, giving them higher wages, health benefits, a credit union and other services.