Great Throughts Treasury

"The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society."

"The first thing is to raise hell, says I. That?s always the first thing to do when you?re faced with an injustice and you feel power. That?s what I do in my fight for the working class."

"That is, the wife must care for what the husband cares for if he is to remain resolute."

"The strike of the miners in Arizona was one of the most remarkable strikes in the history of the American labor movement. Its peaceful character, its successful outcome, were due to that most remarkable character, Governor Hunt."

"The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators... Provision should be made in all union constitution."

"They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore."

"There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery."

"Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers."

"We are told that every American boy has the chance of being president. I tell you that these little boys in the iron cages would sell their chance any day for good square meals and a chance to play."

"What is a good enough principle for an American citizen ought to be good enough for the working man to follow."

"What one state could not get alone, what one miner against a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be achieved by the union."

"Women need to realize that with what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike."

"You must stand for free speech in the streets."

"Whatever your fight, don't be ladylike."

"Your organization is not a praying institution. It's a fighting institution. It's an educational institution along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!"

"You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand."