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The day book. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1911-1917, July 11, 1914, NOON EDITION, Image 2

Image and text provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

Persistent link: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-07-11/ed-1/seq-2/

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capitalized the labor of little children, that is terrorizing every labor crusher
of the South, that is making the extorted dollars tremble and is drawing to
the support of the striking employes every Christian in Atlanta is being
waged by the Men and Religion Forward Movement.
The mills have secured strikebreakers and the mills are making some
show of operating. The owners haughtily copy from Rockefeller in Col
orado the statemenrthat "there is nothing to arbitrate." They have evaded
They have dodged
the state officials.
all the usual weapons of labor. They
laugh at the lines of men and women
who are eating from the commissar
ies provided by sympathetic labor
bodies, but
They cannot dodge the bullets of
printer's ink which day after day are
unmasking their hypocrisy and are
turning'the labor war into a religious
crusade for HUMANITY.
The Men and Religion Forward
Movement excited suspicion on the
part of the workingmen when, a few
years ago, it swept the country
through the impetus of dollars given
largely by those who have fought
labor.
But in Atlanta it is directed by men
who believe that the Bible, was meant
for seven days a week, not one.
The strike, backed by the Amer
ican Federation of Labor, started
when the mountaineers, brought
down to slave in mills at $8 a week
for heads of families and pittances
for the children, first caught the
spirit of organization.
Most of them lived in company
houses so unsanitary that disease
was common. Pellagra flourished.
Their meager wages were reduced by
arbitrary fines. They were ejected
from these hovels by negro sheriffs
when the strike was called.
The Men and Religion Forward
Movement took -an interest in the
900 strikers. They asked the em
ployers to permit an investigation of
conditions by an impartial board.
The strikers agreed to arbitration by
any committee named by the
churches. The employers refused.
Then the religious committee
found that, while the side of the own
ers secured wide publicity in the
newspapers, that the side of the strik
ers was suppressed and that the
public never learned the real facts of
the struggle.
It is believed that publication of
the whole truth would force the mill
owners to lose their haughtiness and
would shame them'into treating their
employes as human beings and it
began its campaign of paid advertise
ments. Marion Jackson, one of the best
known attorneys of this city, "is in
charge of this publicity campaign
and each week his religious appeals
for support of the strikers reach,
those who do not hear the prayers
arid sermons for, with the pews in
open, sympathy with the workers, the
pulpit has lifted its voice in denuncia
tion of conditions which wreck the
bodies and souls of workers.
"We believe the Bible the Teligion
of Jesus Christ, actually practiced, to
be the solution of all labor problems,"
says Jackson. "In the majority of
the cotton mills of the South condi
tions are unsatisfactory from the
standpoint of humanity. We believe
it the duty of the church to tell the
whole truth and then apply to the
facts the principles for which the
church stands love of God and love
of man in Christ's name."
Against this new sort of battle,
criminal money is aghast It closes
its -eyes to the delegations of strik
ers. It is blind to the emaciated,
bodies of its child 'workers, to the'
hunger in the eyes of men, to the hor--ror
in the hearts of women, but It
cannot dodge the printed appeals of
Organized Religion which is proving,
by spending its money, that it be
lieves men are more important than
profits.
. ., i0iM.T..Lataki

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