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President Roosevelt believes Juvenile Court Judge DeLacy’s “admiral paper” has too much substance for a President’s message, and wishes DeLacy to instead write a formal letter which Commissioner of Labor Charles Patrick Neill and Attorney General William H. Moody will look over and send to Congress.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-10-04
President Roosevelt tells Representative Crumpacker that he is very interested in the bill on the investigation of the condition of woman and child labor and feels that the only bureau suited to conduct such an investigation is that of the Bureau of Labor. The Census Bureau is not the proper body to do the work because Roosevelt hopes to aim at more than the simple collection of statistics. He endorses Commissioner of Labor Charles Patrick Neill as the man to head the proposed investigation.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-12
President Roosevelt is having the Department of Commerce and Labor report to him on the proposed investigation into the child labor matter. He advises Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Guild on how to respond if questioned again on the issue of Lieutenant General Nelson Appleton Miles.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-02-06
Dr. Louis Edelman thanks Theodore Roosevelt for his recent article inThe Outlook entitled “Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood.” Edelman shares his own experience with children working in the local mill, one as young as six years old who worked twelve hours each night for twelve cents. Edelman states children are being eaten up by the industrial mills in the South, but society wants the mills so they are not going away.
Alma Whaley was a child laborer in Chattanooga, Tennessee who made a suicide pact with other children working twelve hour a day, six days a week, in a cotton mill. Dr. Louis Edelman appears to use her name to refer to all child laborers who are suffering.
Robert Erskine Ely and the Civic Forum consider the recent meeting highly successful, especially because of the impression of Theodore Roosevelt’s speech on limiting the labor of women and children.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-27
Alfred R. Conkling, who has heard about Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming lecture on “Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood,” wants to bring his attention to the State Factory Investigating Committee that is looking into better fire safety practices and preventions in New York factories.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-18
M. G. Tedford denotes his work as an Episcopal Clergyman to Theodore Roosevelt, and he discusses how Kindergarten-aged children go from school into work at the mills. To curb this, Tedford wants to move “the surplus of this population on the idle lands,” as a means of getting these people to work on farms instead.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-06-15
Mrs. N. Germain shares her travels around the Northwest with Theodore Roosevelt after leaving Massachusetts in 1907. She is now prepared to return East and give lectures. She asks Roosevelt for a reliable party to contact. Germain used to work in shops and wants to purchase land and work for the betterment of mill and shop girls. She asks Roosevelt for information about Arizona and New Mexico.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-04-07
Alexander Jeffrey McKelway prizes Theodore Roosevelt’s letter thanking him for his “uniform kindness” in response to his protest against appointing either Spencer B. Adams or Henry Skinner as a federal judge. As such, he encloses a recent editorial on Adams. He requests a meeting before Roosevelt leaves for his southern trip or prepares his address for the Child Labor Committee meeting. While Roosevelt is well-informed about Southern issues, McKelway believes he has insight regarding child labor.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-01-11
John C. Delaney provides facts regarding the Pennsylvania industries under his charge for Theodore Roosevelt’s reference. He discusses how Roosevelt has been an example in his efforts to improve the “sad conditions” of the state’s industries, especially the laws he helped pass. Delaney also shares how he was a coal breaker as a child and served in the army as a teenager.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1910-08-11
Senator Lodge writes to President Roosevelt about a serious situation developing in Massachusetts politics. At a recent state convention of the American Federation of Labor, the group denounced Lt. Governor Draper and nine of the eleven Republican Congressmen. Lodge believes that “Gus”, his son-in-law Augustus Peabody Gardner, “is a good fighter, but with this labor attack and the character of his opponent he has before him a very severe contest.” His opponent was a man named Schofield, a “Native-american demagogue with a great deal of local popularity.” Lodge spoke yesterday at the state convention in Rhode Island where a “Hearst man” is giving Republicans a tough fight as well.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-10-12
Bessie McGinnis Van Vorst asks President Roosevelt to write a preface for her new book on child labor. Roosevelt’s voice will add authority to it.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-06-14
President Roosevelt is now an honorary member of the National Child Labor Committee.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-11
This draft program of the Seventh Annual Conference on Child Labor held by the National Child Labor Committee outlines the various speakers who will be presenting and the various topics to be addressed.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-02-24
The Detroit News reports that Margaret Sanger spoke on birth control education, arguing for the benefit it would hold for the working class. Sanger discussed the idea of race suicide and how former President Roosevelt claimed that his presidency would end the problem in the United States by encouraging large families. She stated, “Nobody called Roosevelt immoral for advocating larger families. I wonder if you will call me immoral for advocating small families.”
The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
1916-05-03
The August 1913 edition of The Progressive Bulletin celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Progressive Party’s first national convention. It discusses many of the principles of the Party and includes mention of Theodore Roosevelt’s involvement at the previous year’s convention.
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site
1913-08
A man labeled “Graft Politics” pays, with his left hand, a tramp labeled “Floater” at the end of a line of tramps outside a polling place, while with his right hand he attempts to keep a woman from listening to “women’s suffrage talk” because her “place is in the home, caring for the children.” Vignettes show women and children working in sweatshops and factories, living in tenement housing, and children taking care of younger children and being arrested. Caption: “No; they might disturb the existing order of things.”
A full dozen years before women would be able to vote in presidential elections (some states already had equal-rights statutes), Puck went on the record for women’s suffrage. It was not the first time the magazine endorsed the concept, but S. D. Ehrhart’s cartoon was simple and forceful.
This cartoon shows the interior of a galley where rows of children are manning the oars. The overseer, a large man, is labeled “Greed.” Hanging on the wall is a notice that states, “Child-labor Investigators, Sentimentalists, Charity Organizations, and all Meddling Old Women Keep Out.” Caption: “Dedicated to the states where child labor is still permitted.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1909-08-04
A man labeled “Warden,” armed with “Warrants,” carries measuring devices and a sheet of paper that states “Fish, Game, Forestry and Food Laws.” He stands next to a young tree, a calf, and a pond with fish and a lobster. On the right are two young, poorly dressed, and underfed children passing through a doorway into a building labeled “Entrance to Factory.” Inside are other children working with machinery. Caption: The government protects young fish, young oysters, young terrapin, young lobsters, young beef, and young trees. Is it not about time the same solicitude was shown for young human beings? They are more important than trout, or lobsters, or even forests.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1913-02-05
President Roosevelt’s message to Congress at the beginning of the third session of the fifty-eighth Congress in 1904. In this message, Roosevelt discusses various aspects of the state of the union and introduces the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-06