Page 20 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

7 IfthemothersandtheteachersinGeorgiacouldvote,wouldtheGeorgiaLegislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age?
8 WouldtheNewJerseyLegislaturehavepassedthatshamefulrepealbillenablinggirls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised? Until the mothers in the great industrial states are enfranchised, we shall none of us be able to free our consciences from participation in this great evil. No one in this room tonight can feel free from such participation. The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton underwear in the cotton mills. Children braid straw for our hats, they spin and weave the silk and velvet wherewith we trim our hats. They stamp buckles and metal ornaments of all kinds, as well as pins and hat-pins. Under the sweating system, tiny children make artificial flowers and neckwear for us to buy. They carry bundles of garments from the factories to the tenements, little beasts of burden, robbed of school life that they may work for us.
9 We do not wish this. We prefer to have our work done by men and women. But we are almost powerless. Not wholly powerless, however, are citizens who enjoy the right of petition. For myself, I shall use this power in every possible way until the right to the ballot is granted, and then I shall continue to use both.
10 What can we do to free our consciences? There is one line of action by which we can do much.
11 We can enlist the workingmen on behalf of our enfranchisement just in proportion as we strive with them to free the children. No labor organization in this country ever fails to respond to an appeal for help in the freeing of the children.
12 For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead, and for the sake of our cause, we should enlist the workingmen voters, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil!
enfranchised: given full citizenship, including the right to vote
wherewith: with which
garments: clothing
petition: formal request ballot: voting
enlist: to engage in a cause
toil: exhausting physical labor
Close Reading Workshop 2 • Close Reading of Argumentative Nonfiction Texts 19
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.