William Dalton, then S.L.P. National Organizer, visits the small, isolated mill town of Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania to find the factories mainly worked by women and girls whom, he intimates, were the victims of large-scale sexual exploitation.

‘Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania: The Modern Golgotha’ by William S. Dalton from the Weekly People. Vol. 11 No. 13. June 29, 1901.

At Reynoldsville, Pa., Where Humanity is on the Cross.

REYNOLDSVILLE, Pa., June 15. As there is no Section in Reynoldsville, the work of distributing bills announcing the S.L.P. meeting held here had to be done by Du Bois comrades. Comrade Fred Thomas and myself went from Du Bois in the afternoon and visited the tanneries, wool and silk mills, and talked with the workers to whom we gave the bills. We had no trouble in gaining admission to the various slave pens. The capitalists here have full confidence in the apathy and ignorance of their victims. In the tanneries we saw men stripped to the waist working in stenches that make an outsider hold his nose. The work is destructive of health, as the men are in water most of the time. They receive for this the magnificent sum of $1.25 per day, and the tannery workers paraded last fall in Republican processions, carrying banners inscribed with the motto: “We want no change.” Well there’s not much danger of finding any change in their pockets.

We found quite a few boys engaged in breaking bark and other work. When asked why they did not attend school, they said that this was vacation time, and they spend their vacations in the tannery. They get $1 per day, and work like galley slaves. Their “vacation” becomes a continuous performance just as soon as they are considered old enough, looking to leave the foolish extravagance of wasting their time in school and work the year round.

The woolen mill is a cockroach affair, employing only a hundred people, mostly girls. “The well-paid ones,” a knitting girl said, “get $1 per day.” She evidently thought this was very good, and praised the firm. The girls show in form and in feature the inhuman cruelty of compelling women to stand ten hours a day. They pay a fearful price for the privilege of living: youth, hope, strength, joy.

When the whistle at the silk mill at 6 o’clock sounded the order to the human machines to stop work and let the other machines cool down so that they would be fit to run the next day, the door of the mill looked like the opening of a beehive. Out they swarmed, children and women. Of a hundreds of these working bees, turned out of the hive by the drones who own the honey, there were not ten adult males. There were women who looked old, but who had not attained thirty in years; girls who were spiritless and haggard looking at sixteen and some little ones so young that you would imagine they got mixed with the procession by mistake. They are the living proofs, the human documents, that convict the capitalist class of robbing the cradle in its lust for gain. Marat and his co-workers in the task of toppling over the rotten-ripe feudal system and ridding France of the no less rotten feudal rulers, stirred the people to action by denouncing the shameless debauchery of the peasants’ daughters by the nobles. The scoundrels of the world and their pen-pushing lackeys have agreed to call that time when the Revolution sat in judgment and shortened by a head the guilty wretches, “the Reign of Terror.” Forgetful of the lessons of history, drunk with the wine of unbridled power, the capitalist class today tramples on that most sacred of all things: the innocence of our children and imitates the dethroned and decapitated ruler of serfs. What defense will they plead when another Marat, another Spirit of the Age incarnate summons them before the dread tribunal of an awakened proletariat to answer: “How have ye dealt with the least of these?”

We held our meeting on the corner where the Starvation Army usually conducts its ghost dances. For some reason known only to those collectors of Peter’s pence for Pope Booth, they did disturb us. The subject of the address was “The New Labor Union,” and the crowd was very attentive. While I was talking the chief of police wandered into the edge of the crowd and listened for a few minutes, then he asked a bystander: “Has that fellow got a permit?” The other man did not know and told him to ask the speaker. But the guardian of law and order preferred to let it go at that. He may have heard or read of the fate which overtakes janissaries who monkey with the Buzz-Saw. As we had an hour to wait for the train when the lecture was finished, and it was a pleasant evening, I invited local leaders to occupy the hurricane deck of the dry goods box and defend the organizations from the charges contained in the lecture, and stated specifically what the charges were and the grounds therefor. There was a subdued murmur in the crowd as some of the dupes tried to induce a local wise man to accept the debate, but you could not drag a fakir onto that box with a team of bronchos. We had to leave without a scrimmage.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/010629-weeklypeople-v11n13.pdf