In 1902, the US experienced one of the most effective strikes in our history. Coal miners throughout the US went on strike. Within days major industries across the country were shut down because of a lack of coal. President Teddy Roosevelt (R-NY) was a Libertarian and had a hands off attitude towards business and labor. This situation was serious enough that he had to do something. REPUBLICAN Big Business was demanding that he send in the US Army and crush the strikers. But Roosevelt knew from several labor actions in the past, after troops were sent in, massacres and the deaths of 100's of strikers followed. Before doing that, Teddy Roosevelt wanted to investigate the issues and see if a negotiated settlement was possible. What he found shocked him.
Turns out that Coal Mines employed boys as young as 8-years-old to work in the mines. Whole families were employed in coal mines, barely able to pay rent on company owned housing and buy groceries at company owned stores. In both cases, Roosevelt found that miners were gouged, charged far more than others were throughout the country. Mines were located in isolated communities, far away from towns and cities. The only housing was company housing, since the mines owned all the land for miles, same for grocery and other stores. Mine jobs were starvation wage jobs. A cycle of desperation and poverty grew out of this culture, as well as massive profits for the mine owners. Whole families worked, because they would starve otherwise.
What the mine owners and business leaders hadn't counted on was Teddy loved his kids. When he started getting reports from investigators about the lives and working conditions of miners and their families, he was shocked and couldn't believe it. Kids as young as 8-years-old working in mines, beaten by their supervisors. Many times crippled by dangerous working conditions. Boys who lost an arm or leg in this dangerous line of work suffered unimaginably, there was no Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Disability in that Age of Republican Libertarian Free Enterprise, the only thing the crippled boy would get is a pink slip from the company and a bill from the company doctor. Many boys would commit suicide because they had no way to pay the doctor's bill for their injury, no way to earn a living from that point forward and could only be burden to their overburdened, impoverished families.
Mine owners would never allow Social Workers or Reporters from newspapers on THEIR LAND and the local sheriff worked for them too. No one knew about any of this because the rich mine owners didn't want anyone to know. They were arch criminals, having committed the perfect crime, a crime against humanity.
Even the most hopeful, strong young boy was worn down and crippled by work far too hard for him,
These boys worked daylight hours in the total darkness of the mines, 100's of feet below the surface, coming home after the sun set, having no idea what sunlight and play were, growing old far before their time, which made the incredibly rich mine owners happy. Many boys would eventually go blind because of the lack of sunlight, most died before their 35th birthday from coal dust, from horrific beatings, from hunger and disease. They had to grow up fast, if they were going to grow up at all. Remember these kids look like your kid, the only difference, they were beaten by their boss and had no idea what playing football or baseball was, much less what happiness was. Exactly like their Republican bosses wanted it.
Small boys could crawl into tiny passage ways and crevices to plant nitroglycerin and dynamite explosives, if they didn't kill them first. Many boys were killed by nitroglycerin which was very, very dangerous, fewer when dynamite came out.
Even boys who survived a childhood of horrifically hard labor, 12 to 16 hour days and beatings by their supervisors could be left bent and crippled, suffering pain for the rest of their lives. But their employers made money and that was more important to Pro-Life Libertarian Republicans.
Of course, these crippled boys were fired immediately, many chose suicide rather than being a burden on their families. Some would escape to the cities and try selling newspapers using crutches. A boy who should have earned respect, depended on pity to make a living. While millionaire mine owners would have steak and lobster for dinner, these boys would know hunger every second of their lives.
Even dressed in nice clothes, these boys could not hide their hopelessness.
Lost Souls
Can you imagine losing an arm or leg, then losing your job and then getting a bill from the company doctor, the perfect storm to drive a child over the edge into committing suicide. Republican Judges never held employers accountable. Even if an eight-year-old was killed in a mine by the explosion of nitroglycerin, because it had to be his fault he was dead or injured, or crippled for life.
One of the first actions of unions was to create hospitals for workers injured on the job. Company Doctors primary duty was to save the company money, not save lives and limbs.
When President Teddy Roosevelt (R-NY) saw the suffering of miners and their families he became the implacable enemy of the mine owners. He intervened in the Coal Strike, implemented, for the time, a fair settlement and began breaking up huge conglomerates that had far too much power. But mostly because he saw the children whose lives had been destroyed. He broke off friendships with mine owners, many he had grown up with and knew his whole life. He even left the Republican Party, when it was made clear they had no interest in Child Labor Laws or Children. Even though I am sure that they were pro-life, even then. Can't you see how much Republicans care about children, in these boy's faces?
Teddy Roosevelt(R-NY), Woodrow Wilson(D-NJ), Harry Truman(D-MO), Lyndon "LBJ" Johnson(D-TX) and Franklin "FDR" Roosevelt(D-NY) implemented Child Labor Laws, Disability, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to protect those who were injured. While Donald Trump protects those who injure them.
Though she came from one of the wealthiest families in America, Eleanor Roosevelt spent her life in service to the poor, here she is reading a story to visitors to her home in Hyde Park New York in 1957. FDR noticed, after winning the New York Governor's Office in 1930 and after the Wall Street Crash of October 29, 1929, that elderly people were becoming homeless, living in the streets after banks took away their homes. He came up with the Social Security as a means of stopping it from ever happening again.
You would think with the passage of time we would treat children better, but in some ways we are treating them far worse.
A 13-year-old boy in Albuquerque, New Mexico was arrested by a Campus Cop for BURPING IN CLASS, no detention, no suspension, no expulsion, the boy was handcuffed, taken to a Republican PRIVATE FOR PROFIT JUVENILE PRISON, stripped naked, cavity searched and thrown in a jail cell. When he appeared in juvenile court a week later, the judge was furious at this miscarriage of justice. REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR Susana Martinez demanded that the case be appealed, the case was appealed over and over again until it hit the Republican DOMINATED FEDERAL 10 Circuit, which endorsed imprisoning children for Burping. 13-year-old boys get tortured and raped in prison, but for BURPING? When Gov. Martinez(R-NM) ran for re-election in 2018, her support for private for profit prisons and juvenile prisons was one of the reasons she was defeated. Republicans all need to take their moral compasses to SEARS and have them re-calibrated, they are obviously broken if they think private, for profit prisons with low paid guards solve anything.
A REPUBLICAN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT JUVENILE PRISON made the news recently when low paid guards allowed older, bigger 17 and 18-year-old boys to bully and beat-up other boys, for the sake of recreational fights and beatings for the guards/boys' entertainment, if they kept things quiet in the CHILDREN'S prison, then as a reward, these older boys were allowed to have sex with younger inmates, some as young at 10 to 14-years-old, voluntarily or involuntarily, boys incarcerated for crimes like theft, shoplifting and truancy.
Do you remember Evangelical "Pro-Life" Republican Congressman and Freedom Caucus Member Rep. Jim Jordan, while coaching Wrestling at Ohio State University, was told by several boys, some as young as 16-years-old, that they were being sexually abused by Athletic Department Doctor Richard Strauss. Congressman Jordan did nothing, when he saw the doctor taking a shower with the teenage boys, he laughed.
My whole point, Republicans keep telling us how "Pro-Life" they are, but the evidence is they are ANTI-LIFE.
Trump says we need to gut Child Labor Laws, driven by Billionaires Charles and David Koch and their Libertarian Republican Anti-Labor "Non-Profit" ALEC. Given enough time and money they might just do it, unless we hear the cries and pleas from these boys calling to us from their graves, STOP DONALD TRUMP from destroying another generation, like LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN GREED DESTROYED US!
Donald Trump and Republicans have a "dream," right, should we turn the clock back to the good old days, not if you listen to these boys. They know Trump's Republican Dream is our Nightmare.
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