“The last strike benefits that will be paid by the Amalgamated Association have been received by the idle men. Right here be it said that these benefits were by no means as reported during the strike. Not one-half of the men got $4 a week, and the majority received about $2 a week.
“The Homestead steel-workers and their families are in need of almost everything that goes to make life comfortable. All need clothing more or less. One man I met to-day was trying to prevent the biting wind from sweeping a well-ventilated straw hat from his head.
“Then there is fuel. There is hardly a street or roadway in Homestead on which there did not stand a house or several of them in which the cold stoves made the temperature more frigid by contrast. Those families that did burn coal or wood did so through the kindness of the neighbors or the good-will of the fuel merchant.
“In walking through Homestead to-day I passed a vacant lot on Fourth avenue, in which a fire was burning. The fuel consisted of logs dragged from the river. Surrounding the fire were ill-clad boys and girls. They were keeping warm and roasting potatoes. One of the boys told me that ‘Maw hadn’t much for dinner at home, and we are playing Thanksgiving.’
“This was their feast; they were children of the strikers, who lived in a clump of shanties near by.”
Playing Thanksgiving! God of justice! look down upon such a picture. Playing at praying! Absolutely making a game and jest of thanking Thee! So cynical has become the hearts of even these children, caused by the oppression and injustice of the oppressor, that they would make a game, a jest, of giving thanks to the Giver of all good things! because the good things were on the tables of Carnegie, Frick, Webb, and others, while they, somebody’s children--poor, “Common People’s” children, perhaps--were cold, ragged, and hungry; making a feast of half-burned potatoes, veritably, in a spirit of irony. So hard and desolate has become the destiny of the poor of our land that the children cease to be natural, loving, gentle, and sincere, and have become ironical, sarcastic, holding so lightly the respect due to the God of all men, that they make a jest of the day consecrated to rendering thanks to the Giver of all good things of life!