John Spargo
Born in Cornwall and raised for the most part in Wales, John Spargo was a Christian Socialist with strong Marxist leanings when he was invited to join in a lecture tour of the United States in 1900. Spargo was hoping to speak about the advantages of socialism on a tour which was to include numerous stops across the United States. When he arrived in America with his recent bride he was disconcerted to learn that the promised tour was for the most part an exaggeration of its planners. Spargo arrived in New York in the winter of 1901, taking odd jobs and charity to survive. A few lectures attended by members of the Socialist Party in New York brought a small income.
Spargo took to editing a local socialist news sheet, called The Comrade, which was published monthly in New York. This brought him some national recognition and he began to lecture on social change in venues around the country. At the national Socialist Party convention in 1904, Spargo opposed the creation of a single publication speaking for the Socialist Party, believing that multiple independent publications were more effective in generating healthy debate. His position was accepted by the convention, and his reputation as a leading socialist of the day was considerably enhanced. He was elected to the National Committee of the party in 1905.
The same year Spargo wrote the first of a series of books which addressed the issue of child labor in the United States and Great Britain, which he referred to as slavery. The first of these works was The Bitter Cry of the Children. In it Spargo graphically described the labor performed by young children, including the work both supporting and in coal mines. Spargo described the difficulty of the labor and the dangers of the mines, including the constant exposure to and inhalation of coal dust and its undoubted ill effects on health. “I could not do that work and live,” he wrote, “but there were boys of ten and twelve years of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day.”
Spargo followed this work with Underfed School Children in 1906, in which he argued for feeding students in public schools. Spargo pointed out that attempts to teach children who were distracted by the continuous pangs of hunger were futile, and presented the further argument that poorly nourished children were more likely to become sickly, making their education a waste of time since they would likely not survive long enough to make use of it by becoming productive members of society. Spargo continued the argument in The Common Sense of the Milk Question in 1908.
During the Second World War, amid rationing of many foods, public schools across the country began to implement many of Spargo’s ideas. By the 1920s Spargo had abandoned many of his socialist leanings and become a member of the Republican Party. He became a leading historian in Vermont, concentrating on the history and lore of the small state. He faced declining health in the 1920s but recovered and became a leading expert on ceramics as practiced as a craft in Vermont. Spargo’s work brought attention to the child labor laws of the time and the health of children living in poverty, albeit change came but slowly.