Mill Mother's Lament, The

DESCRIPTION: "We leave our homes in the morning, We kiss our children goodbye, While we slave for the bosses, Our children scream and cry." They have no money for clothing and little for food. "Let's stand together, workers, and have a union here."
AUTHOR: Ella May Wiggins
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (Greenway), but Wiggins was shot to death in 1929
KEYWORDS: children hardtimes labor-movement
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greenway-AmericanFolksongsOfProtest, pp. 250-251, "The Mill Mother's Lament" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: (no author listed), _Let's Stand Together: The Story of Ella Mae Wiggins_, Metrolina Chapter, National Organization for Women (Charlotte, NC), 1979, p. 18, "The Mill Mother's Lament" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kristina Horton, _Martyr of Loray Mill: Ella May and the 1929 Textile Workers' Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina_, McFarland & Company, 2015, pp. 138-140, 196-197, "The Miill Mother's Lament" (1 text, printed twice in different contexts)
John A. Salmond, _Gastonia 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike_, University of North Carolina Press, 1995, p. 62, "(Mill Mother's Lament)" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20] (tune)
NOTES [104 words]: This is said to be the most popular and most requested song by Ella May Wiggins, although I have no evidence that it went into tradition. The song was sung by Wiggins's grave at her funeral after she was murdered. Much of it is based on her own experience as (for practical purposes) a single mother working for inadequate wages in a mill -- and one who had had four of her nine children die because of the effects of poverty. It is said to be based on "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20]; for the irony of that, and for background on Wiggins, and on the Gastonia strike that led to her murder, see the notes to "Chief Aderholt." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.1
File: GAFP250

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