[Statement on Motherhood]

We go our way in life too much alone, we hold ourselves too far from all our kind!
Too often we are dead to sigh & moan,
Too often to the weak & helpless blind;
Too often where distress & want abide,
We turn & pass upon the other side."

O friends & brothers gliding down the years,
Humanity is calling each & all
In tender accents, born of grief & tears!

I pray you listen to the thrilling call!
You can not in your cold & selfish pride
Pass guiltlessly upon "the other side."

But the young young children O my brother
They are weepng bitterly!
They are weeping inte playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

The thousands of young girls gone wrong & walking the streets to sell their bodies, brought up in ignorance of their sex functions with a sense of shame toward the beauties of life--ignored & neglected by mothers of the world until too late, they too should point their fingers of scorn at us for we have neglected them. Are we not afraid of the thousands of so called "little mothers" whose little shoulders are bent from carrying the children of the family, whose whole body is usually deformed before she matures at 14 years--

Are we not afraid of the thousands of little girls whose power of motherhood has been taken from her on account of the disease of gonnorrhea which she has contracted in using the filthy toilets in the tenements there.

Mothers of today let us look at this each other unmasked-- These childrn are ours--yours & mine. They belong to us--for we are mothers of the race, their our sisters are their mothers, and just as there is a demand for a greater sisterhood so is there a crying call for a geater motherood--

Are we afraid to face these and millions of other little ones wroged by our neglect, in case they point little fingers of shame at us & cry out in their anguish "you have not mothered us"--

The time has gone past when a mother says I won't think--for in order to save her own child she must save others.

The time has gone when she can say Ill only take care of the water in my own well, the milk from ym own cow, the education for my own child--that day has gone, and in order to get pure milk, water, drugs, food for her own,so must she see that the others get it. In education too, she can not protect her own without protecting the other children of the school--

Of what good does it do a mother to reach her own child the hygiene of his sex unless the children he plays with & associates with in school are taught the same thing-- We cannot get away from it mothers for what concerns our own child concerns our neighbors and each neighborhood reaches out far beyod our geographical lines.

Again we have thousands of little tots just able to toddle from their mothers side into the street, not able to be taken into the kindergarten-- these little ones are taking their first lessons from their playmates in the street--and such lessons as they receive! Is it a wonder that our reform schools our jails & prisons are over crowded when we realize where are children receive their first lessons of life.

The problems of children in our society is our problem mothers and as they are moulded so is our future society moulded. Just as we help them or neglect them can the future society blame us-- Children are creatures of invironment--playing on the streets singing "sweet land of liberty."