The Bitter Cry of Children

The Bitter Cry of Children is a book by a socialist writer John Spargo, a muckraker in the Progressive Period. Published in 1906, it is an exposé of the horrific working conditions of child laborers. He discusses the works of the children he saw very emotionally as he says, "boys sit hour after hours, picking at the pieces of slate and other [trash]... I once stood... and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom... [troubled] me".