Karl Kilbom - Youth

Youth

As the son of a blacksmith, Karl Kilbom grew up in a working-class family of Walloon origin in the small town of Österby outside Uppsala, where he started working in the steel mills at an early age.

In the year 1900, a socialist agitator visited Österby to talk to the workers of the mills. Karl Kilbom, only 15 years old, was one of the 7 people who stayed after the meeting to participate in the formation of a socialist club in Österby with the goal to establish a union. However, company spies had been present at the meeting and soon Kilbom was told he would not only lose his job, but also that his family, who lived in a house owned by the company, would be evicted, if he didn’t quit political activism. This time, Kilbom gave in to the threats.

Read more about this topic:  Karl Kilbom

Famous quotes containing the word youth:

    The delicious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls, “the sweet seriousness of sixteen,” the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us through life,—we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Such, such were the joys
    When we all, girls and boys,
    In our youth time were seen
    On the Echoing Green.”
    William Blake (1757–1827)

    Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)