Prison bars do not frighten when
one has truth and right
deep in the heart.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 1, 1907
New York, New York – Miss Flynn Lectures on Socialism
From the New York Sun of December 31, 1906:
HYPATIA INSTEAD OF HOPP.
—–Bread and Butter, Not Sentiment, Is the Universal Solvent of the Industrial Problem, in the Opinion of the Young Eyed Cherub-But Mr. Hopp Hangs On.
Sandwiched between sentiments by Julius Hopp on what the real drama ought to be an audience that half filled the orchestra of the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre yesterday afternoon listened to a lecture by Miss Elizabeth Flynn, aged 17 schoolgirl Socialist.
Mis Flynn is pretty, is not addicted to laughter and is self-possessed, as one might expect a girl to be who nonchalantly submitted to arrest for carttail talking without a license. Her remarks were on lines familiar to most Socialists, but she declared that they were unfamiliar to most capitalistic editors, who appeared to have room enough in their heads for only one idea at a time.
She said that she was a materialistic Socialist and advocated socialism purely on scientific grounds. It was a problem of bread and butter and not of sentimentalism. Mr. Stokes could not feel about the subject as the workingman could because he was not in the workingmen’s class.
The idea of the Socialist was the cooperative commonwealth. That could be attained only through a process of evolution that had first caused the destruction of slave labor and later the disappearance of the feudal system. The next step in the evolutionary plan would be the vanishing of the capitalistic system. All methods of production that capitalism had used would be used by the working folk in more enlightened fashion for the benefit of all. Production, transportation and distribution would all be done by the people themselves.
The plan of Upton Sinclair to establish a cooperative community in the midst of an unfriendly environment of capitalism would fail, as all experiments of the kind had failed. The man in the way of the consummation of the socialistic idea was the capitalist, and he would have to be removed not by any force other than that of social evolution.
There had been crises in the administrations of many Presidents, including Grant and Cleveland. The cause of it all, according to some of the economists, was over-production. We were on the verge of a crisis, according to some of this same class of economists, just before the California earthquake. Strange to say, they declared that the demand from the Pacific Coast for necessaries averted the crisis.
Miss Flynn said she did not blame the capitalist for wanting to remain a capitalist any more than she blamed the workingman for wanting to become a capitalist. Very few if any of the workingmen, she said, would not be capitalists if they got the chance. The scientific Socialist did not advocate the breaking up of monopoly. He knew that it was going to break itself up. He had no ideals and plans for the future, as Morris or Bellamy had. The questions of religion and matrimony would be settled by the bread and butter forces and not by the idealists. Miss Flynn said she believed that in a very short time society would not need the capitalists, and they naturally would have to get out and work, something they would kick against as much as some workingmen do.
Miss Flynn was applauded vigorously. Mr. Hopp was not received with so much enthusiasm. He seemed a bit depressed when he introduced the lecturer. That was because, as he explained, he was unable to produce, as he had expected, his socialistic drama, “The Friends of Labor,” instead of Miss Flynn….
———-
[Photograph added.]
The Arrest of Miss Elizabeth Flynn
The story of the arrest last August of the “Girl Socialist” was published in several newspapers around the nation. This story appeared in The Chicago Daily Tribune on August 24, 1906:
GIRL SOCIALIST AMAZES HEARERS
—–Sixteen Year Old Lass Talks Learnedly
on Many Different Subjects
—–NEW YORK BUREAU CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
New York, Aug. 23.
Girl Socialist Shows Wonderful Mind.
It is not often that such an interesting person appears in police court as Miss Elizabeth Flynn, the 16 year old socialist, who, with her father and three others, was made a prisoner last night [August 22] while addressing a crowd at the corner of Thirty-eighth street and Broadway. This child, who not yet has finished her course in high school, had her head stuffed full of knowledge, talks learnedly about socialism and other subjects which would be deep water for many grown ups.
The girl was speaking last night from a packing box, beside which hung a red flag over two American flags, when the police interfered. This morning in the Jefferson Market police court they were all discharged. Afterward the girl talked freely on socialism.
“Those who suffer material want,” she said, “become interested in socialism.”
When asked if she could define socialism, she promptly construed it as follows; “Socialism first is the study of the social developments of the race up to the present time, including the facts of the class struggle and economic progress; secondly, analyzing from the past what the next step in the social development will be. The next step will be collectivism.”
———-
[Photograph added.]
SOURCES
The Sun
(New York, New York)
-Dec 31, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/78181460/
The Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Aug 24, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28633111/
IMAGES
EGF NY arrest Aug 22, Union Leader W-B PA, Sep 7, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/173633791/
EGF Drawing, Dly Signal Crowley LA, Oct 27, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/193226029/
See also:
The Rebel Girl: an autobiography,
my first life (1906-1926).
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
International Publishers, 1973
See page 61: “I Mount the Soap Box and Get Arrested”
https://books.google.com/books?id=TK2y0I-E9EkC
For more on Julius Hopp:
See World To-Day, June 1906
“Teaching Socialism on the Stage” by L. France Pierce
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=ZndUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA651
“Stokes” is most likely James Graham Stokes
http://spartacus-educational.com/Graham_Stokes.htm
“Morris” and “Bellamy” were both Utopian Socialists
https://www.marxists.org/subject/utopian/
The Utopian Scheme of Upton Sinclair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicon_Home_Colony
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/
The Rebel Girl – Alyeah Hansen
Lyrics by Joe Hill
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-4f69-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99/book#page/1/mode/2up