You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Mesabi Range, Minnesota – Miss Flynn Fights for MinersFrom the Duluth News Tribune of July 12, 1916:
GURLEY FLYNN IS SORRY SHE WASN’T
ON RANGE EARLIER
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GILBERT, Aug. 12.-“I wish that I had been in charge of this strike at the start. The demands of the miners would have been higher that $3 per day,” was the statement of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, strike agitator, speaking to a crowd at the Socialist hall here.
Joseph J. Ettor, Miss Flynn and other I. W. W.s have been addressing crowds on all parts of the range during the week. All of the meetings are almost the same, the press, the mining companies and the government being flayed on each occasion.
At each meeting strikers are asked to make out affidavits of abuse at the hands of mining companies or the captains and these are being present to the federal investigators.
—–
[Photograph added.]
An earlier speech described by the News Tribune of August 3rd:
I. W. W. SPEAKERS PACK VIRGINIA OPERA HOUSE
—–
Gurley Flynn Quotes Scriptures and Tells of Love
for Organizing-Says $18 Week No Inducement.
—–
VIRGINIA, Aug. 2.-A crowded house, well sprinkled with business men, county officials, city police and nonminers, greeted Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joseph Ettor, Frank Little and other I. W. W. agitators at the Socialist opera house tonight.
Miss Flynn’s talk did not appear to be to the miners, so much as to the business men. She urged the business men to rally to the support of the strikers, saying that it would be to their benefit when they did win the strike and receive higher wages. She ridiculed the press of Virginia and Duluth and explained that the agitators were only receiving $18 per week from their head office to preach the doctrines of labor to the working men and teach them that they are also entitled to wear fine clothes, have automobiles and other luxuries of life, as well as the mine owner. She again characterized the mine owners as the “won’t works” and handed out politely sarcastic remarks to police, county men and others opposing the work of the “one big union.”
She explained that it was not the $18 per week that the agitators are paid that keeps them in this work, declaring that it was the “love of sowing the seeds of discontent to the workers to make them strive for higher wages,” which caused them to work for the I. W. W.
[She said:]
Why, myself and the other agitators could make more money at other work if we wanted to, but we are sincere in this work.
After stating that the I. W. W. paid no heed to religion, politics or such matters, she quoted from the Bible to bring her point home that it should be the miners who should have the good things of life by stating: “He who does not work, shall not eat,” as proof that the mine owners and operators should have nothing.
She charged that the mining company figures to prove that the contract system of labor was a good thing for the miners were taken from doctored books, which books she said would be shown to the federal investigators who are now on the range.
The mine operators claims that they paid more than the men are asking for are absurd. If they made $1 per day do you think they would strike for $3 and $3.50 if they would they are crazy and should all be locked up in the best padded cells you have in an insane asylum in Minnesota. The company would have jumped at a chance for a settlement to give men lower wages
-but she did not explain that by the contract system the man was paid for what he produced and not for time during which he could loaf half his time.
Why you have all got to be Christian Scientists to believe what the papers would tell you. Seeing a gunman on the road, armed with a rifle, you would have to convince yourself that you did not see him, that it was only imagination. Here on the range the I.W. W is a peace messenger to the people. There are English, French, Austrian, Italian, Finns and a dozen other nationalities. In Europe these peoples are fighting like h—. Here, through the agency of the I.W. W. they are calling one another fellow workers and all co-operating to fight one big enemy-the “Steel Trust”
[The article continued with brief descriptions of speeches by Joe Ettor and Frank Little.]
—–
[Photograph added.]
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SOURCE
Duluth News Tribune
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Aug 13, 1916, page 9
-Aug 3, 1916, page 10
http://www.genealogybank.com/
IMAGES
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Reno Gz-Jr, July 12, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/147168974
IWW Red Button
http://iww.ca/
See also:
The Rebel Girl: an autobiography,
-my first life (1906-1926).
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
International Publishers, 1973
Mesabi Range-page 83
https://books.google.com/books?id=TK2y0I-E9EkC
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The Rebel Girl – Alyeah Hansen
Lyrics by Joe Hill