The one system of economics
that gives every human being
an equal opportunity is socialism.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Hellraisers Journal, Monday October 21, 1907
New York, New York – Comrade Elizabeth Flynn Preaches Socialism
From the Montana News of October 17, 1907:
—–
An East Side Joan of Arc.
—–
They call her Comrade Elisabeth Flynn, and she is only a girl just turned 16, as sweet a 16 as ever bloomed with a sensitive, flower-like face. But she is also an ardent socialist orator, one of the most active workers in the cause in New York City. It was in January [1906] last that she made her first appearance on the lecture platform, and electrified her audience with her eloquence, her youth and her loveliness. Since then she has been in demand as a speaker wherever in the city there has been a socialist gathering, at Cooper Union or at Carnegie Hall or on the street corners of the East side.
The girl is a typical Irish beauty, with the blue eyes, filmy black hair and delicate pink complexion of the race, from which she is sprung. She is only a pupil in her second year at the Morris High school, but she has the mature mentality, the habit of thought and finished expression of a woman of 25. Some day she means to study law. She has been reared in the shadow of the red flag of the proletariat, and her socialist tendencies are inherited. Her father has long been a member of the party. The walls of the humble apartment which is their home in the Bronx are covered with pictures of the world-famous men and women who have defied the existing order of society, from Murat and Mirabeau to Byron and George Eliot, and from Tom Paine to Maxim Gorky.
Elisabeth Flynn believes many things that sound strangely enough from the the lips of a girl, but they are the tenets of the party with which she has allied herself. Among her statements are these:
The State should provide for the maintenance of every child so that the individual woman shall not be compelled to depend for support on the individual man while bearing children.
The barter and sale that goes on under the name of love is highly obnoxious.
The one system of economics that gives every human being an equal opportunity is socialism.
The wage working class the world over are the victims of society.
-Broadway Magazine
[September 1906].[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Montana News
“Owned and Published by
-the Socialist Party of Montana)
(Helena, Montana)
-Oct 17, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1907-10-17/ed-1/seq-3/
IMAGE
EGF Girl Socialist w Hat, NYW, Aug 24, 1906
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1906-08-24/ed-1/seq-3/
See also:
The Rebel Girl:
An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(Pages 53-83 for years 1906 & 1907)
International Publishers, 1973
https://books.google.com/books?id=BhRBMQAACAAJ
Can be read online, see link below:
(Scroll down to page 53: “First Speech, 1906”
through page 76: “IWW Stirreth up the People,”
re her role as a delegate to the 1907 IWW Convention.)
(See page 64 for her view of Theodore Dreiser.)
https://libcom.org/history/rebel-girl-autobiography-my-first-life-1906-26
Theodore Dreiser: Political Writings
-ed by Jude Davies
University of Illinois Press, Oct 1, 2010
https://books.google.com/books?id=v0DAHQwuLQEC
The article, “An East Side Joan of Arc,” was published in Broadway Magazine in September of 1906 per page 8:
…Moving on [from Smith’s Magazine] to Broadway magazine in the middle of 1906, in its September issue Dreiser…interviewed sixteen-year old socialist firebrand Elizabeth Gurley flynn, prefiguring what would become major concerns in the 1910s and 1930s, respectively….
For more on EGF in 1906:
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 1, 1907
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks in New York City: “Girl Socialist Amazes Hearers.”
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 2, 1907
Miss Elizabeth Flynn-“The Daughter of the Reds!”-Socialist Schoolgirl Orator Creates Sensation in 1906
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday January 3, 1907
An Interview with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on First Speech: “Women Under Socialism.”
Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 4, 1907
Miss Flynn, 16, Plans Rejuvenation of World. Not an “out-and-out woman suffrage socialist.”
For more on EGF in 1907:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 31, 1907
“An Irish Manifesto,” Irish Socialist Federation Replies to Insult of Rev. Dr. Brann
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday September 10, 1907
Miss Elizabeth Flynn, Girl Socialist, Found on Soapbox Lecturing on Philadelphia Street Corner
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday September 18, 1907
IWW Convention Begins in Chicago; Young Delegate, Miss Flynn, Talks Socialism on Street Corner
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday September 22, 1907
Delegate at IWW Convention: Miss Flynn, “Young High School Girl-Fiery Socialist Orator”