It’s great to fight for freedom
with a Rebel Girl.
-Joe Hill
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday April 25, 1908
Western Speaking Tour of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Postponed
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of April 18, 1908:
Flynn Lecture Tour Temporarily Postponed
Fellow Worker Elizabeth Gurley Flynn will be unable to undertake the Western trip, for which arrangements had been in part completed, owing to the advice of physicians that to do so would endanger her health. She was compelled to abandon her program at Detroit, and will rest for several months in Minnesota, where she hopes to regain her strength and be prepared for active work in the fall of the year.
Readers of THE BULLETIN will, with us, regret this enforced abstinence from the lecture platform of our talented friend and sincerely hope for an early and complete restoration to health.
The Detroit News of April 9 gives the following appreciative notice of Comrade Flynn’s meeting in that city:
A union not to break the law, but a union to enforce the law when it is being broken by the capitalist class. A union that will enforce the will of the working class as expressed at the ballot box. A union that seeks not to enslave labor, but to emancipate it. A union that is organized on the principle that labor produces all wealth and is entitled to all it produces. A union that says there is no identity of interests between the owners of the tools of production and the workers who are bought by the week to run them for the benefit of the few and the the impoverishment of the many.
This is in part the outline given by Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Jones, of what the Industrial Workers of the World are organized for and what they expect to accomplish before an audience that filled Arbeiter hall to the doors Wednesday night.
For more than two hours and a half this gifted little woman held the strict attention of her audience without raising her voice above its well balanced pitch, or indulging in any attempt at flights of oratory nor tricks of elocution. She talked straight from the shoulder and to the point from beginning to the end of her discourse. It was the unanimous opinion that she outclasses Eugene V. Debs as a teacher, and is his peer in the matter of personal magnetism. And Debs is known from coast to coast as the greatest labor orator on the American rostrum.
Her outline of the industrial evolution of industry in this country from primitive to modern methods of production was not only historically correct, but devoid of the usual dull features attendant upon the discussion of these subjects. She showed an intimate knowledge of world politics and the causes for social phenomena that would be a credit to a gray-haired professor of the study, notwithstanding she will not be 18 years of age until next August.
There was a generous sprinkling of well-dressed women in the audience, among which was seen several teachers, lawyers, physicians and commercial men, all of whom joined heartily in punctuating her lecture with generous applause. She put the modern labor leaders through a terrific grilling without using a word of invective. Every sentence was only a link in the chain of evidence she was weaving to show their perfidy to the working class and their unfitness to direct the workers’ movement for the “possession of the necessary economic power, which would make the theory that an American citizen is entitled to life and liberty a living reality.”
At the close of her speech her hearers surged toward the platform and struggled with one another to grasp her hand. A big bouquet of pink carnations was presented her in the name of the “Italian workers of Detroit.” Men shed tears as they thanked her in simple words, and her own eyes were moist as she sank down into a chair exhausted at the close of the enforced reception.
———-
[Photograph added.]
Miss Flynn in Buffalo, New York
From The Buffalo Enquirer of April 1, 1908:
SCHOOL-GIRL SOCIALIST.
—–
Miss Flynn Talked to Sixteen
Policemen and Workingmen.Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of New York, who says she is a member of the “Industrial Workers of the World,” last night delivered a lecture under the auspices of the Bebel Club in the Odd Fellows’ Temple, William Street. Miss Flynn’s subject was “Industrial Unionism as a Cure-all for Economic Ills.”
The hall was crowded when the school-girl Socialist stepped on the stage. As a precaution against trouble Capt. Masters of the William Street Station had a detail of sixteen policemen in the hall. There was no demonstration when the girl closed her lecture, having talked for two hours.
Miss Flynn was attired in a red cloak, black dress, her head being covered with a rough rider hat. She was introduced by Charles J. Ball, Jr.
Speaking of the recent bomb throwing in New York City, Miss flynn said:
None of us know this poor, ignorant fellow who threw the bomb in New York. We have no sympathy with personal violence. Such acts are absolutely wrong, and absolutely hurtful to the cause of the workingman.
———-
From The Buffalo Express of April 1, 1908:
SCHOOLGIRL SOCIALIST
—–
Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of New York
addresses the Bebel Club.
—–IS QUITE A TALKER
—–
Not impassioned, but has excellent staying
Power, good for two Hours.
—–
NOT AT ALL INCENDIARY
—–
Protests Bomb Throwers are misguided Wretches
-No Sympathy for personal Violence.
—–Looking more like a schoolgirl than a Socialist orator Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of New York lectured under the auspices of the Bebel Club in the Odd Fellows’ Temple, William street, last night on industrial unionism as a cure-all for economic ills.
Precaution had been taken by the police to prevent any trouble. Captain Masters with six men in uniform and ten in plain clothes, heard the lecture. The hall was jammed, more than 200 people having to stand.
Below medium height, her pale face framed in black hair, garbed as a schoolgirl-such is the seventeen-year-old girl who, for two hours, held the audience in the hollow of her hand. She wore a black dress with a red four-in-hand tie. When she came in she wore a cloak to match the tie and a rough-rider felt hat. She was introduced by Charles J. Ball. Jr.
As a speaker Miss Flynn is unique. Using only the simplest gestures, she stands in one spot and talks and talks and talks. She never becomes impassioned, of wit she has little, but of sarcasm very much. The way she roasted the capitalists rendered the Socialists beside themselves with mirth.
Miss Flynn is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and her speech was largely a boost for the organization. She said that the organization stood first for the cleavage between the working class and the employing class, for “they have nothing in common.” Secondly, she said that her organization stood for “no surrender.” She said the chasm between labor and capital would never be bridged except by industrial unionism.
The audience enjoyed much her hits at the police, the militia in strikes, the Supreme Court, and even the President. “When we get socialism we won’t need any police, for there will be no one to suppress,” said she, while scores in the audience rubbered smilingly around at the bluecoats at the rear of the hall.
Referring to the Goldfield strike, she said that president Roosevelt, despite his talk about rich malefactors, had used the big stick against the working class of Goldfield. The Supreme Court she said was “depended upon to make all laws passed for the good of the working people declared unconstitutional.”
When Miss Flynn began to describe how the demonstrations of unemployed had fared in some cities, the audience leaned forward to listen-so did some of the plain-clothes men. But the youthful orator skated gracefully over the thin ice and brought out a round of applause when she said:
None of us know this poor ignorant fellow who threw the bomb in new York. But we have no sympathy with personal violence. Such acts are absolutely wrong and absolutely hurtful to the cause of the workingman.
———-
SOURCES
The Industrial Union Bulletin
(chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 18, 1908)
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v2n08-apr-18-1908-iub.pdf
The Buffalo Enquirer
(Buffalo, New York)
-Apr 1, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/325495553/
The Buffalo Express
(Buffalo, New York)
-Apr 1, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/344244591/
IMAGE
EGF, DEN p 21, Sept 21, 1907
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045555/1907-09-21/ed-1/seq-21/
See also:
Category: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
https://weneverforget.org/category/elizabeth-gurley-flynn/
Re: “Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Jones:”
Minnesota Official Marriage System
LAKE County #D32 on 01/07/1908:
JONES, JOHN ARCHIBALD to FLYNN, ELIZABETH GURLEY
https://moms.mn.gov/
EGF, Duluth 1908: this is most likely the red cape, matching tie and rough-rider hat mentioned above-
EGF describes this period of her life:
The Rebel Girl:
An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(Pages 83-6)
International Publishers, 1973
https://books.google.com/books?id=BhRBMQAACAAJ
Can be read online, see link below:
(Scroll down to page 83: “Mesabi Range”
Page 1 for EGF in Duluth, 1908)
https://libcom.org/history/rebel-girl-autobiography-my-first-life-1906-26
Re: New York Bombing Incident
Hellraisers Journal: Monday April 13, 1908
New York, New York – Robert Hunter Blamed for Bombing
Appeal to Reason Defends Robert Hunter, Now Under Attack by Police Chief of New York
The Rebel Girl – Mats Paulson
Lyrics by Joe Hill