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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 3, 1911
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Organize Women in Strong Industrial Unions
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 1, 1911:
WOMEN IN INDUSTRY SHOULD ORGANIZE
———-BY ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN
From the viewpoint of a revolutionary socialist there is certainly much to criticize in the present labor organizations. They have their shortcomings, of so pronounced a character that many thoughtful but pessimistic workers despair of practical benefit from assisting or considering them further. Yet unionism remains a vital and a burning question to the toilers, both men and women.
[…..]
Little need be said of he seven million wage-earning women. That unionism is their one great weapon, hardly admits of argument. Even more than their brother toilers do these underpaid and overworked women need co-operative effort on their own behalf. Yet many of their experiences with the old unions have been neither pleasant nor encouraging. Strike after strike of cloak makers, shirt waist makers, dressmakers, etc on the East Side of New York has been exploited by rich faddists for woman’s suffrage, etc., until the points at issue were lost sight of in the blare of automobile horns attendant on their coming and going. A band of earnest, struggling workers made the tail of a suffrage kite in the hands of women of the very class driving the girls to lives of misery or shame, women who could have financed the strike to a truly successful conclusion were they seriously disposed, is indeed a deplorable sight. But the final settlement of the many widely advertised strikers left much to be desired.
A spontaneous revolt, a light with glowing enthusiasm and ardor that kept thousands of underfed and thinly clad girls on the picket line should be productive of more than “a contract.” Contracts binding dressmakers in one union, cloak makers in another, shirt waist makers in another, and so on through the list of clothing workers-contracts arranging separate wage scales, hours, dates of expiration, etc., mean no more spontaneous rebellions on the East Side of New York. Now [craft] union leaders arbitrate so that you may go back to your old job “without discrimination,” the new concept of “victory” and if you dare to strike under the contract you will be fired from both shop and union for violation of it.
Such a “victory” as this occurred in Chicago last winter, in reality a shameful betrayal of workers because they refused to accept contracts agreed upon by the “Women Trades Union League.”
The unionism to help working women must be industrial in form, aggressive and progressive in spirit, must organize the women workers, must be willing to fight for their interests [even as (?)] they are organized to produce for the employers, must be willing to fight for their interests 365 days in the year.
Women are in industry to stay. They cannot be driven back to the home. Their work left the home and they followed. They are part of the army of labor and must be organized and disciplined as such. Unorganized [they remain at the (?] point of subsistence; organized they are tenacious and true fighters. And the union factory girl of today is the helpful and encouraging wife of the union man of tomorrow. Mutual aid replaces suspicion and distrust in the home and the benefit of mutual effort between women and men workers and husbands and wives should not be underestimated.
Then through intelligent criticisms and systematic efforts to remold the old-a new fighting union will come forth eventually to flower into the co-operative commonwealth.
Men and women workers, unite.
———-
[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Industrial Worker
(Spokane, Washington)
-June 1, 1911, page 4
(See link to read article in full.)
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v3n10-w114-jun-01-1911-IW.pdf
IMAGE
EGF, ISR p606, Apr 1911
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n10-apr-1911-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf
See also:
Tag: Chicago Garment Workers Strike of 1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/chicago-garment-workers-strike-of-1910/
“The [Chicago] Garment Workers Strike Lost
Who Was to Blame?”
-by Robert Dvorak
-from ISR of March 1911, page 550
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n09-mar-1911-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf
“Strike of Brooklyn Shoe Workers”
-by Grace Potter
-from ISR of Apr 1911, page 602
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n10-apr-1911-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf
Words on Fire
The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
-ed by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall
Rutgers University Press, 1987
https://books.google.com/books?id=mqbaAAAAMAAJ
The Rebel Girl: an autobiography,
my first life (1906-1926).
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
International Publishers, 1973
https://books.google.com/books?id=TK2y0I-E9EkC
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Rebel Girl – Behind The Pieces
Lyrics by Joe Hill