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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 13, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Fights for Free Speech
From the Socialist Montana News of December 2, 1909:
A WOMAN LABOR AGITATOR.
The tour of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn through the west, and the strenuous work she has been performing in generaling the Free Speech fights has introduced to this section of country and earnest and energetic young woman.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is a married woman of New York, whose agitation in the labor movement has excited much attention in the capitalist press, and a certain amount in the labor and socialist press; although the attention given her by the latter has been by no means commensurate with the ability of her work, and the impression it has made upon those who have heard and seen her. But Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has broken into the labor movement under peculiar conditions. Reared in a socialist home, she grew up with her mind intelligent and keen as to the homogeneity of the socialist and labor movements, an idea that is as yet scarcely grasped at all in America, either by the great mass of laborers or the majority of the socialists themselves. To be a socialist, a social reformer, meant to Miss Flynn to work in the labor movement.
When the Industrial Workers of the World was organised she thought she saw in its methods the ideal line of activity for the workers to adopt, who were bent upon industrial emancipation through a revolutionary program. She became devoted to the interest of the Industrial Workers. She refused to ally herself with either the Socialist Party or the Socialist Labor Party because of their failure to co-operate decidedly with the I. W. W.
Unusual as this may appear, and questionably, as it certainly is, in the minds of most socialists, there is a reason for it the very structure of the American labor and socialist movement. In other words we may say that the Industrial Workers of the World is the only place offered for a woman to work in the labor movement who wishes to work along radical lines. The American Federation of Labor has never been particularly favorable to women workers and organizers. The aloofness of the American labor movement from the socialist movement has caused the socialist movement to develop on a more or less hybrid line. It concerns itself little with true labor organization and activity.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has observed this pseudo character in both movements, and, being an able and progressive mind, she has cast her lot with the I. W. W. She has good sense and is enthusiastic, and is a type of the coming woman in the American union movement. European labor has availed itself of the activities of its women always, since labor stirred. America is learning its class lesson rapidly and bitterly; and soon its women will be down off the imagined pedestal, and walking in the mire of its struggle.
Miss Flynn is radical, inclined to be impossible, but gives every indication of having the stuff in her that time and experience will bring to a right balance. She believes in educating women up to the necessity of aggressive union work in order that they may assist their husbands. The west would be fortunate should she develop into a socialist worker and settle in the country where everything is new, and where the freakisms that have developed need able and clearheaded men and women to help us solve our problems and make industrial freedom a reality instead of the idle chatter with which some people amuse themselves.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote EGF, Western IWW Aggressive Spirit, IW p3, Aug 12, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n22-aug-12-1909-IW.pdf
Montana News
(Helena, Montana)
-Dec 2, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/72192247
IMAGE
EGF, Spk Chc p2, Nov 18, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/562163667/
See also:
Tag: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
https://weneverforget.org/tag/elizabeth-gurley-flynn/
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
Tag: Missoula Free Speech Fight of 1909
https://weneverforget.org/tag/missoula-free-speech-fight-of-1909/
EGF at 1907 IWW Convention:
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday September 22, 1907
Chicago, Illinois – Miss Flynn Delegate to I. W. W. Convention -“Young High School Girl-Fiery Socialist Orator”
EGF at 1908 IWW Convention:
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 1, 1908
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Western Overall Brigade Present at Chicago Convention of IWW
St. John Announces Western Tour of EGF:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 15, 1909
From the Industrial Worker of May 6th: Vincent St. John Announces Western Tour of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
EGF Found in Butte MT:
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 17, 1909
Butte, Montana – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Metal Miners
For more on SPA, SLP and IWW, see:
The IWW
A Study of American Syndicalism
-by Paul Frederick Brissenden, Ph.D.
2nd Edition, NY, 1920
(search separately: “Socialist Labor Part”; “Socialist Party”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=5CRAAAAAYAAJ
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The Rebel Girl – Mats Paulson
Lyrics by Joe Hill