You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 14, 1908
New York, New York – Young Socialist Returns to Parent’s Home
For the past few weeks, the news of the arrest of the husband of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has been published in newspapers across the nation. For example, we have this item from Alabama’s Centreville Press of February 13th:
Socialist’s Husband Arrested.
John A. Jones, husband of Elizabeth Flynn, the girl Socialist agitator, was arrested at Aurora, Minn., on a charge of incendiarism.
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At this time Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is in New York City and her husband, Jack Jones, is out of jail and has recently been interviewed by a reporter for the Duluth News Tribune.
From Mississippi’s Vicksburg Evening Post of February 3, 1908:
PRISON HALTS HONEYMOON OF GIRL
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New York, Feb. 3.-With a romance written in suffering, a lifetime crowded into a few months, through which the divine fire of a cause gleams like a beacon light, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the girl Socialist agitator whose words have at seventeen made her known across a continent, has returned ill and exhausted to her father’s home in New York City.
It is just two years ago since Miss Flynn, then a student in the Morris Heights High School, became affiliated with the Socialist movement. Gifted with a quick brain and a facile oratory, she seized upon the dramatic possibilities of the great struggle of labor and capital and spoke as one inspired.
The Flynns are New England folk, the father of a Bowdoin College man and civil engineer, whose difficulties with a company which refused him the money he had earned first aroused the thoughtful Elizabeth, eldest of a brood of four, to interest in the situation. When the Flynns left their Connecticut home to come to New York the girl, already deep in socialist literature, became associated with the leaders in this city. But she was a child, too young to become a member of the association, therefore she was permitted to speak from their platform only as an affiliated agitator.
Elizabeth’s parents had become enrolled among the workers. She created an immediate sensation here. It was not long, however, before the divisions in the socialistic body antagonized the young girl, and she formed the Unity Club for active work. This had a sufficient influence to call forth the remonstrance of the Socialists, who refused to allow their members, notably Hugh Pentecost, to speak at any meeting where she presided.
The Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which unites all laborers in one body instead of differentiating the tribes, as in the American Federation of Labor, last September held a convention at Chicago. This Elizabeth Flynn attended, and there she met John Archibald Jones, a delegate from Bovey, Minn., who was endeavoring to bring back to the fold the Western Federation of Miners. Jones had spent thirty-five days in a jail during the summer for carrying concealed weapons in Grand Rapids, Mich., a trumped-up charge, according to the girl wife, for which he has never been tried.
Love at First Sight.
Jones, sacrificing all else to his work for labor, fired the girl with new belief. He was looking for an agitator to help him in a tour of the mining towns in the Mesabe Iron Range of North Minnesota, and Elizabeth consented to join him. After a brief visit to the East, she met Jones at Duluth in November, and together they made their way from palace to place, never pausing for a day.
When they reached Two Harbors, Minn., Jones declared the love which with him had been an affair of first sight. Elizabeth had always promised herself that no ceremony should belittle the bonds of love, but he persuaded her it was necessary for her protection, especially in that section of the country. They went to the office of the Socialist Mayor, but were informed by the clerk that he had no power to marry them, whereupon Elizabeth, her cause upon her lips, broke into a speech which soon gathered a spell-bound audience.
“That settles it,” said the clerk; “no woman with a man in her mind could talk like that. You’re not much in love, anyway.”
Calls Husband “Comrade.”
The pair then went to a Methodist minister who performed the marriage ceremony. But the girl kept her name and Jones was simply “Comrade” as before. Two days later she was talking at a convention at Minneapolis. It had become apparent, however, that her throat was giving out. While Jones went to Aurora, Minn., to take a position in a mine his girl bride remained to consult a specialist. At the mine the day after Jones’s arrival the house of one of the mine captains had been burned in revenge for a decrease in the force. Though this man was himself a Socialist, that element in the community was blamed for the outrage and the agitation of Elizabeth and her husband told heavily against Jones. He was thrown into prison, where he still remains, though be looks for freedom before many weeks.
The young wife, her throat partially paralyzed, has returned home, several months’ absolute rest being the price of her recovery. She will go to the Pacific coast in April for a tour for the Industrial Workers of the World and in the interval expects to see her young husband for just one week before their ways divide.
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[Photograph added.]
From Minnesota’s Virginia Enterprise of February 7, 1908:
JONES PLAYING TO THE GALLERIES
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Is “Discovered” in Duluth by
News Tribune Reporter
Looking for Work.John Archibald Jones, the one-time painter who found an easier way of winning the coin by assisting in deluding the workingman at so much per “delude” and who recently figured as a suspect in the Aurora dynamiting outrage, was discovered in Duluth on Sunday last by a News Tribune reporter “looking for work.”
This job in itself ought to be about all that one of John Archibald’s well-known instinct should have to do, but we know the range people who enjoy an acquaintance will smile the same as we did to read the statement of the agitator, as follows:
[He said last evening:]
God help me if the steel corporation finds out where I am or what I am doing. I cannot get work anywhere on the range, for orders have been given to keep me out. My work in endeavoring to organize the men into the Industrial Workers of the World has been strongly opposed and there is now no room for me up there.
While Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was making her tour of the range, speaking to the miners, we were married. Just before she was called to New York owing to the serious illness of her mother, we were making arrangements with the head office of the Industrial Workers to spread secret cards among the miners but as she was compelled to leave the deal fell through.
She will come west again in April. Then we will travel through Michigan, South Dakota, Montana and other ming states talking Socialism and organizing the miners. Our order has greatly increased the past year and the coming year should be a record-breaker.
We will organize all the miners employed on both ranges. The work will start with the Montenegrens, the Italians and the Austrians, for they are the easiest to secure, and when we have them, the companies cannot easily discharge them, as their places are hard to fill.
It is with the English speaking men that we will have the most difficulty. They dislike to join our union because they are afraid of being discharged. Their positions are easy to fill. With these men we have to work another plan, and it is being carried on with great success. This plan is the secret card system, which is being worked in other places. The men belong to one mining order, and they cannot belong to any other. However, there are many on the range who belong to this union, and will have to take out secret cards in our union.
However, in the meantime, I am busy looking around for something to do and I will have to keep away from the range.
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SOURCES
The Centreville Press
(Centreville, Alabama)
-Feb 13, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/349221876
Vicksburg Evening Post
(Vicksburg, Mississippi)
-Feb 3, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/200968109/
The Virginia Enterprise
(Virginia, Minnesota)
-Feb 7, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/83882571/
IMAGE
EGF, DEN p21, 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/