It’s great to fight for freedom
with a Rebel Girl.
-Joe Hill
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 15, 1907
Northern Minnesota – Miss Flynn Tours and Speaks
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of Dec 14, 1907:
Miss Flynn’s Tour a Success
I arrived in Duluth, Minn., on Friday, November 14th, and on Sunday afternoon, November 16th, the first meeting was held in Superior, Wis., with an audience of 300 people. The second was held the same evening in Duluth, Minn., with an attendance of from 600 to 700 people. At the two meetings the people were enthusiastic in demonstrating their appreciation of industrial unionism. The capitalist papers gave us extended write-ups, copies of which have been forwarded to headquarters, carefully omitting the portions of the talks which dealt with themselves and “the panic.” The chairman of both meetings was Fellow Worker Zollner, a fighter of ability in this vicinity.
The first range town we visited was Proctor, Minn., the home of the “Duluth, Mesaba and Northern” transportation workers. The round-houses and yards of this ore-carrying road are located here, all of it being stock-trust property. The company very generously gave their employers a special train into Duluth to see the “Land of Nod,” which was playing there that night, which had the effect of diminishing the size of our audience. “The Land of Nod” is better for the proletarians than an industrial awakening. Miss Flynn promised to come again, however-one hundred times, if necessary-to get the doctrines of industrial unionism before the workers. Let the company take notice.
Evelette [Eveleth] was visited next, where a meeting was held in a hall furnished by the Finnish comrades. The meeting was a success and a return date was requested.
The next on our list was Two Harbors, a receiving and shipping point on the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, where the shops are located. The I. P. comrades of the district assisted Fellow Worker Konetzny in active and useful work, preparing for the meeting. The opera house held an audience of 350 people, who were attentive and interested.
Then came Bovey, where the meeting was largely attended by the office force of the town, who got “all that was coming to them, and a little bit more.” The workers, who had had the experience with the office force, in the line of carrying guns in the strike for the bosses seemed to be satisfied with the flaying handed to the “intellectual proletarians.”
SOURCE
The Industrial Union Bulletin
(Chicago Illinois)
-Dec 14, 1907, page 3
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v1n42-dec-14-1907-iub.pdf
Note: who the “we” is in this article is unclear. Most likely John Archibald Jones (J. A. or Jack), her future husband. See sources below for her travels with Jones in Northern Minnesota during late 1907.
The Rebel Girl:
An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
(Pages 83-84)
International Publishers, 1973
https://books.google.com/books?id=BhRBMQAACAAJ
Can be read online, see link below:
(Scroll down to page 83)
https://libcom.org/files/rebel-girl-autobiography.pdf
IMAGE
EGF, DEN p21, Sept 21, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/87255888/
See also:
Category: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
https://weneverforget.org/category/elizabeth-gurley-flynn/
Mesabi Iron Miners Strike of 1907,
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mesabi-iron-miners-strike-of-1907/
From more on J. A. Jones see:
Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America, Volume 1
-by Walter B. Rideout
Univ of Wisconsin Press, Jan 16, 2006
(search: “jack jones”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=p_pXZlzWAA0C