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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.
