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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 25, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Devoted to Downtrodden
From the Spokane Spokesman-Review of July 8, 1909:
GIRL, 19, FIGHTS IN CAUSE OF LABOR
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Industrial Agitator,
Devotes Life to Downtrodden.
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STARTED WHEN ONLY 15
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Young Woman Believes in Evolution and
Socialism and Rejects Christianity.
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I will devote my life to the cause of the downtrodden wage-earner.
My father was a victim of the master class and my brothers and sisters and myself have felt the pinch of poverty as the result of industrial tyranny and I am in the fight to a finish.
My sole aim in life is to do what lies in my power to right the wrongs and lighten the burdens of the laboring class.
In these words Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, not yet 19 years old, explained how she came to take to the lecture platform in the interests of the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which conceives all capitalists to be its deadly enemies.
Only Slip of a Girl.
She is only a slip of a girl, tall, pale and slender, but she has strong convictions and a will to stick to a purpose.
Taking the lecture platform before she was 16 years old, at the completion of her high school course in New York city, she has followed her work persistently for more than three years and is regarded as one of the most effective apostles of the organization.
She has appeared in nearly every city in the country.
She sat for nearly an hour last night telling of her work and its purpose.
There was no bitterness in her words as she spoke of industrial conditions as she sees them, in fact, she smiled several times and her eyes sparkled with a kindly light.
There was no denunciation, no venom, only regret that things are not better than they are.
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