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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 28, 1909
Spokane, Washington – June 29th Speech of Gurley Flynn, Part IV
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 15, 1909:
ELIZABETH G. FLYNN ADDRESS TO WORKERS
—–(Concluded From Last Week)
Address of Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Organizer and Lecturer of the Industrial Workers of the World, given at Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday evening, June 29, 1909.
Employers Unite Industrially.
The tobacco trust is organized from the tobacco fields straight through all the productions to the United States cigar stores and sell it over the continent; the American woolen trust, from the backs of the sheep clear through the mills, where the cloth is sold to the wholesaler; the beef trust is organized from the ranchers of the West through the slaughter houses and packing houses, and even in through the tannery, where leather is tanned, and they are now grasping out for the shoe factories, where the shoes are made.
Everywhere in the field of industry you see the organization according to the commodity produced, from the source of the raw material straight through the distribution of the finished product; and you find that straight line of capitalist industry sliced across by the union, just a little slice here and there; and by that method a class that has no capital hope to defeat those that have every power at their command. We have only our organization, fellow workers; they have capital; they have the power of the government, the slugging community of the capitalist class; they have the power of the state; they have the power of international capital-and we have but our power of organization. They can call out against us the militia, the army and the navy, and we have no means of stopping it, until we are organized to shut off from that army and navy their supply of food and their means of transportation. (Applause.)
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