Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 31, 1908
Philadelphia Police Club and Arrest Supporters of Comrade Debs
From the Appeal to Reason of October 24, 1908:
“Riot” to Hear Debs!
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The Philadelphia Inquirer October 12, 1908
The Philadelphia North American, under scare head lines, tells a story which has no parallel in the history of political gatherings in America. Debs was scheduled to speak in three halls in different parts of Philadelphia and long before the doors opened the streets were jammed with men, women and children who were not only anxious to hear the message of Socialism, but willing to pay for this privilege as well!
Says the North American: “Crowds packed every hall, 7,000 being the estimated number inside while as many more lined the streets outside.”
So great was the anxiety of the hungry multitude to listen to the gospel of Socialism that they crowded the doors and became frantic in their efforts to get on the inside.
There was no disorder, yet the police proceeded to club inoffensive women and children and arrest men who protested against the outrages. Here is the North American’s version of the activity of the police:
Women of the World, Unite.
You have double chains to lose
and you have the world to gain.
-May Wood Simons
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday May 31, 1908
Chicago, Illinois: City of the Impoverished Men, Women and Children
From the Montana News of May 21, 1908:
Extracts from the speech of May Wood Simons at the opening of the Chicago convention:
When his auditors had come back from he heights to which Wanhope had lifted them, it remained for May Wood Simons to take them down into the Valley of the Shadow. It is safe to say that such a stirring appeal to the heart of an American audience was never made before. Before Mrs. Simons had spoken for five minutes there was hardly a dry eye in the house.
The sobs of women resounded through the vast auditorium. In one of the front seats William D. Haywood, who came through his great persecution and trial at Boise without batting an eyelash-the man who did not even pale before danger and death when they menaced him and his-was crying openly.
At the press table the hardened reporters, who have seen misery in all its many forms time and again, until their very souls were calloused, were coughing suspiciously and unbidden tears were falling on the shorthand notes of the speech. It was a masterpiece of pathos, that simple description of “The State of Things as They Are.”
Plain Little Recital.
And yet there was nothing theatrical about the little statement. It did not savor of the dramatic in the least. It was just a plain little recital of fact. That was all. And yet a big six-footer just behind the writer of this article was blubbering like a baby. And he was a magazine writer, too. Not for a small magazine, but for one of the most prominent in America.
It is glorious to be arrested
in a good cause.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, age 16
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 4, 1907
From Her Flat in the Bronx: An Interview with Miss Flynn
From New York Evening World of August 24, 1906:
LIFE’S BIG THINGS ALONE INTEREST
GIRL SOCIALIST
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Miss Elizabeth Flynn at Sixteen
Plans Rejuvenation of World.
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STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL.
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Is Leading Spirit of Unity Club
and Laughs at Her Arrest.
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NO WOMAN SUFFRAGIST.
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Says She Fully Realizes the Size of
the Task, but Will Devote
Life to It
—–
The youngest girl socialist in America is undoubtedly Miss Elizabeth Flynn, who was arrested for preaching socialism in the streets and discharged yesterday, and who to-night will address an open-air meeting on Main street, Orange. Although she is only sixteen years of age, Miss Flynn has become the leader of a club of Socialists, the title of which is Unity and the purpose of which is to bring about a lull in the fighting that has so far marked the progress of the socialist party.
Miss Flynn, who lives at No. 795 East One Hundred and Thirty-fourth street, talked freely to-day with an Evening World reporter,. She announced her plan to devote her life to the socialistic cause, saying that she believes it is much better for a woman to give her time to the conversion of mankind to a great economic improvement than to be a mother of children.
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