The IWW has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true.
Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Thursday April 22, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Wants Women on the Picket Line
From The Day Book of April 20, 1915:
WOMEN PICKETS ASKED BY GIRL LEADER
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Urges
Union Men to Send Wives
and Daughters to Firing Line-
Wants 8-Hour Day by Organization.
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, speaker for the Industrial Workers of the World at Oak hall, 220 Oak st., last night criticized the American Federation of Labor because it doesn't put women on the picket line during strikes.
[Said Miss Flynn:]
Many a time...a strike has been lost because the men didn't know enough to bring their women right out on the firing line. It isn't the police and the strikebreakers who always defeat strikers.
It's the woman who stays home and never understands what her man is fighting about-there's where the trouble is. Put the woman on the picket line. If she stays home, ignorant of the issues of the strike, with her children tugging at her skirts, and newspapers and gossips giving her a wrong idea what it's all about, she beats the strike, she and the rest of 'em like her.
I. W. W. Women lead march to Madison Square Garden before
the Pageant of the Paterson Silk Strikers, 1913
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The I. W. W. has had women right in the front line of pickets wherever we have had a strike. For this we have been accused of hiding behind women's skirts. The truth is the women push themselves to the front ahead of the men on the picket line when they once get interested.
The eight-hour movement of thirty years ago was more virile than it is today. Instead of trying to get the eight-hour workday by organization they are trying to get it by law today. Any eight-hour day you get by law isn't a real eight-hour day. They got it on the law books of Colorado. And they they found they had to strike to get the law enforced. The soldiers sent by Gov. Ammons to shoot the strikers were killing men who were on strike to get the law enforced [which labor laws the administration of Gov. Ammons, Democrat of Colorado, had failed to enforce].
The I. W. W. is for sabotage. That means working slack instead of fast. It means interfering with the quality of goods. It is an attempt of the part of the workers to limit production in proportion to pay.
Employers sabotage. They adulterate food. They mix tin and lead solutions into silks to make the product weigh more and look more valuable than it really is. The more labor lays down on the job the more work there is to be done and the less men there are in the unemployed army.
A skilled worker is a fellow waiting for some machine to run him off his job. Glass bottle blowers used to be skilled workers. It cost $500 to join the union. Now machines do the work. And in many shops the union has gone to smash.
The bosses exploit negroes, Jews, Irish, Poles in a mass, altogether. Why shouldn't these workers forget nationality, color, race and creed and fight the boss in a mass, altogether.
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[Photographs added.]
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SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 20, 1915, Noon Edition
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Fort Wayne (IN) News of Mar 20, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IWW Women lead march to Madison Square Garden, 1913
http://intothebeautifulnew.tumblr.com/...
See also:
Sabotage
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
IWW Publishing Bureau,
Cleveland, Ohio, April 1915
http://babel.hathitrust.org/...
Modern-day IWW on Sabotage
http://www.iww.org/...
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on Sabotage
Published in April of 1915
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Many of the practices I referred to in this pamphlet were not "sabotage" at all, but simply old-fashioned working class practices from time immemorial-such as the Scotch system of "ca' canny" or slow-down on the job. Another was the "Open Mouth" practice of workers in restaurants, stores, etc., telling the customer the exact truth about the quality of foods or goods.
Another was the railroad workers' practice of "following the Book of Rules," which is an instrument devised to protect the companies against damage suits by placing blame for accidents on workers. It was never intended by the company that it should be obeyed to the letter for if it were, chaos would ensue. So it was used occasionally by European workers as a method of striking on the job. A few years ago when Michael Quill, the head of the Transport Workers Union in New York City, threatened the company with a strict enforcement of the Book of Rules, he was accused of having read this obscure pamphlet of mine, of which he had undoubtedly never heard. Very few copies are around today and most of them are in the government's files.
[Photograph and paragraph break added.]
SOURCE
I speak my own piece: autobiography of "The Rebel Girl"
by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Masses & Mainstream, 1955
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGE
Cover of Sabotage by EGF
Pub'd by IWW in April of 1915
http://babel.hathitrust.org/...
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The Rebel Girl-Mats Paulson
Yes, her hands may be harden'd from labor
And her dress may not be very fine
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
-Joe Hill
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