Workers must gain economic advantage,
but they must also gain revolutionary spirit,
in order to achieve a complete victory.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Monday April 12, 1915
Chicago, Illinois - I. W. W. Organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn On Speaking Tour
The Day Book reports that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has arrived in Chicago. She is in that city as part of a tour she is making across the country. Miss Flynn is an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World and is well known for the part she played in the Paterson Silk Strike.
From The Day Book of April 10, 1915:
LEADER OF LABOR STRIKES PREACHES GOSPEL OF PEACE
Pretty as a sweet-girl graduate, fearlessly militant as Mrs. Pankhurst herself, is Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the young labor leader who has been chosen by the Industrial Workers of the World to make a missionary tour through the country and preach I. W. W. doctrine to men and women who work for wage.
"The Man Who Works for Wages" first heard of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn about 10 years ago, when a short-skirted school girl, with her hair in pigtails, amazed a labor meeting in New York by an impromptu speech on economic, social and political conditions with which wage earners contend.
The schoolgirl reformer was then a student in high school, but she was giving more time to the study of the philosophy of Bebel and Marx and other leaders in the international labor movement than to Murray's grammar. She studied the needs of labor, she knew the immeasurable power of united labor-when she talked men thrice her age listened with respect.
Before she was 20 years old she was making lecture tours in the interest of labor and doing notable work as an organizer. During the Paterson silk strike, two years ago, she was a powerful influence with the strikers, and a consoling friend to the "strike mothers."
This leader of labor strikes is less than 25 years old. Grave mannered and gentle she moves among her fellow workers as an apostle of peace and foe to violence. Reason, not riot, is the weapon she offers to working men and women to wage their battle for labor's rights.
From The Day Book of April 12, 1915:
THIS INTERESTING WOMAN TO GIVE SOME LECTURES
Did you ever stop to notice-
That little families live in big houses?
And big families live in little houses?
This is the heading of a circular on a series of lectures in Chicago by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Her first one is in Hod Carriers' Hall, Harrison and Green sts., April 16.
She will talk about "Small Families." Miss Flynn is organizing for the Industrial Workers of the World.
She is a syndicalist and is strong for the idea that the wives of workingmen should know how to reduce the birth rate in their individual households.
[Says the Flynn circular:]
The woman whose job is to raise children to be sold in the modern child labor market is forbidden to know how she can improve her home by having less children...But the wife of a millionaire who made his money out of child labor generally has no children or at most only one or two.
Other subjects and dates are: April 18, East End Hall, Clark and Erie sts., "Violence and the Labor Movement." April 19, Bakers' Hall, 220 Oak st., "Solidarity-Labor's Road to Freedom."
[Photograph added.]
MOTHER JONES RAISES $1,000 FOR COLORADO MINERS!
During a meeting described as "riotous" by the Tribune, milk drivers took time out from a strenuous debate on the strike question to grant Mother Jones $1,000 for the relief of the miners of Colorado.
From the Chicago Daily Tribune of April 9, 1915:
Milkmen Near Riot
Mother Jones in Military Bastile of Colorado
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Riotous scenes were staged in the North Side Turner hall yesterday when nearly 500 union milk wagon drivers battled for and against a strike to enforce the union demand for a six day week. They left after four hours of tumult, no nearer agreement than when they came.
The drivers swayed back and forth under the spell of feverish oratory. When the incessant shouts and catcalls were finally hushed and a vote was taken it was set aside by President Robert Fitchie as illegal.
Meet Employers Again.
The arbitration committee will meet again with the employers in an effort to obtain a concession of a two weeks' vacation with pay in place of the six day week.
"Mother" Jones of Colorado strike fame urged no strike be voted if it could be avoided W. A. Near, chairman of the committee which had been meeting with the employers, then asked the adoption of a resolution calling for a strike if the demand for two weeks' vacation is not granted.
He was followed by D. [J.] Tobin, international president of the union, who also pleaded for peace. He declared that the union faced ruin if it insisted on striking for the six day week.
Both speakers were barely able to proceed, so persistent were the shouts of "Strike or Bust!"
Shout "Strike or Oust."
Then several demanded an immediate strike if the demand for one day a week of rest is not granted. Time and again the two factions stopped the speakers with shouts of "Sit down!" "Put him out!" and "Strike!" Mr. Near seemed to have won over the meeting for peace when he spoke a second time, but again the strike supporters raised a shout. For fifteen minutes no vote could be taken.
At the close of "Mother" Jones' speech she was unanimously granted $1,000 for the relief of suffering miner families in Colorado
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[Photograph added.]
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SOURCES
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 10, 1915
(Also source for image.)
http://www.newspapers.com/...
-Apr 12, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 9, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, forman portrait
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Mother Jones in Colorado Military Bastille
https://archive.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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