Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908 4- ir + £ jL 5K«a p&ftt'Ss ILL sw*UH»

One pound of pure silk would come out from three to 15 pounds heavier in weight. In the journals of the Silk Association we found advice to master dyers on the use of salts for weighting purposes. Ashley and Baily, a silk mill in Paterson up for auction at that time, was advertised as having an excellent weighting plant. Our expose explained to the public why the modem silk fabrics cracked so easily. Part of our “sabotage” advice to the workers was to throw the adulterants down the drain and dye the beautiful silk pure and durable, pound for pound. This was better advice than Boyd’s. But neither were acted upon, I’m sure. Professor Brissenden in his history of the IWW makes the correct comment that the IWW talked rather than applied these tactics.

There was a wave of advocating “sabotage” during this period. It originated in France with the syndicalist General Conference of Labor. Books and pamphlets appeared on it in Europe and some were translated here. It had been the subject of a heated discussion at the Socialist Party Convention in Indianapolis in May 1912, and an amendment added to its constitution barred from membership anyone “who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage or other methods of violence.” This was carried by a large vote. As a result, William D. Haywood was recalled as a member of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee. The very wording of this Article 2, Section 6, Socialist amendment was a forerunner of the infamous criminal syndicalist laws passed subsequently in many states. Its passage widened the chasm between the IWW and the SP. It forced us to explain “sabotage,” as we understood it, far more than we ordinarily would have done, and caused many attacks on the IWW.

This loose talk about sabotage opened the door for the most vicious charges against the IWW, such as setting forest fires in California, which had to be proven untrue in the Criminal Syndicalist trials by producing the fire records of the State of California. It was a form of infantile Leftism in a big way, consisting largely of “sound and fury,

We had a women’s meeting, too, in Paterson at which Haywood, Tresca and I spoke. When I told this story to the women clad in shoddy cotton dresses, there were murmurs of approval which confirmed that the child was right—all the silk they ever saw outside the mill was spoiled goods. Tresca made some remarks about shorter hours, people being less tired, more time to spend together and jokingly he said: “More babies.” The women did not look amused. When Haywood interrupted and said: “No, Carlo, we believe in birth control—a few babies, well cared for!” they burst into laughter and applause. They gladly agreed to sending the children to other cities and, chastened by the Lawrence experience, the police did not interfere this time.

I had one quite unusual experience during the strike. I stayed over in Paterson quite often, usually at the home of A. Lessig, one of the local leaders (accused in a later strike of being a company agent). One morning Mrs. Lessig and I were having breakfast when the doorbell rang. A young man with his coat collar turned up was at the door. He asked to see Miss Flynn, whom he said he understood was staying with her. She was inclined to be suspicious, thought he might be the police, and said: “Who are you?” He turned down his overcoat collar and to her surprise she saw he was a priest. So she invited him to come in. He told me he was greatly disturbed about the strike. When he heard from one of his parishioners, who was a striker, that I was right there, a few hours away from the church, he decided to come to talk to me. He said he knew the people in his parish were very poor, that they were suffering a great deal on account of the strike, but he felt their demands were justified.

His main concern was to learn something about the IWW. Were we as bad as the newspapers said? Were we really trying to help the workers of Paterson? He saw that the people loved us very much and that impressed him. We had an interesting discussion—it was evident he was seeking the truth and his sympathy was with the workers. I heard later that he told his flock to stick to their union, not to scab, and to help win the strike, which surprised some of them very much. But the man who sent him to see me never gave him away, nor did I.

Once again, as in Lawrence, John Golden of the AFL United Tex


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tile Workers tried to intervene. They hired the Armory (which, needless to say, we were never able to get) and called on all textile workers to come to hear the truth about the IWW. We arranged for the hall to be filled and it was, with over 5,000 strikers and as many more outside. Every striker carried his IWW book to that meeting. When Mrs. Sarah Conboy was furiously attacking the IWW, a local IWW official, Ewald Koettgen, jumped on the platform and asked: “Will we who represent the IWW have a chance to reply to these remarks?” The lady grabbed the American flag and wrapped it around herself. The chairman pounded the gavel. Side doors opened and police appeared. Koettgen pulled out his IWW card, waved it in the air and said: “If we can’t talk, let’s go home!” He was answered by a waving sea of red cards.The whole audience got up and left. The AFL textile organizers who came to break up the IWW were left in their empty hall with the police. The strikers marched to the halls we still had at that time and held their own meetings. Bill Haywood said Mrs. Conboy was so mad she threatened to scratch his other eye out, and the strikers howled with laughter. Laughter is a great tonic and a safety valve in a strike.

Our forces were few. We spoke at night in other places to raise funds. I went to the anthracite mining region to speak to girls working in a local silk mill, who were doing Paterson work. The Miners Union gave us their hall and their officials spoke with us. Many of the girls were miners’ daughters, so we were able to stop all work on Paterson orders in these outlying areas. We worked very hard, day and night, to try to keep the strike alive and moving.

As the strike began to drag through the summer months, the IWW leadership was hard put to keep up the drooping spirits and the waning interest of the strikers. Many sought jobs elsewhere. Although we had always advocated short strikes, we found it was not so easy to actually terminate a struggle. Some of the Socialists involved in the strike advocated a shop-by-shop settlement, which we vigorously opposed. Two workers, both Italian, had been killed and hundreds beaten and arrested. One of the dead was a striker who was shot on the picket line. Another was a Paterson worker, not a striker. He lived opposite one of the dye houses. One afternoon, after he returned from work, he was sitting on his steps with his young child in his arms. Deputies

As usual in IWW strikes, we arranged mass funerals and, as usual, the police were conspicuous by their absence. I recall going with a committee of strikers to see the widow of a worker slain near the dye plant to ask if we could give her husband a union funeral. She was in bed, awaiting the birth of a second child. On the other side of a folding partition was the casket of her dead husband, parallel to the bed. The priest came in while we were there but he made no objection to our request. She was a simple grief-stricken woman, who expressed her sympathy with the strikers, many of whom were her neighbors. She placed the blame where it belonged—on the company thugs who murdered her husband. It was a tragic example of force and violence by the employers in the class struggle—a worker dead, a woman wid- owned, two children, one unborn, left orphans—a story repeated all too often in my experience.

At about this time a suggestion was made by a New York friend that a pageant be presented in which the strikers would themselves act out the highlights of the strike. It was organized by Jack Reed, assisted by a group of New York artists and stage folk. It was held in the old Madison Square Garden, and 1,200 strikers were involved in this gigantic enterprise. Night after night, to advertise it, the letters “I W W” gleamed in red lights on the top of the Garden tower, under Diana’s statue. It was a unique form of proletarian art. Nothing like it had happened before in the American labor movement. Nor has it happened since, to my knowledge, until the recent moving-picture production, Salt of the Earth, in which Mexican-American mine workers and their families graphically portrayed what actually happened in their strike.

At the Pageant, a great curtain, representing a silk mill, covered the back of the stage. The aisle was used as the street. In the first scene, the noise of the mill suddenly ceased, the cry of “Strike! Strike!” was raised and the workers poured out of the mill. Scene two showed the mass picket line, encircling the mill—singing, shouting, enthusiasm. The police (portrayed by apologetic strikers) beat and arrested them

Scene four was of the Paterson children leaving their parents to go to friends and sympathizers in other cities until the strike was over. The children were enthusiastic over the adventure, the parents sad but resolute, willing to part with them because they knew they would have loving care, food, clothes and security with their adopted families. Scene five was a strike meeting in Paterson in the Turn Hall, our largest hall. The strikers came to the meeting down the middle aisle, massing around a platform erected on the stage, with their backs to the audience, who thus became a part of the meeting. Haywood addressed this vast gathering on the causes and history of the strike and what the silk workers of Paterson were fighting for. The Pageant ended with the entire crowd singing “The Internationale.”

The Pageant was acclaimed in New York as a great production and a new form of art. But in Paterson the effects were not all positive. Over a thousand of our best strikers were taken out of activity and their attention centered on a play. It was detrimental to our real picket line and meetings. Jealousies arose as to who could go to New York.

Funds were running low and expectations were high as to the financial results of the pageant. The expenses of one such performance were naturally enormous. The final proceeds were extremely meager. That it was run by a New York committee was exploited by the local press to create suspicion and criticism. The Paterson papers accused the strike leaders and the New York committee of raising a large sum and lining their own pockets. It was disastrous to solidarity during the last days of a losing strike. Those of us who had to hold the fort in Paterson to the bitter end had little enthusiasm left for the Pageant. Unfortunately, Bill Haywood became very ill with ulcers, lost over 80 pounds, and was taken to Europe by a friend after the strike ended. Jack Reed, a newspaper correspondent and organizer of the pageant, was assigned to a trip to Mexico and then went to Europe. But this

When the strike ended in 1913, the authorities of many towns and cities in New Jersey made a determined effort to prevent prominent IWW organizers from speaking. I was involved in the defense campaigns on behalf of Quinlan and Boyd, who were convicted during the strike. Others of us were still under indictment and could be called for trial at any time. The Scott conviction was reversed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. He was the local Socialist editor. That encouraged us to fight for dismissals of all charges. My numerous speaking engagements in New Jersey brought me into direct conflict with many repressive measures. In Trenton I was scheduled to speak in the open air at Broad and Front Streets. But I lost this battle with the chief of police, one Cleary, because I was ill and unable to appear. (I was troubled considerably with chronic bronchitis after the long speaking ordeal of the strike.) This irked me considerably as the Central Labor Union was accused locally of being the moving factor behind the police dictum that I could not speak. Bishop McFaul of Trenton commended the chief of police and denounced both Quinlan and myself. Our greatest crime in his eyes seemed to be our “Irish names.”

But in Jersey City, where Frank Hague was then a budding politician and serving as Commissioner of Public Safety, I was more successful. He announced that I would not be allowed to speak in any hall or public place. But I did speak, just as the CIO finally spoke years later when Hague was the notorious tsar-like mayor of Jersey City and issued a similar dictum against their right of assemblage. The People’s Institute, which conducted a public forum every Sunday in the Dickerson High School, invited me to speak in 1914. The Board of Education, in a stormy meeting which lasted till after midnight on January 16, 1914, denied the use of the school to the forum for this meeting. One woman member, Miss Cornelia Bradford, held out on the grounds of free speech. She had read Giovannitti’s poems, which she said were “tender and beautiful.” The officers of the People’s Institute were resolute and after being turned down by the manager of the Or-


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pheum Theater, finally secured the Monticello Theater. No uniformed police appeared, only plainclothes detectives, to see “that Miss Flynn did not say anything to incite her hearers to commit acts of violence,” said the Hudson Dispatch of January 19, 1914, which added: “There was nothing in her address that would offend anyone.” A strong resolution, condemning the action of the Board of Education, was subsequently passed by the Holy Cross Forum of Jersey City (Protestant Episcopal).

In New York City, a Paterson Defense Conference was refused the use of Cooper Union on January 29, 1914, and the meeting had to be held at Arlington Hall. Mrs. J. Sargeant Cram, who was a granddaughter of Peter Cooper, made a vigorous protest against this action to the Board of Directors of Cooper Union. She later bought land and built the Peace House at 110th Street and 5th Avenue, in further protest. The directors of Cooper Union were reported to have said that neither Haywood nor any other IWW speaker could appear on the Cooper Union’s platform.

Meantime, between trips elsewhere, those of us who lived in New York City continued to go regularly to Paterson. We felt it had been a serious error for all of us to leave Lawrence as we had done, and tried not to repeat the mistake there. Prosecutor Dunn was riled by hearings of the Federal Industrial Relations Commission held in Paterson at which someone asked why the outstanding strike indictments were not pressed. In June 1914 he suddenly called Tresca to trial again. Charged with inciting to riot, tried again by a “foreign” (Hudson County) jury, with only police witnesses against him, and many Italian-speaking strikers testifying on his behalf, he was acquitted in 20 minutes. He was accused of saying, in part: “This strike is the start of a great revolution.” Arthur Brisbane, in the New York Journal of July 3, 1941, remarked editorially, commending his acquittal: “Any man has a right to say that he is beginning a revolution. It is just as well for our judges and district attorneys to remember that this country began with a Revolution.”

The Paterson workers were extremely dissatisfied with the conditions in the mill—especially the speedup—and by the Fall of 1915 there was considerable talk of strike again. In an effort to suppress discussion of their grievances and organized action, Chief of Police Bimson ordered that all IWW meetings be suppressed and particularly that we notorious “outside agitators” should not be allowed to speak.

The Free Speech League of New York City organized a protest meeting in late September in Paterson. Leonard Abbott and Lincoln Steffens were met at the train by a crowd of cheering workers, shouting ‘Free Speech!” and “Hurrah for the IWW.” A meeting they had arranged at the Auditorium was ordered prohibited by the chief of police. They went to the Socialist Party headquarters and spoke from the window to the crowd below. There was no interference until Tresca was introduced, said “Good evening,” and was stopped by the police. The crowd was forcibly dispersed at that point by the police who clubbed right and left.

Then I was called to trial on the indictment of two and a half years earlier. A defense committee organized in New York City read like the Social Register. It included Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. Robert Bruere, Mrs. J. Sargent Cram, Mrs. Sumner Gerard, Mrs. Philip Ly- dig, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Miss Fola La Follette, Mrs. Willard Straight, Mrs. Leonard Thomas, Miss Lillian Wald, Miss Margaret Wycherley, and Allen Dawson, Reverend Percy S. Grant, Rev. John Hayes Holmes, Walter Lippmann, Reverend John Howard Melish, Benjamin Luska and Dr. Ira S. Wile. This committee employed lawyers for me. A woman lawyer, Jessie Ashley, volunteered her services. I was tried again on November 27, 1915, by a “foreign jury” from Hudson County. Many workers testified on my behalf and I testified for myself. The Paterson News of December 1, 1915, after I was acquitted in a few minutes, remarked bitterly that “the police witnesses displayed that superhuman perfection of memory which is always suspicious and Hie jury did not believe them.” They were my only accus