Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908 4- ir + £ jL 5K«a p&ftt'Ss ILL sw*UH»
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- THE REBEL GIRL with Joe Hill’s dedication to the author Dedicated
- EDITOR’S NOTE This edition
- EDITOR’S NOTE 11
- CONTENTS 15
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908            
£ jL 5K« a p&ftt'Ss iLl SW*UH» CW.^ Pni* »«* J«J I > <»• I "Hi * */ .o - Q " * * :— 4 T* -f C^Ltin^ WteI t»3 *•■* Mn» *4i V«- IvMrt* k* ”— -h -4-* -V -4" THE REBEL GIRL with Joe Hill’s dedication to the author Dedicated To the ever living memory of my dearly beloved only son, Fred Flynn, who died March 29, 1940, at the age of 29. He was my friend and comrade—loving, encouraging, humorous, active in progressive labor politics—to whom I promised this book would be written, and to whom I consciously dedicated my life’s work, before and after his death.
This edition of the first part of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s autobiogra phy has been reedited in accordance with her wishes. She had pre pared the manuscript during very trying times. Her trial under the Smith Act took place in Foley Square, New York, in 1952. In the years immediately following, she was engaged in the exhausting proc esses of appeal and defense, not only in her case but on behalf of the many Communist leaders who were victims of that thought-control prosecution. She began serving her sentence at the Federal Women’s Reformatory at Alderson, West Virginia in January 1955 and was not released until May 1957. The book first appeared, under the imprint of Masses & Mainstream, in November 1955. While in prison she was not permitted to see the proofs (nor the book when it appeared). She thus had no opportunity to make final corrections before publication. Fortunately, Miss Flynn left among her papers a marked copy of the book, in which she noted some corrections. These have been included in the present edition. She had also planned to give the book a more thorough critical reading, but did not manage to do so before her death. However, when she asked International Publishers to reissue the book, she urged that it be completely reedited to correct the errors and smooth out the rough spots. This has been done for the present edition. Evidently, the author before beginning to serve her prison sentence had no time to round out the full period through 1926. Missing, among other things, is her role in the textile strike in Passaic, New Jer sey, and the nationwide tour she made as the newly elected chairman of the International Labor Defense on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti in a desperate effort to save the lives of these martyrs. It was in the course of this trip that she became seriously ill in Portland, Oregon; it took ten years of cure and convalescence before she could return to public life. The book was first published under the title “I Speak My Own Piece: Autobiography of ‘The Rebel Girl’.” In aletter to the editor (San Francisco, May 25, 1962) she expressed the desire that in a new edi tion, the title be changed to “The Rebel Girl” and that Joe Hill’s song 9 10 EDITOR’S NOTE of that name be printed in the book. Also found among her papers was an early outline for the autobiography, to comprise two volumes, the first to be subtitled “My First Life (1906-1926)” and the other “My Second Life.” These wishes have been honored in the present edition. The editor has taken the liberty to give a better structure to the book, by dividing it into seven parts, more or less as the author de scribed the book in her Preface. An index has been added. It is characteristic of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn that in her preliminary outline she wrote under “My Second Life” the motto: “If I could live my life over again!” and then added emphatically “— I did.” After her release from the Alderson prison, she was deeply im mersed in the many pressing defense campaigns arising from the Mc Carthy period and its aftermath. Under the circumstances, she thought it more important to write about her recent prison experiences rather than turn to the second part of the autobiography. She finished her prison book in 1962 and it was published the following year under the title, The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner. On finish ing the manuscript she wrote the editor: “Then I propose, now at last I have my hand to writing again, that I go to work on my second vol ume of autobiography . . . (from 1927 to 1951, approximately).” She did manage to draft a few pages, which were found among her papers, before setting off hopefully to Moscow in 1964 where, in se clusion from the many demands upon her at home, she planned to complete the book. She had hardly begun, when she died on Septem ber 4, 1964, at the age of 74. As Miss Flynn says in the Preface to the present book, her intention in the second volume was to “portray my life as an active Communist from 1937 to the present day. Many have written as ex-Communists. This second book will be the story of an active American Communist and one who is proud of it. No matter what are the consequences, ‘I will never move from where I stand!’ ” To clear up any possible misunderstanding as to when her life as an “active Communist” began—“My Second Life”—it would be in place to explain an important change made in the Preface as it appeared in the first edition. There the date of her joining the Communist Party was given as 1937. In her copy of the book she wrote “1927 correct date” and subtracted 1927 from 1962 (the year evidently in which she made this note) to give the result “35 years”—with the obvious impli cation that she considered herself a Communist for those 35 years. EDITOR’S NOTE 11 According to the draft manuscript already referred to, she applied for membership not in 1927 but in the Fall of 1926, on the request of C. E. Ruthenberg, then general secretary of the Communist Party. As she writes in the Preface, she did so after “careful examination and evaluation of 21 years of previous activities, which led me, to my mind logically and irrevocably” to take this action. Unfortunately, due to the complex factional situation in the party after the death of Ruthen berg in the Spring of 1927, her application was not acted upon. Final ly, after her recovery and with the sponsorship of her old friends Wil liam Z. Foster and Ella “Mother” Bloor, she became a member of the party, this time for good. “Like vaccination it didn’t take the first time,” she wrote in her notes. She was soon elected a member of the National Committee and in 1961 became the National Chairman of the party. The year of her first application for membership is given as 1926 in the present Preface. That Elizabeth Gurley Flynn never completed her autobiography is an inestimable loss. She would have written about the climactic events of the later years, in which she was deeply engaged, with the same un derstanding, sensitivity, wit, and devotion to working people and social ism that mark her story of the earlier years. At the time the book first appeared in 1955 it received little general attention, despite the fame, or as some would have it, the “notoriety” of the author. In the general atmosphere of red-baiting and repression which prevailed, the book suffered “prior censorship” in circles where normally it would have aroused the deepest interest. Let us hope that in the new version the autobiography of “The Rebel Girl” will com mand the attention due this outstanding Communist leader who since the turn of the century had devoted herself so completely to the cause of labor and socialism. —James S. Allen
Preface 21 one: Childhood and Early Youth Paddy the Rebel 23 The Name “Gurley” 26 Shanty and Lace Curtain Irish 31 We Go “Out West” 33 I Hate Poverty 35 Life in the South Bronx 39 Not a Catholic 41 The Spark from Anthracite 45 Books Feed the Flame 47 My First Boy Friend 49 First Speech, 1906 53 “Woman’s Place” 55 T aking Children to Meetings 5 8 two: Socialist and IWW Agitator, 1906-1912 I Mount the Soap Box and Get Arrested 61 “I Don’t Want to Be an Actress!” 64 The East Side and “The Revolution” 67 “Undesirable Citizens” 70 James Connolly—Irish Socialist 73 The IWW “Stirreth Up the People” 76 I Meet Tom L. Johnson 79 Roaring Pittsburgh 81 Mesabi Range 83 Life in Chicago, 1908-1909 86 Mother Jones—Labor Agitator 88 “The Saint” 90 Preston-Smith and Conspiracy 93 Westward Ho! 95 The Migratory Workers 101 Free Speech in Montana 103 Defending the Constitution in Spokane 106 My First Conspiracy Trial, 1910 108
Marriage Goes on the Rocks 113 Caritas Island 115 The Girls’Strike 116 Giants of Labor—Haywood and Debs 118 I Get Arrested Some More 122 The McNamaras Plead “Guilty” 124
The Strike of 1912 127 Bill Haywood in Lawrence 130 “The Melting Pot Boils Over” 133 “Suffer Little Children” 13 5 With Force and Violence 138 Lowell and New Bedford 143 The Ettor-Giovannitti Trial 146 “No God! No Master!” 150
New York Cooks and Waiters Strike 152 The Strike of 1913 15 5 Jersey Justice 160 The Sabotage Issue 162 The Life of a Strike 165 The Pageant 167 Free Speech in New Jersey 170 five: The IWW, 1912-1914 Foster and Tom Mann, Syndicalists 174 Free Speech in San Diego 177 Ford and Suhr 179 Magon and Cline 180 Unemployment Demonstrations 182 May Day in Tampa 184 Jim Larkin Comes to the United States 185 Murder Strikes at Children 187 Joe Hill—Martyred Troubador of Labor 191 Out by the Golden Gate 195 “He Kept Us Out of War” 198 CONTENTS 15 Harvest Stiffs Organize 201 The Saint Turns Prospector 203 Blood on the Range 207 A Solomon’s Decision 212 six: World War I and its Aftermath The Mooney Frame-Up 217 The Everett Massacre 220 Tom Tracy Acquitted 223 Arrested for Vagrancy 226 “Safe for Democracy!” 229 Frank Little Lynched 232 “Seditious Conspiracy” 235 The War Year of 1918 238 Came Armistice Day 241 Amnesty for All Political Prisoners, 1918 to 1923 244 Free Your Fellow-Workers! 246 Women Who Opposed World War I 249 “Life Behind Bars” 252 The Palmer Raids 255 Ruthenberg—“Most Arrested Man in America” 257 Centralia, 1919 261 Criminal Syndicalist Laws 265 “511”—Meeting Place of Many Minds 269 The Irish and Soviet Republics 272 Woodrow Wilson and “Votes for Women” 276 “United Front” in the Twenties 279 When Americans First Heard of Lenin 283 Foster—Leader of Labor 286 The Great Steel Strike, 1919 289 The Children’s Crusade 292
Bomb Scare—Prelude to Murder 297 The Anatomy of a New England Frame-Up 300 I Visit Sacco and Vanzetti 303 The Campaign Starts 305 The DeFalco Affair 308 Before the Trial 311
16 CONTENTS The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti The World as Jury 322 “A Ghastly Miscarriage of Justice’ The Dark Days of 1924 327 Now the Higher Courts 329 Not Much Personal Life 332 314 ' 324 Index 337 Illustrations The Rebel Girl, songsheet 3 Frontispiece, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1908 4 Thomas Flynn, 1895 27 Annie Gurley Flynn, 1895 Elizabeth, school picture, 1903 On Rutgers Square, New York City, 1906 28 On tour through Senator Clark’s mine, 1909 98 With Big Bill Haywood and Hubert Harrison The author with baby son Fred, 1911 99 Together with Eugene Debs, 1911 An Alfred Steiglitz portrait of Elizabeth, 1907 100 In Lawrence, Mass., 1912: the author with a 139 delegation of strikers’ children. Joe Ettor and Artuto Giovanitti Strikers march in Lowell, Mass., 1912 140 Three photos of The Rebel Girl at Patterson, N. J. 1913 157 Carlo Tresca, 158 Mrs. Masonovich and child, Mesabi Range, 1916 208 Judge O. N. Hilton, 1914 Mary Heaton Vorse 210 Hannah Sheey Skeffington 271 Fanny Sellins Thomas Flynn’s party card Letter from Eugene Debs, 1926 315 Letter from Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1925 316 17 18 ILLUSTRATIONS Son Fred (six years’ old), 1915 317 Jim Larkin Women’s Conference delegate’s badge, 1926 Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1926 318
I have tried to write this first book from the viewpoint and in the context of my experiences at the time, avoiding superimposing the viewpoint of the writer at the age of 65, which will be fully developed in the second volume. I feel it is important for me to set down here my personal recollections of this earlier part of the century, a period full of heroic struggles on the part of the American working class, espe cially the foreign bom. As the reader will see, the years 1906 to 1926 were full of “force and violence” used by the ruling class in America against the workers, who gave their lives, shed their blood, were beat en, jailed, blacklisted and framed, as they fought for the right to or ganize, to strike and to picket. Struggles—for a few cents more an hour, for a few minutes less work a day—were long and bitterly fought. Nothing was handed on a silver platter to the American work ing class by employers. All their hard-won gains came through their own efforts and solidarity. It was my privilege to be identified with many of these earlier labor struggles and the heroic men and women, particularly of the “Left,” who made labor history in those days. They should never be forgotten. I feel I have a responsibility to share my memories of them with
By birth I am a New Englander, though not of Mayflower stock. My ancestors were “immigrants and revolutionists”—from the Emerald Isle. I was bom in 1890 in Concord, New Hampshire, at the end of a most tragic century for “that most distressful country,” which had suf fered under British rule for over 700 years. There had been an upris ing in each generation in Ireland, and forefathers of mine were reput ed to be in every one of them. The awareness of being Irish came to us as small children, through plaintive song and heroic story. The Irish people fought to wrest their native. soil from foreign landlords, to speak their native Gaelic tongue, to worship in the church of their choice, to have their own schools, to be independent and self-govern ing. As children, we drew in a burning hatred of British rule with our mother’s milk. Until my father died, at over eighty, he never said “England” without adding, “God damn her!” Before I was ten I knew of the great heroes—Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, Michael Davitt, Parnell, and O’Donovan Rossa, who was chained hand and foot, like a dog, and had to eat from a tin plate on the floor of a British prison. When the French army landed at Killalla Bay in 1798, on an expe dition planned by Wolfe Tone to help free Ireland, all four of my great grandfathers—Gurley, Flynn, Ryan and Conneran—joined the French. They were members of the Society of United Irishmen, dedi cated to set up an Irish Republic. Fired with enthusiasm over the French revolution and the success of the American colonies, they were determined to follow their examples. Young Irishmen for miles around dropped their potato digging when they heard “the French are in the
A reign of horrible terror and reprisal against the Irish followed— floggings, executions, massacres, exile. Paddy Flynn lay in a ditch near his home all night till he heard that a baby was bom. Then he was “On the run!”—again with a price on his head, fed and protected by the peasants, like hundreds of his countrymen. Others fled to France, some came to the Americas, still others were shipped to Austrailian penal colonies. Irish songs reflect this period—“Who dares to speak of ’98?” and “Here’s a memory to the friends that are gone, boys— gone!” Paddy slipped around the hills he knew so well. Once he lay in the center of a ripe wheatfield, while the peasants, knowing he was there, slowly cut and reaped all around him, and the British soldiers rode past looking for rebels. Finally he reached the home of his foster brother, who was a landlord, but who had a loyalty to the son of his peasant wet-nurse and with whom he grew up as a lad. So he hid him away safely in the bam. My bold adventurous great-grandfather-to-be had a gun, a blunder buss it was called, that “shot a hatful of bullets.” He couldn’t resist taking aim at the wild geese as they flew over. A “loyal” (pro-British) weaver heard the shot and came after him with a shuttle board, de manding his surrender. “A fine challenge!” cried Paddy, and shot the king’s spokesman. A neighbor digging peat nearby threw down his spade and rushed to town spreading the news: “Paddy Flynn is in the bog shooting yeomen!” All his friends rushed to his aid while the Brit ish sent out a searching party. But he was over the hills and far away again. After several years ammesty was granted, and he came home to live to a ripe old age. He had two wives and 18 children, who later scattered as immigrants to all continents. When he was dying, his last words were, “I want to see the French land on this coast once more!” My grandfather, Tom Flynn, was one of the many sons of Paddy the Rebel. He was arrested in Ireland as a boy of 16 when caught fish ing for salmon on a Sunday morning, at an hour when everybody was expected to be in church. The river was considered the private proper- Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 2.03 Mb. Share with your friends:
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