Labor History Archives

Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Part 4 by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/elizabeth_flynn_memories.html Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addressed students and faculty members of Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, on November 8, 1962, less than two years prior to her death. Her talk was sponsored by the History Club of the University and its chapter of the Student Peace Union. The occasion was chaired by Kenneth Owens, an assistant professor of history at the University. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's remarks were offered without notes; they were tape recorded and it is a transcript of that tape which is herewith published for the first time.This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).A few excerpts follow:“It is ‘society’ which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word ‘society’.It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished . . .”“I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. We left off with Flynn talking about how hard it was to keep the union together after a strike with on central structure. I never would have used such a word (ideological) today but it had to be unity for a particular idea, for a goal, and not only workers but non-workers could also be involved in that kind of an effort. And so today the methods to have political auxiliaries to unions is a much better and a much more effective thing. But we tried to put everything in one pot and it simply didn't work. We were unable, and we were pretty arrogant. We were young and had the right answer to everything. We didn't want to work with the AFL, we didn't want to work with the Socialist Party, we didn't want to work with anybody else. And naturally, when the Communist Party came along, they considered that a real party because here was a much more revolutionary organization than the old Socialist Party, and they didn't agree either with the concept of the Russian Revolution although they were glad that it was a revolution that overthrew the Czar and they didn't stand with Kerensky but there was certain, you might almost call it, primitive concepts of a revolution. To the IWW a revolution meant that you take over the factories, and the shops and the mills, and the mines and the fields and you chase the bosses out, just chase them out, and that was the end of it. That was the revolution. Well to the bosses it was nothing less than a revolution against them which they successfully redefined as a revolution against the Country. Many more people would be sympathetic to workers revolting against an uncaring and exploitive management than would be to a revolution against the very tenants of the Country. Image from http://faculty.washington.edu/ gregoryj/cpproject/correll.htm Today, big corporations have taken over our Country and America is becoming more and more like the very Corporations supporting the politicians in power. For citizens it means we are losing the very foundation upon which America was founded. However, they ignored the state. Their idea was that the state would disappear, when you abolish capitalism, you abolish the state, but that the state might continue to exist, that it might be necessary for it to continue to exist, was not exactly within the IWW picture so naturally they expected a great deal more from a revolution in another country than it was possible for that country to achieve overnight. This is rather naïve and idealistic. It depends upon people adhering to basic social principles. History has taught us that that rarely happens. So we need a system of laws and the US Constitution as a guiding hand in helping us humans maintain our freedom.But the idea that everything will just stay the same and take care of itself is just as naïve. Those who would enslave workers are taking away the safeguards that originally defined us as a free democracy. Now the IWW's positive side, certainly it was militant, it was courageous, that it fitted the period, that it belonged to the pioneer days and that it fought for the interests of the poorest, the most lonely, the most despised, those that the AFL couldn't organize, the foreign born, the women, and as the Negroes began coming into industry, the Negroes. Of course, I should say that when we first started in 1905, there were not too many Negro workers in the north. They came up later. Henry Ford was responsible for bringing a great many of them, on all kinds of false pretenses and the steel industries brought them up also to act as strike breakers. However, they were very susceptible to the organization put forward by Foster and others. Exploiters, Capitalists, are always trying to find ways to exploit. Without the militancy of workers, corporations of the day would have no need to bargain with the AFL and affiliate unions in a peaceful manner. And in fact labor laws were passed forcing both labor and management to bargain in good faith and bargain peacefully. Also, Capitalists have been successful in convincing the populace that exploitation is good. So buying cheap stuff at Wal-Mart and exploiting low paid working people is just fine. The problem is that people just don’t understand that they are merely being used as a tool of exploitation and that they themselves are just as exploited.Graphic from http://faculty.washington.edu/gregoryj/ cpproject/vofawoodcut11.jpg Now, I am going to tell you of a few of the things that we never heard of in those days. It is very well to realize the difference in the environment, the difference in the composition, the difference in the level of our development. We couldn't see things with the eyes of 1962. We saw them with the eyes of 1905 through about 1917. Well, we certainly never heard of such a thing and we never thought it would be possible, that there would be social security or unemployment insurance. Those were the results of the 30's. The great struggle hat came out after the decline of the IWW. Also, we never heard of vacations with pay. We never heard of vacations, let alone vacations with pay. We never heard of seniority as it is understood today. There were no pensions for retirement of workers. There were no welfare funds of unions. There were no health centers of unions, and there were no trade union schools such as there are today. The actual wars between labor and management set the stage for a New Deal sought by progressives in both Parties. President Roosevelt could see the social unrest and poverty building up during the Great Depression and therefore came up the New Deal. This New Deal gave people some of the wealth concentrated in the hands of the few at the time. He also saved the Capitalist system from a devastating realignment of our system of Government. Today we have come full circle. Corporations are concentrating wealth and power again which will inevitably lead to social unrest and a burning desire for change. These will be interesting times indeed. All of these things have come with the unions that have come into existence since the period of the IWW. We had no political action committees and certainly we did not have and we didn't think of such a thing as being able to check off the dues in a closed shop by the employer. Well, of course, the employers don't like it and there is something about all kinds of repressive legislation to abolish it. We certainly never heard of paying farmers not to produce. That was something we would have said everybody was crazy if we said such a thing would come into existence. Graphic from http://faculty.washington.edu/gregoryj/ cpproject/images/correll/b&w%20800w /Voice%20of%20Action%20calendar05.jpg Now, picketing with us, was everybody getting out, man, woman and child, and you ran up against the men on horseback, etc., but that was picketing. The other day I saw a picture of teamsters picketing. Well, I wish I could show it to the strikers in 1912. Here they were, sitting at a table, a round table, with a TV on it, and they had a pitcher and they had glasses, and I don't guarantee what was in it (laughter) an they had a big umbrella over their heads, like they have on the beach, and that was picketing by the teamsters but I'll bet they were just as effective in keeping anybody from going to work as we ever were with our mass picketing so many years ago. There is less violence against labor today, but there are more legal restrictions. There are more attempts to invade the rights of labor by repressive legislation and by all kinds of restrictions. Under the Bush Administration we have lost long standards like overtime and the 40 hour week. The NLRB is reversing years of case law to our disadvantage. Labor unions are hamstrung today and working people are finding themselves once again battling against the system. A system by, of and for the corporate wealthy. Graphic From http://www.holtlaborlibrary. org/tafthartley.html One of the most important issues today, even more important than wages to the workers, to our struggling with something we never heard of, is automation, are the work rules, the kind of speedup that there is today with automation is entirely different from the speedups that we knew in the old day. We never thought of such a thing that there would be a decreased labor force and increased production and that part of the plant would be left idle and the other part would produce more than the whole plant at one time. Now this, of course, are all the results of automation and 80 are new problems that we couldn't even foresee or even imagine in these long ago days. We had our own problems but they were quite different. There has been labor protection by law but there has also been labor repression by law, such as the Taft-Hartley Law and the Landrum-Griffin Law. This cartoon, by Evelyn Atwood, is from the center spread of the pamphlet, Fight the Slave Labor Law      The Taft-Hartley Act (also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act) was passed over the veto of Harry S. Truman on 23rd June, 1947. When it was passed by Congress Truman denounced it as a "slave-labor billThe act declared the closed shop illegal and permitted the union shop only after a vote of a majority of the employees. It also forbade jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts. Other aspects of the legislation included the right of employers to be exempted from bargaining with unions unless they wished to. Graphic From http://www.holtlaborlibrary. org/tafthartley.html The act forbade unions from contributing to political campaigns and required union leaders to affirm they were not supporters of the Communist Party. This aspect of the act was upheld by the Supreme Court on 8th May, 1950The Taft-Hartley Act also gave the United States Attorney General the power to obtain an 80 day injunction when a threatened or actual strike that he/she believed "imperiled the national health or safety". http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhartley.htm Now, today, education may be, I ought to say, that after I told you I left school at 16. Education is much more necessary today in industry than it was in these long ago years. In those days, we used to say that all you would need was the boss came out and looked the workers over, and if he was strong in the back and weak in the head, you were the one he hired, it that is no longer the case because more and more, with the introduction of automation and the introduction of new methods of production, it is not a question of manual labor alone. Automation has increased productivity many time over. However, the profits of that miracle have gone primarily to an elite few. Instead of everyone working fewer hours for good wages, workers were left with no jobs at all. So what is this retrace we are in all about? It is a question of skill and it is a question of education and in the Socialist countries they do use automation in this way. They use it to abolish menial and arduous work, and they educate people to a higher level to able to cope with the complicated requirements of automation. Many will be laid off and are being laid off. Those that stay will need more training. Now, these are some of the problems of today. Now, you may ask me, and I am not going on any longer because I know you want to ask me, and I talked too long, have we made progress? When people fight for something in common cause, they trust each other and stick together. We don’t have that kind of trust and solidarity because we have not really had to fight all the much. Our unions are slowly slipping away and the general public doesn’t think much about it because they have no experience to tell them to be alarmed. Graphic from http://faculty.washington.edu/ gregoryj/cpproject/correll.htm What is a union anyway? A business? A social movement? Oh, we certainly have, we certainly have, in spite of all the difficulties, in spite of all the problems, the labor movement has made tremendous progress. There is a new role and a new outlook for youth today. One of the pamphlets that I read years ago, I don't know if any of you have ever heard of it, is Peter Kropotkin's Appeal to the Young (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/appealtoyoung.html ) and it was a beautiful appeal to the young to  carry forward their responsibility to make this world a better world to live in. Now, I feel in our way we did our best but the time comes when you know, they say old age isn't a disease but I say it is. The time comes when you have to slow down and lay off and give the benefit of your experience to a younger generation, if they want it. I feel very grateful to you for this opportunity. I very rarely speak on a subject like this and therefore I feel very grateful to you for the opportunity to relive my youth in a sense and to bring to you some of the tremendous struggles and sacrifices and ideals and hopes that went into the early years of this century to building the American labor movement. Picture from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/ tablegraphics.html  Now that’s a beard! It is clearly up to the young to learn from the old and help form the pattern of their lives and futures. If they don’t learn from history and just go along for the ride, someone else will shape their lives for them. Someone who has the wealth to pay for professional shapers-o- lives geared to the goals of he who pays the piper. Will you spend you life working for long hours just to stay alive long enough to perhaps retire with a little something to live on? ALL THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE HOMEWORK Has it ever occurred to you that with our technology we could be living in something close to paradise? Think about it. Where does all our money go? All of it including profits, government taxes, war both economic and physical, and anything else you can think of; where does it go? Why do we live like this?Check out these great graphics at http://www.oldamericancentury.org/gallery.htm

“...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance - 1841 - From 'Essays", First series http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/ infousa/facts/democrac/14.htm andhttp://www.lucidcafe.com/ library/96may/emerson.html We are stronger together. We have to fight to get our fair share. We can win, just like we have in the past.