[The Truth About the Paterson Strike](https://syndicalism.org/texts/474/the-truth-about-the-paterson-strike)
============================================================================================================

By [Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn](https://syndicalism.org/authors/240/elizabeth-gurley-flynn)

Speech given January 31, 1914 at the New York Civic Club Forum

Topics: [manufacturing](https://syndicalism.org/topics/manufacturing),
[USA](https://syndicalism.org/topics/USA),
[IWW](https://syndicalism.org/topics/IWW),
[sabotage](https://syndicalism.org/topics/sabotage), [strike tactics and
analysis](https://syndicalism.org/topics/strike%20tactics%20and%20analysis)

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*Comrades and Friends:*

The reason why I undertake to give this talk at this moment, one year
after the Paterson strike was called, is that the flood of criticism
about the strike is unabated, becoming more vicious all the time,
drifting continually from the actual facts, and involving as a matter of
course the policies and strike tactics of the I.W.W. To ensure future
success in the city of Paterson it is necessary for the past failure to
be understood, and not to be clouded over by a mass of outside
criticism. It is rather difficult for me to separate myself from my
feelings about the Paterson strike, to speak dispassionately. I feel
that many of our critics are people who stayed at home in bed while we
were doing the hard work of the strike. Many of our critics are people
who never went to Paterson, or who went on a holiday; who did not study
the strike as a day-by-day process. Therefore it's rather hard for me to
overcome my impatience with them and speak purely theoretically.

What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers
must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary
spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a
few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with
the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to have
achieved a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. For workers to go
back with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and a determined
attitude toward society means that even if they have made no economic
gain they have the possibility of gaining in the future. In other words,
a labor victory must be economic and it must be revolutionizing.
Otherwise it is not complete. The difference between a strike like
Lawrence and a garment workers' strike in New York is that both of them
gained certain material advantages, but in Lawrence there has been born
such a spirit that even when 10,000 workers were out of employment, the
employers did not dare reduce the wages of a single man still in the
mills. When the hours were reduced by law in New Hampshire and
Connecticut in the midst of the industrial panic prevailing throughout
the textile industry it was impossible for those manufacturers to reduce
the wages at the same time, knowing full well that to do so would create
a spontaneous war. Among the garment workers in New York there has
unfortunately been developed an instrument known as the protocol,
whereby this spirit is completely crushed, is completely diverted from
its main object against the employers. This spirit has now to assert
itself against the protocol.\
 \
So a labor victory must be twofold, but if it can only be one it is
better to gain in spirit than to gain economic advantage. The I.W.W.
attitude in conducting a strike, one might say, is pragmatic. We have
certain general principles; their application differs as the people, the
industry, the time, and the place indicate. It is impossible to conduct
a strike among English-speaking people in the same way that you conduct
a strike among foreigners, it is impossible to conduct a strike in the
steel industry in the same manner you conduct a strike among the textile
workers where women and children are involved in large numbers. So we
have no ironclad rules. We realize that we are dealing with human beings
and not with chemicals. And we realize that our fundamental principles
of solidarity and class revolt must be applied in as flexible a manner
as the science of pedagogy. The teacher may have as her ultimate ideal
to make the child a proficient master of English, but he begins with the
alphabet. So in an I.W.W. strike many times we have to begin with the
alphabet, where our own ideal would be the mastery of the whole.

The Paterson strike divides itself into two periods. From the 25th of
February, when the strike started, to the 7th of June, the date of the
pageant in New York City, marks the first period. The second period is
from the pageant to the 29th of July, when every man and woman was back
at work. But the preparation for the strike had its roots in the past,
the development of a four-loom in a union mill organized by the American
Federation of Labor. This four-loom irritated the workers and
precipitated many small outbreaks. At any rate they sent to Mr. John
Golden, the president of the United Textile Workers of America, for
relief, and his reply was substantially, "The four-loom system is in
progress. You have no right to rebel against it." They sought some other
channel of expressing their revolt, and a year before the historic
strike the Lawrence strike occurred. It stimulated their spirit and it
focused their attention on the I.W.W. But unfortunately there came into
the city a little group of Socialist Labor Party people who conducted a
strike ending in disaster under what they were pleased to call the
auspices of the "Detroit I.W.W." That put back the entire movement for a
year.

But in the beginning of last year, 1913, there was a strike in the
Doherty mill against the four-loom system. There had been agitation for
three months by the Eight-Hour League of the I.W.W. for the eight-hour
day, and it had stimulated a general response from the disheartened
workers. So we held a series of mass meetings calling for a general
strike, and that strike broke on the 25th of February, 1913. It was
responded to mostly by the unorganized workers. We had three elements to
deal with in the Paterson strike; the broad silk weavers and the dyers,
who were unorganized and who were as you might say, almost virgin
material, easily brought forth and easily stimulated to aggressive
activity. But on the other hand we had the ribbon weavers, the
English-speaking conservative people, who had behind them craft
antecedents, individual craft unions that they had worked through for
thirty years. These people responded only after three weeks, and then
they formed the complicating element in the strike, continually pulling
back on the mass through their influence as the English-speaking and
their attitude as conservatives. The police action precipitated the
strike of many workers. They came out because of the brutal persecution
of the strike leaders and not because they themselves were so full of
the strike feeling that they could not stay in any longer. This was the
calling of the strike.

The administering of the strike was in the hands of a strike committee
formed of two delegates from each shop. If the strike committee had been
full-force there would have been 600 members. The majority of them were
not I.W.W.; were non-union strikers. The I.W.W. arranged the meetings,
conducted the agitation work. But the policies of the strike were
determined by that strike committee of the strikers themselves. And with
the strike committee dictating all the policies of the strike, placing
the speakers in a purely advisory capacity, there was a continual danger
of a break between the conservative element who were in the strike
committee and the mass who were being stimulated by the speakers. The
socialist element in the strike committee largely represented the ribbon
weavers, this conservative element making another complication in the
strike. I want if possible to make that clear before leaving it, that
the preparation and declaration as well as the stimulation of the strike
was all done by the I.W.W., by the militant minority among the silk
workers; the administering of the strike was done democratically by the
silk workers themselves. We were in the position of generals on a
battlefield who had to organize their forces, who had to organize their
commissary department while they were in battle but who were being
financed and directed by people in the capital. Our plan of battle was
very often nullified by the democratic administration of the strike
committee.

The industrial outlook in Paterson presented its difficulties and its
advantages. No one realized them quicker than we did. There was the
difficulty of 300 mills, no trustification, no company that had the
balance of power upon whom we could concentrate our attack. In Lawrence
we had the American Woolen Company. Once having forced the American
Woolen Company to settle, it was an easy matter to gather in the threads
of the other mills. No such situation existed in Paterson. 300
manufacturers, but many of them having annexes in Pennsylvania, meant
that they had a means whereby they could fill a large percentage of
their orders unless we were able to strike Pennsylvania simultaneously.
And those mills employed women and children, wives and children of union
weavers, who didn't need actually to work for a living wage, but worked
simply to add to the family income. We had the difficulty that silk is
not an actual necessity. In the strike among coal miners you reached the
point eventually where you had the public by the throat, and through the
public you were able to bring pressure on the employers. Not so in the
silk industry. Silk is a luxury. We had the condition in Paterson,
however, that this was the first silk year in about thirty years. In
1913 fortunately silk was stylish. Every woman wanted a silk gown, and
the more flimsy it was the more she wanted it. Silk being stylish meant
that the employers were mighty anxious to take advantage of this
exceptional opportunity. And the fact that there were over 300 of them
gave us on the other hand the advantage that some of them were very
small, they had great liabilities and not very much reserve capital.
Therefore we were sort of playing a game between how much they could get
done in Pennsylvania balanced off with how great the demand for silk was
and how close they were to bankruptcy. We had no means of telling that,
except by guesswork. *They* could always tell when our side was
weakening.

The first period of the strike meant for us persecution and propaganda,
those two things. Our work was to educate and stimulate. Education is
not a conversion, it is a process. One speech to a body of workers does
not overcome their prejudices of a lifetime. We had prejudices on the
national issues, prejudices between crafts, prejudices between competing
men and women --- all these to overcome. We had the influence of the
minister on the one side, and the respect that they had for government
on the other side. We had to stimulate them. Stimulation, in a strike,
means to make that strike and through it the class struggle their
religion; to make them forget all about the fact that it's for a few
cents or a few hours, but to make them feel it is a "religious duty" for
them to win that strike. Those two things constituted our work, to
create in them a feeling of solidarity and a feeling of
class-consciousness --- a rather old term, very threadbare among certain
elements in the city of New York, but meaning a great deal in a strike.
It means, to illustrate, this: the first day of the strike a
photographer came on the stage to take a picture, and all over the hall
there was a quiver of excitement: "No, no, no. Don't let him take a
picture." "Why not?" "Why, our faces might show in the picture. The boss
might see it." "Well," I said, "doesn't he know you are here? If he
doesn't know now, he will know tomorrow."

From that day, when the strikers were afraid to have their pictures
taken for fear they might be spotted, to the day when a thousand of them
came to New York to take part in a pageant, with a friendly rivalry
among themselves as to which one would get their picture in the paper,
was a long process of stimulation, a long process of creating in them
class spirit, class respect, class consciousness. That was the work of
the agitator. Around this propaganda our critics center their volleys:
the kind of propaganda we gave the strikers, the kind of stimulation and
education we gave them. Many of our critics presume that the strikers
were perfect and the leaders only were human; that we didn't have to
deal with their imperfections as well as with our own. And the first big
criticism that has been made --- of course they all criticize: for the
socialists we were too radical, for the anarchists we were too
conservative, for everybody else we were impossible --- is that we
didn't advocate violence. Strange as it may seem, this is the criticism
that has come from more sources than any other.

I contend that there was no use for violence in the Paterson strike;
that only where violence is necessary should violence be used. This is
not a moral or legal objection but a utilitarian one. I don't say that
violence should *not* be used, but where there is no call for it, there
is no reason why we should resort to it. In the Paterson strike, for the
first four months there wasn't a single scab in the mills. The mills
were shut down as tight as a vacuum. They were like empty junk boats
along the banks of the river. Now, where any violence could be used
against non-existent scabs, passes my understanding. Mass action is far
more up-to-date than personal or physical violence. Mass action means
that the workers withdraw their labor power, and paralyze the wealth
production of the city, cut off the means of life, the breath of life of
the employers. Violence may mean just weakness on the part of those
workers. Violence occurs in almost every American Federation of Labor
strike, because the workers are desperate, because they are losing their
strike. In the street car strikes, for instances, every one of them is
marked with violence, because the men in the power-house are at work,
power is going through the rails and the scabs are able to run the cars.
The men and women in desperation, seeing that the work is being done,
turn the cars off the track, cut the wires, throw stones, and so on. But
the I.W.W. believes that it is far more up to date to call the men in
the power house out on strike. Then there won't be any cars running, any
scabs to throw stones at or any wires that are worth cutting. Physical
violence is dramatic. It's especially dramatic when you talk about it
and don't resort to it. But actual violence is an old-fashioned method
of conducting a strike. And mass action, paralyzing all industry, is a
new-fashioned and a much more feared method of conducting a strike. That
does not mean that violence shouldn't be used in self-defense. Everybody
believes in violence for self-defense. Strikers don't need to be told
that. But the actual fact is that in spite of our theory that the way to
win a strike is to put your hands in your pocket and refuse to work, it
was only in the Paterson strike of all the strikes in 1913 that a strike
leader said what Haywood said: "If the police do not let up in the use
of violence against the strikers the strikers are going to arm
themselves and fight back." That has, however, not been advertised as
extensively as was the "hands in your pockets" theory. Nor has it been
advertised by either our enemies or our friends: that in the Paterson
strike police persecution did drop off considerably after the open
declaration of self-defense was made by the strikers. In that
contingency violence is of course a necessity and one would be stupid to
say that in either Michigan or West Virginia or Colorado the miners have
not a right to take their guns and defend their wives and their babies
and themselves.

The statement has been made by Mrs. Sanger in the "Revolutionary
Almanac" that we should have stimulated the strikers to do something
that would bring the militia in, and the presence of the militia would
have forced a settlement of the strike. That is not necessarily true. It
was not the presence of the militia that forced a settlement of the
Lawrence strike. And today there is militia in Colorado, they have been
there for months. There is the militia in Michigan, they have been there
for a long period. There was the militia in West Virginia, but *that*
did not bring a successful termination of the strike, because coal was
being produced --- and copper was being produced --- in other parts of
the world, and the market was not completely cut off from its product.
The presence of the militia may play a part in stimulating the strikers
or in discouraging the strikers, but it does not affect the industrial
outcome of the strike, and I believe to say so is to give entirely too
much significance to political or military power. I don't believe that
the presence of the militia is going to affect an industrial struggle to
any appreciable extent, providing the workers are economically in an
advantageous position.

Before I finish with this question of violence I want to ask you men and
women here if you realize that there is a certain responsibility about
advocating violence. It's very easy to say, "We will give up our own
lives in behalf of the workers," but it's another question to ask them
to give up their lives; and men and women who go out as strike agitators
should only advocate violence when they are absolutely certain that it
is going to do some good other than to spill the blood of the innocent
workers on the streets of the cities. I know of one man in particular
who wrote an article in the "Social War" about how "the blood of the
workers should dye the streets in the city of Paterson in protest" but
he didn't come to Paterson to let his blood dye the streets, as the
baptism of violence. In fact we never saw him in the city of Paterson
from the first day of the strike to the last. This responsibility rests
heavily upon every man and woman who lives with and works with and loves
the people for whom the strike is being conducted.

The second criticism is "Why did we go to Haledon? Why didn't we fight
out the free speech fight in Paterson?" One of the humorous features of
it is that if Haledon had been a Democratic city instead of a Socialist
city, that criticism would probably not have been made at all. It was
not that we went to Haledon, it was that we went to a Socialist city,
that irritates our critics. I want to point out to you something that
you possibly never realized before, and that is that we had "right" to
speak in Paterson. There was no conventional free speech fight in
Paterson. A conventional free speech fight is where you are not
permitted to speak at all, where you are immediately arrested and thrown
into jail and not given the right to open your mouth. That is not the
kind of free speech fight that existed in Paterson. We had the right to
speak in the halls of Paterson, and we would have had the right to the
last day of the strike if it had not been for the position of the
hallkeepers. It was not the police that closed the halls, it was for the
hallkeepers, and for the reason that they could not afford to lose their
licenses. And a hallkeeper is usually a saloon-keeper first and a renter
of halls afterwards. If there had been any hall in Paterson where a
saloon was not attached we would probably have been able to secure that
hall with but very little trouble. Some of the hallkeepers in fact, if I
may speak from personal experience, were very glad to get rid of us,
because we were not paying any rent and we were making a lot of work
around their places. We had the right to speak on Lafayette Oval. We
hired a piece of land on Water Street and used it during the entire time
of the strike. The only time meetings were interfered with was on
Sunday, and that involved not a free speech issue but a Sunday issue,
the blue law of the State of New Jersey. When you are fighting a strike
with 25,000 people and you are focusing your attention on trying to keep
those people lined up to win that strike, it is a mighty dangerous
procedure to go off at a tangent and dissipate your energies on
something that is not important, even though you may have a right to do
it. We had a right to speak on Sundays, but it meant to divide our
energies and possibly to spend our money in ways that did not seem
absolutely advisable at the time. The free speech fight that we have in
Paterson is something far more intricate than just having a policeman
put his hand over your mouth and tell you you can't speak. They let you
talk. Oh yes. If I had invited all of you to come to Paterson and speak
they would have let you talk, and the police and the detectives would
have stood off at one side and listened to you. Then you \[would\] have
been indicted by the grand jury for what you said, arrested and put
under bonds and a long legal process started to convict you for what you
said.

Therefore to call in the free speech fighters of the country would have
been an absurdity, since every one of them would have been permitted to
say their say and afterward would have been indicted for the language
they used. There was quite a different situation from Lawrence. In
Lawrence the halls were never interfered with. In Paterson we had this
peculiar technicality, that while you had the right to speak they said,
"We hold you responsible for what you say, we arrest you for what you
say, what you meant, what you didn't say, what we thought you ought to
have said, and all the rest of it." Our original reason for going to
Haledon, however, was not on account of the Sunday law only, but goes
deep into the psychology of a strike. Because Sunday is the day before
Monday! Monday is the day that a break comes in every strike, if it is
to come at all during the week. If you can bring the people safely over
Monday they usually go along for the rest of the week. If on Sunday,
however, you let those people stay at home, sit around the stove without
any fire in it, sit down at the table where there isn't very much food,
see the feet of the children with shoes getting thin, and the bodies of
the children where the clothes are getting ragged, they begin to think
in terms of "myself" and lose that spirit of the mass and the
realization that all are suffering as they are suffering. You have got
to keep them busy every day in the week, and particularly on Sunday, in
order to keep that spirit from going down to zero. I believe that's one
reason why ministers have sermons on Sunday, so that people don't get a
chance to think how bad their conditions are the rest of the week.
Anyhow, it's a very necessary thing in a strike. And so our original
reason for going to Haledon --- I remember we discussed it very
thoroughly --- was to give them novelty, to give them variety, to take
them en masse out of the city of Paterson some place else, to a sort of
picnic over Sunday that would stimulate them for the rest of the week.
In fact that is a necessary process in every strike, to keep the people
busy all the time, to keep them active, working, fighting soldiers in
the ranks. And this is the agitator's work --- to plan and suggest
activity, diverse, but concentrated on the strike. That's the reason why
the I.W.W. has these great mass meetings, women's meetings, children's
meetings; why we have mass picketing and mass funerals. And out of all
this continuous mass activity we are able to create that feeling on the
part of the workers, "One for all and all for one." We are able to make
them realize that an injury to one is an injury to all, we are able to
bring them to the point where they will have relief and not strike
benefits, to the point where they will go to jail and refuse fines, and
go hundreds of them together.

This method of conducting strikes has proved so successful and so
remarkable with the I.W.W. that the United Mine Workers have taken it
up, and in Michigan they are holding women's meetings, children's
meetings, mass picketings, and mass parades, such as never characterized
an American Federation of Labor strike before.

This is the agitator's work, this continual activity. And we lay awake
many nights trying to think of something more we could give them to do.
I remember one night in Lawrence none of us slept. The strike spirit was
in danger of waning for lack of action. And I remember Bill Haywood said
finally, "Let's get a picket line out in Essex street. Get every striker
to put a little red ribbon on and walk up and down and show that the
strike is not broken." A few days later the suggestion was carried out,
and when they got out of their homes and saw this great body that they
were, they had renewed strength and renewed energy which carried them
along for many weeks more in the strike. That was the original object in
going to Haledon.

It has been asked "Why didn't we advocate short strikes, intermittent
strikes? Why didn't we practice sabotage? Why didn't we do everything we
didn't do?" It reminds me of the story Tom Mann told. A very pretty
young lady, you know how many of them there are around New York of this
type, fluttering sentimentalists, came up to him with a sweet smile and
said, "Can you tell me, Mr. Mann, why the women and the miners and the
railroad people and all these people don't get together in England," and
he said, "Can you tell me why you didn't cut your dress on the other
side instead of this side?" People are not material, you can't lay them
down on the table and cut them according to a pattern. You may have the
best principles, but you can't always fit the people to the best
principles. And for us to have gone into Paterson for the first three
months of the strike and to have advocated a short strike would have
said "Aha, they got theirs, didn't they? That's what happens in every
strike. They are very revolutionary until the boss gives them theirs,
and then say 'Boys, go back to work.'" In other words, we would simply
have duplicated what every grafting, corrupt labor leader has done in
Paterson and the United States: to tell them "Go back to work, your
strike is lost." And so it was necessary for us first to gain the
confidence of the people and to make them feel that we were willing to
fight just as long as they were; that we were not the first ones to call
quits. And why should we? We were not the ones that were making the
sacrifices, we were not the ones that were paying the price. It was the
strikers that were doing that. But for us to advocate a short strike, on
the other hand, would have been directly contrary to our own feelings.
We felt that the strike was going to be won. And it may seem to you a
very foolish piece of optimism when I say that I believed the Paterson
strike was going to be won up to the Sunday before the Paterson strike
was lost. We didn't tell the people to stay out on a long strike knowing
in our hearts that they were losing. We couldn't have talked to them if
we had felt that way. But every one of us was confident they were going
to win that strike. And you all were. Throughout the United States the
people were. To successfully advocate an intermittent strike or to go
back to work and use sabotage was impossible for the simple reason that
the people wanted a long strike, and until they themselves found out by
experience that a long strike was a waste of energy it was no use for us
to try to dictate to them.

People learn to do by doing. We haven't a military body in a strike, a
body to which you can say "Do this" and "Do that" and "Do the other
thing" and they obey unfailingly. Democracy means mistakes, lots of
them, mistake after mistake. But it also means experience and that there
will be no repetition of those mistakes.

Now, we can talk short strike in Paterson, we can talk intermittent
strike, we can talk sabotage, because the people know we are not afraid
of a long strike, that we are not cowards, that we haven't sold them
out, that we went through the long strike with them and that we all
learned together that the long strike was not a success. In other words,
by that six months they have gained the experience that will mean it
never needs to be repeated.

Sabotage was objected to by the Socialists. In fact they pursued a
rather intolerant attitude. It was the Socialist organizer and the
Socialist secretary who called the attention of the public to the fact
that Frederic Sumner Boyd made a sabotage speech. Why "intolerant"?
Because nobody ever objected to anything that the Socialists said. We
tried to produce among those strikers this feeling: "Listen to anything,
listen to everybody. Ministers come, priests come, lawyers, doctors,
politicians, Socialists, anarchists, A. F. of L., I.W.W. --- listen to
them all and then take what you think is good for yourselves and reject
what is bad. If you are not able to do that then no censorship over your
meetings is going to do you any good." And so the strikers had a far
more tolerant attitude than had the Socialists. The strikers had the
attitude: "Listen to everything." The Socialists had the attitude: "You
must listen to us but you must not listen to the things we don't agree
with, you must not listen to sabotage because we don't agree with
sabotage." We had a discussion in the executive committee about it, and
one after the other of the members of the executive committee admitted
that they used sabotage, why shouldn't they talk about it? It existed in
the mills, they said. Therefore there was no reason why it should not be
recognized on the platform. It was not the advocacy of sabotage that
hurt some of our comrades but denial of their right to dictate the
policy of the Paterson strike.

What the workers had to contend with in the first period of this strike
was this police persecution that arrested hundreds of strikers, fined
hundreds, sentenced men to three years in state's prison for talking;
persecutions that meant beating and clubbing and continual opposition
every minute they were on the picket line, speakers arrested, Quinlan
arrested, Scott convicted and sentenced to 15 years and \$1500 fine. On
the other side, what? No money. If all these critics all over the United
States had only put their interest in the form of finances the Paterson
strike might have been another story. We were out on strike five months.
We had \$60,000 and 25,000 strikers. That meant \$60,000 for five
months, \$12,000 a month for 25,000 strikers; it meant an average of
less than 50 cents a month. And yet they stayed out on strike for six
months. In Ireland today there is a wonderful strike going on and they
are standing it beautifully. Why? Because they have had half a million
dollars since the thirty-first of August (five months) given into the
relief fund, and every man that goes on the picket line has food in his
stomach and some kind of decent clothes on his back.

(N.B.: Unfortunately future history shows that their pounds were not an
adequate substitute for solidarity, which we had and they lacked.)

I saw men go out in Paterson without shoes, in the middle of winter and
with bags on their feet. I went into a family to have a picture taken of
a mother with eight children who didn't have a crust of bread, didn't
have a bowl of milk for the baby in the house --- but the father was out
on the picket line. Others were just as bad off. Thousands of them that
we never heard of at all. This was the difficulty that the workers had
to contend with in Paterson: hunger; hunger gnawing at their vitals;
hunger tearing them down; and still they had the courage to fight it out
for six months.

Then came the pageant. What I say about the pageant tonight may strike
you as rather strange, but I consider that the pageant marked the climax
in the Paterson strike and started the decline in the Paterson strike,
just for the reason that the pageant promised money for the Paterson
strikers and it didn't give them a cent. Yes, it was a beautiful example
of realistic art, I admit that. It was splendid propaganda for the
workers in New York. I don't minimize its value but am dealing with it
here solely as a factor in the strike, with what happened in Paterson
before, during, and after the pageant. In preparation for the pageant
the workers were distracted for weeks, turning to the stage of the hall,
away from the field of life. They were playing pickets on the stage.
They were neglecting the picketing around the mill. And the first scabs
got into the Paterson mills while the workers were training for the
pageant, because the best ones, the most active, the most energetic, the
best, the strongest ones of them went into the pageant and they were the
ones that were the best pickets around the mills. Distraction from their
real work was the first danger in Paterson. And how many times we had to
counteract that and work against it!

And then came jealousy. There were only a thousand that came to New
York. I wonder if you ever realized that you left 24,000 disappointed
people behind? The women cried and said "Why did *she* go? Why couldn't
I go?" The men told about how many times they had been in jail, and
asked why couldn't they go as well as somebody else. Between jealousy,
unnecessary but very human, and their desire to do something, much
discord was created in the ranks.

But whatever credit is due for such a gigantic undertaking comes to the
New York silk workers, not the dilettante element who figured so
prominently, but who would have abandoned it at the last moment had not
the silk workers advanced \$600 to pull it through.

And then comes the grand finale --- no money. Nothing. This thing that
had been heralded as the salvation of the strike, this thing that was
going to bring thousands of dollars to the strike --- \$150 came to
Paterson, and all kinds of explanations. I don't mean to say that I
blame the people who ran the pageant. I know they were amateurs and they
gave their time and their energy and their money. They did the best they
could and I appreciate their effort. But that doesn't minimize the
result that came in Paterson. It did not in any way placate the workers
of Paterson, to tell them that people in New York had made sacrifices,
in view of the long time that *they* had been making sacrifices. And so
with the pageant as a climax, with the papers clamoring that tens of
thousands of dollars had been made, and with the committee explaining
what was very simple, that nothing *could* have been made with one
performance on such a gigantic scale, there came trouble,
dissatisfaction, in the Paterson strike.

Bread was the need of the hour, and bread was not forthcoming even from
the most beautiful and realistic example of art that has been put on the
stage in the last half century.

What was the employers' status during all this time? We saw signs of
weakness every day. There was a ministers' committee appointed to settle
the strike. There was a businessmen's committee appointed to settle the
strike. The governor's intervention, the President's intervention was
sought by the manufacturers. Every element was brought to bear to settle
the strike. Even the American Federation of Labor; nobody believes that
they came in there uninvited and no one can believe that the armory was
given to them for a meeting place unless for a purpose. What was this
purpose but to settle the strike? The newspapers were clamoring that the
strike could and must be settled. And we looked upon all this --- the
newspapers that were owned by the mill owners, the ministers and the
business men who were stimulated by the mill owners --- we looked upon
all this as a sign that the manufacturers were weakening. Even the
socialists admitted it. In the New York *Call* of July 9 we read this:
"The workers of Paterson *should* stay with them another round or two
after a confession of this kind. What the press had to say about the
strike looks very much like a concession of defeat." This was on the 9th
of July. Every sign of weakness on the part of the manufacturers was
evident.

But there came one of the most peculiar phenomena that I have ever seen
in a strike; that the bosses weakened simultaneously with the workers.
Both elements weakened together. The workers did not have a chance to
see the weaknesses of the employers as clearly, possibly, as we who had
witnessed it before, did, which gave us our abiding faith in the
workers' chances of success, but the employers had every chance to see
the workers weaken. The employers have a full view of your army. You
have no view of their army and can only guess at their condition. So a
tentative proposition came from the employers of a shop-by-shop
settlement. This was the trying-out of the bait, the bait that should
have been refused by the strikers without qualification. Absolute
surrender, all or nothing, was the necessary slogan. By this we did not
mean that 100 per cent of the manufacturers must settle, or that 99 per
cent of the workers must stay out till 1 per cent won everything. The
I.W.W. advice to the strikers was --- an overwhelming majority of the
strikers must receive the concession before a strike is won. This was
clearly understood in Paterson, though misrepresented there and
elsewhere. Instead, the committee swallowed the bait and said, "We will
take a vote on the shop-by-shop proposition, a vote of the committee."
The minute they did that, they admitted their own weakness. And the
employers immediately reacted to a position of strength. There was no
referendum vote proposed by this committee, they were willing to take
their own vote to see what they themselves thought of it, and to settle
the strike on their own decision alone.

Then it was that the I.W.W. speakers and Executive Committee had to
inject themselves in contradistinction to the strike committee. And the
odd part of it was that the conservatives on the committee utilized our
own position against us. We had always said, "The silk workers must gain
their own strike." And so they said, "We are the silk workers. You are
simply outside agitators. You can't talk to this strike committee even."
I remember one day the door was virtually slammed in my face, until the
Italian and Jewish workers made such an uproar, threatening to throw the
others out of a three-story building window, that the floor was granted.
It was only when we threatened to go to the masses and to get this
referendum vote in spite of them that they took the referendum vote. But
all this came out in the local press and it all showed that the
committee was conservative and the I.W.W. was radical, more correctly
the I.W.W. and the masses were radical. And so this vote was taken by
the strikers. It resulted in a defeat of the entire proposition. 5,000
dyers in one meeting voted it down unanimously. They said, "We never
said we would settle shop by shop. We are going to stick it out together
until we win together or until we lose together." But the very fact that
they had been willing to discuss it made the manufacturers assume an
aggressive position. And then they said, "We never said we would settle
shop-by-shop. We never offered you any such proposition. We won't take
you back now unless you come under the old conditions."

One of the peculiar things about this whole situation was the attitude
of the socialists on that committee. I want to make myself clearly
understood. I don't hold the socialist party officially responsible,
only insofar as they have not repudiated these particular individuals.
The socialist element in the committee represented the ribbon weavers,
the most conservative, the ones who were in favor of the shop-by-shop
settlement. They were led by a man named Magnet, conservative, Irish,
Catholic, Socialist. His desire was to wipe the strike off the slate in
order to leave the stage free for a political campaign. He had
aspirations to be the mayoralty candidate, which did not however come to
fruition. This man and the element that were behind him, the socialist
element, were willing to sacrifice, to betray a strike in order to make
an argument, the argument given out in the "Weekly Issue" a few days
before election: "Industrial action has failed. Now try political
action." It was very much like the man who made a prophecy that he was
going to die on a certain date, and then he committed suicide. He died,
all right. Industrial action failed, all right. But they forgot to say
that they contributed more than any other element in the strike
committee to the failure of the strike. They were the conservatives,
they were the ones who wanted to get rid of the strike as quickly as
possible. And through these ribbon weavers the break came.

On the 18th of July the ribbon weavers notified the strike committee,
"We have drawn out of your committee. We are going to settle our strike
to suit ourselves. We are going to settle it shop by shop. That's the
way they have settled it in New York at Smith and Kauffmann." But a
visit had been made by interested parties to the Smith and Kauffmann
boys prior to their settlement, at which they were informed that the
Paterson strike was practically lost: "These outside agitators don't
know anything about it, because they are fooled in this matter. You had
better go back to work." When they went back to work on the nine-hour
day and the shop-by-shop settlement, then it was used by the same people
who had told them that, as an argument to settle in the same way in
Paterson. And the ribbon weavers stayed out till the very last. Oh yes.
They have all the glory throughout the United States of being the last
ones to return to work, but the fact is that they were the first ones
that broke the strike, because they broke the solidarity, they
precipitated a position that was virtually a stampede. The strike
committee decided, "Well, with the ribbon weavers drawing out, what are
we going to do? We might as well accept;" and the shop-by-shop
proposition was put through by the strike committee without a referendum
vote, stampeded by the action of the English-speaking, conservative
ribbon weavers.

So that was the tragedy of the Paterson strike, the tragedy of a
stampede, the tragedy of an army, a solid phalanx being cut up into 300
pieces, each shop-piece trying to settle as best for themselves. It was
absolutely in violation of the I.W.W. principles and the I.W.W. advice
to the strikers. No strike should ever be settled without a referendum
vote, and no shop settlement should ever have been suggested in the city
of Paterson, because that was the very thing that had broken the strike
the year before. So this stampede came, and the weaker ones went back to
work and the stronger ones were left outside, to be made the target of
the enemy, blacklisted for weeks and weeks after the strike was over,
many of them on the blacklist yet. It produced discord among the
officers in the strike. I remember one day at Haledon, the chairman said
to Tresca and myself, "If you are going to talk about the eight-hour day
and about a general strike, then you had better not talk at all." And we
had to go out and ask the people, "Are we expected here today and can we
say what we think, or have we got to say what the strike committee has
decided?" We were unanimously welcomed. But it was too late. Just as
soon as the people saw that there was a break between the agitators and
the strike committee, that the ribbon weavers wanted this and others
wanted that, the stampede had started and no human being could have held
it back.

It was the stampede of hungry people, people who could no longer think
clearly. The bosses made beautiful promises to the ribbon weavers and to
everybody else, but practically every promise made before the settlement
of the Paterson strike was violated, and the better conditions have only
been won through the organized strikes since the big strike. Not one
promise that was made by the employers previous to breakup on account of
the shop-by-shop settlement was ever lived up to. Other places were
stranded. New York, Hoboken, College Point were left stranded by this
action. And on the 28th of July everybody was back at work, back to work
in spite of the fact that the general conviction had been that we were
on the eve of victory. I believe that if the strikers had been able to
hold out a little longer by any means, by money if possible, which was
refused to us, we could have won the Paterson strike. We could have won
it because the bosses had lost their spring orders, they had lost their
summer orders, they had lost their fall orders, and they were in danger
of losing their winter orders, one year's work; and the mills in
Pennsylvania, while they could give the bosses endurance for a period,
could not fill all the orders and could not keep up their business for
the year round.

I say we were refused money. I wish to tell you that is the absolute
truth. The New York *Call* was approached by fellow-worker Haywood, when
we were desperate for money, when the kitchens were closed and the
people were going out on the picket line on bread and water, and asked
to publish a full page advertisement begging for money, pleading for
money. They refused to accept the advertisement. They said, "We can't
take your money." "Well, can you *give* us the space?" "Oh, no, we can't
afford to give you the space. We couldn't take money from strikers, but
we couldn't give space either." And so in the end there was no appeal,
either paid for or not, but a little bit of a piece that did not amount
to a candle of light, lost in the space of the newspaper. However, on
the 26th of July, while the ribbon weavers and some of the broad silk
weavers were still out, the *Call* had published a criticism by Mr.
Jacob Panken of the Paterson strike. Lots of space for criticism, but no
space to ask bread for hungry men and women. And this was true not only
of the *Call*, but of the other socialist papers. So, between these two
forces, we were helpless. And then we had to meet our critics. First
came the socialist critic who said, "But the I.W.W. didn't do enough for
the socialist party. Look at all the money we gave you. And you don't
say anything about it." Dr. Korshet had a long article in the New York
*Call*. Anyone may read it who likes to refresh his memory. Just this:
"We gave you money and you didn't thank us." Well, I would like to know
why we *should* thank them. Aren't the socialists supposed to be
workingmen, members of the working class, just the same as we are? And
if they do something for their own class we have got to thank them the
next ten years for it. They are like the charity organization that gives
the poor working woman a little charity and then expects her to write
recommendations to the end of the end of the earth. We felt that there
was no need to thank the socialist party for what they had done, because
they had only done their duty and they had done very little in
comparison with what they have done in A. F. of L. strikes, in the
McNamara cases.

They make the criticism that we didn't give them any credit. How about
the 5,000 votes that the I.W.W. membership gave the party in Paterson
for a candidate who was a member of the A. F. of L. and who did not get
a single vote from his own union? All his votes came from the I.W.W. If
they wanted to invest money, the money that they invested for each vote
in Paterson was well spent, on a purely business basis.

And then Mr. Panken's criticism was that we should have settled the
strike shop by shop. A humorous criticism, a cynical, sarcastic
criticism, when you consider that's exactly what was done, and that's
exactly why we lost the Paterson strike. But a few days before the
strike was over, before this collapse came, we received a little piece
of paper through the delegates to the New York-Paterson Relief
Committee, and on this little piece of paper it said, "The following
gentlemen are willing to bring about a settlement of the Paterson strike
if the strike committee will send them a letter requesting them to do
it." And on this piece of paper were the names of Jacob Panken, Meyer
London, Abe Cahan, Charles Edward Russell, and two others. In other
words, a few days before the Paterson strike collapsed there was a
committee of six socialists in New York who had such faith that the
strike was going to be won, including the man who criticized us for not
settling shop by shop, that they were willing to settle it for us on
this condition that they incidentally take all the glory of the
settlement if we asked them to do it. We didn't ask them. We said, "If
there is anybody that thinks he can settle the Paterson strike and he
calls himself a socialist or a friend of labor he will do it without
being asked to do it in an official manner. They did not do it. They
criticized.

Our position to the strikers was "If the I.W.W. conception had been
followed out you would have won all together, or you would have lost all
together, but you would still have had your army a continuing whole."
Every general knows it is far better for an army to retreat en masse
than it is to scatter and be shot to pieces. And so it is better to lose
all together than to have some win at the expense of the rest, because
losing all together you have the chance within a few months of
recovering and going back to the battle again, your army still
centralized, and winning in the second attempt.

What lessons has the Paterson strike given to the I.W.W. and to the
strikers? One of the lessons it has given to me is that when the I.W.W.
assumes the responsibility of a strike the I.W.W. should control the
strike absolutely through a union strike committee; that there should be
no outside interference, no outside non-union domination accepted or
permitted, no Magnet permitted to pose as "representing the non-union
element." That direct action and solidarity are the only keys to a
worker's success or the workers' success. That the spirit throughout
this long weary propaganda has remained unbroken, and I will give you
just three brief examples.

The 5,000 votes for the socialist party was because the workers had this
in mind: "Maybe we will strike again, and the next time we strike we
want all this political machinery on our side." They would not have done
that if their spirit had been crushed and they had no hope for another
strike. The free speech fight for [Emma
Goldman](https://syndicalism.org/authors/238/emma-goldman) that was
recently successfully waged in Paterson was made because the strikers
have an unbroken spirit still. Many of them did not know Emma Goldman. I
say this with no disrespect to her. Many of them are foreigners and did
not know anything about her speeches and lectures. But they knew
somebody wanted to speak there and their constitutional enemies, the
police, were trying to prevent it, and so they turned out en masse and
free speech was maintained in Paterson. And just around Christmas time
there was an agitation for a strike, and then instead of stimulation we
had to give them a sort of sedative, to keep them quiet. Why, they were
so anxious to go out on strike that they had great mass meetings: "now
is the time, eight-hour day, nine-hour day, anything at all; but --- we
want to strike again!" Every time I go to Paterson some people get
around and say, "Say, Miss Flynn, when is there going to be another
strike?" They have that certain feeling that the strike has been
postponed, but they are going to take it up again and fight it out
again. That spirit is the result of the I.W.W. agitation in Paterson.

And so, I feel that we have been vindicated in spite of our defeat. We
have won further toleration for the workers. We have given them a class
feeling, a trust in themselves and a distrust for everybody else. They
are not giving any more faith to the ministers, even though we didn't
carry any "No God, no master" banners floating through the streets of
Paterson. You know, you may put a thing on a banner and it makes no
impression at all; but you let a minister show himself up, let all the
ministers show themselves against the workers and that makes more
impression than all the "No God, no master" banners from Maine to
California. That is the difference between education and sensationalism.

And they have no more use for the state. To them the statue of liberty
is personified by the policeman and his club.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Additional Information**

Taken from *Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology*, edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh
(1964), which used the manuscript of Flynn\'s talk from the [Labadie
Collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labadie_Collection).