Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

Labor firebrand Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was back in Spokane – six years after being jailed during Spokane’s Free Speech Fight – and was more inflammatory than ever in a speech at the Socialist Hall.

“We believe that violence, any violence, that advances the cause of the workers is right, because there is an industrial war, and we are not obliged to regard the ethics or the morals of the employers,” Flynn said.

She said she made a distinction between violence committed by individuals for individual purposes, which she did not condone, and “violence perpetrated in the belief that it will favorably affect social conditions,” which she did. She said that the latter was a natural response to the violence practiced by capitalism to keep workers in slavery “like dumb driven cattle.”

She said laws that “violate the spirit of humanity” should not be obeyed.

“That is why we violated the ordinance written by a little two-by-four council in Spokane that attempted to curtail the right of free speech,” she said.

She spoke before a crowd of 200. Two more lectures were planned at the same hall the next day.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1892: The Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco.