The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3)Various
General
The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
If the modern feminists understood great women, which they do not often
do, they would contend that there is a great significance in the fact
that three women stand out prominently in this movement and in a measure
at least are representative of three groups which more or less dominate
the whole. Listing them according to age,—for on any other basis
comparisons are difficult, each being effective in her own
sphere,—Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn are
social artists, working in different directions, yet in the same
direction, now seeming to exclude each other entirely, and now, no
doubt, sustaining each other in spirit across the separating gaps in the
common purpose, just as old age, middle age, and youth do sometimes in
life, or just as three mountains may have separate and distinct
characters and yet be a part of the same range.
Old Mother Jones is a “character.” In her eighty-two years she has seen
life’s storm, has lived its hope, fear, love, and hate, and has mastered
it. She will die happy with the knowledge that she did her part in the
fight for better things, which she may not see but which she believes
are coming.
Emma Goldman is at the height of her creative effort, breaking down the
stone walls of prejudice and superstition, freeing minds from the grip
of the past, preparing the soil for new harvests of life and beauty. She
sees mankind on the rack in the agony of a herculean struggle. Giant
social forces jostle each other in their efforts for recognition in her
consciousness. Her attitude toward the revolutionary movement reminds
one of the picture of the Earth in Meredith’s poem _Earth and Man_—“Her
fingers dint the breast which is his well of strength, his home of
rest.” She senses the stirring of new life in the race’s womb and she
fears a bit, for she sees clearly the possibilities of a tragic
miscarriage or a premature birth.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is the young Diana of the labor movement. Strong,
full of hope, past the fear which accompanies all beginnings, facing the
future with the courage and confidence of a youth fully launched on its
career and enjoying the sense of growing understanding and power.
The redeemers of life are those in whose natures this spirit of the
creator lives, whether it expresses itself in the labor movement or in
the studio; and there is a significance in the fact that all three of
these leaders come from one class, the workers. The interest in the
movement is not by any means confined to the laboring classes,
so-called, but the real dynamic power back of the movement, the steam
which drives it on, does come from this class; and it is more than a
coincidence that these three women should all belong to it, for the
vital power, the staying quality which is the condition of real
leadership, seems to have been nearly cornered by the laboring elements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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