A century-old comrade tells us what a symbol of a Socialist future means to her.

‘My Red Pennant’ by Clara R. Cushman from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 11. May, 1914.

COMRADES, have we built better than we knew? Let me tell you about it. I have been a comrade only a short time and the other day one of my friends gave me a Socialist pennant. I was delighted with it, as I had never seen one before. So I brought it home and tacked it right up in my room.

Now, I am rather a lonely comrade, because there isn’t a single member of my family, except myself, who is a Socialist. So I didn’t expect my banner to be admired and was prepared for derogatory remarks. Instead of that, when He came home, He said something that has made me see visions ever since. He said: “Humph! It looks like an old red flannel shirt.”

An old red flannel shirt! I stood in front of that pennant and looked and looked. An old red flannel shirt! Don’t you know that old red flannel shirt that you used to see on so many men digging ditches, laying railroad ties, working with pick and shovel to make the world more livable, and breaking their hearts and bodies in the doing of it? You don’t see it so much anymore–that red flannel shirt. I don’t know why, unless the wearers have now to wear something with less wool in it. But we all remember it.

So you see, in choosing a pennant that anybody can say looks like an old red flannel shirt, we have chosen either with profound wisdom or with exceedingly good luck. Now, look at the emblem on the pennant. Those two clasped hands are sinewy. Each might show an expanse of white cuff held with a gold link. But it doesn’t. It shows a laborer’s shirt sleeve. It is all sublimely fitting. It is sublimely fitting that my emblem should show toilers’ hands, and it is sublimely fitting that my pennant should look like an old red flannel shirt.

Keep your place on my wall, red pennant, for I see visions every time I look at you.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n11-may-1914-ISR-riaz-GR-ocr.pdf