A central part of the long fight to organize our class has been to demand, secure, and defend ‘free speech’ rights long since declared, though more often denied. Particularly has it been the case when organizing unorganized workers, as with ‘industrial workers’ before World War Two, many women, immigrant or Black, often deemed unskilled and unrecognizable by the existing unions.

‘The Women Who Won a Free Speech Fight’ from Coming Nation. Vol. 1 (new) No. 2. December, 1913.  

THE first free speech fight ever won by women was recently won at Portland, Oregon. The fight came as an effort to force the Oregon Packing plant to raise employe’s wages from 40c a day to $1.50 a day.

Monster demonstrations were held on the streets, money to feed the strikers was collected to the amount of over $1,200. This led the authorities to issue a mandate against such meetings, and the free speech fight was begun.

The women of Portland determined to win the fight, and night after night two to ten of them were thrown into jail. They were peaceful in their methods, merely insisting upon telling the crowds of the needs of the strikers. The police tried to raise a riot several times. In order to carry on their work without actually violating the laws made against the “move on” ordinance, several methods were resorted to. On one occasion a soap box was mounted on rollers, the girls pushed it along, and Mrs. Irene George spoke from it while it was moved in this manner.

Automobiles were also spoken from while moving.

The women suffered every annoyance and inconvenience while in jail, the rats and bed-bugs preventing any rest or sleep. Persecution and brutality from the officials was also bestowed upon them.

Forty lawyers volunteered to try the cases of the women, in spite of the fact that the police said they should be hung “higher than a telegraph pole.” The police also reported that the women would all be judged insane.

Mrs. Jean Bennett, writing from the jail to this magazine, said: “If the women of this country would only take a hand in this fight we would clean it up until every American would be proud to wrap the stars and stripes around us…Last night I took five subs for The Coming Nation, but owing to the fact that I am in jail I cannot get a money order, but will do so as soon as I get out. We are sending you a photo of some of the women who are fighting for free speech.”

The free speech fight was won, and the papers are conceding that the women of Portland won it.

The Socialist Woman was a monthly magazine edited by Josephine Conger-Kaneko from 1907 with this aim: “The Socialist Woman exists for the sole purpose of bringing women into touch with the Socialist idea. We intend to make this paper a forum for the discussion of problems that lie closest to women’s lives, from the Socialist standpoint”. In 1908, Conger-Kaneko and her husband Japanese socialist Kiichi Kaneko moved to Girard, Kansas home of Appeal to Reason, which would print Socialist Woman. In 1909 it was renamed The Progressive Woman, and The Coming Nation in 1913. Its contributors included Socialist Party activist Kate Richards O’Hare, Alice Stone Blackwell, Eugene V. Debs, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and others. A treat of the journal was the For Kiddies in Socialist Homes column by Elizabeth Vincent.The Progressive Woman lasted until 1916.

PDF of full issue: https://books.google.com/books/download/The_Coming_Nation.pdf?id=IMksAQAAMAAJ&output=pdf