Rebel Girls and Union Maids: The Woman Question in the Journals of the AFL and IWW, 1905-1920

Abstract

Between 1905 and 1920 the journals of the American movement, both the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the unions affiliated with the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL), established an ideology of gender in their articles, editorials, cartoons, fiction, and organizers' reports which characterized women as either Girls or Union Maids. Joe Hill, the romantic IWW bard, captured the essence of the Rebel Girl in his 1915 song of the same name. Hill's proletarian muse fired the revolution with spite and defiance and fidelity to her class and kind, as well as bringing courage, pride and joy/To the fighting Rebel Boy. Her hands harden'd from labor and simple garb set apart from the blue blooded queens and princesses/Who have charms made of diamond and pearl. Her common cause was not with women of the capitalist class but rather with the men of own class. Despite departure from conventional standards of ladyhood, however, the title of lady was still hers, redefined through the revolutionary struggle-For the only and Thoroughbred Lady is the Rebel Girl.1 The Rebel Girl was not freed from domesticity by the coming of the One Big Union, the Wobblies' mythic anarcho-syndicalist millennium. Rather, she played a domestic role both in the oppressed present and the liberated future. The Rebel Girl stood by male comrade as muse or helpmate and instilled a pacifist and revolutionary ideology in children. Sexuality was acknowledged in the Rebel Girl, while only alluded to in trade union sister.