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To the great majority of those who have heard of her, Helen Keller is known exelusively for her great bravery and her undaunted struggle to overcome the handicaps of blindneas, deafness and dumbness which resulted in her mastery of five languages, including her own. Small wonder that the pieture blurs. here - for this remarkable women, born in 1880, like many women throughout the history of class society was committed to the idea of social revolution, and apoke up for her fellow-women against the stifling social oppression. She was an avowed Socialist and proud of it - a member of the I.W.W. (the American Syndicalist movement - the Wobblies.) "] am no worshipper of cloth of any colour but I love the red flag and what it symbolises to me and other socialists. I have a red flag hanging in my study."
She spoke and wrote frequently on behalf of workers on strike. "Whenever there is a strike it showe that men and women are over burdened by hardship. Only through organisation can the workers escape undustrial slavery." She attacked militarism in vibrant speeches, and she hailed the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and continued to defend it for the rest of her life. "There abides with me a gratifying sense that casting my lot with the workers, even if only in dreams and sentiments, has given symmetry and dignity to my womanhood and enabled me to face unashamed the spiritual challenge which is quite as searchingly fiery as the economic ordeal. "
Helen Keller wrote to an English Woman-Suffragist the following letter:"I thank you, for the copy of "Votes for Women." Mr. Zangwill's address interested me deeply. comment on it, and though I know little, your request encourages me to tell you some of my ideas on the subject.
meeting in New York. far future. democracy.
You ask me: to I have thought much lately about the queation of woman suffrage, and I have followed in my Braille magazines the recent elections in Great Britain. The other day I read a fine report of an address by Miss Pankhurst at a I do not believe that the present government has any intention of giving women a part in national politics or doing justice to Ireland, or the workmen of England. as the franchise is denied to a large number of those who serve and benefit the public, so long as those who vote are at the beek and call of party machines, the people are not free, and the day of women's freedom seems still to be in the It makes no difference whether the Tories or the Liberals in Great Britain, the Denocrats or the Republicans in the United States, or any party of the old model in any other country, get the upper hand. To ask any such party for women's righta is like asking a czar for Are not the dominant parties managed by the ruling elasses, that is, the propertied classes, solely for the profit and privilege of the few? une us millions to help them into power. They tell us, like so many children, that our safety lies in voting for them, They toss us crumbs of concession to make us believe that they are working in ow interest. Then they exploit the resources of the nation not for us, but for the interests which they represent and uphold. We, the people, are not Our democracy is but a name. vote? What does that mean? chat we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrate. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, We elect expensive masters to do our work for us, and then blame them because they work for themselves and for their class.
The enfranchisement of women is a part of the vast movement to enfranchiseall mankind. You ask for votes for women.
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What good can votes do you when tenelevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000, and only oneeleventh to the rest of the 40,000,0002 Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
When one shows the masters that half the wealth of Great Britain belonga to 25,000 persons, when one says that this is wrong, that this wrong lies at the bottom of all social injustice, including the wrong of women, the highly respectable newspapers cry "Socialist Agitator! Stirrer of Glass Strife!" Well, let us agitate, let us confess that we are thorough-going Social Democrats, or anything else that they please to label us. But let us keep our eyes on the central fact that a few, a few British men own the majority of British men and all British women. The few own the many, because they possess the means of livelihood of all. In our splendid republic, where at election time all are free and equal, a few Americans own the rest. Eighty percent of our people live in rented houses, and one-half of the rest are mortgaged. The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, famines and strikes, news of thousanda of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labor before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a amall and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.
I am indignant at the treatment of the brave, patient women of England. I am indignant when the women cloak-makers of Chicago are abused by the police. I am filled with anguish when I think of the degradation, the enslavement and the industrial tyranny which crushes millions and drags down women and helpless children.
I know the deep interest which you and your husband always took in God's poor, and your sympathy invites me to open my heart to you and express these opinions about grave problems.
March 3, 1911.
Linda Fryd Mole