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ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

Emma Goldman

With Biographic Sketch by Hippolyte Havel

CONTENTS

Biographic Sketch

Preface

Anarchism: What It Really Stands For

Minorities Versus Majorities

The Psychology of Political Violence

Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure

Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty

Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School

The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

The Traffic in Women

Woman Suffrage

The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation

Marriage and Love

The Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought

EMMA GOLDMAN

Propagandism is not, as some suppose, a "trade," because

nobody will follow a "trade" at which you may work with

the industry of a slave and die with the reputation of a

mendicant. The motives of any persons to pursue such a

profession must be different from those of trade, deeper

than pride, and stronger than interest.

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

Among the men and women prominent in the public life of America there

are but few whose names are mentioned as often as that of Emma

Goldman. Yet the real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. The

sensational press has surrounded her name with so much

misrepresentation and slander, it would seem almost a miracle that,

in spite of this web of calumny, the truth breaks through and a

better appreciation of this much maligned idealist begins to manifest

itself. There is but little consolation in the fact that almost

every representative of a new idea has had to struggle and suffer

under similar difficulties. Is it of any avail that a former

president of a republic pays homage at Osawatomie to the memory of

John Brown? Or that the president of another republic participates

in the unveiling of a statue in honor of Pierre Proudhon, and holds

up his life to the French nation as a model worthy of enthusiastic

emulation? Of what avail is all this when, at the same time, the

LIVING John Browns and Proudhons are being crucified? The honor and

glory of a Mary Wollstonecraft or of a Louise Michel are not enhanced

by the City Fathers of London or Paris naming a street after

them--the living generation should be concerned with doing justice to

the LIVING Mary Wollstonecrafts and Louise Michels. Posterity

assigns to men like Wendel Phillips and Lloyd Garrison the proper

niche of honor in the temple of human emancipation; but it is the

duty of their contemporaries to bring them due recognition and

appreciation while they live.

The path of the propagandist of social justice is strewn with thorns.

The powers of darkness and injustice exert all their might lest a ray

of sunshine enter his cheerless life. Nay, even his comrades in the

struggle--indeed, too often his most intimate friends--show but

little understanding for the personality of the pioneer. Envy,

sometimes growing to hatred, vanity and jealousy, obstruct his way

and fill his heart with sadness. It requires an inflexible will and

tremendous enthusiasm not to lose, under such conditions, all faith

in the Cause. The representative of a revolutionizing idea stands

between two fires: on the one hand, the persecution of the existing

powers which hold him responsible for all acts resulting from social

conditions; and, on the other, the lack of understanding on the part

of his own followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow

standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in

the midst of the multitude surrounding him. Even his most intimate

friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That

is the tragedy of the person prominent in the public eye.

The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so long been enveloped

is gradually beginning to dissipate. Her energy in the furtherance

of such an unpopular idea as Anarchism, her deep earnestness, her

courage and abilities, find growing understanding and admiration.

The debt American intellectual growth owes to the revolutionary

exiles has never been fully appreciated. The seed disseminated by

them, though so little understood at the time, has brought a rich

harvest. They have at all times held aloft the banner of liberty,

thus impregnating the social vitality of the Nation. But very few

have succeeding in preserving their European education and culture

while at the same time assimilating themselves with American life.

It is difficult for the average man to form an adequate conception

what strength, energy, and perseverance are necessary to absorb the

unfamiliar language, habits, and customs of a new country, without

the loss of one's own personality.

Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly preserving their

individuality, have become an important factor in the social and

intellectual atmosphere of America. The life she leads is rich in

color, full of change and variety. She has risen to the topmost

heights, and she has also tasted the bitter dregs of life.

Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June,

1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never

dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like

all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their

daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and

round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren,

a good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a

strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their

child, and carry it to the heights which separate generations in

eternal struggle. They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism

between parent and offspring was fated to find its most acute

expression, irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle

between fathers and sons--and especially between parents and

daughters--there was no compromise, no weak yielding, no truce. The

spirit of liberty, of progress--an idealism which knew no

considerations and recognized no obstacles--drove the young

generation out of the parental house and away from the hearth of the

home. Just as this same spirit once drove out the revolutionary

breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated him from his native

traditions.

What role the Jewish race--notwithstanding all anti-semitic calumnies

the race of transcendental idealism--played in the struggle of the

Old and the New will probably never be appreciated with complete

impartiality and clarity. Only now are we beginning to perceive the

tremendous debt we owe to Jewish idealists in the realm of science,

art, and literature. But very little is still known of the important

part the sons and daughters of Israel have played in the

revolutionary movement and, especially, in that of modern times.

The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed in a small,

idyllic place in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her

father had charge of the government stage. At the time Kurland was

thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic

province was recruited mostly from German JUNKERS. German fairy

tales and stories, rich in the miraculous deeds of the heroic knights

of Kurland, wove their spell over the youthful mind. But the

beautiful idyl was of short duration. Soon the soul of the growing

child was overcast by the dark shadows of life. Already in her

tenderest youth the seeds of rebellion and unrelenting hatred of

oppression were to be planted in the heart of Emma Goldman. Early

she learned to know the beauty of the State: she saw her father

harassed by the Christian CHINOVNIKS and doubly persecuted as petty

official and hated Jew. The brutality of forced conscription ever

stood before her eyes: she beheld the young men, often the sole

supporter of a large family, brutally dragged to the barracks to lead

the miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping of the poor

peasant women, and witnessed the shameful scenes of official venality

which relieved the rich from military service at the expense of the

poor. She was outraged by the terrible treatment to which the female

servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by their BARINYAS,

they fell to the tender mercies of the regimental officers, who

regarded them as their natural sexual prey. The girls, made pregnant

by respectable gentlemen and driven out by their mistresses, often

found refuge in the Goldman home. And the little girl, her heart

palpitating with sympathy, would abstract coins from the parental

drawer to clandestinely press the money into the hands of the

unfortunate women. Thus Emma Goldman's most striking characteristic,

her sympathy with the underdog, already became manifest in these

early years.

At the age of seven little Emma was sent by her parents to her

grandmother at Konigsberg, the city of Emanuel Kant, in Eastern

Prussia. Save for occasional interruptions, she remained there till her

13th birthday. The first years in these surroundings do not exactly

belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother, indeed, was

very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the household were concerned

more with the spirit of practical rather than pure reason, and the

categoric imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation

was changed when her parents migrated to Konigsberg, and little Emma

was relieved from her role of Cinderella. She now regularly attended

public school and also enjoyed the advantages of private instruction,

customary in middle class life; French and music lessons played an

important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter of Ibsen

and Shaw was then a little German Gretchen, quite at home in the

German atmosphere. Her special predilections in literature were the

sentimental romances of Marlitt; she was a great admirer of the good

Queen Louise, whom the bad Napoleon Buonaparte treated with so marked

a lack of knightly chivalry. What might have been her future

development had she remained in this milieu? Fate--or was it

economic necessity?--willed it otherwise. Her parents decided to

settle in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Almighty Tsar, and there

to embark in business. It was here that a great change took place in

the life of the young dreamer.

It was an eventful period--the year of 1882--in which Emma Goldman,

then in her 13th year, arrived in St. Petersburg. A struggle for

life and death between the autocracy and the Russian intellectuals

swept the country. Alexander II had fallen the previous year.

Sophia Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch,

Michailov, the heroic executors of the death sentence upon the

tyrant, had then entered the Walhalla of immortality. Jessie

Helfman, the only regicide whose life the government had reluctantly

spared because of pregnancy, followed the unnumbered Russian martyrs

to the etapes of Siberia. It was the most heroic period in the great

battle of emancipation, a battle for freedom such as the world had

never witnessed before. The names of the Nihilist martyrs were on

all lips, and thousands were enthusiastic to follow their example.

The whole INTELLIGENZIA of Russia was filled with the ILLEGAL

spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated into every home, from

mansion to hovel, impregnating the military, the CHINOVNIKS, factory

workers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced the very casemates of

the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The difference

of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought the men and the

women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do justice or adequately

portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion?

Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, ON THE THRESHOLD.

It was inevitable that the young dreamer from Konigsberg should be

drawn into the maelstrom. To remain outside of the circle of free

ideas meant a life of vegetation, of death. One need not wonder at

the youthful age. Young enthusiasts were not then--and, fortunately,

are not now--a rare phenomenon in Russia. The study of the Russian

language soon brought young Emma Goldman in touch with revolutionary

students and new ideas. The place of Marlitt was taken by Nekrassov

and Tchernishevsky. The quondam admirer of the good Queen Louise

became a glowing enthusiast of liberty, resolving, like thousands of

others, to devote her life to the emancipation of the people.

The struggle of generations now took place in the Goldman family.

The parents could not comprehend what interest their daughter could

find in the new ideas, which they themselves considered fantastic

utopias. They strove to persuade the young girl out of these

chimeras, and daily repetition of soul-racking disputes was the

result. Only in one member of the family did the young idealist find

understanding--in her elder sister, Helene, with whom she later

emigrated to America, and whose love and sympathy have never failed

her. Even in the darkest hours of later persecution Emma Goldman

always found a haven of refuge in the home of this loyal sister.

Emma Goldman finally resolved to achieve her independence. She saw

hundreds of men and women sacrificing brilliant careers to go V

NAROD, to the people. She followed their example. She became a

factory worker; at first employed as a corset maker, and later in the

manufacture of gloves. She was now 17 years of age and proud to earn

her own living. Had she remained in Russia, she would have probably

sooner or later shared the fate of thousands buried in the snows of

Siberia. But a new chapter of life was to begin for her. Sister

Helene decided to emigrate to America, where another sister had

already made her home. Emma prevailed upon Helene to be allowed to

join her, and together they departed for America, filled with the

joyous hope of a great, free land, the glorious Republic.

America! What magic word. The yearning of the enslaved, the

promised land of the oppressed, the goal of all longing for progress.

Here man's ideals had found their fulfillment: no Tsar, no Cossack,

no CHINOVNIK. The Republic! Glorious synonym of equality, freedom,

brotherhood.

Thus thought the two girls as they travelled, in the year 1886, from

New York to Rochester. Soon, all too soon, disillusionment awaited

them. The ideal conception of America was punctured already at

Castle Garden, and soon burst like a soap bubble. Here Emma Goldman

witnessed sights which reminded her of the terrible scenes of her

childhood in Kurland. The brutality and humiliation the future

citizens of the great Republic were subjected to on board ship, were

repeated at Castle Garden by the officials of the democracy in a more

savage and aggravating manner. And what bitter disappointment

followed as the young idealist began to familiarize herself with the

conditions in the new land! Instead of one Tsar, she found scores of

them; the Cossack was replaced by the policeman with the heavy club,

and instead of the Russian CHINOVNIK there was the far more inhuman

slave-driver of the factory.

Emma Goldman soon obtained work in the clothing establishment of the

Garson Co. The wages amounted to two and a half dollars a week. At

that time the factories were not provided with motor power, and the

poor sewing girls had to drive the wheels by foot, from early morning

till late at night. A terribly exhausting toil it was, without a ray

of light, the drudgery of the long day passed in complete

silence--the Russian custom of friendly conversation at work was not

permissible in the free country. But the exploitation of the girls

was not only economic; the poor wage workers were looked upon by

their foremen and bosses as sexual commodities. If a girl resented

the advances of her "superiors", she would speedily find herself on

the street as an undesirable element in the factory. There was never

a lack of willing victims: the supply always exceeded the demand.

The horrible conditions were made still more unbearable by the

fearful dreariness of life in the small American city. The Puritan

spirit suppresses the slightest manifestation of joy; a deadly

dullness beclouds the soul; no intellectual inspiration, no thought

exchange between congenial spirits is possible. Emma Goldman almost

suffocated in this atmosphere. She, above all others, longed for

ideal surroundings, for friendship and understanding, for the

companionship of kindred minds. Mentally she still lived in Russia.

Unfamiliar with the language and life of the country, she dwelt more

in the past than in the present. It was at this period that she met

a young man who spoke Russian. With great joy the acquaintance was

cultivated. At last a person with whom she could converse, one who

could help her bridge the dullness of the narrow existence. The

friendship gradually ripened and finally culminated in marriage.

Emma Goldman, too, had to walk the sorrowful road of married life;

she, too, had to learn from bitter experience that legal statutes

signify dependence and self-effacement, especially for the woman.

The marriage was no liberation from the Puritan dreariness of

American life; indeed, it was rather aggravated by the loss of

self-ownership. The characters of the young people differed too

widely. A separation soon followed, and Emma Goldman went to New

Haven, Conn. There she found employment in a factory, and her

husband disappeared from her horizon. Two decades later she was

fated to be unexpectedly reminded of him by the Federal authorities.

The revolutionists who were active in the Russian movement of the

80's were but little familiar with the social ideas then agitating

Western Europe and America. Their sole activity consisted in

educating the people, their final goal the destruction of the

autocracy. Socialism and Anarchism were terms hardly known even by

name. Emma Goldman, too, was entirely unfamiliar with the

significance of those ideals.

She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia, at a

period of great social and political unrest. The working people were

in revolt against the terrible labor conditions; the eight-hour

movement of the Knights of Labor was at its height, and throughout

the country echoed the din of sanguine strife between strikers and

police. The struggle culminated in the great strike against the

Harvester Company of Chicago, the massacre of the strikers, and the

judicial murder of the labor leaders, which followed upon the

historic Haymarket bomb explosion. The Anarchists stood the martyr

test of blood baptism. The apologists of capitalism vainly seek to

justify the killing of Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer, and Engel.

Since the publication of Governor Altgeld's reason for his liberation

of the three incarcerated Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt is left that

a fivefold legal murder had been committed in Chicago, in 1887.

Very few have grasped the significance of the Chicago martyrdom;

least of all the ruling classes. By the destruction of a number of

labor leaders they thought to stem the tide of a world-inspiring

idea. They failed to consider that from the blood of the martyrs

grows the new seed, and that the frightful injustice will win new

converts to the Cause.

The two most prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in

America, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman--the one a native

American, the other a Russian--have been converted, like numerous

others, to the ideas of Anarchism by the judicial murder. Two women

who had not known each other before, and who had received a widely

different education, were through that murder united in one idea.

Like most working men and women of America, Emma Goldman followed the

Chicago trial with great anxiety and excitement. She, too, could not

believe that the leaders of the proletariat would be killed. The

11th of November, 1887, taught her differently. She realized that no

mercy could be expected from the ruling class, that between the

Tsarism of Russia and the plutocracy of America there was no

difference save in name. Her whole being rebelled against the crime,

and she vowed to herself a solemn vow to join the ranks of the

revolutionary proletariat and to devote all her energy and strength

to their emancipation from wage slavery. With the glowing enthusiasm

so characteristic of her nature, she now began to familiarize herself

with the literature of Socialism and Anarchism. She attended public

meetings and became acquainted with socialistically and

anarchistically inclined workingmen. Johanna Greie, the well-known

German lecturer, was the first Socialist speaker heard by Emma

Goldman. In New Haven, Conn., where she was employed in a corset

factory, she met Anarchists actively participating in the movement.

Here she read the FREIHEIT, edited by John Most. The Haymarket

tragedy developed her inherent Anarchist tendencies: the reading of

the FREIHEIT made her a conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to

learn that the idea of Anarchism found its highest expression through

the best intellects of America: theoretically by Josiah Warren,

Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; philosophically by Emerson,

Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.

Made ill by the excessive strain of factory work, Emma Goldman

returned to Rochester where she remained till August, 1889, at which

time she removed to New York, the scene of the most important phase

of her life. She was now twenty years old. Features pallid with

suffering, eyes large and full of compassion, greet one in her

pictured likeness of those days. Her hair is, as customary with

Russian student girls, worn short, giving free play to the strong

forehead.

It is the heroic epoch of militant Anarchism. By leaps and bounds

the movement had grown in every country. In spite of the most severe

governmental persecution new converts swell the ranks. The

propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret character. The

repressive measures of the government drive the disciples of the new

philosophy to conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall into

the hands of the authorities and languish in prisons. But nothing

can stem the rising tide of enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and

devotion to the Cause. The efforts of teachers like Peter Kropotkin,

Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus, and others, inspire the devotees with

ever greater energy.

Disruption is imminent with the Socialists, who have sacrificed the

idea of liberty and embraced the State and politics. The struggle is

bitter, the factions irreconcilable. This struggle is not merely

between Anarchists and Socialists; it also finds its echo within the

Anarchist groups. Theoretic differences and personal controversies

lead to strife and acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist

legislation of Germany and Austria had driven thousands of Socialists

and Anarchists across the seas to seek refuge in America. John Most,

having lost his seat in the Reichstag, finally had to flee his native

land, and went to London. There, having advanced toward Anarchism,

he entirely withdrew from the Social Democratic Party. Later, coming

to America, he continued the publication of the FREIHEIT in New York,

and developed great activity among the German workingmen.

When Emma Goldman arrived in New York in 1889, she experienced little

difficulty in associating herself with active Anarchists. Anarchist

meetings were an almost daily occurrence. The first lecturer she

heard on the Anarchist platform was Dr. A. Solotaroff. Of great

importance to her future development was her acquaintance with John

Most, who exerted a tremendous influence over the younger elements.

His impassioned eloquence, untiring energy, and the persecution he

had endured for the Cause, all combined to enthuse the comrades. It

was also at this period that she met Alexander Berkman, whose

friendship played an important part throughout her life. Her talents

as a speaker could not long remain in obscurity. The fire of

enthusiasm swept her toward the public platform. Encouraged by her

friends, she began to participate as a German and Yiddish speaker at

Anarchist meetings. Soon followed a brief tour of agitation taking

her as far as Cleveland. With the whole strength and earnestness of

her soul she now threw herself into the propaganda of Anarchist

ideas. The passionate period of her life had begun. Through

constantly toiling in sweat shops, the fiery young orator was at the

same time very active as an agitator and participated in various

labor struggles, notably in the great cloakmakers' strike, in 1889,

led by Professor Garsyde and Joseph Barondess.

A year later Emma Goldman was a delegate to an Anarchist conference

in New York. She was elected to the Executive Committee, but later

withdrew because of differences of opinion regarding tactical

matters. The ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that

time not yet become clarified. Some still believed in parliamentary

methods, the great majority being adherents of strong centralism.

These differences of opinion in regard to tactics led in 1891 to a

breach with John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and other

comrades joined the group AUTONOMY, in which Joseph Peukert, Otto

Rinke, and Claus Timmermann played an active part. The bitter

controversies which followed this secession terminated only with the

death of Most, in 1906.

A great source of inspiration to Emma Goldman proved the Russian

revolutionists who were associated in the group ZNAMYA. Goldenberg,

Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt, Ivan von

Schewitsch, husband of Helene von Racowitza and editor of the

VOLKSZEITUNG, and numerous other Russian exiles, some of whom are

still living, were members of this group. It was also at this time

that Emma Goldman met Robert Reitzel, the German-American Heine, who

exerted a great influence on her development. Through him she became

acquainted with the best writers of modern literature, and the

friendship thus begun lasted till Reitzel's death, in 1898.

The labor movement of America had not been drowned in the Chicago

massacre; the murder of the Anarchists had failed to bring peace to

the profit-greedy capitalist. The struggle for the eight-hour day

continued. In 1892 broke out the great strike in Pittsburg. The

Homestead fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the

militia, the suppression of the strikers, and the complete triumph of

the reaction are matters of comparatively recent history. Stirred to

the very depths by the terrible events at the seat of war, Alexander

Berkman resolved to sacrifice his life to the Cause and thus give an

object lesson to the wage slaves of America of active Anarchist

solidarity with labor. His attack upon Frick, the Gessler of

Pittsburg, failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was doomed to a

living death of twenty-two years in the penitentiary. The

bourgeoisie, which for decades had exalted and eulogized tyrannicide,

now was filled with terrible rage. The capitalist press organized a

systematic campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against

Anarchists. The police exerted every effort to involve Emma Goldman

in the act of Alexander Berkman. The feared agitator was to be

silenced by all means. It was only due to the circumstance of her

presence in New York that she escaped the clutches of the law. It

was a similar circumstance which, nine years later, during the

McKinley incident, was instrumental in preserving her liberty. It is

almost incredible with what amount of stupidity, baseness, and

vileness the journalists of the period sought to overwhelm the

Anarchist. One must peruse the newspaper files to realize the

enormity of incrimination and slander. It would be difficult to

portray the agony of soul Emma Goldman experienced in those days.

The persecutions of the capitalist press were to be borne by an

Anarchist with comparative equanimity; but the attacks from one's own

ranks were far more painful and unbearable. The act of Berkman was

severely criticized by Most and some of his followers among the

German and Jewish Anarchists. Bitter accusations and recriminations

at public meetings and private gatherings followed. Persecuted on

all sides, both because she championed Berkman and his act, and on

account of her revolutionary activity, Emma Goldman was harassed even

to the extent of inability to secure shelter. Too proud to seek

safety in the denial of her identity, she chose to pass the nights in

the public parks rather than expose her friends to danger or vexation

by her visits. The already bitter cup was filled to overflowing by

the attempted suicide of a young comrade who had shared living

quarters with Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and a mutual artist

friend.

Many changes have since taken place. Alexander Berkman has survived

the Pennsylvania Inferno, and is back again in the ranks of the

militant Anarchists, his spirit unbroken, his soul full of enthusiasm

for the ideals of his youth. The artist comrade is now among the

well-known illustrators of New York. The suicide candidate left

America shortly after his unfortunate attempt to die, and was

subsequently arrested and condemned to eight years of hard labor for

smuggling Anarchist literature into Germany. He, too, has withstood

the terrors of prison life, and has returned to the revolutionary

movement, since earning the well deserved reputation of a talented

writer in Germany.

To avoid indefinite camping in the parks Emma Goldman finally was

forced to move into a house on Third Street, occupied exclusively by

prostitutes. There, among the outcasts of our good Christian

society, she could at least rent a bit of a room, and find rest and

work at her sewing machine. The women of the street showed more

refinement of feeling and sincere sympathy than the priests of the

Church. But human endurance had been exhausted by overmuch suffering

and privation. There was a complete physical breakdown, and the

renowned agitator was removed to the "Bohemian Republic"--a large

tenement house which derived its euphonious appellation from the fact

that its occupants were mostly Bohemian Anarchists. Here Emma

Goldman found friends ready to aid her. Justus Schwab, one of the

finest representatives of the German revolutionary period of that

time, and Dr. Solotaroff were indefatigable in the care of the

patient. Here, too, she met Edward Brady, the new friendship

subsequently ripening into close intimacy. Brady had been an active

participant in the revolutionary movement of Austria and had, at the

time of his acquaintance with Emma Goldman, lately been released from

an Austrian prison after an incarceration of ten years.

Physicians diagnosed the illness as consumption, and the patient was

advised to leave New York. She went to Rochester, in the hope that

the home circle would help restore her to health. Her parents had

several years previously emigrated to America, settling in that city.

Among the leading traits of the Jewish race is the strong attachment

between the members of the family, and, especially, between parents

and children. Though her conservative parents could not sympathize

with the idealist aspirations of Emma Goldman and did not approve of

her mode of life, they now received their sick daughter with open

arms. The rest and care enjoyed in the parental home, and the

cheering presence of the beloved sister Helene, proved so beneficial

that within a short time she was sufficiently restored to resume her

energetic activity.

There is no rest in the life of Emma Goldman. Ceaseless effort and

continuous striving toward the conceived goal are the essentials of

her nature. Too much precious time had already been wasted. It was

imperative to resume her labors immediately. The country was in the

throes of a crisis, and thousands of unemployed crowded the streets

of the large industrial centers. Cold and hungry they tramped

through the land in the vain search for work and bread. The

Anarchists developed a strenuous propaganda among the unemployed and

the strikers. A monster demonstration of striking cloakmakers and of

the unemployed took place at Union Square, New York. Emma Goldman

was one of the invited speakers. She delivered an impassioned

speech, picturing in fiery words the misery of the wage slave's life,

and quoted the famous maxim of Cardinal Manning: "Necessity knows no

law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his

neighbor's bread." She concluded her exhortation with the words:

"Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they

do not give you work or bread, then take bread."

The following day she left for Philadelphia, where she was to address

a public meeting. The capitalist press again raised the alarm. If

Socialists and Anarchists were to be permitted to continue agitating,

there was imminent danger that the workingmen would soon learn to

understand the manner in which they are robbed of the joy and

happiness of life. Such a possibility was to be prevented at all

cost. The Chief of Police of New York, Byrnes, procured a court

order for the arrest of Emma Goldman. She was detained by the

Philadelphia authorities and incarcerated for several days in the

Moyamensing prison, awaiting the extradition papers which Byrnes

intrusted to Detective Jacobs. This man Jacobs (whom Emma Goldman

again met several years later under very unpleasant circumstances)

proposed to her, while she was returning a prisoner to New York, to

betray the cause of labor. In the name of his superior, Chief

Byrnes, he offered lucrative reward. How stupid men sometimes are!

What poverty of psychologic observation to imagine the possibility of

betrayal on the part of a young Russian idealist, who had willingly

sacrificed all personal considerations to help in labor's

emancipation.

In October, 1893, Emma Goldman was tried in the criminal courts of

New York on the charge of inciting to riot. The "intelligent" jury

ignored the testimony of the twelve witnesses for the defense in

favor of the evidence given by one single man--Detective Jacobs. She

was found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary

at Blackwell's Island. Since the foundation of the Republic she was

the first woman--Mrs. Surratt excepted--to be imprisoned for a

political offense. Respectable society had long before stamped upon

her the Scarlet Letter.

Emma Goldman passed her time in the penitentiary in the capacity of

nurse in the prison hospital. Here she found opportunity to shed

some rays of kindness into the dark lives of the unfortunates whose

sisters of the street did not disdain two years previously to share

with her the same house. She also found in prison opportunity to

study English and its literature, and to familiarize herself with the

great American writers. In Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,

Thoreau, and Emerson she found great treasures.

She left Blackwell's Island in the month of August, 1894, a woman of

twenty-five, developed and matured, and intellectually transformed.

Back into the arena, richer in experience, purified by suffering.

She did not feel herself deserted and alone any more. Many hands

were stretched out to welcome her. There were at the time numerous

intellectual oases in New York. The saloon of Justus Schwab, at

Number Fifty, First Street, was the center where gathered Anarchists,

litterateurs, and bohemians. Among others she also met at this time

a number of American Anarchists, and formed the friendship of

Voltairine de Cleyre, Wm. C. Owen, Miss Van Etton, and Dyer D. Lum,

former editor of the ALARM and executor of the last wishes of the

Chicago martyrs. In John Swinton, the noble old fighter for liberty,

she found one of her staunchest friends. Other intellectual centers

there were: SOLIDARITY, published by John Edelman; LIBERTY, by the

Individualist Anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker; the REBEL, by Harry

Kelly; DER STURMVOGEL, a German Anarchist publication, edited by

Claus Timmermann; DER ARME TEUFEL, whose presiding genius was the

inimitable Robert Reitzel. Through Arthur Brisbane, now chief

lieutenant of William Randolph Hearst, she became acquainted with the

writings of Fourier. Brisbane then was not yet submerged in the

swamp of political corruption. He sent Emma Goldman an amiable

letter to Blackwell's Island, together with the biography of his

father, the enthusiastic American disciple of Fourier.

Emma Goldman became, upon her release from the penitentiary, a factor

in the public life of New York. She was appreciated in radical ranks

for her devotion, her idealism, and earnestness. Various persons

sought her friendship, and some tried to persuade her to aid in the

furtherance of their special side issues. Thus Rev. Parkhurst,

during the Lexow investigation, did his utmost to induce her to join

the Vigilance Committee in order to fight Tammany Hall. Maria

Louise, the moving spirit of a social center, acted as Parkhurst's

go-between. It is hardly necessary to mention what reply the latter

received from Emma Goldman. Incidentally, Maria Louise subsequently

became a Mahatma. During the free silver campaign, ex-Burgess

McLuckie, one of the most genuine personalities in the Homestead

strike, visited New York in an endeavor to enthuse the local radicals

for free silver. He also attempted to interest Emma Goldman, but

with no greater success than Mahatma Maria Louise of Parkhurst-Lexow

fame.

In 1894 the struggle of the Anarchists in France reached its highest

expression. The white terror on the part of the Republican upstarts

was answered by the red terror of our French comrades. With feverish

anxiety the Anarchists throughout the world followed this social

struggle. Propaganda by deed found its reverberating echo in almost

all countries. In order to better familiarize herself with

conditions in the old world, Emma Goldman left for Europe, in the

year 1895. After a lecture tour in England and Scotland, she went to

Vienna where she entered the ALLGEMEINE KRANKENHAUS to prepare

herself as midwife and nurse, and where at the same time she studied

social conditions. She also found opportunity to acquaint herself

with the newest literature of Europe: Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen,

Zola, Thomas Hardy, and other artist rebels were read with great

enthusiasm.

In the autumn of 1896 she returned to New York by way of Zurich and

Paris. The project of Alexander Berkman's liberation was on hand.

The barbaric sentence of twenty-two years had roused tremendous

indignation among the radical elements. It was known that the Pardon

Board of Pennsylvania would look to Carnegie and Frick for advice in

the case of Alexander Berkman. It was therefore suggested that these

Sultans of Pennsylvania be approached--not with a view of obtaining

their grace, but with the request that they do not attempt to

influence the Board. Ernest Crosby offered to see Carnegie, on

condition that Alexander Berkman repudiate his act. That, however,

was absolutely out of the question. He would never be guilty of such

forswearing of his own personality and self-respect. These efforts

led to friendly relations between Emma Goldman and the circle of

Ernest Crosby, Bolton Hall, and Leonard Abbott. In the year 1897 she

undertook her first great lecture tour, which extended as far as

California. This tour popularized her name as the representative of

the oppressed, her eloquence ringing from coast to coast. In

California Emma Goldman became friendly with the members of the Isaak

family, and learned to appreciate their efforts for the Cause. Under

tremendous obstacles the Isaaks first published the FIREBRAND and,

upon its suppression by the Postal Department, the FREE SOCIETY. It

was also during this tour that Emma Goldman met that grand old rebel

of sexual freedom, Moses Harman.

During the Spanish-American war the spirit of chauvinism was at its

highest tide. To check this dangerous situation, and at the same

time collect funds for the revolutionary Cubans, Emma Goldman became

affiliated with the Latin comrades, among others with Gori, Esteve,

Palaviccini, Merlino, Petruccini, and Ferrara. In the year 1899

followed another protracted tour of agitation, terminating on the

Pacific Coast. Repeated arrests and accusations, though without

ultimate bad results, marked every propaganda tour.

In November of the same year the untiring agitator went on a second

lecture tour to England and Scotland, closing her journey with the

first International Anarchist Congress at Paris. It was at the time of

the Boer war, and again jingoism was at its height, as two years

previously it had celebrated its orgies during the Spanish-American

war. Various meetings, both in England and Scotland, were disturbed

and broken up by patriotic mobs. Emma Goldman found on this occasion

the opportunity of again meeting various English comrades and

interesting personalities like Tom Mann and the sisters Rossetti, the

gifted daughters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then publishers of the

Anarchist review, the TORCH. One of her life-long hopes found here

its fulfillment: she came in close and friendly touch with Peter

Kropotkin, Enrico Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov,

and Louise Michel. Old warriors in the cause of humanity, whose

deeds have enthused thousands of followers throughout the world, and

whose life and work have inspired other thousands with noble idealism

and self-sacrifice. Old warriors they, yet ever young with the

courage of earlier days, unbroken in spirit and filled with the firm

hope of the final triumph of Anarchy.

The chasm in the revolutionary labor movement, which resulted from

the disruption of the INTERNATIONALE, could not be bridged any more.

Two social philosophies were engaged in bitter combat. The

International Congress in 1889, at Paris; in 1892, at Zurich, and in

1896, at London, produced irreconcilable differences. The majority

of Social Democrats, forswearing their libertarian past and becoming

politicians, succeeded in excluding the revolutionary and Anarchist

delegates. The latter decided thenceforth to hold separate

congresses. Their first congress was to take place in 1900, at

Paris. The Socialist renegade, Millerand, who had climbed into the

Ministry of the Interior, here played a Judas role. The congress of

the revolutionists was suppressed, and the delegates dispersed two

days prior to their scheduled opening. But Millerand had no

objections against the Social Democratic Congress, which was

afterwards opened with all the trumpets of the advertiser's art.

However, the renegade did not accomplish his object. A number of

delegates succeeded in holding a secret conference in the house of a

comrade outside of Paris, where various points of theory and tactics

were discussed. Emma Goldman took considerable part in these

proceedings, and on that occasion came in contact with numerous

representatives of the Anarchist movement of Europe.

Owing to the suppression of the congress, the delegates were in

danger of being expelled from France. At this time also came the bad

news from America regarding another unsuccessful attempt to liberate

Alexander Berkman, proving a great shock to Emma Goldman. In

November, 1900, she returned to America to devote herself to her

profession of nurse, at the same time taking an active part in the

American propaganda. Among other activities she organized monster

meetings of protest against the terrible outrages of the Spanish

government, perpetrated upon the political prisoners tortured in

Montjuich.

In her vocation as nurse Emma Goldman enjoyed many opportunities of

meeting the most unusual and peculiar characters. Few would have

identified the "notorious Anarchist" in the small blonde woman,

simply attired in the uniform of a nurse. Soon after her return from

Europe she became acquainted with a patient by the name of Mrs.

Stander, a morphine fiend, suffering excruciating agonies. She

required careful attention to enable her to supervise a very

important business she conducted,--that of Mrs. Warren. In Third

Street, near Third Avenue, was situated her private residence, and

near it, connected by a separate entrance, was her place of business.

One evening, the nurse, upon entering the room of her patient,

suddenly came face to face with a male visitor, bull-necked and of

brutal appearance. The man was no other than Mr. Jacobs, the

detective who seven years previously had brought Emma Goldman a

prisoner from Philadelphia and who had attempted to persuade her, on

their way to New York, to betray the cause of the workingmen. It

would be difficult to describe the expression of bewilderment on the

countenance of the man as he so unexpectedly faced Emma Goldman, the

nurse of his mistress. The brute was suddenly transformed into a

gentleman, exerting himself to excuse his shameful behavior on the

previous occasion. Jacobs was the "protector" of Mrs. Stander, and

go-between for the house and the police. Several years later, as one

of the detective staff of District Attorney Jerome, he committed

perjury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year. He is now

probably employed by some private detective agency, a desirable

pillar of respectable society.

In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowell Institute of

Massachusetts to deliver a series of lectures on Russian literature.

It was his second American tour, and naturally the comrades were

anxious to use his presence for the benefit of the movement. Emma

Goldman entered into correspondence with Kropotkin and succeeded in

securing his consent to arrange for him a series of lectures. She

also devoted her energies to organizing the tours of other well known

Anarchists, principally those of Charles W. Mowbray and John Turner.

Similarly she always took part in all the activities of the movement,

ever ready to give her time, ability, and energy to the Cause.

On the sixth of September, 1901, President McKinley was shot by Leon

Czolgosz at Buffalo. Immediately an unprecedented campaign of

persecution was set in motion against Emma Goldman as the best known

Anarchist in the country. Although there was absolutely no

foundation for the accusation, she, together with other prominent

Anarchists, was arrested in Chicago, kept in confinement for several

weeks, and subjected to severest cross-examination. Never before in

the history of the country had such a terrible man-hunt taken place

against a person in public life. But the efforts of police and press

to connect Emma Goldman with Czolgosz proved futile. Yet the episode

left her wounded to the heart. The physical suffering, the

humiliation and brutality at the hands of the police she could bear.

The depression of soul was far worse. She was overwhelmed by

realization of the stupidity, lack of understanding, and vileness

which characterized the events of those terrible days. The attitude

of misunderstanding on the part of the majority of her own comrades

toward Czolgosz almost drove her to desperation. Stirred to the very

inmost of her soul, she published an article on Czolgosz in which she

tried to explain the deed in its social and individual aspects. As

once before, after Berkman's act, she now also was unable to find

quarters; like a veritable wild animal she was driven from place to

place. This terrible persecution and, especially, the attitude of

her comrades made it impossible for her to continue propaganda. The

soreness of body and soul had first to heal. During 1901-1903 she

did not resume the platform. As "Miss Smith" she lived a quiet life,

practicing her profession and devoting her leisure to the study of

literature and, particularly, to the modern drama, which she

considers one of the greatest disseminators of radical ideas and

enlightened feeling.

Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Goldman accomplished. Her name

was brought before the public with greater frequency and emphasis

than ever before, the malicious harassing of the much maligned

agitator arousing strong sympathy in many circles. Persons in

various walks of life began to get interested in her struggle and her

ideas. A better understanding and appreciation were now beginning to

manifest themselves.

The arrival in America of the English Anarchist, John Turner, induced

Emma Goldman to leave her retirement. Again she threw herself into

her public activities, organizing an energetic movement for the

defense of Turner, whom the Immigration authorities condemned to

deportation on account of the Anarchist exclusion law, passed after

the death of McKinley.

When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New York to acquaint

the American public with Russian dramatic art, Emma Goldman became

the manager of the undertaking. By much patience and perseverance

she succeeded in raising the necessary funds to introduce the Russian

artists to the theater-goers of New York and Chicago. Though

financially not a success, the venture proved of great artistic

value. As manager of the Russian theater Emma Goldman enjoyed some

unique experiences. M. Orleneff could converse only in Russian, and

"Miss Smith" was forced to act as his interpreter at various polite

functions. Most of the aristocratic ladies of Fifth Avenue had not

the least inkling that the amiable manager who so entertainingly

discussed philosophy, drama, and literature at their five o'clock

teas, was the "notorious" Emma Goldman. If the latter should some

day write her autobiography, she will no doubt have many interesting

anecdotes to relate in connection with these experiences.

The weekly Anarchist publication, FREE SOCIETY, issued by the Isaak

family, was forced to suspend in consequence of the nation-wide fury

that swept the country after the death of McKinley. To fill out the

gap Emma Goldman, in co-operation with Max Baginski and other

comrades, decided to publish a monthly magazine devoted to the

furtherance of Anarchist ideas in life and literature. The first

issue of MOTHER EARTH appeared in the month of March, 1906, the

initial expenses of the periodical partly covered by the proceeds of

a theater benefit given by Orleneff, Mme. Nazimova, and their

company, in favor of the Anarchist magazine. Under tremendous

difficulties and obstacles the tireless propagandist has succeeded in

continuing MOTHER EARTH uninterruptedly since 1906--an achievement

rarely equalled in the annals of radical publications.

In May, 1906, Alexander Berkman at last left the hell of

Pennsylvania, where he had passed the best fourteen years of his

life. No one had believed in the possibility of his survival. His

liberation terminated a nightmare of fourteen years for Emma Goldman,

and an important chapter of her career was thus concluded.

Nowhere had the birth of the Russian revolution aroused such vital

and active response as among the Russians living in America. The

heroes of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Tchaikovsky, Mme.

Breshkovskaia, Gershuni, and others visited these shores to waken the

sympathies of the American people toward the struggle for liberty,

and to collect aid for its continuance and support. The success of

these efforts was to a considerable extent due to the exertions,

eloquence, and the talent for organization on the part of Emma

Goldman. This opportunity enabled her to give valuable services to

the struggle for liberty in her native land. It is not generally

known that it is the Anarchists who are mainly instrumental in

insuring the success, moral as well as financial, of most of the

radical undertakings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledged

appreciation; the needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, and

to these he devotes his energy and abilities. Yet it may be

mentioned that some otherwise decent folks, though at all times

anxious for Anarchist support and co-operation, are ever willing to

monopolize all the credit for the work done. During the last several

decades it was chiefly the Anarchists who had organized all the great

revolutionary efforts, and aided in every struggle for liberty. But

for fear of shocking the respectable mob, who looks upon the

Anarchists as the apostles of Satan, and because of their social

position in bourgeois society, the would-be radicals ignore the

activity of the Anarchists.

In 1907 Emma Goldman participated as delegate to the second Anarchist

Congress, at Amsterdam. She was intensely active in all its

proceedings and supported the organization of the Anarchist

INTERNATIONALE. Together with the other American delegate, Max

Baginski, she submitted to the congress an exhaustive report of

American conditions, closing with the following characteristic

remarks:

"The charge that Anarchism is destructive, rather than constructive,

and that, therefore, Anarchism is opposed to organization, is one of

the many falsehoods spread by our opponents. They confound our

present social institutions with organization; hence they fail to

understand how we can oppose the former, and yet favor the latter.

The fact, however, is that the two are not identical.

"The State is commonly regarded as the highest form of organization.

But is it in reality a true organization? Is it not rather an

arbitrary institution, cunningly imposed upon the masses?

"Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is farther

from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against

the poor.

"We are asked to believe that the Army is an organization, but a

close investigation will show that it is nothing else than a cruel

instrument of blind force.

"The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of learning,

are they not models of organization, offering the people fine

opportunities for instruction? Far from it. The school, more than

any other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mind

is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and

moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation

and oppression.

"Organization, as WE understand it, however, is a different thing.

It is based, primarily, on freedom. It is a natural and voluntary

grouping of energies to secure results beneficial to humanity.

"It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color

and form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously

will the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with the

spirit of solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony,

which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makes

non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since it

abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes.

"Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and social

interests results in relentless war among the social units, and

creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operative

commonwealth.

"There is a mistaken notion that organization does not foster

individual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay of

individuality. In reality, however, the true function of

organization is to aid the development and growth of personality.

"Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express their

latent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does the

individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his

highest form of development.

"An organization, in the true sense, cannot result from the

combination of mere nonentities. It must be composed of

self-conscious, intelligent individualities. Indeed, the total of

the possibilities and activities of an organization is represented in

the expression of individual energies.

"It therefore logically follows that the greater the number of

strong, self-conscious personalities in an organization, the less

danger of stagnation, and the more intense its life element.

"Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without

discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty:

a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle

for the means of existence,--the savage struggle which undermines the

finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short,

Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish

well-being for all.

"The germ of such an organization can be found in that form of trades

unionism which has done away with centralization, bureaucracy, and

discipline, and which favors independent and direct action on the

part of its members."

The very considerable progress of Anarchist ideas in America can best

be gauged by the remarkable success of the three extensive lecture

tours of Emma Goldman since the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Each

tour extended over new territory, including localities where

Anarchism had never before received a hearing. But the most

gratifying aspect of her untiring efforts is the tremendous sale of

Anarchist literature, whose propagandist effect cannot be estimated.

It was during one of these tours that a remarkable incident happened,

strikingly demonstrating the inspiring potentialities of the

Anarchist idea. In San Francisco, in 1908, Emma Goldman's lecture

attracted a soldier of the United States Army, William Buwalda. For

daring to attend an Anarchist meeting, the free Republic

court-martialed Buwalda and imprisoned him for one year. Thanks to

the regenerating power of the new philosophy, the government lost a

soldier, but the cause of liberty gained a man.

A propagandist of Emma Goldman's importance is necessarily a sharp

thorn to the reaction. She is looked upon as a danger to the

continued existence of authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then,

that the enemy resorts to any and all means to make her impossible.

A systematic attempt to suppress her activities was organized a year

ago by the united police force of the country. But like all previous

similar attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energetic

protests on the part of the intellectual element of America succeeded

in overthrowing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech.

Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by the

Federal authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of the

rights of citizenship, the government revoked the citizenship papers

of her husband, whom she had married at the youthful age of eighteen,

and whose whereabouts, if he be alive, could not be determined for

the last two decades. The great government of the glorious United

States did not hesitate to stoop to the most despicable methods to

accomplish that achievement. But as her citizenship had never proved

of use to Emma Goldman, she can bear the loss with a light heart.

There are personalities who possess such a powerful individuality

that by its very force they exert the most potent influence over the

best representatives of their time. Michael Bakunin was such a

personality. But for him, Richard Wagner had never written DIE KUNST

UND DIE REVOLUTION. Emma Goldman is a similar personality. She is a

strong factor in the socio-political life of America. By virtue of

her eloquence, energy, and brilliant mentality, she moulds the minds

and hearts of thousands of her auditors.

Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering humanity, and an

inexorable honesty toward herself, are the leading traits of Emma

Goldman. No person, whether friend or foe, shall presume to control

her goal or dictate her mode of life. She would perish rather than

sacrifice her convictions, or the right of self-ownership of soul and

body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic

Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new

philosophy; she also persists in living it,--and that is the one

supreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to

consider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to

make concessions to existing society and compromise with old

prejudices,--then even the most radical views could be pardoned in

her. But that she takes her radicalism seriously; that it has

permeated her blood and marrow to the extent where she not merely

teaches but also practices her convictions--this shocks even the

radical Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life; she associates

with publicans--hence the indignation of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

It is no mere coincidence that such divergent writers as Pietro Gori

and William Marion Reedy find similar traits in their

characterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to LA QUESTIONE

SOCIALE, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with the

vision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the

oppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep earnestness, analyses the

ills of society, and portrays, with artist touch, the coming dawn of

humanity, founded on equality, brotherhood, and liberty."

William Reedy sees in Emma Goldman the "daughter of the dream, her

gospel a vision which is the vision of every truly great-souled man

and woman who has ever lived."

Cowards who fear the consequences of their deeds have coined the word

of philosophic Anarchism. Emma Goldman is too sincere, too defiant,

to seek safety behind such paltry pleas. She is an Anarchist, pure

and simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed by Josiah

Warrn, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Yet she also

understands the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, a

Vaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or a Czolgosz to commit deeds of

violence. To the soldier in the social struggle it is a point of

honor to come in conflict with the powers of darkness and tyranny,

and Emma Goldman is proud to count among her best friends and

comrades men and women who bear the wounds and scars received in

battle.

In the words of Voltairine de Cleyre, characterizing Emma Goldman

after the latter's imprisonment in 1893: The spirit that animates

Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his

slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny--the spirit which is willing to

dare and suffer.

HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.

New York, December, 1910.

PREFACE

Some twenty-one years ago I heard the first great Anarchist

speaker--the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then, and for

many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the masses

with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could never

be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all the

multitudes who flocked to Most's meetings escape his prophetic voice!

Surely they had but to hear him to throw off their old beliefs, and

see the truth and beauty of Anarchism!

My one great longing then was to be able to speak with the tongue of

John Most,--that I, too, might thus reach the masses. Oh, for the

naivety of Youth's enthusiasm! It is the time when the hardest thing

seems but child's play. It is the only period in life worth while.

Alas! This period is but of short duration. Like Spring, the STURM

UND DRANG period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and

delicate, to be matured or killed according to its powers of

resistance against a thousand vicissitudes.

My great faith in the wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I

have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion.

Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I

came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking

people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The

very fact that most people attend meetings only if aroused by

newspaper sensations, or because they expect to be amused, is proof

that they really have no inner urge to learn.

It is altogether different with the written mode of human expression.

No one, unless intensely interested in progressive ideas, will bother

with serious books. That leads me to another discovery made after

many years of public activity. It is this: All claims of education

notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind

craves. Already this truth is recognized by most modern educators in

relation to the immature mind. I think it is equally true regarding

the adult. Anarchists or revolutionists can no more be made than

musicians. All that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought.

Whether something vital will develop depends largely on the fertility

of the human soil, though the quality of the intellectual seed must

not be overlooked.

In meetings the audience is distracted by a thousand non-essentials.

The speaker, though ever so eloquent, cannot escape the restlessness

of the crowd, with the inevitable result that he will fail to strike

root. In all probability he will not even do justice to himself.

The relation between the writer and the reader is more intimate.

True, books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read

into them. That we can do so demonstrates the importance of written

as against oral expression. It is this certainty which has induced

me to gather in one volume my ideas on various topics of individual

and social importance. They represent the mental and soul struggles

of twenty-one years,--the conclusions derived after many changes and

inner revisions.

I am not sanguine enough to hope that my readers will be as numerous

as those who have heard me. But I prefer to reach the few who really

want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused.

As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory remarks do but

detract from the ideas set forth. However, I wish to forestall two

objections which will undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference to

the essay on ANARCHISM; the other, on MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES.

"Why do you not say how things will be operated under Anarchism?" is

a question I have had to meet thousands of times. Because I believe

that Anarchism can not consistently impose an iron-clad program or

method on the future. The things every new generation has to fight,

and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the past, which

holds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as I understand it,

leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems, in

harmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination can not foresee

the potentialities of a race set free from external restraints.

How, then, can any one assume to map out a line of conduct for those

to come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure, fresh air,

must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If we succeed

in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, we

will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages.

The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out

one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or

personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a

hater of the weak because he believed in the UEBERMENSCH. It does

not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this

vision of the UEBERMENSCH also called for a state of society which

will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but

the apostle of the theory "each for himself, the devil take the hind

one." That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social

possibilities is utterly ignored. Yet, it is nevertheless true that

if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated

individuals, whose free efforts make society.

These examples bring me to the objection that will be raised to

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES. No doubt, I shall be excommunicated as

an enemy of the people, because I repudiate the mass as a creative

factor. I shall prefer that rather than be guilty of the demagogic

platitudes so commonly in vogue as a bait for the people. I realize

the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well,

but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which

allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too

extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is

generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is

dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only

when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common

purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos

and inequality.

For the rest, my book must speak for itself.

Emma Goldman

ANARCHISM: WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR

ANARCHY.

Ever reviled, accursed, ne'er understood,

Thou art the grisly terror of our age.

"Wreck of all order," cry the multitude,

"Art thou, and war and murder's endless rage."

O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven

The truth that lies behind a word to find,

To them the word's right meaning was not given.

They shall continue blind among the blind.

But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,

Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.

I give thee to the future! Thine secure

When each at least unto himself shall waken.

Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest's thrill?

I cannot tell--but it the earth shall see!

I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will

Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!

JOHN HENRY MACKAY.

The history of human growth and development is at the same time the

history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the

approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the

Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means

to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter

may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the

distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and

hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack,

the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict's

garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is

serenely marching on.

Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of

innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising

innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and

venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.

To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against

Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall

therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I

shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it

brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and

ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the

relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it

makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always

does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child.

"Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism

deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical,

though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and

destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous.

Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a

thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false

interpretation.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in

existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing

conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one

objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is

wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore,

is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish;

rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the

stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life.

In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical.

More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and

foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new

life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by

the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too

outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents.

Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial

bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing

everything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the

most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of

destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he

aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's

forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that

feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the

soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy

fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than

to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society,

proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of

any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people

will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or

prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every

proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not

taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then

elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM:--The philosophy of a new social order based on

liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all

forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong

and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of

life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an

economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be

brought about only through the consideration of EVERY PHASE of

life,--individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well

as the external phases.

A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose

two elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that are

only now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other,

but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper

environment: the individual and social instincts. The individual and

society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each

striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and

importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,--the

one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth,

aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for

mutual helpfulness and social well-being.

The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, and

between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive

man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life,

felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready

to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious

concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers

on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the

early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the LEIT-MOTIF

of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the

State, to society. Again and again the same motif, MAN IS NOTHING,

THE POWERS ARE EVERYTHING. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on

condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the

earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State,

society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all

the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of

himself.

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the

consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and

society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void,

since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.

Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely

in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual

and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart

and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the

other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and

strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the

essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing

the element to keep the life essence--that is, the individual--pure

and strong.

"The one thing of value in the world," says Emerson, "is the active

soul; this every man contains within him. The soul active sees

absolute truth and utters truth and creates." In other words, the

individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the

true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to

come a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have

held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces

for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity,

Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so

far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social

instincts, the individual and society.

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of

human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent

the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails.

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades

his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out

of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical,

so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and

blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to

rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says

Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will

you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all

progress.

Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to

satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right,

when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion,

"Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted

man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face

toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring,

devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the

monster dead.

"Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon.

Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the

accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his

birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast.

Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create

enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows

that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far

exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to

an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is

its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means

power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to

enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of

her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what

avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are

wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with

hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business

venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged

in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this

simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is

growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year);

the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever

getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable

bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime

of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer

into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than

his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the

products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of

originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is

making.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that

help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to

live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig

coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no

talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous

things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,--too weak to live,

too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this

deadening method of centralized production as the proudest

achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are

to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete

than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that

centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of

health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in

a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal

is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the

individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as "one who

develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in

danger." A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of

society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions

of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table,

the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the

painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,--the

result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work

as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic

arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive

associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best

means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism,

however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of

individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in

harmony with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete

individual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces against

the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State,

organized authority, or statutory law,--the dominion of human

conduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the

monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the

State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "All

government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not

whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every

instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest American

Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but a

tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself

unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it

has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never

made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even

the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice."

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance

and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments

ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses,

while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the

annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she

maintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities in

its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is

filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to

clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate

liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably

dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which

there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit,

and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving

humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two

walls."

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if

it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it

employs to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates the

State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the

individual or small minorities,--the destruction of social

relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life

itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of

political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for

the purpose of human sacrifice.

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that

government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary ONLY to

maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient

in that function only.

Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the State

under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that "it is at present a huge

machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force."

This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes

to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist.

Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the

fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains

social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it

prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore

examine these contentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and

spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the

requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for

sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law.

But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not

the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws,

if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free

opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through

such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence,

force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus

Blackstone is right when he says, "Human laws are invalid, because

they are contrary to the laws of nature."

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of

people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for

order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and

maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the

only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social

harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society

where those who always work never have anything, while those who

never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent;

hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority

meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges

to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further

enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of

government--laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures,

prisons,--is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most

antagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to

diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the

greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing

in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital

punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with

crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the

horrible scourge of its own creation.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution

of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to

misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people

are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they

loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the

statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What does

society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the

poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass

on its way to crime and degradation. Who that knows this terrible

process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin:

"Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed

to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on

humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured

abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even,

and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of

aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and

there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when

subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a

thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the

entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which

ought to be brought to an end."

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit

consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and

expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the

paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social

tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the

occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that

laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and

mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production

fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people

should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its

deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to

make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real

harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both

recreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust,

arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best it

has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to

individual and social variations and needs. In destroying government

and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and

independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by

authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only

in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in

him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social

bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a

normal social life.

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it

endure under Anarchism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy

name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson

to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak

authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan,

the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of

human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every

soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in

captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits,

their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from

their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow

space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its

potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose,

alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all

its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind

from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from

the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint

of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free

grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social

wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access

to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according

to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the

conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the

world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious

observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty

and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine

and true in man.

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of

the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living

force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions.

The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad

program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow

out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the

intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The

serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for

social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a

Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent

that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more

drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not

stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for

the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that

hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also

agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of

bringing about the great social change.

"All voting," says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or

backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never

exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing

nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of

chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority."

A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements

will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure

and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and

social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments

made for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven

only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine

protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child

labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though

with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism

has reached the most brazen zenith.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for

which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are

there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind

the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions

is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying,

cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the

political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete

demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left

that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict.

Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe,

and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to

find themselves betrayed and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in

the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be

absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of

labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is

the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be,

would either remain true to their political faith and lose their

economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be

utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves

one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and

minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more

to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as

much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands

for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws

and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and

resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man.

Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and

courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men

who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass

your hand through."

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If

not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the

American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the

King's coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his

comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.

True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will

have to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economic

arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action.

It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush

the trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man's right

to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert

their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism

would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy,

in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of

English labor unions) direct, revolutionary, economic action has

become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to

make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power.

The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic

consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short

time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize

the importance of the solidaric general protest.

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is

equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred

forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to

them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority

in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct

action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code,

is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social

change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either

not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that

revolution is but thought carried into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every

phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the

effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social

opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the

spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the

sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony.

It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the

world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES

If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would

say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere,

destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and

education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took

pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced

by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous

quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally

injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding

to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.

In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its

increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are

completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for

supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery,

deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who

succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is

the only god,--Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to

character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof

to verify this sad fact.

Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our

government stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were the

American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that

political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond

reproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of

the rights and liberties of the people.

Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the

blind could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions, and its

supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed,

outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the

victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the

traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its

reasoning capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it

has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage,

the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others.

Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders

even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most dangerous

enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities,

the damned compact majority." Without ambition or initiative, the

compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always

opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new

truth.

The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the

Socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the

minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be

led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth

of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the

situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but

to the inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass.

The latter wants but to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As

to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance

of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy

manner.

The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or

writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the

non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the

wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit

with age.

Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while the

dietitians of predigested food, a la Professors Eliot and Butler, are

the successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons.

In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde

Fitches are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate

the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, a

Hauptmann, a Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are like

solitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the multitude.

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality

inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it

suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping

ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a

result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the

chief literary output.

Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts?

One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the

hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none

but a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in

conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infests

American cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to a

Michael Angelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true

artistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions, who

exercises originality, and strives to be true to life, leads an

obscure and wretched existence. His work may some day become the fad

of the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted; not

until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an idealless

and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master.

It is said that the artist of today cannot create because

Prometheus-like he is bound to the rock of economic necessity.

This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was

dependent on his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter

of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far

away from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to

worship at the shrine of the master.

The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one

value,--the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any

great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies.

Thus the financier in Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES points

to some blurred arrangement in colors, saying "See how great it is;

it cost 50,000 francs." Just like our own parvenues. The fabulous

figures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the

poverty of their taste.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

That this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is

democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the

majority.

Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: "In our country of absolute

democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is

omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding

from its reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greek

lantern and go about to seek among a hundred, you will not find a

single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has,

something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or

business, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him.

And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals,

each one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction, as a nation

compared to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than any

other people we are afraid of each other." Evidently we have not

advanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell

Phillips.

Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as

then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept

him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the

unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very

worst element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that the

majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is

display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight,

the lynching of a "nigger," the rounding up of some petty offender,

the marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an

ex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater

the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgar

of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour.

On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies,

men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as

mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of

individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the

phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for

enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic

liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today,

as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured,

and killed.

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth

preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was

the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it,

that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and

fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the

omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the

night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss,

a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession

against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less

bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority,

who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and

sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom;

the minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the

majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with

age.

Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute

slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the Wat Tylers, the Tells,

the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the

power of kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world

would have never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous

wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by

apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille

Desmoulins was like the trumpet before Jericho, razing to the ground

that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille.

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great

idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of

which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia

with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already

been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is

not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture,

literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron

yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian

peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery,

still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with the white

hands"[1] brings luck.

In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a

stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of

Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their

posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage

worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the

background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of

the black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston,

Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and

Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in

that somber giant, John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence

and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords.

Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a

practical issue, recognized as such by all.

About fifty years ago, a meteor-like idea made its appearance on the

social horizon of the world, an idea so far-reaching, so

revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of

tyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of

joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the

difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution,

the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they

started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become

a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich

man, as well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority,

as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as

the perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as

well as the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty

years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its

youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its

revolutionary ideal--why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful

vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of

the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and

shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise

is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, the

abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us.

Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this

never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that

it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters.

But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself

is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its

masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment

a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic

authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would

authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of

the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The

Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the

myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of

life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be

acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and

dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the free

unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.

Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the

earth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity

of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a

creative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well

that as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality.

It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained

the human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life

uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it will

always be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of

originality. I therefore believe with Emerson that "the masses are

crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not

to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything

to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw

individuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do

not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet,

accomplished women only."

In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic

well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the

non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not

through the mass.

[1] The intellectuals.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

To analyze the psychology of political violence is not only extremely

difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with

understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on

the other hand, human sympathy is expressed with the ATTENTATER,[1] one

risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only

intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of

human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.

The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces, dreaded their

approach, hiding from the perils they threatened. As man learned to

understand Nature's phenomena, he realized that though these may

destroy life and cause great loss, they also bring relief. To the

earnest student it must be apparent that the accumulated forces in

our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of

violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in

storm and lightning.

To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel

intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one's very being must

throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are

daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of

humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that

accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes

the storm inevitable.

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest

against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a

cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe

in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing

is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have

studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come

in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their

super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which

compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted

writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders,

have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these

men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly

not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who

knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause.

Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in the second part of BEYOND HUMAN POWER,

emphasizes the fact that it is among the Anarchists that we must look

for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and

who welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as truly as

Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity.

Francois Coppee, the French novelist, thus expresses himself

regarding the psychology of the ATTENTATER:

"The reading of the details of Vaillant's execution left me in a

thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes,

marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his

energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at

society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another

spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and

women pressing against each other in the middle of the oblong arena

of the circus, under the gaze of thousands of eyes, while from all

the steps of the immense amphitheatre went up the terrible cry, AD

LEONES! and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts.

"I did not believe the execution would take place. In the first

place, no victim had been struck with death, and it had long been the

custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of

severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, was

disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his

abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor.

In the independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf,

very loud and eloquent. 'A purely literary current of opinion' some

have said, with no little scorn. IT IS, ON THE CONTRARY, AN HONOR TO

THE MEN OF ART AND THOUGHT TO HAVE EXPRESSED ONCE MORE THEIR DISGUST

AT THE SCAFFOLD."

Again Zola, in GERMINAL and PARIS, describes the tenderness and

kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering, of these men who

close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our

system.

Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else

understands the psychology of the ATTENTATER is M. Hamon, the author

of the brilliant work, UNE PSYCHOLOGIE DU MILITAIRE PROFESSIONEL, who

has arrived at these suggestive conclusions:

"The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to

establish an ideal type of Anarchist, whose mentality is the

aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist

partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to

differentiate him from other men. The typical Anarchist, then, may

be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt

under one or more of its forms,--opposition, investigation,

criticism, innovation,--endowed with a strong love of liberty,

egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen

desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of

others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment

of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal."

To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added

these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing

sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety

of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living,

and courage beyond compare.[2]

"There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget,

when he is abusing the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be

his BETE NOIRE for the moment, as the cause of some outrage just

perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have,

from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes,

and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen,

which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil

from violence, whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last

desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for

breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any special

conviction, but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole

course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of

this fact. To go no further, take the three most notorious examples

of political parties goaded into violence during the last fifty

years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in Ireland, and the

Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists? No. Did they

all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The Mazzinians

were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians

Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by

desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when

we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we

stand appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by

sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their

social instincts.

"Now that Anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds

have been sometimes committed by Anarchists, as well as by others.

For no new faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane the

mind of man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought

upon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of anything violent or

anti-social in the doctrine itself; simply because of the ferment any

new and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept or

reject it. And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand,

threatens every vested interest, and, on the other, holds out a

vision of a free and noble life to be won by a struggle against

existing wrongs, is certain to rouse the fiercest opposition, and

bring the whole repressive force of ancient evil into violent contact

with the tumultuous outburst of a new hope.

"Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of

better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs

those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their

lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper

misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society,

for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of what

work and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine and

the squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has

the resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and

waiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way

for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to

spread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. How

many thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have lost

work and even the chance of work, solely on the ground of their

opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman, who, if he be a

zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And

what happens to a man with his brain working actively with a ferment

of new ideas, with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for

toiling and agonizing men, with the knowledge that his suffering and

that of his fellows in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate,

but by the injustice of other human beings,--what happens to such a

man when he sees those dear to him starving, when he himself is

starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the

least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will

even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in

striking when and how they can, they are striking, not for

themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their

persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we, who

ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and

coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we

to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic

self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social

and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject

submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and

brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness,

gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful

society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly

exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous

acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such

cases of homicide, or attempted homicide, as those of which we are

treating, to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole

responsibility of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt

of these homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionally

or by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions that

drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole life

into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against the

wrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to the active and

passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest

destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin in

society cast the first stone at such an one."[3]

That every act of political violence should nowadays be attributed to

Anarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known to

almost everyone familiar with the Anarchist movement that a great

number of acts, for which Anarchists had to suffer, either originated

with the capitalist press or were instigated, if not directly

perpetrated, by the police.

For a number of years acts of violence had been committed in Spain,

for which the Anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild

beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the

perpetrators of these acts were not Anarchists, but members of the

police department. The scandal became so widespread that the

conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment

of the gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to

death and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light

during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exonerate

completely the Anarchists from any connection with the acts committed

during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number of

police officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge,

disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb throwers were

others of far higher position, who provided them with funds and

protected them.

This is one of the many striking examples of how Anarchist

conspiracies are manufactured.

That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease,

that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their

European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We

need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known

as the Haymarket Riot.

No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that

the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a

lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not

Judge Gary himself said: "Not because you have caused the Haymarket

bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial."

The impartial and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that

blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of

Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three

Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty

loving man and woman in the world.

When we approach the tragedy of September sixth, 1901, we are

confronted by one of the most striking examples of how little social

theories are responsible for an act of political violence. "Leon

Czolgosz, an Anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman."

To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth, and

will she not continue to do so beyond death? Everything is possible

with the Anarchists.

Today, even, nine years after the tragedy, after it was proven a

hundred times that Emma Goldman had nothing to do with the event,

that no evidence whatsoever exists to indicate that Czolgosz ever

called himself an Anarchist, we are confronted with the same lie,

fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the press. No living

soul ever heard Czolgosz make that statement, nor is there a single

written word to prove that the boy ever breathed the accusation.

Nothing but ignorance and insane hysteria, which have never yet been

able to solve the simplest problem of cause and effect.

The President of a free Republic killed! What else can be the cause,

except that the ATTENTATER must have been insane, or that he was

incited to the act.

A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it will

continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparatively

intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yet

within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have

successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the

fundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country,

guaranteeing to every man, woman, and child "life, liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness." For thirty years they have been increasing

their wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers,

thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless,

and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country from

east to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. For

many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones,

while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere

pittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been

sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the daughters

outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary years

this process of undermining the nation's health, vigor, and pride,

without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has been

going on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this

"free land of ours" became more and more audacious in their

heartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed

European tyrannies for supremacy of power.

In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a foreigner.

The boy was a product of our own free American soil, that lulled him

to sleep with,

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty.

Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the

celebration of the Fourth of July, or of Decoration Day, when he

faithfully honored the Nation's dead? Who knows but that he, too,

was willing to "fight for his country and die for her liberty," until

it dawned upon him that those he belonged to have no country, because

they have been robbed of all that they have produced; until he

realized that the liberty and independence of his youthful dreams

were but a farce. Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of too

sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless and

brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and

the bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being among

all the infuriated mob at your trial--a newspaper woman--as a

visionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your large,

dreamy eyes must have beheld a new and glorious dawn.

Now, to a recent instance of police-manufactured Anarchist plots.

In that bloodstained city, Chicago, the life of Chief of Police

Shippy was attempted by a young man named Averbuch. Immediately the

cry was sent to the four corners of the world that Averbuch was an

Anarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the act.

Everyone who was at all known to entertain Anarchist ideas was

closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an

Anarchist group confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. It

goes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I must

needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police

credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had

never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly

"conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police

are not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target,

to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of a

political act. Was Averbuch an Anarchist? There is no positive

proof of it. He had been but three months in the country, did not

know the language, and, as far as I could ascertain, was quite

unknown to the Anarchists of Chicago.

What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants,

undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He received

his first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutal

dispersement of the unemployed parade. He further experienced

American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an

economic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the glorious

land brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are

in the same position the world over. In his native land he probably

learned that necessity knows no law--there was no difference between

a Russian and an American policeman.

The question to the intelligent social student is not whether the

acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whether

the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably

impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the

sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free

Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle,

furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought,

outraged souls of men like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount of

persecution, of hounding, of repression, can stay this social

phenomenon.

But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committed

acts of violence? Certainly they have, always however ready to

shoulder the responsibility. My contention is that they were

impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous

pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive

natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making

man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.

This is not a mere assertion, but a fact verified by all experience.

A close examination of the circumstances bearing upon this question

will further clarify my position.

Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within the

last two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the most

significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, in

connection with the Homestead strike of 1892.

During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a

conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel

Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was

intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out

the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so

successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the coke

regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely

prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the

fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high

board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for

sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to

smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act

precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content

with the death of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish,

Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began

the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them

out of the wretched Company houses.

The whole country was aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds

of voices were raised in protest, calling on Frick to desist, not to

go too far. Yes, hundreds of people protested,--as one objects to

annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the

outrage at Homestead,--Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist.

He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the

discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all

bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of

the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act,

his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick.

The record of European acts of political violence affords numerous

and striking instances of the influence of environment upon sensitive

human beings.

The court speech of Vaillant, who, in 1894, exploded a bomb in the

Paris Chamber of Deputies, strikes the true keynote of the psychology

of such acts:

"Gentlemen, in a few minutes you are to deal your blow, but in

receiving your verdict I shall have at least the satisfaction of

having wounded the existing society, that cursed society in which one

may see a single man spending, uselessly, enough to feed thousands of

families; an infamous society which permits a few individuals to

monopolize all the social wealth, while there are hundreds of

thousands of unfortunates who have not even the bread that is not

refused to dogs, and while entire families are committing suicide for

want of the necessities of life.

"Ah, gentlemen, if the governing classes could go down among the

unfortunates! But no, they prefer to remain deaf to their appeals.

It seems that a fatality impels them, like the royalty of the

eighteenth century, toward the precipice which will engulf them, for

woe be to those who remain deaf to the cries of the starving, woe to

those who, believing themselves of superior essence, assume the right

to exploit those beneath them! There comes a time when the people no

longer reason; they rise like a hurricane, and pass away like a

torrent. Then we see bleeding heads impaled on pikes.

"Among the exploited, gentlemen, there are two classes of

individuals: Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what

they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to

be slaves, and content themselves with the little that is given them

in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the contrary,

who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social

iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at

seeing others suffer? Then they throw themselves into the struggle,

and make themselves the bearers of the popular claims.

"Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have gone, I have

seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of capital. Everywhere I

have seen the same wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in the

remoter parts of the inhabited districts of South America, where I

had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of

civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there

study nature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen

capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the

unfortunate pariahs.

"Then I came back to France, where it was reserved for me to see my

family suffer atrociously. This was the last drop in the cup of my

sorrow. Tired of leading this life of suffering and cowardice, I

carried this bomb to those who are primarily responsible for social

sufferings.

"I am reproached with the wounds of those who were hit by my

projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that, if the

bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during the

Revolution, it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of

the nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on

Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands, yes,

millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and

wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. Add also those who

die of hunger, and all this with the assent of our Deputies. Beside

all this, of how little weight are the reproaches now brought against

me!

"It is true that one does not efface the other; but, after all, are

we not acting on the defensive when we respond to the blows which we

receive from above? I know very well that I shall be told that I

ought to have confined myself to speech for the vindication of the

people's claims. But what can you expect! It takes a loud voice to

make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our voices by

imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake; the

explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of the rebel Vaillant, but

the cry of an entire class which vindicates its rights, and which

will soon add acts to words. For, be sure of it, in vain will they

pass laws. The ideas of the thinkers will not halt; just as, in the

last century, all the governmental forces could not prevent the

Diderots and the Voltaires from spreading emancipating ideas among

the people, so all the existing governmental forces will not prevent

the Reclus, the Darwins, the Spencers, the Ibsens, the Mirbeaus, from

spreading the ideas of justice and liberty which will annihilate the

prejudices that hold the mass in ignorance. And these ideas,

welcomed by the unfortunate, will flower in acts of revolt as they

have done in me, until the day when the disappearance of authority

shall permit all men to organize freely according to their choice,

when we shall each be able to enjoy the product of his labor, and

when those moral maladies called prejudices shall vanish, permitting

human beings to live in harmony, having no other desire than to study

the sciences and love their fellows.

"I conclude, gentlemen, by saying that a society in which one sees

such social inequalities as we see all about us, in which we see

every day suicides caused by poverty, prostitution flaring at every

street corner,--a society whose principal monuments are barracks and

prisons,--such a society must be transformed as soon as possible, on

pain of being eliminated, and that speedily, from the human race.

Hail to him who labors, by no matter what means, for this

transformation! It is this idea that has guided me in my duel with

authority, but as in this duel I have only wounded my adversary, it

is now its turn to strike me.

"Now, gentlemen, to me it matters little what penalty you may

inflict, for, looking at this assembly with the eyes of reason, I can

not help smiling to see you, atoms lost in matter, and reasoning only

because you possess a prolongation of the spinal marrow, assume the

right to judge one of your fellows.

"Ah! gentlemen, how little a thing is your assembly and your verdict

in the history of humanity; and human history, in its turn, is

likewise a very little thing in the whirlwind which bears it through

immensity, and which is destined to disappear, or at least to be

transformed, in order to begin again the same history and the same

facts, a veritably perpetual play of cosmic forces renewing and

transferring themselves forever."

Will anyone say that Vaillant was an ignorant, vicious man, or a

lunatic? Was not his mind singularly clear, analytic? No wonder

that the best intellectual forces of France spoke in his behalf, and

signed the petition to President Carnot, asking him to commute

Vaillant's death sentence.

Carnot would listen to no entreaty; he insisted on more than a pound

of flesh, he wanted Vaillant's life, and then--the inevitable

happened: President Carnot was killed. On the handle of the stiletto

used by the ATTENTATER was engraved, significantly,

VAILLANT!

Santa Caserio was an Anarchist. He could have gotten away, saved

himself; but he remained, he stood the consequences.

His reasons for the act are set forth in so simple, dignified, and

childlike manner that one is reminded of the touching tribute paid

Caserio by his teacher of the little village school, Ada Negri, the

Italian poet, who spoke of him as a sweet, tender plant, of too fine

and sensitive texture to stand the cruel strain of the world.

"Gentlemen of the Jury! I do not propose to make a defense, but only

an explanation of my deed.

"Since my early youth I began to learn that present society is badly

organized, so badly that every day many wretched men commit suicide,

leaving women and children in the most terrible distress. Workers,

by thousands, seek for work and can not find it. Poor families beg

for food and shiver with cold; they suffer the greatest misery; the

little ones ask their miserable mothers for food, and the mothers

can not give them, because they have nothing. The few things

which the home contained have already been sold or pawned. All they

can do is beg alms; often they are arrested as vagabonds.

"I went away from my native place because I was frequently moved to

tears at seeing little girls of eight or ten years obliged to work

fifteen hours a day for the paltry pay of twenty centimes. Young

women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hours daily, for a

mockery of remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow

countrymen, but to all the workers, who sweat the whole day long for

a crust of bread, while their labor produces wealth in abundance.

The workers are obliged to live under the most wretched conditions,

and their food consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice,

and water; so by the time they are thirty or forty years old, they

are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals. Besides, in

consequence of bad food and overwork, these unhappy creatures are, by

hundreds, devoured by pellagra--a disease that, in my country,

attacks, as the physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a

life of toil and privation.

"I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry,

and many children who suffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the

towns. I saw many and large shops full of clothing and woolen

stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn,

suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other hand, I saw

thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live on

the labor of others; who spend every day thousands of francs for

their amusement; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own

dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses, many

servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life.

"I believed in God; but when I saw so great an inequality between

men, I acknowledged that it was not God who created man, but man who

created God. And I discovered that those who want their property to

be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise

and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance.

"Not long ago, Vaillant threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, to

protest against the present system of society. He killed no one,

only wounded some persons; yet bourgeois justice sentenced him to

death. And not satisfied with the condemnation of the guilty man,

they began to pursue the Anarchists, and arrest not only those who

had known Vaillant, but even those who had merely been present at any

Anarchist lecture.

"The government did not think of their wives and children. It did

not consider that the men kept in prison were not the only ones who

suffered, and that their little ones cried for bread. Bourgeois

justice did not trouble itself about these innocent ones, who do not

yet know what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their

fathers are in prison; they only want to eat.

"The government went on searching private houses, opening private

letters, forbidding lectures and meetings, and practicing the most

infamous oppressions against us. Even now, hundreds of Anarchists

are arrested for having written an article in a newspaper, or for

having expressed an opinion in public.

"Gentlemen of the Jury, you are representatives of bourgeois society.

If you want my head, take it; but do not believe that in so doing you

will stop the Anarchist propaganda. Take care, for men reap what

they have sown."

During a religious procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a bomb was

thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested.

Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and

Socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bastille, Montjuich,

and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been

killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal

press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors.

The man primarily responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was

Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered

the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bones

crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art of brutality

during his regime in Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the

appeals and protests of the awakened civilized conscience.

In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian,

Angiolillo. The latter was an editor in his native land, and his

bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities.

Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to

France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he

found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend

of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo:

"His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of

Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he

had not grown up at the 'case.' With his handsome frank face, his

soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the

vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French,

but no English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to carry

on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to

acquire the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was

not long until he became very popular with his fellow compositors.

His distinguished and yet modest manner, and his consideration

towards his colleagues, won him the hearts of all the boys."

Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailed accounts in the

press. He read of the great wave of human sympathy with the helpless

victims at Montjuich. On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes

the results of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards, who escaped

Castillo's clutches, came to seek asylum in England. There, at the

great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible

scars of burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a

thousand theories; the impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments,

beyond himself even.

Senor Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain,

sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in such cases, all strangers

were kept away from his exalted presence. One exception was made,

however, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly dressed

Italian--the representative, it was understood, of an important

journal. The distinguished gentleman was--Angiolillo.

Senor Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped on the veranda.

Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was

a corpse.

The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene. "Murderer!

Murderer!" she cried, pointing at Angiolillo. The latter bowed.

"Pardon, Madame," he said, "I respect you as a lady, but I regret

that you were the wife of that man."

Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its most terrible form--for

the man whose soul was as a child's.

He was garroted. His body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid in

twilight. And the people came, and pointing the finger of terror and

fear, they said: "There--the criminal--the cruel murderer."

How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It misunderstands always,

condemns always.

A remarkable parallel to the case of Angiolillo is to be found in the

act of Gaetano Bresci, whose ATTENTAT upon King Umberto made an

American city famous.

Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has

but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to

succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors

for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood,

self-respect.

Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled in Paterson, New Jersey,

and there found a lucrative job at six dollars per week in one of the

weaving mills of the town. Six whole dollars per week was, no doubt,

a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on in the new country.

He loved his little home. He was a good husband and devoted father

to his BAMBINA, Bianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked for a

number of years. He actually managed to save one hundred dollars out

of his six dollars per week.

Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an

ideal,--the Anarchist paper published in Paterson, LA QUESTIONE

SOCIALE.

Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the

paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little

pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair,

Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, the entire

savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.

In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor,

and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They

appealed to their good King Umberto; he would help. And he did.

The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King,

held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would

move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.

Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Paterson, read of the horrible

massacre. His mental eye beheld the defenceless women and innocent

infants of his native land, slaughtered right before the good King.

His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the

wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why

these foul murders?

The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended

almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his hundred dollars. His

comrades begged, implored him to give them a respite. The paper

would go down if they were to return him his loan. But Bresci

insisted on its return.

How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost

the good will, the confidence of his comrades. They would have

nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals.

On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo.

The young Italian weaver of Paterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the

life of the good King.

Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an

Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to

the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its

extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and

infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken

word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white

heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms.

The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those

whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to

respond--even as does steel to the magnet--to the wrongs and horrors

of society.

If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political

violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in

India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old

philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the

drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet

the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently

resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon

Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra.

If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually

permeated for centuries with the spirit of passivity, can one

question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character

exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the

justice of these words:

"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men

have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in

India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods.

The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India.

They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down

India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the

more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more

terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and

foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny

continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but

the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for

a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair.

It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the

tyrant."[4]

Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity

is not the sole factor moulding human character. Climate, food,

occupation; nay, color, light, and sound must be considered in the

study of human psychology.

If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great

social abuses will and must influence different minds and

temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the

stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain

exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of

political violence.

Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above

things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth:

if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of

human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not

do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that Anarchism

teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering,

all misery, all ills, result from the evil of submission?

Has not some American ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance

to tyranny is obedience to God? And he was not an Anarchist even.

I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So

long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration

must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government,

political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few

resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict

between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.

High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so

relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the

string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who

feel the agonized cry understand its harmony; they hear in it the

fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature.

Such is the psychology of political violence.

[1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.

[2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

[3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.

[4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN.

PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE

In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the

following story of THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL:

"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest.

'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What tortures of

hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the

tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and

the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is

you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten

them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'

"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the

air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the

workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the

scorching heat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too

much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the

devil: 'Let me go! Let me leave this hell!'

"'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil

gets hold of him again and drags him off to a farm. There he sees

workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable.

The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls

to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.

"Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same workers live

with their families--dirty, cold, smoky, ill-smelling holes. The

devil grins. He points out the poverty and hardships which are at

home here.

"'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seems as if even he, the

devil, pities the people. The pious servant of God can hardly bear

it. With uplifted hands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes,

yes! This is hell on earth!'

"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell.

You torment them, torture them to death mentally when they are

already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more

hell--one more, the very worst.'

"He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air

and the many human forms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on

the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked,

emaciated bodies.

"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put

on your ankles heavy chains such as these unfortunates wear; lie down

on the cold and filthy floor--and then talk to them about a hell that

still awaits them!'

"'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more

dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away from here!'

"'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this. Did you

not know it? Did you not know that these men and women whom you are

frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter--did you not know

that they are in hell right here, before they die?'"

This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall of one

of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny that the same applies

with equal force to the present time, even to American prisons?

With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our

far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the

worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured,

that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.

Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such

an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a

widespread contagion.

After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde

gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL:

The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,

Bloom well in prison air;

It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there.

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the Warder is Despair.

Society goes on perpetuating this poisonous air, not realizing that

out of it can come naught but the most poisonous results.

We are spending at the present $3,500,000 per day, $1,000,095,000 per

year, to maintain prison institutions, and that in a democratic

country,--a sum almost as large as the combined output of wheat,

valued at $750,000,000, and the output of coal, valued at

$350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington, D.C., estimates the

cost of prisons at $6,000,000,000 annually, and Dr. G. Frank Lydston,

an eminent American writer on crime, gives $5,000,000,000 annually as

a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of

maintaining vast armies of human beings caged up like wild beasts![1]

Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in America there

are four and a half times as many crimes to every million population

today as there were twenty years ago.

The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is murder, not

robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the South. London is five

times as large as Chicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteen

murders annually in the latter city, while only twenty in London.

Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on

the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco

and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it

seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from its

prisons.

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most

thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an

excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the

dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past

when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is

"ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.

The widespread prison investigations, agitation, and education during

the last few years are conclusive proof that men are learning to dig

deep into the very bottom of society, down to the causes of the

terrible discrepancy between social and individual life.

Why, then, are prisons a social crime and a failure? To answer this

vital question it behooves us to seek the nature and cause of crimes,

the methods employed in coping with them, and the effects these

methods produce in ridding society of the curse and horror of crimes.

First, as to the NATURE of crime:

Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases, the political, the

passional, the insane, and the occasional. He says that the

political criminal is the victim of an attempt of a more or less

despotic government to preserve its own stability. He is not

necessarily guilty of an unsocial offense; he simply tries to

overturn a certain political order which may itself be anti-social.

This truth is recognized all over the world, except in America where

the foolish notion still prevails that in a Democracy there is no

place for political criminals. Yet John Brown was a political

criminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is every striker.

Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, the political criminal of our time

or place may be the hero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso

calls the political criminal the true precursor of the progressive

movement of humanity.

"The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome birth and

honest life, who under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong has

wrought justice for himself."[2]

Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in THE MENACE OF THE POLICE, cites the case of Jim

Flaherty, a criminal by passion, who, instead of being saved by

society, is turned into a drunkard and a recidivist, with a ruined

and poverty-stricken family as the result.

A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand Whitlock's novel,

THE TURN OF THE BALANCE, the greatest American expose of crime in the

making. Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and

death by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the

unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law. Archie and

Flaherty are but the types of many thousands, demonstrating how the

legal aspects of crime, and the methods of dealing with it, help to

create the disease which is undermining our entire social life.

"The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than

a child, since he is mentally in the same condition as an infant or

an animal."[3]

The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of a very

flagrant nature, or when the culprit's wealth permits the luxury of

criminal insanity. It has become quite fashionable to be the victim

of paranoia. But on the whole the "sovereignty of justice" still

continues to punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its

power. Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing

that in Germany, one hundred and six madmen, out of one hundred and

forty-four criminal insane, were condemned to severe punishment.

The occasional criminal "represents by far the largest class of our

prison population, hence is the greatest menace to social

well-being." What is the cause that compels a vast army of the human

family to take to crime, to prefer the hideous life within prison

walls to the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron

master, who leaves its victims no avenue of escape, for the most

depraved human being loves liberty.

This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and economic

arrangement. I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or

psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an

advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and

economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs

of crime. Granted even that there are innate criminal tendencies, it

is none the less true that these tendencies find rich nutrition in

our social environment.

There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against

the person and the price of alcohol, between crimes against property

and the price of wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the

former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the

criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that

"the social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality;

that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes

important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY

SOCIETY HAS THE CRIMINALS IT DESERVES."[4]

The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the

worker to earn enough to keep up health and vigor. And as prosperity

is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are

constantly added to the host of the unemployed. From East to West,

from South to North, this vast army tramps in search of work or food,

and all they find is the workhouse or the slums. Those who have a

spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the

emaciated, degraded position of poverty.

Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes

consist in some violation of property rights; but that is too low a

figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of

ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and

social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and

robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible

fact, though he may not be able to account for it.

A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso,

and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels

only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A

Milanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from

the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants

rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social

virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assault on a rich man

would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud."

Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs.

Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated

convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the

purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation,

thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and

chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar

means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The

same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence;

patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the

well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those

who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural

desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our

beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable

pursuit."[5]

Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy than in all the

law-and-moral books of society.

The economic, political, moral, and physical factors being the

microbes of crime, how does society meet the situation?

The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several

changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has

retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is,

revenge. It has also adopted the theologic idea; namely, punishment;

while the legal and "civilized" methods consist of deterrence or

terror, and reform. We shall presently see that all four modes have

failed utterly, and that we are today no nearer a solution than in

the dark ages.

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a

wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of

courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty

of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is

justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency

to do. The majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not

stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature.

True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, which proclaims

punishment as a means of purification, or the vicarious atonement of

sin. But legally and socially the statute exercises punishment, not

merely as an infliction of pain upon the offender, but also for its

terrifying effect upon others.

What is the real basis of punishment, however? The notion of a free

will, the idea that man is at all times a free agent for good or

evil; if he chooses the latter, he must be made to pay the price.

Although this theory has long been exploded, and thrown upon the

dustheap, it continues to be applied daily by the entire machinery of

government, turning it into the most cruel and brutal tormentor of

human life. The only reason for its continuance is the still more

cruel notion that the greater the terror punishment spreads, the more

certain its preventative effect.

Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with the social

offender. Why do they not deter? Although in America a man is

supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the

instruments of law, the police, carry on a reign of terror, making

indiscriminate arrests, beating, clubbing, bullying people, using the

barbarous method of the "third degree," subjecting their unfortunate

victims to the foul air of the station house, and the still fouler

language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and

society is paying the price. On the other hand, it is an open secret

that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of

the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst of hells,

his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being,

degraded to a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent

entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes through a

process of dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge was

mere child's play.

There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United

States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the

blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming

bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the

solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions

his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the

deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois,

Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become

so flagrant as to reach the outside world, while in most other

prisons the same Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls

rarely allow the agonized shrieks of the victims to escape--prison

walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might with greater

immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to hope for protection

from these twentieth century chambers of horrors.

Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an

emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew of humanity, with

the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their

natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and

inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as

the only possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing

to find men and women who have spent half their lives--nay, almost

their entire existence--in prison. I know a woman on Blackwell's

Island, who had been in and out thirty-eight times; and through a

friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and

cared for in the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known the meaning

of liberty. From the reformatory to the penitentiary had been the

path of this boy's life, until, broken in body, he died a victim of

social revenge. These personal experiences are substantiated by

extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of

prisons as a means of deterrence or reform.

Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the

prison question,--reclamation, to restore once more to the prisoner

the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I

fear it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring good wine

into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of

society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the

dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal

institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first

step to be taken is the renovation of the social consciousness, which

is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be

awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all

have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less, according to our

mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual

criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.

With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may

learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He

may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender,

and give him a chance to live and breathe among his fellows.

Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold,

impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness

quickened, it might be possible to free the prison victims from the

brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion

is a powerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it.

They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that

their jobs depend upon it.

But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right

to work while in prison, with some monetary recompense that would

enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the

beginning of a new life.

It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society when we

consider that workingmen, wage slaves themselves, object to convict

labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely

consider the impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition

so far raised by organized labor has been directed against windmills.

Prisoners have always worked; only the State has been their

exploiter, even as the individual employer has been the robber of

organized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for

the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private

individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The

Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it, as have

the leading nations of Europe, since it leads to hideous overworking

and abuse of prisoners, and to endless graft.

Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers perhaps the

worst example. Under a five-year contract, dated July 7th, 1906, and

renewable for five years more at the option of private contractors,

the labor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the

Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at

the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company

is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases the

convict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South

Dakota penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey, Indiana,

Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in all.

The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be

estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a

day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for

example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley

Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg.

Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and

Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt

manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous

graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures

shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen,

while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the

State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory,

charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts

no taxes. What graft!

It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of

workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country

by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection

that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus

displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who

should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being

self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which

they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when

we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which

so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful

citizens.

The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous

profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the

contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether

beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work

does not come up to the excessive demands made.

Another word on the condemnation of convicts to tasks at which they

cannot hope to make a living after release. Indiana, for example, is

a State that has made a great splurge over being in the front rank of

modern penological improvements. Yet, according to the report

rendered in 1908 by the training school of its "reformatory," 135

were engaged in the manufacture of chains, 207 in that of shirts, and

255 in the foundry--a total of 597 in three occupations. But at this

so-called reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the inmates,

39 of which were connected with country pursuits. Indiana, like

other States, professes to be training the inmates of her reformatory

to occupations by which they will be able to make their living when

released. She actually sets them to work making chains, shirts, and

brooms, the latter for the benefit of the Louisville Fancy Grocery

Co. Broom making is a trade largely monopolized by the blind, shirt

making is done by women, and there is only one free chain factory in

the State, and at that a released convict can not hope to get

employment. The whole thing is a cruel farce.

If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their helpless

victims of such tremendous profits, is it not high time for organized

labor to stop its idle howl, and to insist on decent remuneration for

the convict, even as labor organizations claim for themselves? In

that way workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the prisoner

an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said elsewhere that

thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means

of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the social fold. These

men and women must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison

life has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors

that meet them on their release are not likely to decrease their

bitterness. The inevitable result is that they form a favorable

nucleus out of which scabs, blacklegs, detectives, and policemen are

drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organized

labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own

ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt

for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these

effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he

should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and

WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH.

Last, but not least, is the growing realization of the barbarity and

the inadequacy of the definite sentence. Those who believe in, and

earnestly aim at, a change are fast coming to the conclusion that man

must be given an opportunity to make good. And how is he to do it

with ten, fifteen, or twenty years' imprisonment before him? The

hope of liberty and of opportunity is the only incentive to life,

especially the prisoner's life. Society has sinned so long against

him--it ought at least to leave him that. I am not very sanguine

that it will, or that any real change in that direction can take

place until the conditions that breed both the prisoner and the

jailer will be forever abolished.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

Out of his heart a white!

For who can say by what strange way

Christ brings his will to light,

Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

Bloomed in the great Pope's sight.

[1] CRIME AND CRIMINALS. W. C. Owen.

[2] THE CRIMINAL, Havelock Ellis.

[3] THE CRIMINAL.

[4] THE CRIMINAL.

[5] THE CRIMINAL.

PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of

childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it

the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting

clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place

where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken

lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our

little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of

the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant

lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured

by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it

love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious

recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called

upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into

factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have

replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of

great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of

sorrow, tears, and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of

scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest

anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that

will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that

requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the

making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a

trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of

the average workingman.

Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a

superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than

religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability

to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard

thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and

therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than

himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in

the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand,

is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a

network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his

self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of

patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is

divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate.

Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot,

consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than

the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the

duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die

in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course,

with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is

poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French,

the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he

is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord

himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any

foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a

greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for

that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred

million dollars. Just think of it--four hundred million dollars

taken from the produce of the PEOPLE. For surely it is not the rich

who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at

home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are

not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or

Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan

grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves?

Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send

messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any

mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS

people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.

It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz, in

destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will even aid in

arresting Mexican revolutionists on American soil and keep them

incarcerated in American prisons, without the slightest cause or

reason.

But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and

power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the

historic wisdom of Frederic the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire,

who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the

masses."

That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will doubt

after considering the following statistics. The progressive increase

of the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the world

during the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as to

startle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be

briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 into

five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of several great

nations for army and navy purposes during the first and last of those

periods. From the first to the last of the periods noted the

expenditures of Great Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to

$4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to

$3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to $2,700,375,600,

those of the United States from $1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450,

those of Russia from $1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italy

from $1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan from

$182,900,500 to $700,925,475.

The military expenditures of each of the nations mentioned increased

in each of the five-year periods under review. During the entire

interval from 1881 to 1905 Great Britain's outlay for her army

increased fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia's

was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent., that of France

about 15 per cent., and that of Japan nearly 500 per cent. If we

compare the expenditures of these nations upon their armies with

their total expenditures for all the twenty-five years ending with

1905, the proportion rose as follows:

In Great Britain from 20 per cent. to 37; in the United States from

15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18; in Italy from 12 to 15; in Japan

from 12 to 14. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the

proportion in Germany decreased from about 58 per cent. to 25, the

decrease being due to the enormous increase in the imperial

expenditures for other purposes, the fact being that the army

expenditures for the period of 1901-5 were higher than for any

five-year period preceding. Statistics show that the countries in

which army expenditures are greatest, in proportion to the total

national revenues, are Great Britain, the United States, Japan,

France, and Italy, in the order named.

The showing as to the cost of great navies is equally impressive.

During the twenty-five years ending with 1905 naval expenditures

increased approximately as follows: Great Britain, 300 per cent.;

France 60 per cent.; Germany 600 per cent.; the United States 525 per

cent.; Russia 300 per cent.; Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700 per

cent. With the exception of Great Britain, the United States spends

more for naval purposes than any other nation, and this expenditure

bears also a larger proportion to the entire national disbursements

than that of any other power. In the period 1881-5, the expenditure

for the United States navy was $6.20 out of each $100 appropriated

for all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the next

five-year period, to $8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, and

to $16.40 for 1901-5. It is morally certain that the outlay for the

current period of five years will show a still further increase.

The rising cost of militarism may be still further illustrated by

computing it as a per capita tax on population. From the first to

the last of the five-year periods taken as the basis for the

comparisons here given, it has risen as follows: In Great Britain,

from $18.47 to $52.50; in France, from $19.66 to $23.62; in Germany,

from $10.17 to $15.51; in the United States, from $5.62 to $13.64; in

Russia, from $6.14 to $8.37; in Italy, from $9.59 to $11.24, and in

Japan from 86 cents to $3.11.

It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per capita that

the economic burden of militarism is most appreciable. The

irresistible conclusion from available data is that the increase of

expenditure for army and navy purposes is rapidly surpassing the

growth of population in each of the countries considered in the

present calculation. In other words, a continuation of the increased

demands of militarism threatens each of those nations with a

progressive exhaustion both of men and resources.

The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient

to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet

patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic

and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their

"defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism

requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness

to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

The usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the

country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman

knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce

the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's

interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that they can

gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war

and conquest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two

thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take

boys from one village and another village; stick them into uniforms,

equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against

each other."

It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar

cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American war, supposedly a great

and patriotic event in the history of the United States. How our

hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards!

True, our indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was

nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long after Butcher

Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans and outraged many Cuban

women. Still, in justice to the American Nation be it said, it did

grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely.

But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war

came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities

and rent--that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree--it

suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was

the consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit,

that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to

protect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatened

by the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is

based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitude

of the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly in

the clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberate

Cuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great

cigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war.

Nor do we stand alone in waging war for such causes. The curtain is

beginning to be lifted on the motives of the terrible Russo-Japanese

war, which cost so much blood and tears. And we see again that back

of the fierce Moloch of war stands the still fiercer god of

Commercialism. Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War during the

Russo-Japanese struggle, has revealed the true secret behind the

latter. The Tsar and his Grand Dukes, having invested money in

Corean concessions, the war was forced for the sole purpose of

speedily accumulating large fortunes.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of

peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen

is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life

fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try

his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really

peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations,

with the result that peace is maintained.

However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any

foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent

of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It

is to meet the internal enemy that the Powers of various countries

are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to

consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader.

The powers that have for centuries been engaged in enslaving the

masses have made a thorough study of their psychology. They know

that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and

tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And the more

gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it

will appeal to the million-headed child.

An army and navy represents the people's toys. To make them more

attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are

being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of

the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the

Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the

pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco

spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the

fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one

hundred thousand. To entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and

wine a few superior officers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to

get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars

were spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and revelries, at a time

when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the

country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed

were ready to sell their labor at any price.

Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have been

accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and

shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet,

that it may remain, as one of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory

for the child."

A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of

civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is to be poisoned with

such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human

brotherhood?

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed;

we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the

possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon

helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch

anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the

attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell

with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful

nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on

the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism.

Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the

average man, it is as nothing compared with the insult and injury

that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,--that poor, deluded

victim of superstition and ignorance. He, the savior of his country,

the protector of his nation,--what has patriotism in store for him?

A life of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a

life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.

While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited the

Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay and Golden Gate

Park. Its purpose should have been playgrounds for children, gardens

and music for the recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly,

dull, and gray by barracks,--barracks wherein the rich would not

allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties soldiers are

herded like cattle; here they waste their young days, polishing the

boots and brass buttons of their superior officers. Here, too, I saw

the distinction of classes: sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up

in line like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a lieutenant.

American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform!

Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual

perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results

similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted

writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough study of the subject.

I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male

prostitution.... The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves

is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to

say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the

venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings Hyde

Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and

others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or

out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to

Tommy Atkins' pocket money."

To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army and

navy can best be judged from the fact that special houses exist for

this form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England;

it is universal. "Soldiers are no less sought after in France than

in England or in Germany, and special houses for military

prostitution exist both in Paris and the garrison towns."

Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex

perversion, he would have found that the same conditions prevail in

our army and navy as in those of other countries. The growth of the

standing army inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the

barracks are the incubators.

Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit

the soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled in

a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a

military experience, find themselves totally unfitted for their

former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste

for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them.

Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is

usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom

either the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the

ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former

life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a

well-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodly number of

ex-soldiers; while on the other hand, the army and navy are to a

great extent supplied with ex-convicts.

Of all the evil results, I have just described, none seems to me so

detrimental to human integrity as the spirit patriotism has produced

in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly

believed that one can be a soldier and exercise his rights as a man

at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely.

True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his

record was unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, who reduced

Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or

an enlisted man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the

government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that

government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of

allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the

principles of the Declaration of Independence.

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being

into a loyal machine!

In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen.

Funston tells the American people that the soldier's action was a

"serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible

crime" really consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of

fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San

Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma

Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great

military offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it

will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into prison, and rob him

of the results of fifteen years of faithful service?

Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very

manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism is inexorable and,

like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not

admit that a soldier is also a human being, who has a right to his

own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No,

patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda

was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly, though not at a

useless, price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his

position in the army, but he regained his self-respect. After all,

that is worth three years of imprisonment.

A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article,

commented on the power of the military man over the civilian in

Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no

other meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would

have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was

not in Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. He

probably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name of

patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged

about, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds of

indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the

growth of military power in the United States. There is hardly a

strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of those in

power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the

men wearing the Kaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick

military law. Had the writer forgotten that?

A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are

absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking honesty, they

will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the

Dick military law was rushed through Congress with little discussion

and still less publicity,--a law which gives the President the power

to turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly

for the defense of the country, in reality for the protection of the

interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President

happens to be.

Our writer claims that militarism can never become such a power in

America as abroad, since it is voluntary with us, while compulsory in

the Old World. Two very important facts, however, the gentleman

forgets to consider. First, that conscription has created in Europe

a deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of society.

Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest and, once in the

army, they will use every possible means to desert. Second, that it

is the compulsory feature of militarism which has created a

tremendous anti-militarist movement, feared by European Powers far

more than anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of

capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined,

capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men

are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a

far more exacting and rigid force--necessity. Is it not a fact that

during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the

number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either

lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in

search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal

lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dollars per month,

three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not

sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an element of

character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain

of the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy. This

admission is a very encouraging sign. It proves that there is still

enough of the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the

average American to risk starvation rather than don the uniform.

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that

patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the

necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought

into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed

nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony

of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers

abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot;

a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing

all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, "Go

and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."

This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers,

they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great human family. A

solidarity that has proven infallible more than once during past

struggles, and which has been the impetus inducing the Parisian

soldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered

to shoot their brothers. It has given courage to the men who

mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It will eventually

bring about the uprising of all the oppressed and downtrodden against

their international exploiters.

The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that

solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism

and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the

prisons of France, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries,

because they dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the

movement limited to the working class; it has embraced

representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents being

men and women prominent in art, science, and letters.

America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has

already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that

militarism is growing a greater danger here than anywhere else,

because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it

wishes to destroy.

The beginning has already been made in the schools. Evidently the

government holds to the Jesuitical conception, "Give me the child

mind, and I will mould the man." Children are trained in military

tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the

curriculum, and the youthful minds perverted to suit the government.

Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters

to join the army and navy. "A fine chance to see the world!" cries

the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied

into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through

the Nation.

The American workingman has suffered so much at the hands of the

soldier, State, and Federal, that he is quite justified in his

disgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite.

However, mere denunciation will not solve this great problem. What

we need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: anti-patriotic

literature that will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his

trade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to

the man to whose labor he owes his very existence.

It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already

high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No doubt

they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical

pamphlet. But then, has not authority from time immemorial stamped

every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly

strive for social reconstruction can well afford to face all that;

for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into the

barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the

patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great

structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal

brotherhood,--a truly FREE SOCIETY.

FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN SCHOOL

Experience has come to be considered the best school of life. The

man or woman who does not learn some vital lesson in that school is

looked upon as a dunce indeed. Yet strange to say, that though

organized institutions continue perpetrating errors, though they

learn nothing from experience, we acquiesce, as a matter of course.

There lived and worked in Barcelona a man by the name of Francisco

Ferrer. A teacher of children he was, known and loved by his people.

Outside of Spain only the cultured few knew of Francisco Ferrer's

work. To the world at large this teacher was non-existent.

On the first of September, 1909, the Spanish government--at the

behest of the Catholic Church--arrested Francisco Ferrer. On the

thirteenth of October, after a mock trial, he was placed in the ditch

at Montjuich prison, against the hideous wall of many sighs, and shot

dead. Instantly Ferrer, the obscure teacher, became a universal

figure, blazing forth the indignation and wrath of the whole

civilized world against the wanton murder.

The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the first crime committed by

the Spanish government and the Catholic Church. The history of these

institutions is one long stream of fire and blood. Still they have

not learned through experience, nor yet come to realize that every

frail being slain by Church and State grows and grows into a mighty

giant, who will some day free humanity from their perilous hold.

Francisco Ferrer was born in 1859, of humble parents. They were

Catholics, and therefore hoped to raise their son in the same faith.

They did not know that the boy was to become the harbinger of a great

truth, that his mind would refuse to travel in the old path. At an

early age Ferrer began to question the faith of his fathers. He

demanded to know how it is that the God who spoke to him of goodness

and love would mar the sleep of the innocent child with dread and awe

of tortures, of suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and

investigating mind, it did not take him long to discover the

hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church. He would

have none of it.

Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for truth; he was

also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just indignation against the

iron regime of his country, and when a band of rebels, led by the

brave patriot, General Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican

ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more ardent a

fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,--I hope

no one will confound it with the Republicanism of this country.

Whatever objection I, as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of

Latin countries, I know they tower high above the corrupt and

reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of

liberty and justice. One has but to think of the Mazzinis, the

Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize that their efforts were

directed, not merely towards the overthrow of despotism, but

particularly against the Catholic Church, which from its very

inception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism.

In America it is just the reverse. Republicanism stands for vested

rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the annihilation of every

semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability

of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a Roosevelt.

The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. It takes more than one

brave effort to split the rock of ages, to cut off the head of that

hydra monster, the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest,

persecution, and punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little

band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for safety

to foreign shores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went

to France.

How his soul must have expanded in the new land! France, the cradle

of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense

Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belated

country,--how she must have inspired him. What opportunities, what a

glorious chance for a young idealist.

Francisco Ferrer lost no time. Like one famished he threw himself

into the various liberal movements, met all kinds of people, learned,

absorbed, and grew. While there, he also saw in operation the Modern

School, which was to play such an important and fatal part in his

life.

The Modern School in France was founded long before Ferrer's time.

Its originator, though on a small scale, was that sweet spirit,

Louise Michel. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our own great

Louise felt long ago that the future belongs to the young generation;

that unless the young be rescued from that mind and soul destroying

institution, the bourgeois school, social evils will continue to

exist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen, that the atmosphere is

saturated with ghosts, that the adult man and woman have so many

superstitions to overcome. No sooner do they outgrow the deathlike

grip of one spook, lo! they find themselves in the thralldom of

ninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the mountain peak of

complete regeneration.

The child, however, has no traditions to overcome. Its mind is not

burdened with set ideas, its heart has not grown cold with class and

caste distinctions. The child is to the teacher what clay is to the

sculptor. Whether the world will receive a work of art or a wretched

imitation, depends to a large extent on the creative power of the

teacher.

Louise Michel was pre-eminently qualified to meet the child's soul

cravings. Was she not herself of a childlike nature, so sweet and

tender, unsophisticated and generous. The soul of Louise burned

always at white heat over every social injustice. She was invariably

in the front ranks whenever the people of Paris rebelled against some

wrong. And as she was made to suffer imprisonment for her great

devotion to the oppressed, the little school on Montmartre was soon

no more. But the seed was planted, and has since borne fruit in many

cities of France.

The most important venture of a Modern School was that of the great,

young old man, Paul Robin. Together with a few friends he

established a large school at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris.

Paul Robin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modern ideas in

education. He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the

bourgeois conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to exempt

society from its terrible crimes against the young. The contention

that the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers, that it must

continue in poverty and filth, that it must grow up a drunkard or

criminal, just because its parents left it no other legacy, was too

preposterous to the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believed that

whatever part heredity may play, there are other factors equally

great, if not greater, that may and will eradicate or minimize the

so-called first cause. Proper economic and social environment, the

breath and freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy,

and, above all, a deep understanding for the needs of the

child--these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and criminal stigma

imposed on the innocent young.

Paul Robin did not select his children; he did not go to the

so-called best parents: he took his material wherever he could find

it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums,

the reformatories, from all those gray and hideous places where a

benevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty

conscience. He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little

waifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There,

surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed,

clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the little human plants

began to grow, to blossom, to develop beyond even the expectations of

their friend and teacher, Paul Robin.

The children grew and developed into self-reliant, liberty loving men

and women. What greater danger to the institutions that make the

poor in order to perpetuate the poor. Cempuis was closed by the

French government on the charge of co-education, which is prohibited

in France. However, Cempuis had been in operation long enough to

prove to all advanced educators its tremendous possibilities, and to

serve as an impetus for modern methods of education, that are slowly

but inevitably undermining the present system.

Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educational

attempts,--among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a gifted writer and poet,

author of L'AMOUR LIBRE, and Sebastian Faure, with his LA RUCHE,[1]

which I visited while in Paris, in 1907.

Several years ago Comrade Faure bought the land on which he built his

LA RUCHE. In a comparatively short time he succeeded in transforming

the former wild, uncultivated country into a blooming spot, having

all the appearance of a well kept farm. A large, square court,

enclosed by three buildings, and a broad path leading to the garden

and orchards, greet the eye of the visitor. The garden, kept as only

a Frenchman knows how, furnishes a large variety of vegetables for LA

RUCHE.

Sebastian Faure is of the opinion that if the child is subjected to

contradictory influences, its development suffers in consequence.

Only when the material needs, the hygiene of the home, and

intellectual environment are harmonious, can the child grow into a

healthy, free being.

Referring to his school, Sebastian Faure has this to say:

"I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes, mostly orphans, or

those whose parents are too poor to pay. They are clothed, housed,

and educated at my expense. Till their twelfth year they will

receive a sound, elementary education. Between the age of twelve and

fifteen--their studies still continuing--they are to be taught some

trade, in keeping with their individual disposition and abilities.

After that they are at liberty to leave LA RUCHE to begin life in the

outside world, with the assurance that they may at any time return to

LA RUCHE, where they will be received with open arms and welcomed as

parents do their beloved children. Then, if they wish to work at our

place, they may do so under the following conditions: One third of

the product to cover his or her expenses of maintenance, another

third to go towards the general fund set aside for accommodating new

children, and the last third to be devoted to the personal use of the

child, as he or she may see fit.

"The health of the children who are now in my care is perfect. Pure

air, nutritious food, physical exercise in the open, long walks,

observation of hygienic rules, the short and interesting method of

instruction, and, above all, our affectionate understanding and care

of the children, have produced admirable physical and mental results.

"It would be unjust to claim that our pupils have accomplished

wonders; yet, considering that they belong to the average, having had

no previous opportunities, the results are very gratifying indeed.

The most important thing they have acquired--a rare trait with

ordinary school children--is the love of study, the desire to know,

to be informed. They have learned a new method of work, one that

quickens the memory and stimulates the imagination. We make a

particular effort to awaken the child's interest in his surroundings,

to make him realize the importance of observation, investigation, and

reflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they would not

be deaf and blind to the things about them. Our children never

accept anything in blind faith, without inquiry as to why and

wherefore; nor do they feel satisfied until their questions are

thoroughly answered. Thus their minds are free from doubts and fear

resultant from incomplete or untruthful replies; it is the latter

which warp the growth of the child, and create a lack of confidence

in himself and those about him.

"It is surprising how frank and kind and affectionate our little ones

are to each other. The harmony between themselves and the adults at

LA RUCHE is highly encouraging. We should feel at fault if the

children were to fear or honor us merely because we are their elders.

We leave nothing undone to gain their confidence and love; that

accomplished, understanding will replace duty; confidence, fear; and

affection, severity.

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and

generosity hidden in the soul of the child. The effort of every true

educator should be to unlock that treasure--to stimulate the child's

impulses, and call forth the best and noblest tendencies. What

greater reward can there be for one whose life-work is to watch over

the growth of the human plant, than to see its nature unfold its

petals, and to observe it develop into a true individuality. My

comrades at LA RUCHE look for no greater reward, and it is due to

them and their efforts, even more than to my own, that our human

garden promises to bear beautiful fruit."[2]

Regarding the subject of history and the prevailing old methods of

instruction, Sebastian Faure said:

"We explain to our children that true history is yet to be

written,--the story of those who have died, unknown, in the effort to

aid humanity to greater achievement."[3]

Francisco Ferrer could not escape this great wave of Modern School

attempts. He saw its possibilities, not merely in theoretic form,

but in their practical application to every-day needs. He must have

realized that Spain, more than any other country, stands in need of

just such schools, if it is ever to throw off the double yoke of

priest and soldier.

When we consider that the entire system of education in Spain is in

the hands of the Catholic Church, and when we further remember the

Catholic formula, "To inculcate Catholicism in the mind of the child

until it is nine years of age is to ruin it forever for any other

idea," we will understand the tremendous task of Ferrer in bringing

the new light to his people. Fate soon assisted him in realizing his

great dream.

Mlle. Meunier, a pupil of Francisco Ferrer, and a lady of wealth,

became interested in the Modern School project. When she died, she

left Ferrer some valuable property and twelve thousand francs yearly

income for the School.

It is said that mean souls can conceive of naught but mean ideas.

If so, the contemptible methods of the Catholic Church to blackguard

Ferrer's character, in order to justify her own black crime, can

readily be explained. Thus the lie was spread in American Catholic

papers, that Ferrer used his intimacy with Mlle. Meunier to get

possession of her money.

Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of whatever nature, between a

man and a woman, is their own affair, their sacred own. I would

therefore not lose a word in referring to the matter, if it were not

one of the many dastardly lies circulated about Ferrer. Of course,

those who know the purity of the Catholic clergy will understand the

insinuation. Have the Catholic priests ever looked upon woman as

anything but a sex commodity? The historical data regarding the

discoveries in the cloisters and monasteries will bear me out in

that. How, then, are they to understand the co-operation of a man

and a woman, except on a sex basis?

As a matter of fact, Mlle. Meunier was considerably Ferrer's senior.

Having spent her childhood and girlhood with a miserly father and a

submissive mother, she could easily appreciate the necessity of love

and joy in child life. She must have seen that Francisco Ferrer was

a teacher, not college, machine, or diploma-made, but one endowed

with genius for that calling.

Equipped with knowledge, with experience, and with the necessary

means; above all, imbued with the divine fire of his mission, our

Comrade came back to Spain, and there began his life's work. On the

ninth of September, 1901, the first Modern School was opened. It was

enthusiastically received by the people of Barcelona, who pledged

their support. In a short address at the opening of the School,

Ferrer submitted his program to his friends. He said: "I am not a

speaker, not a propagandist, not a fighter. I am a teacher; I love

children above everything. I think I understand them. I want my

contribution to the cause of liberty to be a young generation ready

to meet a new era."

He was cautioned by his friends to be careful in his opposition to

the Catholic Church. They knew to what lengths she would go to

dispose of an enemy. Ferrer, too, knew. But, like Brand, he

believed in all or nothing. He would not erect the Modern School on

the same old lie. He would be frank and honest and open with the

children.

Francisco Ferrer became a marked man. From the very first day of the

opening of the School, he was shadowed. The school building was

watched, his little home in Mangat was watched. He was followed

every step, even when he went to France or England to confer with his

colleagues. He was a marked man, and it was only a question of time

when the lurking enemy would tighten the noose.

It succeeded, almost, in 1906, when Ferrer was implicated in the

attempt on the life of Alfonso. The evidence exonerating him was too

strong even for the black crows;[4] they had to let him go--not for

good, however. They waited. Oh, they can wait, when they have set

themselves to trap a victim.

The moment came at last, during the anti-military uprising in Spain,

in July, 1909. One will have to search in vain the annals of

revolutionary history to find a more remarkable protest against

militarism. Having been soldier-ridden for centuries, the people of

Spain could stand the yoke no longer. They would refuse to

participate in useless slaughter. They saw no reason for aiding a

despotic government in subduing and oppressing a small people

fighting for their independence, as did the brave Riffs. No, they

would not bear arms against them.

For eighteen hundred years the Catholic Church has preached the

gospel of peace. Yet, when the people actually wanted to make this

gospel a living reality, she urged the authorities to force them to

bear arms. Thus the dynasty of Spain followed the murderous methods

of the Russian dynasty,--the people were forced to the battlefield.

Then, and not until then, was their power of endurance at an end.

Then, and not until then, did the workers of Spain turn against their

masters, against those who, like leeches, had drained their strength,

their very life-blood. Yes, they attacked the churches and the

priests, but if the latter had a thousand lives, they could not

possibly pay for the terrible outrages and crimes perpetrated upon

the Spanish people.

Francisco Ferrer was arrested on the first of September, 1909.

Until October first, his friends and comrades did not even know what

had become of him. On that day a letter was received by L'HUMANITE,

from which can be learned the whole mockery of the trial. And the

next day his companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following

letter:

"No reason to worry; you know I am absolutely innocent. Today I am

particularly hopeful and joyous. It is the first time I can write to

you, and the first time since my arrest that I can bathe in the rays

of the sun, streaming generously through my cell window. You, too,

must be joyous."

How pathetic that Ferrer should have believed, as late as October

fourth, that he would not be condemned to death. Even more pathetic

that his friends and comrades should once more have made the blunder

in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they

had placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brothers

killed before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescue

Ferrer, not even a protest of any extent; nothing. "Why, it is

impossible to condemn Ferrer; he is innocent." But everything is

possible with the Catholic Church. Is she not a practiced henchman,

whose trials of her enemies are the worst mockery of justice?

On October fourth Ferrer sent the following letter to L'HUMANITE:

The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909.

My dear Friends--Notwithstanding most absolute innocence, the

prosecutor demands the death penalty, based on denunciations of

the police, representing me as the chief of the world's

Anarchists, directing the labor syndicates of France, and guilty

of conspiracies and insurrections everywhere, and declaring that

my voyages to London and Paris were undertaken with no other

object.

With such infamous lies they are trying to kill me.

The messenger is about to depart and I have not time for more.

All the evidence presented to the investigating judge by the

police is nothing but a tissue of lies and calumnious

insinuations. But no proofs against me, having done nothing at

all.

FERRER.

October thirteenth, 1909, Ferrer's heart, so brave, so staunch, so

loyal, was stilled. Poor fools! The last agonized throb of that

heart had barely died away when it began to beat a hundredfold in the

hearts of the civilized world, until it grew into terrific thunder,

hurling forth its malediction upon the instigators of the black

crime. Murderers of black garb and pious mien, to the bar of

justice!

Did Francisco Ferrer participate in the anti-military uprising?

According to the first indictment, which appeared in a Catholic paper

in Madrid, signed by the Bishop and all the prelates of Barcelona, he

was not even accused of participation. The indictment was to the

effect that Francisco Ferrer was guilty of having organized godless

schools, and having circulated godless literature. But in the

twentieth century men can not be burned merely for their godless

beliefs. Something else had to be devised; hence the charge of

instigating the uprising.

In no authentic source so far investigated could a single proof be

found to connect Ferrer with the uprising. But then, no proofs were

wanted, or accepted, by the authorities. There were seventy-two

witnesses, to be sure, but their testimony was taken on paper. They

never were confronted with Ferrer, or he with them.

Is it psychologically possible that Ferrer should have participated?

I do not believe it is, and here are my reasons. Francisco Ferrer

was not only a great teacher, but he was also undoubtedly a marvelous

organizer. In eight years, between 1901-1909, he had organized in

Spain one hundred and nine schools, besides inducing the liberal

element of his country to organize three hundred and eight other

schools. In connection with his own school work, Ferrer had equipped

a modern printing plant, organized a staff of translators, and spread

broadcast one hundred and fifty thousand copies of modern scientific

and sociologic works, not to forget the large quantity of rationalist

text books. Surely none but the most methodical and efficient

organizer could have accomplished such a feat.

On the other hand, it was absolutely proven that the anti-military

uprising was not at all organized; that it came as a surprise to the

people themselves, like a great many revolutionary waves on previous

occasions. The people of Barcelona, for instance, had the city in

their control for four days, and, according to the statement of

tourists, greater order and peace never prevailed. Of course, the

people were so little prepared that when the time came, they did not

know what to do. In this regard they were like the people of Paris

during the Commune of 1871. They, too, were unprepared. While they

were starving, they protected the warehouses, filled to the brim with

provisions. They placed sentinels to guard the Bank of France, where

the bourgeoisie kept the stolen money. The workers of Barcelona,

too, watched over the spoils of their masters.

How pathetic is the stupidity of the underdog; how terribly tragic!

But, then, have not his fetters been forged so deeply into his flesh,

that he would not, even if he could, break them? The awe of

authority, of law, of private property, hundredfold burned into his

soul,--how is he to throw it off unprepared, unexpectedly?

Can anyone assume for a moment that a man like Ferrer would affiliate

himself with such a spontaneous, unorganized effort? Would he not

have known that it would result in a defeat, a disastrous defeat for

the people? And is it not more likely that if he would have taken

part, he, the experienced ENTREPRENEUR, would have thoroughly

organized the attempt? If all other proofs were lacking, that one

factor would be sufficient to exonerate Francisco Ferrer. But there

are others equally convincing.

For the very date of the outbreak, July twenty-fifth, Ferrer had

called a conference of his teachers and members of the League of

Rational Education. It was to consider the autumn work, and

particularly the publication of Elisee Reclus' great book, L'HOMME ET

LA TERRE, and Peter Kropotkin's GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. Is it at

all likely, is it at all plausible that Ferrer, knowing of the

uprising, being a party to it, would in cold blood invite his friends

and colleagues to Barcelona for the day on which he realized their

lives would be endangered? Surely, only the criminal, vicious mind

of a Jesuit could credit such deliberate murder.

Francisco Ferrer had his life-work mapped out; he had everything to

lose and nothing to gain, except ruin and disaster, were he to lend

assistance to the outbreak. Not that he doubted the justice of the

people's wrath; but his work, his hope, his very nature was directed

toward another goal.

In vain are the frantic efforts of the Catholic Church, her lies,

falsehoods, calumnies. She stands condemned by the awakened human

conscience of having once more repeated the foul crimes of the past.

Francisco Ferrer is accused of teaching the children the most

blood-curdling ideas,--to hate God, for instance. Horrors!

Francisco Ferrer did not believe in the existence of a God. Why

teach the child to hate something which does not exist? Is it not

more likely that he took the children out into the open, that he

showed them the splendor of the sunset, the brilliancy of the starry

heavens, the awe-inspiring wonder of the mountains and seas; that he

explained to them in his simple, direct way the law of growth, of

development, of the interrelation of all life? In so doing he made

it forever impossible for the poisonous weeds of the Catholic Church

to take root in the child's mind.

It has been stated that Ferrer prepared the children to destroy the

rich. Ghost stories of old maids. Is it not more likely that he

prepared them to succor the poor? That he taught them the

humiliation, the degradation, the awfulness of poverty, which is a

vice and not a virtue; that he taught the dignity and importance of

all creative efforts, which alone sustain life and build character.

Is it not the best and most effective way of bringing into the proper

light the absolute uselessness and injury of parasitism?

Last, but not least, Ferrer is charged with undermining the army by

inculcating anti-military ideas. Indeed? He must have believed with

Tolstoy that war is legalized slaughter, that it perpetuates hatred

and arrogance, that it eats away the heart of nations, and turns them

into raving maniacs.

However, we have Ferrer's own word regarding his ideas of modern

education:

"I would like to call the attention of my readers to this idea: All

the value of education rests in the respect for the physical,

intellectual, and moral will of the child. Just as in science no

demonstration is possible save by facts, just so there is no real

education save that which is exempt from all dogmatism, which leaves

to the child itself the direction of its effort, and confines itself

to the seconding of its effort. Now, there is nothing easier than to

alter this purpose, and nothing harder than to respect it.

Education is always imposing, violating, constraining; the real

educator is he who can best protect the child against his (the

teacher's) own ideas, his peculiar whims; he who can best appeal to

the child's own energies.

"We are convinced that the education of the future will be of an

entirely spontaneous nature; certainly we can not as yet realize it,

but the evolution of methods in the direction of a wider

comprehension of the phenomena of life, and the fact that all

advances toward perfection mean the overcoming of restraint,--all

this indicates that we are in the right when we hope for the

deliverance of the child through science.

"Let us not fear to say that we want men capable of evolving without

stopping, capable of destroying and renewing their environments

without cessation, of renewing themselves also; men, whose

intellectual independence will be their greatest force, who will

attach themselves to nothing, always ready to accept what is best,

happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live multiple lives in

one life. Society fears such men; we therefore must not hope that it

will ever want an education able to give them to us.

"We shall follow the labors of the scientists who study the child

with the greatest attention, and we shall eagerly seek for means of

applying their experience to the education which we want to build up,

in the direction of an ever fuller liberation of the individual.

But how can we attain our end? Shall it not be by putting ourselves

directly to the work favoring the foundation of new schools, which

shall be ruled as much as possible by this spirit of liberty, which

we forefeel will dominate the entire work of education in the future?

"A trial has been made, which, for the present, has already given

excellent results. We can destroy all which in the present school

answers to the organization of constraint, the artificial

surroundings by which children are separated from nature and life,

the intellectual and moral discipline made use of to impose

ready-made ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave and annihilate

natural bent. Without fear of deceiving ourselves, we can restore

the child to the environment which entices it, the environment of

nature in which he will be in contact with all that he loves, and in

which impressions of life will replace fastidious book-learning. If

we did no more than that, we should already have prepared in great

part the deliverance of the child.

"In such conditions we might already freely apply the data of science

and labor most fruitfully.

"I know very well we could not thus realize all our hopes, that we

should often be forced, for lack of knowledge, to employ undesirable

methods; but a certitude would sustain us in our efforts--namely,

that even without reaching our aim completely we should do more and

better in our still imperfect work than the present school

accomplishes. I like the free spontaneity of a child who knows

nothing, better than the world-knowledge and intellectual deformity

of a child who has been subjected to our present education."[5]

Had Ferrer actually organized the riots, had he fought on the

barricades, had he hurled a hundred bombs, he could not have been so

dangerous to the Catholic Church and to despotism, as with his

opposition to discipline and restraint. Discipline and

restraint--are they not back of all the evils in the world?

Slavery, submission, poverty, all misery, all social iniquities

result from discipline and restraint. Indeed, Ferrer was dangerous.

Therefore he had to die, October thirteenth, 1909, in the ditch of

Montjuich. Yet who dare say his death was in vain? In view of the

tempestuous rise of universal indignation: Italy naming streets in

memory of Francisco Ferrer, Belgium inaugurating a movement to erect

a memorial; France calling to the front her most illustrious men to

resume the heritage of the martyr; England being the first to issue a

biography:--all countries uniting in perpetuating the great work of

Francisco Ferrer; America, even, tardy always in progressive ideas,

giving birth to a Francisco Ferrer Association, its aim being to

publish a complete life of Ferrer and to organize Modern Schools all

over the country; in the face of this international revolutionary

wave, who is there to say Ferrer died in vain?

That death at Montjuich,--how wonderful, how dramatic it was, how it

stirs the human soul. Proud and erect, the inner eye turned toward

the light, Francisco Ferrer needed no lying priests to give him

courage, nor did he upbraid a phantom for forsaking him. The

consciousness that his executioners represented a dying age, and that

his was the living truth, sustained him in the last heroic moments.

A dying age and a living truth,

The living burying the dead.

[1] THE BEEHIVE.

[2] MOTHER EARTH, 1907.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Black crows: The Catholic clergy.

[5] MOTHER EARTH, December, 1909.

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM

Speaking of Puritanism in relation to American art, Mr. Gutzen

Burglum said: "Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical

for so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our

impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that there

can be neither truth nor individuality in our art."

Mr. Burglum might have added that Puritanism has made life itself

impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents

beauty in a thousand variations; it is, indeed, a gigantic panorama

of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed

and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea

that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order

to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every

natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every

manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism

which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the

dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated

Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled

against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was

Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the

conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George

Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life

of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most

pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the

artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on

the dullness of middle-class respectability.

It is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to America as the

country of Puritanic provincialism. It is quite true that our life

is stunted by Puritanism, and that the latter is killing what is

natural and healthy in our impulses. But it is equally true that it

is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on

American soil. It was bequeathed to us by the Pilgrim fathers.

Fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Pilgrims of Mayflower

fame established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and

crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts,

is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into

despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous

lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well

as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English

methods for American purification.

Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of

Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her

cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. On the now

famous Common a half-naked woman, with a baby in her arms, was

publicly whipped for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot

Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Boston

has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by

Puritanism. Salem, in the summer of 1692, killed eighteen people for

witchcraft. Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by

fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: "The Pilgrim fathers

infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old." The

horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in

the American classic, THE SCARLET LETTER.

Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash; but it still

has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American

people. Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock. Like the

Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of

American morals; he dictates the standards of good and evil, of

purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the

private lives of the people, into their most intimate relations.

The system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to

shame the infamous Third Division of the Russian secret police. Why

does the public tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply

because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in

the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not

succeeded in fully emancipating themselves. The visionless and

leaden elements of the old Young Men's and Women's Christian

Temperance Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and the

Prohibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint, are

the grave diggers of American art and culture.

Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature which delve

deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a

severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every

Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's

liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism as

the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is

possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct,

curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.

Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of

freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It

repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but

being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions,

Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.

The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true.

The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the flesh as something

evil; it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost. The result of

this vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized by

modern thinkers and educators. They realize that "nakedness has a

hygienic value as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its

influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young or

acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. It is an inspiration to

adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. The vision

of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in

all the world, with its vigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of

the prime tonics of life."[1] But the spirit of purism has so perverted

the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of

nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of

chastity. Yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon

nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern

idea of chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest

victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses.

"Chastity varies with the amount of clothing," and hence Christians

and purists forever hasten to cover the "heathen" with tatters, and

thus convert him to goodness and chastity.

Puritanism, with its perversion of the significance and functions of

the human body, especially in regard to woman, has condemned her to

celibacy, or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to

prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity is

apparent when we consider the results. Absolute sexual continence is

imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered

immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia,

impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints

involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life,

sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings.

The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably also

explains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud believes

that the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the

inhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual

repression. Having thus suppressed the natural sex desires of the

unmarried woman, Puritanism, on the other hand, blesses her married

sister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock. Indeed, not merely

blesses her, but forces the woman, oversexed by previous repression,

to bear children, irrespective of weakened physical condition or

economic inability to rear a large family. Prevention, even by

scientifically determined safe methods, is absolutely prohibited;

nay, the very mention of the subject is considered criminal.

Thanks to this Puritanic tyranny, the majority of women soon find

themselves at the ebb of their physical resources. Ill and worn,

they are utterly unable to give their children even elementary care.

That, added to economic pressure, forces many women to risk utmost

danger rather than continue to bring forth life. The custom of

procuring abortions has reached such vast proportions in America as

to be almost beyond belief. According to recent investigations along

this line, seventeen abortions are committed in every hundred

pregnancies. This fearful percentage represents only cases which

come to the knowledge of physicians. Considering the secrecy in

which this practice is necessarily shrouded, and the consequent

professional inefficiency and neglect, Puritanism continuously exacts

thousands of victims to its own stupidity and hypocrisy.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is

nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism. It is its most

cherished child, all hypocritical sanctimoniousness notwithstanding.

The prostitute is the fury of our century, sweeping across the

"civilized" countries like a hurricane, and leaving a trail of

disease and disaster. The only remedy Puritanism offers for this

ill-begotten child is greater repression and more merciless

persecution. The latest outrage is represented by the Page Law,

which imposes upon New York the terrible failure and crime of Europe;

namely, registration and segregation of the unfortunate victims of

Puritanism. In equally stupid manner purism seeks to check the

terrible scourge of its own creation--venereal diseases. Most

disheartening it is that this spirit of obtuse narrow-mindedness has

poisoned even our so-called liberals, and has blinded them into

joining the crusade against the very things born of the hypocrisy of

Puritanism--prostitution and its results. In wilful blindness

Puritanism refuses to see that the true method of prevention is the

one which makes it clear to all that "venereal diseases are not a

mysterious or terrible thing, the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a

sort of shameful evil branded by purist malediction, but an ordinary

disease which may be treated and cured." By its methods of

obscurity, disguise, and concealment, Puritanism has furnished

favorable conditions for the growth and spread of these diseases.

Its bigotry is again most strikingly demonstrated by the senseless

attitude in regard to the great discovery of Prof. Ehrlich, hypocrisy

veiling the important cure for syphilis with vague allusions to a

remedy for "a certain poison."

The almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due to its

intrenchment behind the State and the law. Pretending to safeguard

the people against "immorality," it has impregnated the machinery of

government and added to its usurpation of moral guardianship the

legal censorship of our views, feelings, and even of our conduct.

Art, literature, the drama, the privacy of the mails, in fact, our

most intimate tastes, are at the mercy of this inexorable tyrant.

Anthony Comstock, or some other equally ignorant policeman, has been

given power to desecrate genius, to soil and mutilate the sublimest

creation of nature--the human form. Books dealing with the most

vital issues of our lives, and seeking to shed light upon dangerously

obscured problems, are legally treated as criminal offenses, and their

helpless authors thrown into prison or driven to destruction and

death.

Not even in the domain of the Tsar is personal liberty daily outraged

to the extent it is in America, the stronghold of the Puritanic

eunuchs. Here the only day of recreation left to the masses, Sunday,

has been made hideous and utterly impossible. All writers on

primitive customs and ancient civilization agree that the Sabbath was

a day of festivities, free from care and duties, a day of general

rejoicing and merry-making. In every European country this tradition

continues to bring some relief from the humdrum and stupidity of our

Christian era. Everywhere concert halls, theaters, museums, and

gardens are filled with men, women, and children, particularly

workers with their families, full of life and joy, forgetful of the

ordinary rules and conventions of their every-day existence. It is

on that day that the masses demonstrate what life might really mean

in a sane society, with work stripped of its profit-making,

soul-destroying purpose.

Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day. Naturally,

only the workers are affected: our millionaires have their luxurious

homes and elaborate clubs. The poor, however, are condemned to the

monotony and dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and

fun of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom of the

church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing

atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people

lack even the latter, unless they can invest their meager earnings in

quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows

what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of Puritanism

it, too, has but driven the "devil" deeper into the human system.

Nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibition

towns. But so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul

breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly

Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy,

but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, it succeeds

but in creating an abnormal life.

Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits,

is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body, and

deepens our vision of human fellowship. Without stimuli, in one form

or another, creative work is impossible, nor indeed the spirit of

kindliness and generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have

seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not justify

Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions.

A Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans

can ever hope to do. The former have given to life meaning and

color; the latter are turning red blood into water, beauty into

ugliness, variety into uniformity and decay. Puritanism, in whatever

expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look

strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until

the entire fabric is doomed. With Hippolyte Taine, every truly free

spirit has come to realize that "Puritanism is the death of culture,

philosophy, humor, and good fellowship; its characteristics are

dullness, monotony, and gloom."

[1] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Havelock Ellis.

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave

traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard of conditions," and

lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror.

It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted

from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against

indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such

crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively

business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and

the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated.

How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should

have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to

all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue?

To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic

(and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered

anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Prostitution has

been, and is, a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business,

perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the victims

of prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has remained to

our industrial system, or to economic prostitution.

Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors

will baby people become interested--for a while at least. The people

are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day. The

"righteous" cry against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It

serves to amuse the people for a little while, and it will help to

create a few more fat political jobs--parasites who stalk about the

world as inspectors, investigators, detectives, and so forth.

What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white

women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course;

the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor,

thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With

Mrs. Warren these girls feel, "Why waste your life working for a few

shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?"

Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know it

well enough, but it doesn't pay to say anything about it. It is much

more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged

morality, than to go to the bottom of things.

However, there is one commendable exception among the young writers:

Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work, THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, is the

first earnest attempt to treat the social evil, not from a

sentimental Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience,

Mr. Kauffman proves that our industrial system leaves most women no

alternative except prostitution. The women portrayed in THE HOUSE OF

BONDAGE belong to the working class. Had the author portrayed the

life of women in other spheres, he would have been confronted with

the same state of affairs.

Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but

rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should

pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with

sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells

herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether

our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of

woman is responsible for prostitution.

Just at present our good people are shocked by the disclosures that

in New York City alone, one out of every ten women works in a

factory, that the average wage received by women is six dollars per

week for forty-eight to sixty hours of work, and that the majority of

female wage workers face many months of idleness which leaves the

average wage about $280 a year. In view of these economic horrors,

is it to be wondered at that prostitution and the white slave trade

have become such dominant factors?

Lest the preceding figures be considered an exaggeration, it is well

to examine what some authorities on prostitution have to say:

"A prolific cause of female depravity can be found in the several

tables, showing the description of the employment pursued, and the

wages received, by the women previous to their fall, and it will be a

question for the political economist to decide how far mere business

consideration should be an apology on the part of employers for a

reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the savings of

a small percentage on wages is not more than counter-balanced by the

enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray

the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice, WHICH IS THE

DIRECT RESULT, IN MANY CASES, OF INSUFFICIENT COMPENSATION OF HONEST

LABOR."[1]

Our present-day reformers would do well to look into Dr. Sanger's

book. There they will find that out of 2,000 cases under his

observation, but few came from the middle classes, from well-ordered

conditions, or pleasant homes. By far the largest majority were

working girls and working women; some driven into prostitution

through sheer want, others because of a cruel, wretched life at home,

others again because of thwarted and crippled physical natures (of

which I shall speak later on). Also it will do the maintainers of

purity and morality good to learn that out of two thousand cases, 490

were married women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently

there was not much of a guaranty for their "safety and purity" in the

sanctity of marriage.[2]

Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in PROSTITUTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, is

even more emphatic in characterizing economic conditions as one of

the most vital factors of prostitution.

"Although prostitution has existed in all ages, it was left to the

nineteenth century to develop it into a gigantic social institution.

The development of industry with vast masses of people in the

competitive market, the growth and congestion of large cities, the

insecurity and uncertainty of employment, has given prostitution an

impetus never dreamed of at any period in human history."

And again Havelock Ellis, while not so absolute in dealing with the

economic cause, is nevertheless compelled to admit that it is

indirectly and directly the main cause. Thus he finds that a large

percentage of prostitutes is recruited from the servant class,

although the latter have less care and greater security. On the

other hand, Mr. Ellis does not deny that the daily routine, the

drudgery, the monotony of the servant girl's lot, and especially the

fact that she may never partake of the companionship and joy of a

home, is no mean factor in forcing her to seek recreation and

forgetfulness in the gaiety and glimmer of prostitution. In other

words, the servant girl, being treated as a drudge, never having the

right to herself, and worn out by the caprices of her mistress, can

find an outlet, like the factory or shopgirl, only in prostitution.

The most amusing side of the question now before the public is the

indignation of our "good, respectable people," especially the various

Christian gentlemen, who are always to be found in the front ranks of

every crusade. Is it that they are absolutely ignorant of the

history of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? Or is

it that they hope to blind the present generation to the part played

in the past by the Church in relation to prostitution? Whatever

their reason, they should be the last to cry out against the

unfortunate victims of today, since it is known to every intelligent

student that prostitution is of religious origin, maintained and

fostered for many centuries, not as a shame but as a virtue, hailed

as such by the Gods themselves.

"It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found

primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of

social tradition, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive

freedom that was passing out of the general social life. The typical

example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before

Christ, at the Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every

woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the first

stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship the goddess. Very

similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North

Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean,

and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at

Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the

service of the goddess.

"The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule,

out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings

possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the

fertility of Nature, is maintained by all authoritative writers on

the subject. Gradually, however, and when prostitution became an

organized institution under priestly influence, religious

prostitution developed utilitarian sides, thus helping to increase

public revenue.

"The rise of Christianity to political power produced little change

in policy. The leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution.

Brothels under municipal protection are found in the thirteenth

century. They constituted a sort of public service, the directors of

them being considered almost as public servants."[3]

To this must be added the following from Dr. Sanger's work:

"Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostitutes would be tolerated

if they pay a certain amount of their earnings to the Church.

"Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical; from one single brothel, which

he himself had built, he received an income of 20,000 ducats."

In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that

direction. At least she does not openly demand tribute from

prostitutes. She finds it much more profitable to go in for real

estate, like Trinity Church, for instance, to rent out death traps at

an exorbitant price to those who live off and by prostitution.

Much as I should like to, my space will not admit speaking of

prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and during the Middle Ages. The

conditions in the latter period are particularly interesting,

inasmuch as prostitution was organized into guilds, presided over by

a brothel Queen. These guilds employed strikes as a medium of

improving their condition and keeping a standard price. Certainly

that is more practical a method than the one used by the modern wage

slave in society.

It would be one-sided and extremely superficial to maintain that the

economic factor is the only cause of prostitution. There are others

no less important and vital. That, too, our reformers know, but dare

discuss even less than the institution that saps the very life out of

both men and women. I refer to the sex question, the very mention of

which causes most people moral spasms.

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity,

and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and

importance of sex. Everything dealing with the subject is

suppressed, and persons who attempt to bring light into this terrible

darkness are persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is

nevertheless true that so long as a girl is not to know how to take

care of herself, not to know the function of the most important part

of her life, we need not be surprised if she becomes an easy prey to

prostitution, or to any other form of a relationship which degrades

her to the position of an object for mere sex gratification.

It is due to this ignorance that the entire life and nature of the

girl is thwarted and crippled. We have long ago taken it as a

self-evident fact that the boy may follow the call of the wild; that

is to say, that the boy may, as soon has his sex nature asserts

itself, satisfy that nature; but our moralists are scandalized at the

very thought that the nature of a girl should assert itself. To the

moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the

woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

That this is no mere statement is proved by the fact that marriage

for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by

law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and

repudiated. Yet a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothing

else than "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated

to gain."[4]

"Those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise

of the sexual act and make of this a profession."[5]

In fact, Banger goes further; he maintains that the act of

prostitution is "intrinsically equal to that of a man or woman who

contracts a marriage for economic reasons."

Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as thousands of

girls cannot marry, our stupid social customs condemn them either to

a life of celibacy or prostitution. Human nature asserts itself

regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature

should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his

general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman

are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all

that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of

morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation

of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute

ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an

overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of

affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.

Not that the gratification of sex must needs lead to prostitution; it

is the cruel, heartless, criminal persecution of those who dare

divert from the beaten paths, which is responsible for it.

Girls, mere children, work in crowded, over-heated rooms ten to

twelve hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a

constant over-excited sex state. Many of these girls have no home or

comforts of any kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap

amusement is the only means of forgetting their daily routine. This

naturally brings them into close proximity with the other sex. It is

hard to say which of the two factors brings the girl's over-sexed

condition to a climax, but it is certainly the most natural thing

that a climax should result. That is the first step toward

prostitution. Nor is the girl to be held responsible for it. On the

contrary, it is altogether the fault of society, the fault of our

lack of understanding, of our lack of appreciation of life in the

making; especially is it the criminal fault of our moralists, who

condemn a girl for all eternity, because she has gone from the "path

of virtue"; that is, because her first sex experience has taken place

without the sanction of the Church.

The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and

society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition is

such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore

has no ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up,

instead of dragging her down. Thus society creates the victims that

it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of. The meanest, most

depraved and decrepit man still considers himself too good to take as

his wife the woman whose grace he was quite willing to buy, even

though he might thereby save her from a life of horror. Nor can she

turn to her own sister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems

herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own position is

in many respects even more deplorable than her sister's of the

street.

"The wife who married for money, compared with the prostitute," says

Havelock Ellis, "is the true scab. She is paid less, gives much more

in return in labor and care, and is absolutely bound to her master.

The prostitute never signs away the right over her own person, she

retains her freedom and personal rights, nor is she always compelled

to submit to a man's embrace."

Nor does the better-than-thou woman realize the apologist claim of

Lecky that "though she may be the supreme type of vice, she is also

the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, happy homes

would be polluted, unnatural and harmful practice would abound."

Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-half of the human race for

the sake of some miserable institution which they can not outgrow.

As a matter of fact, prostitution is no more a safeguard for the

purity of the home than rigid laws are a safeguard against

prostitution. Fully fifty per cent. of married men are patrons of

brothels. It is through this virtuous element that the married

women--nay, even the children--are infected with venereal diseases.

Yet society has not a word of condemnation for the man, while no law

is too monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless victim.

She is not only preyed upon by those who use her, but she is also

absolutely at the mercy of every policeman and miserable detective on

the beat, the officials at the station house, the authorities in

every prison.

In a recent book by a woman who was for twelve years the mistress of

a "house," are to be found the following figures: "The authorities

compelled me to pay every month fines between $14.70 to $29.70, the

girls would pay from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police." Considering that

the writer did her business in a small city, that the amounts she

gives do not include extra bribes and fines, one can readily see the

tremendous revenue the police department derives from the blood money

of its victims, whom it will not even protect. Woe to those who

refuse to pay their toll; they would be rounded up like cattle, "if

only to make a favorable impression upon the good citizens of the

city, or if the powers needed extra money on the side. For the

warped mind who believes that a fallen woman is incapable of human

emotion it would be impossible to realize the grief, the disgrace,

the tears, the wounded pride that was ours every time we were pulled

in."

Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has a kept a "house" should be

able to feel that way? But stranger still that a good Christian

world should bleed and fleece such women, and give them nothing in

return except obloquy and persecution. Oh, for the charity of a

Christian world!

Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How

would America ever retain her virtue if Europe did not help her out?

I will not deny that this may be the case in some instances, any more

than I will deny that there are emissaries of Germany and other

countries luring economic slaves into America; but I absolutely deny

that prostitution is recruited to any appreciable extent from Europe.

It may be true that the majority of prostitutes in New York City are

foreigners, but that is because the majority of the population is

foreign. The moment we go to any other American city, to Chicago or

the Middle West, we shall find that the number of foreign

prostitutes is by far a minority.

Equally exaggerated is the belief that the majority of street girls

in this city were engaged in this business before they came to

America. Most of the girls speak excellent English, are Americanized

in habits and appearance,--a thing absolutely impossible unless they

had lived in this country many years. That is, they were driven into

prostitution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American

custom for excessive display of finery and clothes, which, of course,

necessitates money,--money that cannot be earned in shops or

factories.

In other words, there is no reason to believe that any set of men

would go to the risk and expense of getting foreign products, when

American conditions are overflooding the market with thousands of

girls. On the other hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove that

the export of American girls for the purpose of prostitution is by no

means a small factor.

Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State Attorney of Cook County,

Ill., makes the open charge that New England girls are shipped to

Panama for the express use of men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr.

Roe adds that "there seems to be an underground railroad between

Boston and Washington which many girls travel." Is it not

significant that the railroad should lead to the very seat of Federal

authority? That Mr. Roe said more than was desired in certain

quarters is proved by the fact that he lost his position. It is not

practical for men in office to tell tales from school.

The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there are no

brothels in the Canal Zone. That is the usual avenue of escape for a

hypocritical world that dares not face the truth. Not in the Canal

Zone, not in the city limits,--therefore prostitution does not exist.

Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson Reynolds, who has made a

thorough study of the white slave traffic in Asia. As a staunch

American citizen and friend of the future Napoleon of America,

Theodore Roosevelt, he is surely the last to discredit the virtue of

his country. Yet we are informed by him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai,

and Yokohama, the Augean stables of American vice are located. There

American prostitutes have made themselves so conspicuous that in the

Orient "American girl" is synonymous with prostitute. Mr. Reynolds

reminds his countrymen that while Americans in China are under the

protection of our consular representatives, the Chinese in America

have no protection at all. Every one who knows the brutal and

barbarous persecution Chinese and Japanese endure on the Pacific

Coast, will agree with Mr. Reynolds.

In view of the above facts it is rather absurd to point to Europe as

the swamp whence come all the social diseases of America. Just as

absurd is it to proclaim the myth that the Jews furnish the largest

contingent of willing prey. I am sure that no one will accuse me of

nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say that I have developed out

of them, as out of many other prejudices. If, therefore, I resent

the statement that Jewish prostitutes are imported, it is not because

of any Judaistic sympathies, but because of the facts inherent in the

lives of these people. No one but the most superficial will claim

that Jewish girls migrate to strange lands, unless they have some tie

or relation that brings them there. The Jewish girl is not

adventurous. Until recent years she had never left home, not even so

far as the next village or town, except it were to visit some

relative. Is it then credible that Jewish girls would leave their

parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange lands,

through the influence and promises of strange forces? Go to any of

the large incoming steamers and see for yourself if these girls do

not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other

kinsfolk. There may be exceptions, of course, but to state that

large numbers of Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any

other purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them;

besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break

easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

To ascribe the increase in prostitution to alleged importation, to

the growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highly

superficial. I have already referred to the former. As to the cadet

system, abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it is

essentially a phase of modern prostitution,--a phase accentuated by

suppression and graft, resulting from sporadic crusades against the

social evil.

The procurer is no doubt a poor specimen of the human family, but in

what manner is he more despicable than the policeman who takes the

last cent from the street walker, and then locks her up in the

station house? Why is the cadet more criminal, or a greater menace

to society, than the owners of department stores and factories, who

grow fat on the sweat of their victims, only to drive them to the

streets? I make no plea for the cadet, but I fail to see why he

should be mercilessly hounded, while the real perpetrators of all

social iniquity enjoy immunity and respect. Then, too, it is well to

remember that it is not the cadet who makes the prostitute. It is

our sham and hypocrisy that create both the prostitute and the cadet.

Until 1894 very little was known in America of the procurer. Then we

were attacked by an epidemic of virtue. Vice was to be abolished,

the country purified at all cost. The social cancer was therefore

driven out of sight, but deeper into the body. Keepers of brothels,

as well as their unfortunate victims, were turned over to the tender

mercies of the police. The inevitable consequence of exorbitant

bribes, and the penitentiary, followed.

While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they represented

a certain monetary value, the girls now found themselves on the

street, absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police.

Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection, these girls

naturally proved an easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of

the spirit of our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the

direct outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and attempted

suppression of prostitution. It were sheer folly to confound this

modern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter.

Mere suppression and barbaric enactments can serve but to embitter,

and further degrade, the unfortunate victims of ignorance and

stupidity. The latter has reached its highest expression in the

proposed law to make humane treatment of prostitutes a crime,

punishing any one sheltering a prostitute with five years'

imprisonment and $10,000 fine. Such an attitude merely exposes the

terrible lack of understanding of the true causes of prostitution, as

a social factor, as well as manifesting the Puritanic spirit of the

Scarlet Letter days.

There is not a single modern writer on the subject who does not refer

to the utter futility of legislative methods in coping with the

issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko finds that governmental suppression and

moral crusades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secret

channels, multiplying its dangers to society. Havelock Ellis, the

most thorough and humane student of prostitution, proves by a wealth

of data that the more stringent the methods of persecution the worse

the condition becomes. Among other data we learn that in France, "in

1560, Charles IX. abolished brothels through an edict, but the

numbers of prostitutes were only increased, while many new brothels

appeared in unsuspected shapes, and were more dangerous. In spite of

all such legislation, OR BECAUSE OF IT, there has been no country in

which prostitution has played a more conspicuous part."[6]

An educated public opinion, freed from the legal and moral hounding

of the prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate present conditions.

Wilful shutting of eyes and ignoring of the evil as a social factor

of modern life, can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our

foolish notions of "better than thou," and learn to recognize in the

prostitute a product of social conditions. Such a realization will

sweep away the attitude of hypocrisy, and insure a greater

understanding and more humane treatment. As to a thorough

eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a

complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral

ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery.

[1] Dr. Sanger, THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

[2] It is a significant fact that Dr. Sanger's book has been excluded

from the U. S. mails. Evidently the authorities are not anxious that

the public be informed as to the true cause of prostitution.

[3] Havelock Ellis, SEX AND SOCIETY.

[4] Guyot, LA PROSTITUTION.

[5] Banger, CRIMINALITE ET CONDITION ECONOMIQUE.

[6] SEX AND SOCIETY.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it

not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True,

our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power

over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of

old.

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet

achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those

who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this

omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that

divinity!

Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worshipper, and though her

idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her

hands, ever blind to the fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus

woman has been the greatest supporter of all deities from time

immemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the price that only gods

can exact,--her freedom, her heart's blood, her very life.

Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When you go to woman, take the whip

along," is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one

sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods.

Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to

the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and

fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater

supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say

that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of

the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman.

The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the

world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods

that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.

The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and

precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return

gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest

supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the

love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers

the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks

her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns.

It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the

battlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that

insatiable monster, war.

Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps

the very life-energy of woman,--this modern prison with golden bars.

Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as

wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the

home, to the power that holds her in bondage.

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is

made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to

set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of

suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they

insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better

Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus

suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very

Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.

What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as

zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As

of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms

of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most

enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth century

deity,--suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,--all

that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion

woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years

ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave

people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how

craftily they were made to submit.

Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention

that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No

one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas,

for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an

imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of

people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey?

Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so

much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and

self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the

people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous

politicians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to

tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal

suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs.

The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the

right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the

right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these

disastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman

nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the

conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither

physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have

the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me

to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has

failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not

make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in

purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to

credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest

misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or

devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in

being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies

and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a

right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics

will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The

most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.

As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage

have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are

absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of

life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is

herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner.

In her able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she says: "In Colorado, we find

that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the

essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system."

Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but

the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the

representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to

understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either

herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States

where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in

Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in

our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance

lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where

we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States

are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater

freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation

of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,

with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the

laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in

England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle?

Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children

than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex

commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double

standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the

ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in

the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to

Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage

accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political

conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting

the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of

an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is

responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that

there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of

woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free

labor from the thralldom of political bossism.

Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in

Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an

intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like

Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are

the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias?

Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully

go to Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in need of heroic

liberators. Why has the ballot not created them? The only Finnish

avenger of his people was a man, not a woman, and he used a more

effective weapon than the ballot.

As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being

pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there

through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other

States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts

without the ballot?

True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteed equal rights to

property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women

without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand

to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their

condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a

position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to

Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State to

collect material in favor of suffrage, she would be the last to say

anything derogatory; yet we are informed that "equal suffrage has but

slightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women do

not receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman in

Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers are

paid less than in California." On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails

to account for the fact that although women have had school suffrage

for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census in

Denver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand

defective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in the

educational department, and also notwithstanding that women in

Colorado have passed the "most stringent laws for child and animal

protection." The women of Colorado "have taken great interest in the

State institutions for the care of dependent, defective, and

delinquent children." What a horrible indictment against woman's

care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective

children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it has

failed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? And

where is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring into

the political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine owners

waged a guerilla war against the Western Miners' Union; when General

Bell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of beds at night,

kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens,

declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the

Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why did

they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They

helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor

Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings,

Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado.

"Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted.

Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman

suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics

is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the

political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotted and relentless in

her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.

Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and

declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd" not

being interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN marriage. It goes

without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been

prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine nature:

it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no

further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell.

Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business

than since the law has been set against them.

In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more

drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected

with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the

vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan

fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity

of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the

very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a

political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people,

not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado

woman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in,

and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."[2] Yes, and

into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing

satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did

she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's?

"Notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with the saloons."

Certainly, the lady vote gatherers can not be accused of much sense

of proportion. Granting even that these busybodies can decide whose

lives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics,

must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same category?

Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry, so manifest in the

principle of Prohibition, which sanctions the spread of drunkenness

among men and women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch on

the only place left to the poor man. If no other reason, woman's

narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to

liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the

superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive

field, man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment,

ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination

to measure everyone's morality with a Puritanic yardstick. In his

political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He

knows that quantity and not quality is the material for the political

grinding mill, and, unless he is a sentimental reformer or an old

fossil, he knows that politics can never be anything but a swamp.

Women who are at all conversant with the process of politics, know

the nature of the beast, but in their self-sufficiency and egotism

they make themselves believe that they have but to pet the beast, and

he will become as gentle as a lamb, sweet and pure. As if women have

not sold their votes, as if women politicians can not be bought! If

her body can be bought in return for material consideration, why not

her vote? That it is being done in Colorado and in other States, is

not denied even by those in favor of woman suffrage.

As I have said before, woman's narrow view of human affairs is not

the only argument against her as a politician superior to man. There

are others. Her life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred

her conception of the meaning of equality. She clamors for equal

rights with men, yet we learn that "few women care to canvas in

undesirable districts."[3] How little equality means to them compared

with the Russian women, who face hell itself for their ideal!

Woman demands the same rights as man, yet she is indignant that her

presence does not strike him dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, and

does not jump from his seat like a flunkey. These may be trivial

things, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of American

suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown these

silly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatest

demands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to the

heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to their

energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some

of our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, the

suffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of real

equality. Else how is one to account for the tremendous, truly

gigantic effort set in motion by those valiant fighters for a

wretched little bill which will benefit a handful of propertied

ladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass of

workingwomen? True, as politicians they must be opportunists, must

take half measures if they can not get all. But as intelligent and

liberal women they ought to realize that if the ballot is a weapon,

the disinherited need it more than the economically superior class,

and that the latter already enjoy too much power by virtue of their

economic superiority.

The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline

Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that

there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors.

If so, how will the workingwoman of England, already inferior

economically to the ladies who are benefited by the Shackleton bill,[4]

be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass?

Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal,

devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs

their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their

economic masters. They would still have to do it, were universal

suffrage for men and women established in England. No matter what

the workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those who

believe in the power of the vote show little sense of justice when

they concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it

might serve most.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently,

altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic

needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional

type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor;

nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she

advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.[5]

I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.

There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with

workingwomen--the Women's Trade Union League, for instance; but they

are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic.

The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What

would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of

these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their

victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage workers?

Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as

America. Particularly this is true of the American woman of the

middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but

his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality.

Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the

most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how

truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly

notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact;

it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.

One of the great American women leaders claims that woman is entitled

not only to equal pay, but that she ought to be legally entitled even

to the pay of her husband. Failing to support her, he should be put

in convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by his

equal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the cause claim

for woman that her vote will abolish the social evil, which has been

fought in vain by the collective efforts of the most illustrious

minds the world over? It is indeed to be regretted that the alleged

creator of the universe has already presented us with his wonderful

scheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to

outdo him completely.

Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a fetich. If we have

outlived the time when such heresy was punishable at the stake, we

have not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare

differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put down

as an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking the

question squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in the

beginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor

can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot

improve on man's mistakes, why perpetuate the latter?

History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a few

truths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. The

history of the political activities of men proves that they have

given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a

more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of

fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant

fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through

suffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her

climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism,

woman has become man's equal, not through the ballot, but by her will

to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue

of learning and vocation, but she has won man's esteem, his respect,

his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the

admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through

suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability,

will power, and her endurance in the struggle for liberty. Where are

the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such

a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America,

we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage

has helped her in the march to emancipation.

It is just sixty-two years ago since a handful of women at the Seneca

Falls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equal

education with men, and access to the various professions, trades,

etc. What wonderful accomplishment, what wonderful triumphs! Who

but the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge?

Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open to

her? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new

life for herself. She has become a world power in every domain of

human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without

the right to make laws, without the "privilege" of becoming a judge,

a jailer, or an executioner.

Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see

the light, I shall not complain.

The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of

man, but that she is wasting her life force to outdo him, with a

tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of

keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what

cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work

woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She

can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive

anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development,

her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself.

First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex

commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by

refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a

servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.; by

making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying

to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities,

by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public

condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free,

will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real

love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life giving;

a creator of free men and women.

[1] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen Sumner.

[2] EQUAL SUFFRAGE.

[3] Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

[4] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-evident

that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The

English Parliament is full of such Judases.

[5] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION

I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic

theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various

groups within the human race, regardless of class and race

distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between

woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where

these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general

social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life

today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory

interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our

social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall

have become a reality.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not

necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor

does it call for the elimination of individual traits and

peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the

nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in

oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still

retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be

the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat

and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without

antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one

another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of

Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive

everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor

of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea

of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being

suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of

my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire

sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the

truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and

activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers

should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of

every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation.

But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed

her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential

to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an

artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French

arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels,

and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the

expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown

plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially

in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these

words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest

and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory

was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to

direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great

enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the

tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything

against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the

emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today,

has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with

the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she

really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is,

nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a

few States. Has that purified our political life, as many

well-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it

is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease

to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone.

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the

laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is

altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business

and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more

blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand

washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right

to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is,

she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and

present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary

strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all

her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to

reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that

women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are

neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor

receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing

equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical and

psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and

women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of

freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of

freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In

addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a

"home, sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a

day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of

girls are willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and

tired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing or

typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the

middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy.

A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest

subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect

woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised

independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and

stifling woman's nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural

and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the

more cultured professional walks of life--teachers, physicians,

lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper

appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and

emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social

equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and

independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only

hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together

make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom

life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing

joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and

exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and

ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart,

mother, in freedom.

The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does

not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses

her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human

nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of

life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without

which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those

who realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained many

decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man;

ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important,

a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without

them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing

institutions and the replacement thereof with something more

advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the

most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day

practice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability

and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are,

for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea

that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe

them the value of a half-dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's

emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs

have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of

the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every

member of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand

in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her.

She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In

short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin;

regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents of

woman's rights were highly indignant at such representation, and,

lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were

not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of

course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good

and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove

how good she could be and that her influence would have a purifying

effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for

woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged

new ones. The great movement of TRUE emancipation has not met with a

great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their

narrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtful

character, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated

at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child

could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the

most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate

craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied with

man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to

overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and

devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman.

Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that

has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and

woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant

Norwegian, Laura Marholm, called WOMAN, A CHARACTER STUDY. She was

one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of

the existing conception of woman's emancipation, and its tragic

effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholm

speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the

genius, Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sonya

Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature, Marie Bashkirtzeff, who

died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women

of such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfied

craving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and the

unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these

masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the

higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for

her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, but

also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong

individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her

character.

The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior

airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for

woman as depicted in the CHARACTER STUDY by Laura Marholm. Equally

impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than

her mentality and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman

nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary

attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the

modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete

assertion of her being. For over a hundred years the old form of

marriage, based on the Bible, "till death doth part," has been

denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the

man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and

commands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time and

again it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonial

relation restricted woman to the function of a man's servant and the

bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who

prefer marriage, with all its deficiencies, to the narrowness of an

unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral

and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of many advanced

women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the

meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was

independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more

harmful to life and growth--ethical and social conventions--were left

to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves.

They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and hearts of the

most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and

hearts of our grandmothers.

These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion

or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt, or relative of any

sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of

Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of

the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to

defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon

her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature,

whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her

most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she

cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are

brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly

beating against their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be

satisfied.

The French writer, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, NEW BEAUTY,

attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This

ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very

cleverly and wisely of how to feed infants; she is kind, and

administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a

young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the

future, and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by

the use of stone walls and floors, and by the doing away with rugs

and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically

dressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first

meeting, was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend,

gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that

he loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful, and

though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by a

spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he

would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic

absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing

faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of

his nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always

rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union,

the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess

that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold

as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the

love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather

an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the

father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors,

than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does

not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love,

but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a

minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies

in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which

produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from

the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a

deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess,

ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the

comfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than between

the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of

emancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the

stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison

between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number

of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and

wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness,

and simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated professional

women who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices.

This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn

woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and

clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old

traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so

far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped

that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, or

equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins

neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.

History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation

from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman

learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as

far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore,

far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to

cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs.

The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and

fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and

be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete

and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the

ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is

synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away

with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and

woman represent two antagonistic worlds.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let

us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles

confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will

not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great

thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self

richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and

transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless

joy.

MARRIAGE AND LOVE

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are

synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the

same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on

actual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as

the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some

marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love

could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few

people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large

numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but

who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while

it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is

equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I

maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of

it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from

marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a

married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close

examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the

inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away

from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without

which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman

and the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It

differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is

more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small

compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one

pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue

payments. If, however, woman's premium is her husband, she pays for

it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life,

"until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns

her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness,

individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his

sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He

feels his chains more in an economic sense.

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage.

"Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."

That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One

has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how

bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped

Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing

looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth

marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have

increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third,

that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8

per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material,

dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert

Herrick, in TOGETHER; Pinero, in MID-CHANNEL; Eugene Walter, in PAID

IN FULL, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness,

the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor

for harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the

popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig

deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so

disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long

environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each

other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an

insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has

not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for,

each other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first

to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not--as the

stupid critic would have it--because she is tired of her

responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she

has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger

and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more

degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers? No need

for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As to

the knowledge of the woman--what is there to know except that she has

a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth

that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out

of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so

strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is

responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no

soul--what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a

woman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she

absorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to

man's superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly

intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own,

now that she is actually growing aware of herself as being outside

of the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage is

gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation

can stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her

ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed

towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is

prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much

less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan

of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to

know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of

respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which

is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare

question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the

average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is

kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive

field--sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only

to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the

most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a

large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical

suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex

matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all

an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up

because of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex

without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as

utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness

consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be

anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman,

full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her

most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must

stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience

until a "good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife?

That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement

end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important,

factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the

wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the

gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions,

young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken

in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become

"sensible."

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has

aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and

only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can

he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage.

Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are

not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of

shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty and

sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution.

The State and Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is

the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and

women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above

dollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that class whom

economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The

tremendous change in woman's position, wrought by that mighty factor,

is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time

since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage

workers; six million women, who have equal right with men to be

exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even.

Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk

of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad

tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation

is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women

wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light

as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught

to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really

independent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of

a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown

aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to

organize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to

get married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy

to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough

that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more

solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can

escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no

longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on

labor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of the

wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must

continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to

this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of

the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the

middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is

the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the

husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that

marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband.

There she moves about in HIS home, year after year, until her aspect

of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her

surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome,

gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could

not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a short

period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties,

absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world.

She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements,

dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a

bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring

atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After

all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the

hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of

children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet

orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little

victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care,

the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it

ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and

put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of

the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity,

what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to

"justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however,

goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a

blighted memory of his father's stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,--therein lies the curse of

marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so

revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human

dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man

of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in

ignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities

that thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute

dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her

social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its

gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human

character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what

other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but

defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to

woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it

not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if

she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does

not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in

hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of

love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of

thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the

hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues

claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it

forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of

hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all

conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human

destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that

poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains,

but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has

subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue

love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not

conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has

been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the

splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate,

if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant

with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to

make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other

atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly,

completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the

universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.

If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear

fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life

against death.

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love

begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want

of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became

mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock

enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is

capable of bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood,

lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who

would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if

woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The

race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the

priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a

mere machine,--and the marriage institution is our only safety valve

against the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these

frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the

edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm

of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of

a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have

neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of

poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children,

begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by

compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to

learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in

freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego

forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an

atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does

become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her

being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that

in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master

stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because

she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken

her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a

personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue

her life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in

freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like

Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual

awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty

mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or

for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for

a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people.

Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it

soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress

and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust

itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans

and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to

rise to love's summit.

Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the

mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to

receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What

fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even

approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men

and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship

and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

THE MODERN DRAMA: A POWERFUL DISSEMINATOR OF RADICAL THOUGHT

So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly felt

within a limited social class, the powers of reaction may often

succeed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrest

grows into conscious expression and becomes almost universal, it

necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks

its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of

existing values.

An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of the modern,

conscious social unrest cannot be gained from merely propagandistic

literature. Rather must we become conversant with the larger phases

of human expression manifest in art, literature, and, above all, the

modern drama--the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of our

deep-felt dissatisfaction.

What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent

are the simple canvasses of a Millet! The figures of his

peasants--what terrific indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs

that condemn the Man With the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself

excluded from Nature's bounty.

The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity and defiance

of labor in the group of miners carrying their maimed brother to

safety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of the

seething unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth, and

the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression.

No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modern

literature--Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiev, Gorki,

Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit of

universal ferment and the longing for social change.

Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radical

thought and the disseminator of new values.

It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such an

important role. But a study of the development of modern ideas in

most countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in driving

home great social truths, truths generally ignored when presented in

other forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and France.

Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think

and has awakened their social sympathies, because of the tremendous

contrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people and

the despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while the

great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki, and Andreiev

closely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirations

of the Russian people, they did not influence radical thought to the

extent the drama has done in other countries.

Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by THE POWER

OF DARKNESS or NIGHT LODGING. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is

yet the greatest enemy of organized Christianity. With a master hand

he portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power

of darkness, the superstitions of the Christian Church.

What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, the

responsibility of the Church for crimes committed by its deluded

victims; what other medium could, in consequence, rouse the

indignation of man's conscience?

Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki's

NIGHT LODGING. The social pariahs, forced into poverty and crime,

yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration.

Lost existences these, blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial

environment.

France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty,

is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such she, too, did not

need the drama as a means of awakening. And yet the works of

Brieux--as ROBE ROUGE, portraying the terrible corruption of the

judiciary--and Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES--picturing

the destructive influence of wealth on the human soul--have

undoubtedly reached wider circles than most of the articles and books

which have been written in France on the social question.

In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in

America--though in a lesser degree--the drama is the vehicle which is

really making history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not

otherwise to be reached.

Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of a century

men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest integrity, made it their

life-work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, among

the oppressed and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous

revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumane

system like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas!

The cultured people remained absolutely indifferent; to them that

revolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented

men, dangerous, illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place was

behind prison bars.

Self-satisfied as the "cultured" usually are, they could not

understand why one should fuss about the fact that thousands of

people were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth of

the world. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, they could not believe

that side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a position

lower than a beast's, shelterless and ragged, without hope or

ambition.

This condition of affairs was particularly pronounced in Germany

after the Franco-German war. Full to the bursting point with its

victory, Germany thrived on a sentimental, patriotic literature,

thereby poisoning the minds of the country's youth by the glory of

conquest and bloodshed.

Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other

countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, and

especially in the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev.

But as no country can long maintain a standard of culture without a

literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany gradually

began to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of its

own people.

Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startled

the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with his FAMILIE

SELICKE. The play deals with society's refuse, men and women of the

alleys, whose only subsistence consists of what they can pick out of

the garbage barrels. A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet what

other method is there to break through the hard shell of the minds

and souls of people who have never known want, and who therefore

assume that all is well in the world?

Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truth

is bitter, and the people living on the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hated

to be confronted with the truth.

Not that FAMILIE SELICKE represented anything that had not been

written about for years without any seeming result. But the dramatic

genius of Holz, together with the powerful interpretation of the

play, necessarily made inroads into the widest circles, and forced

people to think about the terrible inequalities around them.

Sudermann's EHRE[1] and HEIMAT[2] deal with vital subjects. I have

already referred to the sentimental patriotism so completely turning

the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of

honor. Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerable

lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number of leading

writers. But nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposer of that

national disease as the EHRE.

Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it analyzes the real

meaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed, inborn feeling, but

that it varies with every people and every epoch, depending

particularly on one's economic and social station in life. We

realize from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion will

necessarily define honor differently from his victims.

The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Muhling,

being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty on his premises in the

absence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Muhling's

representative, is making a vast fortune for his employer in India.

On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by

young Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters

with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indignant,

resents the insult to his family's honor, and is forthwith dismissed

from his position for impudence. Robert finally throws this

accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:

"We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you

seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace

with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor."

An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by

Count Trast, the principal character in the EHRE, a man widely

conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in

his many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honor he

mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the

charms of the chieftain's wife.

The theme of HEIMAT treats of the struggle between the old and the

young generations. It holds a permanent and important place in

dramatic literature.

Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed an

unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor selected by her father. For

daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home.

Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the

world to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated

singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that they

respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father immediately

begins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda is

indignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedy

of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller had

in his student days been Magda's lover, while she was battling for

her economic and social independence. The consequence of the

fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth.

The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from

Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of

Magda's social and professional success, Keller willingly consents,

but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place the child in

an institution. The struggle between the Old and the New culminates

in Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence

of thought and action: "...I'll say what I think of you--of you

and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I

must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold

upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase

my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years?

Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built

up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I

blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become

what I am."

The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously

treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because

Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal

conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the

influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT,

especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world

factor.

The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally

revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His

first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German

theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a

beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the

entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an

extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his

economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth,

both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is

shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy,

and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the

one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the

question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit

parents.

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon

almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps

over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and

morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed

openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann

stands a colossal figure before the world.

When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the

land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists,

"workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty

in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner

amusement? That is too much!"

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be

brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It

was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder

in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!

Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this

drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that

wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty,

hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest

the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the

purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the

oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in

depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia.

Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for

bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half

covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the

cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant

women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent

Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes,

it was too much!

Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social

life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions,

he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and

spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition.

Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, DIE

VERSUNKENE GLOCKE[5], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty

because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long.

Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because

they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their

very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world

forever hindering individual and social emancipation.

Max Halbe's JUGEND[6] and Wedekind's FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN[7] are dramas

which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different

direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and

narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly

this is true of FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN. Young boys and girls sacrificed

on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that

prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to

the health and well-being of society,--the origin of life, and its

functions. It shows how a mother--and a truly good mother, at

that--keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as

to all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victim

to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by

quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died

of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.

The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is

especially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promising

children fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack of

appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening.

Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her

mother to explain the mystery of life:

"I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I

myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the

least idea how it all comes about.... Don't be cross, Mother,

dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't scold me for

asking about it. Give me an answer.--How does it happen?--You cannot

really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still

believe in the stork."

Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an

affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter.

But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and

embarrassment in this evasive reply:

"In order to have a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is

married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are

still unable to love.--Now you know it!"

How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnant

girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries in

desperation, "You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl," the

agonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it's not possible,

Mother, I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn't you tell

me everything?"

With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he

fails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful father

of Wendla's unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, his

early sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of

teachers and parents.

For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the

compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. MUTTERSCHUTZ, a

publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of

the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a

considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of

Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the

introduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany.

Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more

than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the

scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the

inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was

a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen.

His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF

THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and

replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read

BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of

religion,--religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as

a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.

Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of

hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on

the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society.

First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the

futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty

material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships;

and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four

recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS

OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social

structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,--pillars nicely

gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition.

And what are these pillars?

Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial

career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the

community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies,

deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his

good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry

her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself

by shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," and

finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by

preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to

sea.

But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness

and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking

conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better

life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon

falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a

lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate

the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he

himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the

assembled townspeople:

"I have no right to this homage-- ... My fellow-citizens must know

me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us

realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The

old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying

propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a

museum, open for instruction."

With A DOLL'S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation.

Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice

done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

"While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his

opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed

them, because he would not have approved. He used to call me his

doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came

to live in your house. You settled everything according to your

taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I

look back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, from

hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, but

you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong."

In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty and

social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into full

stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge

for herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a human

being, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the

possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of the

justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted. Her rebelling

soul rises in protest against the existing. In her own words: "I

must make up my mind which is right, society or I."

In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for the great

miracle. But it was not the disappointed hope that opened her vision

to the falsehoods of marriage. It was rather the smug contentment of

Helmer with a safe lie--one that would remain hidden and not endanger

his social standing.

When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage and went out

into the world a new, regenerated personality, she opened the gate of

freedom and truth for her own sex and the race to come.

More than any other play, GHOSTS has acted like a bomb explosion,

shaking the social structure to its very foundations.

In DOLL'S HOUSE the justification of the union between Nora and

Helmer rested at least on the husband's conception of integrity and

rigid adherence to our social morality. Indeed, he was the

conventional ideal husband and devoted father. Not so in GHOSTS.

Mrs. Alving married Captain Alving only to find that he was a

physical and mental wreck, and that life with him would mean utter

degradation and be fatal to possible offspring. In her despair she

turned to her youth's companion, young Pastor Manders who, as the

true savior of souls for heaven, must needs be indifferent to earthly

necessities. He sent her back to shame and degradation,--to her

duties to husband and home. Indeed, happiness--to him--was but the

unholy manifestation of a rebellious spirit, and a wife's duty was

not to judge, but "to bear with humility the cross which a higher

power had for your own good laid upon you."

Mrs. Alving bore the cross for twenty-six long years. Not for the

sake of the higher power, but for her little son Oswald, whom she

longed to save from the poisonous atmosphere of her husband's home.

It was also for the sake of the beloved son that she supported the

lie of his father's goodness, in superstitious awe of "duty and

decency." She learned, alas! too late, that the sacrifice of her

entire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited by

the sins of his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too,

she learned, that "we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we

have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It is

all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no

vitality, but they cling to us all the same and we can't get rid of

them.... And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of

light. When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and

Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul

rebelled against as something loathsome; it was then that I began to

look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a

single knot, but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled

out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn."

How could a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething depths whence

issued the great masterpiece of Henrik Ibsen? It could not

understand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom upon

its greatest benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved by

his reply in AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites over a

decaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes rises the

regenerated individual, the bold and daring rebel. Dr. Stockman, an

idealist, full of social sympathy and solidarity, is called to his

native town as the physician of the baths. He soon discovers that

the latter are built on a swamp, and that instead of finding relief

the patients, who flock to the place, are being poisoned.

An honest man, of strong convictions, the doctor considers it his

duty to make his discovery known. But he soon learns that dividends

and profits are concerned neither with health nor principles. Even

the reformers of the town, represented in the PEOPLE'S MESSENGER,

always ready to prate of their devotion to the people, withdraw their

support from the "reckless" idealist, the moment they learn that the

doctor's discovery may bring the town into disrepute, and thus injure

their pockets.

But Doctor Stockman continues in the faith he entertains for has

townsmen. They would hear him. But here, too, he soon finds himself

alone. He cannot even secure a place to proclaim his great truth.

And when he finally succeeds, he is overwhelmed by abuse and ridicule

as the enemy of the people. The doctor, so enthusiastic of his

townspeople's assistance to eradicate the evil, is soon driven to a

solitary position. The announcement of his discovery would result in

a pecuniary loss to the town, and that consideration induces the

officials, the good citizens, and soul reformers, to stifle the voice

of truth. He finds them all a compact majority, unscrupulous enough

to be willing to build up the prosperity of the town on a quagmire of

lies and fraud. He is accused of trying to ruin the community. But

to his mind "it does not matter if a lying community is ruined. It

must be levelled to the ground. All men who live upon lies must be

exterminated like vermin. You'll bring it to such a pass that the

whole country will deserve to perish."

Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man, he

thinks, must not behave like a blackguard. "He must not so act that

he would spit in his own face." For only cowards permit

"considerations" of pretended general welfare or of party to override

truth and ideals. "Party programmes wring the necks of all young,

living truths; and considerations of expediency turn morality and

righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous."

These plays of Ibsen--THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, A DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS,

and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE--constitute a dynamic force which is

gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground

called civilization. Nay, more; Ibsen's destructive effects are at

the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines

existing pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the foundation

of a healthier, ideal future, based on the sovereignty of the

individual within a sympathetic social environment.

England with her great pioneers of radical thought, the intellectual

pilgrims like Godwin, Robert Owen, Darwin, Spencer, William Morris,

and scores of others; with her wonderful larks of liberty--Shelley,

Byron, Keats--is another example of the influence of dramatic art.

Within comparatively a few years, the dramatic works of Shaw, Pinero,

Galsworthy, Rann Kennedy, have carried radical thought to the ears

formerly deaf even to Great Britain's wondrous poets. Thus a public

which will remain indifferent reading an essay by Robert Owen, on

Poverty, or ignore Bernard Shaw's Socialistic tracts, was made to

think by MAJOR BARBARA, wherein poverty is described as the greatest

crime of Christian civilization. "Poverty makes people weak,

slavish, puny; poverty creates disease, crime, prostitution; in fine,

poverty is responsible for all the ills and evils of the world."

Poverty also necessitates dependency, charitable organizations,

institutions that thrive off the very thing they are trying to

destroy. The Salvation Army, for instance, as shown in MAJOR

BARBARA, fights drunkenness; yet one of its greatest contributors is

Badger, a whiskey distiller, who furnishes yearly thousands of pounds

to do away with the very source of his wealth. Bernard Shaw,

therefore, concludes that the only real benefactor of society is a

man like Undershaft, Barbara's father, a cannon manufacturer, whose

theory of life is that powder is stronger than words.

"The worst of crimes," says Undershaft, "is poverty. All the other

crimes are virtues beside it; all the other dishonors are chivalry

itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible

pestilences; strikes dead the very soul of all who come within sight,

sound, or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing; a murder

here, a theft there, a blow now and a curse there: what do they

matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there are

not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are

millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed,

ill-clothed people. They poison us morally and physically; they kill

the happiness of society; they force us to do away with our own

liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should

rise against us and drag us down into their abyss.... Poverty and

slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading

articles; they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at

them; don't reason with them. Kill them.... It is the final test

of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social

system.... Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the name

of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments,

inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders, and set up new."

No wonder people cared little to read Mr. Shaw's Socialistic tracts.

In no other way but in the drama could he deliver such forcible,

historic truths. And therefore it is only through the drama that Mr.

Shaw is a revolutionary factor in the dissemination of radical ideas.

After Hauptmann's DIE WEBER, STRIFE, by Galsworthy, is the most

important labor drama.

The theme of STRIFE is a strike with two dominant factors: Anthony,

the president of the company, rigid, uncompromising, unwilling to

make the slightest concession, although the men held out for months

and are in a condition of semi-starvation; and David Roberts, an

uncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the workingman and

the cause of freedom is at white heat. Between them the strikers are

worn and weary with the terrible struggle, and are harassed and

driven by the awful sight of poverty and want in their families.

The most marvellous and brilliant piece of work in STRIFE is

Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of

backbone. One moment they applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the

power of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion;

the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who

pleads the cause of the union,--the union that always stands for

compromise, and which forsakes the workingmen whenever they dare to

strike for independent demands; again they are aglow with the

earnestness, the spirit, and the intensity of David Roberts--all

these people willing to go in whatever direction the wind blows. It

is the curse of the working class that they always follow like sheep

led to slaughter.

Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matter

how intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he will

not allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown on

the dustheap. Such was the fate of the president of the company,

Anthony, and of David Roberts. To be sure they represented opposite

poles--poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible

gap that can never be bridged over. Yet they shared a common fate.

Anthony is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron

methods:

"I have been chairman of this company thirty-two years. I have

fought the men four times. I have never been defeated. It has been

said that times have changed. If they have, I have not changed with

them. It has been said that masters and men are equal. Cant. There

can be only one master in a house. It has been said that Capital and

Labor have the same interests. Cant. Their interests are as wide

asunder as the poles. There is only one way of treating men--with

the iron rod. Masters are masters. Men are men."

We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yet

there is something admirable in the courage and consistency of this

man, nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed,

as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers, and

give libraries with the tenth; who grind human beings like Russell

Sage, and then spend millions of dollars in social research work; who

turn beautiful young plants into faded old women, and then give them

a few paltry dollars or found a Home for Working Girls. Anthony is a

worthy foe; and to fight such a foe, one must learn to meet him in

open battle.

David Roberts has all the mental and moral attributes of his

adversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt, and the depth of modern

ideas. He, too, is consistent, and wants nothing for his class short

of complete victory.

"It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting, not for

our own little bodies and their warmth; it is for all those who come

after, for all times. Oh, men, for the love of them don't turn up

another stone on their heads, don't help to blacken the sky. If we

can shake that white-faced monster with the bloody lips that has

sucked the lives out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the

world began, if we have not the hearts of men to stand against it,

breast to breast and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry

for mercy, it will go on sucking life, and we shall stay forever

where we are, less than the very dogs."

It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should pass on

and leave two such giants behind. Inevitable, until the mass will

reach the stature of a David Roberts. Will it ever? Prophecy is not

the vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One

cannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methods

hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard all those

elements in their midst that are forever ready to reconcile the

irreconcilable, namely Capital and Labor. They will have to learn

that characters like David Roberts are the very forces that have

revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out

of the clutches of that "white-faced monster with bloody lips,"

towards a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a deeper recognition of

human values.

No subject of equal social import has received such extensive

consideration within the last few years as the question of prison and

punishment.

Hardly any magazine of consequence that has not devoted its columns

to the discussion of this vital theme. A number of books by able

writers, both in America and abroad, have discussed this topic from

the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, all agreeing that

present penal institutions and our mode of coping with crime have in

every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. One would

expect that something very radical should result from the cumulative

literary indictment of the social crimes perpetrated upon the

prisoner. Yet with the exception of a few minor and comparatively

insignificant reforms in some of our prisons, absolutely nothing has

been accomplished. But at last this grave social wrong has found

dramatic interpretation in Galworthy's JUSTICE.

The play opens in the office of James How and Sons, Solicitors. The

senior clerk, Robert Cokeson, discovers that a check he had issued

for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion

falls upon William Falder, the junior office clerk. The latter is in

love with a married woman, the abused, ill-treated wife of a brutal

drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man,

Falder confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his

sweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with whom he had planned to escape to

save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband.

Notwithstanding the entreaties of young Walter, who is touched by

modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns

Falder over to the police.

The second act, in the court-room, shows Justice in the very process

of manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic

verity the great court scene in RESURRECTION. Young Falder, a

nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the

bar. Ruth, his married sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burns

with anxiety to save the young man whose affection brought about his

present predicament. The young man is defended by Lawyer Frome,

whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of deep social philosophy

wreathed with the tendrils of human understanding and sympathy. He

does not attempt to dispute the mere fact of Falder having altered

the check; and though he pleads temporary aberration in defense of

his client, that plea is based upon a social consciousness as deep

and all-embracing as the roots of our social ills--"the background of

life, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission

of a crime." He shows Falder to have faced the alternative of seeing

the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband, whom she cannot

divorce; or of taking the law into his own hands. The defence pleads

with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal by

condemning him to prison, for "justice is a machine that, when

someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is

this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act

which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member

of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called

prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man.

For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable,

stares him in the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of

Justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him."

But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the learned

Judge says--"the law is what it is--a majestic edifice, sheltering

all of us, each stone of which rests on another."

Falder is sentenced to three years' penal servitude.

In prison, the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the

victim of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that young

Falder is mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be

done in the matter: many others are in a similar position, and "the

quarters are inadequate."

The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silent

force. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in Falder's

prison cell.

"In fast-falling daylight, Falder, in his stockings, is seen standing

motionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. He

moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making no

noise. He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hear

something, any little thing that is going on outside. He springs

suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless.

Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at

it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a

man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to

life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his

head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door,

listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it with his

fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning

from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, holding

his head, as if he felt that it were going to burst, and stops under

the window. But since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking,

and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it, as if

trying to make a companion of his own face. It has grown very nearly

dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the

only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring

intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather

white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or something

there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the

glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted.

Falder is seen gasping for breath.

A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is

suddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden

clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were

rolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him.

He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging

sound, traveling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; Falder's

hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this

beating, and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the very

cell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, he

flings himself at his door, and beats on it."

Finally Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the

stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul.

Thanks to Ruth's pleading, the firm of James How and Son is willing

to take Falder back in their employ, on condition that he give up

Ruth. It is then that Falder learns the awful news that the woman he

loves had been driven by the merciless economic Moloch to sell

herself. She "tried making skirts ... cheap things.... I never

made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton, and

working all day. I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve....

And then ... my employer happened--he's happened ever since." At

this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag him back

to prison for failing to report himself as ticket-of-leave man.

Completely overwhelmed by the inexorability of his environment, young

Falder seeks and finds peace, greater than human justice, by throwing

himself down to death, as the detectives are taking him back to

prison.

It would be impossible to estimate the effect produced by this play.

Perhaps some conception can be gained from the very unusual

circumstance that it had proved so powerful as to induce the Home

Secretary of Great Britain to undertake extensive prison reforms in

England. A very encouraging sign this, of the influence exerted by

the modern drama. It is to be hoped that the thundering indictment

of Mr. Galsworthy will not remain without similar effect upon the

public sentiment and prison conditions of America. At any rate, it

is certain that no other modern play has borne such direct and

immediate fruit in wakening the social conscience.

Another modern play, THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE, strikes a vital key

in our social life. The hero of Mr. Kennedy's masterpiece is Robert,

a coarse, filthy drunkard, whom respectable society has repudiated.

Robert, the sewer cleaner, is the real hero of the play; nay, its

true and only savior. It is he who volunteers to go down into the

dangerous sewer, so that his comrades "can 'ave light and air."

After all, has he not sacrificed his life always, so that others may

have light and air?

The thought that labor is the redeemer of social well-being has been

cried from the housetops in every tongue and every clime. Yet the

simple words of Robert express the significance of labor and its

mission with far greater potency.

America is still in its dramatic infancy. Most of the attempts along

this line to mirror life, have been wretched failures. Still, there

are hopeful signs in the attitude of the intelligent public toward

modern plays, even if they be from foreign soil.

The only real drama America has so far produced is THE EASIEST WAY,

by Eugene Walter.

It is supposed to represent a "peculiar phase" of New York life. If

that were all, it would be of minor significance. That which gives

the play its real importance and value lies much deeper. It lies,

first, in the fundamental current of our social fabric which drives

us all, even stronger characters than Laura, into the easiest way--a

way so very destructive of integrity, truth, and justice. Secondly,

the cruel, senseless fatalism conditioned in Laura's sex. These two

features put the universal stamp upon the play, and characterize it

as one of the strongest dramatic indictments against society.

The criminal waste of human energy, in economic and social

conditions, drives Laura as it drives the average girl to marry any

man for a "home"; or as it drives men to endure the worst indignities

for a miserable pittance.

Then there is that other respectable institution, the fatalism of

Laura's sex. The inevitability of that force is summed up in the

following words: "Don't you know that we count no more in the life of

these men than tamed animals? It's a game, and if we don't play our

cards well, we lose." Woman in the battle with life has but one

weapon, one commodity--sex. That alone serves as a trump card in the

game of life.

This blind fatalism has made of woman a parasite, an inert thing.

Why then expect perseverance or energy of Laura? The easiest way is

the path mapped out for her from time immemorial. She could follow

no other.

A number of other plays could be quoted as characteristic of the

growing role of the drama as a disseminator of radical thought.

Suffice to mention THE THIRD DEGREE, by Charles Klein; THE FOURTH

ESTATE, by Medill Patterson; A MAN'S WORLD, by Ida Croutchers,--all

pointing to the dawn of dramatic art in America, an art which is

discovering to the people the terrible diseases of our social body.

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased

application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that

all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic

awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for

concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education,

especially in their application to the free development of the child;

the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by,

art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road. Above all,

the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist

and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart, is the

strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the

powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of

ignorance, prejudice, and superstition.

[1] HONOR.

[2] MAGDA.

[3] BEFORE SUNRISE.

[4] THE WEAVERS.

[5] THE SUNKEN BELL.

[6] YOUTH.

[7] THE AWAKENING OF SPRING.

End of Project Gutenberg's Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman