Anarchism and other essays

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from

Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/anarchismotheresOOgold

ANARCHIS

AND

OTHER ESSAYS

BY

EMMA GOLDMAN

WITH BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH
BY

HiPPOLYTE Havel

SECOND REVISED EDITION

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

5 5 \X^EST TWENTY-EIGHTH STREET

NEW YORK

A. C. FIFIELD, LONDON

1911

CONTENTS

Biographic Sketch 5

Preface 47

anarctlism : what it really stands for 53

Minorities versus Majorities 75

The Psychology of Political Violence 85

Prisons: a social crime and failure 115

Patriotism : a menace to liberty 133

Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School. . 151

The Hypocrisy of Puritanism 173

The Traffic in Women 183

Woman Suffrage 201

The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation.... 219

Marriage and Love 233

The Drama: a powerful disseminator of

radical thought 247

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 differ-
ent from those of trade, deeper than pride, and

stronger than interest.

George Jacob Holyoake.

Among the men and women prominent in the public
Hfe 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

6 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 Uke 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 recog-
nition 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 per-
sonality 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 repre-
sentative 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 sur-

EMMA GOLDMAN 7

rounding 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 understand-
ing 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 un-
derstood at the time, has brought a rich harvest.
They have at all times held aloft the banner of lib-
erty, thus impregnating the social vitality of the
Nation. But very few have succeeded 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 per-
severance 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 be-
come 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.

8 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 respect-
able 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 ideal-
ism— played in the struggle of the Old and the New
will probably never be appreciated with complete im-
partiality and clarity. Only now we are beginning
to perceive the tremendous debt we owe to Jewish
idealists in the realm of science, art, and literature.

EMMA GOLDMAN 9

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 that time Kurland was
thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of
that Baltic province was recruited mostly from Ger-
man Junker. 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 sup-
port of a large family, brutally dragged to the bar-
racks 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 treat-
ment to which the female servants were subjected:
maltreated and exploited by their harinyas, they fell
to the tender mercies of the regimental officers, who

lO' BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

regarded them as their natural sexual prey. These
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
Immanuel Kant, in Eastern Prussia. Save for occa-
sional 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 nu-
merous 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 regu-
larly attended public school and also enjoyed the
advantages of private instruction, customary in middle-
class life; French and music lessons played an im-
portant part in the curriculum. The future inter-
preter of Ibsen and Shaw was then a little German
Gretchen, quite at home in the German atmosphere.
Her special predilections in literature were the senti-
mental romances of Marlitt ; she was a great admirer
of the good Queen Louise, whom the bad Napoleon

EMMA GOLDMAN II

Buonaparte treated with so marked a lack of knightly
chivalry. What might have been her future develop-
ment 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 busi-
ness. 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 in-
tellectuals swept the country, Alexander II. had
fallen the previous year. Sophia Perovskaia, Zhe-
liabov, 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 preg-
nancy, 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 be-
fore. 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 senti-
ments penetrated into every home, from mansion to
hovel, impregnating the military, the chinovniks , fac-
tory workers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced
the very casemates of the royal palace. New ideas
germinated in the youth. The difference of sex was

12 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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, Tur-
genlev 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 phe-
nomenon 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 emiancipation of the people.

The struggle of generations now took place in
the Goldman family. The parents could not com-
prehend 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 Gold-

EMMA GOLDMAN 13

man 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 narSd, 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 an-
other 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
Co^ack, no cMnovnik. 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 re-

14 BIOGIL\PHIC SKETCH

minded her of the terrible scenes of her childhood
in Kurland. The brutality and humiHation 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 disap-
pointment 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 cloth-
ing 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 Vv'ould speedily find herself on
the street as an undesirable element in the factory.
There w^as never a lack of wilEng victims : the supply
always exceeded the demand.

The horrible conditions were made still more

EMMA GOLDMAN 1 5

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 pos-
sible. Emma Goldman almost suffocated in this atmos-
phere. 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 depend-
ence 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 em-
ployment 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.

l6 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

The revolutionists who were active in the Russian
movement of the 8o's were but Httle 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 explo-
sion. The Anarchists stood the martyr test of blood
baptism. The apologists of capitalism vainly seek
to justify the killing oif Parsons, Spies, Lingg,
Fischer, and Engel. Since the publication of Gov-
ernor Altgeld's reasons for his liberation of the
three incarcerated Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt
is left that a fivefold legal murder had been com-
mitted 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.

EMMA GOLDMAN 17

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 nth 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 working-
men. Johanna Greie, the well-known German lec-
turer, was the first Socialist speaker heard by Emma

l8 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

Goldman. In New Haven, Conn., where she was
employed in a corset factory, she miet Anarchists
actively participating in the movement. Here she
read the Freiheit, edited by John Most. The Hay-
market tragedy developed her inherent Anarchist
tendencies; the reading o£ the Freiheit made her a
conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to learn
that the idea of Anarchism found its highest ex-
pression through the best intellects of America : the-
oretically 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 re-
moved 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 govern-
mental persecution new converts swell the ranks.
The propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret
character. The repressive measures of the govern-
ment drive the disciples of the new philosophy to
conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall
into the hands of the authorities and languish in

EMMA GOLDMAN I9

prisons. But nothing- can stem the rising tide of
enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and devotion to the
Cause. The efforts of teachers Hke 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 dif-
ferences 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 Ger-
man 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. H.
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,

■20 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 through-
out 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. Though constantly toil-
ing 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 cloak-
makers' 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 with-
drew 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.

EMMA GOLDMAN 21

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 asso-
ciated in the group Znamya. Goldenberg, Solo-
taroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt,
Ivan von Schewitsch, husband of Helene von Raco-
witza and editor of the Volkszeitung, and numerous
other Russian exiles, some of whom are still living,
were members of the 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 ac-
quainted 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 Berk-
man resolved to sacrifice his life to the Cause and
thus give an object lesson to the wage slaves of
America of active Anarchkt solidarity wdth labor.
His attack upon Prick, the Gessler of Pittsburg,

22 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was doomed
to a living death of twenty-two years in the peni-
tentiary. 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 misrepresenta-
tion 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 Gold-
man 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 unbear-
able. 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 in-

EMMA GOLDMAN 23

ability 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, Alex-
ander Berkman, and a mutual artist friend.

Many changes have since taken place. Alexander
Berkman has survived the Penns>lvania 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 tal-
ented writer in Germany.

To avoid indefinite camping in the parks Emma
Goldman finally w^as forced to move into a house
on Third Street, occupied exclusively by prostitutes.
There, among the outcasts of our good Christian soci-
ety, she could at least rent a bit of a room, and
find re-st and work at her sewing machine. The
women of the street showed more refinement of
feeling and sincere sympathy than the pnests of the
Church, But human endurance had been exhausted

24 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

b}' 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 move-
ment of Austria and had, at the time of his ac-
quaintance 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 to 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 con-
servative 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

EMMA GOLDMAN 2$

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 in-
dustrial centers. Cold and hungry they tramped
through the land in the vain search for work and
bread. The Anarchists developed a strenuous propa-
ganda 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 in-
vited speakers. She delivered an impassioned speech,
picturing in fiery words the misery of the wage-
slave's life, and quoted the famous maxim of Car-
dinal 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.

26 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 Lloyamensing
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 psycho-
logic observation to imagine the possibility of betrayal
on the part of a young Russian idealist, who had will-
ingly 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 im-
prisoned for a political offense. Respectable society
had long before stamped upon her the Scarlet Letter.

Emma Goldman passed her time in the peni-
tentiary in the capacity of nurse in the prison hospital.
Here she found opportunity to shed some rays
pf kindness into the dark lives of the unfortunates

EMMA GOLDMAN 2/

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 her-
self 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 staunch-
est 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 Ger-
man Anarchist publication, edited by Claus Timmer-
mann ; Der Arme Teufel, whose presiding genius
was the inimitable Robert Reitzel. Through Arthur
Brisbane, now chief lieutenant of William Randolph

28 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

Hearst, she became acquainted with the writings of
Fourier. Brisbane then was not yet submerged in
the swamp of pohtical corruption. He sent Emma
Goldman an amiable letter to Blackwell's Island,
together with the biography of his father, the en-
thusiastic 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 Comrriittee 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, ]\Iaria Louise subsequently became a
Mahatma. During the free-silver campaign, ex-
Burgess McLuckie, one of the most genuine per-
sonalities 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 an-
swered by the red terror of our French comrades.

EMMA GOLDMAN 29

With feverish anxiety the Anarchists throughout the
world followed this social struggle. Propaganda by
deed found its reverberating echo in almost all coun-
tries. 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 liter-
ature 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 Pennsyl-
vania 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 be-
tween Emma Goldman and the circle of Ernest

30 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 tre-
mendous 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, Pet-
ruccini, and Ferrara. In the year 1899 followed an-
other 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 Scot-

EMMA GOLDMAN 3 1

f

land, were disturbed and broken up by patriotic
mobs. Emma Goldman found on this occasion the
opportunity of again meeting various English com-
rades and interesting personalities like Tom Mann
and the sisters Rossetti, the gifted daughters of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then pv.blishers of the An-
archist 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 ideal-
ism 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 Inter-
nationale, 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 revo-
lutionary 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

32 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

role. The congress of the revolutionists was sup-
pressed, and the delegates dispersed two days prior
to the 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 iiis
object. A number of delegates succeeded in holding
a secret conference in the house of a comrade out-
side of Paris, where various points of theory and
tactics were discussed. Emma Goldman took con-
siderable part in these proceedings, and on that
occasion came in contact with numerous representa-
tives 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 out-
rages 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

EMMA GOLDAIAN 33

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 im-
portant 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, sud-
denly 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 per-
suade 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 coun-
tenance 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 per-
jury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year.
He is now probably employed by some private detec-
tive agency, a desirable pillar of respectable society.

In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowel'
Institute of Massachusetts to deliver a series of lec-
tures on Russian literature. It was his second Amer-
ican tour, and naturally the comrades were anxious to
use his presence for the benefit of the movement.

^'4 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

Emma Goldman entered into correspondence with
Kropotkin and succeeded in securing his consent to
arrange for him a series of lectures. She also de-
voted 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 Mc-
Kinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz at Buffalo. Im-
mediately 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 ar-
rested in Chicago, kept in confinement for sev-
eral weeks, and subjected to severest cross-examina-
tion. Never before in the history of the country had
such a terrible man-hunt taken place against a per-
son 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 bru-
tality at the hands of the police she could bear.
The depression of soul was far worse. She was over-
whelmed by the realization of the stupidity, lack of
understanding, and vileness which characterized the
events of those terrible days. The attitude of mis-
understanding 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,

EMMA GOLDMAN 35

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 verita-
ble wild animal she was driven from place to place.
This terrible persecution and, especially, the atti-
tude 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 en-
lightened feeling.

Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Gold-
man 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 authori-
ties condemned to deportation on account of the
Anarchist exclusion law, passed after the death of
McKinley.

36 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 neces-
sary funds to introduce the Russian artists to the
theatergoers 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 dis-
cussed 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 sus-
pend 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 further-
ance 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 com-

EMMA GOLDMAN 37

pany, in favor of the Anarchist magazine. Under
tremendous difficulties and obstacles the tireless prop-
agandist 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 ter-
minated 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 Ameri-
can 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 under-
takings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowl-
edged 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

38 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 Inter-
nationale. Together with the other American dele-
gate, 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. An-
archism is opposed to organization, is one of the
many falsehoods spread by our opponents. They
confound our present social institutions with or-
ganization ; 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 institu-
tion, cunningly imposed upon the masses?

EMMA GOLDMAN 39

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 insti-
tutions of learning, are they not models of organiza-
tion, offering the people fine opportunities for in-
struction? Far from it. The school, more than any
other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the
human mind is drilled and manipulated into sub-
mission 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 pro-
duces variety of color and form, the complete whole
we admire in the flower. Analogously will the or-
ganized 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 organiza-
tion of common interests possible, since it abolishes
the existing antagonism between individuals and
classes.

Under present conditions the antagonism of eco-
nomic and social interests results in relentless war

40 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

a-mong the social units, and creates an insurmounta-
ble obstacle in the way of a co-operative common-
wealth.

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 com-
plete organism, so does the individual, by co-opera-
tive effort with other individuals, attain his highest
form of development.

An organization, in the true sense, cannot re-
sult from the combination of mere nonentities. It
must be composed of self-conscious, intelligent in-
dividualities. 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 organiza-
tion without discipline, fear, or punishment, and
without the pressure of poverty : a new social or-
ganism 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.

EMMA GOLDMAN 41

The germ of such an organization can be found
in that form of trades-unionism which has done
away with centralization, bureaucracy, and dis-
ciphne, 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 re-
markable success of the three extensive lecture
tours of Emma Goldman since the Amsterdam Con-
gress of 1907. Each tour extended over new terri-
tory, including localities where Anarchism had
never before received a hearing. But the most
gratifying aspect of her untiring efforts is the tre-
mendous sale of Anarchist literature, whose propa-
gandistic effect cannot be estimated. It was during
one of these tours that a remarkable incident hap-
pened, strikingly demonstrating the inspiring poten-
tialities 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 Re-
public court-martialed Buwalda and imprisoned him
for one year. Thanks to the regenerating power
of the new philosophy, the government lost a sol-
dier, 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

42 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

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 man-
ner. Energetic protests on the part of the intel-
lectual element of America succeeded in overthrow-
ing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech.
Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossi-
ble was essayed by the Federal authorities at Wash-
ington. 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 where-
abouts, 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 pow-
erful individuality that by its very force they exert
the most potent influence over the best representa-
tives of their time. Michael Bakunin was such a
personality. But for him, Richard Wagner had
never written Die Kunst tmd 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 men-
tality, she moulds the minds and hearts of thou-
sands of her auditors.

EMMA GOLDMAN 43

Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering
humanity, and an inexorable honesty toward her-
self, 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. Re-
spectability 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, unfor-
givable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to
consider her ideal as merely an intellectual orna-
ment; 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 prac-
tices her convictions — this shocks even the radical
Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life;
she associates with publicans — hence the indigna-
tion 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

44 BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH

dawn of humanity, founded on equality, brother-
hood, 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 Anarch-
ism. 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 Warren,
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 sol-
dier 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, characteriz-
ing 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 sufifer.

HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.
New York, December, 1910.

ANARCHISM

AND

OTHER ESSAYS

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
Host'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 periyd in life
worth while. Alas ! This period is but of short dura-
tion. 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

48 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 edu-
cation notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that
which his mind craves. Already this truth is recog-
nized by most modern educators in relation to the im-
mature 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 thou-
sand 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 him-
self.

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

PREFACE 49

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. Ex-
planatory 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 genera-
tion 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 ex-
ternal 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

50 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 excommiunicated 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 dema-
gogic 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 pre-
scribe 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

i

PREFACE 51

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.

4»y>^yyC4L

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 Mack ay.

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

54 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and
crudest 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 dis-
tant past to realize the enormity of opposition, diffi-
culties, 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, Anarch-
ism 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 be-
tween 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.

ANARCHISM 55

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 prac-
tical, 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 sus-
taining 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 em-
ployed against this philosophy and its exponents.
Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking
v,^hat 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

56 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 par-
asitic growths that feed on the life's essence of so-
ciety. 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 ef-
fort 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 bot-
tom of any given idea, to examine into its origin
and meaning, most people will either condemn it alto-
gether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial def-
inition 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 Ufe; 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 col-
lective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

ANARCHISM 57

A thorough perusal of the history of human devel-
opment will disclose two elements in bitter conflict
with each other; elements that are only now begin-
ning 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-reali-
zation; 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 sur-
render. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which
continues to be the Leitmotiv 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 re-

58 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

frain : Mzn 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 main-
tains 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. An-
archism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life;
not merely in nature, but in man. There is no con-
flict 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 es-
sence, 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 in-
dividual— pure and strong.

"The one thing of value in the world," says Emer-
son, "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 in-
dividual 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 ar-
biter and pacifier of the two forces for individual
and social harmony. To accomplish that unity.
Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious in-
fluences which have so far prevented the harmonious

ANARCHISM 59

blending of individual and social instincts, the in-
dividual and society.

...Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Prop-
erty, the dominion of human needs ; and Govern-
ment, 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 des-
potic, 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, ''Sacri-
fice ! 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 birth-

6o ANARCHISM AXD OTHER ESSAYS

right, and has turned him loose a pauper and an out-
cast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse
that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs.
The ABC student of economics knows that the
productivity of labor within the last few decades far
exceeds normal demand. But what are normal
demands to an abnormal institution? The only
demand that property recognizes is its own glutton-
ous 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 com-
prising 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
Vv'ounded 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 wull and decision
than his master of steel and iron. Man is being
robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but

ANARCHISM 6l

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 pro-
duction 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 ex-
pression 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 person-
ality, then, is only possible in a state of society where
man is free to choose the mode of work, the condi-
tions 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

62 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep in-
terest in work as a creative force. That being the
ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must
consist of voluntary productive and distributive asso-
ciations, gradually developing into free communism,
as the best means of producing with the least waste
of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recog-
nizes the right of the individual, or numbers of in-
dividuals, 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 great-
est American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said : "Gov-
ernment, 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

ANARCHISM 63

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 treat-
ment 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, ty-
rannical, 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

64 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

does not agree that government, organized authority,
or the State, is necessary only to maintain or pro-
tect 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, never-
theless 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 pre-
vents 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 grati-
fication, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law.
But its expression needs not the machinery of govern-
ment, 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 oppor-
tunity. That governments do not maintain them-
selves 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, be-
cause they are contrary to the laws of nature."

ANARCHISM 6$

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 har-
mony. Order derived through submission and main-
tained 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 in-
terests 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 disin-
herited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of govern-
ment— laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures,
prisons, — is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" ^^
tlie 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 crim-
inal, breaking every written and natural law, steal-
ing 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 m.isdirected 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

66 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

are out of place doing the things they hate to do,
living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inev-
itable, and all the laws on the statutes can only in-
crease, 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 pun-
ishment 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 abun-
dance for all, including even the occasional lazy

ANARCHISM 67

individual. Besides, it is well to consider that lazi-
ness results either from special privileges, or phys-
ical 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, o£ 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, govern-
ment, with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures,
must be done away with. At best it has but im-
posed one single mode of life upon all, without
regard to individual and social variations and needs.
In destroying government and statutory laws, An-
archism 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 not7~wiirTt endure under An-
archism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have
been committed in thy name ! Every fool, from
king to policeman, from the flatheaded par-

68 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

son 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 to-
day, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fet-
tered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental
study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless.
Their character, their habits, their appetites un-
dergo a complete transformation when torn from
their soil in field and forest. With human nature
caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into sub-
mission, how can we speak of its potentialities ?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all,
peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dom-
inant 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 re-
straint of government. Anarchism stands for a
social order based on the free grouping of individ-
uals 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 con-

ANARCHISM 69

elusion resulting from the close and studious ob-
servation of the tendencies of modern society : indi-
vidual 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 con-
ditions. 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, overflow-
ing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kro-
potkin. 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 An-
archists 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

70 ANARCHISM AXD OTHER ESSAY5

the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to pre-
vail 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 enact-
ments made for the improvement and protection of
labor. Thus it was proven only last year that Illi-
nois, 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 w'ere the workers able to have their own
representatives, for which our good Socialist politi-
cians 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.

ANARCKISil 71

It may be claimed that men of integrity
■would not become corrupt in the political grinding
rrall. Perhaps not; but such m^en would be abso-
lutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in
behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in nu-
merous instances. The State is the economic mas-
ter 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 SAvay
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 re-
sistance 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 revolu-
tionary fathers, their posterity Avould still wear the
King's coat. If not for the direct action of a John

^2 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 conscious-
ness 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.

ANARCHISM 73

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 to-
day 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 indi-
vidual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is
the great, surging, living truth that is reconstruct-
ing 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 edu-
cation— rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker
who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality
of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incom-
petent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities
of things, valueless to themselves, and generally in-
jurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, in-
stead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has
merely increased man's burden.

In politics, naught but quantity counts. In propor-
tion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, jus-
tice, 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, con-
fident 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.

y6 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

Never before did the corruption, the complete rot-
tenness of our government stand so thoroughly ex-
posed ; 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, out-
raged 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 ca-
pacity? 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 com-
pact 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

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES 'J'J

to entertain this view. Have not the few accumu-
lated 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-compromis-
ing 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 Pro-
fessors Eliot and Butler, are the successful perpetu-
ators 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 Haupt-
mann, 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 re-

78 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

suit, 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 execu-
tion, 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 Prometheuslike 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 cri-
terion, one value, — the dollar. He is not concerned
about the quality of any great work, but in the quan-
tity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the finan-

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES 79

cier 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 parvenus. 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 inde-
pendence 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 opin-
ion 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 hun-
dred, you will not find a single American who has
not, or who does not fancy at least he has, some-
thing 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 in-
stead of being a mass of individuals, each one fear-
lessly 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

80 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He em-
bodies 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 har-
binger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and
disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome,
led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and
Luther, was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES 8 1

night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turned
politicians and began catering to the small potentates,
the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized
the great possibilities of the Reformation. They won
success and the majority, but that majority proved
no less cruel and bloodthirsty in the persecution of
thought and reason than was the Catholic monster.
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 pur-
suit 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 Revolu-
tion. Great events are usually preceded by appar-
ently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of
Camille Desmoulins was like the trumpet before
Jericho, razing to the ground that emblem of tor-
ture, 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.

82 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

How is stjch 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"* 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 pan-
orama 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 meteorlike idea made its
appearance on the social horizon of the world, an
idea so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embrac-
ing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants every-
where. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger
of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers

* The intellectuals.

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES 83

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 fash-
ionable lady, as well as the shirtwaist girl. Why
not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has be-
come 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? Political cunning ever sings the praise of
the mass : 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 weJl 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 dema-

84 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

gogues 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 num-
bers ? Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on
the mass, but never freedom or 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 indi-
viduality, of free initiative, of originality. I there-
fore 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 de-
termination of intelligent minorities, and not through
the mass.

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
Attentdter* one risks being considered a possible
accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy
that can bring us closer to the source of human suf-
fering, 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

*A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.

S6 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 martyr-
dom will redeem humanity.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 87

Francois Coppe, the French novelist, thus ex-
presses himself regarding the psychology of the
Attentdter:

"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

88 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

human suffering, of these men who close the chapter
of their hves with a violent outbreak against our
system.

Last, but not least, the man who probably better
than anyone else understands the psychology of the
Attentdter is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliant
work Une Psychologie du Militavre Professionnel,
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 com-
mon psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist par-
takes 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 curi-
osity, a keen desire to know. These traits are sup-
plemented 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. San-
born, must be added these sterling qualities : a rare
love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordi-
nary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of
demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of
living, and courage beyond compare.*

"There is a truism that the man in the street seems

* Paris and the Social Revolution.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 89

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 perpe-
trated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal out-
rages have, from time immemorial, been the reply of
goaded and desperate classes, and goaded and desper-
ate 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 out-
raged 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 Mazzin-
ians were Republicans, the Fenians political separa-
tists, the Russians Social Democrats or Constitutional-
ists. 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

90 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 oppo-
sition, 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 mis-
ery 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 con-
tinue 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 diffi-
culties with his employers. How many thousands of
Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have lost work

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 9I

and ever, the chance of work, solely on the ground of
their opinions. It is only the specially gifted crafts-
man, 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 stig-
matizes such men as monsters of wickedness, gratu-
itously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently
peaceful society? No! We hate murder with a
hatred that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apolo-
gists for Matabele massacres, to callous acquiescers

92 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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.""^

That every act of political violence should now-
adays be attributed to Anarchists is not at all sur-
prising. 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 numiber 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 perpetra-
tors 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

* From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of
London.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 93

gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently con-
demned to death and executed. The sensational evi-
dence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police
Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the
Anarchists from any connection with the acts com-
mitted 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
v/ith the same ease, that they are just as merciless,
just as brutal and cunning as their European col-
leagues, 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 mur-
dered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, blood-
thirsty 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 Anarch-
ists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every
liberty-loving man and woman in the world.

94 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 con-
tinue 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 statem^ent, 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 Attentdter 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 par-
asites have successfully robbed the American people,
and trampled upon the fundamental principles, laid
down by the fathers of this country, guaranteeing to

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 95

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 povv'ers of this "free land of
ours" became more and more audacious in their heart-
less, 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 countrj', '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

96 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

belonged to have no country, because they have been
robbed of all that they have produced; until he real-
ized 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 Aver-
buch was an Anarchist, and that the 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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 97

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, out-
raged 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

98 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 circum-
stances 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 con-
nection with the Homestead strike of 1892.

During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel
Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amal-
gamated 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 dur-
ing his rejgn 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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE 99

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 inhu-
man 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 in-
fluence of environment upon sensitive human beings.

The court speech of Vaillant, who, in 1894, ex-
ploded 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 exist-
ing society, that cursed society in which one may see
a single man spending, uselessly, enough to feed thou-
sands of families; an infamous society which permits

lOO ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

a few individuals to monopolize all the social wealth,
while there are hundreds of thousands of unfor-
tunates who have not even the bread that is not
refused to dogs, and while entire families, are com-
mitting 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 them-
selves 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 real-
izing 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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE lOI

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 beHeve that he
who was weary of the pains of civiHzation 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 re-
served 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 cow-
ardice, I carried this bomb to those who are primarily
responsible for social misery.

"1 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 of Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey,
adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of un-
fortunates 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

102 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 mis-
take; 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 Vol-
taires 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 preju-
dices 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 everyone shall 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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IO3

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 trans-
formation! 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 pen-
alty 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 assem-
bly 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 im-
mensity, 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 per-
petual play of cosmic forces renewing and trans-
ferring themselves forever."

Will anyone say that Vaillant was an ignorant,
vicious man, or a lunatic? Was not his mind singu-
larly clear and 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

104 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

Carnot was killed. On the handle of the stiletto
used by the Attentat er was engraved, significantly,

VATLLANT !

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
cannot give it to 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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IO5

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 v/retched conditions, and their food con-
sists 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.

'T 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 de-
bauch the daughters of the workers ; who own dwell-
ings 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

I06 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 meet-
ings, 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 Bar-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE lO/

celona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hun-
dred 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 Min-
ister 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. Persecu-
tion 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.

I08 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French, but
no English; the little French I knew was not suffi-
cient to carry on a prolonged conversation. How-
ever, 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 man-
ner, 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 meet-
ing, 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 him-
self even.

Sefior Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Min-
ister of Spain, sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual
in such cases, all strangers were kept away from his
exalted presence. One exception was made, how-
ever, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly
dressed Italian — the representative, it was under-
stood, of an important journal. The distinguished
gentleman was — Angiolillo.

Sefior Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped
on the veranda. Suddenly Angiolillo confronted
him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was a corpse.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE I09

The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the
scene. "Murderer! Murderer!" she cried, pointing
at Angiohllo. 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 mmrderer."

How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It mis-
understands 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 oppor-
tunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden
success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. He
\vould work hard and faithfully. Work had no
terrors for him, if it would only help him to inde-
pendence, 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 hamhina
Bianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked

no ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 work-
ingman to have an ideal, — the Anarchist paper pub-
lished in Paterson, La Questione Sociale.

Every week, though tired from work, he would
help to set up the paper. Until late 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 de-
manded his hundred dollars. His comrades begged,
implored him to give them a respite. The paper

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE III

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 per-
secuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teach-
ings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarch-
ism 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 lifeblood 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

112 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 tre-
mendous, revolutionizing effect on human character
exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt
the logic, the justice of these words:

"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punish-
ment 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 un-
armed 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."*

Even conservative scientists are beginning to
realize that heredity is not the sole factor moulding
human character. Climate, food, occupation; nay.

* The Free Hindustan.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE II3

color, light, and sound must be considered in the
study of human psychology.

If that be true, how much more correct is the con-
tention that great social abuses will and must in-
fluence different minds and temperaments in a differ-
ent 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 pro-
duction 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 in-

114 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

human. 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.

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 tor-
tures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know
that you and the authorities of the State are my rep-
resentatives 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

Il6 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

places.' The devil gets hold pf 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 any-
one 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

PRISONS 117

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 wath 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 con-
tagion.

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 heavj^ gate,

And the Warder is Desoair.

Il8 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 in-
stitutions, 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 an-
nually as a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of
expenditure for the purpose of maintaining vast
armies of human beings caged up like wild beasts!*

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.

* Crime and Criminals. W. C. Owen.

PRISONS 119

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth,
but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized
institution, maintained at an excessive national ex-
pense, 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 con-
clusive 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 fail-
ure? 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 occa-
sional. He says that the political criminal is the vic-
tim of an attempt of a more or less despotic govern-
ment to preserve its own stability. He is not neces-
sarily 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

120 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 pro-
gressive 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."*

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 pov-
erty-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 surround-
ings, and by the unscrupulous hounding of the ma-
chinery 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 undermin-
ing our entire social life.

"The insane criminal really can no more be con-
sidered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally
in the same condition as an infant or an animal."*

The law already recognizes that, but only in rare
cases of a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit's

* The Criminal, Havelock Ellis^

PRISONS 121

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 criminally insane, were con-
demned 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 m.aster, 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 Vv^ill 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, be-
tween crimes against the person and the price of
alcohol, between crimes against property and the price
of wheat. He quotes Ouetelet and Lacassagne, the

122 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

former looking upon society as the preparer of crime,
and the criminals as instruments that execute them.
The latter finds that "the social environment is the
cultivation medium of criminality; that the criminal
is the microbe, an element which only becomes im-
portant when it finds the medium which causes it to
ferment; every society has the criminals it deserves."*

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 con-
stantly 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, pre-
fer 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 in-
vestigation 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 Have-
lock Ellis, Lombroso, and other eminent men have
compiled, shows that the criminal feels only too

* The Criminal

PRISONS 123

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 im-
prisoned 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 inde-
pendence; 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 con-
cluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."*

Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy
than in all the law-and-moral books of society.

The economic, political, moral, and physical fac-
tors being the microbes of crime, how does society
meet the situation?

* The Criminal.

124 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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, pun-
ishment; while the legal and "civilized" methods con-
sist 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 primi-
tive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature.
True, it is still steeped in the theologic m.uddle, 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

PRISONS 125

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 deal-
ing with the social oft'ender. Why do they not deter ?
Although in America a man is supposed to be con-
sidered 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 lan-
guage of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly mul-
tiplying, 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 with-
out 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 reforma-
tory in the United States where men are not tortured
"to be made good," by means of the black-jack, the
club, the strait- jacket, the water-cure, the "hum-
ming bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the
human body), the solitary, the bull-ring, and starva-
tion diet. In these institutions his will is broken, his
soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly mo-

126 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

notony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these hor-
rors 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-cen-
tury chambers of horrors.

Year after year the gates of prison hells return to
the world an emaciated, deformed, will-less, 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 ex-
tensive 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

PRISONS 127

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 dulfedge of our social conscience would be sharp-
ened, 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 wakened, the aver-
age 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

128 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 con-
sider 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 con-
victs 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 Reli-
ance-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.

PRISONS 129

"The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island
contract may be estimated from the fact that this same
Company pays 62^ 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-Dud-
ley 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 manu-
facturers. The very difference in prices points to
enormous graft. For example, the Reliance- Sterling
Mfg. Co. manufactures shirts, the cost by 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 dol-
lars' worth of workingmen's shirts and overalls is pro-
duced 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 con-
victs, 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 reform-
atories, which so loudly profess to be training their
inmates to become useful citizens.

'• J., -oted from the publications of the National Com-
mittee on Prison Labor.

130 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 manufac-
ture 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 repre-
sented by the inmates, 39 of which were connected
with country pursuits. Indiana, like other States,
professes to be training the inmates of her reforma-
tory 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,

PRISONS 131

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 con-
victs, 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, black-
legs, 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 better-
ment. 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 sys-
tem which grinds them both.

Last, but not least, is the growing realization of
the barbarity and the inadequacy of the definite sen-
tence. 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

132 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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.

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 glitter-
ing 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 recollec-
tions 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.

134 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the
last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tol-
stoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines
patriotism as the principle that will justify the train-
ing of wholesale murderers ; a trade that requires bet-
ter 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 injuri-
ous, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The super-
stition 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. Simi-
larly 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. Patriot-
ism 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

PATRIOTISM 135

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 for-
eigner. 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 dol-
lars. 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 squandor 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 Rus-
sian 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

136 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

American prisons, without the sHghtest cause or
reason.

But, then, patriotism is not for those who repre-
sent wealth and power. It is good enough for the
people. It reminds one of the historic wisdom of
Frederick the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire,
who said : "Religion is a fraud, but it must be main-
tained for the masses."

That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no
one will doubt after considering the following sta-
tistics. 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 fi^rst 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

PATRIOTISM 137

fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Rus-
sia'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 ex-
penditures 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 pro-
portion 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 188 1-5, the expenditure

138 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 con-
sidered 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 intelli-
gence 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

PATRIOTISM 139

"defenders," but even by sacrificing their own chil-
dren. 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 inter-
national arbitration of disputes than by war and con-
quest. 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 will-
ing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the
smoke v/as over, the dead buried, and the cost of the
war came back to the people in an increase in the

I40 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 expHcit, that the Hves, blood, and money
of the American people were used to protect the inter-
ests 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 invari-
ably anxious to try his strength. The same is his-

PATRIOTISM 141

torically true of governments. Really peaceful coun-
tries 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, hun-
dreds 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 send-
ing 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

142 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 unem-
ployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.

Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What
could not have been accomplished with such an enor-
mous 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 brother-
hood?

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 pro-
jecting 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

PATRIOTISM 143

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 sub-
mission, 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 overlook-
ing 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. Amer-
ican 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 con-
ditions. Havelock EH^lis, 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 even-

144 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

ings 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 prosti-
tution. 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 idle-
ness 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.

PATRIOTISM 145

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 timiC, the military author-
ities 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 Inde-
pendence.

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 Am.erican 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

146 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great mili-
tary offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

Can there be a greater indictment against patriot-
ism 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 insati-
able 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 con-
vinced 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 mili-

PATRIOTISM 147

tary power in the United States. There is hardly a
strike where troops and mihtia 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 mili-
tary 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 under-
mined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no con-

148 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

scription ; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist
in the army, but we have developed a far more exact-
ing 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 munic-
ipal lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dol-
lars per month, three m.eals 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 man-
hood. 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 com-
patriot; 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

PATRIOTISM 149

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 down-
trodden against their international exploiters.

The proletariat of Europe has realized the great
force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugu-
rated 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 mili-
tary tactics, the glory of military achievements
extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful minds

150 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 mili-
tary 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 denuncia-
tion 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 recon-
struction 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 perpetuating 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.

152 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the first
crime committed by the Spanish government and
the Catholic Church. The history of these institu-
tions 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 inno-
cent child with dread and awe of tortures, of suffer-
ing, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and investigating
mind, it did not take him long to discover the hideous-
ness 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 An-

FRANCISCC FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL I53

arclilst, have to the Republicans of Latin countries,
I know they tower high above that corrupt and reac-
tionary party which, in America, is destroying every
vestige of hberty 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
against 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 Mc-
Kinley, 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 at-
tempt 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 ac-
tion. 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

154 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 wuth 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 thraldom of
ninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the
mountain peak of complete regeneration.

The child, however, has no traditions to over-
come. Its mind is not burdened with set ideas, its
heart has not grown cold with class and caste dis-
tinctions. 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

FRANCISCO FERRER*. THE MODERN SCHOOL 1 55

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 de-
votion to the oppressed, the little school on Mont-
martre 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 burgeois 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,

156 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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, sur-
rounded 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 per-
petuate 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 V Amour
Libre, and Sebastian Faure, with his La Ruche*
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

* The Beehive.

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL I57

wild, uncultivated country into a blooming spot, hav-
ing 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 French-
man knows how, furnishes a large variety of veg-
etables for La Ruche.

Sebastian Faure is of the opinion that if the child
is subjected to contradictory influences, its develop-
ment suffers in consequence. Only when the ma-
terial 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 condi-
tions : 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

158 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 under-
standing 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 be-
long to the average, having had no previous oppor-
tunities, 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 wouL_ 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.

'Tt is surprising how frank and kind and affec-
tionate our little ones are to each other. The harmony

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL 1 59

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, under-
standing will replace duty; confidence, fear; and
affection, severity.

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sym-
pathy, 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 tenden-
cies. 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 prom-
ises to bear beautiful fruit."*

Regarding the subject of history and the prevail-
ing 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."f

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 real-

* Mother Earth, 1907.
t Ibid.

l6o ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

ized 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 edu-
cation in Spain is in the hands of the Catholic Church,
and when we further remember the Catholic formula,
"To inculcate Catholicism in the m.ind 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.

Mile. 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 Mile. Meunier to get possession of
her money.

Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of what-
ever 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

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL l6l

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. Mile. Meunier was consid-
erably 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 knov/ledge, 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

l62 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 fol-
lowed 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 ;* 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

* Black crows : The Catholic clergy.

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL 163

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 com-
panion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following
letter :

"No reason to worry; you know I am abso-
lutely 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

164 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

the blunder in crediting the enemy with a sense o£
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 everyAvhere, 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

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL 165

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 ter-
rific 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-mil-
itary 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 indict-
ment was to the effect that Francisco Ferrer was
guilty of having organized godless schools, and hav-
ing circulated godless literature. But in the twentieth
century men can not be burned merely for their god-
less 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 ac-
cepted, 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 190 1- 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.

l66 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 so-
ciologic works, not to forget the large quantity of
rationalist text books. Surely none but the most
methodical and efficient organizer could have accom-
plished 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 them-
selves, 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 Com-
mune of 1 87 1. They, too, were unprepared. While
they were starving, they protected the warehouses
filled to the brim with provisions. They placed sen-
tinels to guard the Bank of France, where the bour-
geoisie 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

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL 167

burned into his soul, — how is he to throw it off un-
prepared, unexpectedly ?

Can anyone assume for a moment that a man
like Ferrer would affiliate himself with such a spon-
taneous, 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 oroofs 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 particu-
larly the publication of Elisee Reclus' great book,
UHomme 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

l68 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 chil-
dren 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 aw^e-inspiring
wonder of the mountains and seas ; that he explained
to them in his simple, direct w^ay the law of growth,
of development, of the interrelation of all life? In
so doing he made it forever impossible for the poison-
ous weeds of the Catholic Church to take root in the
child's mind.

It has been stated that Ferrer prepared the chil-
dren 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 under-
mining the army by inculcating anti-military ideas.
Indeed? He must have believed with Tolstoy that
war is legalized slaughter, that it perpetuates hatred

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL 169

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 Hke 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 educa-
tion 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, constrain-
ing; 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 ad-
vances 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

I/O ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 ex-
perience 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 organiza-
tion of constraint, the artificial surroundings by which
children are separated from nature and life, the in-
tellectual and moral discipline made use of to impose
ready-made ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave
and annihilate natural bent. Without fear of deceiv-
ing ourselves, we can restore the child to the environ-
ment 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 fastidi-
ous book-learning. If we did no more than that, we
should already have prepared in great part the
deliverance of the child.

FRANCISCO FERRER: THE MODERN SCHOOL I7I

"In such conditions we might already freely apply
the data of science and labor most fruitfully.

"1 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."*

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 Mont-
juich. 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 memo-
rial; 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

* Mother Earth, December, 1909.

172 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

uniting in perpetuating the great work of Francisco
Ferrer; America, even, tardy always in progressive
ideas, giving birth to a Francisco Ferrer Associa-
tion, its aim being to pubHsh a complete life of Ferrer
and to organize Modern Schools all over the coun-
try,— 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 repre-
sented 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.

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM

Speaking of Puritanism in relation to American art,
Mr. Gutzon Borglum said: "Puritanism has made us
self-centered and hypocritical for so long, that sin-
cerity 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 individual-
ity in our art."

Mr. Borglum 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, im-
posed 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 Eng-
land during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
destroying and crushing every manifestation of art
and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which

174 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 monot-
ony, 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 re-
cently 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 expres-
sion 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 and 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 Amer-
ican purification.

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM I75

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 Pil-
grim 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 Torquemiadas 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? Sim-
ply because Comstock is but the loud expression of
the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and

176 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

from whose thraldom even Hberals have not suc-
ceeded in fully emancipating themselves. The vision-
less and leaden elements of the old Young Men's and
Women's Christian Temperance Unions, Purity
Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and the Prohibi-
tion 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 liter-
ature 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 dic-
tate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and
stifle our best impulses. Puritanism in this the twen-
tieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and
beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock.
It repudiates, as som.ething vile and sinful, our deep-
est 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 sub-
dued 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

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM 1 77

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 curi-
osities. 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."* But the spirit of purism has so per-
verted 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, ex-
pressive 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 exag-
geration 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 pros-
titution. The enormity of this crime against human-
ity is apparent when we consider the results. Abso-
lute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried
woman, under pain of being considered immoral or
fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, im-
potence, depression, and a great variety of nervous

* The Psychology of Sex. Havelock Ellis.

178 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

complaints involving diminished power of work, lim-
ited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupa-
tion with sexual desires and imaginings. The arbi-
trary and pernicious dictum of total continence
probably also explains the mental inequality of the
sexes. Thus Freud believes that the intellectual in-
feriority of so many women is due to the inhibition
of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of
sexual repression. Having thus suppressed the na-
tural sex desires of the unmarried woman, Puritan-
ism, 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 scientific-
ally 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 phys-
ical 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

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM 1 79

practice is necessarily shrouded, and the consequent
professional inefficiency and neglect, Puritanism con-
tinuously exacts thousands of victims to its own
stupidity and hypocrisy.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and
chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puri-
tanism. It is its most cherished child, all hypocritical
sanctimoniousness notwithstanding. The prostitute is
the fury of our century, sweeping across the "civil-
ized" 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
the State of New York the terrible failure and crime
of Europe, namely, registration and identification of
the unfortunate victims of Puritanism. In equally
stupid manner purism seeks to check the terrible
scourge of its own creation — venereal diseases. M(^st
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 Puri-
tanism refuses to see that the true method of preven-
tion is the one which makes it clear to all that "ven-
ereal 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 meth-
ods of obscurity, disguise, and concealment, Puritan-
ism has furnished favorable conditions for the growth

l8o ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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, hypoc-
risy 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, feel-
ings, 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 legaly 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 lib-
erty 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

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM l8l

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 ex-
istence. 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 brutaliz-
ing atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibi-
tion States the people lack even the latter, unless they
can invest their meager earnings in quantities of adul-
terated 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.

l82 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 emo-
tions. 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. Puritan-
ism, 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,
hum. , and good fellowship; its characteristics are
dullness, monotony, and gloom."

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

Our reformers have suddenly made a great dis-
covery— 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,

184 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 v/omen?
Not merely white women, but yellow and black
women as well. Exploitation, of course; the merci-
less 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 3^our 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 Kauff-
man, 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 in-

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN I»5

dustrial 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 hor-
rors, is it to be v/ondered at that prostitution and
the white slave trade have become such dominant
factors ?

Lest the preceding figures be considered an ex-
aggeration, it is well to examine what somie author-
ities 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

l86 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

women previous to their fall, and it will be a ques-
tion 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 oh wages is not more than coun-
terbalanced by the enormous amount of taxation
enforced on the public at large to defray the ex-
penses incurred on account of a system of vice,
zvhich is the direct result, in many cases, of insuffi-
cient compensation of honest labor."*

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 condi-
tions, 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 be-
cause 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.f

* Dr. Sanger, The History of Prostitution.

t 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.

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN 187

Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in Prostitution in the Nine-
teenth Century, is even more emphatic in characteriz-
ing 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 in-
dustry 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 espec^'ally 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 glim-
mer 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 be-
fore the public is the indignation of our "good,
respectable people," especially the various Christian

l88 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

gentlemen, who are always to be found in the front
ranks of every crusade. Is it that they are abso-
lutely ignorant of the history of religion, and es-
pecially 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 pros-
titution? 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 west-
ern 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, dedi-
cated 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,

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN 189

is maintained by all authoritative writers on the sub-
ject. Gradually, however, and when prostitution be-
came an organized institution under priestly influence,
religious prostitution developed utilitarian sides, thus
helping to increase public revenue.

"The rise of Christianity to political power pro-
duced little change in policy. The leading fathers of
the Church tolerated prostitution. Brothels under
municipal protection are found in the thirteenth cen-
tury. They constituted a sort of public service, the
directors of them being considered almost as public
servants."*

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 care-
ful 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 prosti-
tution.

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 pros-

*Havelock Ellis, Sex and Society.

190 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

titution 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 dis-
cuss 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 that subject is suppressed,
and persons who attempt to bring light into this terri-
ble 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 as his sex nature asserts

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN IQI

itself, satisfy that nature; but our moralists are scan-
dalized 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 per-
fectly 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."*

"Those women are prostitutes who sell their
bodies for the exercise of the sexual act and make of
this a profession. "f

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

* Guyot, La Prostitution.

t Banger, Criminalite et Condition Economique.

192 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

good and noble in a human being. This double stand-
ard of morality has played no little part in the crea-
tion 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 per-
secution of those who dare divert from the beaten
track, 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 com-
forts 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 alto-
gether 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 with-
out the sanction of the Church.

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN 193

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 her-
self 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 her-
self 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 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

194 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 vir-
tuous 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 detect-
ive 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."

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN 195

Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has 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 of 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 busi-
ness 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 condi-
tions, by the thoroughly American custom for ex-
cessive 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

196 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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, 111., 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 Rey-
nolds, 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, Theo-
dore 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 go con-

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN I97

spicuous that in the Orient "American girl" is synony-
mous 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

198 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 of 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 des-
picable 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 depart-
ment 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 per-
petrators 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

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN I99

of virtue. Vice was to be abolished, the country puri-
fied at all cost. The social cancer was therefore
driven out of sight, but deeper into the body. Keep-
ers 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, them-
selves 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 unfor-
tunate 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 atti-
tude 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

200 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

methods in coping with the issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko
finds that governmental suppression and moral cru-
sades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into
secret channels, multiplying its dangers to society.
Havelock Ellis, the most thorough and humane stu-
dent of prostitution, proves by a w^ealth of data that
the more stringent the methods of persecution the
v^^orse the condition becomes. Among other data we
learn that in France, "in 1560, Charles IX. abolished
brothels through an edict, but the numbers of prosti-
tutes were only increased, while many new brothels
appeared in unsuspected shapes, and were more dan-
gerous. In spite of all such legislation, or because of
it, there has been no country in which prostitution has
played a more conspicuous part."*

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 under-
standing and more humane treatment. As to a thor-
ough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accom-
plish that save a complete transvaluation of all
accepted values — especially the moral ones — coupled
with the abolition of industrial slavery.

* 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 diety. Woe to the heretic who dare
question that divinity!

Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worship-
per, 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

202 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one sentence the
attitude of woman towards her gods.

Rehgion, especially the Christian religion, has con-
demned 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 chil-
dren ; 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

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 203

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 suf-
fragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the
contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage
which will make her a better Christian and home-
keeper, 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, happi-
ness, joy, freedom, independence, — all that, and more,
is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion
woman does not see what people of intellect per-
ceived 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

204 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 poli-
ticians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to
starve, free to tramp the highways of this great coun-
try, 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 twen-
tieth-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 mis-
fortune has been that she was looked upon as either

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 205

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 suf-
fragists 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 strik-
ing way the essential rottenness and degrading char-
acter 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 coun-
tries 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

206 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 understand-
ing 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 condi-
tions 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 sanc-
tion 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 accom-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 20/

plishment, since her influence has been unable to free
labor from the thraldom 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 n ass 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

208 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 Sum-
ner 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 thou-
sand 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 pro-
tection." 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 inter-
est, 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, pull-
ing men out of bed at night, kidnapping them across
the border line, throwing them into bull pens, declar-
ing "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

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 209

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 bigoted
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 prosti-
tution and gambling have been prohibited. In this
regard the law must needs be of feminine gender: 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."* Could Brother Comstock do more?

* Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen Sumner.

2IO ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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."* 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 at-
mosphere, 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 drunk-
enness 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,

* Equal Suffrage.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 211

man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judg-
ment, 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 them-
selves 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 cannot be bought! H 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 man, yet we learn that
"few women care to canvas in undesirable districts."*
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

* Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

212 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

she is indignant that her presence does not strike him
dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, and does not
jump from his seat Hke 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 w^retched little bill which
will benefit a handful of propertied ladies, with abso-
lutely no provision for the vast mass of working-
women? True, as politicians they must be opportun-
ists, 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 equal-
ity between political superiors and inferiors. If so,
how will the workingwomen of England, already
inferior economically to the ladies who are benefited

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 213

by the Shackleton bill,* 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 suf-
frage 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 antag-
onistic 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.f
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 Provi-

* Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-
evident that he should introduce a bill excluding his own con-
stituents. The English Parliament is full of such Judases.

t Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

214 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

dence. What would become of the rich, if not for
the poor? What would become of these idle, para-
sitic 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 is this true of
the American woman of the middle class. She not
only considers herself the equal of man, but his supe-
rior, 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 bril-
liant 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

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 21$

fetich. If we have outlived the time when such heresy
was punishable by the stake, we have not outlived
the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare
differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall prob-
ably 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
perpetrate 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 man-
ner. As a matter of fact, every inch of ground he
has gained has been through a constant fight, a cease-
less 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,

2l6 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

her ability, willpower, and her endurance in her
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 accomplishments, what wonder-
ful 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 "privi-
lege" 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 com-
plain.

The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable
to do the work of a man, but that she is wasting
her life-force to outdo him, with a tradition of cen-
turies which has left her physically incapable of keep-
ing 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

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 21^

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 inde-
pendence, 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 chil-
dren, 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 free-
ing 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 un-
known 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.

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, regard-
less 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 indi-
viduals 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 near-
est future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet

220 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human
beings and still retain one's own characteristic quali-
ties. 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, Under-
stand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of
Madame de Stael : "To understand everything means
to forgive everything," has never particularly ap-
pealed to me ; it has the odor of the confessional ; to
forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea of phar-
isaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being
suffices. The admission partly represents the funda-
mental 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 quali-

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN S EMANCIPATION 221

ties. 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 efiFort of the tre-
mendous 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 pre-
dicted? 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

222 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 equal-
ity with man; that is, she can choose her own pro-
fession 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, gen-
erally do so at the expense of their physical and
psychical well-being. As to the great mass of work-
ing 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 so 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

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN S EMANCIPATION 223

enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect woman to
sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised inde-
pendence 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 seem-
ingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured pro-
fessional 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 inde-
pendence; the horror that love or the joy of mother-
hood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her
profession — all these together make of the emanci-
pated 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

224 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 exist-
ing 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 Anarch-
ists, 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 move-
ment 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 reck-

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION 225

less life of lust and sin ; regardless of society, religion,
and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were
highly indignant at such misrepresentation, and, lack-
ing 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 Puri-
tans 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 devo-
tion 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

226 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrow-
ness of the existing conception of woman's eman-
cipation, 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 re-
sulting 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 individual-
ity, 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 con-
sidered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful
personality. In the case of the modern woman, these
attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete asser-
tion of her being. For over a hundred years the old

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN's EMANCIPATION 227

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 man's servant and the
bearer of his children. And yet we find many eman-
cipated 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 in-
ternal 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 them-
selves. 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

228 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 priv-
ilege, 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 em-
bodied 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

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN^S EMANCIPATION 229

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 propri-
ety 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 happi-
ness 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 dis-
ciples 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

230 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 cus-
toms. 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 sub-
ordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN S EMANCIPATION 23I

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 be-
cause few people can completely outgrow a conven-
tion. 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

234 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 mar-
riage 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, how-
ever, woman's premium is a 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 Philis-
tine 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

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 235

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 mar-
riage as a factor for harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content him-
self with the popular superficial excuse for this phe-
nomenon. He will have to dig down deeper into the
very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves
so disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every mar-
riage stands the life-long environment of the two
sexes; an environment so different from each other
that man and woman must remain strangers. Sepa-
rated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, cus-
tom, 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 any-
thing more humiliating, more degrading than a life-

236 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 appear-
ance? 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
a being outside of the master's grace, the sacred insti-
tution 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 pre-
pared 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 incon-
sistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 23/

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 aver-
age 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 her-
self 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 good"
ness consisting of an empty head 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 mar-
riage, which differentiates it from love.

238 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 pople 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 sordid-
ness are the elements inherent in the marriage institu-
tion. The State and the 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 con-
sider love above dollars and cents. Particularly is
this 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-earners; six million
women, who have the 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

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 239

brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes,
even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipa-
tion 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 tread-
mill; 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 tran-
sitory, 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 call-
ing? 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, how-
ever, 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 house-
work, 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

240 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not im-
portant 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, cow-
ardly 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 ! Mar-
riage protecting the child, yet thousands of children
destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the
child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories over-
crowded, 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 con-

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 24I

vict'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 its 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 — capital-
ism. 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 gra-
cious 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, out-
rages, 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

242 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if mother-
hood 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 fet-
tered 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 un-
reservedly, 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, how-
ever, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 243

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 chil-
dren ? The race, the race ! shouts the king, the presi-
dent, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be pre-
served, 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

244 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring
forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruc-
tion 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 imposi-
tion, 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.

MARRIAGE AND LOVE 245

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, litera-
ture, 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.

248 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 awak-
ening 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 sym-
pathies, 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.

THE DRAMA 249

Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence
exerted by The Power of Darkness or Night Lodg-
ing. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the great-
est enemy of organized Christianity. With a master
hand he portrays the destructive effects upon the
human mind of the power of darkness, the supersti-
tions 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 des-
perately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspira-
tion. 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 Rohe Rouge, portraying the terrible corruption
of the judiciary — and Mirbeau's Les A jf aires 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,

250 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 vic-
tims 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
trouble-makers, 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 pro-
nounced 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, Dajidet, Maupassant, and especially in the g'reat

THE DRAMA ^gl

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 there-
fore 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, to-
gether 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* and Heimat'\ deal with vital
subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental
patriotism so completely turning the head of the aver-
age German as to create a perverted conception of

* Honor.
t Magda.

252 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 dift'erently from
his victims.

The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the
millionaire Miihling, being permitted to occupy a
dilapidated shanty on his premises in the absence of
their son, Robert. The latter, as Miihling's repre-
sentative, is making a vast fortune for his employer
in India. On his return Robert discovers that his
sister had been seduced by young Aliihling, whose
father graciously offers to straighten matters with a
check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indig-
nant, 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

THE DRAMA 253

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 mor-
tally offended by refusing the hospitality which
offered him the charms of the chieftain's wife.

The theme of Heimat treates of the struggle
between the old and the young generations. It holds
a permanent and important place in dramatic litera-
ture.

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 imme-
diately 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 independ-
ence. 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

254 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 — the struggle
between the old and young generations — was not
original. It had been previously treated by a master
hand in Fathers and Sons, portraying the awakening
of an age. But though artistically far inferior to
Turgeniev's work, Heimat — depicting the awakening
of a sex — proved a powerful revolutionizing factor,
mainly because of its dramatic expression.

The dramatist who not only disseminated radical-
ism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Ger-
mans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play, Vor
Sonnenaufgang* refused by every leading German
threatre, but finally performed in the independent
Lessing Theatre, acted like a stroke of lightning,
illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject
matter deals with the life of an extensive land-owner,
ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic

* 'Before Sunrise.

THE DRAMA 255

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 breed-
ing of children by unfit parents.

During the second performance of the play a lead-
ing 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 Weher^ first saw the light, pande-
monium 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

* The Weavers.

256 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 grind-
ing 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 tradi-
tion. Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic
prose-poem Die Versunkene Glocke* fails to reach
the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautende-
lein said, he had lived in the valley too long. Simi-
larly 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.

* The Sunken Bell.

THE DRAMA 257

Max Halbe's Jugend^^ and Wedekind's Frilhling's
Erwachen-f are dramas which have disseminated rad-
ical 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 is this true of Frilhling's Erwachen.
Young girls and boys sacrificed on the altar of false
education and of our sickening morality that pro-
hibits 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 ignorance, the same mother sees
her child 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

* Youth.

t The Awakening of Spring.

258 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 enlight-
enment. Mutterschuts, 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

THE DRAMA 259

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 chan-
nel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the scene, Bjorn-
son, the great essayist, thundered against the inequali-
ties 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 concep-
tion, 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 Leitmotiv in most of 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

260 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 stepsister 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 bene-
factor of the community with banquet praise, he him-
self, 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 every-
one 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."

THE DRAMA 261

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. Pie 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 accord-
ing 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 con-
scious 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 her-
self. 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: 'T 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 mar-
riage. It was rather the smug contentment of Helmer

262 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

with a safe He — 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 free-
dom 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 hus-
band'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 indif-
ferent 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 humil-
ity 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

THE DRAMA 263

she supported the lie of his father's goodness, in super-
stitious av/e 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 piti-
fully 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 there-
fore 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 dis-
covers that the latter are built on a swamp, and that

264 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 con-
cerned neither with health nor priniciples. 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 dis-
covery may bring the town into disrepute, and thus
injure their pockets.

But Doctor Stockman continues in the faith he
entertains for his 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 eradi-
cate 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 reform-
ers, 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 exter-
minated like vermin. You'll bring it to such a pass
that the whole country will deserve to perish."

THE DRAMA 265

Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A
free man, he thinks, must not behave like a black-
guard. "He must not so act that he would spit in his
own face." For only cowards permit "considera-
tions" of pretended general welfare or of party to
override truth and ideals. "Party programmes wring
the necks of all young, living truths; and considera-
tions 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 dissipat-
ing 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

266 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

described as the greatest crime of Christian civiliza-
tion. "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, chari-
table 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 pov-
erty. All the other crimes are virtues beside it; all
the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison.
Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pesti-
lences; 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 liber-
ties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they
should rise against us and drag us down into their

THE DRAMA 267

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 govern-
ments, 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 radi-
cal ideas.

After Hauptmann's Die Weber, Strife, by Gals-
worthy, 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 con-
cession, 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 workingmen 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 marvelous and brilliant piece of work in
Strife is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob in its
fickleness and lack of backbone. One moment they

268 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the power of God
and religion and admonishes the men against rebel-
lion ; the next instant they are carried away by a walk-
ing 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 commer-
cial age. No matter how intense the spirit or how
important the man, the moment he will not allow him-
self 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 antago-
nistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible gap that
can never be bridged over. Yet they shared a com-
mon fate. Anthony is the embodiment of conserva-
tism, 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 —

THE DRAMA 269

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 mil-
lions 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 attri-
butes 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 our-
selves, 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

270 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 evi-
dent. 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 excep-

THE DRAMA 27I

tion of a few minor and comparatively insignificant
reforms iij some of our prisons, absolutely nothing has
been accomplished. But at last this grave social
wrong has found dramatic interpretation in Gals-
worthy'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 neces-
sity 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
youth 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

272 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

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 com-
mission 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 DRAMA 2/3

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 out-
side. 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 fore-
head 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

274 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

darkness — he seems to be seeing somebody or some-
thing there. There is a sharp tap and dick; 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 roll-
ing 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 her-
self. 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

THE DRAMA 2/5

police appear to drag him back to prison for failing
to report himself as ticket-of-leave man. Completely
overcome 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 pro-
duced 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 Sec-
retary 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

276 ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS

Robert express the significance of labor and its mis-
sion 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 impor-
tance 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 integ-
rity, truth, and justice. Secondly, the cruel, senseless
fatalism conditioned in Laura's sex. These two fea-
tures put the universal stamp upon the play, and char-
acterize 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

THE DRAMA 2,'jy

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 char-
acteristic of the growing role of the drama as a dis-
seminator of radical thought. Suffice it 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 litera-
ture, all pave the way to the Open Road. Above all,
the modern drama, operating through the double chan-
nel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it d6es
both mind and heart, is the strongest force in develop-
ing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of
unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of igno-
rance, prejudice, and superstition.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

ALEXANDER BERKMAN

Jl Zlnique ConhihuHon to
Socio-'Psychohgical "Liierafure

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY REPRESENTS THREE
PHASES:

I) The Revolutionary Awakening and its Toll^
The Attentat

II) The Allegheny Penitentiary : Fourteen Yeari
in Purgatory

III) The Resurrection and After

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