Anarchism and Other Essays
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Politics; Political Theory

Emma Goldman

Anarchism and Other

Essays

Table of Context:

Biographical Sketch

Preface

Chapter 1: What it Really Stands for

Anarchy

Chapter 2: Minorities Versus Majorities

Chapter 3: The Psychology of Political

Violence

Chapter 4: Prisons: A Social Crime and

Failure

Chapter 5: Patriotism: A Menace to

Liberty

Chapter 6: Francisco Ferrer and the

Modern School

Chapter 7: The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

Chapter 8: The Traffic in Women

Chapter 9: Woman Suffrage

Chapter 10: The Tragedy of Woman’s

Emancipation

Chapter 11: Marriage and Love

Chapter 12: The Modern Drama: A

Powerful Disseminator of Radical

Thought

Biographical Sketch

Propagandism is not, as some suppose, a “trade,”

because nobody will follow a “trade” at which you
may work with the industry of a slave and die with
the reputation of a mendicant. The motives of any
persons to pursue such a profession must be
different from those of trade, deeper than pride,
and stronger than interest.

George Jacob Holyoake

Among the men and women prominent in the public life
of America there are but few whose names are
mentioned as often as that of Emma Goldman. Yet the
real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. The
sensational press has surrounded her name with so much
misrepresentation and slander, it would seem almost a
miracle that, in spite of this web of calumny, the truth
breaks through and a better appreciation of this much
maligned idealist begins to manifest itself. There is but
little consolation in the fact that almost every
representative of a new idea has had to struggle and
suffer under similar difficulties. Is it of any avail that a
former president of a republic pays homage at

Osawatomie to the memory of John Brown? Or that the president of another republic participates in the
unveiling of a statue in honor of Pierre Proudhon, and
holds up his life to the French nation as a model worthy
of enthusiastic emulation? Of what avail is all this when,
at the same time, the living John Browns and Proudhons are being crucified? The honor and glory of a Mary

Wollstonecraft or of a Louise Michel are not enhanced by
the City Fathers of London or Paris naming a street after
them — the living generation should be concerned with
doing justice to the living Mary Wollstonecrafts and

Louise Michels. Posterity assigns to men like Wendel

Phillips and Lloyd Garrison the proper niche of honor in
the temple of human emancipation; but it is the duty of
their contemporaries to bring them due recognition and
appreciation while they live.

The path of the propagandist of social justice is strewn
with thorns. The powers of darkness and injustice exert
all their might lest a ray of sunshine enter his cheerless
life. Nay, even his comrades in the struggle — indeed,
too often his most intimate friends — show but little
understanding for the personality of the pioneer. Envy,
sometimes growing to hatred, vanity and jealousy,
obstruct his way and fill his heart with sadness. It
requires an inflexible will and tremendous enthusiasm
not to lose, under such conditions, all faith in the Cause.

The representative of a revolutionizing idea stands
between two fires: on the one hand, the persecution of
the existing powers which hold him responsible for all
acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the other,
the lack of understanding on the part of his own
followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow
standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands
quite alone in the midst of the multitude surrounding
him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand
how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of
the person prominent in the public eye.

The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so
long been enveloped is gradually beginning to dissipate.

Her energy in the furtherance of such an unpopular idea
as Anarchism, her deep earnestness, her courage and
abilities, find growing understanding and admiration.

The debt American intellectual growth owes to the
revolutionary exiles has never been fully appreciated.

The seed disseminated by them, though so little
understood at the time, has brought a rich harvest. They
have at all times held aloft the banner of liberty, thus
impregnating the social vitality of the Nation. But very
few have 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 perseverance are necessary
to absorb the unfamiliar language, habits, and customs of
a new country, without the loss of one’s own personality.

Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly
preserving their individuality, have become an important
factor in the social and intellectual atmosphere of

America. The life she leads is rich in color, full of change
and variety. She has risen to the topmost heights, and
she has also tasted the bitter dregs of life.

Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the

27th day of June, 1869, in the Russian province of Kovno.

Surely these parents never dreamed what unique
position their child would someday occupy. Like all
conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced
that their daughter would marry a respectable citizen,
bear him children, and round out her allotted years
surrounded by a flock of grandchildren, a good, religious
woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a
strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of
their child, and carry it to the heights which separate
generations in eternal struggle. They lived in a land and
at a time when antagonism between parent and
offspring was fated to find its most acute expression,
irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle between fathers and sons — and especially between
parents and daughters — there was no compromise, no
weak yielding, no truce. The spirit of liberty, of progress

— an idealism which knew no considerations and
recognized no obstacles — drove the young generation
out of the parental house and away from the hearth of
the home. Just as this same spirit once drove out the
revolutionary breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated
him from his native traditions.

What rôle the Jewish race — notwithstanding all anti-

Semitic calumnies the race of transcendental idealism —
played in the struggle of the Old and the New will
probably never be appreciated with complete
impartiality and clarity. Only now we are beginning to
perceive the tremendous debt we owe to Jewish idealists
in the realm of science, art, and literature. But very little is still known of the important part the sons and
daughters of Israel have played in the revolutionary
movement and, especially, in that of modern times.

The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed
in a small, idyllic place in the German-Russian province of

Kurland, where her father had charge of the government
stage. At that time Kurland was thoroughly German;
even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic province was
recruited mostly from German 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 support of a large
family, brutally dragged to the barracks to lead the
miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping of the
poor peasant women, and witnessed the shameful
scenes of official venality which relieved the rich from
military service at the expense of the poor. She was
outraged by the terrible treatment to which the female
servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by
their barinyas, they fell to the tender mercies of the
regimental officers, who regarded them as their natural
sexual prey. 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 Königsberg, the city of Immanuel

Kant, in Eastern Prussia. Save for occasional
interruptions, she remained there till her 13th birthday.

The first years in these surroundings do not exactly
belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother,
indeed, was very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the
household were concerned more with the spirit of
practical rather than pure reason, and the categoric
imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation
was changed when her parents migrated to Königsberg,
and little Emma was relieved from her rôle of Cinderella.

She now regularly attended public school and also
enjoyed the advantages of private instruction, customary
in middle class life; French and music lessons played an
important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter
of Ibsen and Shaw was then a little German Gretchen,
quite at home in the German atmosphere. Her special
predilections in literature were the sentimental
romances of Marlitt; she was a great admirer of the good

Queen Louise, whom the bad Napoleon Buonaparte treated with so marked a lack of knightly chivalry. What
might have been her future development had she
remained in this milieu? Fate — or was it economic
necessity? — willed it otherwise. Her parents decided to
settle in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Almighty Tsar,
and there to embark in business. It was here that a great
change took place in the life of the young dreamer.

It was an eventful period — the year of 1882 — in which

Emma Goldman, then in her 13th year, arrived in St.

Petersburg. A struggle for life and death between the
autocracy and the Russian intellectuals swept the
country. Alexander II had fallen the previous year. Sophia

Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch,

Michailov, the heroic executors of the death sentence
upon the tyrant, had then entered the Walhalla of
immortality. Jessie Helfman, the only regicide whose life
the government had reluctantly spared because of
pregnancy, followed the unnumbered Russian martyrs to
the étapes of Siberia. It was the most heroic period in the
great battle of emancipation, a battle for freedom such
as the world had never witnessed before. The names of
the Nihilist martyrs were on all lips, and thousands were
enthusiastic to follow their example. The
whole intelligensia of Russia was filled with the illegal
spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated into every home, from mansion to hovel, impregnating the military,
the chinovniks, factory workers, and peasants. The
atmosphere pierced the very casemates of the royal
palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The
difference of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder
fought the men and the women. The Russian woman!

Who shall ever do justice or adequately portray her
heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion?

Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, On the
Threshold.

It was inevitable that the young dreamer from

Königsberg should be drawn into the maelstrom. To
remain outside of the circle of free ideas meant a life of
vegetation, of death. One need not wonder at the
youthful age. Young enthusiasts were not then — and,
fortunately, are not now — a rare phenomenon in

Russia. The study of the Russian language soon brought
young Emma Goldman in touch with revolutionary
students and new ideas. The place of Marlitt was taken
by Nekrassov and Tchernishevsky. The quondam admirer
of the good Queen Louise became a glowing enthusiast
of liberty, resolving, like thousands of others, to devote
her life to the emancipation of the people.

The struggle of generations now took place in the Goldman family. The parents could not comprehend
what interest their daughter could find in the new ideas,
which they themselves considered fantastic utopias.

They strove to persuade the young girl out of these
chimeras, and daily repetition of soul-racking disputes
was the result. Only in one member of the family did the
young idealist find understanding — in her elder sister,

Helene, with whom she later emigrated to America, and
whose love and sympathy have never failed her. Even in
the darkest hours of later persecution Emma Goldman
always found a haven of refuge in the home of this loyal
sister.

Emma Goldman finally resolved to achieve her
independence. She saw hundreds of men and women
sacrificing brilliant careers to go v naród, to the people.

She followed their example. She became a factory
worker; at first employed as a corset maker, and later in
the manufacture of gloves. She was now 17 years of age
and proud to earn her own living. Had she remained in

Russia, she would have probably sooner or later shared
the fate of thousands buried in the snows of Siberia. But
a new chapter of life was to begin for her. Sister Helene
decided to emigrate to America, where another sister
had already made her home. Emma prevailed upon

Helene to be allowed to join her, and together they departed for America, filled with the joyous hope of a
great, free land, the glorious Republic.

America! What magic word. The yearning of the
enslaved, the promised land of the oppressed, the goal
of all longing for progress. Here man’s ideals had found
their fulfillment: no Tsar, no Cossack, no chinovnik. The Republic! Glorious synonym of equality, freedom,
brotherhood

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

1886, from New York to Rochester. Soon, all too soon,
disillusionment awaited them. The ideal conception of

America was punctured already at Castle Garden, and
soon burst like a soap bubble. Here Emma Goldman
witnessed sights which reminded her of the terrible
scenes of her childhood in Kurland. The brutality and
humiliation the future citizens of the great Republic were
subjected to on board ship, were repeated at Castle

Garden by the officials of the democracy in a more
savage and aggravating manner. And what bitter
disappointment followed as the young idealist began to
familiarize herself with the conditions in the new land!

Instead of one Tsar, she found scores of them; the

Cossack was replaced by the policeman with the heavy
club, and instead of the Russian chinovnik there was the far more inhuman slave driver of the factory.

Emma Goldman soon obtained work in the clothing
establishment of the Garson Co. The wages amounted to
two and a half dollars a week. At that time the factories
were not provided with motor power, and the poor
sewing girls had to drive the wheels by foot, from early
morning till late at night. A terribly exhausting toil it was, without a ray of light, the drudgery of the long day
passed in complete silence — the Russian custom of
friendly conversation at work was not permissible in the
free country. But the exploitation of the girls was not
only economic; the poor wage workers were looked
upon by their foremen and bosses as sexual
commodities. If a girl resented the advances of her
superiors,” she would speedily find herself on the street
as an undesirable element in the factory. There was
never a lack of willing victims: the supply always
exceeded the demand.

The horrible conditions were made still more unbearable
by the fearful dreariness of life in the small American
city. The Puritan spirit suppresses the slightest
manifestation of joy; a deadly dullness beclouds the soul;
no intellectual inspiration, no thought exchange between
congenial spirits is possible. Emma Goldman almost
suffocated in this atmosphere. She, above all others, longed for ideal surroundings, for friendship and
understanding, for the companionship of kindred minds.

Mentally she still lived in Russia. Unfamiliar with the
language and life of the country, she dwelt more in the
past than in the present. It was at this period that she
met a young man who spoke Russian. With great joy the
acquaintance was cultivated. At last a person with whom
she could converse, one who could help her bridge the
dullness of the narrow existence. The friendship
gradually ripened and finally culminated in marriage.

Emma Goldman, too, had to walk the sorrowful road of
married life; she, too, had to learn from bitter experience
that legal statutes signify dependence and self-
effacement, especially for the woman. The marriage was
no liberation from the Puritan dreariness of American
life; indeed, it was rather aggravated by the loss of self-
ownership. The characters of the young people differed
too widely. A separation soon followed, and Emma

Goldman went to New Haven, Conn. There she found
employment in a factory, and her husband disappeared
from her horizon. Two decades later she was fated to be
unexpectedly reminded of him by the Federal
authorities.

The revolutionists who were active in the Russian movement of the 80’s were but little familiar with the
social ideas then agitating Western Europe and America.

Their sole activity consisted in educating the people,
their final goal the destruction of the autocracy.

Socialism and Anarchism were terms hardly known even
by name. Emma Goldman, too, was entirely unfamiliar
with the significance of those ideals.

She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia,
at a period of great social and political unrest. The
working people were in revolt against the terrible labor
conditions; the eight-hour movement of the Knights of

Labor was at its height, and throughout the country
echoed the din of sanguine strife between strikers and
police. The struggle culminated in the great strike against
the Harvester Company of Chicago, the massacre of the
strikers, and the judicial murder of the labor leaders,
which followed upon the historic Haymarket bomb
explosion. The Anarchists stood the martyr test of blood
baptism. The apologists of capitalism vainly seek to
justify the killing of Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer, and

Engel. Since the publication of Governor Altgeld’s
reasons for his liberation of the three incarcerated

Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt is left that a fivefold
legal murder had been committed in Chicago, in 1887.

Very few have grasped the significance of the Chicago martyrdom; least of all the ruling classes. By the
destruction of a number of labor leaders they thought to
stem the tide of a world-inspiring idea. They failed to
consider that from the blood of the martyrs grows the
new seed, and that the frightful injustice will win new
converts to the Cause.

The two most prominent representatives of the

Anarchist idea in America, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma

Goldman — the one a native American, the other a

Russian — have been converted, like numerous others,
to the ideas of Anarchism by the judicial murder. Two
women who had not known each other before, and who
had received a widely different education, were through
that murder united in one idea.

Like most working men and women of America, Emma

Goldman followed the Chicago trial with great anxiety
and excitement. She, too, could not believe that the
leaders of the proletariat would be killed. The 11th of

November, 1887, taught her differently. She realized that
no mercy could be expected from the ruling class, that
between the Tsarism of Russia and the plutocracy of

America there was no difference save in name. Her
whole being rebelled against the crime, and she vowed
to herself a solemn vow to join the ranks of the
revolutionary proletariat and to devote all her energy and strength to their emancipation from wage slavery.

With the glowing enthusiasm so characteristic of her
nature, she now began to familiarize herself with the
literature of Socialism and Anarchism. She attended
public meetings and became acquainted with
socialistically and anarchistically inclined working men.

Johanna Greie, the well-known German lecturer, was the
first Socialist speaker heard by Emma Goldman. In New

Haven, Conn., where she was employed in a corset
factory, she met Anarchists actively participating in the
movement. Here she read the Freiheit, edited by John

Most. The Haymarket tragedy developed her inherent

Anarchist tendencies; the reading of the Freiheit made her a conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to learn
that the idea of Anarchism found its highest expression
through the best intellects of America: theoretically by

Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews Lysander

Spooner; philosophically by Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt

Whitman.

Made ill by the excessive strain of factory work, Emma

Goldman returned to Rochester where she remained till

August, 1889, at which time she removed to New York,
the scene of the most important phase of her life. She
was now twenty years old. Features pallid with suffering,
eyes large and full of compassion, greet one in her pictured likeness of those days. Her hair is, as customary
with Russian student girls, worn short, giving free play to
the strong forehead.

It is the heroic epoch of militant Anarchism. By leaps and
bounds the movement had grown in every country. In
spite of the most severe govern mental persecution new
converts swell the ranks. The propaganda is almost
exclusively of a secret character. The repressive
measures of the government drive the disciples of the
new philosophy to conspirative methods. Thousands of
victims fall into the hands of the authorities and languish
in prisons. But nothing can stem the rising tide of
enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and devotion to the Cause.

The efforts of teachers like Peter Kropotkin, Louise

Michel, Elisée Reclus, and others, inspire the devotees
with ever greater energy.

Disruption is imminent with the Socialists, who have
sacrificed the idea of liberty and embraced the State and
politics. The struggle is bitter, the factions irreconcilable.

This struggle is not merely between Anarchists and

Socialists; it also finds its echo within the Anarchist
groups. Theoretic differences and personal controversies
lead to strife and acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist
legislation of Germany and Austria had driven thousands
of Socialists and Anarchists across the seas to seek refuge in America. John Most, having lost his seat in the

Reichstag, finally had to flee his native land, and went to

London. There, having advanced toward Anarchism, he
entirely withdrew from the Social Democratic Party.

Later, coming to America, he continued the publication
of the Freiheit in New York, and developed great activity among the German workingmen.

When Emma Goldman arrived in New York in 1889, she
experienced little difficulty in associating herself with
active Anarchists. Anarchist meetings were an almost
daily occurrence. The first lecturer she heard on the

Anarchist platform was Dr. 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, and the
persecution he had endured for the Cause, all combined
to enthuse the comrades. It was also at this period that
she met Alexander Berkman, whose friendship played an
important part throughout her life. Her talents as a
speaker could not long remain in obscurity. The fire of
enthusiasm swept her toward the public platform.

Encouraged by her friends, she began to participate as a

German and Yiddish speaker at Anarchist meetings. Soon
followed a brief tour of agitation taking her as far as Cleveland. With the whole strength and earnestness of
her soul she now threw herself into the propaganda of

Anarchist ideas. The passionate period of her life had
begun. Though constantly toiling in sweat-shops, the
fiery young orator was at the same time very active as an
agitator and participated in various labor struggles,
notably in the great cloakmakers’ strike, in 1889, led by

Professor Garsyde and Joseph Barondess.

A year later Emma Goldman was a delegate to an

Anarchist conference in New York. She was elected to
the Executive Committee, but later withdrew because of
differences of opinion regarding tactical matters. The
ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that time
not yet become clarified. Some still believed in
parliamentary methods, the great majority being
adherents of strong centralism. These differences of
opinion in regard to tactics led, in 1891, to a breach with

John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and
other comrades joined the group Autonomy, in which

Joseph Peukert, Otto Rinke, and Claus Timmermann
played an active part. The bitter controversies which
followed this secession terminated only with the death of

Most, in 1906.

A great source of inspiration to Emma Goldman proved the Russian revolutionists who were associated in the
group Znamya. Goldenberg, Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt, Ivan von Schewitsch, husband
of Helene von Racowitza and editor of the Volkszeitung, and numerous other Russian exiles, some of whom are
still living, were members of 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
acquainted with the best writers of modern literature,
and the friendship thus begun lasted, till Reitzel’s death,
in 1898.

The labor movement of America had not been drowned
in the Chicago massacre; the murder of the Anarchists
had failed to bring peace to the profit-greedy capitalist.

The struggle for the eight hour day continued. In 1892
broke out the great strike in Pittsburg. The Homestead
fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the
militia, the suppression of the strikers, and the complete
triumph of the reaction are matters of comparatively
recent history. Stirred to the very depths by the terrible
events at the seat of war, Alexander Berkman resolved to
sacrifice his life to the Cause and thus give an object
lesson to the wage slaves of America of active Anarchist
solidarity with labor. His attack upon Frick, the Gessler of Pittsburg, failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was
doomed to a living death of twenty-two years in the
penitentiary. The bourgeoisie, which for decades had
exalted and eulogized tyrannicide, now was filled with
terrible rage. The capitalist press organized a systematic
campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against

Anarchists. The police exerted every effort to involve

Emma Goldman in the act of Alexander Berkman. The
feared agitator was to be silenced by all means. It was
only due to the circumstance of her presence in New

York that she escaped the clutches of the law. It was a
similar circumstance which, nine years later, during the

McKinley incident, was instrumental in preserving her
liberty. It is almost incredible with what amount of
stupidity, baseness, and vileness the journalists of the
period sought to overwhelm the Anarchist. One must
peruse the newspaper files to realize the enormity of
incrimination and slander. It would be difficult to portray
the agony of soul Emma Goldman experienced in those
days. The persecutions of the capitalist press were to be
borne by an Anarchist with comparative equanimity; but
the attacks from one’s own ranks were far more painful
and unbearable. The act of Berkman was severely
criticized by Most and some of his followers among the

German and Jewish Anarchists. Bitter accusations and
recriminations at public meetings and private gatherings followed. Persecuted on all sides, both because she
championed Berkman and his act, and on account of her
revolutionary activity, Emma Goldman was harassed
even to the extent of inability to secure shelter. Too
proud to seek safety in the denial of her identity, she
chose to pass the nights in the public parks rather than
expose her friends to danger or vexation by her visits.

The already bitter cup was filled to overflowing by the
attempted suicide of a young comrade who had shared
living quarters with Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman,
and a mutual artist friend.

Many changes have since taken place. Alexander

Berkman has survived the Pennsylvania Inferno, and is
back again in the ranks of the militant Anarchists, his
spirit unbroken, his soul full of enthusiasm for the ideals
of his youth. The artist comrade is now among the well-
known illustrators of New York. The suicide candidate
left America shortly after his unfortunate attempt to die,
and was subsequently arrested and condemned to eight
years of hard labor for smuggling Anarchist literature into

Germany. He, too, has withstood the terrors of prison
life, and has returned to the revolutionary movement,
since earning the well-deserved reputation of a talented
writer in Germany.

To avoid indefinite camping in the parks Emma Goldman finally was forced to move into a house on Third Street,
occupied exclusively by prostitutes. There, among the
outcasts of our good Christian society, she could at least
rent a bit of a room, and find rest and work at her sewing
machine. The women of the street showed more
refinement of feeling and sincere sympathy than the
priests of the Church. But human endurance had been
exhausted by overmuch suffering and privation. There
was a complete physical breakdown, and the renowned
agitator was removed to the “Bohemian Republic” — a
large tenement house which derived its euphonious
appellation from the fact that its occupants were mostly

Bohemian Anarchists. Here Emma Goldman found
friends ready to aid her. Justus Schwab, one of the finest
representatives of the German revolutionary period of
that time, and Dr. Solotaroff were indefatigable in the
care of the patient. Here, too, she met Edward Brady, the
new friendship subsequently ripening into close intimacy.

Brady had been an active participant in the revolutionary
movement of Austria and had, at the time of his
acquaintance with Emma Goldman, lately been released
from an Austrian prison after an incarceration of ten
years.

Physicians diagnosed the illness as consumption, and the patient was advised to leave New York. She went to

Rochester, in the hope that the home circle would help
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
conservative parents could not sympathize with the
idealist aspirations of Emma Goldman and did not
approve of her mode of life, they now received their sick
daughter with open arms. The rest and care enjoyed in
the parental home, and the cheering presence of the
beloved sister Helene, proved so beneficial that within a
short time she was sufficiently restored to resume her
energetic activity.

There is no rest in the life of Emma Goldman. Ceaseless
effort and continuous striving toward the conceived goal
are the essentials of her nature. Too much precious time
had already been wasted. It was imperative to resume
her labors immediately. The country was in the throes of
a crisis, and thousands of unemployed crowded the
streets of the large industrial centers. Cold and hungry
they tramped through the land in the vain search for
work and bread. The Anarchists developed a strenuous
propaganda among the unemployed and the strikers. A monster demonstration of striking cloakmakers and of
the unemployed took place at Union Square, New York.

Emma Goldman was one of the invited speakers. She
delivered an impassioned speech, picturing in fiery words
the misery of the wage slave’s life, and quoted the
famous maxim of Cardinal Manning: “Necessity knows no
law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share
of his neighbor’s bread.” She concluded her exhortation
with the words: “Ask for work. If they do not give you
work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or
bread, then take bread.”

The following day she left for Philadelphia, where she
was to address a public meeting. The capitalist press
again raised the alarm. If Socialists and Anarchists were
to be permitted to continue agitating, there was
imminent danger that the workingmen would soon learn
to understand the manner in which they are robbed of
the joy and happiness of life. Such a possibility was to be
prevented at all cost. The Chief of Police of New York,

Byrnes, procured a court order for the arrest of Emma

Goldman. She was detained by the Philadelphia
authorities and incarcerated for several days in the

Moyamensing prison, awaiting the extradition papers
which Byrnes intrusted to Detective Jacobs. This man

Jacobs (whom Emma Goldman again met several years later under very unpleasant circumstances) proposed to
her, while she was returning a prisoner to New York, to
betray the cause of labor. In the name of his superior,

Chief Byrnes, he offered lucrative reward. How stupid
men sometimes are! What poverty of psychologic
observation to imagine the possibility of betrayal on the
part of a young Russian idealist, who had willingly
sacrificed all personal considerations to help in labor’s
emancipation.

In October, 1893, Emma Goldman was tried in the
criminal courts of New York on the charge of inciting to
riot. The “intelligent” jury ignored the testimony of the
twelve witnesses for the defense in favor of the evidence
given by one single man — Detective Jacobs. She was
found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in the
penitentiary at Blackwell’s Island. Since the foundation of
the Republic she was the first woman — Mrs. Surratt
excepted — to be imprisoned for a political offense.

Respectable society had long before stamped upon her
the Scarlet Letter.

Emma Goldman passed her time in the penitentiary in
the capacity of nurse in the prison hospital. Here she
found opportunity to shed some rays of kindness into the
dark lives of the unfortunates whose sisters of the street
did not disdain two years previously to share with her the same house. She also found in prison opportunity to
study English and its literature, and to familiarize herself
with the great American writers. In Bret Harte, Mark

Twain, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson she found
great treasures.

She left Blackwell’s Island in the month of August, 1894,
a woman of twenty-five, developed and matured, and
intellectually transformed. Back into the arena, richer in
experience, purified by suffering. She did not feel herself
deserted and alone any more. Many hands were
stretched out to welcome her. There were at the time
numerous intellectual oases in New York. The saloon of

Justus Schwab, at Number Fifty, First Street, was the
center where gathered Anarchists, littérateurs, and
bohemians. Among others she also met at this time a
number of American Anarchists, and formed the
friendship of Voltairine de Cleyre, Wm. C. Owen, Miss

Van Etton, and Dyer D. Lum, former editor of
the Alarm and executor of the last wishes of the Chicago martyrs. In John Swinton, the noble old fighter for liberty,
she found one of her staunchest friends. Other
intellectual centers there were Solidarity, published by John Edelman; Liberty, by the Individualist Anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker; the Rebel, by Harry Kelly; Der

Sturmvogel, a German Anarchist publication, edited by Claus Timmermann; Der Arme Teufel, whose presiding
genius was the inimitable Robert Reitzel. Through Arthur

Brisbane, now chief lieutenant of William Randolph

Hearst, she became acquainted with the writings of

Fourier. Brisbane then was not yet submerged in the
swamp of political corruption. He sent Emma Goldman
an amiable letter to Blackwell’s Island, together with the
biography of his father, the enthusiastic American
disciple of Fourier.

Emma Goldman became, upon her release from the
penitentiary, a factor in the public life of New York. She
was appreciated in radical ranks for her devotion, her
idealism, and earnestness. Various persons sought her
friendship, and some tried to persuade her to aid in the
furtherance of their special side issues. Thus Rev.

Parkhurst, during the Lexow investigation, did his utmost
to induce her to join the Vigilance Committee in order to
fight Tammany Hall. Maria Louise, the moving spirit of a
social center, acted as Parkhurst’s go between. It is
hardly necessary to mention what reply the latter
received from Emma Goldman. Incidentally, Maria Louise
subsequently became a Mahatma. During the free-silver
campaign, ex-Burgess McLuckie, one of the most genuine
personalities in the Homestead strike, visited New York in
an endeavor to enthuse the local radicals for free silver.

He also attempted to interest Emma Goldman, but with
no greater success than Mahatma Maria Louise of

Parkhurst-Lexow fame.

In 1894 the struggle of the Anarchists in France reached
its highest expression. The white terror on the part of the

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

Anarchists throughout the world followed this social
struggle. Propaganda by deed found its reverberating
echo in almost all countries. In order to better familiarize
herself with conditions in the old world, Emma Goldman
left for Europe, in the year 1895. After a lecture tour in

England and Scotland, she went to Vienna where she
entered the Allgemeine Krankenhaus to prepare herself as midwife and nurse, and where at the same time she
studied social conditions. She also found opportunity to
acquaint herself with the newest literature of Europe:

Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, Thomas Hardy, and
other artist rebels were read with great enthusiasm.

In the autumn of 1896 she returned to New York by way
of Zurich and Paris. The project of Alexander Berkman’s
liberation was on hand. The barbaric sentence of twenty-
two years had roused tremendous indignation among
the radical elements. It was known that the Pardon

Board of Pennsylvania would look to Carnegie and Frick for advice in the case of Alexander Berkman. It was
therefore suggested that these Sultans of Pennsylvania
be approached — not with a view of obtaining their
grace, but with the request that they do not attempt to
influence the Board. Ernest Crosby offered to see

Carnegie, on condition that Alexander Berkman
repudiate his act. That, however, was absolutely out of
the question. He would never be guilty of such
forswearing of his own personality and self-respect.

These efforts led to friendly relations between Emma

Goldman and the circle of Ernest Crosby, Bolton Hall, and

Leonard Abbott. In the year 1897 she undertook her first
great lecture tour, which extended as far as California.

This tour popularized her name as the representative of
the oppressed, her eloquence ringing from coast to
coast. In California Emma Goldman became friendly with
the members of the Isaak family, and learned to
appreciate their efforts for the Cause. Under tremendous
obstacles the Isaaks first published the Firebrand and, upon its suppression by the Postal Department, the Free

Society. It was also during this tour that Emma Goldman met that grand old rebel of sexual freedom, Moses

Harman.

During the Spanish-American war the spirit of chauvinism was at its highest tide. To check this dangerous situation,
and at the same time collect funds for the revolutionary

Cubans, Emma Goldman became affiliated with the Latin
comrades, among others with Gori, Esteve, Palaviccini,

Merlino, Petruccini, and Ferrara. In the year 1899
followed another protracted tour of agitation,
terminating on the Pacific Coast. Repeated arrests and
accusations, though without ultimate bad results,
marked every propaganda tour.

In November of the same year the untiring agitator went
on a second lecture tour to England and Scotland, closing
her journey with the first International Anarchist

Congress at Paris. It was at the time of the Boer war, and
again jingoism was at its height, as two years previously
it had celebrated its orgies during the Spanish-American
war. Various meetings, both in England and Scotland,
were disturbed and broken up by patriotic mobs. Emma

Goldman found on this occasion the opportunity of again
meeting various English comrades and interesting
personalities like Tom Mann and the sisters Rossetti, the
gifted daughters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then
publishers of the Anarchist review, the Torch. One of her life-long hopes found here its fulfillment: she came in
close and friendly touch with Peter Kropotkin, Enrico

Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov, and Louise Michel. Old warriors in the cause of humanity,
whose deeds have enthused thousands of followers
throughout the world, and whose life and work have
inspired other thousands with noble idealism and self-
sacrifice. Old warriors they, yet ever young with the
courage of earlier days, unbroken in spirit and filled with
the firm hope of the final triumph of Anarchy.

The chasm in the revolutionary labor movement, which
resulted from the disruption of the Internationale, could not be bridged any more. Two social philosophies were
engaged in bitter combat. The International Congress in

1889, at Paris; in 1892, at Zurich, and in 1896, at London,
produced irreconcilable differences. The majority of

Social Democrats, forswearing their libertarian past and
becoming politicians, succeeded in excluding the
revolutionary and Anarchist delegates. The latter decided
thenceforth to hold separate congresses. Their first
congress was to take place in 1900, at Paris. The Socialist
renegade Millerand, who had climbed into the Ministry
of the Interior, here played a Judas rôle. The congress of
the revolutionists was suppressed, 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 his object. A
number of delegates succeeded in holding a secret
conference in the house of a comrade outside of Paris,
where various points of theory and tactics were
discussed. Emma Goldman took considerable part in
these proceedings, and on that occasion came in contact
with numerous representatives of the Anarchist
movement of Europe.

Owing to the suppression of the congress, the delegates
were in danger of being expelled from France. At this
time also came the bad news from America regarding
another unsuccessful attempt to liberate Alexander

Berkman, proving a great shock to Emma Goldman. In

November, 1900, she returned to America to devote
herself to her profession of nurse, at the same time
taking an active part in the American propaganda.

Among other activities she organized monster meetings
of protest against the terrible outrages of the Spanish
government, perpetrated upon the political prisoners
tortured in Montjuich.

In her vocation as nurse Emma Goldman enjoyed many
opportunities of meeting the most unusual and peculiar
characters. Few would have identified the “notorious Anarchist” in the small blonde woman, simply attired in
the uniform of a nurse. Soon after her return from

Europe she became acquainted with a patient by the
name of Mrs. Stander, a morphine fiend, suffering
excruciating agonies. She required careful attention to
enable her to supervise a very important business she
conducted, — that of Mrs. Warren. In Third Street, near

Third Avenue, was situated her private residence, and
near it, connected by a separate entrance, was her place
of business. One evening, the nurse, upon entering the
room of her patient, suddenly came face to face with a
male visitor, bull necked and of brutal appearance. The
man was no other than Mr. Jacobs, the detective who
seven years previously had brought Emma Goldman a
prisoner from Philadelphia and who had attempted to
persuade her, on their way to New York, to betray the
cause of the workingmen. It would be difficult to
describe the expression of bewilderment on the
countenance of the man as he so unexpectedly faced

Emma Goldman, the nurse of his mistress. The brute was
suddenly transformed into a gentleman, exerting himself
to excuse his shameful behavior on the previous
occasion. Jacobs was the “protector” of Mrs. Stander,
and go-between for the house and the police. Several
years later, as one of the detective staff of District

Attorney Jerome, he committed perjury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year. He is now probably
employed by some private detective agency, a desirable
pillar of respectable society.

In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowell

Institute of Massachusetts to deliver a series of lectures
on Russian literature. It was his second American tour,
and naturally the comrades were anxious to use his
presence for the benefit of the movement. Emma

Goldman entered into correspondence with Kropotkin
and succeeded in securing his consent to arrange for him
a series of lectures. She also devoted her energies to
organizing the tours of other well-known Anarchists,
principally those of Charles W. Mowbray and John

Turner. Similarly she always took part in all the activities
of the movement, ever ready to give her time, ability,
and energy to the Cause.

On the sixth of September, 1901, President McKinley was
shot by Leon Czolgosz at Buffalo. Immediately an
unprecedented campaign of persecution was set in
motion against Emma Goldman as the best known

Anarchist in the country. Although there was absolutely
no foundation for the accusation, she, together with
other prominent Anarchists, was arrested in Chicago,
kept in confinement for several weeks, and subjected to
severest cross-examination. Never before in the history of the country had such a terrible man-hunt taken place
against a person in public life. But the efforts of police
and press to connect Emma Goldman with Czolgosz
proved futile. Yet the episode left her wounded to the
heart. The physical suffering, the humiliation and
brutality at the hands of the police she could bear. The
depression of soul was far worse. She was over whelmed
by the realization of the stupidity, lack of understanding,
and vileness which characterized the events of those
terrible days. The attitude of misunderstanding on the
part of the majority of her own comrades toward

Czolgosz almost drove her to desperation. Stirred to the
very inmost of her soul, she published an article on

Czolgosz in which she tried to explain the deed in its
social and individual aspects. As once before, after

Berkman’s act, she now also was unable to find quarters;
like a veritable wild animal she was driven from place to
place. This terrible persecution and, especially, the
attitude of her comrades made it impossible for her to
continue propaganda. The soreness of body and soul had
first to heal. During 1901–1903 she did not resume the
platform. As “Miss Smith” she lived a quiet life, practicing
her profession and devoting her leisure to the study of
literature and, particularly, to the modern drama, which
she considers one of the greatest disseminators of radical ideas and enlightened feeling.

Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Goldman
accomplished. Her name was brought before the public
with greater frequency and emphasis than ever before,
the malicious harassing of the much maligned agitator
arousing strong sympathy in many circles. Persons in
various walks of life began to get interested in her
struggle and her ideas. A better understanding and
appreciation were now beginning to manifest
themselves.

The arrival in America of the English Anarchist, John

Turner, induced Emma Goldman to leave her retirement.

Again she threw herself into her public activities,
organizing an energetic movement for the defense of

Turner, whom the Immigration authorities condemned to
deportation on account of the Anarchist exclusion law,
passed after the death of McKinley.

When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New

York to acquaint the American public with Russian
dramatic art, Emma Goldman became the manager of
the undertaking. By much patience and perseverance she
succeeded in raising the necessary funds to introduce the

Russian artists to the 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 discussed philosophy,
drama, and literature at their five o’clock teas, was the

“notorious” Emma Goldman. If the latter should
someday write her autobiography, she will no doubt
have many interesting anecdotes to relate in connection
with these experiences.

The weekly Anarchist publication Free Society, issued by the Isaak family, was forced to suspend in consequence
of the nation-wide fury that swept the country after the
death of McKinley. To fill out the gap Emma Goldman, in
co-operation with Max Baginski and other comrades,
decided to publish a monthly magazine devoted to the
furtherance of Anarchist ideas in life and literature. The
first issue of Mother Earth appeared in the month of

March, 1906, the initial expenses of the periodical partly
covered by the proceeds of a theater benefit given by

Orleneff, Mme. Nazimova, and their company, in favor of
the Anarchist magazine. Under tremendous difficulties
and obstacles the tireless propagandist has succeeded in continuing Mother Earth uninterruptedly since 1906 —
an achievement rarely equalled in the annals of radical
publications.

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

Pennsylvania, where he had passed the best fourteen
years of his life. No one had believed in the possibility of
his survival. His liberation terminated a nightmare of
fourteen years for Emma Goldman, and an important
chapter of her career was thus concluded.

Nowhere had the birth of the Russian revolution aroused
such vital and active response as among the Russians
living in America. The heroes of the revolutionary
movement in Russia, Tchaikovsky, Mme. Breshkovskaia,

Gershuni, and others visited these shores to waken the
sympathies of the American people toward the struggle
for liberty, and to collect aid for its continuance and
support. The success of these efforts was to a
considerable extent due to the exertions, eloquence, and
the talent for organization on the part of Emma

Goldman. This opportunity enabled her to give valuable
services to the struggle for liberty in her native land. It is not generally known that it is the Anarchists who are
mainly instrumental in insuring the success, moral as well
as financial, of most of the radical undertakings. The

Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledged appreciation; the needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, and to
these he devotes his energy and abilities. Yet it may be
mentioned that some otherwise decent folks, though at
all times anxious for Anarchist support and co-operation,
are ever willing to monopolize all the credit for the work
done. During the last several decades it was chiefly the

Anarchists who had organized all the great revolutionary
efforts, and aided in every struggle for liberty. But for
fear of shocking the respectable mob, who looks upon
the Anarchists as the apostles of Satan, and because of
their social position in bourgeois society, the would-be
radicals ignore the activity of the Anarchists.

In 1907 Emma Goldman participated as delegate to the
second Anarchist Congress, at Amsterdam. She was
intensely active in all its proceedings and supported the
organization of the Anarchist Internationale. Together with the other American delegate, Max Baginski, she
submitted to the congress an exhaustive report of

American conditions, closing with the following
characteristic remarks:

“The charge that Anarchism is destructive, rather than
constructive, and that, therefore, Anarchism is opposed
to organization, is one of the many falsehoods spread by
our opponents. They confound our present social
institutions with organization; hence they fail to understand how we can oppose the former, and yet
favor the latter. The fact, however, is that the two are
not identical.

The State is commonly regarded as the highest form of
organization. But is it in reality a true organization? Is it not rather an arbitrary institution, cunningly imposed
upon the masses?

Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is
farther from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of
the rich against the poor.

We are asked to believe that the Army is an organization,
but a close investigation will show that it is nothing else
than a cruel instrument of blind force.

The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of
learning, are they not models of organization, offering
the people fine opportunities for instruction? Far from it.

The school, more than any other institution, is a veritable
barrack, where the human mind is drilled and
manipulated into submission to various social and moral
spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of
exploitation and oppression.

Organization, as we understand it, however, is a different thing. It is based, primarily, on freedom. It is a natural
and voluntary grouping of energies to secure results
beneficial to humanity.

It is the harmony of organic growth which produces
variety of color and form, the complete whole we admire
in the flower. Analogously will the organized activity of
free human beings, imbued with the spirit of solidarity,
result in the perfection of social harmony, which we call

Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makes non-
authoritarian organization of common interests possible,
since it abolishes the existing antagonism between
individuals and classes.

Under present conditions the antagonism of economic
and social interests results in relentless war among the
social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in
the way of a co-operative 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 complete
organism, so does the individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his highest form of
development.

An organization, in the true sense, cannot result from the
combination of mere nonentities. It must be composed
of self-conscious, intelligent individualities. Indeed, the
total of the possibilities and activities of an organization
is represented in the expression of individual energies.

It therefore logically follows that the greater the number
of strong, self-conscious personalities in an organization,
the less danger of stagnation, and the more intense its
life element.

Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization
without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the
pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will
make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of
existence, — the savage struggle which undermines the
finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss.

In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization
which will establish well-being for all.

The germ of such an organization can be found in that
form of trades-unionism which has done away with
centralization, bureaucracy, and discipline, and which
favors independent and direct action on the part of its members.”

The very considerable progress of Anarchist ideas in

America can best be gauged by the remarkable success
of the three extensive lecture tours of Emma Goldman
since the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Each tour
extended over new territory, including localities where

Anarchism had never before received a hearing. But the
most gratifying aspect of her untiring efforts is the
tremendous sale of Anarchist literature, whose
propagandistic effect cannot be estimated. It was during
one of these tours that a remarkable incident happened,
strikingly demonstrating the inspiring potentialities of
the Anarchist idea. In San Francisco, in 1908, Emma

Goldman’s lecture attracted a soldier of the United

States Army, William Buwalda. For daring to attend an

Anarchist meeting, the free Republic court-martialed

Buwalda and imprisoned him for one year. Thanks to the
regenerating power of the new philosophy, the
government lost a soldier, but the cause of liberty gained
a man.

A propagandist of Emma Goldman’s importance is
necessarily a sharp thorn to the reaction. She is looked
upon as a danger to the continued existence of
authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then, that the
enemy resorts to any and all means to make her impossible. A systematic attempt to suppress her
activities was organized a year ago by the united police
force of the country. But like all previous similar
attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energetic
protests on the part of the intellectual element of

America succeeded in overthrowing the dastardly
conspiracy against free speech. Another attempt to make

Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by the Federal
authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of the
rights of citizenship, the government revoked the
citizenship papers of her husband, whom she had
married at the youthful age of eighteen, and whose
whereabouts, if he be alive, could not be determined for
the last two decades. The great government of the
glorious United States did not hesitate to stoop to the
most despicable methods to accomplish that
achievement. But as her citizenship had never proved of
use to Emma Goldman, she can bear the loss with a light
heart.

There are personalities who possess such a powerful
individuality that by its very force they exert the most
potent influence over the best representatives of their
time. Michael Bakunin was such a personality. But for
him, Richard Wagner had never written Die Kunst und die

Revolution. Emma Goldman is a similar personality. She is a strong factor in the socio-political life of America. By
virtue of her eloquence, energy, and brilliant mentality,
she moulds the minds and hearts of thousands of her
auditors.

Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering humanity,
and an inexorable honesty toward herself, are the
leading traits of Emma Goldman. No person, whether
friend or foe, shall presume to control her goal or dictate
her mode of life. She would perish rather than sacrifice
her convictions, or the right of self-ownership of soul and
body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of
theoretic Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not
merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in
living it, — and that is the one supreme, unforgivable
crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to consider her
ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to
make concessions to existing society and compromise
with old prejudices, — then even the most radical views
could be pardoned in her. But that she takes her
radicalism seriously; that it has permeated her blood and
marrow to the extent where she not merely teaches but
also practices her convictions — this shocks even the
radical Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life;
she associates with publicans — hence the indignation of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

It is no mere coincidence that such divergent writers as

Pietro Gori and William Marion Reedy find similar traits
in their characterization of Emma Goldman. In a
contribution to La Questione Sociale, Pietro Gori calls her a “moral power, a woman who, with the vision of a sibyl,
prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the
oppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep
earnestness, analyses the ills of society, and portrays,
with artist touch, the coming dawn of humanity, founded
on equality, brotherhood, and liberty.”

William Reedy sees in Emma Goldman the “daughter of
the dream, her gospel a vision which is the vision of
every truly great-souled man and woman who has ever
lived.”

Cowards who fear the consequences of their deeds have
coined the word of philosophic Anarchism. Emma

Goldman is too sincere, too defiant, to seek safety
behind such paltry pleas. She is an Anarchist, pure and
simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed
by Josiah 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 soldier in the social struggle it is a point of honor to come in
conflict with the powers of darkness and tyranny, and

Emma Goldman is proud to count among her best friends
and comrades men and women who bear the wounds
and scars received in battle.

In the words of Voltairine de Cleyre, characterizing Emma

Goldman after the latter’s imprisonment in 1893: The
spirit that animates Emma Goldman is the only one
which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the
tyrant from his tyranny — the spirit which is willing to
dare and suffer.

Hippolyte Havel.

New York, December, 1910.

Preface

Some twenty-one years ago I heard the first great

Anarchist speaker — the inimitable John Most. It seemed
to me then, and for many years after, that the spoken
word hurled forth among the masses with such
wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could
never be erased from the human mind and soul. How
could any one of all the multitudes who flocked to Most’s
meetings escape his prophetic voice! Surely they had but
to hear him to throw off their old beliefs, and see the
truth and beauty of Anarchism!

My one great longing then was to be able to speak with
the tongue of John Most, — that I, too, might thus reach
the masses. Oh, for the naivety of Youth’s enthusiasm! It
is the time when the hardest thing seems but child’s play.

It is the only period in life worthwhile. Alas! This period is but of short duration. Like Spring, the Sturm und

Drang period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and delicate, to be matured or killed according to its
powers of resistance against a thousand vicissitudes.

My great faith in the wonder worker, the spoken word, is
no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken
thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral
propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people
from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The
very fact that most people attend meetings only if
aroused by newspaper sensations, or because they
expect to be amused, is proof that they really have no
inner urge to learn.

It is altogether different with the written mode of human
expression. No one, unless intensely interested in
progressive ideas, will bother with serious books. That
leads me to another discovery made after many years of
public activity. It is this: All claims of education
notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his
mind craves. Already this truth is recognized by most
modern educators in relation to the immature mind. I
think it is equally true regarding the adult. Anarchists or
revolutionists can no more be made than musicians. All
that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought.

Whether something vital will develop depends largely on
the fertility of the human soil, though the quality of the
intellectual seed must not be overlooked.

In meetings the audience is distracted by a thousand
non-essentials. The speaker, though ever so eloquent,
cannot escape the restlessness of the crowd, with the
inevitable result that he will fail to strike root. In all probability he will not even do justice to himself.

The relation between the writer and the reader is more
intimate. True, books are only what we want them to be;
rather, what we read into them. That we can do so
demonstrates the importance of written as against oral
expression. It is this certainty which has induced me to
gather in one volume my ideas on various topics of
individual and social importance. They represent the
mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years, — the
conclusions derived after many changes and inner
revisions.

I am not sanguine enough to hope that my readers will
be as numerous as those who have heard me. But I
prefer to reach the few who really want to learn, rather
than the many who come to be amused.

As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory
remarks do but detract from the ideas set forth.

However, I wish to forestall two objections which will
undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference to the essay
on Anarchism; the other, on Minorities versus Majorities.

“Why do you not say how things will be operated under

Anarchism?” is a question I have had to meet thousands
of times. Because I believe that Anarchism cannot
consistently impose an iron-clad program or method on the future. The things every new generation has to fight,
and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the
past, which holds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as

I understand it, leaves posterity free to develop its own
particular systems, in harmony with its needs. Our most
vivid imagination cannot foresee the potentialities of a
race set free from external restraints. How, then, can
anyone assume to map out a line of conduct for those to
come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure,
fresh air, must guard against the tendency to fetter the
future. If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish
of the past and present, we will leave to posterity the
greatest and safest heritage of all ages.

The most disheartening tendency common among
readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a
criterion of the writer’s ideas or personality. Friedrich

Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak
because he believed in the Uebermensch. It does not
occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that
this vision of the Uebermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings
and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner
naught but the apostle of the theory “each for himself,
the devil take the hind one.” That Stirner’s individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly
ignored. Yet, it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated
individuals, whose free efforts make society.

These examples bring me to the objection that will be
raised to Minorities versus Majorities. No doubt, I shall be excommunicated as an enemy of the people, because

I repudiate the mass as a creative factor. I shall prefer
that rather than be guilty of the demagogic platitudes so
commonly in vogue as a bait for the people. I realize the
malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only
too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous
palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to
recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with
social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my
faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the
latter becomes free to choose his associates for a
common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony
out of this world of chaos and inequality.

For the rest, my book must speak for itself.

Emma Goldman

Chapter 1: What it Really Stands for

Anarchy

Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood,

Thou art the grisly terror of our age.

“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,

”Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.”

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

The truth that lies behind a word to find,

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

They shall continue blind among the blind.

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

Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.

I give thee to the future! Thine secure

When each at least unto himself shall waken.

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

I cannot tell — but it the earth shall see!

I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will

Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!

John Henry Mackay

The history of human growth and development is at the
same time the history of the terrible struggle of every
new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In
its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means
to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or
period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we
retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the
enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed
in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the
thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the
convict’s garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against
the spirit that is serenely marching on.

Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other
ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary
and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs
meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the
world it aims to reconstruct.

To deal even remotely with all that is being said and
done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of
a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the
principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to
elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism
is that it brings to light the relation between so-called
intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very
strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The
ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by
mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child.

“Why?” “Because.” Yet the opposition of the uneducated
to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of
the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is
impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism
stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be
repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent
man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough
knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or
false interpretation.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one
already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried
out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the
existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme
that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not
whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish;
rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to
leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as
sustain, new life. In the light of this conception,

Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea,
it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept
at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about

Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed
against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore

Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the
proverbial bad man does to the child, — a black monster
bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and
violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to
know that the most violent element in society is
ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing

Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that

Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s
forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic
growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is
merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that
it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to
condemn than to think. The widespread mental
indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only
too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given
idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most
people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze
every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the
average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin
with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based
on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that
all forms of government rest on violence, and are
therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic
basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main
evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the
solution of that evil can be brought about only through
the consideration of every phase of life, — individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

A thorough perusal of the history of human development
will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each
other; elements that are only now beginning to be
understood, not as foreign to each other, but as closely
related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper
environment: the individual and social instincts. The
individual and society have waged a relentless and
bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of
the other. The individual and social instincts, — the one a
most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth,
aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent
factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being.

The explanation of the storm raging within the individual,
and between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek.

The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much
less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt
him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of
man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior
powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete
surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which
continues to be the 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 refrain: Man can have all the glories of
the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself.

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God,
the State, and society are non-existent, that their
promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled
only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is
therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in
nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the
individual and the social instincts, any more than there is
between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle
of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the
element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The
individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence
of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing
the element to keep the life essence — that is, the
individual — pure and strong.

“The one thing of value in the world,” says Emerson, “is
the active soul; this every man contains within him. The
soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and
creates.” In other words, the individual instinct is the
thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees
and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come a still
greater truth, the re-born social soul.

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the
phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and
pacifier of the two forces for individual and social
harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so
far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and
social instincts, the individual and society.

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the
dominion of human needs; and Government, the
dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of
man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails.

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it
humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man
is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has
created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so
terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and
blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism
rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break
your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until
you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the
dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all
progress.

Property, the dominion of man’s needs, the denial of the
right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property
claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the
same refrain, even as religion, “Sacrifice! Abnegate!

Submit!” The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his
prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face
toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is
preparing to strike the monster dead.

“Property is robbery,” said the great French Anarchist

Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the
robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man,
property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned
him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not
even the time-worn excuse that man does not create
enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of
economics knows that the productivity of labor within
the last few decades far exceeds normal demand. But
what are normal demands to an abnormal institution?

The only demand that property recognizes is its own
gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth
means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit,
the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is
particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous
national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her
wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are
wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of
human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any
business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is
inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple
lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is
growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in

America last year); the returns to the masses, who help
to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America
continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our
business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the
latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and
decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being
robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the
power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in
things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and
surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to
wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for
thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth.

What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous
things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence, — too
weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there
are people who extol this deadening method of
centralized production as the proudest achievement of
our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to
continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not
want to know that centralization is not only the death-
knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and
science, all these being impossible in a clock-like,
mechanical atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of
production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a
perfect personality as “one who develops under perfect
conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger.”

A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of
society where man is free to choose the mode of work,
the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to
whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or
the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist, — the result of
inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work
as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its
economic arrangements must consist of voluntary
productive and distributive associations, gradually
developing into free communism, as the best means of
producing with the least waste of human energy.

Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the
individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all
times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only
under complete individual and social freedom,

Anarchism directs its forces against the third and
greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State,
organized authority, or statutory law, — the dominion of
human conduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as
property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and
stifled man’s needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit,
dictating every phase of conduct. “All government in
essence,” says Emerson, “is tyranny.” It matters not
whether it is government by divine right or majority rule.

In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of
the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest

American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: “Government,
what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,
endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity,
but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the
vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made
man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for
it, even the well-disposed are daily made agents of injustice.”

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the
arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do
no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and
punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining
themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the
annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right
when she maintains that “the State only aims at instilling
those qualities in its public by which its demands are
obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment
is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its
atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties,
which require treatment and spacious expansion,
inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a
taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an
exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public,
monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving
humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road
between two walls.”

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of
the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes.

Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous
with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small
minorities, — the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political
freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for
the purpose of human sacrifice.

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not
agree that government, organized authority, or the State,
is necessary only to maintain or protect property and
monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the
miraculous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless
admits that “it is at present a huge machine for robbing
and slave-driving of the poor by brute force.” This being
the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes
to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to
exist.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of people who
continue in the fatal belief that government rests on
natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony,
that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy
man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine
these contentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself
freely and spontaneously without any external force, in
harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light,
air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression
needs not the machinery of government, needs not the
club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such
laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only
spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do
not maintain themselves through such harmonious
factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force,
and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus

Blackstone is right when he says, “Human laws are
invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature.”

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of
thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to
governments any capacity for order or social harmony.

Order derived through submission and maintained by
terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only

“order” that governments have ever maintained. True
social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of
interests. In a society where those who always work
never have anything, while those who never work enjoy
everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence
social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized
authority meets this grave situation is by extending still
greater privileges to those who have already
monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of
government — laws, police, soldiers, the courts,
legislatures, prisons, — is strenuously engaged in

“harmonizing” the most antagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that
they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the

State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every
written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes,
killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has
come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has
failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible
scourge of its own creation.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every
institution of today, economic, political, social, and
moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong
channels; so long as most people are out of place doing
the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes
can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What
does society, as it exists today, know of the process of
despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the
human soul must pass on its way to crime and
degradation. Who that knows this terrible process can
fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin:

“Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading
effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate
the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society
by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for
in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of
aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison
walls and there see what human beings become when
deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal
keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging,
piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire
apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination
which ought to be brought to an end.”

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too
absurd to merit consideration. If society were only
relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class,
and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of
protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would
contain an abundance for all, including even the
occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider
that laziness results either from special privileges, or
physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane
system of production fosters both, and the most
astounding phenomenon is that people should want to
work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its
deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of
color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man
should find in work both recreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government,
with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be
done away with. At best it has but imposed one single
mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and
social variations and needs. In destroying government
and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the
self-respect and independence of the individual from all
restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can
man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he
learn to think and move, and give the very best in him.

Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social
bonds which knit men together, and which are the true
foundation of a normal social life.

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if
not, will it endure under Anarchism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been
committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to
policeman, from the flat headed parson to the visionless
dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of
human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the
more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone
speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every
heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

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

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace
and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors
of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the
human mind from the dominion of religion; the
liberation of the human body from the dominion of
property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of
government. Anarchism stands for a social order based
on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of
producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee
to every human being free access to the earth and full
enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to
individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and
women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the
close and studious observation of the tendencies of
modern society: individual liberty and economic equality,
the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in
man.

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose,
a theory of the future to be realized through divine
inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of

Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad
program to be carried out under all circumstances.

Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each
place and clime, and of the intellectual and
temperamental requirements of the individual. The
serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different
methods for social reconstruction than the intense,
overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter

Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the
economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more
drastic measures than would England or America.

Anarchism does not stand for military drill and
uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of
revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders
human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a
means of bringing about the great social change.

“All voting,” says Thoreau, “is a sort of gaming, like
checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and
wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency.

Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A
wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance,
nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”

A close examination of the machinery of politics and its
achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing
but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to
ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people.

Laws have been passed and enactments made for the
improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven
only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for
mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In

States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is
at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full
political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most
brazen zenith.

Even were the workers able to have their own
representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians
are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process
of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying,
cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby
the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that
is a complete demoralization of character and conviction,
until nothing is left that would make one hope for
anything from such a human derelict. Time and time
again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe,
and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians,
only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not
become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps
not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert
the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has
been shown in numerous instances. The State is the
economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there
be, would either remain true to their political faith and
lose their economic support, or they would cling to their
economic master and be utterly unable to do the
slightest good. The political arena leaves one no
alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

The political superstition is still holding sway over the
hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of
liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is
willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct
action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws
and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But
defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the
salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity,
self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free,
independent spirits, for “men who are men, and who
have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your
hand through.”

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct
action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their
posterity would still wear the King’s coat. If not for the
direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America
would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the
trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will
have to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism,
the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its
existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and
government have attempted to crush the trade-union
movement, and condemned the exponents of man’s
right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they
sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading,
and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of

English labor unions), direct, revolutionary, economic
action has become so strong a force in the battle for
industrial liberty as to make the world realize the
tremendous importance of labor’s power. The General

Strike, the supreme expression of the economic
consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America
but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to
win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general
protest.

Direct action, having proven effective along economic
lines, is equally potent in the environment of the
individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his
being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally
set him free. Direct action against the authority in the
shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct
action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our
moral code, is the logical, consistent method of

Anarchism.

Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real
social change has ever come about without a revolution.

People are either not familiar with their history, or they
have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today
permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science,
art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic
betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition
to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the
spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the
sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social
harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is
reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the

Dawn.

Chapter 2: Minorities Versus Majorities

If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times,

I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit,
dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life

— production, politics, and education — rests on
quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride
in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been
replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who
turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to
themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of
mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life’s
comforts and peace, has merely increased man’s burden.

In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to
its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and
uprightness are completely swamped by the array of
numbers. In the struggle for supremacy the various
political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit,
cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one
who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the
victor. That is the only god, — Success. As to what
expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no
moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to
verify this sad fact.

Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government stand so thoroughly
exposed; never before were the American people
brought face to face with the Judas nature of that
political body, which has claimed for years to be
absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our
institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties
of the people.

Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that
even the blind could see them, it needed but to muster
up its minions, and its supremacy was assured. Thus the
very victims, duped, betrayed, outraged a hundred times,
decided, not against, but in favor of the victor.

Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray
the traditions of American liberty? Where was its
judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it, the
majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. Lacking
utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has
always placed its destiny in the hands of others.

Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its
leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right:

“The most dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our
midst are the compact majorities, the damned compact
majority.” Without ambition or initiative, the compact
mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always
opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.

The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all
politicians, the Socialists included, that ours is an era of
individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not
probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this
view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the
world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of
the situation? Their success, however, is due not to
individualism, but to the inertia, the cravenness, the
utter submission of the mass. The latter wants but to be
dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As to individualism,
at no time in human history did it have less chance of
expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal,
healthy manner.

The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose,
the artist or writer of original ideas, the independent
scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of
social changes are daily pushed to the wall by men
whose learning and creative ability have become
decrepit with age.

Educators of Ferrer’s type are nowhere tolerated, while
the dietitians of predigested food, à la Professors Eliot
and Butler, are the successful perpetuators of an age of
nonentities, of automatons. In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde Fitches are the
idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate the
beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an

Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips.

They are like solitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the
multitude.

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for
the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this
palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that
needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre,
the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief
literary output.

Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same
sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and
thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of
the art manufacture. Certainly, none but a majority taste
would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in
conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that
infests American cities has as much relation to true art,
as a totem to a Michael Angelo. Yet that is the only art
that succeeds. The true artistic genius, who will not cater
to accepted notions, who exercises originality, and
strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched
existence. His work may some day become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart’s blood had been exhausted;
not until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of
an idealles and visionless mob has done to death the
heritage of the master.

It is said that the artist of today cannot create because

Prometheus like he is bound to the rock of economic
necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was dependent on his patron saint, no less than
the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art
connoisseurs of those days were far away from the
madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to
worship at the shrine of the master.

The art protector of our time knows but one criterion,
one value, — the dollar. He is not concerned about the
quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars
his purchase implies. Thus the financier in Mirbeau’s Les
Affaires sont les Affaires points to some blurred
arrangement in colors, saying: “See how great it is; it cost

50,000 francs.” Just like our own 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 independence of
thought. That this should be so terribly apparent in a
country whose symbol is democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the majority.

Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: “In our country of
absolute, democratic equality, public opinion is not only
omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its
tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach, and the result
is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to
seek among a hundred, you will not find a single

American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he
has, something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social
life, or business, from the good opinion and the votes of
those around him. And the consequence is that instead
of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly
blurting out his own conviction, as a nation compared to
other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than any
other people we are afraid of each other.” Evidently we
have not advanced very far from the condition that
confronted Wendell Phillips.

Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant;
today, as then, the majority represents a mass of
cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul
and mind poverty. That accounts for the unprecedented
rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst
element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that
the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it
craves is display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a “nigger,” the
rounding up of some petty offender, the marriage
exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-
president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the
greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in
ideals and vulgar of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the
man of the hour.

On the other hand, men towering high above such
political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of
ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is
absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours
is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon
of all history: every effort for progress, for
enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and
economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not
from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are
misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and
killed.

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator
of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and
justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The
moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle
became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire,
spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the
omnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was like a sunrise amid the
darkness of the 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 pursuit of new
conquests, and the majority is lagging behind,
handicapped by truth grown false with age.

Politically the human race would still be in the most
absolute slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the Wat

Tylers, the Tells, the innumerable individual giants who
fought inch by inch against the power of kings and
tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world would have
never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous
wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually
preceded by apparently small things. Thus the eloquence
and fire of Camille Desmoulins was like the trumpet
before Jericho, razing to the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille.

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers
of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the
leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of
this is borne out in Russia with greater force than
elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been
consumed by that bloody régime, yet the monster on the
throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible
when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and
finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority,
that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian
peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles “the
man with the white hands”[1] brings luck.

In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no
less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of

Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied
and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of
them. The greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln
have been forgotten in the men who created the
background for the panorama of that time. The true
patron saints of the black men were represented in that
handful of fighters in Boston, Lloyd Garrison, Wendell

Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker,
whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their
eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold
of the Southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed
only when abolition had become a practical issue,
recognized as such by all.

About fifty years ago, a meteor like idea made its
appearance on the social horizon of the world, an idea so
far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to
spread terror in the hearts of tyrants everywhere. On the
other hand, that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of
hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the difficulties in
their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution, the
hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid
they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now
that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone
is a Socialist today: the rich man, as well as his poor
victim; the upholders of law and authority, as well as
their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as the
perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady,
as well as the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the
truth of fifty years ago has become a lie, now that it has
been clipped of all its youthful imagination, and been
robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal —
why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a

“practical, workable scheme,” resting on the will of the majority, why not? 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 well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the
handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for
this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! The moment a
protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of
capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet
how long would authority and private property exist, if
not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers,
policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist
demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain
the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their
very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power.

And how could the latter be acquired without numbers?

Yes, 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, and chained the human body. As a mass its aim has
always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous
as the desert. As a mass it will always be the annihilator
of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I
therefore believe with Emerson that “the masses are
crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence,
and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish
not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and
break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any
mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet,
accomplished women only.”

In other words, the living, vital truth of social and
economic well-being will become a reality only through
the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination
of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.

Chapter 3: 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 Attentäter,[2] one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only
intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the
source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate
way out of it.

The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces, dreaded
their approach, hiding from the perils they threatened.

As man learned to understand Nature’s phenomena, he
realized that though these may destroy life and cause
great loss, they also bring relief. To the earnest student it must be apparent that the accumulated forces in our
social and economic life, culminating in a political act of
violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere,
manifested in storm and lightning.

To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must
feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one’s
very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure.

Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we
cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that
accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging
passion that makes the storm inevitable.

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a
violent protest against our social and economic iniquities
as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose
joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as
upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from
the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied
the character and personality of these men, or who have
come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is
their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice
surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of
our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets,
discussing the psychology of political offenders, have
paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that
these men had advised violence, or even approved of the
acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social
student, of the man who knows that beyond every
violent act there is a vital cause.

Björnstjerne Björnson, in the second part of Beyond

Human Power, emphasizes the fact that it is among the

Anarchists that we must look for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and who
welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as
truly as Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem
humanity.

François Coppé, the French novelist, thus expresses
himself regarding the psychology of the Attentäter:

“The reading of the details of Vaillant’s execution left me
in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest
under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his
will, concentrating all his energy, and, with eyes fixed
upon the knife, hurling finally at society his cry of
malediction. And, in spite of me, another spectacle rose
suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and
women pressing against each other in the middle of the
oblong arena of the circus, under the gaze of thousands
of eyes, while from all the steps of the immense
amphitheatre went up the terrible cry, Ad leones! and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts.

“I did not believe the execution would take place. In the
first place, no victim had been struck with death, and it
had long been the custom not to punish an abortive
crime with the last degree of severity. Then, this crime,
however terrible in intention, was disinterested, born of
an abstract idea. The man’s past, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor.

In the independent press generous voices were raised in
his behalf, very loud and eloquent. ‘A purely literary
current of opinion’ some have said, with no little scorn. It is, on the contrary, an honor to the men of art and thought to have expressed once more their disgust at the
scaffold.”

Again Zola, in Germinal and Paris, describes the tenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with
human suffering, of these men who close the chapter of
their lives with a violent outbreak against our system.

Last, but not least, the man who probably better than
anyone else understands the psychology of
the Attentäter is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliant work Une Psychologie du Militaire 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 common psychic
characteristics. Every Anarchist partakes sufficiently of
this ideal type to make it possible to differentiate him
from other men. The typical Anarchist, then, may be
defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of
revolt under one or more of its forms, — opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation, — endowed with a
strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and
possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know.

These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of
others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a
profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with
missionary zeal.”

To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must
be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals,
surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life,
exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and
regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond
compare.[3]

“There is a truism that the man in the street seems
always to forget, when he is abusing the Anarchists, or
whatever party happens to be his bête noire for the
moment, as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated.

This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have,
from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and
desperate classes, and goaded and desperate individuals,
to wrongs from their fellowmen, which they felt to be
intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence,
whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last
desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human
nature for breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any special conviction, but in the depths of that
human nature itself. The whole course of history,
political and social, is strewn with evidence of this fact.

To go no further, take the three most notorious
examples of political parties goaded into violence during
the last fifty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in Ireland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were these people

Anarchists? No. Did they all three even hold the same
political opinions? No. The Mazzinians were Republicans,
the Fenians political separatists, the Russians Social

Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by
desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt.

And when we turn from parties to individuals who have
acted in like manner, we stand appalled by the number
of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation
into conduct obviously violently opposed to their social
instincts.

“Now that Anarchism has become a living force in
society, such deeds have been sometimes committed by

Anarchists, as well as by others. For no new faith, even
the most essentially peaceable and humane the mind of
man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought
upon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of
anything violent or anti-social in the doctrine itself;
simply because of the ferment any new and creative idea excites in men’s minds, whether they accept or reject it.

And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand,
threatens every vested interest, and, on the other, holds
out a vision of a free and noble life to be won by a
struggle against existing wrongs, is certain to rouse the
fiercest opposition, and bring the whole repressive force
of ancient evil into violent contact with the tumultuous
outburst of a new hope.

“Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the
possibility of better things makes the present misery
more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most
energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these
struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the
outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society, for
instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a
glimpse of what work and life might and ought to be,
finds the toilsome routine and the squalor of his
existence almost intolerable; and even when he has the
resolution and courage to continue steadily working his
best, and waiting until new ideas have so permeated
society as to pave the way for better times, the mere fact
that he has such ideas and tries to spread them, brings
him into difficulties with his employers. How many
thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have
lost work and even the chance of work, solely on the ground of their opinions? It is only the specially gifted
craftsman, who, if he be a zealous propagandist, can
hope to retain permanent employment. And what
happens to a man with his brain working actively with a
ferment of new ideas, with a vision before his eyes of a
new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing men, with
the knowledge that his suffering and that of his fellows in
misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate, but by the
injustice of other human beings, — what happens to such
a man when he sees those dear to him starving, when he
himself is starved? Some natures in such a plight, and
those by no means the least social or the least sensitive,
will become violent, and will even feel that their violence
is social and not anti-social, that in striking when and
how they can, they are striking, not for themselves, but
for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their
persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are
we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament,
to stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of
the Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreants
these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion,
sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject
submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the
ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as
monsters of wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful society? No! We
hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly
exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to
callous acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but
we decline in such cases of homicide, or attempted
homicide, as those of which we are treating, to be guilty
of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility
of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt of
these homicides lies upon every man and woman who,
intentionally or by cold indifference, helps to keep up
social conditions that drive human beings to despair. The
man who flings his whole life into the attempt, at the
cost of his own life, to protest against the wrongs of his
fellow men, is a saint compared to the active and passive
upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest
destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is
without sin in society cast the first stone at such an
one.”[4]

That every act of political violence should nowadays be
attributed to Anarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known to almost everyone familiar with the

Anarchist movement that a great number of acts, for
which Anarchists had to suffer, either originated with the
capitalist press or were instigated, if not directly perpetrated, by the police.

For a number of years acts of violence had been
committed in Spain, for which the Anarchists were held
responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into
prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of
these acts were not Anarchists, but members of the
police department. The scandal became so widespread
that the conservative Spanish papers demanded the
apprehension and punishment of the gang-leader, Juan

Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and
executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light
during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to
exonerate completely the Anarchists from any
connection with the acts committed during a long period.

This resulted in the dismissal of a number of police
officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in
revenge, disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police
bomb throwers were others of far higher position, who
provided them with funds and protected them.

This is one of the many striking examples of how

Anarchist conspiracies are manufactured.

That the American police can perjure themselves with
the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as
brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only
recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887,
known as the Haymarket Riot.

No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly
doubt that the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago,
died as victims of a lying, 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 Anarchists, thereby earning
the lasting esteem of every liberty-loving man and
woman in the world.

When we approach the tragedy of September sixth,

1901, we are confronted by one of the most striking
examples of how little social theories are responsible for
an act of political violence. “Leon Czolgosz, an Anarchist,
incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman.” To be
sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth,
and will she not continue to do so beyond death?

Everything is possible with the Anarchists.

Today, even, nine years after the tragedy, after it was proven a hundred times that Emma Goldman had
nothing to do with the event, that no evidence
whatsoever exists to indicate that Czolgosz ever called
himself an Anarchist, we are confronted with the same
lie, fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the
press. No living soul ever heard Czolgosz make that
statement, nor is there a single written word to prove
that the boy ever breathed the accusation. Nothing but
ignorance and insane hysteria, which have never yet
been able to solve the simplest problem of cause and
effect.

The President of a free Republic killed! What else can be
the cause, except that the Attentäter must have been
insane, or that he was incited to the act.

A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it
will continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the
comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A
free Republic! And yet within a little over thirty years a
small band of parasites have successfully robbed the

American people, and trampled upon the fundamental
principles, laid down by the fathers of this country,
guaranteeing to every man, woman, and child “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” For thirty years
they have been increasing their wealth and power at the
expense of the vast mass of workers, thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless, and
friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the
country from east to west, from north to south, in a vain
search for work. For many years the home has been left
to the care of the little ones, while the parents are
exhausting their life and strength for a mere pittance. For
thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been
sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the
daughters outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For
long and weary years this process of undermining the
nation’s health, vigor, and pride, without much protest
from the disinherited and oppressed, has been going on.

Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of
this “free land of ours” became more and more
audacious in their heartless, cruel efforts to compete
with the rotten and decayed European tyrannies for
supremacy of power.

In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a
foreigner. The boy was a product of our own free

American soil, that lulled him to sleep with,

My country, ‘tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty.

Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the celebration of the Fourth of July, or of

Decoration Day, when he faithfully honored the Nation’s
dead? Who knows but that he, too, was willing to “fight
for his country and die for her liberty,” until it dawned
upon him that those he belonged to have no country,
because they have been robbed of all that they have
produced; until he realized that the liberty and
independence of his youthful dreams were but a farce.

Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of too sensitive
a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless and
brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above
the belly and the bank account. No wonder you
impressed the one human being among all the infuriated
mob at your trial — a newspaper woman — as a
visionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your
large, dreamy eyes must have beheld a new and glorious
dawn.

Now, to a recent instance of police-manufactured

Anarchist plots. In that bloodstained city Chicago, the life
of Chief of Police Shippy was attempted by a young man
named Averbuch. Immediately the cry was sent to the
four corners of the world that Averbuch was an

Anarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the
act. Everyone who was at all known to entertain

Anarchist ideas was closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an Anarchist group confiscated,
and all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying
that, as on various previous occasions, I must needs be
held responsible for the act. Evidently the American
police credit me with occult powers. I did not know

Averbuch; in fact, had never before heard his name, and
the only way I could have possibly “conspired” with him
was in my astral body. But, then, the police are not
concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a
target, to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of
the psychology of a political act. Was Averbuch an

Anarchist? There is no positive proof of it. He had been
but three months in the country, did not know the
language, and, as far as I could ascertain, was quite
unknown to the Anarchists of Chicago.

What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian
immigrants, undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty
of America. He received his first baptism by the
policeman’s club during the brutal dispersement of the
unemployed parade. He further experienced American
equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an
economic master. In short, a three months’ sojourn in
the glorious land brought him face to face with the fact
that the disinherited are in the same position the world
over. In his native land he probably learned that necessity knows no law — there was no difference
between a Russian and an American policeman.

The question to the intelligent social student is not
whether the acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical,
any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical.

The thing that will inevitably impress itself on the
thinking and feeling man and woman is that the sight of
brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free

Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic
struggle, furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force
in the overwrought, outraged souls of men like Czolgosz
or Averbuch. No amount of persecution, of hounding, of
repression, can stay this social phenomenon.

But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists
committed acts of violence? Certainly they have, always
however ready to shoulder the responsibility. My
contention is that they were impelled, not by the
teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure
of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive
natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social
theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a
leaven for rebellion. This is not a mere assertion, but a
fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the
circumstances bearing upon this question will further clarify my position.

Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist
acts within the last two decades. Strange as it may seem,
one of the most significant deeds of political violence
occurred here in America, in connection with the

Homestead strike of 1892.

During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company
organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated

Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick,
then Chairman of the Company, was intrusted with that
democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out the
policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so
successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the
coke regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations
were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the
military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead

Steel Works, the erection of a high board fence, capped
with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for
sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he
attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs
into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible
carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death
of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry

Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway
began the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them out of the wretched Company
houses.

The whole country was aroused over these inhuman
outrages. Hundreds of voices were raised in protest,
calling on Frick to desist, not to go too far. Yes, hundreds
of people protested, — as one objects to annoying flies.

Only one there was who actively responded to the
outrage at Homestead, — Alexander Berkman. Yes, he
was an Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was
the only force that made the discord between his
spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable.

Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of
the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander

Berkman’s act, his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick.

The record of European acts of political violence affords
numerous and striking instances of the influence of
environment upon sensitive human beings.

The court speech of Vaillant, who, in 1894, exploded a
bomb in the Paris Chamber of Deputies, strikes the true
keynote of the psychology of such acts:

“Gentlemen, in a few minutes you are to deal your blow,
but in receiving your verdict I shall have at least the
satisfaction of having wounded the existing society, that
cursed society in which one may see a single man spending, uselessly, enough to feed thousands of
families; an infamous society which permits a few
individuals to monopolize all the social wealth, while
there are hundreds of thousands of unfortunates who
have not even the bread that is not refused to dogs, and
while entire families are committing suicide for want of
the necessities of life.

“Ah, gentlemen, if the governing classes could go down
among the unfortunates! But no, they prefer to remain
deaf to their appeals. It seems that a fatality impels
them, like the royalty of the eighteenth century, toward
the precipice which will engulf them, for woe be to those
who remain deaf to the cries of the starving, woe to
those who, believing themselves of superior essence,
assume the right to exploit those beneath them! There
comes a time when the people no longer reason; they
rise like a hurricane, and pass away like a torrent. Then
we see bleeding heads impaled on pikes.

“Among the exploited, gentlemen, there are two classes
of individuals. Those of one class, not realizing what they
are and what they might be, take life as it comes, believe
that they are born to be slaves, and content themselves
with the little that is given them in exchange for their
labor. But there are others, on the contrary, who think,
who study, and who, looking about them, discover social iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others suffer? Then they throw themselves into
the struggle, and make themselves the bearers of the
popular claims.

“Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have
gone, I have seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of
capital. Everywhere I have seen the same wounds
causing tears of blood to flow, even in the remoter parts
of the inhabited districts of South America, where I had
the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains
of civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees
and there study nature. Well, there even, more than
elsewhere, I have seen capital come, like a vampire, to
suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs.

“Then I came back to France, where it was reserved for
me to see my family suffer atrociously. This was the last
drop in the cup of my sorrow. Tired of leading this life of
suffering and cowardice, I carried this bomb to those
who are primarily responsible for social misery.

“I am reproached with the wounds of those who were hit
by my projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that,
if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres
during the Revolution, it is probable that they would still
be under the yoke of the nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on Tonquin,

Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands,
yes, millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the
mines, and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt.

Add also those who die of hunger, and all this with the
assent of our Deputies. Beside all this, of how little
weight are the reproaches now brought against me!

“It is true that one does not efface the other; but, after
all, are we not acting on the defensive when we respond
to the blows which we receive from above? I know very
well that I shall be told that I ought to have confined
myself to speech for the vindication of the people’s
claims. But what can you expect! It takes a loud voice to
make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our
voices by imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no
mistake; the explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of
the rebel Vaillant, but the cry of an entire class which
vindicates its rights, and which will soon add acts to
words. For, be sure of it, in vain will they pass laws. The
ideas of the thinkers will not halt; just as, in the last
century, all the governmental forces could not prevent
the Diderots and the Voltaires from spreading
emancipating ideas among the people, so all the existing
governmental forces will not prevent the Reclus, the

Darwins, the Spencers, the Ibsens, the Mirbeaus, from spreading the ideas of justice and liberty which will
annihilate the prejudices that hold the mass in ignorance.

And these ideas, welcomed by the unfortunate, will
flower in acts of revolt as they have done in me, until the
day when the disappearance of authority shall permit all
men to organize freely according to their choice, when
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 soon as possible,
on pain of being eliminated, and that speedily, from the
human race. Hail to him who labors, by no matter what
means, for this transformation! It is this idea that has
guided me in my duel with authority, but as in this duel I
have only wounded my adversary, it is now its turn to
strike me.

“Now, gentlemen, to me it matters little what penalty you may inflict, for, looking at this assembly with the
eyes of reason, I cannot help smiling to see you, atoms
lost in matter, and reasoning only because you possess a
prolongation of the spinal marrow, assume the right to
judge one of your fellows.

“Ah! gentlemen, how little a thing is your assembly and
your verdict in the history of humanity; and human
history, in its turn, is likewise a very little thing in the
whirlwind which bears it through immensity, and which
is destined to disappear, or at least to be transformed, in
order to begin again the same history and the same facts,
a veritably perpetual play of cosmic forces renewing and
transferring themselves forever.”

Will anyone say that Vaillant was an ignorant, vicious
man, or a lunatic? Was not his mind singularly clear 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 Carnot was killed.

On the handle of the stiletto used by the Attentäter was engraved, significantly,

VAILLANT!

Sante 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 cannot 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 women of eighteen
or twenty also work fifteen hours daily, for a mockery of
remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow
countrymen, but to all the workers, who sweat the whole
day long for a crust of bread, while their labor produces
wealth in abundance. The workers are obliged to live
under the most wretched conditions, and their food
consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice, and
water; so by the time they are thirty or forty years old,
they are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals.

Besides, in consequence of bad food and overwork, these
unhappy creatures are, by hundreds, devoured by
pellagra — a disease that, in my country, attacks, as the
physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a life of
toil and privation.

“I have observed that there are a great many people who
are hungry, and many children who suffer, whilst bread
and clothes abound in the towns. I saw many and large
shops full of clothing and woolen stuffs, and I also saw
warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn, suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other hand, I saw
thousands of people who do not work, who produce
nothing and live on the labor of others; who spend every
day thousands of francs for their amusement; who
debauch the daughters of the workers; who own
dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses,
many servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life.

“I believed in God; but when I saw so great an inequality
between men, I acknowledged that it was not God who
created man, but man who created God. And I
discovered that those who want their property to be
respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of
paradise and hell, and in keeping the people in
ignorance.

“Not long ago, Vaillant threw a bomb in the Chamber of

Deputies, to protest against the present system of
society. He killed no one, only wounded some persons;
yet bourgeois justice sentenced him to death. And not
satisfied with the condemnation of the guilty man, they
began to pursue the Anarchists, and arrest not only those
who had known Vaillant, but even those who had merely
been present at any Anarchist lecture.

“The government did not think of their wives and children. It did not consider that the men kept in prison
were not the only ones who suffered, and that their little
ones cried for bread. Bourgeois justice did not trouble
itself about these innocent ones, who do not yet know
what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their fathers
are in prison; they only want to eat.

“The government went on searching private houses,
opening private letters, forbidding lectures and meetings,
and practicing the most infamous oppressions against us.

Even now, hundreds of Anarchists are arrested for having
written an article in a newspaper, or for having
expressed an opinion in public.

“Gentlemen of the Jury, you are representatives of
bourgeois society. If you want my head, take it; but do
not believe that in so doing you will stop the Anarchist
propaganda. Take care, for men reap what they have
sown.”

During a religious procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a
bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and
women were arrested. Some were Anarchists, but the
majority were trade-unionists and Socialists. They were
thrown into that terrible bastille Montjuich, and
subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had
been killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of Europe, resulting in the release
of a few survivors.

The man primarily responsible for this revival of the

Inquisition was Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of

Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims,
their flesh burned, their bones crushed, their tongues cut
out. Practiced in the art of brutality during his regime in

Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the appeals
and protests of the awakened civilized conscience.

In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to death by a
young Italian, Angiolillo. The latter was an editor in his
native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the
attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and

Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to France and

Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found
employment as a compositor, and immediately became
the friend of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus
described Angiolillo: “His appearance suggested the
journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His
delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had
not grown up at the ‘case.’ With his handsome frank
face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke

Italian, Spanish, and French, but no English; the little

French I knew was not sufficient to carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to acquire
the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was
not long until he became very popular with his fellow
compositors. His distinguished and yet modest manner,
and his consideration towards his colleagues, won him
the hearts of all the boys.”

Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailed
accounts in the press. He read of the great wave of
human sympathy with the helpless victims at Montjuich.

On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes the results
of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards, who
escaped Castillo’s clutches, came to seek asylum in

England. There, at the great meeting, these men opened
their shirts and showed the horrible scars of burned
flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a thousand
theories; the impetus was beyond words, beyond
arguments, beyond himself even.

Señor Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of

Spain, sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in such cases,
all strangers were kept away from his exalted presence.

One exception was made, however, in the case of a
distinguished looking, elegantly dressed Italian — the
representative, it was understood, of an important
journal. The distinguished gentleman was — Angiolillo.

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

The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene.

“Murderer! Murderer!” she cried, pointing at Angiolillo.

The latter bowed. “Pardon, Madame,” he said, “I respect
you as a lady, but I regret that you were the wife of that
man.”

Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its most terrible
form — for the man whose soul was as a child’s.

He was garroted. His body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid
in twilight. And the people came, and pointing the finger
of terror and fear, they said: “There — the criminal —
the cruel murderer.”

How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It misunderstands
always, condemns always.

A remarkable parallel to the case of Angiolillo is to be
found in the act of Gaetano Bresci, whose Attentat upon King Umberto made an American city famous.

Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity,
where one has but to try to meet with golden success.

Yes, he too would try to succeed. He would work hard
and faithfully. Work had no terrors for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood, self-respect.

Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled in Paterson,

New Jersey, and there found a lucrative job at six dollars
per week in one of the weaving mills of the town. Six
whole dollars per week was, no doubt, a fortune for Italy,
but not enough to breathe on in the new country. He
loved his little home. He was a good husband and
devoted father to his bambina Bianca, whom he adored.

He worked and worked for a number of years. He
actually managed to save one hundred dollars out of his
six dollars per week.

Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to
have an ideal, — the Anarchist paper published in

Paterson, La Questione Sociale.

Every week, though tired from work, he would help to
set up the paper. Until later hours he would assist, and
when the little pioneer had exhausted all resources and
his comrades were in despair, Bresci brought cheer and
hope, one hundred dollars, the entire savings of years.

That would keep the paper afloat.

In his native land people were starving. The crops had
been poor, and the peasants saw themselves face to face
with famine. They appealed to their good King Umberto;
he would help. And he did. The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King, held up in mute
silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would move
him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor
fools.

Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Paterson, read of
the horrible massacre. His mental eye beheld the
defenceless women and innocent infants of his native
land, slaughtered right before the good King. His soul
recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the
wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own
flesh. Why, why these foul murders?

The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in

Paterson ended almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded
his hundred dollars. His comrades begged, implored him
to give them a respite. The paper would go down if they
were to return him his loan. But Bresci insisted on its
return.

How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money,
but lost the good will, the confidence of his comrades.

They would have nothing more to do with one whose
greed was greater than his ideals.

On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo. The young Italian weaver of Paterson,

Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good King.

Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone
known as an Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the
act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if
the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could
equal the force of those slain women and infants, who
had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken word,
ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such
white heat as the 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 act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon Wyllie by the Hindu Madar Sol Dhingra.

If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually permeated for centuries with the spirit of
passivity, can one question the tremendous,
revolutionizing effect on human character exerted by
great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the
justice of these words:

“Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of
innocent men have been the watchwords of the
government of the alien domination in India ever since
we began the commercial boycott of English goods. The
tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in

India. They think that by the strength of the sword they
will keep down India! It is this arrogance that has brought
about the bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a
helpless and unarmed people, the more terrorism will
grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and
foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this
tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to
be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It
is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people
when brought to the verge of despair. It is never criminal
on their part. The crime lies with the tyrant.”[5]

Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that
heredity is not the sole factor moulding human
character. Climate, food, occupation; nay, color, light,
and sound must be considered in the study of human psychology.

If that be true, how much more correct is the contention
that great social abuses will and must influence different
minds and temperaments in a different way. And how
utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the
teachings of Anarchism, or certain exponents of these
teachings, are responsible for the acts of political
violence.

Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values
human life above things. All Anarchists agree with

Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if the production of
any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life,
society should do without that commodity, but it cannot
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. It would say that resistance to
tyranny is man’s highest ideal. So long as tyranny exists,
in whatever form, man’s deepest aspiration must resist it
as inevitably as man must breathe.

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in
the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how
terrible must be the conflict between their souls and
unbearable social iniquities.

High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for
life, so relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a
desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear
nothing but discord. But those who feel the agonized cry
understand its harmony; they hear in it the fulfillment of
the most compelling moment of human nature.

Such is the psychology of political violence.

Chapter 4: Prisons: A Social Crime and

Failure

In 1849 Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his
prison cell the following story of The Priest and the Devil:

“‘Hello, you little fat father!’ the devil said to the priest.

‘What made you lie so to those poor, misled people?

What tortures of hell did you depict? Don’t you know
they are already suffering the tortures of hell in their
earthly lives? Don’t you know that you and the
authorities of the State are my representatives on earth?

It is you that make them suffer the pains of hell with
which you threaten them. Don’t you know this? Well,
then, come with me!’

“The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him
high in the air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron
foundry. He saw the workmen there running and
hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the scorching heat.

Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too much
for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the
devil: ‘Let me go! Let me leave this hell!’

“‘Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more
places.’ The devil gets hold of him again and drags him
off to a farm. There he sees workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The overseer
carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls
to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.

“Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same
workers live with their families — dirty, cold, smoky, ill-
smelling holes. The devil grins. He points out the poverty
and hardships which are at home here.

“‘Well, isn’t this enough?’ he asks. And it seems as if even
he, the devil, pities the people. The pious servant of God
can hardly bear it. With uplifted hands he begs: ‘Let me
go away from here. Yes, yes! This is hell on earth!’

“‘Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another
hell. You torment them, torture them to death mentally
when they are already all but dead physically! Come on! I
will show you one more hell — one more, the very
worst.’

“He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon,
with its foul air and the many human forms, robbed of all
health and energy, lying on the floor, covered with
vermin that were devouring their poor, naked, emaciated
bodies.

“‘Take off your silken clothes,’ said the devil to the priest,

‘put on your ankles heavy chains such as these
unfortunates wear; lie down on the cold and filthy floor

— and then talk to them about a hell that still awaits
them!’

“‘No, no!’ answered the priest, ‘I cannot think of
anything more dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go
away from here!’

“‘Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this.

Did you not know it? Did you not know that these men
and women whom you are frightening with the picture of
a hell hereafter — did you not know that they are in hell
right here, before they die?”

This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall
of one of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny
that the same applies with equal force to the present
time, even to American prisons?

With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes,
and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue
to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are
outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be

“protected” from the phantoms of its own making.

Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can
be promoted by a widespread contagion.

After eighteen months of horror in an English prison,

Oscar Wilde gave to the world his great masterpiece, The

Ballad of Reading Gaol:

The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,

Bloom well in prison air;

It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there.

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the Warder is Despair.

Society goes on perpetuating this poisonous air, not
realizing that out of it can come naught but the most
poisonous results.

We are spending at the present $3,500,000 per day,

$1,000,095,000 per year, to maintain prison institutions,
and that in a democratic country, — a sum almost as
large as the combined output of wheat, valued at

$750,000,000, and the output of coal, valued at

$350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington, D.C.,
estimates the cost of prisons at $6,000,000,000 annually,
and Dr. G. Frank Lydston, an eminent American writer on
crime, gives $5,000,000,000 annually as a reasonable
figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of maintaining vast armies of human beings caged up like
wild beasts![6]

Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in

America there are four and a half times as many crimes
to every million population today as there were twenty
years ago.

The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is
murder, not robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the

South. London is five times as large as Chicago, yet there
are one hundred and eighteen murders annually in the
latter city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago
the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the
list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San

Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible
condition of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the
protection society derives from its prisons.

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when
the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution,
maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven
a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to
question its right to exist. The time is past when we can
be content with our social fabric merely because it is

“ordained by divine right,” or by the majesty of the law.

The widespread prison investigations, agitation, and education during the last few years are conclusive proof
that men are learning to dig deep into the very bottom of
society, down to the causes of the terrible discrepancy
between social and individual life.

Why, then, are prisons a social crime and a failure? To
answer this vital question it behooves us to seek the
nature and cause of crimes, the methods employed in
coping with them, and the effects these methods
produce in ridding society of the curse and horror of
crimes.

First, as to the nature of crime:

Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases, the
political, the passional, the insane, and the occasional.

He says that the political criminal is the victim of an
attempt of a more or less despotic government to
preserve its own stability. He is not necessarily guilty of
an unsocial offense; he simply tries to overturn a certain
political order which may itself be anti-social. This truth is recognized all over the world, except in America where
the foolish notion still prevails that in a Democracy there
is no place for political criminals. Yet John Brown was a
political criminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is
every striker. Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, the
political criminal of our time or place may be the hero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso calls the political
criminal the true precursor of the progressive movement
of humanity.

“The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome
birth and honest life, who under the stress of some great,
unmerited wrong has wrought justice for himself.”[7]

Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in The Menace of the Police, cites the case of Jim Flaherty, a criminal by passion, who, instead
of being saved by society, is turned into a drunkard and a
recidivist, with a ruined and poverty-stricken family as
the result.

A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand

Whitlock’s novel, The Turn of the Balance, the greatest American exposé of crime in the making. Archie, even
more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and death by
the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the
unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law.

Archie and Flaherty are but the types of many thousands,
demonstrating how the legal aspects of crime, and the
methods of dealing with it, help to create the disease
which is undermining our entire social life.

“The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally in the same
condition as an infant or an animal.”[8]

The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of
a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit’s wealth
permits the luxury of criminal insanity. It has become
quite fashionable to be the victim of paranoia. But on the
whole the “sovereignty of justice” still continues to
punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its
power. Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter’s statistics
showing that in Germany one hundred and six madmen,
out of one hundred and forty-four criminally insane,
were condemned to severe punishment.

The occasional criminal “represents by far the largest
class of our prison population, hence is the greatest
menace to social well-being.” What is the cause that
compels a vast army of the human family to take to
crime, to prefer the hideous life within prison walls to
the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron
master, who leaves its victims no avenue of escape, for
the most depraved human being loves liberty.

This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and
economic arrangement. I do not mean to deny the
biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating
crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and economic influences
are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of
crime. Granted even that there are innate criminal
tendencies, it is none the less true that these tendencies
find rich nutrition in our social environment.

There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between
crimes against the person and the price of alcohol,
between crimes against property and the price of wheat.

He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the former looking
upon society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals
as instruments that execute them. The latter find that

“the social environment is the cultivation medium of
criminality; that the criminal is the microbe, an element
which only becomes important when it finds the medium
which causes it to ferment; every society has the
criminals it deserves.”[9]

The most “prosperous” industrial period makes it
impossible for the worker to earn enough to keep up
health and vigor. And as prosperity is, at best, an
imaginary condition, thousands of people are constantly
added to the host of the unemployed. From East to

West, from South to North, this vast army tramps in
search of work or food, and all they find is the workhouse
or the slums. Those who have a spark of self-respect left,
prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty.

Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable
crimes consist in some violation of property rights; but
that is too low a figure. A thorough investigation would
prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced,
directly or indirectly, to our economic and social
iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and
robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes
this terrible fact, though he may not be able to account
for it.

A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis,

Lombroso, and other eminent men have compiled,
shows that the criminal feels only too keenly that it is
society that drives him to crime. A Milanese thief said to

Lombroso: “I do not rob, I merely take from the rich their
superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants
rob?” A murderer wrote: “Knowing that three-fourths of
the social virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open
assault on a rich man would be less ignoble than the
cautious combination of fraud.” Another wrote: “I am
imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs. Ministers who
rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!” An educated
convict said to Mr. Davitt: “The laws of society are
framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the
world to power and calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and chances. Why
should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar
means from those who have taken more than they had a
right to?” The same man added: “Religion robs the soul
of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of
the world for which the well-being and the peace of the
inhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it,
while the laws of the land, in restraining natural desires,
were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our
beings. Compared with this,” he concluded, “thieving is
an honorable pursuit.”[10]

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

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

The methods of coping with crime have no doubt
undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic
sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive
motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge. It
has also adopted the theologic idea; namely,
punishment; while the legal and “civilized” methods
consist of deterrence or terror, and reform. We shall
presently see that all four modes have failed utterly, and that we are today no nearer a solution than in the dark
ages.

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back,
to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized
man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an
organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in
the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what
he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do. The

“majesty of the law” is a reasoning thing; it would not
stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a “higher”

nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle,
which proclaims punishment as a means of purification,
or the vicarious atonement of sin. But legally and socially
the statute exercises punishment, not merely as an
infliction of pain upon the offender, but also for its
terrifying effect upon others.

What is the real basis of punishment, however? The
notion of a free will, the idea that man is at all times a
free agent for good or evil; if he chooses the latter, he
must be made to pay the price. Although this theory has
long been exploded, and thrown upon the dustheap, it
continues to be applied daily by the entire machinery of
government, turning it into the most cruel and brutal
tormentor of human life. The only reason for its
continuance is the still more cruel notion that the greater the terror punishment spreads, the more certain its
preventative effect.

Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with
the social offender. Why do they not deter? Although in

America a man is supposed to be considered innocent
until proven guilty, the instruments of law, the police,
carry on a reign of terror, making indiscriminate arrests,
beating, clubbing, bullying people, using the barbarous
method of the “third degree,” subjecting their
unfortunate victims to the foul air of the station house,
and the still fouler language of its guardians. Yet crimes
are rapidly multiplying, and society is paying the price.

On the other hand, it is an open secret that when the
unfortunate citizen has been given the full “mercy” of
the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst
of hells, his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a
human being, degraded to a mere automaton without
will or feeling, dependent entirely upon the mercy of
brutal keepers, he daily goes through a process of
dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge
was mere child’s play.

There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in
the United States where men are not tortured “to be
made good,” by means of the black-jack, the club, the
strait-jacket, the water-cure, the “humming bird” (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the
solitary, the bull-ring, and starvation diet. In these
institutions his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly monotony and routine of prison
life. In Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the

South, these horrors have become so flagrant as to reach
the outside world, while in most other prisons the same

Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls rarely
allow the agonized shrieks of the victims to escape —
prison walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might
with greater immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to
hope for protection from these twentieth-century
chambers of horrors.

Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the
world an emaciated, deformed, 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 extensive data
giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of prisons
as a means of deterrence or reform.

Well-meaning persons are now working for a new
departure in the prison question, — reclamation, to
restore once more to the prisoner the possibility of
becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I fear
it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring
good wine into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a
complete reconstruction of society will deliver mankind
from the cancer of crime. Still, if the dull edge of our
social conscience would be sharpened, the penal
institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the
first step to be taken is the renovation of the social
consciousness, which is in a rather dilapidated condition.

It is sadly in need to be awakened to the fact that crime
is a question of degree, that we all have the rudiments of
crime in us, more or less, according to our mental,
physical, and social environment; and that the individual
criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.

With the social consciousness wakened, the average
individual may learn to refuse the “honor” of being the
bloodhound of the law. He may cease to persecute,
despise, and mistrust the social offender, and give him a
chance to live and breathe among his fellows. Institutions
are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold,
impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social
consciousness quickened, it might be possible to free the
prison victims from the brutality of prison officials,
guards, and keepers. Public opinion is a powerful
weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it.

They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they
realize that their jobs depend upon it.

But the most important step is to demand for the
prisoner the right to work while in prison, with some
monetary recompense that would enable him to lay
aside a little for the day of his release, the beginning of a new life.

It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society
when we consider that workingmen, wage-slaves
themselves, object to convict labor. I shall not go into the
cruelty of this objection, but merely consider the
impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition so far raised by organized labor has been directed against
windmills. Prisoners have always worked; only the State
has been their exploiter, even as the individual employer
has been the robber of organized labor. The States have
either set the convicts to work for the government, or
they have farmed convict labor to private individuals.

Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The

Federal government and seventeen States have
discarded it, as have the leading nations of Europe, since
it leads to hideous overworking and abuse of prisoners,
and to endless graft.

“Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers
perhaps the worst example. Under a five-year contract,
dated July 7th, 1906, and renewable for five years more
at the option of private contractors, the labor of the
inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the

Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling

Mfg. Co. at the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust,
for it also leases the convict labor of Connecticut,

Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota
penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey,

Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in
all.

“The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be estimated from the fact that this same

Company pays 62 1/2 cents a day in Nebraska for the
convict’s labor, and that Tennessee, for example, gets

$1.10 a day for a convict’s work from the Gray-Dudley

Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star

Overall Mfg. Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the

Kraft Mfg. Co., and Maryland 55 cents a day from

Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt manufacturers. The
very difference in prices points to enormous graft. For
example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures
shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per
dozen, while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen.

Furthermore, the State charges this Trust no rent for the
use of its huge factory, charges nothing for power, heat,
light, or even drainage, and exacts no taxes. What
graft!”[11]

It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars’

worth of workingmen’s shirts and overalls is produced
annually in this country by prison labor. It is a woman’s
industry, and the first reflection that arises is that an
immense amount of free female labor is thus displaced.

The second consideration is that male convicts, who
should be learning trades that would give them some
chance of being self-supporting after their release, are
kept at this work at which they cannot possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when we consider that
much of this labor is done in reformatories, which so
loudly profess to be training their inmates to become
useful citizens.

The third, and most important, consideration is that the
enormous profits thus wrung from convict labor are a
constant incentive to the contractors to exact from their
unhappy victims tasks altogether beyond their strength,
and to punish them cruelly when their work does not
come up to the excessive demands made.

Another word on the condemnation of convicts to tasks
at which they cannot hope to make a living after release.

Indiana, for example, is a State that has made a great
splurge over being in the front rank of modern
penological improvements. Yet, according to the report
rendered in 1908 by the training school of its

“reformatory,” 135 were engaged in the manufacture of
chains, 207 in that of shirts, and 255 in the foundry — a
total of 597 in three occupations. But at this so-called
reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the
inmates, 39 of which were connected with country
pursuits. Indiana, like other States, professes to be
training the inmates of her reformatory to occupations
by which they will be able to make their living when
released. She actually sets them to work making chains, shirts, and brooms, the latter for the benefit of the

Louisville Fancy Grocery Co. Broom-making is a trade
largely monopolized by the blind, shirt-making is done by
women, and there is only one free chain-factory in the

State, and at that a released convict cannot hope to get
employment. The whole thing is a cruel farce.

If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their
helpless victims of such tremendous profits is it not high
time for organized labor to stop its idle howl, and to
insist on decent remuneration for the convict, even as
labor organizations claim for themselves? In that way
workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the
prisoner an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said
elsewhere that thousands of convicts, incompetent and
without a trade, without means of subsistence, are yearly
turned back into the social fold. These men and women
must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison life
has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed
doors that meet them on their release are not likely to
decrease their bitterness. The inevitable result is that
they form a favorable nucleus out of which scabs, 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 betterment. If the
workingman wants to avoid these effects, he
should insist on the right of the convict to work, he should meet him as a brother, take him into his
organization, and with his aid turn against the system
which grinds them both.

Last, but not least, is the growing realization of the
barbarity and the inadequacy of the definite sentence.

Those who believe in, and earnestly aim at, a change are
fast coming to the conclusion that man must be given an
opportunity to make good. And how is he to do it with
ten, fifteen, or twenty years’ imprisonment before him?

The hope of liberty and of opportunity is the only
incentive to life, especially the prisoner’s life. Society has sinned so long against him — it ought at least to leave
him that. I am not very sanguine that it will, or that any
real change in that direction can take place until the
conditions that breed both the prisoner and the jailer will
be forever abolished.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

Out of his heart a white!

For who can say by what strange way

Christ brings his will to light,

Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight.

Chapter 5: Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty

What is patriotism? Is it love of one’s birthplace, the
place of childhood’s recollections and hopes, dreams and
aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we
would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we,
too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would
count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest
each one “an eye should be,” piercing the very depths of
our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to
the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even
as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would
sit at mother’s knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of
great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the
spot, every inch representing dear and precious
recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could
be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has
been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening
sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the
birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds,
for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of
sorrow, tears, and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? “Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels,” said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the
greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as
the principle that will justify the training of wholesale
murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for
the exercise of man-killing than the making of such
necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade
that guarantees better returns and greater glory than
that of the average workingman.

Gustave Hervé, another great anti-patriot, justly calls
patriotism a superstition — one far more injurious,
brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of
religion originated in man’s inability to explain natural
phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder
or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and
therefore concluded that back of them must be a force
greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural
force in the rain, and in the various other changes in
nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition
artificially created and maintained through a network of
lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his
self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and
conceit.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the
essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism
assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the
fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider
themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than
the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is,
therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen
spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his
superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner,
of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the
mind of the child is poisoned with bloodcurdling stories
about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians,
etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is
thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by
the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we
are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more
battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that

America has within a short time spent four hundred
million dollars. Just think of it — four hundred million
dollars taken from the produce of the people. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are
cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in

America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich

Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany,
or Englishmen in England? And do they not 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 Russian Tsar, when any
mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the
name of his people, when Sergius was punished by the

Russian revolutionists.

It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz,
in destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will
even aid in arresting Mexican revolutionists on American
soil and keep them incarcerated in American prisons,
without the slightest cause or reason.

But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent
wealth and power. It is good enough for the people. It
reminds one of the historic wisdom of Frederick the

Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire, who said: “Religion is
a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses.”

That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will
doubt after considering the following statistics. The
progressive increase of the expenditures for the leading
armies and navies of the world during the last quarter of
a century is a fact of such gravity as to startle every
thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be
briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905
into five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of
several great nations for army and navy purposes during
the first and last of those periods. From the first to the
last of the periods noted the expenditures of Great

Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to

$4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to

$3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to

$2,700,375,600, those of the United States from

$1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450, those of Russia from

$1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italy from

$1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan
from $182,900,500 to $700,925,475.

The military expenditures of each of the nations
mentioned increased in each of the five-year periods
under review. During the entire interval from 1881 to

1905 Great Britain’s outlay for her army increased
fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia’s
was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent.,
that of France about 15 per cent., and that of Japan
nearly 500 per cent. If we compare the expenditures of
these nations upon their armies with their total
expenditures for all the twenty-five years ending with

1905, the proportion rose as follows:

In Great Britain from 20 per cent to 37; in the United States from 15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18; in Italy
from 12 to 15; in Japan from 12 to 14. On the other hand,
it is interesting to note that the proportion in Germany
decreased from about 58 per cent to 25, the decrease
being due to the enormous increase in the imperial
expenditures for other purposes, the fact being that the
army expenditures for the period of 190I-5 were higher
than for any five-year period preceding. Statistics show
that the countries in which army expenditures are
greatest, in proportion to the total national revenues, are

Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy,
in the order named.

The showing as to the cost of great navies is equally
impressive. During the twenty-five years ending with

1905 naval expenditures increased approximately as
follows: Great Britain, 300 per cent.; France 60 per cent.;

Germany 600 per cent.; the United States 525 per cent.;

Russia 300 per cent.; Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700
per cent. With the exception of Great Britain, the United

States spends more for naval purposes than any other
nation, and this expenditure bears also a larger
proportion to the entire national disbursements than
that of any other power. In the period 1881–5, the
expenditure for the United States navy was $6.20 out of
each $100 appropriated for all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the next five-year period, to

$8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, and to $16.40
for 1901–5. It is morally certain that the outlay for the
current period of five years will show a still further
increase.

The rising cost of militarism may be still further
illustrated by computing it as a per capita tax on
population. From the first to the last of the five-year
periods taken as the basis for the comparisons here
given, it has risen as follows: In Great Britain, from

$18.47 to $52.50; in France, from $19.66 to $23.62; in

Germany, from $10.17 to $15.51; in the United States,
from $5.62 to $13.64; in Russia, from $6.14 to $8.37; in

Italy, from $9.59 to $11.24, and in Japan from 86 cents to

$3.11.

It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per
capita that the economic burden of militarism is most
appreciable. The irresistible conclusion from available
data is that the increase of expenditure for army and
navy purposes is rapidly surpassing the growth of
population in each of the countries considered in the
present calculation. In other words, a continuation of the
increased demands of militarism threatens each of those
nations with a progressive exhaustion both of men and resources.

The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be
sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence
from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The
people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they
pay, not only by supporting their “defenders,” but even
by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires
allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and
readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

The usual contention is that we need a standing army to
protect the country from foreign invasion. Every
intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is
a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish.

The governments of the world, knowing each other’s
interests, do not invade each other. They have learned
that they can gain much more by international
arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest.

Indeed, as Carlyle said, “War is a quarrel between two
thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore
they take boys from one village and another village, stick
them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them
loose like wild beasts against each other.”

It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American
war, supposedly a great and patriotic event in the history
of the United States. How our hearts burned with
indignation against the atrocious Spaniards! True, our
indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was
nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long
after Butcher Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans
and outraged many Cuban women. Still, in justice to the

American Nation be it said, it did grow indignant and was
willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the
smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war
came back to the people in an increase in the price of
commodities and rent — that is, when we sobered up
from our patriotic spree it suddenly dawned on us that
the cause of the Spanish-American war was the
consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more
explicit, that the lives, blood, and money of the American
people were used to protect the interests of American
capitalists, which were threatened by the Spanish
government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is
based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the
attitude of the American government to Cuban labor.

When Cuba was firmly in the clutches of the United

States, the very soldiers sent to liberate Cuba were
ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great
cigarmakers’ strike, which took place shortly after the war.

Nor do we stand alone in waging war for such causes.

The curtain is beginning to be lifted on the motives of the
terrible Russo-Japanese war, which cost so much blood
and tears. And we see again that back of the fierce

Moloch of war stands the still fiercer god of

Commercialism. Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War
during the Russo-Japanese struggle, has revealed the
true secret behind the latter. The Tsar and his Grand

Dukes, having invested money in Corean concessions, the
war was forced for the sole purpose of speedily
accumulating large fortunes.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best
security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the
most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily
armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that
the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his
strength. The same is historically true of governments.

Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in
war preparations, with the result that peace is
maintained.

However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is
not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of
the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the
internal enemy that the Powers of various countries are
preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened
to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any
foreign invader.

The powers that have for centuries been engaged in
enslaving the masses have made a thorough study of
their psychology. They know that the people at large are
like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be
turned into joy with a little toy. And the more gorgeously
the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it will
appeal to the million-headed child.

An army and navy represents the people’s toys. To make
them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and
thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of
these toys. That was the purpose of the American
government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the

Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made
to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city
of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for
the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty
thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred
thousand. To entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and
wine a few superior officers, while the “brave boys” had
to mutiny to get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theatre
parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and
children through the breadth and length of the country
were starving in the streets; when thousands of
unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.

Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not
have been accomplished with such an enormous sum?

But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those
cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as
one of the newspapers said, “a lasting memory for the
child.”

A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The
implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child
is to be poisoned with such memories, what hope is
there for a true realization of human brotherhood?

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We
hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go
into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting
dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless
citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch
anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own
life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate.

Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that

America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks
of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism.

Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with
for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the
insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier
himself, — that poor, deluded victim of superstition and
ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of
his nation, — what has patriotism in store for him? A life
of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace;
a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.

While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited
the Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay
and Golden Gate Park. Its purpose should have been
playgrounds for children, gardens and music for the
recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly, dull, and
gray by barracks, — barracks wherein the rich would not
allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties
soldiers are herded like cattle; here they waste their
young days, polishing the boots and brass buttons of
their superior officers. Here, too, I saw the distinction of
classes: sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up in line
like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a
lieutenant. American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform!

Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual
perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis,
the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough
study of the subject. I quote: “Some of the barracks are
great centers of male prostitution.... The number of
soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are
willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in
certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the
venality of the majority of the men.... On summer
evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate
are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and
with little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins’

pocket money.”

To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the
army and navy can best be judged from the fact that
special houses exist for this form of prostitution. The
practice is not limited to England; it is universal. “Soldiers are no less sought after in France than in England or in

Germany, and special houses for military prostitution
exist both in Paris and the garrison towns.”

Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex perversion, he would have found that
the same conditions prevail in our army and navy as in
those of other countries. The growth of the standing
army inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the
barracks are the incubators.

Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends
to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the
army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or
navy, but even they, after a military experience, find
themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations.

Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for
excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can
content them. Released from the army, they can turn to
no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff,
discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the
struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the
ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their
former life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than
before. It is a well-known fact that in our prisons there is
a goodly number of ex-soldiers; while, on the other hand,
the army and navy are to a great extent plied with ex-
convicts.

Of all the evil results I have just described none seems to
me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit
patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a
soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time,
the military authorities punished him severely. True, he
had served his country fifteen years, during which time
his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen.

Funston, who reduced Buwalda’s sentence to three
years, “the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is
unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government,
and it makes no difference whether he approves of that
government or not.” Thus Funston stamps the true
character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into
the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of

Independence.

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a
thinking being into a loyal machine!

In justification of this most outrageous sentence of

Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that
the soldier’s action was “a serious crime equal to
treason.” Now, what did this “terrible crime” really
consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of
fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in

San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the
speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which
the General calls “a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion.”

Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism
than that it will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him
into prison, and rob him of the results of fifteen years of
faithful service?

Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and
his very manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism
is inexorable and, like all insatiable monsters, demands
all or nothing. It does not admit that a soldier is also a
human being, who has a right to his own feelings and
opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No, patriotism
cannot admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda
was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly,
though not at a useless price. When he returned to
freedom, he had lost his position in the army, but he
regained his self-respect. After all, that is worth three
years of imprisonment.

A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent
article, commented on the power of the military man
over the civilian in Germany. He said, among other
things, that if our Republic had no other meaning than to
guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would have just
cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was
not in Colorado during the patriotic régime of General Bell. He probably would have changed his mind had he
seen how, in the name of patriotism and the Republic,
men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged about, driven
across the border, and subjected to all kinds of
indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in
the growth of military power in the United States. There
is hardly a strike where troops and militia do not come to
the rescue of those in power, and where they do not act
as arrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing the

Kaiser’s uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick military
law. Had the writer forgotten that?

A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they
are absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking
honesty, they will not speak of these matters. And so it
has come to pass that the Dick military law was rushed
through Congress with little discussion and still less
publicity, — a law which gives the President the power to
turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer,
supposedly for the defense of the country, in reality for
the protection of the interests of that particular party
whose mouthpiece the President happens to be.

Our writer claims that militarism can never become such
a power in America as abroad, since it is voluntary with
us, while compulsory in the Old World. Two very
important facts, however, the gentleman forgets to consider. First, that conscription has created in Europe a
deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of
society. Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest
and, once in the army, they will use every possible means
to desert. Second, that it is the compulsory feature of
militarism which has created a tremendous anti-militarist
movement, feared by European Powers far more than
anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of
capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is
undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no
conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist
in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting
and rigid force — necessity. Is it not a fact that during
industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in
the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may
not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than
tramping the country in search of work, standing in the
bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After
all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a
day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not
sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an
element of character and manhood. No wonder our
military authorities complain of the “poor material”

enlisting in the army and navy. This admission is a very
encouraging sign. It proves that there is still enough of
the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the average American to risk starvation rather than don the
uniform.

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning
to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a
conception to meet the necessities of our time. The
centralization of power has brought into being an
international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed
nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a
greater harmony of interests between the workingman
of America and his brothers abroad than between the

American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a
solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is
bringing all the workers to the point when they will say
to their masters, “Go and do your own killing. We have
done it long enough for you.”

This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even
the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the
great human family. A solidarity that has proven infallible
more than once during past struggles, and which has
been the impetus inducing the Parisian soldiers, during
the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered
to shoot their brothers. It has given courage to the men
who mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It
will eventually bring about the uprising of all the
oppressed and downtrodden against their international exploiters.

The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of
that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war
against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism.

Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany,

Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, because they
dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the
movement limited to the working class; it has embraced
representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents
being men and women prominent in art, science, and
letters.

America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism
has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am
convinced that militarism is growing a greater danger
here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes
capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.

The beginning has already been made in the schools.

Evidently the government holds to the Jesuitical
conception, “Give me the child mind, and I will mould the
man.” Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of
military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the
youthful minds perverted to suit the government.

Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring
posters to join the army and navy. “A fine chance to see the world!” cries the governmental huckster. Thus
innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism,
and the military Moloch strides conquering through the

Nation.

The American workingman has suffered so much at the
hands of the soldier, State and Federal, that he is quite
justified in his disgust with, and his opposition to, the
uniformed parasite. However, mere denunciation will not
solve this great problem. What we need is a propaganda
of education for the soldier: antipatriotic literature that
will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his trade, and
that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to
the man to whose labor he owes his very existence. It is
precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already
high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No
doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to
read a radical pamphlet. But, then, has not authority
from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as
treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for
social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into
the barracks than into the factory. When we have
undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the
path for that great structure wherein all nationalities
shall be united into a universal brotherhood, — a truly FREE SOCIETY.

Chapter 6: 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.

The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the first crime committed by the Spanish government and the Catholic

Church. The history of these institutions is one long
stream of fire and blood. Still they have not learned
through experience, nor yet come to realize that every
frail being slain by Church and State grows and grows
into a mighty giant, who will someday free humanity
from their perilous hold.

Francisco Ferrer was born in 1859, of humble parents.

They were Catholics, and therefore hoped to raise their
son in the same faith. They did not know that the boy
was to become the harbinger of a great truth, that his
mind would refuse to travel in the old path. At an early
age Ferrer began to question the faith of his fathers. He
demanded to know how it is that the God who spoke to
him of goodness and love would mar the sleep of the
innocent child with dread and awe of tortures, of
suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and investigating
mind, it did not take him long to discover the
hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church.

He would have none of it.

Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for
truth; he was also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just
indignation against the iron régime of his country, and
when a band of rebels, led by the brave patriot General

Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more
ardent a fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The

Republican ideal, — I hope no one will confound it with
the Republicanism of this country. Whatever objection I,
as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of Latin
countries, I know they tower high above that corrupt and
reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every
vestige of liberty and justice. One has but to think of the

Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize
that their efforts were directed, not merely 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 McKinley, and the brutal
arrogance of a Roosevelt.

The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. It takes
more than one brave effort to split the rock of ages, to
cut off the head of that hydra monster, the Catholic

Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest, persecution, and
punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little
band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to
flee for safety to foreign shores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went to France.

How his soul must have expanded in the new land!

France, the cradle of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense Paris, with her pulsating life, after
the gloom of his own belated country, — how she must
have inspired him. What opportunities, what a glorious
chance for a young idealist.

Francisco Ferrer lost no time. Like one famished he threw
himself into the various liberal movements, met all kinds
of people, learned, absorbed, and grew. While there, he
also saw in operation the Modern School, which was to
play such an important and fatal part in his life.

The Modern School in France was founded long before

Ferrer’s time. Its originator, though on a small scale, was
that sweet spirit Louise Michel. Whether consciously or
unconsciously, our own great Louise felt long ago that
the future belongs to the young generation; that unless
the young be rescued from that mind and soul-
destroying institution, the bourgeois school, social evils
will continue to exist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen,
that the atmosphere is saturated with ghosts, that the
adult man and woman have so many superstitions to
overcome. No sooner do they outgrow the deathlike grip
of one spook, lo! They find themselves in the thraldom of ninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the
mountain peak of complete regeneration.

The child, however, has no traditions to overcome. Its
mind is not burdened with set ideas, its heart has not
grown cold with class and caste distinctions. The child is
to the teacher what clay is to the sculptor. Whether the
world will receive a work of art or a wretched imitation,
depends to a large extent on the creative power of the
teacher.

Louise Michel was pre-eminently qualified to meet the
child’s soul cravings. Was she not herself of a childlike
nature, so sweet and tender, unsophisticated and
generous? The soul of Louise burned always at white
heat over every social injustice. She was invariably in the
front ranks whenever the people of Paris rebelled against
some wrong. And as she was made to suffer
imprisonment for her great devotion to the oppressed,
the little school on Montmartre was soon no more. But
the seed was planted and has since borne fruit in many
cities of France.

The most important venture of a Modern School was
that of the great young old man Paul Robin. Together
with a few friends he established a large school at

Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris. Paul Robin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modern ideas in education.

He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the
bourgeois conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to
exempt society from its terrible crimes against the
young. The contention that the child must suffer for the
sins of the fathers, that it must continue in poverty and
filth, that it must grow up a drunkard or criminal, just
because its parents left it no other legacy, was too
preposterous to the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He
believed that whatever part heredity may play, there are
other factors equally great, if not greater, that may and
will eradicate or minimize the so-called first cause.

Proper economic and social environment, the breath and
freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy,
and, above all, a deep understanding for the needs of the
child — these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and
criminal stigma imposed on the innocent young.

Paul Robin did not select his children; he did not go to
the so-called best parents: he took his material wherever
he could find it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan
and foundling asylums, the reformatories, from all those
gray and hideous places where a benevolent society
hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty conscience.

He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little waifs his
place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There, surrounded by nature’s own glory, free and unrestrained,
well fed, clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the
little human plants began to grow, to blossom, to
develop beyond even the expectations of their friend and
teacher, Paul Robin.

The children grew and developed into self-reliant,
liberty-loving men and women. What greater danger to
the institutions that make the poor in order to
perpetuate the poor? Cempuis was closed by the French
government on the charge of co-education, which is
prohibited in France. However, Cempuis had been in
operation long enough to prove to all advanced
educators its tremendous possibilities, and to serve as an
impetus for modern methods of education, that are
slowly but inevitably undermining the present system.

Cempuis was followed by a great number of other
educational attempts, — among them, by Madelaine

Vernet, a gifted writer and poet, author of l’Amour Libre, and Sebastian Faure, with his La Ruche,[12] which I visited while in Paris, in I907.

Several years ago Comrade Faure bought the land on
which he built his La Ruche. In a comparatively short time he succeeded in transforming the former wild,
uncultivated country into a blooming spot, having all the appearance of a well-kept farm. A large, square court,
enclosed by three buildings, and a broad path leading to
the garden and orchards, greet the eye of the visitor. The
garden, kept as only a Frenchman knows how, furnishes
a large variety of vegetables for La Ruche.

Sebastian Faure is of the opinion that if the child is
subjected to contradictory influences, its development
suffers in consequence. Only when the material needs,
the hygiene of the home, and intellectual environment
are harmonious, can the child grow into a healthy, free
being.

Referring to his school, Sebastian Faure has this to say:

“I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes, mostly
orphans, or those whose parents are too poor to pay.

They are clothed, housed, and educated at my expense.

Till their twelfth year they will receive a sound
elementary education. Between the age of twelve and
fifteen — their studies still continuing — they are to be
taught some trade, in keeping with their individual
disposition and abilities. After that they are at liberty to
leave La Ruche to begin life in the outside world, with the assurance that they may at any time return to La Ruche, where they will be received with open arms and
welcomed as parents do their beloved children. Then, if they wish to work at our place, they may do so under the
following conditions: One third of the product to cover
his or her expenses of maintenance, another third to go
towards the general fund set aside for accommodating
new children, and the last third to be devoted to the
personal use of the child, as he or she may see fit.

“The health of the children who are now in my care is
perfect. Pure air, nutritious food, physical exercise in the
open, long walks, observation of hygienic rules, the short
and interesting method of instruction, and, above all, our
affectionate understanding and care of the children,
have produced admirable physical and mental results.

“It would be unjust to claim that our pupils have
accomplished wonders; yet, considering that they belong
to the average, having had no previous opportunities, the
results are very gratifying indeed. The most important
thing they have acquired — a rare trait with ordinary
school children — is the love of study, the desire to
know, to be informed. They have learned a new method
of work, one that quickens the memory and stimulates
the imagination. We make a particular effort to awaken
the child’s interest in his surroundings, to make him
realize the importance of observation, investigation, and
reflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they
would not be deaf and blind to the things about them.

Our children never accept anything in blind faith, without
inquiry as to why and wherefore; nor do they feel
satisfied until their questions are thoroughly answered.

Thus their minds are free from doubts and fear resultant
from incomplete or untruthful replies; it is the latter
which warp the growth of the child, and create a lack of
confidence in himself and those about him.

“It is surprising how frank and kind and affectionate our
little ones are to each other. The harmony between
themselves and the adults at La Ruche is highly
encouraging. We should feel at fault if the children were
to fear or honor us merely because we are their elders.

We leave nothing undone to gain their confidence and
love; that accomplished, understanding will replace duty;
confidence, fear; and affection, severity.

“No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy,
kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of the child.

The effort of every true educator should be to unlock
that treasure to stimulate the child’s impulses, and call
forth the best and noblest tendencies. What greater
reward can there be for one whose life-work is to watch
over the growth of the human plant, than to see its
nature unfold its petals, and to observe it develop into a
true individuality. My comrades at La Ruche look for no
greater reward, and it is due to them and their efforts, even more than to my own, that our human garden
promises to bear beautiful fruit.”[13]

Regarding the subject of history and the prevailing old
methods of instruction, Sebastian Faure said:

“We explain to our children that true history is yet to be
written, — the story of those who have died, unknown,
in the effort to aid humanity to greater achievement.”[14]

Francisco Ferrer could not escape this great wave of

Modern School attempts. He saw its possibilities, not
merely in theoretic form, but in their practical application
to every-day needs. He must have realized that Spain,
more than any other country, stands in need of just such
schools, if it is ever to throw off the double yoke of priest and soldier.

When we consider that the entire system of education in

Spain is in the hands of the Catholic Church, and when
we further remember the Catholic formula, “To inculcate

Catholicism in the mind of the child until it is nine years
of age is to ruin it forever for any other idea,” we will
understand the tremendous task of Ferrer in bringing the
new light to his people. Fate soon assisted him in
realizing his great dream.

Mlle. Meunier, a pupil of Francisco Ferrer, and a lady of wealth, became interested in the Modern School project.

When she died, she left Ferrer some valuable property
and twelve thousand francs yearly income for the School.

It is said that mean souls can conceive of naught but
mean ideas. If so, the contemptible methods of the

Catholic Church to blackguard Ferrer’s character, in order
to justify her own black crime, can readily be explained.

Thus the lie was spread in American Catholic papers that

Ferrer used his intimacy with Mlle. Meunier to get
passession of her money.

Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of whatever nature,
between a man and a woman, is their own affair, their
sacred own. I would therefore not lose a word in
referring to the matter, if it were not one of the many
dastardly lies circulated about Ferrer. Of course, those
who know the purity of the Catholic clergy will
understand the insinuation. Have the Catholic priests
ever looked upon woman as anything but a sex
commodity? The historical data regarding the discoveries
in the cloisters and monasteries will bear me out in that.

How, then, are they to understand the co-operation of a
man and a woman, except on a sex basis?

As a matter of fact, Mlle. Meunier was considerably Ferrer’s senior. Having spent her childhood and girlhood
with a miserly father and a submissive mother, she could
easily appreciate the necessity of love and joy in child
life. She must have seen that Francisco Ferrer was a
teacher, not college, machine, or diploma-made, but one
endowed with genius for that calling.

Equipped with knowledge, with experience, and with the
necessary means; above all, imbued with the divine fire
of his mission, our Comrade came back to Spain, and
there began his life’s work. On the ninth of September,

1901, the first Modern School was opened. It was
enthusiastically received by the people of Barcelona, who
pledged their support. In a short address at the opening
of the School, Ferrer submitted his program to his
friends. He said: “I am not a speaker, not a propagandist,
not a fighter. I am a teacher; I love children above
everything. I think I understand them. I want my
contribution to the cause of liberty to be a young
generation ready to meet a new era.” He was cautioned
by his friends to be careful in his opposition to the

Catholic Church. They knew to what lengths she would
go to dispose of an enemy. Ferrer, too, knew. But, like

Brand, he believed in all or nothing. He would not erect
the Modern School on the same old lie. He would be frank and honest and open with the children.

Francisco Ferrer became a marked man. From the very
first day of the opening of the School, he was shadowed.

The school building was watched his little home in

Mangat was watched. He was followed every step, even
when he went to France or England to confer with his
colleagues. He was a marked man, and it was only a
question of time when the lurking enemy would tighten
the noose.

It succeeded, almost, in 1906, when Ferrer was
implicated in the attempt on the life of Alfonso. The
evidence exonerating him was too strong even for the
black crows;[15] they had to let him go — not for good, however. They waited. Oh, they can wait, when they
have set themselves to trap a victim.

The moment came at last, during the anti-military
uprising in Spain, in July, 1909. One will have to search in
vain the annals of revolutionary history to find a more
remarkable protest against militarism. Having been
soldier-ridden for centuries, the people of Spain could
stand the yoke no longer. They would refuse to
participate in useless slaughter. They saw no reason for
aiding a despotic government in subduing and oppressing
a small people fighting for their independence, as did the brave Riffs. No, they would not bear arms against them.

For eighteen hundred years the Catholic Church has
preached the gospel of peace. Yet, when the people
actually wanted to make this gospel a living reality, she
urged the authorities to force them to bear arms. Thus
the dynasty of Spain followed the murderous methods of
the Russian dynasty, — the people were forced to the
battlefield.

Then, and not until then, was their power of endurance
at an end. Then, and not until then, did the workers of

Spain turn against their masters, against those who, like
leeches, had drained their strength, their very life —
blood. Yes, they attacked the churches and the priests,
but if the latter had a thousand lives, they could not
possibly pay for the terrible outrages and crimes
perpetrated upon the Spanish people.

Francisco Ferrer was arrested on the first of September,

1909. Until October first his friends and comrades did not
even know what had become of him. On that day a letter
was received by L’Humanité from which can be learned
the whole mockery of the trial. And the next day his
companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following
letter:

“No reason to worry; you know I am absolutely innocent.

Today I am particularly hopeful and joyous. It is the first
time I can write to you, and the first time since my arrest
that I can bathe in the rays of the sun, streaming
generously through my cell window. You, too, must be
joyous.”

How pathetic that Ferrer should have believed, as late as

October fourth, that he would not be condemned to
death. Even more pathetic that his friends and comrades
should once more have made the blunder in crediting the
enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they had
placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their
brothers killed before their very eyes. They made no
preparation to rescue Ferrer, not even a protest of any
extent; nothing. “Why, it is impossible to condemn

Ferrer; he is innocent.” But everything is possible with
the Catholic Church. Is she not a practiced henchman,
whose trials of her enemies are the worst mockery of
justice?

On October fourth Ferrer sent the following letter
to L’Humanite:

”The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909.

”My dear Friends — Notwithstanding most absolute
innocence, the prosecutor demands the death penalty,
based on denunciations of the police, representing me as the chief of the world’s Anarchists, directing the labor
syndicates of France, and guilty of conspiracies and
insurrections everywhere, and declaring that my voyages
to London and Paris were undertaken with no other
object.

“With such infamous lies they are trying to kill me.

“The messenger is about to depart and I have not time
for more. All the evidence presented to the investigating
judge by the police is nothing but a tissue of lies and
calumnious insinuations. But no proofs against me,
having done nothing at all.

“FERRER.”

October thirteenth, 1909, Ferrer’s heart, so brave, so
staunch, so loyal, was stilled. Poor fools! The last
agonized throb of that heart had barely died away when
it began to beat a hundredfold in the hearts of the
civilized world, until it grew into terrific thunder, hurling forth its malediction upon the instigators of the black
crime. Murderers of black garb and pious mien, to the
bar of justice!

Did Francisco Ferrer participate in the anti-military
uprising? According to the first indictment, which
appeared in a Catholic paper in Madrid, signed by the Bishop and all the prelates of Barcelona, he was not even
accused of participation. The indictment was to the
effect that Francisco Ferrer was guilty of having
organized godless schools, and having circulated godless
literature. But in the twentieth century men cannot be
burned merely for their godless beliefs. Something else
had to be devised; hence the charge of instigating the
uprising.

In no authentic source so far investigated could a single
proof be found to connect Ferrer with the uprising. But
then, no proofs were wanted, or accepted, by the
authorities. There were seventy-two witnesses, to be
sure, but their testimony was taken on paper. They never
were confronted with Ferrer, or he with them.

Is it psychologically possible that Ferrer should have
participated? I do not believe it is, and here are my
reasons. Francisco Ferrer was not only a great teacher,
but he was also undoubtedly a marvelous organizer. In
eight years, between 1901–1909, he had organized in

Spain one hundred and nine schools, besides inducing
the liberal element of his country to organize three
hundred and eight other schools. In connection with his
own school work, Ferrer had equipped a modern printing
plant, organized a staff of translators, and spread
broadcast one hundred and fifty thousand copies of modern scientific and sociologic works, not to forget the
large quantity of rationalist text books. Surely none but
the most methodical and efficient organizer could have
accomplished such a feat.

On the other hand, it was absolutely proven that the
anti-military uprising was not at all organized; that it
came as a surprise to the people themselves, like a great
many revolutionary waves on previous occasions. The
people of Barcelona, for instance, had the city in their
control for four days, and, according to the statement of
tourists, greater order and peace never prevailed. Of
course, the people were so little prepared that when the
time came, they did not know what to do. In this regard
they were like the people of Paris during the Commune
of 1871. They, too, were unprepared. While they were
starving, they protected the warehouses filled to the
brim with provisions. They placed sentinels to guard the

Bank of France, where the bourgeoisie kept the stolen
money. The workers of Barcelona, too, watched over the
spoils of their masters.

How pathetic is the stupidity of the underdog; how
terribly tragic! But, then, have not his fetters been forged
so deeply into his flesh, that he would not, even if he
could, break them? The awe of authority, of law, of
private property, hundredfold burned into his soul, —
how is he to throw it off unprepared, unexpectedly?

Can anyone assume for a moment that a man like Ferrer
would affiliate himself with such a spontaneous,
unorganized effort? Would he not have known that it
would result in a defeat, a disastrous defeat for the
people? And is it not more likely that if he would have
taken part, he, the experienced entrepreneur, would
have thoroughly organized the attempt? If all other
proofs were lacking, that one factor would be sufficient
to exonerate Francisco Ferrer. But there are others
equally convincing.

For the very date of the outbreak, July twenty-fifth,

Ferrer had called a conference of his teachers and
members of the League of Rational Education. It was to
consider the autumn work, and particularly the
publication of Elisée Reclus’ great book, L’Homme et la

Terre, and Peter Kropotkin’s Great French Revolution. Is it at all likely, is it at all plausible that Ferrer, knowing of the uprising, being a party to it, would in cold blood
invite his friends and colleagues to Barcelona for the day
on which he realized their lives would be endangered?

Surely, only the criminal, vicious mind of a Jesuit could
credit such deliberate murder.

Francisco Ferrer had his life-work mapped out; he had everything to lose and nothing to gain, except ruin and
disaster, were he to lend assistance to the outbreak. Not
that he doubted the justice of the people’s wrath; but his
work, his hope, his very nature was directed toward
another goal.

In vain are the frantic efforts of the Catholic Church, her
lies, falsehoods, calumnies. She stands condemned by
the awakened human conscience of having once more
repeated the foul crimes of the past.

Francisco Ferrer is accused of teaching the children the
most blood-curdling ideas, — to hate God, for instance.

Horrors! Francisco Ferrer did not believe in the existence
of a God. Why teach the child to hate something which
does not exist? Is it not more likely that he took the
children out into the open, that he showed them the
splendor of the sunset, the brilliancy of the starry
heavens, the awe-inspiring wonder of the mountains and
seas; that he explained to them in his simple, direct way
the law of growth, of development, of the interrelation
of all life? In so doing he made it forever impossible for
the poisonous weeds of the Catholic Church to take root
in the child’s mind.

It has been stated that Ferrer prepared the children to destroy the rich. Ghost stories of old maids. Is it not more
likely that he prepared them to succor the poor? That he
taught them the humiliation, the degradation, the
awfulness of poverty, which is a vice and not a virtue;
that he taught the dignity and importance of all creative
efforts, which alone sustain life and build character. Is it
not the best and most effective way of bringing into the
proper light the absolute uselessness and injury of
parasitism?

Last, but not least, Ferrer is charged with undermining
the army by inculcating anti-military ideas. Indeed? He
must have believed with Tolstoy that war is legalized
slaughter, that it perpetuates hatred and arrogance, that
it eats away the heart of nations, and turns them into
raving maniacs.

However, we have Ferrer’s own word regarding his ideas
of modern education:

“I would like to call the attention of my readers to this
idea: All the value of education rests in the respect for
the physical, intellectual, and moral will of the child. Just as in science no demonstration is possible save by facts,
just so there is no real education save that which is
exempt from all dogmatism, which leaves to the child
itself the direction of its effort, and confines itself to the seconding of its effort. Now, there is nothing easier than
to alter this purpose, and nothing harder than to respect
it. Education is always imposing, violating, constraining;
the real educator is he who can best protect the child
against his (the teacher’s) own ideas, his peculiar whims;
he who can best appeal to the child’s own energies.

“We are convinced that the education of the future will
be of an entirely spontaneous nature; certainly we
cannot as yet realize it, but the evolution of methods in
the direction of a wider comprehension of the
phenomena of life, and the fact that all advances toward
perfection mean the overcoming of restraint, — all this
indicates that we are in the right when we hope for the
deliverance of the child through science.

“Let us not fear to say that we want men capable of
evolving without stopping, capable of destroying and
renewing their environments without cessation, of
renewing themselves also; men, whose intellectual
independence will be their greatest force, who will
attach themselves to nothing, always ready to accept
what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring
to live multiple lives in one life. Society fears such men;
we therefore must not hope that it will ever want an
education able to give them to us.

“We shall follow the labors of the scientists who study the child with the greatest attention, and we shall
eagerly seek for means of applying their experience to
the education which we want to build up, in the direction
of an ever fuller liberation of the individual. But how can
we attain our end? Shall it not be by putting ourselves
directly to the work favoring the foundation of new
schools, which shall be ruled as much as possible by this
spirit of liberty, which we forefeel will dominate the
entire work of education in the future?

“A trial has been made, which, for the present, has
already given excellent results. We can destroy all which
in the present school answers to the organization of
constraint, the artificial surroundings by which children
are separated from nature and life, the intellectual and
moral discipline made use of to impose ready-made
ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave and annihilate
natural bent. Without fear of deceiving ourselves, we can
restore the child to the environment which entices it, the
environment of nature in which he will be in contact with
all that he loves, and in which impressions of life will
replace fastidious book-learning. If we did no more than
that, we should already have prepared in great part the
deliverance of the child.

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

“I know very well we could not thus realize all our hopes,
that we should often be forced, for lack of knowledge, to
employ undesirable methods; but a certitude would
sustain us in our efforts — namely, that even without
reaching our aim completely we should do more and
better in our still imperfect work than the present school
accomplishes. I like the free spontaneity of a child who
knows nothing, better than the world-knowledge and
intellectual deformity of a child who has been subjected
to our present education.”[16]

Had Ferrer actually organized the riots, had he fought on
the barricades, had he hurled a hundred bombs, he could
not have been so dangerous to the Catholic Church and
to despotism, as with his opposition to discipline and
restraint. Discipline and restraint — are they not back of
all the evils in the world? Slavery, submission, poverty, all misery, all social iniquities result from discipline and
restraint. Indeed, Ferrer was dangerous. Therefore he
had to die, October thirteenth, 1909, in the ditch of

Montjuich. Yet who dare say his death was in vain? In
view of the tempestuous rise of universal indignation:

Italy naming streets in memory of Francisco Ferrer,

Belgium inaugurating a movement to erect a memorial;

France calling to the front her most illustrious men to resume the heritage of the martyr; England being the
first to issue a biography; all countries uniting in
perpetuating the great work of Francisco Ferrer;

America, even, tardy always in progressive ideas, giving
birth to a Francisco Ferrer Association, its aim being to
publish a complete life of Ferrer and to organize Modern

Schools all over the country, — in the face of this
international revolutionary wave, who is there to say

Ferrer died in vain?

That death at Montjuich, — how wonderful, how
dramatic it was, how it stirs the human soul. Proud and
erect, the inner eye turned toward the light, Francisco

Ferrer needed no lying priests to give him courage, nor
did he upbraid a phantom for forsaking him. The
consciousness that his executioners represented a dying
age, and that his was the living truth, sustained him in
the last heroic moments.

A dying age and a living truth,

The living burying the dead.

Chapter 7: 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 sincerity and
reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been
fairly bred out of us, with the result that there can be
neither truth nor individuality in our art.”

Mr. 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, imposed upon man by
the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must
do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and
healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and
culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed

Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the
dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which
alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and
pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that
forced some of England’s freest women into the
conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and,
later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has
demanded another toll — the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact,

Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious
factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the
artistic expression of his people, and stamping its
approval only on the dullness of middle-class
respectability.

It is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to

America as the country of Puritanic provincialism. It is
quite true that our life is stunted by Puritanism, and that
the latter is killing what is natural and healthy in our
impulses. But it is equally true that it is to England that
we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on American
soil. It was bequeathed to us by the Pilgrim Fathers.

Fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Pilgrims of

Mayflower fame established in the New World a reign of

Puritanic tyranny and crime. The history of New England,
and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors
that have turned life into gloom, joy 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 American purification.

Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals
of Puritanism as the “Bloody Town.” It rivaled Salem,
even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious
opinions. On the now famous Common a half-naked
woman, with a baby in her arms, was publicly whipped
for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot Mary

Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In
fact, Boston has been the scene of more than one
wanton crime committed by Puritanism. Salem, in the
summer of 1692, killed eighteen people for witchcraft.

Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by
fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: “The Pilgrim
fathers infested the New World to redress the balance of
the Old.” The horrors of that period have found their
most supreme expression in the American classic, The

Scarlet Letter.

Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash;
but it still has a most pernicious hold on the minds and
feelings of the American people. Naught else can explain
the power of a Comstock. Like the Torquemadas of ante-
bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of

American morals; he dictates the standards of good and
evil, of purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the private lives of the people, into their most
intimate relations. The system of espionage established
by this man Comstock puts to shame the infamous Third

Division of the Russian secret police. Why does the public
tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply because

Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism
bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom
even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating
themselves. The visionless and leaden elements of the
old Young Men’s and Women’s Christian Temperance

Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and
the Prohibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their
patron saint, are the grave diggers of American art and
culture.

Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature
which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of
our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As
with a surgeon’s knife every Puritanic carcass is
dissected, and the way thus cleared for man’s liberation
from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism
as the constant check upon American life, neither truth
nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and
mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural
expression, and stifle our best impulses. Puritanism in
this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on

Plymouth Rock. It repudiates, as something vile and
sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant
as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is
itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.

The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too
true. The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the
flesh as something evil; it had to be subdued and hidden
at all cost. The result of this vicious attitude is only now
beginning to be recognized by modern thinkers and
educators. They realize that “nakedness has a hygienic
value as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its
influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the
young or acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. It is
an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any
youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and
eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the
world, with its vigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of the prime tonics of life.”[17] But the spirit of purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to
appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide the
natural form under the plea of chastity. Yet chastity itself
is but an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a
false shame of the human form. The modern idea of
chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural
impulses. “Chastity varies with the amount of clothing,”

and hence Christians and purists forever hasten to cover
the “heathen” with tatters, and thus convert him to
goodness and chastity.

Puritanism, with its perversion of the significance and
functions of the human body, especially in regard to
woman, has condemned her to celibacy, or to the
indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to
prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity
is apparent when we consider the results. Absolute
sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried
woman, under pain of being considered immoral or
fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia,
impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous
complaints involving diminished power of work, limited
enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with
sexual desires and imaginings. The arbitrary and
pernicious dictum of total continence probably also
explains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud
believes that the intellectual inferiority of so many
women is due to the inhibition of thought imposed upon
them for the purpose of sexual repression. Having thus
suppressed the natural sex desires of the unmarried
woman, Puritanism, on the other hand, blesses her married sister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock.

Indeed, not merely blesses her, but forces the woman,
oversexed by previous repression, to bear children,
irrespective of weakened physical condition or economic
inability to rear a large family. Prevention, even by
scientifically determined safe methods, is absolutely
prohibited; nay, the very mention of the subject is
considered criminal.

Thanks to this Puritanic tyranny, the majority of women
soon find themselves at the ebb of their physical
resources. Ill and worn, they are utterly unable to give
their children even elementary care. That, added to
economic pressure, forces many women to risk utmost
danger rather than continue to bring forth life. The
custom of procuring abortions has reached such vast
proportions in America as to be almost beyond belief.

According to recent investigations along this line,
seventeen abortions are committed in every hundred
pregnancies. This fearful percentage represents only
cases which come to the knowledge of physicians.

Considering the secrecy in which this practice is
necessarily shrouded, and the consequent professional
inefficiency and neglect, Puritanism continuously exacts
thousands of victims to its own stupidity and hypocrisy.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of

Puritanism. It is its most cherished child, all hypocritical
sanctimoniousness notwithstanding. The prostitute is the
fury of our century, sweeping across the “civilized”

countries like a hurricane, and leaving a trail of disease
and disaster. The only remedy Puritanism offers for this
ill-begotten child is greater repression and more
merciless persecution. The latest outrage is represented
by the Page Law, which imposes upon 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. Most disheartening it is that this spirit of
obtuse narrow mindedness has poisoned even our so-
called liberals, and has blinded them into joining the
crusade against the very things born of the hypocrisy of

Puritanism — prostitution and its results. In wilful
blindness Puritanism refuses to see that the true method
of prevention is the one which makes it clear to all that

“venereal diseases are not a mysterious or terrible thing,
the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shameful evil
branded by purist malediction, but an ordinary disease
which may be treated and cured.” By its methods of
obscurity, disguise, and concealment, Puritanism has
furnished favorable conditions for the growth and spread of these diseases. Its bigotry is again most strikingly
demonstrated by the senseless attitude in regard to the
great discovery of Prof. Ehrlich, hypocrisy veiling the
important cure for syphilis with vague allusions to a
remedy for “a certain poison.”

The almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due
to its entrenchment behind the State and the law.

Pretending to safeguard the people against “immorality,”

it has impregnated the machinery of government and
added to its usurpation of moral guardianship the legal
censorship of our views, feelings, and even of our
conduct.

Art, literature, the drama, the privacy of the mails, in
fact, our most intimate tastes, are at the mercy of this
inexorable tyrant. Anthony Comstock, or some other
equally ignorant policeman, has been given power to
desecrate genius, to soil and mutilate the sublimest
creation of nature — the human form. Books dealing
with the most vital issues of our lives, and seeking to
shed light upon dangerously obscured problems, are
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 liberty daily outraged to the extent it is in America, the
stronghold of the Puritanic eunuchs. Here the only day of
recreation left to the masses, Sunday, has been made
hideous and utterly impossible. All writers on primitive
customs and ancient civilization agree that the Sabbath
was a day of festivities, free from care and duties, a day
of general rejoicing and merry making. In every European
country this tradition continues to bring some relief from
the humdrum and stupidity of our Christian era.

Everywhere concert halls, theaters, museums, and
gardens are filled with men, women, and children,
particularly workers with their families, full of life and
joy, forgetful of the ordinary rules and conventions of
their every-day existence. It is on that day that the
masses demonstrate what life might really mean in a
sane society, with work stripped of its profit-making,
soul-destroying purpose.

Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day.

Naturally, only the workers are affected: our millionaires
have their luxurious homes and elaborate clubs. The
poor, however, are condemned to the monotony and
dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and fun
of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom
of the church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor,
or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back-room saloon.

In Prohibition States the people lack even the latter,
unless they can invest their meager earnings in quantities
of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, everyone knows
what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of

Puritanism it, too, has but driven the “devil” deeper into
the human system. Nowhere else does one meet so
many drunkards as in our Prohibition towns. But so long
as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of
hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly

Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and
economy, but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself
abnormal, it succeeds but in creating an abnormal life.

Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises
the spirits, is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body, and deepens our vision of human fellowship.

Without stimuli, in one form or another, creative work is
impossible, nor indeed the spirit of kindliness and
generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have seen
their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not
justify Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole
gamut of human emotions. A Byron and a Poe have
stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans can ever
hope to do. The former have given to life meaning and
color; the latter are turning red blood into water, beauty
into ugliness, variety into uniformity and decay.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ.

On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous;
yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire
fabric is doomed. With Hippolyte Taine, every truly free
spirit has come to realize that “Puritanism is the death of
culture, philosophy, humor, and good fellowship; its
characteristics are dullness, monotony, and gloom.”

Chapter 8: The Traffic in Women

Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery —
the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these

“unheard-of conditions,” and lawmakers are already
planning a new set of laws to check the horror.

It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be
diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is
inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc.

And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is
increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through
back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the
system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated.

How is it that an institution, known almost to every child,
should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that
this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made
such an important issue?

To assume that the recent investigation of the white
slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial
investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the
least, very foolish. Prostitution has been, and is, a
widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business,
perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the
victims of prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has remained to our industrial system, or to economic
prostitution.

Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with
glaring colors will baby people become interested — for
a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that
must have new toys every day. The “righteous” cry
against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It serves to
amuse the people for a little while, and it will help to
create a few more fat political jobs — parasites who stalk
about the world as inspectors, investigators, detectives,
and so forth.

What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not
merely white women, but yellow and black women as
well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of
capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving
thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With

Mrs. Warren these girls feel, “Why waste your life
working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen
hours a day?”

Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause.

They know it well enough, but it doesn’t pay to say
anything about it. It is much more profitable to play the

Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things.

However, there is one commendable exception among
the young writers: Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose
work The House of Bondage is the first earnest attempt to treat the social evil — not from a sentimental

Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr.

Kauffman proves that our industrial system leaves most
women no alternative except prostitution. The women
portrayed in The House of Bondage belong to the
working class. Had the author portrayed the life of
women in other spheres, he would have been confronted
with the same state of affairs.

Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her
work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable
that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a
position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is
merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to
one man, in or out of marriage, or too many men.

Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic
and social inferiority of woman is responsible for
prostitution.

Just at present our good people are shocked by the
disclosures that in New York City alone one out of every
ten women works in a factory, that the average wage received by women is six dollars per week for forty-eight
to sixty hours of work, and that the majority of female
wage workers face many months of idleness which
leaves the average wage about $280 a year. In view of
these economic horrors, is it to be wondered at that
prostitution and the white slave trade have become such
dominant factors?

Lest the preceding figures be considered an
exaggeration, it is well to examine what some authorities
on prostitution have to say:

“A prolific cause of female depravity can be found in the
several tables, showing the description of the
employment pursued, and the wages received, by the
women previous to their fall, and it will be a question for
the political economist to decide how far mere business
consideration should be an apology — on the part of
employers for a reduction in their rates of remuneration,
and whether the savings of a small percentage on wages
is not more than counterbalanced by the enormous
amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to
defray the expenses incurred on account of a system of
vice, which is the direct result, in many cases, of insufficient compensation of honest labor.”[18]

Our present-day reformers would do well to look into Dr.

Sanger’s book. There they will find that out of 2,000
cases under his observation, but few came from the
middle classes, from well-ordered conditions, or pleasant
homes. By far the largest majority were working girls and
working women; some driven into prostitution through
sheer want, others because of a cruel, wretched life at
home, others again because of thwarted and crippled
physical natures (of which I shall speak later on). Also it
will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to
learn that out of two thousand cases, 490 were married
women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently
there was not much of a guaranty for their “safety and
purity” in the sanctity of marriage.[19]

Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in Prostitution in the Nineteenth

Century, is even more emphatic in characterizing
economic conditions as one of the most vital factors of
prostitution.

“Although prostitution has existed in all ages, it was left
to the nineteenth century to develop it into a gigantic
social institution. The development of industry with vast
masses of people in the competitive market, the growth
and congestion of large cities, the insecurity and
uncertainty of employment, has given prostitution an
impetus never dreamed of at any period in human history.”

And again Havelock Ellis, while not so absolute in dealing
with the economic cause, is nevertheless compelled to
admit that it is indirectly and directly the main cause.

Thus he finds that a large percentage of prostitutes is
recruited from the servant class, although the latter have
less care and greater security. On the other hand, Mr.

Ellis does not deny that the daily routine, the drudgery,
the monotony of the servant girl’s lot, and especially the
fact that she may never partake of the companionship
and joy of a home, is no mean factor in forcing her to
seek recreation and forgetfulness in the gaiety and
glimmer of prostitution. In other words, the servant girl,
being treated as a drudge, never having the right to
herself, and worn out by the caprices of her mistress, can
find an outlet, like the factory or shopgirl, only in
prostitution.

The most amusing side of the question now before the
public is the indignation of our “good, respectable
people,” especially the various Christian gentlemen, who
are always to be found in the front ranks of every
crusade. Is it that they are absolutely ignorant of the
history of religion, and especially of the Christian
religion? Or is it that they hope to blind the present
generation to the part played in the past by the Church in relation to prostitution? Whatever their reason, they
should be the last to cry out against the unfortunate
victims of today, since it is known to every intelligent
student that prostitution is of religious origin, maintained
and fostered for many centuries, not as a shame, but as a
virtue, hailed as such by the Gods themselves.

“It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be
found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great
conserver of social tradition, preserving in a transformed
shape a primitive freedom that was passing out of the
general social life. The typical example is that recorded
by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the

Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every
woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to
the first stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship
the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other parts
of western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other
islands of the eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece,
where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth
possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the
service of the goddess.

“The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a
general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity
of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred
influence in promoting the fertility of Nature, is maintained by all authoritative writers on the subject.

Gradually, however, and when prostitution became an
organized institution under priestly influence, religious
prostitution developed utilitarian sides, thus helping to
increase public revenue.

“The rise of Christianity to political power produced little
change in policy. The leading fathers of the Church
tolerated prostitution. Brothels under municipal
protection are found in the thirteenth century. They
constituted a sort of public service, the directors of them
being considered almost as public servants. ”[20]

To this must be added the following from Dr. Sanger’s
work:

“Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostitutes would be
tolerated if they pay a certain amount of their earnings
to the Church.

“Pope Sixtus IV was more practical; from one single
brothel, which he himself had built, he received an
income of 20,000 ducats.”

In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that
direction. At least she does not openly demand tribute
from prostitutes. She finds it much more profitable to go
in for real estate, like Trinity Church, for instance, to rent out death traps at an exorbitant price to those who live
off and by prostitution.

Much as I should like to, my space will not admit
speaking of prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and
during the Middle Ages. The conditions in the latter
period are particularly interesting, inasmuch as
prostitution was organized into guilds, presided over by a
brothel queen. These guilds employed strikes as a
medium of improving their condition and keeping a
standard price. Certainly that is more practical a method
than the one used by the modern wage-slave in society.

It would be one-sided and extremely superficial to
maintain that the economic factor is the only cause of
prostitution. There are others no less important and vital.

That, too, our reformers know, but dare discuss even less
than the institution that saps the very life out of both
men and women. I refer to the sex question, the very
mention of which causes most people moral spasms.

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex
commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of
the meaning and importance of sex. Everything dealing
with that subject is suppressed, and persons who
attempt to bring light into this terrible darkness are
persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is nevertheless true that so long as a girl is not to know how to take care
of herself, not to know the function of the most
important part of her life, we need not be surprised if she
becomes an easy prey to prostitution, or to any other
form of a relationship which degrades her to the position
of an object for mere sex gratification.

It is due to this ignorance that the entire life and nature
of the girl is thwarted and crippled. We have long ago
taken it as a self-evident fact that the boy may follow the
call of the wild; that is to say, that the boy may, as soon
as his sex nature asserts itself, satisfy that nature; but
our moralists are scandalized at the very thought that the
nature of a girl should assert itself. To the moralist
prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the
woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of
wedlock. That this is no mere statement is proved by the
fact that marriage for monetary considerations is
perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion,
while any other union is condemned and repudiated. Yet
a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothing else than

“any person for whom sexual relationships are
subordinated to gain.”[21]

“Those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of the sexual act and make of this a
profession.”[22]

In fact, Banger goes further; he maintains that the act of
prostitution is “intrinsically equal to that of a man or
woman who contracts a marriage for economic reasons.”

Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as
thousands of girls cannot marry, our stupid social
customs condemn them either to a life of celibacy or
prostitution. Human nature asserts itself regardless of all
laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should
adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as
attributes of his general development, while similar
experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a
terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good
and noble in a human being. This double standard of
morality has played no little part in the creation and
perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of
the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which
alleged “innocence,” together with an overwrought and
stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs
that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.

Not that the gratification of sex must needs lead to prostitution; it is the cruel, heartless, criminal
persecution of those who dare divert from the beaten
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 comforts of any
kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap
amusement is the only means of forgetting their daily
routine. This naturally brings them into close proximity
with the other sex. It is hard to say which of the two
factors brings the girl’s over-sexed condition to a climax,
but it is certainly the most natural thing that a climax
should result. That is the first step toward prostitution.

Nor is the girl to be held responsible for it. On the
contrary, it is altogether the fault of society, the fault of our lack of understanding, of our lack of appreciation of
life in the making; especially is it the criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity, because
she has gone from the “path of virtue”; that is, because
her first sex experience has taken place without the
sanction of the Church.

The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with the doors
of home and society closed in her face. Her entire
training and tradition is such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no ground to
stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up, instead of
dragging her down. Thus society creates the victims that
it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of. The meanest,
most depraved and decrepit man still considers himself
too good to take as his wife the woman whose grace he
was quite willing to buy, even though he might thereby
save her from a life of horror. Nor can she turn to her
own sister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems
herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own
position is in many respects even more deplorable than
her sister’s of the street.

“The wife who married for money, compared with the
prostitute,” says Havelock Ellis, “is the true scab. She is
paid less, gives much more in return in labor and care,
and is absolutely bound to her master. The prostitute
never signs away the right over her own person, she
retains her freedom and personal rights, nor is she
always compelled to submit to man’s embrace.”

Nor does the better-than-thou woman realize the
apologist claim of Lecky that “though she may be the
supreme type of vice, she is also the most efficient
guardian of virtue. But for her, happy homes would be
polluted, unnatural and harmful practice would abound.”

Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-half of the human race for the sake of some miserable institution
which they cannot outgrow. As a matter of fact,
prostitution is no more a safeguard for the purity of the
home than rigid laws are a safeguard against
prostitution. Fully fifty per cent of married men are
patrons of brothels. It is through this virtuous element
that the married women — nay, even the children — are
infected with venereal diseases. Yet society has not a
word of condemnation for the man, while no law is too
monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless
victim. She is not only preyed upon by those who use
her, but she is also absolutely at the mercy of every
policeman and miserable detective on the beat, the
officials at the station house, and the authorities in every
prison.

In a recent book by a woman who was for twelve years
the mistress of a “house,” are to be found the following
figures: “The authorities compelled me to pay every
month fines between $14.70 to $29.70, the girls would
pay from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police.” Considering that
the writer did her business in a small city, that the
amounts she gives do not include extra bribes and fines,
one can readily see the tremendous revenue the police
department derives from the blood money of its victims,
whom it will not even protect. Woe to those who refuse to pay their toll; they would be rounded up like cattle, “if
only to make a favorable impression upon the good
citizens of the city, or if the powers needed extra money
on the side. For the warped mind who believes that a
fallen woman is incapable of human emotion it would be
impossible to realize the grief, the disgrace, the tears, the wounded pride that was ours every time we were pulled
in.”

Strange, isn’t it, that a woman who has 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 business
before they came to America. Most of the girls speak
excellent English, are Americanized in habits and
appearance, — a thing absolutely impossible unless they
had lived in this country many years. That is, they were
driven into prostitution by American conditions, by the
thoroughly American custom for excessive display of
finery and clothes, which, of course, necessitates money,

— money that cannot be earned in shops or factories.

In other words, there is no reason to believe that any set
of men would go to the risk and expense of getting
foreign products, when American conditions are
overflooding the market with thousands of girls. On the
other hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove that the
export of American girls for the purpose of prostitution is
by no means a small factor.

Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State Attorney of Cook

County, Ill., makes the open charge that New England
girls are shipped to Panama for the express use of men in
the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr. Roe adds that “there
seems to be an underground railroad between Boston
and Washington which many girls travel.” Is it not significant that the railroad should lead to the very seat
of Federal authority? That Mr. Roe said more than was
desired in certain quarters is proved by the fact that he
lost his position. It is not practical for men in office to tell tales from school.

The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that
there are no brothels in the Canal Zone. That is the usual
avenue of escape for a hypocritical world that dares not
face the truth. Not in the Canal Zone, not in the city
limits, — therefore prostitution does not exist.

Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson Reynolds, who
has made a thorough study of the white slave traffic in

Asia. As a staunch American citizen and friend of the
future Napoleon of America, Theodore Roosevelt, he is
surely the last to discredit the virtue of his country. Yet
we are informed by him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai,
and Yokohama, the Augean stables of American vice are
located. There American prostitutes have made
themselves so conspicuous that in the Orient “American
girl” is synonymous with prostitute. Mr. Reynolds
reminds his countrymen that while Americans in China
are under the protection of our consular representatives,
the Chinese in America have no protection at all.

Everyone who knows the brutal and barbarous
persecution Chinese and Japanese endure on the Pacific Coast, will agree with Mr. Reynolds.

In view of the above facts it is rather absurd to point to

Europe as the swamp whence come all the social
diseases of America. Just as absurd is it to proclaim the
myth that the Jews furnish the largest contingent of
willing prey. I am sure that no one will accuse me of
nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say that I have
developed out of them, as out of many other prejudices.

If, therefore, I resent the statement that Jewish
prostitutes are imported, it is not because of any

Judaistic sympathies, but because of the facts inherent in
the lives of these people. No one but the most superficial
will claim that Jewish girls migrate to strange lands,
unless they have some tie or relation that brings them
there. The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent
years she had never left home, not even so far as the
next village or town, except it were to visit some relative.

Is it then credible that Jewish girls would leave their
parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange
lands, through the influence and promises of strange
forces? Go to any of the large incoming steamers and see
for yourself if these girls do not come either with their
parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk. There may be
exceptions, of course, but to state that large numbers of

Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any other purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones
about them; besides, the American glass house is rather
thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

To ascribe the increase 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 despicable than
the policeman who takes the last cent from the street
walker, and then locks her up in the station house? Why
is the cadet more criminal, or a greater menace to
society, than the owners of department stores and
factories, who grow fat on the sweat of their victims,
only to drive them to the streets? I make no plea for the
cadet, but I fail to see why he should be mercilessly
hounded, while the real perpetrators of all social iniquity
enjoy immunity and respect. Then, too, it is well to remember that it is not the cadet who makes the
prostitute. It is our sham and hypocrisy that create both
the prostitute and the cadet.

Until 1894 very little was known in America of the
procurer. Then we were attacked by an epidemic of
virtue. Vice was to be abolished, the country purified at
all cost. The social cancer was therefore driven out of
sight, but deeper into the body. Keepers of brothels, as
well as their unfortunate victims, were turned over to
the tender mercies of the police. The inevitable
consequence of exorbitant bribes, and the penitentiary,
followed.

While comparatively protected in the brothels, where
they represented a certain monetary value, the girls now
found themselves on the street, absolutely at the mercy
of the graft-greedy police. Desperate, needing protection
and longing for affection, these girls naturally proved an
easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of the spirit of
our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the
direct outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and
attempted suppression of prostitution. It were sheer folly
to confound this modern phase of the social evil with the
causes of the latter.

Mere suppression and barbaric enactments can serve but to embitter, and further degrade, the unfortunate
victims of ignorance and stupidity. The latter has reached
its highest expression in the proposed law to make
humane treatment of prostitutes a crime, punishing any
one sheltering a prostitute with five years’ imprisonment
and $10,000 fine. Such an attitude merely exposes the
terrible lack of understanding of the true causes of
prostitution, as a social factor, as well as manifesting the

Puritanic spirit of the Scarlet Letter days.

There is not a single modern writer on the subject who
does not refer to the utter futility of legislative methods
in coping with the issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko finds that
governmental suppression and moral crusades
accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secret
channels, multiplying its dangers to society. Havelock

Ellis, the most thorough and humane student of
prostitution, proves by a wealth of data that the more
stringent the methods of persecution the worse the
condition becomes. Among other data we learn that in

France, “in 1560, Charles IX abolished brothels through
an edict, but the numbers of prostitutes were only
increased, while many new brothels appeared in
unsuspected shapes, and were more dangerous. In spite
of all such legislation, or because of it, there has been no
country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous part.”[23]

An educated public opinion, freed from the legal and
moral hounding of the prostitute, can alone help to
ameliorate present conditions. Wilful shutting of eyes
and ignoring of the evil as a social factor of modern life,
can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our
foolish notions of “better than thou,” and learn to
recognize in the prostitute a product of social conditions.

Such a realization will sweep away the attitude of
hypocrisy, and insure a greater understanding and more
humane treatment. As to a thorough eradication of
prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a
complete transvaluation of all accepted values especially
the moral ones — coupled with the abolition of industrial
slavery.

Chapter 9: Woman Suffrage

We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and
progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in
fetish worship? True, our fetishes 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 fetish is universal suffrage. Those who have
not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to
obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring
heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent deity. Woe
to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

Woman, even more than man, is a fetish worshipper, and
though her idols may change, she is ever on her knees,
ever holding up her hands, ever blind to the fact that her
god has feet of clay. Thus woman has been the greatest
supporter of all deities from time immemorial. Thus, too,
she has had to pay the price that only gods can exact, —
her freedom, her heart’s blood, her very life.

Nietzsche’s memorable maxim, “When you go to woman,
take the whip along,” is considered very brutal, yet

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

Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted
her nature and fettered her soul, yet the Christian
religion has no greater supporter, none more devout,
than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that religion would
have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of the people,
if it were not for the support it receives from woman.

The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless
missionaries the world over, are women, always
sacrificing on the altar of the gods that have chained her
spirit and enslaved her body.

The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is
dear and precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers,
sons, and in return gives her a life of loneliness and
despair. Yet the greatest supporter and worshiper of war
is woman. She it is who instills the love of conquest and
power into her children; she it is who whispers the
glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who
rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and
the noise of guns. It is woman, too, who crowns the
victor on his return from the battlefield. Yes, it is woman
who pays the highest price to that insatiable monster,
war.

Then there is the home. What a terrible fetish it is! How
it saps the very life-energy of woman, — this modern
prison with golden bars. Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and
housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the home,
to the power that holds her in bondage.

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful
toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the
home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may
be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate
utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist
always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a
better Christian and 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, happiness, joy, freedom,
independence, — all that, and more, is to spring from
suffrage. In her blind devotion woman does not see what
people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage
is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it
has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.

Woman’s demand for equal suffrage is based largely on
the contention that woman must have the equal right in
all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the
human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is
it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to
make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey?

Yet woman clamors for that “golden opportunity” that
has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed
man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition
which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made
them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous
politicians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve,
free to tramp the highways of this great country, he
enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has
forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he
receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of
boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the
right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these
disastrous results of the twentieth-century fetich have
taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify
politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see
neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why
woman should not have the equal right to vote with
man. But that cannot possibly blind me to the absurd
notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has
failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly
could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that
she would succeed in purifying something which is not
susceptible of purification, is to credit her with
supernatural powers. Since woman’s greatest misfortune
has been that she was looked upon as either angel or
devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth;
namely, in being considered human, and therefore
subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then,
to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to
assume that the poison already inherent in politics will
be decreased, if women were to enter the political
arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly
maintain such a folly.

As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of
universal suffrage have come to realize that all existing
systems of political power are absurd, and are
completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of
life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one
who is herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr.

Helen L. Sumner. In her able work on Equal Suffrage, she says: “In Colorado, we find that equal suffrage serves to
show in the most striking way the essential rottenness
and degrading character of the existing system.” Of
course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of
voting, but the same applies with equal force to the
entire machinery of the representative system. With
such a basis, it is difficult to understand how woman, as a
political factor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and

States where female suffrage exists. See what woman
has accomplished — in Australia, New Zealand, Finland,
the Scandinavian countries, and in our own four States,

Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance lends
enchantment — or, to quote a Polish formula — “it is
well where we are not.” Thus one would assume that
those countries and States are unlike other countries or

States, that they have greater freedom, greater social
and economic equality, a finer appreciation of human
life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,
with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and
help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there
than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater
motherhood, happier and freer children than in England?

Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex
commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the

Puritanical double standard of morality for men and
women? Certainly none but the ordinary female stump
politician will dare answer these questions in the
affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to

Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal
suffrage accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real
political conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged
labor by enacting the most stringent labor laws, making
strikes without the sanction of an arbitration committee
a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman
suffrage is responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that there is no reason to point to Australia as
a wonder-worker of woman’s accomplishment, since her
influence has been unable to free labor from the
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
mass of women without property, the thousands of wage
workers, who live from hand to mouth? That equal
suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their condition is
admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a
position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having
been sent to Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage

League of New York State to collect material in favor of
suffrage, she would be the last to say anything derogatory; yet we are informed that “equal suffrage has
but slightly affected the economic conditions of women.

That women do not receive equal pay for equal work,
and that, though woman in Colorado has enjoyed school
suffrage since 1876, women teachers are paid less than
in California.” On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails to
account for the fact that although women have had
school suffrage for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage
since 1894, the census in Denver alone a few months ago
disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand defective school
children. And that, too, with mostly women in the
educational department, and also notwithstanding that
women in Colorado have passed the “most stringent laws
for child and animal protection.” The women of Colorado

“have taken great interest in the State institutions for the
care of dependent, defective, and delinquent children.”

What a horrible indictment against woman’s care and
interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective
children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since
it has failed utterly in the most important social issue,
the child? And where is the superior sense of justice that
woman was to bring into the political field? Where was it
in 1903, when the mine owners waged a guerilla war
against the Western Miners’ Union; when General Bell
established a reign of terror, pulling men out of bed at
night, kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens, declaring “to hell with the

Constitution, the club is the Constitution”? Where were
the women politicians then, and why did they not
exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They
helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man,

Governor Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool
of the mine kings, Governor Peabody, the enemy of
labor, the Tsar of Colorado. “Certainly male suffrage
could have done nothing worse.” Granted. Wherein,
then, are the advantages to woman and society from
woman suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman
will purify politics is also but a myth. It is not borne out
by the people who know the political conditions of Idaho,

Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally 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 prostitution 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.”[24] Could Brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan fathers have done more? I wonder how many
women realize the gravity of this would-be feat. I wonder
if they understand that it is the very thing which, instead
of elevating woman, has made her a political spy, a
contemptible pry into the private affairs of people, not so
much for the good of the cause, but because, as a

Colorado woman said, “they like to get into houses they
have never been in, and find out all they can, politically
and otherwise. ”[25] 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 cannot be
accused of much sense of proportion. Granting even that
these busybodies can decide whose lives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics,
must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same
category? Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry,
so manifest in the principle of Prohibition, which
sanctions the spread of drunkenness among men and
women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch on the
only place left to the poor man. If no other reason,
woman’s narrow and purist attitude toward life makes
her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political
power. Man has long overcome the superstitions that
still engulf woman. In the economic competitive field,
man has been compelled to exercise efficiency,
judgment, ability, competency. He therefore had neither
time nor inclination to measure everyone’s morality with
a Puritanic yardstick. In his political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He knows that quantity and
not quality is the material for the political grinding mill,
and, unless he is a sentimental reformer or an old fossil,
he knows that politics can never be anything but a
swamp.

Women who are at all conversant with the process of
politics, know the nature of the beast, but in their self-
sufficiency and egotism they make themselves believe
that they have but to pet the beast, and he will become
as gentle as a lamb, sweet and pure. As if women have not sold their votes, as if women politicians cannot be
bought! If her body can be bought in return for material
consideration, why not her vote? That it is being done in

Colorado and in other States, is not denied even by those
in favor of woman suffrage.

As I have said before, woman’s narrow view of human
affairs is not the only argument against her as a politician
superior to man. There are others. Her life-long
economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception
of the meaning of equality. She clamors for equal rights
with man, yet we learn that “few women care to canvas
in undesirable districts.”[26] How little equality means to them compared with the Russian women, who face hell
itself for their ideal!

Woman demands the same rights as man, yet she is
indignant that her presence does not strike him dead: he
smokes, keeps his hat on, and does not jump from his
seat like a flunkey. These may be trivial things, but they
are nevertheless the key to the nature of American
suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have
outgrown these silly notions. They have shown
themselves equal to the greatest demands on their
character and power of endurance. All honor to the
heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes.

Thanks to their energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some of our own lifeless and
spineless ladies. But after all, the suffragettes, too, are
still lacking in appreciation of real equality. Else how is
one to account for the tremendous, truly gigantic effort
set in motion by those valiant fighters for a wretched
little bill which will benefit a handful of propertied ladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass of working
women? True, as politicians they must be opportunists,
must take half-measures if they cannot get all. But as
intelligent and liberal women they ought to realize that if
the ballot is a weapon, the disinherited need it more
than the economically superior class, and that the latter
already enjoy too much power by virtue of their
economic superiority.

The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs.

Emmeline Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her

American lecture tour, that there can be no equality
between political superiors and inferiors. If so, how will
the workingwomen of England, already inferior
economically to the ladies who are benefited by the

Shackleton bill,[27] be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass? Is it not probable that the
class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal, devotion, and
martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs
their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their economic masters? They would still have to do it,
were universal suffrage for men and women established
in England. No matter what the workers do, they are
made to pay, always. Still, those who believe in the
power of the vote show little sense of justice when they
concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they
claim, it might serve most.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very
recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached
from the economic needs of the people. Thus Susan B.

Anthony, no doubt an exceptional type of woman, was
not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor did she
hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she
advised women to take the places of striking printers in

New York.[28] I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.

There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated
with workingwomen — the Women’s Trade Union

League, for instance; but they are a small minority, and
their activities are essentially economic. The rest look
upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What would
become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would
become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander
more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for
the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

Few countries have produced such arrogance and
snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the

American woman of the middle class. She not only
considers herself the equal of man, but his superior,
especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small
wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote
the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she
does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by
man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage
cannot ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it,
as indeed it does.

One of the great American women leaders claims that
woman is entitled not only to equal pay, but that she
ought to be legally entitled even to the pay of her
husband. Failing to support her, he should be put in
convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by
his equal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the
cause claim for woman that her vote will abolish the
social evil, which has been fought in vain by the collective
efforts of the most illustrious minds the world over? It is
indeed to be regretted that the alleged creator of the
universe has already presented us with his wonderful
scheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to outdo him completely.

Nothing is as dangerous as the dissection of a fetish. 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 probably be put
down as an opponent of woman. But that cannot 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 manner. As a matter of fact,
every inch of ground he has gained has been through a
constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and
not through suffrage. There is no reason whatever to
assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has
been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism, woman has become man’s equal, not through
the ballot, but by her will to be and to do. Not only has
she conquered for herself every avenue of learning and
vocation, but she has won man’s esteem, his respect, his
comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained
the admiration, the respect of the whole world. That,
too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism,
her fortitude, her ability, 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 wonderful triumphs! Who but
the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere
domestic drudge? Who dare suggest that this or that
profession should not be open to her? For over sixty
years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new life
for herself. She has become a world-power in every
domain of human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without the right to make laws, without
the “privilege” of becoming a judge, a jailer, or an
executioner.

Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can
help her see the light, I shall not complain.

The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do
the work of a man, but that she is wasting her life-force
to outdo him, with a tradition of centuries which has left
her physically incapable of keeping pace with him. Oh, I
know some have succeeded, but at what cost, at what
terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman
does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes.

She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor
can she receive anything from it that will enhance her
own quality. Her development, her freedom, her
independence, must come from and through herself.

First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a
sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone
over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she
wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the

State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making
her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying
to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its
complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public
opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto
unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for
harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.

Chapter 10: The Tragedy of Woman’s

Emancipation

I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and
economic theories, treating of the fundamental
differences between various groups within the human
race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless
of all artificial boundary lines between woman’s rights
and man’s rights, I hold that there is a point where these
differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect
whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The
general social antagonism which has taken hold of our
entire public life today, brought about through the force
of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to
pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based
upon the principles of economic justice, shall have
become a reality.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals
does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization
of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of
individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that
confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to
solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still
retain one’s own characteristic qualities. This seems to
me to be the basis upon which the mass and the
individual, the true democrat and the true individuality,
man and woman, can meet without antagonism and
opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one
another; rather, understand one another. The oft-quoted
sentence of Madame de Staël: “To understand
everything means to forgive everything,” has never
particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the
confessional; to forgive one’s fellow-being conveys the
idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one’s
fellow-being suffices. The admission partly represents
the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation
of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be
human in the truest sense. Everything within her that
craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest
expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and
the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace
of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman’s
emancipation. But the results so far achieved have
isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain
springs of that happiness which is so essential to her.

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern
woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the
products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees
and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything,
except the forms which would be reached by the
expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially
grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large
numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of
our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and
aspirations these words awakened when they were first
uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of
those days. The sun in all his light and glory was to rise
upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to
direct her own destiny — an aim certainly worthy of the
great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless
effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and
women, who staked everything against a world of
prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that
the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and
practically applied today, has failed to reach that great
end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of
emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really
desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal
suffrage in a few States. Has that purified our political
life, as many well-meaning advocates predicted?

Certainly not. Incidentally, it is really time that persons
with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about
corruption in politics in a boarding school tone.

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals,
or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities.

Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which
are: “To take is more blessed than to give”; “buy cheap
and sell dear”; “one soiled hand washes the other.”

There is no hope even that woman, with her right to
vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality
with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and
trade; but as her past and present physical training has
not equipped her with the necessary strength to
compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all
her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in
order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed,
for it is a fact that women teachers, doctors, lawyers,
architects, and engineers are neither met with the same
confidence as their male colleagues, nor receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing
equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical
and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working
girls and women, how much independence is gained if
the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is
exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the
factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In
addition is the burden which is laid on many women of
looking after a “home, sweet home” — cold, dreary,
disorderly, uninviting — after a day’s hard work. Glorious
independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls are 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 enticing, not so ideal, that one could
expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly
praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of
dulling and stifling woman’s nature, her love instinct, and
her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more
natural and human than that of her seemingly more
fortunate sister in the more cultured professional walks of life teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who
have to make a dignified, proper appearance, while the
inner life is growing empty and dead.

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman’s
independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a
man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will
rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror
that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in
the full exercise of her profession — all these together
make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory
vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows
and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching
or gripping her soul.

Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its
adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to
permit the boundless love and ecstasy contained in the
deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in
freedom.

The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free
woman does not lie in too many, but in too few
experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past
generations in knowledge of the world and human
nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the
lack of life’s essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without which the majority of women have
become mere professional automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was
foreseen by those who realized that, in the domain of
ethics, there still remained many decaying ruins of the
time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are
still considered useful. And, what is more important, a
goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get
along without them. Every movement that aims at the
destruction of existing institutions and the replacement
thereof with something more advanced, more perfect,
has followers who in theory stand for the most radical
ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice,
are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability and
clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There
are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who
stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will
grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-
dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for
woman’s emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-
water litterateurs have painted pictures of the
emancipated woman that make the hair of the good
citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every
member of the woman’s rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality.

Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the
ideal relation between man and woman. In short,
emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin;
regardless of society, religion, and morality. The
exponents of woman’s rights were highly indignant at
such misrepresentation, and, lacking humor, they
exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all
as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of
course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she
could not be good and pure, but now that she was free
and independent she would prove how good she could
be and that her influence would have a purifying effect
on all institutions in society. True, the movement for
woman’s rights has broken many old fetters, but it has
also forged new ones. The great movement
of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow,

Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and
doubtful character, out of their emotional life. Man was
not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the
father of a child, since a child could not very well come to
life without a father. Fortunately, the most rigid Puritans
never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for
motherhood. But woman’s freedom is closely allied with
man’s freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in
freedom needs the love and devotion of each human
being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately,
it is this narrow conception of human relations that has
brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern
man and woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of
the brilliant Norwegian Laura Marholm, called Woman, a
Character Study. She was one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of the existing
conception of woman’s emancipation, and its tragic
effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura

Marholm speaks of the fate of several gifted women of
international fame: the genius Eleonora Duse; the great
mathematician and writer Sonya Kovalevskaia; the artist
and poet nature Marie Bashkirtzeff, who died so young.

Through each description of the lives of these women of
such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of
unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete, and
beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting
from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological
sketches one cannot help but see that the higher the
mental development of woman, the less possible it is for
her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not
only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought
not lose a single trait of her character.

The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously
superior airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an
impossibility for woman as depicted in the Character

Study by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality
and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman
nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered
necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality.

In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve
as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being.

For over a hundred years the old form of marriage, based
on the Bible, “till death doth part,” has been denounced
as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the
man over the woman, of her complete submission to his
whims and commands, and absolute dependence on his
name and support. Time and again it has been
conclusively proved that the old matrimonial relation
restricted woman to the function of man’s servant and
the bearer of his children. And yet we find many
emancipated women who prefer marriage, with all its
deficiencies, to the narrowness of an unmarried life:

narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of
many advanced women is to be found in the fact that
they never truly understood the meaning of
emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was
independence from external tyrannies; the internal
tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth — ethical
and social conventions — were left to take care of
themselves; and they have taken care of themselves.

They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and
hearts of the most active exponents of woman’s
emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our
grandmothers.

These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of
public opinion or what will mother say, or brother,
father, aunt, or relative of any sort; what will Mrs.

Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of

Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives,
jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until
woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on
her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted
freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it
call for life’s greatest treasure, love for a man, or her
most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child,
she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge
that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against
their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be satisfied.

The French writer Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, New Beauty, attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful,
emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young
girl, a physician. She talks very cleverly and wisely of how
to feed infants; she is kind, and administers medicines
free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of
her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the
future, and how various bacilli and germs shall be
exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and by
the doing away with rugs and hangings. She is, of course,
very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The
young man, who, at their first meeting, was overawed by
the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns
to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that he
loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful,
and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is
softened by a spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One
would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is
not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the
enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the
pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his
nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had
formed a union, the young man would have risked
freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing
beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone
walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the
love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and

Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope
on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse,
mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors,
than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If
love does not know how to give and take without
restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never
fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the
present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow
respectabilities, which produce an emptiness in woman’s
soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper
relationship between the old-fashioned mother and
hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little
ones and the comfort of those she loved, and the truly
new woman, than between the latter and her average
emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure
and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the stake.

Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a
goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in
their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a
greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness, and
simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated
professional women who fill the colleges, halls of
learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish
to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her
old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a
brighter and clearer future. We are in need of
unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The
movement for woman’s emancipation has so far made
but the first step in that direction it is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote,
or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true
emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It
begins in woman’s soul. History tells us that every
oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters
through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn
that Iesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach
as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is,
therefore, far more important for her to begin with her
inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of
prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be
loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a
complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have
to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to
be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being
slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the
absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man
and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and
big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of
trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of
the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it
knows of but one great thing: to give of one’s self
boundlessly, in order to find one’s self richer, deeper,
better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform
the tragedy of woman’s emancipation into joy, limitless
joy.

Chapter 11: Marriage and Love

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they
are synonymous, that they spring from the same
motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most
popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on
superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as
far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each
other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of
love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only
in marriage; much rather is it because few people can
completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large
numbers of men and women to whom marriage is
naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of
public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some
marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true
that in some cases love continues in married life, I
maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not
because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results
from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a
miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after
marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it
is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the
spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without
which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to
both the woman and the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an
insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance
agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting.

Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the
investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays
for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman’s premium is 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 Philistine argument that the laxity of
divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman
account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage
ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have
increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand
population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for
divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that
desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of
material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this
subject. Robert Herrick, in Together; Pinero, in Mid-

Channel; Eugene Walter, in Paid in Full, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the
monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as
a factor for harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself
with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon.

He will have to dig down deeper into the very life of the
sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage
stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an
environment so different from each other that man and
woman must remain strangers. Separated by an
insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing
knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which
every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably
the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her
husband, not — as the stupid critic would have it —
because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the
need of woman’s rights, but because she has come to
know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger
and borne him children. Can there be any thing more
humiliating, more degrading than a lifelong proximity
between two strangers? No need for the woman to know
anything of the man, save his income. As to the
knowledge of the woman — what is there to know
except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not
yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no
soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his
rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so
strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence
woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any
rate, woman has no soul — what is there to know about
her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her
asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in
her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man’s superiority that has kept the marriage institution
seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is
coming into her own, now that she is actually growing
aware of herself as a being outside of the master’s grace,
the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being
undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation
can stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that
marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and
education must be directed towards that end. Like the
mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for
that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much
less about her function as wife and mother than the
ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation.

Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the
marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the
purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare
question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and
mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in
the competitive field — sex. Thus she enters into life-long
relations with a man only to find herself shocked,
repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural
and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and
physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal
ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great
virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that
more than one home has been broken up because of this
deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the
mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church,
she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the
wife of a “good” man, his goodness consisting of an
empty 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 marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet
risked the wrath of their fathers for love when Gretchen
exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is
no more. If, on rare occasions young people allow themselves the luxury of romance they are taken in care
by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become

“sensible.”

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the
man has aroused her love, but rather is it, “How much?”

The important and only God of practical American life:

Can the man make a living? Can he support a wife? That
is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this
saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of
moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams
of shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul-
poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the
marriage institution. The State and 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 consider
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 age-workers in every walk
of life, from the highest brain work to the most difficult
menial labor in the mines and on the railroad tracks; yes,
even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation
is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast
army of women wage-workers look upon work as a
permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No
matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be
independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is
really independent in our economic 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 transitory,
to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is
infinitely harder to organize women than men. “Why
should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have
a home.” Has she not been taught from infancy to look
upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon
enough that the home, though not so large a prison as
the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a
keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most
tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a

Committee “on labor and wages, and congestion of

Population,” ten per cent of the wage workers in New

York City alone are married, yet they must continue to
work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to
this horrible aspect the drudgery of 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
cannot speak of her home, since it is the man who
creates her sphere. It is not important whether the
husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is
that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the
grace of her husband. There she moves about
in his home, year after year until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her
surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty,
quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man
from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there
is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life,
of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely
incapacitates the average woman for the outside world.

She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her
movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her
judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for
the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for
marriage? After all, is not that the most important
consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage
protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute
and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan
asylums and reformatories 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 convict’s
clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child?

If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what
does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the
man to “justice,” to put him safely behind closed doors;
his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the

State. The child receives but a blighted memory of 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 — capitalism. It
robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his
body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty and
dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on
the last vestige of man’s self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman,
an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life’s
struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes
her imagination, and then imposes its gracious
protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on
human character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman’s
nature, what other protection does it need save love and
freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts
her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, only when you
follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn
her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if
she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling
herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood,
even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of
defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon
an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the
hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all
the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood
would exclude it forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the
harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of
all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most
powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-
compelling force be synonymous with that poor little

State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought
brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy
love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on
earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has
conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not
conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit,
but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a
throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can
command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes
him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with
warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic
power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can
dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the
statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it
from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the
soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is
like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against
death.

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long
as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or
famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true.

I know women who became mothers in freedom by the
men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care,
the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable
of bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free
motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who
would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would
make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse
the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the
race! Shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the
priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be
degraded to a mere machine, — and the marriage
institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious
sex-awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts
to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of
the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to
the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit,
wretched human beings, who have neither the strength
nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and
slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children,
begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not
by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-
moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of
responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has
awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she
forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth
life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and
death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to
the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To
grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that
manner alone call she help build true manhood and
womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when,
with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was
the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage
and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains,
and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a
personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late
to rescue her life’s joy, her Oswald; but not too late to
realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with
blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate
marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery.

They know, whether love last but one brief span of time
or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to
most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes
root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate
fiber cannot 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.

Someday, someday 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.

Chapter 12: The Modern Drama: A

Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought

So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but
dumbly felt within a limited social class, the powers of
reaction may often succeed in suppressing such
manifestations. But when the dumb unrest grows into
conscious expression and becomes almost universal, it
necessarily affects all phases of human thought and
action, and seeks its individual and social expression in
the gradual transvaluation of existing values.

An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of
the modern, conscious social unrest cannot be gained
from merely propagandistic literature. Rather must we
become conversant with the larger phases of human
expression manifest in art, literature, and, above all, the
modern drama — the strongest and most far-reaching
interpreter of our deep-felt dissatisfaction.

What a tremendous factor for the awakening of
conscious discontent are the simple canvasses of a

Millet! The figures of his peasants — what terrific
indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs that
condemn the Man with the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself excluded from Nature’s bounty.

The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity
and defiance of labor in the group of miners carrying
their maimed brother to safety. His genius thus
powerfully portrays the interrelation of the seething
unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth,
and the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression.

No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening
in modern literature — Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy,

Andreiev, Gorki, Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others
embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the
longing for social change.

Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the
leaven of radical thought and the disseminator of new
values.

It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern
drama such an important rôle. But a study of the
development of modern ideas in most countries will
prove that the drama has succeeded in driving home
great social truths, truths generally ignored when
presented in other forms. No doubt there are exceptions,
as Russia and France.

Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think and has awakened their social sympathies,
because of the tremendous contrast which exists
between the intellectual life of the people and the
despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while
the great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki,
and Andreiev closely mirror the life and the struggle, the
hopes and aspirations of the Russian people, they did not
influence radical thought to the extent the drama has
done in other countries.

Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence
exerted by The Power of Darkness or Night Lodging.

Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy
of organized Christianity. With a master hand he portrays
the destructive effects upon the human mind of the
power of darkness, the superstitions of the Christian

Church.

What other medium could express, with such dramatic
force, the responsibility of the Church for crimes
committed by its deluded victims; what other medium
could, in consequence, rouse the indignation of man’s
conscience?

Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained
in Gorki’s Night Lodging. The social pariahs, forced into
poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences these,
blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial environment.

France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle
for liberty, is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such she, too, did not need the drama as a means of
awakening. And yet the works of Brieux — as Robe

Rouge, portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary

— and Mirbeau’s Les Affaires sont les Affaires —
picturing the destructive influence of wealth on the
human soul — have undoubtedly reached wider circles
than most of the articles and books which have been
written in France on the social question.

In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and
even in America — though in a lesser degree — the
drama is the vehicle which is really making history,
disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to
be reached.

Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of
a century men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest
integrity, made it their life-work to spread the truth of
human brotherhood, of justice, among the oppressed
and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous
revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and
inhumane system like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas! The cultured people remained
absolutely indifferent; to them that revolutionary tide
was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented men,
dangerous, illiterate 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 pronounced in

Germany after the Franco-German war. Full to the
bursting point with its victory, Germany thrived on a
sentimental, patriotic literature, thereby poisoning the
minds of the country’s youth by the glory of conquest
and bloodshed.

Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature
of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Dalldet,

Maupassant, and especially in the great works of

Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev. But as no country
can long maintain a standard of culture without a literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany
gradually began to develop a drama reflecting the life
and the struggles of its own people.

Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period,
startled the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with
his Familie Selicke. The play deals with society’s refuse, men and women of the alleys, whose only subsistence
consists of what they can pick out of the garbage barrels.

A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet what other
method is there to break through the hard shell of the
minds and souls of people who have never known want,
and who therefore assume that all is well in the world?

Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous
indignation. The truth is bitter, and the people living on
the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hated to be confronted with
the truth.

Not that Familie Selicke represented anything that had not been written about for years without any seeming
result. But the dramatic genius of Holz, together with the
powerful interpretation of the play, necessarily made
inroads into the widest circles, and forced people to
think about the terrible inequalities around them.

Sudermann’s Ehre [29] and Heimat[30] deal with vital subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental
patriotism so completely turning the head of the average

German as to create a perverted conception of honor.

Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerable
lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number
of leading writers. But nothing acted as such a clarifier
and exposer of that national a disease as the Ehre.

Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it analyzes
the real meaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed,
inborn feeling, but that it varies with every people and
every epoch, depending particularly on one’s economic
and social station in life. We realize from this play that
the man in the brownstone mansion will necessarily
define honor differently from his victims.

The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire

Mühling, being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty
on his premises in the absence of their son, Robert. The
latter, as Mühling’s representative, is making a vast
fortune for his employer in India. On his return Robert
discovers that his sister had been seduced by young

Mühling, whose father graciously offers to straighten
matters with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged
and indignant, resents the insult to his family’s honor,
and is forthwith dismissed from his position for
impudence. Robert finally throws this accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:

“We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart’s blood for you,
while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly
pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for
you. That is what you call honor.”

An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is
given by Count Trast, the principal character in the Ehre, a man widely conversant with the customs of various
climes, who relates that in his many travels he chanced
across a savage tribe whose honor he mortally offended
by refusing the hospitality which offered him the charms
of the chieftain’s wife.

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

Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Schwartz, has
committed an unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor
selected by her father. For daring to disobey the parental
commands she is driven from home. Magda, full of life
and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the world to return
to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated
singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that
they respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet
father immediately begins to question her, insisting on his “paternal rights.” Magda is indignant, but gradually
his persistence brings to light the tragedy of her life. He
learns that the respected Councillor von Keller had in his
student days been Magda’s lover, while she was battling
for her economic and social independence. The
consequence of the fleeting romance was a child,
deserted by the man even before birth. The rigid military
father of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor
von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of

Magda’s social and professional success, Keller willingly
consents, but on condition that she forsake the stage,
and place the child in an institution. The struggle
between the Old and the New culminates in Magda’s
defiant words of the woman grown to conscious
independence of thought and action: “... I’ll say what I
think of you — of you and your respectable society. Why
should I be worse than you that I must prolong my
existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon
my body, and the luster 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 radicalism, but
literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is

Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play, Vor

Sonnenaufgang,[31] 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 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 Sonftenaufgang, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann’s head, was the question
as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit
parents.

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by
swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at
the top of his voice: “The decency and morality of

Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed
openly from the stage.” The surgeon is forgotten, and

Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world:

When Die Weber[32] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. “What,”

cried the moralists, “workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to
be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness
to be dished out as an after dinner amusement? That is
too much!”

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy
bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors
of the weaver’s existence. It was too much because of
the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf
ears of self-satisfied society, J’accuse!

Of course, it was generally known even before the
appearance of this drama that capital cannot get fat
unless it devours labor, that wealth cannot be hoarded
except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and
cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest the
victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is
the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed; and that, indeed, was
the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in depicting to the
world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia. Human
beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning
enough for bread and fuel; human beings living in
broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and
nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold; infants
covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant
women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a
benevolent Christian era, without life, without hope,
without warmth. Ah, yes, it was too much!

Hauptmann’s dramatic versatility deals with every
stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding
effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the
struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual
liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition.

Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-
poem Die Versunkene Glocke,[33] fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautendelein said,
he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly Dr.

Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because
they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions.

Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit
against a world forever hindering individual and social emancipation.

Max Halbe’s Jugend[34] and Wedekind’s Frühling’s
Erwachen[35] are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of
the child and the dense ignorance and narrow Puritanism
that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly is this
true of Frühling’s Erwachen. Young girls and boys
sacrificed on the altar of false education and of our
sickening morality that prohibits the enlightenment of
youth as to questions so imperative to the health and
well-being of society, — the origin of life, and its
functions. It shows how a mother — and a truly good
mother, at that — keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter
in absolute ignorance as to all matters of sex, and when
finally the young girl falls a victim to her 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 scold me for asking
about it. Give me an answer. — How does it happen? —

You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am
fourteen years old, still believe in the stork.”

Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of
morality, an affectionate and sensible explanation might
have saved her daughter. But the conventional mother
seeks to hide her “moral” shame and embarrassment in
this evasive reply:

“In order to have a child — one must love the man — to
whom one is married.... One must love him, Wendla, as
you at your age are still unable to love. — Now you know
it!”

How much Wendla “knew” the mother realized too late.

The pregnant girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And
when her mother cries in desperation, “You haven’t the
dropsy, you have a child, girl,” the agonized Wendla
exclaims in bewilderment: “But it’s not possible, Mother,

I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn’t you tell me everything?”

With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide
because he fails in his school examinations And Melchior,
the youthful father of Wendla’s unborn child, is sent to
the House of Correction, his early sexual awakening
stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of teachers and
parents.

For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had
advocated the compelling necessity of sex
enlightenment. Mutterschutz, a publication specially
devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of the sex
problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a
considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic
genius of Wedekind to influence radical thought to the
extent of forcing the introduction of sex physiology in
many schools of Germany.

Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the
drama much more than through any other channel. Long
before Ibsen appeared on the scene, Björnson, the great
essayist, thundered against the inequalities and injustice
prevalent in those countries. But his was a voice in the
wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen.

His Brand, Doll’s House, Pillars of Society, Ghosts, and An

Enemy of the People have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and replaced them by a modern and
real view of life. One has but to read Brand to realize the modern conception, let us say, of religion, — religion, as
an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as a principle of
human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.

Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the
veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught,
however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the
flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests
the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as
preached by our moral codes; third, petty material
consideration, which is the only god the majority
worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of
provincialism. These four recur as the 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 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 benefactor of the community with
banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual
manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople:

“I have no right to this homage — ... My fellow citizens
must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine
himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this
event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its
hypocrisy, its hollowness, its Iying propriety, and its
pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction.”

With a Doll’s House Ibsen has paved the way for
woman’s emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll’s
rôle to the realization of the injustice done her by her
father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

“While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all
his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others

I concealed them, because he would not have approved.

He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I
played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.

You settled everything according to your taste, and I got
the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look
back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar,
from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you,

Torvald, but you would, have it so. You and father have
done me a great wrong.”

In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely
duty and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her
doll’s dress into full stature of conscious womanhood.

She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has
realized that, before all else, she is a human being, owing
the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the
possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical
of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted.

Her rebelling soul rises in protest against the existing. In
her own words: “I must make up my mind which is right,
society or I.”

In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for
the great miracle. But it was not the disappointed hope
that opened her vision to the falsehoods of marriage. It
was rather the smug contentment of Helmer with a safe
lie — one that would remain hidden and not endanger
his social standing.

When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage
and went out into the world a new, regenerated
personality, she opened the gate of freedom and truth
for her own sex and the race to come.

More than any other play, Ghosts has acted like a bomb explosion, shaking the social structure to its very
foundations.

In Doll’s House the justification of the union between Nora and Helmer rested at least on the husband’s
conception of integrity and rigid adherence to our social
morality. Indeed, he was the conventional ideal husband
and devoted father. Not so in Ghosts. Mrs. Alving
married Captain Alving only to find that he was a physical
and mental wreck, and that life with him would mean
utter degradation and be fatal to possible offspring. In her despair she turned to her youth’s companion, young

Pastor Manders who, as the true savior of souls for
heaven, must needs be indifferent to earthly necessities.

He sent her back to shame and degradation, — to her
duties to husband and home. Indeed, happiness — to
him — was but the unholy manifestation of a rebellious
spirit, and a wife’s duty was not to judge, but “to bear
with humility the cross which a higher power had for
your own good laid upon you.”

Mrs. Alving bore the cross for twenty-six long years. Not
for the sake of the higher power, but for her little son

Oswald, whom she longed to save from the poisonous
atmosphere of her husband’s home.

It was also for the sake of the beloved son that she
supported the lie of his father’s goodness, in
superstitious awe of “duty and decency.” She learned —
alas, too late that the sacrifice of her entire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited by the sins of
his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too, she
learned, that “we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what
we have inherited from our father and mother that walks
in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs.

They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same
and we can’t get rid of them.... And then we are, one and
all, so pitifully afraid of light. When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and Obligation; when you
praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled
against as something loathsome, it was then that I began
to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to
pick at a single knot, but when I had got that undone, the
whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it
was all machine-sewn.”

How could a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething
depths whence issued the great masterpiece of Henrik

Ibsen? It could not understand, and therefore it poured
the vials of abuse and venom upon its greatest
benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved
by his reply in An Enemy of the People.

In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites
over a decaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes
rises the regenerated individual, the bold and daring
rebel. Dr. Stockman, an idealist, full of social sympathy
and solidarity, is called to his native town as the
physician of the baths. He soon discovers that the latter
are built on a swamp, and that instead of finding relief
the patients, who flock to the place, are being poisoned.

An honest man, of strong convictions, the doctor
considers it his duty to make his discovery known. But he
soon learns that dividends and profits are concerned neither with health nor 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 discovery 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 eradicate the evil, is soon
driven to a solitary position. The announcement of his
discovery would result in a pecuniary loss to the town,
and that consideration induces the officials, the good
citizens, and soul reformers, to stifle the voice of truth.

He finds them all a compact majority, unscrupulous
enough to be willing to build up the prosperity of the
town on a quagmire of lies and fraud. He is accused of
trying to ruin the community. But to his mind “it does not
matter if a lying community is ruined. It must be levelled
to the ground. All men who live upon lies must be
exterminated like vermin. You’ll bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish.”

Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man,
he thinks, must not behave like a black guard. “He must
not so act that he would spit in his own face.” For only
cowards permit “considerations” of pretended general
welfare or of party to override truth and ideals. “Party
programmes wring the necks of all young, living truths;
and considerations of expediency turn morality and
righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous.”

These plays of Ibsen — The Pillars of Society, A Doll’s
House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People— constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts
walking the social burying ground called civilization. Nay,
more; Ibsen’s destructive effects are at the same time
supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines
existing pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the
foundation of a healthier, ideal future, based on the
sovereignty of the individual within a sympathetic social
environment.

England with her great pioneers of radical thought, the
intellectual pilgrims like Godwin, Robert Owen, Darwin,

Spencer, William Morris, and scores of others; with her
wonderful larks of liberty — Shelley, Byron, Keats — is
another example of the influence of dramatic art. Within comparatively a few years the dramatic works of Shaw,

Pinero, Galsworthy, Rann Kennedy, have carried radical
thought to the ears formerly deaf even to Great Britain’s
wondrous poets. Thus a public which will remain
indifferent reading an essay by Robert Owen on poverty,
or ignore Bernard Shaw’s Socialistic tracts, was made to
think by Major Barbara, wherein poverty is described as the greatest crime of Christian civilization. “Poverty
makes people weak, slavish, puny; poverty creates
disease, crime, prostitution; in fine, poverty is
responsible for all the ills and evils of the world.” Poverty also necessitates dependency, charitable organizations,
institutions that thrive off the very thing they are trying
to destroy. The Salvation Army, for instance, as shown
in Major Barbara, fights drunkenness; yet one of its
greatest contributors is Badger, a whiskey distiller, who
furnishes yearly thousands of pounds to do away with
the very source of his wealth. Bernard Shaw therefore
concludes that the only real benefactor of society is a
man like Undershaft, Barbara’s father, a cannon
manufacturer, whose theory of life is that powder is
stronger than words.

“The worst of crimes,” says Undershaft, “is poverty. All
the other crimes are virtues beside it; all the other
dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes
dead the very soul of all who come within sight, sound,
or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing; a murder
here, a theft there, a blow now and a curse there: what
do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses
of life; there are not fifty genuine professional criminals
in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject
people, dirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people. They
poison us morally and physically; they kill the happiness
of society; they force us to do away with our own
liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they
should rise against us and drag us down into their
abyss.... Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries
to your sermons and leading articles; they will not stand
up to my machine guns. Don’t preach at them; don’t
reason with them. Kill them.... It is the final test of
conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a
social system.... Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only
change the name of the cabinet. When you shoot, you
pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish
old orders, and set up new.”

No wonder people cared little to read Mr. Shaw’s

Socialistic tracts. In no other way but in the drama could
he deliver such forcible, historic truths. And therefore it
is only through the drama that Mr. Shaw is a revolutionary factor in the dissemination of radical ideas.

After Hauptmann’s Die Weber, Strife, by Galsworthy, is the most important labor drama.

The theme of Strife is a strike with two dominant factors: Anthony, the president of the company, rigid,
uncompromising, unwilling to make the slightest
concession, although the men held out for months and
are in a condition of semi-starvation; and David Roberts,
an uncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the
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 applaud old

Thomas, who speaks of the power of God and religion
and admonishes the men against rebellion; the next
instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who
pleads the cause of the union, — the union that always
stands for compromise, and which forsakes the
workingmen whenever they dare to strike for
independent demands; again they are aglow with the
earnestness, the spirit, and the intensity of David Roberts

— all these people willing to go in whatever direction the
wind blows. It is the curse of the working class that they
always follow like sheep led to slaughter.

Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age.

No matter how intense the spirit or how important the
man, the moment he will not allow himself to be used or
sell his principles, he is thrown on the dustheap. Such
was the fate of the president of the company, Anthony,
and of David Roberts. To be sure they represented
opposite poles — poles antagonistic to each other, poles
divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over.

Yet they shared a common fate. Anthony is the
embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron
methods:

“I have been chairman of this company thirty-two years. I
have fought the men four times. I have never been
defeated. It has been said that times have changed. If
they have, I have not changed with them. It has been
said that masters and men are equal. Cant. There can be
only one master in a house. It has been said that Capital
and Labor have the same interests. Cant. Their interests
are as wide asunder as the poles. There is only one way
of treating men — with the iron rod. Masters are
masters. Men are men.”

We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yet there is something admirable in the
courage and consistency of this man, nor is he half as
dangerous to the interests of the oppressed, as our
sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine
fingers, and give libraries with the tenth; who grind
human beings like Russell Sage, and then spend millions
of dollars in social research work; who turn beautiful
young plants into faded old women, and then give them
a few paltry dollars or found a Home for Working Girls.

Anthony is a worthy foe; and to fight such a foe, one
must learn to meet him in open battle.

David Roberts has all the mental and moral attributes of
his adversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt and the
depth of modern ideas. He, too, is consistent, and wants
nothing for his class short of complete victory.

“It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting,
not for our own little bodies and their warmth: it is for all those who come after, for all times. Oh, men, for the love
of them don’t turn up another stone on their heads,
don’t help to blacken the sky. If we can shake that white-
faced monster with the bloody lips that has sucked the
lives out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the
world began, if we have not the hearts of men to stand
against it, breast to breast and eye to eye, and force it
backward till it cry for mercy, it will go on sucking life, and we shall stay forever where we are, less than the
very dogs.”

It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should
pass on and leave two such giants behind. Inevitable,
until the mass will reach the stature of a David Roberts.

Will it ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the
dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One cannot
help realizing that the workingmen will have to use
methods hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have
to discard all those elements in their midst that are
forever ready to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely

Capital and Labor. They will have to learn that characters
like David Roberts are the very forces that have
revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for
emancipation out of the clutches of that “white-faced
monster with bloody lips,” towards a brighter horizon, a
freer life, and a deeper recognition of human values.

No subject of equal social import has received such
extensive consideration within the last few years as the
question of prison and punishment.

Hardly any magazine of consequence that has not
devoted its columns to the discussion of this vital theme.

A number of books by able writers, both in America and
abroad, have discussed this topic from the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, all agreeing that
present penal institutions and our mode of coping with
crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as
wasteful. One would expect that something very radical
should result from the cumulative literary indictment of
the social crimes perpetrated upon the prisoner. Yet with
the exception of a few minor and comparatively
insignificant reforms in some of our prisons, absolutely
nothing has been accomplished. But at last this grave
social wrong has found dramatic interpretation in

Galsworthy’s Justice.

The play opens in the office of James How and Sons,

Solicitors. The senior clerk, Robert Cokeson, discovers
that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been
forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls upon

William Falder, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused, ill-treated wife of a
brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet
not unkindly man, Falder confesses the forgery, pleading
the dire necessity of his sweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with
whom he had planned to escape to save her from the
unbearable brutality of her husband. Notwithstanding
the entreaties of young Walter, who is touched by
modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns Falder over to the police.

The second act, in the court-room, shows Justice in the
very process of manufacture. The scene equals in
dramatic power and psychologic verity the great court
scene in Resurrection. Young Falder, a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the bar.

Ruth, his married sweetheart, full of love and devotion,
burns with anxiety to save the 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 attempt to dispute the mere fact of Falder
having altered the check; and though he pleads
temporary aberration in defense of his client, that plea is
based upon a social consciousness as deep and all-
embracing as the roots of our social ills — “the
background of life, that palpitating life which always lies
behind the commission of a crime.” He shows Falder to
have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman
murdered by her brutal husband, whom she cannot
divorce; or of taking the law into his own hands. The
defence pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young
man into a criminal by condemning him to prison, for

“justice is a machine that, when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself… Is this young man to be
ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at
the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a
member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-
starred ships called prisons? … I urge you, gentlemen, do
not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four
minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the
face… The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over
this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him.”

But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for — as
the learned Judge says — “the law is what it is — a
majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which
rests on another.”

Falder is sentenced to three years’ penal servitude.

In prison, the young, inexperienced convict soon finds
himself the victim of the terrible “system.” The
authorities admit that young Falder is mentally and
physically “in bad shape,” but nothing can be done in the
matter: many others are in a similar position, and “the
quarters are inadequate.”

The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its
silent force. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking
place in Falder’s prison cell.

“In fast-falling daylight, Falder, in his stockings, is seen standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the
door, listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his
stockinged feet making no noise. He stops at the door.

He is trying harder and harder to hear something, any
little thing that is going on outside. He springs suddenly
upright — as if at a sound — and remains perfectly
motionless. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his
work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he
does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in
sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life.

Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving
his head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at
the door, listens, and, placing the palms of his hands
against it with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead
against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves
slowly back towards the window, holding his head, as if
he felt that it were going to burst, and stops under the
window. But since he cannot see out of it he leaves off
looking, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers
into it, as if trying to make a companion of his own face.

It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of
his hand with a clatter — the only sound that has broken
the silence — and he stands staring intently at the wall
where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the
darkness — he seems to be seeing somebody or
something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has been turned up. The cell
is brightly lighted. Falder is seen gasping for breath.

“A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on
thick metal, is suddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not
able to bear this sudden clamor. But the sound grows, as
though some great tumbril were rolling towards the cell.

And gradually it seems to hypnotize him. He begins
creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging
sound, traveling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer;

Falder’s hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already
joined in this beating, and the sound swells till it seems
to have entered the very cell. He suddenly raises his
clenched fists. Panting violently, he flings himself at his
door, and beats on it.”

Finally Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave
man, the stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of
misery in his soul. Thanks to Ruth’s pleading, the firm of

James How and Son is willing to take Falder back in their
employ, on condition that he give up Ruth. It is then that

Falder learns the awful news that the woman he loves
had been driven by the merciless economic Moloch to
sell herself. She “tried making skirts ... cheap things... I
never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my
own cotton, and working all day. I hardly ever got to bed
till past twelve.... And then ... my employer happened —
he’s happened ever since.” At this terrible psychologic
moment the police appear to drag him back to prison for
failing to report himself as ticket-of-leave man.

Completely 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 produced
by this play. Perhaps some conception can be gained
from the very unusual circumstance that it had proved so
powerful as to induce the Home Secretary of Great

Britain to undertake extensive prison reforms in England.

A very encouraging sign this, of the influence exerted by
the modern drama. It is to be hoped that the thundering
indictment of Mr. Galsworthy will not remain without
similar effect upon the public sentiment and prison
conditions of America. At any rate it is certain that no
other modern play has borne such direct and immediate
fruit in wakening the social conscience.

Another modern play, The Servant in the House, strikes a vital key in our social life. The hero of Mr. Kennedy’s
masterpiece is Robert, a coarse, filthy drunkard, whom
respectable society has repudiated. Robert, the sewer
cleaner, is the real hero of the play; nay, its true and only
savior. It is he who volunteers to go down into the dangerous sewer, so that his comrades “can ‘ave light
and air.” After all, has he not sacrificed his life always, so that others may have light and air?

The thought that labor is the redeemer of social well-
being has been cried from the housetops in every tongue
and every clime. Yet the simple words of Robert express
the significance of labor and its mission with far greater
potency.

America is still in its dramatic infancy. Most of the
attempts along this line to mirror life, have been
wretched failures. Still, there are hopeful signs in the
attitude of the intelligent public toward modern plays,
even if they be from foreign soil.

The only real drama America has so far produced is The

Easiest Way, by Eugene Walter.

It is supposed to represent a “peculiar phase” of New

York life. If that were all, it would be of minor
significance. That which gives the play its real importance
and value lies much deeper. It lies, first, in the
fundamental current of our social fabric which drives us
all, even stronger characters than Laura, into the easiest
way — a way so very destructive of integrity, truth, and
justice. Secondly, the cruel, senseless fatalism
conditioned in Laura’s sex. These two features put the universal stamp upon the play, and characterize it as one
of the strongest dramatic indictments against society.

The criminal waste of human energy, in economic and
social conditions, drives Laura as it drives the average girl to marry any man for a “home”; or as it drives men to
endure the worst indignities for a miserable pittance.

Then there is that other respectable institution, the
fatalism of Laura’s sex. The inevitability of that force is
summed up in the following words: “Don’t you know that
we count no more in the life of these men than tamed
animals? It’s a game, and if we don’t play our cards well,
we lose.” Woman in the battle with life has but one
weapon, one commodity — sex. That alone serves as a
trump card in the game of life.

This blind fatalism has made of woman a parasite, an
inert thing. Why then expect perseverance or energy of

Laura? The easiest way is the path mapped out for her
from time immemorial. She could follow no other.

A number of other plays could be quoted as
characteristic of the growing role of the drama as a
disseminator of radical thought. Suffice 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 literature,
all pave the way to the Open Road. Above all, the
modern drama, operating through the double channel of
dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind
and heart, is the strongest force in developing social
discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that
sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance,
prejudice, and superstition.

[1] The intellectuals.

[2] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.

[3] Paris and the Social Revolution.

[4] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.

[5] The Free Hindustan.

[6]
Crime and Criminals. W. C. Owen.

[7]
The Criminal, Havelock Ellis.

[8]
The Criminal.

[9]
The Criminal.

[10]
The Criminal.

[11] Quoted from the publications of the National Committee on Prison Labor.

[12]
The Beehive

[13]
Mother Earth, 1907.

[14]
Ibid.

[15] Black crows: The Catholic clergy.

[16]
Mother Earth, December, 1909.

[17]
The Psychology of Sex. Havelock Ellis

[18] Dr. Sanger, The History of Prostitution.

[19] 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.

[20] Havelock Ellis, Sex and Society:

[21] Guyot, La Prostitution.

[22] Bangert Criminalité et Condition Economique.

[23]
Sex and Society.

[24]
Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen Sumner.

[25]
Equal Suffrage.

[26] Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

[27] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self evident that he should introduce a bill excluding his own
constituents. The English Parliament is full of such

Judases.

[28]
Equal Suffrage, Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

[29]
Honor.

[30]
Magda.

[31]
Before Sunrise.

[32]
The Weavers.

[33]
The Sunken Bell.

[34]
Youth.

[35]
The Awakening of Spring

Table of Contents

Chapter 2: Minorities Versus Majorities

Chapter 3: The Psychology of Political

Chapter 6: Francisco Ferrer and the

Chapter 7: The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

Chapter 8: The Traffic in Women

Chapter 9: Woman Suffrage

Chapter 11: Marriage and Love

Chapter 12: The Modern Drama: A