Halo Infinite, sensational leak: the initial cutscene revealed!
Halo Infinite, sensational leak
A few weeks after the official launch, the initial cutscene of Halo Infinite has been released. The video began to circulate online during the Italian night and is fortunately spoiler-free, but it proves once again that no game is obviously immune to this kind of leak.There are obviously positive details in everything. what: the leaked cutscene reveals absolutely nothing about Halo Infinite. They are in fact only two minutes of video, which show the initial video, without any kind of spoilers about the Master Chief campaign, which we have had the opportunity to try and of which you can read the report at this address. For obvious reasons, the video is still available online, but we have voluntarily chosen not to attach it to this news, as it could still ruin the gaming experience for anyone who is waiting for the new Master Chief adventure.
Some scenarios behind the leak, however, deserve to be investigated. As reported by The Gamer, in fact, the Halo Infinite cutscene would have been leaked during a live stream, specifically in German. We don't know how anyone got hold of it, but it was all streamed on Twitch. Obviously, to avoid any strikes from 343 Industries and Xbox, the streamer censored his face. However, it will hardly help: in all likelihood, both the development team and the publisher will be able to trace quite easily who violated the NDA, or the non-disclosure agreement.
Halo Infinite will debut on December 8th 2021 (without co-op campaign and Forge mode), for Xbox One, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. The game will also arrive on PC, via the Xbox app or directly on Steam. On November 15, 2021, the multiplayer sector made its debut, still in beta, completely free. It will be playable without cost even after the full game is launched.
The perfect console for playing Halo Infinite? Obviously Xbox Series S: you can buy it with a small discount on Amazon.
Mother Earth
Mother Earth was an anarchist journal that described itself as 'A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature', edited by Emma Goldman. Alexander Berkman was the magazine's editor from 1907 to 1915. It published longer articles on a variety of topics including the labor movement, education, literature and the arts, state and government control, and women's emancipation, sexual freedom, and was an early supporter of birth control. Its subscribers and supporters formed a virtual 'who's who' of the radical left in the United States in the years prior to 1920.
In 1917, Mother Earth began to openly call for opposition to US entry into World War I and specifically to disobey government laws on conscription and registration for the military draft. On June 15, 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act. The law set punishments for acts of interference in US foreign policy and espionage. The Act authorized stiff fines and prison terms of up to 20 years for anyone who obstructed the military draft or encouraged 'disloyalty' to the U.S. government. After Goldman and Berkman continued to advocate against conscription, Goldman's offices at Mother Earth were thoroughly searched, and volumes of files and detailed subscription lists from Mother Earth, along with Berkman's journal The Blast, were seized. As a US Justice Department news release reported:
Mother Earth remained in monthly circulation until August 1917.[1] Berkman and Goldman were found guilty of violating the Espionage Act, and were later deported.
List of contributors(Partial):Leonard D. AbbottMargaret Caroline AndersonMax BaginskiAlexander BerkmanMaxwell BodenheimBayard BoyesenGeorg BrandesLouise BryantVoltairine de CleyreJohn R. CoryellJulia May CourtneyPadraic ColumFloyd DellMabel DodgeWill DurantFrancisco Ferrer GuardiaRicardo Flores MagónWilliam Z. FosterEmma GoldmanMaxim Gorky (translated by Alice Stone Blackwell and S. Persky)Margaret GrantMartha GrueningBolton HallSadakichi HartmannHippolyte HavelBen HechtRobert HenriC. L. JamesHarry KellyHarry KempPeter KropotkinErrico MalatestaMax NettlauEugene O'Neill (unsigned)Robert Allerton ParkerCharles Robert PlunkettRobert LonzoÉlisée ReclusBen ReitmanLola RidgeRudolf RockerMorris RosenfeldMargaret SangerTheodore SchroederLeo TolstoyRoss WinnAdolf WolffCharles Erskine Scott Wood
List of artists(Partial):Jules-Félix GrandjouanManuel KomroffRobert MinorMan RayAdolf Wolff
MOTHER EARTH
E. Goldman and M. Baginski
THERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it.
When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust.
Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, creating the 'Great Beyond' and proclaiming Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being, tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience.
In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: 'Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!'
But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs.
To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource.
During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a go od business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in awe.
MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual!
Emma Goldman,Max Baginski.
The Song of the Storm-Finch*
By Maxim Gorky
THE strong wind is gathering the storm-clouds togetherAbove the gray plain of the ocean so wide.The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning,Between clouds and ocean is soaring with pride.
Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shootingUp, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high,The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly;The clouds can hear joy in the bird's fearless cry.
In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest,And anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard;The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph--All these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird . . . . .
The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring;With flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glowO'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings,And quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.
Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing,The lightnings reflected there quiver and shakeAs into the blackness they vanish forever.The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!
The storm-finch soars fearless and proud 'mid the lightnings,Above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret;And what is the prophet of victory saying?'Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet-fiercer yet!'
*From 'Songs of Russia,' rendered into English by ALICE STONE BLACKWELL
To the Readers
The name 'Open Road' had to be abandoned, owing to the existence of a magazine by that name.
Observations and Comments
The importance of written history for the people can easily be compared with the importance of a diary for the individual. It furnishes data for recollections, points of comparison between the Past and Present. But as most diaries and auto-biographies show a lack of straight-forward, big, simple, sincere self-analyses, so does history seldom prove a representation of facts, of the truth, of reality.
The way history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools, or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating crowd in the background. Quacks of history speak only of 'great men' like Bonapartes, Bismarcks, Deweys, or Rough Riders as leaders of the people, while the latter serve as a setting, a chorus, howling the praise of the heroes, and also furnishing their blood money for the whims and extravagances of their masters. Such history only tends to produce conceit, national impudence, superciliousness and patriotic stupidity, all of which is in full bloom in our great Republic.
Our aim is to teach a different conception of historical events. To define them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might. A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities of the human race.
The American Brutus is, of course, a business man and has no time to overthrow Caesar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall of the Republic.
Between ourselves, the number of those who still believe in the American Republic can be counted on one's fingers. One has either pierced through the lie, all for the people and by the people-in that case one must become a Revolutionist; or, one has succeeded in putting one's bounty in safety-then he is a conservative. 'No disturbances, please. We are about to close a profitable contract.' Modern bourgeoisie is absolutely indifferent as to who is to be their political boss, just so they are given opportunity to store their profits, and accumulate great wealth. Besides, the cry about the decline of the great Republic is really meaningless. As far as it ever stood for liberty and well-being of the people, it has long ceased to be. Therefore lamentations come too late. True, the American Republic has not given birth to an aristocracy. It has produced the power of the parvenu, not less brutal than European aristocracy, only narrower in vision and not less vulgar in taste.
Instead of mourning one ought to rejoice that the latest display of disgusting servility has completely thrown off the mantle of liberty and independence of Dame Columbia, now exposed before the civilized world in all her slavish submissiveness.
The storm in Russia has frightened many out of their warm bed-clothes.
A real Revolution in these police-regulated times. More than one voice was raised against the possibility of a Revolution, and they who dared to predict it were considered fit for the lunatic asylum.
The workingmen, peasants and students of Russia, however, have proven that the calculations of the 'wise' contained a hitch somewhere. A Revolution swept across the country and did not even stop to ask permission of those in authority.
Authority and Power are now taking revenge on their daring sons and daughters. The Cossacks, at the command of the 'good Czar' are celebrating a bloody feast-knouting, shooting, clubbing people to death, dragging great masses to prisons and into exile, and it is not the fault of that vicious idiot on the throne, nor that of his advisors, Witte and the others, if the Revolution still marches on, head erect. Were it in their power, they would break her proud neck with one stroke, but they cannot put the head of a hundred million people on the block, they cannot deport eighty millions of Peasants to Siberia nor ran they order all the workingmen in the industrial districts shot. Were the working bees to be killed, the drones would perish of starvation--that is why the Czar of the Peace Treaty still suffers some of his people to live? --
In Mayville, Wis., a transvaluation society has been formed, the purpose of which is, to bring about the transvaluation of all values in matters of love and the relations of the sexes. The members of this society are to contribute by word and deed towards the breaking of all barriers that prevent an ideal and healthy conception of love.
The president of this society, Emil Ruedebusch, known in this country through his work, 'The Old and New Ideal,' which, by the way, was condiscated upon the grounds of obscenity and the author put on trial. It is an undisputed fact that robust, graft-greedy Columbia abhors every free expression on love or marriage. Emil Ruedebusch, like many others who have dared to lift the veil of hypocrisy, was condemned to a heavy fine. A second work of the author, 'Die Eigenen,' was published in Germany.
His idea, that the relation of the sexes must be freed oppressing from the fetters of a lame morality that degrades every human emotion to the plane of utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy, and stupid prudery, against the simplest manifestation of nature.Tragedy of Women's Emancipation
By Emma GoldmanBEGIN my article with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between the 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 to-day, 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 and 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 or peculiarities. The problem that confronts us, to-day, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own innate qualities. This seems to me 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; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: 'To understand everything means to forgive everything,' has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's being suffices. This 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 her to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach expression; and 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 their 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 first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all its 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 insist that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipation 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 have 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 mottoes of which are: 'to take is more blessed than to give'; 'buy cheap and sell clear'; 'one soiled hand washes the other.' There is no hope that even 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 have not equipped tier 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 doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the same 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, or at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of of middle class people who long to throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal that one can 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 walk of life. Teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, straightened and 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 joy and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, freedom.
The tragic fate of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not consist of too many, but of too few experiencees. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; and it is because of that 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 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 decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, which 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 such as are more advanced more perfect, has followers, who in theory stand for the most extreme radical ideas, and who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the next best 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 literateurs 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 women'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 a misrepresentation, and, lacking in 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 how 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 established 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 rigid puritanism never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied to 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 writer, 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 she speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: The genius, Eleanora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sanja Kovalevskaja; the artist and poet nature, Marie Bashkirzeff, 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, 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 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 one hundred years, the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, 'till death us do part' has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her of complete submission to his whims and commands and the absolute dependence upon his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proven 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 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 cause for 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, such as ethical and social conventions, were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along 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 satisfied.
The French novelist, 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 clearly 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 the doing away of 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 her 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 a 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 restriction it is not love, but a transaction that never fail 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 heathen, merely fit 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 our 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, equal civil rights, are all very 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 its true liberation from its masters through its, own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is therefore far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for various equal rights in every vocation in life is just and fair, but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed if the 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 synonomous 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 one's self boundlessly in order to find oneself richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness and replace the tragedy of woman's emancipation with joy, limitless joy.
TRY LOVE
By GRACE POTTER
IN the human heart it lies. The key to happiness. Men call the key love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they, laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door for very bliss and waiting. just outside they laugh and play and blow wild kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their youth found happiness in just that way, is gathered round to see it found again.
When at last the man and maid unlock the door and go in joy to find their happiness, the men and women who have been watching them bury their faces in their hands and weep. Why do they weep? Because they are thinking that soon other doors in life will be met by this man and maid and that there will be no keys to unlock them. They, themselves, could find no key.
They never thought of trying the key of love in all the doors of life. Long, and wearily, eyes searching wide, hands eagerly groping, they have spent their time trying to find other keys. They have looked for and found knowledge. And tried that. Looked for and found fame. And tried that. Looked for and found wealth. And tried that. Looked for and found many, many other keys. And tried them all. And when at last they have lain down on their deathbeds, they have turned gray hopeless faces to the world and died saying, 'We could not find the right key.'
Some few, some very few, there are, who try the key of love in all life's doors. Radiant, they turn to the men and women about and cry, 'Try love! It unlocks all other doors as surely as it does the first in life. Try love!'
And though their fellow beings see that these are the only ones in all the world who find happiness, they turn doubting from them. 'It cannot be,' they say, 'that the key we used in youth should be used again in all the other doors of life.' And so they keep on trying the keys that every disappointed, dying man calls out in warning voice will fail.
Only a few there are who learn--a very few--that love unlocks all other doors in life as surely as it does the first. Try love!
Japan.--A new civilization. The land of a new culture! was the cry of every penny-a-liner at the time she began to display her battleships, cannon, and her accomplished method of drilling her soldiers. They were mocking themselves and did not know how. They talk of culture and civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported, are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now that Japan is a civilized country.
WITHOUT GOVERNMENT
By MAX BAGINSKI
THE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and institutions of the present social order.
On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie, in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mehanical: 'In the name of the king,' or his more hypocritical: 'In the name of the people I pass sentence'; the soldier with his training for murder, and the priest with his: 'Authority comes from God.'
The exteriors of prisons, armories, and churches show that they are institutions in which the body and soul are subdued. He whose thoughts reach beyond this philosophy of the menagerie sees in them the strongest expression of the view, that it is not possible to make life worth living the more with the help of reason, love, justice, solidarity. The family and school take care to prepare man for these institutions. They deliver him up to the state, so to speak, blindfolded and with fettered limbs. Force, force. It echoes through all history. The first law which subjected man to man was based upon force. The private right of the individual to land was built up by force; force took way the claims upon homesteads from the majority and made them unsettled and transitory. It was force that spoke to mankind thus: 'Come to me, humble yourself before me, serve me, bring the treasures and riches of the earth under MY roof. You are destined by Providence to always be in want. You shall be allowed just enough to maintain strength with which to enrich me infinitely by your exertions and to load me down with superfluity and luxury.'
What maintains the material and intellectual slavery of the masses and the insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional part of the values which they produce? It is force.
What is it that makes the brain-worker just as dependent in the intellectual realm as the artisan in the material world? Force. The artist and the writer being compelled to gain a livelihood dare not dream of giving the best of their individuality. No, they must scan the market in order to find out what is demanded just then. Not any different than the dealer in clothes -who must study the style of the season before he places 'his merchandise before the public. Thus art and literature sink to the level of bad taste and speculation. The artistic individuality shrinks before the calculating reckoner. Not that which moves the artist or the writer most receives expression; the vacillating demands of mediocrity of every-day people must be satisfied. The artist becomes the helper of the dealer and the average men, who trot along in the tracks of dull habit.
The State Socialists love to assert that at present we live in the age of individualism; the truth, however, is that individuality was never valued at so low a rate as to-day. Individual thinking and feeling are incumbrances and not recommendations on the paths of life. Wherever they are found on the market they meet with the word 'adaptation.' Adapt yourself to the demands of the reigning social powers, act the odedient servant before them, and if you produce something be sure that it does not run against the grain of your 'superiors,' or say adieu to success, reputation and recompense. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, prejudices which they hold as righteousness and falsehoods which they hold as truths. Paint the whole, crown it with regard for good manners, for society does not like to hear the truth about itself. Praise the men in power as fathers of the people, have the devourers of the commonwealth parade along as benefactors of mankind.
Of course, the force which humbles humanity in this manner is far from openly declaring itself as force. It is masked, and in the course of time it has learned to step forward wit the least possible noise. That diminishes the danger of being recognized.
The modern republic is a good example. In it tyranny is veiled so correctly, that there are really great numbers of people who are deceived by this masquerade and who maintain that what they perceive is a true face with honest eyes.
No czar, no king. But right in line with these are the landowners, the merchants, manufacturers, landlords, monopolists. They all are in possession, which is as strong a guarantee for the continuance of their power, as a castle surrounded by thick walls. Whoever possesses can rob him who possesses nothing of his independence. If I am dependent for a living on work, for which I need contrivances and machines, which I myself cannot procure, because I am without means, I must sacrifice my independence to him who possesses these contrivances and machines. You may work here, he will tell me, but only under the condition that you will deliver up the products of your labor to me, that I may trade with and make profit on them.
The one without possessions has no choice. He may appeal to the declaration of human rights; he may point to his political rights, the equality before the law, before God and the archangels--if he wants to eat, drink, dress and have a home he must choose such work as the conditions of the industrial mercantile or agricultural plants impose upon him.
Through organized opposition the workingmen can somewhat improve this condition; by the help of trade unions they can regulate the hours of work and hinder the reduction of wages to a level too low for mere living. The trade unions are a necessity for the workingmen, a bulwark against which the most unbearable demands of the class of possesors rebound; but a complete freeing of labor--be it of an intellectual or of a physical nature--can be brought about only through the abolition of wage work and the right of private ownership of land and the sources of maintenance and nourishment of mankind. There are heart-rendering cries over the blasphemous opinion that property is not as holy a thing as its possessors would like to make it. They declare that possessions must not be less protected than human life, for they are necessary foundations of society. The case is represented as though everybody were highly interested in the maintenance of the right of private property, whereas conditions are such that non-possession is the normal condition of most people.
Because few possess everything, therefore the many possess nothing. So far as possession can be considered as an oppressive measure in the hands of a few, it is a monopoly. Set in a paradox it would read: The abolition of property will free the people from homelessness and non-possession. In fact, this will happen when the earth with its treasures shall cease to be an object of trade for usurers; when it shall vouchsafe to all a home and a livelihood. Then not only the bent bodies will straighten; the intellect free itself as might the bound Prometheus rid himself of his fetters and leave the rock to which he is chained, but we shall look back on the institutions of force, the state, the hangman, et al, as ghosts of an anxious fantasy.
In free unions the trades will organize themselves and will produce the means of livelihood. Things will not be produced for profit's sake, but for the sake of need. The profit-grabber has grown superfluous just as his patron, the state, which at present serves by means of its taxes and revenues, his anti-humanitarian purposes and hinders the reasonable consumption of goods. From the governing mania the foundation will be withdrawn; for those strata in society will be lacking which therefore had grown rich and fat by monopolizing the earth and its production. They alone needed legislatures to make laws against the disinherited. They needed courts of justice to condemn; they needed the police to carry out practically the terrible social injustice, the cause of which lay in their existence and manner of living. And now the political corruptionists are lacking who served the above-mentioned classes as helpers, and therefore had to be supported as smaller drones.
What a pleasant surprise! We see now that the production and distribution of means of livelihood are a much simpler matter without government than with government. And people now realize that the governments never promoted their welfare, but rather made it impossible, since with the help of force they only allowed the right of possession to the minority.
Life is really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a repugnant struggle for a mere existence.
Truth and beauty are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as Esau sold his primogeniture.
At last the individuality of man has struck a solid social foundation on which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the state and ownership--which is far-reaching--must take the direction of prescribed models that are acknowledged, and must not be directed against the continuance of the leisure classes.
Love will be free. Love's favor is a free granting, a giving and taking without speculation. No prostitution; for the economic and social power of one person over another exists no longer, and with the falling off of external oppression many an internal serfdom of feeling will be done away with, which often is only the reflex of hard external compulsion. Then the longing of large hearts may take tangible shape. Utopias are arrows aimed into the future, harbingers of a new reality.
Rabelais, in his description of life in the 'Thelemite Abbey,' wrote:
'All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed: 'Do What Thou Wilt.'
'Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable to the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us. By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, 'Let us drink,' they would all drink. If any one of them said, 'Let us play,' they all played. If one said, 'Let us go a walking into the fields,' they went all. If it were to go a hawking, or a hunting, the ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists either a sparhawk, or a laneret, or a marlin, and the young gallants car- the other kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six. several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there.'
A few days ago the red ghost of revolution showed itself in the White House. The President saw it and threatened it with his boxing fists: 'What are you looking for here, be off to Russia.' 'You are comical in your excitement,' answered Revolution. 'You must know, I am not only Russian, I am international, at home here as well as on the other side of the great water.'
A Proposition.--Would it not be wiser to explain theories out of life and not life out of theories?
VIVE LE ROI
By Frances Maule Bjorkman
Aye, vive le roi. The King is dead--So move our lives from day to day.The triumph of to-morrow's lordMeets for our former chief's decay.
Then love and live and laugh and sing--The world is good and life is free--There's not a single care I knowThat's worth a single tear from me.
What's love or fame or place or power?What's wealth when we shall come to die?What matters anything on earthSo long as only I am I?
The joy or grief or love or shameThat holds its little hour of swayIs only worth its destined time--What use to try to make it stay?
Aye, let it go. The monarch dead,A better king our shouts may hailAnd if a worse--well, still be glad;He too will pass behind the vail.
They all must pass--fame, joy and love,The sting of grief, the blot of shame;The only thing that really countsIs how we bear the praise or blame.
I'll take the good the while it lastsAnd when it goes I'll learn to sing,All eager for the coming joy--'The king is dead, long live the king.'
Reflections of A Rich Man
If God were not in existence we would have to order one from the Professors of Theology.
The fear, instilled in the majority of the poor, with the God, Devil, Heaven and Hell idea, is greater than their dread of a hundred thousand policemen. Had we not given God the place of Chief Gendarme of the Universe, we would need twice as many soldiers and police as we have to-day.
A poor devil who owns but one million dollars said to me the other day: 'I, in your place, would rather contribute money towards art and literature than to donate it to the Baptist Church.' What an impracticable fellow! Art and literature, among the common people, only tends to cause mischief. They are to remain our privilege. We know the demands of good taste and we can afford to pay for the aesthetic pleasures of life. The majority is unable to do that; besides, to teach them the beauty of art only means to make them discontented and rebellious against our authority.
I frankly admit I never had a great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth. A man of disordered circumstances arouses my disgust. Jesus was neither engaged in any kind of a business, nor did he possess as much as a bank account, nor even a steady home. He preached to the poor. What for? The poor should work and not philosophize. The Scriptures tell nowhere that Jesus returned the mule, upon which he made his entry into Jerusalem, to the owner, or that he paid him for it. I strongly suspect he did not do it. One thing is certain, I never would have taken this dreamer of the abolition of profits as my business partner.
It was very hot yesterday. I walked through my park, intending to betake myself to my favorite place for rest and reverie. Suddenly I stood still, arrested by the sight of a man lying under a tree. In my park? And how the fellow looked! In rags and dirty! I have been told I was kind-hearted, and I realized this myself at the moment. I walked over to the man and inquired interestedly: 'Are you ill?' He grunted in reply. The wretch must have thought, in his sleep, that I was one of his kind. My generosity did not cease. 'If you need money, do not feel shy about telling me. How much do you need. I am the rich X Y Z, who has a fabulous fortune, as you have undoubtedly heard.' At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side, with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: 'What I want? I want to sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two hours?' Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I fear our charitable efforts in their behalf will accomplish little.
Eleven million, nine hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-six dollars and fifty-eight cents is what the gallant Gen. Bingham asks us for protecting us from each other for the ensuing year. With a population of four million and 4.50 members to a family, we pay a fraction less than $3 per head, and about $13.50 for a family, a year for police protection in this enlightened Christian (750,000 of us are Jews, but ours is a Christian city) city of ours, I'd give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no higher ambition than to love my fellow-man--and woman, and mind my own business: but his reply has invariably been, 'I'm Dr. Tarr, and my system prevails in this lunatic asylum!' I recognize the logic of his argument all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful for the privilege of grumbling a little now and again.
COMSTOCKERY
By John R. Corvell
BE it understood that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the least comprehending the spirit of his lofty conception.
The man Comstock, who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it.
It may be said, too, in dismissing him, that it is of no consequence whether the very unpleasant stories current concerning him are true or not. It is altogether probable that a man who stands for what he does and who glories in proclaiming the things he does, will also do things for which he does not stand and which he does not proclaim. That is a characteristic of most of us and only proves that, after all, he is not less than human.
The only point that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the abhorrence and the contempt of his fellows.
Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to regulate the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it would be absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals are only the observances which the conditions of life impose upon a people; and an act depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to those conditions. As, for example, horse-stealing in a closely settled community, which has its railroads and other means of communication, is a crime to be punished by a brief period of imprisonment; while in the sparsely settled sections of a country, where the horse is an imperative necessity of life, its theft becomes a hanging matter, whatever the written law for that section of the country may be as to the punishment of the crime. And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality. In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves.
What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential immorality -using that word in its conventional sense -having its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the character of the simulator.
Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first Anglo-Saxon whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on this soil; certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower, and was soon blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out such a fragrance that the peculiar odor of it has become a characteristic of this land of liberty.
When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene books and pictures which were being freely circulated among the children of the land, boarding-schools, whether for girls or boys, being fairly flooded with the pernicious literature. The work of confiscation, suppression and of imprisonment was done thoroughly and conscientiously, so that in the course of a comparatively short time it was difficult to find books or pictures of the kind in question. It is said that the effectiveness of the work done is best shown by the one or more libraries of obscene books which the society, or some of its officers, have collected.
The value of the work done and the efficiency of the workers were recognized in the passage from time to time of laws giving extraordinary powers not alone to the popularly so-called 'Comstock Society,' but to officers of the government. A perfect fury of purity took possession of our legislators; they were determined to stamp out impurity. And perhaps they were establishing reputations for themselves. It is recorded that in the days of the Inquisition men established their orthodoxy by the loudness of their cries against heresy; that in the times of the French Revolution, men proved their patriotism by making charges of treason against their neighbors; that practicing polygamists have purified themselves by hounding a theoretical polygamist out of their legislative body. Anyhow, the laws were passed, the thing was done.
And what was the thing that was done? A moral Inquisition had been established. Arguing from a wrong premise a hideous conclusion had been reached. It was voiced only a few weeks ago by an official of the postoffice in Chicago, when confiscating a publication. He said in substance, if not literally: 'Any discussion of sex is obscene.'
There it is in a few words -a complete and perfect treatise on Comstockery! In the early days in some parts of New England, a man might not kiss his wife on a Sunday. On common days, the filthy act was permissible, but the Sabbath must not be so defiled. And now, any discussion of sex is obscenity!
Pause a while and consider what this means and whither it will lead, where it has already lead. Discussion of sex is obscene; then sex, itself, must be obscene; life and all that pertains to it must be filthy. That is, providing it be the life of Man. The sex of flowers may be discussed frankly and freely either for the pleasure of knowledge, or in order to use knowledge for the purpose of improving the flower. The sex of animals may be discussed; it is discussed in government publications and in the many farm journals published throughout the country, because it is necessary to improve the breed of our domestic animals, because these animals are valuable. But discussion of the sex of man is obscene!
There have been some changes in public sentiment, some changes, perhaps, in the grey matter on the judicial bench, since the early days in New York when Comstockery was most rampant; for what was tolerated then is not tolerated now; some things that were judicially wrong then are judicially right now. And in this change there is hope and the promise of greater change.
In those early days a confectioner on Fulton street sought to attract customers by exhibiting in his window a painting by a great artist. If memory serves, it was 'The Triumph of Charles V,' by Hans Makart. Figures of nude females were in the picture, and Comstockery established in its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and -not ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not even to be solved by the theory of change in public sentiment; for it is only a few months ago that the art censor in chief of Comstockery saw in the window of an art dealer on Fifth Avenue a landscape in which figured several nude children discreetly wandering away from the beholder. The picture was ordered out of the window forthwith. And went. A few blocks below, on Broadway, there were then and are now exhibited in a window, numerous photographs of nude children, not all of them discreet as to way of their going. Why? Has the art censor decided that the photographs are innocuous, or that they are art?
But these instances and the amazing expeditions made by the censor into the realm of literature are hardly more than ludicrous; and they can and will correct themselves. But the frightful results of Comstockery, as applied to life and to real purity, cannot be so lightly passed over. And let it not be forgotten that an indictment of Comstockery is an indictment or ourselves, for the prurient, hypocritical, degrading thing can exist not one instant after we have declared that it shall perish.
It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of society. It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert impurity into a basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has legislated knowledge into a crime, and it seeks its perpetuation in the degradation of an enfeebled human race. And that these are not over-statements can easily be established to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind.
The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said, all is said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that physician would be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and powder and permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows, unwarned even of the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his life. Nay, worse! What if the physician should have himself clothed with plenary powers and should compel the poor wretch to refrain from making his case known after he had discovered is nature? But this is precisely what Comstockery does.
The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate the disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything possible was done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was done to prevent anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew anything about it, from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was ignorance; ignorance of self, of life, of sex. And not only does Comstockery strive to perpetuate ignorance, not only does it glorify ignorance and miscall it innocence, not only does it elevate it into a virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a crime. The offence of the book it had eliminated was not its vicious misinformation, but its use of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that any discussion of sex is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man of over seventy years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged woman physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of themselves.
It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it better be called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the standing that it once had. When it was made generally known that a postoffice official had said that any discussion of sex was obscene, there followed such a rattling fire of reprobation and condemnation even from many startled conventionalists, who could support the thing but could not look it in the face, that themaker of the now historic phrase was moved to deny that he had said it officially. In fact, there are many signs, most of them still small, on the distant horizon, it is true, which indicate that we are becoming alive to the fact that it is imperative that sex should be discussed.
This is an age of radical ideas. Radicalism in politics, in religion, in ethics, is ripe; which is only another way of saying that we are beginning to dare to think. Probably the most apparent, if not the most significant, sign of the general radicalism, is the tendency to exalt the science of life to an even higher plane than that which it occupied in the days of Hellenic supremecy. We are beginning to understand that right living is a purely physical matter, and that morals are only laws of health; and if there are yet but few who dare take so radical a view of morals as that, still there are quite as few who will not admit freely that nothing can be immoral which is beneficial to the human body.
Of course, it is unthinkable, even from the point of view of the most conventional of orthodox Christians, that there can be any immorality in sex, for sex in itself is absolutely a work of the deity, hence of the highest morality, if it can have any such attribute at all. As well might one give digestion a moral quality. Morality is surely a matter or personal conduct. One may say that it is immoral to eat so much as to injure one's health, but it is not a matter of record that any considerable body of persons declares the stomach to be an immoral organ, or the digestive function to be an immoral one, or any discussion of digestion immoral. Then why sex or sex functions?
It is true that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for the 'limbs' of a female; and it does a variety of other absurd things, all going to show that in some singular fashion it has confounded acts with things; as one might call all knives immoral because a few knives had been used to do murder with.
By what extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which was a virtue, knowledge of which a crime. And then, under those conditions, if a person, possessed of a little knowledge such as might have crept stealthily down the ages, were in a fine humanitarian spirit to dare to publish some of the things he knew in order to help dyspeptic humanity, he would have been robbed of his worldly goods and clapped forthwith into jail. Fancy that under such circumstances a man who had lived his three score and ten years and had learned something from his own suffering and experience, something from the secretly imparted information of others, might not say a word to help his fellows. Is it not too absurd to contemplate without both tears and laughter that that man who should plead with his fellow men to abstain from habitually living on butter cakes and coffee, should be charged with obscenity and imprisoned in consequence? And imagine some sapient postoffice official solemnly declaring that any discussion of digestion is obscene. Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats! Consider, too, trying to cure indigestion and to suppress the orgies of our children in pies, crullers, fritters and butter cakes by the näive device of forbidding all knowledge of the digestive function and making the utterance of the name of a digestive organ an obsecenity punishable by fine and imprisonment!
Digestion is a matter to be considered in the light of hygiene. So is sex. Digestion is not in itself either moral or immoral. Neither is sex. But there is the most hideous immorality in the ascription of obscenity to sex, sex function or any phase of sex life. And this is the crime of Comstockery. It has reared an awful idol to which have been sacrificed the best of our youth; with hypocrisy the high-priest, ignorance the creed, and pruriency the detective.
Comstockery strikes at the very root of life. It forbids that we shall know how to live our best; it forbids that we shall know how to save our children from the perils we have so discreditably passed through; it raises barriers of false modesty between parents and children by branding the very science of life an obscenity. Owing to the shocking suggestions of Comstockery all that relate to life is degraded into the gutter; and that which would be pure and sweet and wholesome in the home or in the school, becomes filthy Comstockery on the snickering lips of ignorant playfellows.
The wonder is that we have endured the nasty thing for so long a time. We have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our school-mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are entitled by very reason of living, but, more than all, because of our need to live right. We all know the hideous untruths we were told because of Comstockery; we all know how much we had to unlearn, and how great the suffering mentally, how great the deterioration physically in the unlearning; we all know our unfitness for parentage at the time we entered it; every man knows how the brothels kept open doors and beckoning inmates by the thousand for his undoing. And yet we endure it -Comstockery.
It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in wherever it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it touches. Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see it, but such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but to cover our nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but only in man. You may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked human being. The summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in New York, and a poor wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on the top floor of a crowded tenement was half crazed by the heat and the lack of fresh air which there was absolutely none in the closet in which he was trying to sleep. He ran down into the street nude at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of finding a surcease of his distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.
Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health; or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children.
The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes, at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex, should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the the select company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.
Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live well ourselves and fit us to bring into the world such children as will amaze us with their health of body and purity of mind. No alteration of the facts of life is necessary, but only a change of attitude. Why, when Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was gravely debated whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It was assumed that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand? Why any one part of the body more than another? Comstockery! Comstockery!DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLETIn Peter Kropotkin's Book: 'Russian Literature' (published by McClure, Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from Turgenieff's works, which shows the Russian poet's genius and psychological insight in all its wonderful depth. Here it is:
'Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life itself he values only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the ideal, for the promotion of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for his brothers, for opposing the forces hostile to mankind: the witches, the giants--that is, the oppressors.... Therefore he is fearless, patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food, the poorest cloth: he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is great and daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is an egotist; but to believe in one' self--even an egotist cannot do that: we can believe only in something which is outside us and above us. . . . As he has doubts of everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself; his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force wherefrom results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated - undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from his oppressor falls twice as heavy upon the head of the innocent himself? . . . What does it matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills? . . . Nothing of the sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills, he does not believe in giants . . . but he would not have attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism. . . . But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, bow to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? Here it is that the oftennoticed tragical aspect of human life comes in: for action we require will, and for action we require thought; but thought and will have parted from each other, and separate every day more and more...'And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought....'
ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON
By Edwin BjorkmanTHE air was still and full of a gray meloncholy light, yet the waters of the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The billows rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness of fear. When they sank back again, they were black -black as despair that knows of no hope.
Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they touched the sullen, colorless cloudbanks overhead. Their sides were seamed with numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the other, from the river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving along those paths; they swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I could not see whence they were coming nor whither they were going. All were pushing and jostling and scratching and howling and fighting. Every one's object seemed to be to raise himself to the path above his own and to preven all others from doing the same.
Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down, shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while its surface of heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river near by, and a man would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the paths above. Then each face would be turned toward him for a breathless moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before.
The crush on paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails, distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above. Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising of falling, they all pushed onward, onward -from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years -always the same wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost unto bursting.
'Why?' I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all, turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment.
'Why?' I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing into my face, laughing like demons rather than men.
My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.
'Why?'
As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked, bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment of consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing, bell-like voice that came from within myself. That last word was:
'Why?'
The British Elections and the Labor Parties
By H. KELLY
We are a left-center country; we live by compromise.'
The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to the truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of political economy, Adam Smith--for Scotland is included in our generalization--Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which in the forties stood almost at the head of the Socialist movement in Europe, which has been the scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's congresses and has furnished a refuge for so many distinguished exiles, it is passing strange, to say the least, that up to the present no one has been elected to Parliament on a purely Socialist platform; this notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of forty-three labor members elected nineteen are members of the Independent Labor Party and one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was elected to Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union record and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a Radical, and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated. In 1900 he was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical mining district in Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and undoubtedly received a large number of votes on the ground of having been a miner once himself. R. B. Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest Socialist who has yet sat in the British Parliament, was elected as a Radical, announcing himself a Socialist some time after his election.
The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch, editor of 'Justice,' the official organ of that party, for more than a decade, and Geo. Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most respected members, refused to compromise in the recent election, and paid the inevitable penalty. Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is a man of exceptional ability, has devoted himself for twenty-five years to the Socialist and labor movement, was endorsed by all the labor bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip Stanhope, recently created a lord and one of the ablest Liberal politicians in the country, did him the honor of declining to stand against him. Still he was defeated-while politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected on a labor platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a 'Labor Platform!' Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid members, one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but not Socialism and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit another and leaving untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real Socialism, the right of labor to the fruits of its toil.
Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive from the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly forced the gilded doors of the 'Mother of Parliaments' and about which the guilty middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H. Broadhurst, W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but nominal labor men not having worked at their various trades for years and are middle class by training and income, that others like Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John Ward and many more are at best labor politicians so steeped in political bargaining and compromising that the net results to labor from them will be very small indeed. It is not necessary nor would it be just to question the honesty or well-meaning of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove that a distinct disappointment. awaits those who elected them. Past history foretells the future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the Dock Strike, who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming in a few short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the 'hero of Featherstone,' H. H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot down in real American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo Imperialists--and the end is not yet. There are our other friends (?). H. Broadhurst, special favorite of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner, who so endeared himself to the coal operators of Wales in his capacity as official of the Miners' Union and Scale Committee that when his daughter was married several years ago she received a cheque for £100 from one of the aforesaid operators, and others whom space forbids in mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor parties now in the House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent stretch of imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed masses. An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of inherent good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and the Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the forces which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the agitation which preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing desire on the part of the workers for a larger share of the product of their toil and a part in the management of industry that we see hope. The form that movement has taken or the beneficial results from the efforts of the elected are details. It is scarcely five years since the Labor Representation Committee sprang into existence, and it says much for the solidarity of labor that over a million trade unionists, thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party and eight hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so short a time.
For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action and will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of thought and used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a rigid account of the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his suffrage. When the disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real progress may come. The process of disillusionment does not come with geometrical precision. To some it comes over night, to others it is a process of years, and to some it is denied altogether. For years the Anarchists have been scoffed at as impossible dreamers for advocating the General Strike as the only effective means of overthrowing the present system. The glorious fight of the Russian people for freedom has changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening the German Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw the franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the shape of the unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although temporarily allayed by the elections, it will blossom forth again.
If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to take the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought in. The Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish Archbishops and attacking secular education, will be amended and not repealed. The endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass, Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of modern pirates.
They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the superstitions of the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in what Christians call 'the eternal righteousness of their cause,' they meet the future with smiling face; and far from being downcast over the turn of events in Great Britain, see hope in the formation of the Labor Parties.AND YOU?
BOLTON HALL
'What would you do,' asked the Idealist, 'if youwere Czar of Russia?''I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that isfundamental,' said the Reformer, 'and then resign.What would you do?''I would first resign, and then teach the people toabolish monopoly of land, the same as now,' answeredthe Idealist. 'But what would you do, Teacher?''I would teach the people from the throne that theywere oppressed by their system of monopoly--and bytheir Czar.'NATIONAL ATAVISM
By Internationalist
THE Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities in America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population.
The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised land, the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they long for themoment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish state, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic peace.
Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious conception that 'the world is my country' to the conception of exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial.
The Zionism of Max Noreau and his followers never was more than a sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism and Revolution; and this at a moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity. Nothing could be more injurious to the Russian revolution, nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present nationalistic agitation.
The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and superstition.
From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical nationalistic elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question: Will it give us our own territory where we can surround ourselves with walls and watch-towers? Yes, the very people, who once spoke with a divine fire of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, and that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further.
These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality than logic.
The Poles have their own territory; still this fact does not hinder Russia from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children; neither does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And of what avail is native territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian; Turkish and Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition. Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on them, have proven what little protection their territorial independence has given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks, pillage and attempts at annexation. Nothing is left them but to bow before the superior powers, or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might, in a measure, temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold, but never end in a complete overthrow of the powerful enemy.
Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider what circumstances have made this possible.
It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of European powers, who consider her a foreign detective bureau which watches over, annoys and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements.
Italian, Russian and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy, as when they can render constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier, where they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes. A very enticing national independence, is it not?
Is it possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar conditions? Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases and who would rather follow the broad path of Internationalism, are accused of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish race. Rather it is far more likely that those who stand for the establishment of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment.
Especially the radicals among the Nationalists seem to be altogether lost in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label 'nationalist' because it stands for so much retrogression for so many memories of hatred, of savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name. And who does not wish to appear advanced and modern? Therefore the name of Nationalist is rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the same thing. True, the territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized Jewish state; they aim for a free commune. But, if it is certain that small states are subordinated to great powers and merely endured by them, it is still more certain that free communes within powerful states, built on coercion and land robbery, have even less chance for a free existence. Such cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social revolution?
If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life of all peoples is never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism, national vanities; everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth and supremacy.
Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the various ranks within the Jewish race?
It is not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic agitation. The social and economic motives for concerted action or separation are of far more vital influence than the national.
The feeling of solidarity of the working-people is bound to prove stronger than the nationalistic glue. As to the remainder of the adherents of the nationalistic movement, they are recruited from the ranks of the middle Jewish class.
The Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian or Mohammedan banker than to his Jewish factory worker, or tenement house dweller. Equally so will the Jewish workingman, conscious of the revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power, find his brother in a fellow worker, and not in a Jewish banker.
True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold: he is exploited, oppressed and robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon, because he is a Jew; but he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the maintainance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination, and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind, as the Christian employer and owner of wealth.
The Jewish population of the East side has little in common with the dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the workingmen of other nationalities of the country -he has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building of a Jewish commonwealth?
Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace and well-being to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature and not of a nationalistic one. The former brightens and widens the horizon, the latter stupefies the reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision was far beyond the Liliputian sphere of Nationalism. Only that which contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy with the seal of the government attached thereto is bound to fall flat and to be insignificant.
It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and victory, with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires. In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees, by Maeterlink, the music of Wagner, Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanore Duse.
I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of the Jewish people; and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized world within a few years. But it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian Church, and not the Russian people, that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews.
Jewish, Socialists and Anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of the Nationalists and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people and have even blamed the Revolutionists for them, whereas it is an undisputed fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by the ruling clique, in the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said, 'we have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed, let the Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them.'
Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish brethren were to say, 'Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated and killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union with the intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people for the overthrow of the abominable tyranny; and when we have accomplished that let us co-operate in the great work of building a social structure upon which neither the nation nor the race but Humanity can live and grow in beauty.'
Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment with the demand for another form of national sentiment means only to lay the foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish Nationalists ever to materialize, the world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by another.
In one respect the Jews are really a 'chosen people.' Not chosen by the grace of God, nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people, as well as with the Jews, merely prove national narrowness. They are 'chosen' by a necessity, which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews; they have grown big in their endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul.
Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind.
Owing to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True, they have not their own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race. That is certainly a greater, nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty nationality.
It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as Gentiles; and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the birth of the new era-mankind clasped in universal brotherhood.
Mine Owners' Revenge
By M.B.
Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G. A. Pettibone, former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th.
They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-Governor of Idaho, Mr. Steunenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple Creek and Haines, Oregon.
The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to kill the Miners' Union. This accord and harmony is so apparent that thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of the mine owners against the miners
Requisition papers and a special train in seem to have been prepared in advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone a few moments sufficed to close the whole proceedings.
Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible-that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no such hope.
The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners consists largely of one individual, who is supposed to have known and witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the District Attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused. An expert perjurer, it seems.
The Governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not know that it has ever been the mission of the Supreme Being to serve as Impresario to Falsehood and Wretchedness?
The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results, The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, á la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake? Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy, ere America becomes thoroughly Russified?
'TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR.'
By John Davidson.
Break—break it open; let the knocker rust;
Consider no 'shalt not,' nor no man's 'must';
And, being entered, promptly take the lead,
Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;
Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;
Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream;
Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;
High hearts and you are destiny enough.
The mystery and the power enshrined in you
Are old as time and as the moment new;
And none but you can tell what part you play,
Nor can you tell until you make assay,
For this alone, this always, will succeed,
The miracle and magic of the deed.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
Whoever severs himself from Mother Earth and her flowing sources of life goes into exile. A vast part of civilization has ceased to feel the deep relation with our mother. How they hasten and fall over one another, the many thousands of the great cities; how they swallow their food, everlastingly counting the minutes with cold hard faces; how they dwell packed together, close to one another, above and beneath, in dark gloomy stuffed holes, with dull hearts and insensitive heads, from the lack of space and air! Economic necessity causes such hateful pressure. Economic necessity? Why not economic stupidity? This seems a more appropriate name for it. Were it not for lack of understanding and knowledge, the necessity of escaping from the agony of an endless search for profit would make itself felt more keenly.
Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large, luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the poisonous air? Neither unconquerable external nor internal necessity forces the human race to such life; that which keeps it in such condition are ignorance and indifference.
Since Turgenieff wrote his 'Fathers and Sons' and the 'New Generation,' the appearance of the Revolutionary army in Russia has changed features. At that time only the intellectuals and college youths, a small coterie of idealists, who knew no distinction between class and caste, took part in the tremendous work of reconstruction. The revolutionist of those days had delicate white hands, lots of learning, æstheticism and a good portion of nervousness. He attempted to go among the people, but the people understood him not, for he did not speak the people's tongue. It was a great effort for most of those brave ones to overcome their disgust at the dirt and dense ignorance they met among the peasants, who absolutely lacked comprehension of new ideas; therefore, there could be no understanding between the intellectuals, who wanted to help, and the sufferers, who needed help. These two elements were brought in closer touch through industrialism. The Russian peasant, robbed of the means to remain on his soil, was driven into the large industrial centres, and there he learned to know those brave and heroic men and women who gave up their comfort and career in their efforts for the liberation of their people.
These ideas that have undergone such great changes in Russia within the last decade should serve as good material for study for those who claim the Russian Revolution is dead.
Nicholas Tchaykovsky, one of Russia's foremost workers in the revolutionary movement, and one who, through beauty of character, simplicity of soul and great strategical ability, has been the idol of the Russian revolutionary youth for many years, is here as the delegate of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party, to raise funds for a new uprising. He was right when he said, at the meeting in Grand Central Palace, 'The Russian Revolution will live until the decayed and cowardly regime of tyranny in Russia is rooted out of existence.'
Decorative separator
The French have a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallières. The father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a crowd when he cries out to them: 'My opponents express the suspicion that I am a numskull. I do not care to argue the point with them, but this I will say by the way of explanation, fellow citizens, that I am a thoroughly honest man to the very roots of my hair.' By this method one can attain the presidency of a republic.
As Secretary of the Interior, Fallières caused the arrest of the Socialist poet, Clovis Hugues. At another time he declared: 'As long as I am in office, I will not tolerate the red flag on the open street.'
The French bourgeois have found in Fallières their fitting man of straw for seven years.
The only genuine Democrat of these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the poor—for good pay, of course.
Whosoever believes that the law is infallible and can bring about order in the chaotic social conditions, knows the curative effect of law to the minutest detail. The question how things might be improved is met with this reply: 'All criminals should be caught in a net like fish and put away for safe keeping, so that society remains in the care of the righteous.' Hallelujah!
People with a capacity to judge for themselves think differently. Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, President of the National Prison Association, maintains:
'Our county jails everywhere are the schools and colleges of crime. In the light of social science it were better for the world if every one of them were destroyed than that this work should be continued. Experience shows that the system of imprisonment of minor offenders for short terms is but a gigantic measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the foundations of character and unfit him for independent life. To consign a man to prison is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class.... With all the solemnity and emphasis of which I am capable, I utter the profound conviction, after twenty years of constant study of our prison population, that more than nine-tenths of them ought never to have been confined.'
Government and authority are responsible for the conditions in the western mining districts.
Is not the existence of government considered as a necessity on the grounds that it is here to maintain peace, law and order? This is an oft-repeated song.
Let us see how the government of Colorado has lived up to its calling within the last few years. It has permitted that the labor protective laws that have passed the legislature should be broken and trampled upon by the mine owners.
The money powers care little for the eight-hour law, and when the mine workers insisted upon keeping that law, the authorities of Colorado immediately went to the rescue of the exploiters. Not only were police and soldiers let loose upon the Western Federation of Miners; but the government of Colorado permitted the mine owners to recruit an army to fight the labor organizations. Hirelings were formed into a so-called citizens' committee, that inaugurated a reign of terror. These legal lawbreakers invaded peaceful homes during the day and night, and those that were in the least suspected of belonging to or sympathizing with the Western Federation of Miners were torn out of bed, arrested and dragged off to the bull pen, or transported into the desert, without food or shelter, many miles from other living beings. Some of these victims were crippled for life and died as a result thereof.
When it became known that the W. F. M. continued to stand erect, regardless of brutal attacks, it was decided to strike the last violent blow against it.
Orchard, the man of honor, confessed, and the lawbreakers appealed to the law against Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone.
This time the government did not hesitate. The eight-hour and protective labor law was too insignificant to enforce, but to bring the officers of the W. F. M. to account, that, of course, is the duty and the function of the State.
There is not the slightest hope that the authorities who, for a number of years, have permitted the violation of the law, will be put on trial, but the crime they have perpetrated is a weighty argument in favor of those who maintain that the State is not an independent institution, but a tool of the possessing class.
Many radicals entertain the queer notion that they cannot arrange their own lives, according to their own ideas, but that they have to adapt themselves to the conditions they hate, and which they fight in theory with fire and sword.
Anything rather than arouse too much public condemnation! The lives they lead are dependent upon the opinion of the Philistines. They are revolutionists in theory, reactionists in practice.
The words of Louis XIV, 'I am the State,' have been taken up as a motto by the American policeman. One of the New York papers contains the following account:
'In discharging some seventy prisoners in the Jefferson Market Police Court yesterday morning, the Magistrate said to the police in charge of the cases: 'I am amazed that you men should bring these prisoners before me without a shred of evidence on which they can be held.''
Such is the blessing of this republic. We are not confronted by one czar of the size of an elephant, but by a hundred thousand czars, as small as mosquitoes, but equally disagreeable and annoying.
Friends of Mother Earth in various Western cities have proposed a lecture tour in behalf of the magazine. So far I have heard from Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago. Those of other cities who wish to have me lecture there, will please communicate with me as to dates at once. The tour is to begin May 12th and last for a month or six weeks.
Emma Goldman,Box 217, Madison Square Station.
THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES.
By Emma Goldman.
Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question.
The longing of the best and noblest of our times makes for the strongest individualities. Every sensitive being abhors the idea of being treated as a mere machine or as a mere parrot of conventionality and respectability, the human being craves recognition of his kind.
It must be borne in mind that it is through the channel of the child that the development of the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of the educating or training of the latter in the school and the family—even the family of the liberal or radical—are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child.
Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as an unusual event, since the obstacles placed in the way of growth and development of character are so numerous that it must be considered a miracle if it retains its strength and beauty and survives the various attempts at crippling that which is most essential to it.
Indeed, he who has freed himself from the fetters of the thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion—private laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it—may well intone a high and voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin at the most delicate age.
The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.
Zola, in his novel 'Fecundity,' maintains that large sections of people have declared death to the child, have conspired against the birth of the child,—a very horrible picture indeed, yet the conspiracy entered into by civilization against the growth and making of character seems to me far more terrible and disastrous, because of the slow and gradual destruction of its latent qualities and traits and the stupefying and crippling effect thereof upon its social well-being.
Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.
The ideal of the average pedagogist is not a complete, well-rounded, original being; rather does he seek that the result of his art of pedagogy shall be automatons of flesh and blood, to best fit into the treadmill of society and the emptiness and dulness of our lives. Every home, school, college and university stands for dry, cold utilitarianism, overflooding the brain of the pupil with a tremendous amount of ideas, handed down from generations past. 'Facts and data,' as they are called, constitute a lot of information, well enough perhaps to maintain every form of authority and to create much awe for the importance of possession, but only a great handicap to a true understanding of the human soul and its place in the world.
Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation. Eternal change, thousandfold variations, continual innovation are the essence of life. Professional pedagogy knows nothing of it, the systems of education are being arranged into files, classified and numbered. They lack the strong fertile seed which, falling on rich soil, enables them to grow to great heights, they are worn and incapable of awakening spontaneity of character. Instructors and teachers, with dead souls, operate with dead values. Quantity is forced to take the place of quality. The consequences thereof are inevitable.
In whatever direction one turns, eagerly searching for human beings who do not measure ideas and emotions with the yardstick of expediency, one is confronted with the products, the herdlike drilling instead of the result of spontaneous and innate characteristics working themselves out in freedom.
'No traces now I see
Whatever of a spirit's agency.
'Tis drilling, nothing more.'
These words of Faust fit our methods of pedagogy perfectly. Take, for instance, the way history is being taught in our schools. See how the events of the world become like a cheap puppet show, where a few wire-pullers are supposed to have directed the course of development of the entire human race.
And the history of our own nation! Was it not chosen by Providence to become the leading nation on earth? And does it not tower mountain high over other nations? Is it not the gem of the ocean? Is it not incomparably virtuous, ideal and brave? The result of such ridiculous teaching is a dull, shallow patriotism, blind to its own limitations, with bull-like stubbornness, utterly incapable of judging of the capacities of other nations. This is the way the spirit of youth is emasculated, deadened through an over-estimation of one's own value. No wonder public opinion can be so easily manufactured.
'Predigested food' should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment, who, instead, would be content with a large amount of empty and shallow shells. This may suffice as a recognition of the manifold hindrances placed in the way of an independent mental development of the child.
Equally numerous, and not less important, are the difficulties that confront the emotional life of the young. Must not one suppose that parents should be united to children by the most tender and delicate chords? One should suppose it; yet, sad as it may be, it is, nevertheless, true, that parents are the first to destroy the inner riches of their children.
The Scriptures tell us that God created Man in His own image, which has by no means proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their heavenly master; they use every effort to shape and mould the child according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the child is merely part of themselves—an idea as false as it is injurious, and which only increases the misunderstanding of the soul of the child, of the necessary consequences of enslavement and subordination thereof.
As soon as the first rays of consciousness illuminate the mind and heart of the child, it instinctively begins to compare its own personality with the personality of those about it. How many hard and cold stone cliffs meet its large wondering gaze? Soon enough it is confronted with the painful reality that it is here only to serve as inanimate matter for parents and guardians, whose authority alone gives it shape and form.
The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political, social and moral conventions owes its origin to the family, where the child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long established and hard notions of thoughts and emotions. Yet the latent qualities and instincts seek to assert their own peculiar methods of seeking the foundation of things, of distinguishing between what is commonly called wrong, true or false. It is bent upon going its own way, since it is composed of the same nerves, muscles and blood, even as those who assume to direct its destiny. I fail to understand how parents hope that their children will ever grow up into independent, self-reliant spirits, when they strain every effort to abridge and curtail the various activities of their children, the plus in quality and character, which differentiates their offspring from themselves, and by the virtue of which they are eminently equipped carriers of new, invigorating ideas. A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.
When the child reaches adolescence, it meets, added to the home and school restrictions, with a vast amount of hard traditions of social morality. The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a great sin, that dares not face the light.
What is more astonishing is the fact that parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living.
And yet these parents imagine that they mean best for the child, and for aught I know, some really do; but their best means absolute death and decay to the bud in the making. After all, they are but imitating their own masters in State, commercial, social and moral affairs, by forcibly suppressing every independent attempt to analyze the ills of society and every sincere effort toward the abolition of these ills; never able to grasp the eternal truth that every method they employ serves as the greatest impetus to bring forth a greater longing for freedom and a deeper zeal to fight for it.
That compulsion is bound to awaken resistance, every parent and teacher ought to know. Great surprise is being expressed over the fact that the majority of children of radical parents are either altogether opposed to the ideas of the latter, many of them moving along the old antiquated paths, or that they are indifferent to the new thoughts and teachings of social regeneration. And yet there is nothing unusual in that. Radical parents, though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mould and form the child according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses. And, with the latter, they hold out the necessity before the young 'to do as I tell you and not as I do.' But the impressionable mind of the child realizes early enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord's commands the rest of the week, the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government, domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he abhors. Just so, the Freethought parent can proudly boast that his son of four will recognize the picture of Thomas Paine or Ingersoll, or that he knows that the idea of God is stupid. Or that the Social Democratic father can point to his little girl of six and say, 'Who wrote the Capital, dearie?' 'Karl Marx, pa!' Or that the Anarchistic mother can make it known that her daughter's name is Louise Michel, Sophia Perovskaya, or that she can recite the revolutionary poems of Herwegh, Freiligrath, or Shelley, and that she will point out the faces of Spencer, Bakunin or Moses Harmon almost anywhere.
These are by no means exaggerations; they are sad facts that I have met with in my experience with radical parents. What are the results of such methods of biasing the mind? The following is the consequence, and not very infrequent, either. The child, being fed on one-sided, set and fixed ideas, soon grows weary of re-hashing the beliefs of its parents, and it sets out in quest of new sensations, no matter how inferior and shallow the new experience may be, the human mind cannot endure sameness and monotony. So it happens that that boy or girl, over-fed on Thomas Paine, will land in the arms of the Church, or they will vote for imperialism only to escape the drag of economic determinism and scientific socialism, or that they open a shirt-waist factory and cling to their right of accumulating property, only to find relief from the old-fashioned communism of their father. Or that the girl will marry the next best man, provided he can make a living, only to run away from the everlasting talk on variety.
Such a condition of affairs may be very painful to the parents who wish their children to follow in their path, yet I look upon them as very refreshing and encouraging psychological forces. They are the greatest guarantee that the independent mind, at least, will always resist every external and foreign force exercised over the human heart and head.
Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes, but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible.
HOPE AND FEAR.[A]
(Translated from the Jewish of L. I. Peretz.)
....My heart is with you.
My eye does not get weary looking at your flaming banner; my ear does not get tired listening to your powerful song....
My heart is with you; man's hunger must be appeased, and he must have light; he must be free, and he must be his own master, master over himself and his work.
And when you snap at the fist which is trying to strangle you, your voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard—I rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my heart and intoxicates me like old wine....
And yet....
And yet you frighten me.
I am afraid of the bridled who conquer, for they are apt to become the oppressors, and every oppressor transgresses against the human soul....
Do you not talk among yourselves of how humanity is to march, like an army in line, and you are going to sound for it the march on the road?
And yet humanity is not an army.
The strong are going forward, the magnanimous feel more deeply, the proud rise higher, and yet will you not lay down the cedar in order that it may not outgrow the grass?
Or will you not spread your wings over mediocrity, or will you not shield indifference, and protect the gray and uniformly fleeced herd?
* * *
You frighten me.
As conquerors you might become the bureaucracy: to dole out to everybody his morsel, as is the usage in the poor-house; to arrange work for everybody as it is done in the galleys. And you will thus crush the creator of new worlds—the free human will, and fill up with earth the purest spring of human happiness—human initiative, the power which braves one against thousands, against peoples, and against generations? And you will systematize life and bid it to remain on the level of the crowd.
And will you not be occupied with regulations: registrating, recording, estimating—or will you not prescribe how fast and how often the human pulse must beat, how far the human eye may look ahead, how much the ear may perceive, and what kinds of dreams the languishing heart may entertain?
* * *
With joy in my heart I look at you when you tear down the gates of Sodom, but my heart trembles at the same time, fearing that you might erect on its ruins new ones—more chilling and darker ones.
There will be no houses without windows; but fog will envelop the souls....
There will be no empty stomachs, but souls will starve. No ear will hear cries of woe, but the eagle—the human intellect—will stand at the trough with clipped wings together with the cow and the ox.
And justice, which has accompanied you on the thorny and bloody path to victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate. And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not feel the quagmire under your feet.... Every tyrant thinks he stands on firm ground so long as he has not been vanquished.
And you will build prisons for those who dare to stretch out their hands, pointing to the abyss into which you sink; you will tear out the tongues of the mouths that warn you against those who come after you, to destroy you and your injustice....
Cruelly will you defend the equality of rights of the herd to use the grass under its feet and the salt in the ground,—and your enemies will be the free individuals, the overmen, the ingenious inventors, the prophets, the saviors, the poets and artists.
* * *
Everything that comes to pass occurs in space and time.... The present is the existing: the stable, the firm, and therefore the rigid and frozen—the to-day, which will and must perish....
Time is change—it varies and develops; it is the eternally sprouting, the blossoming, the eternal morning....
And as your 'morning,' to which you aspire, will become the 'to-day,' you will become the upholders of the 'yesterday,' of that which is lifeless—dead. You will trample the sproutings of to-morrow and destroy its blossoms, and pour streams of cold water upon the heads that nestle your prophecies, your dreams, and your new hopes.
The to-day is unwilling to die, bloody is every sunset....
I yearn and hope for your victory, but I fear and tremble for your victory.
You are my hope, and you are my fear.
Nietzsche—Zarathustra spake thus: 'He who wishes to say something should be silent a long while.' If the makers of public opinion would only carry out this hint for about a lifetime!
According to the latest researches, it has been brought to light that the grim angel who drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise was named Comstock.
As long as there are women who must fear to become mothers on account of economic difficulties or moral prejudices, the emancipation of woman is only a phrase.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This sketch the writer had addressed to Jewish Social Democrats.
JOHN MOST.
By M. B.JOHN MOST suddenly died in Cincinnati, March 17. He was on an agitation trip, and when he reached Cincinnati he took sick with erysipelas and died within a few days, surrounded by his comrades.
Shortly before that he had the fortune to taste of the kindness and good breeding of the police once more. Some friends in Philadelphia arranged a meeting to celebrate Most's sixtieth birthday. He was one of the speakers; but the police of that city interpreted the American Constitution, which speaks of the right to free speech and assembly, as giving the right to forcibly disperse the meeting.
Conscious misrepresentation and ignorance, the twin angels that hover over the throne of the newspaper kingdom of this country, have made John Most a scarecrow. Organized police authorities and police justices that can neither be accused of a surplus of intelligence nor even of the shadow of love of fairness, made him their target whenever they felt the great calling to save their country from disaster. Naturally the mob of law-abiding citizens must be assured from time to time that their masters have a sacred duty to perform, that they earn the right of graft.
Most was born at Augsburg, Bavaria, February 5, 1846. According to his memoirs, he early found it necessary to resist the tyranny of a stepmother and the miserable treatment of his master. As a bookbinder apprentice, at a very early age, he took to his heels and went on the road of the world, where he soon came in contact with revolutionary ideas in the labor movement that greatly inspired him and urged him to read and study. It might be more appropriately said that he developed a ravenous appetite for knowledge and research of all the works of human science.
At that time socialistic ideas had just begun to exercise great influence upon the thinking mind of the European continents. The zeal and craving for knowledge displayed by the working people of those days can hardly be properly estimated, especially by the proletariat of this country, whose literature and source of knowledge chiefly consists of the daily papers. Workingmen, who worked ten and twelve hours in factories and shops, spent their evenings in study and reading of economic, political and philosophic works—Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx, Engels, Bakunin and, later, Kropotkin; also Henry George's 'Progress and Poverty.' Added to these were the works of the materialistic-natural science schools, such as Darwin, Huxley, Molleschot, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Buechner, Haeckel, that constituted the mental diet of a large number of workingmen of that period. Just as the revolutionary economists were hailed as the liberators of physical slavery, so were the materialistic, naturalistic sciences accepted as the saviors from mental narrowness and darkness.
Most was untiring in his work of popularizing these ideas, and as he could quickly grasp things he was tremendously successful in simplifying scientific books into pamphlets and essays, accessible to the ordinary intelligence of the working people. He possessed a marvelous memory, and once he got hold of an amount of data he could easily avail himself of it at any moment. This was particularly true in the domain of history, with its compilation of bloodcurdling events, from which he drew his conclusions of how the human race ought not to live.
Together with his journalistic activity, he combined oral propaganda. His power of delivery was marvelous, and those who heard him in his early days will understand why the powers of the world stood in awe before him. He not only had a very convincing way, but he succeeded in keeping his audiences spellbound or to bring them up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm.
The scene of his first great activity was in Vienna, where he was soon met with many indictments and persecutions from the authorities, who mercilessly pursued him for the rest of his life. After a term of imprisonment in several American prisons, he went to Germany, where he became the editor of the 'Free Press' in Berlin, but his original and biting criticism of bureaucracy again brought him in conflict with the powers that be. The Berlin prison, Ploetzensee, soon closed its doors on the culprit. Even to-day those who visit that famous institution of civilization are still shown Most's cell.
At that time Bismarck carried an unsuccessful battle against the power of the Catholic Church, eager to subordinate her to the State authority. It happened that the famous leader of the Catholic party, Majunke, was sent for a term of imprisonment to Ploetzensee. When the prisoners were led out for their daily walk, the leader of the Reds, John Most, met the leader of the Blacks, Majunke. The situation was comical enough to cause amusement to both; both being brilliant, they found enough interesting material for conversation, which helped them over the dreariness and monotony of prison life.
Several years later Bismarck succeeded in enacting the muzzle law against Social Democracy, which destroyed the freedom of the press and assembly. The question arose then what could be done.
Most had been elected to the Reichstag, representing the famous factory town Chemnitz, but his experience in Parliament only served him to despise the representative system and professional lawmaking more than ever.
When leaders of Social Democracy, like Bebel and Liebknecht, thought it more expedient to adapt themselves to conditions, Most went to London, where he continued his revolutionary literary crusade in the 'Freiheit.' He came in contact with Karl Marx, Engels and various other refugees who lived in England. Marx assured Most that his sharp pen in the 'Freiheit' was not likely to cause him any trouble in England so long as the Conservative party was in power, but that nothing good was to be expected of a Liberal government. Marx was right. Shortly after Most's arrival in London his paper was seized and he was arrested on the indictment for inciting to murder because he paid a glowing tribute to the revolutionists of Russia, who, on the first of March, 1881, executed Alexander II. He was tried and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment to one of the barbarous English prisons.
Most gradually developed into an Anarchist, representing Communist Anarchism, the organization of production and consummation, based on free industrial groups, and which would exclude State and bureaucratic interference. His ideas were related to those of Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus. He often assured me that he considered Kropotkin his teacher, and that he owed much of his mental development to him.
The next aim of the hounded man was America, but it does not appear that he was followed across the ocean by his lucky star. He soon was made to feel that free speech and free press in this great republic was but a myth. Time and again he was arrested, brutally treated by the police, and sentenced to serve time in the penitentiary. Added to this came the fearful attacks and misrepresentations of Most and his ideas by the press, many of the articles making him appear as a wild beast ever plotting destruction. The last sentence inflicted upon him was after the Czolgosz act. He was arrested for an article by the Radical Karl Heinzen, that had been written many years ago and the author of which had been dead a long time. The article had not the slightest relation to the act, did not contain a single reference to the conditions of this country, and treated altogether of European conditions of fifty years ago. In the face of this sentence one cannot but help think of Tolstoi's 'Power of Darkness.' Only the Power of Darkness in the minds of the judges before whom Most was tried and the newspaper men, who helped in arousing public opinion against him, were responsible for the sentence inflicted upon him.
Taking Most's life superficially, it would appear that his road was hard and thorny, but looking at it from a thorough view point, one will realize that all his hardships and injustices had made of him a relentless, uncompromising rebel, who continued to wage war against the enemies of the people.
With but few exceptions the American journalists censure the immoral profession of 'Mrs. Warren.' Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers? Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental prostitution.
CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA.A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth, knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa.
'Who are you and what do you want?' said a voice from the inside.
'In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for you and fill you full of lead.'
'But what do you want here?'
'My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a reasonable human being out of you if it is possible.'
'What are you going to do?'
'In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates.'
'What shall I do with them?'
'Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes.'
'But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them. I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?'
'Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of being a martyr to civilization.'
'How kind!'
'Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?'
'When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel like it.'
'What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant.'
'If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house. I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and there.'
'Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty dollars.'
'What for?'
'As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the blessings of civilization for nothing?'
'But I have no money.'
'That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life.'
'What is jail?'
'Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some sacrifices for civilization, you know.'
'What a great and glorious thing is civilization.'
'You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I get through with you, my fine fellow.'
The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen since—Waverly Magazine.
OUR PURPOSE.By Mary Hansen.
I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,To herald the birth of a king;I come, not with traditional story,The life of a savior to sing;I come, not with jests for the silly,I come, not to worship the strong,But to question the powers that govern,To point out a world-old wrong.To kiss from the starved lips of childhoodThe lies that are sapping its breath,And brighten the brief cheerless valleyThat leads to the darkness of death;With reason and sympathy blended,And a hope that all mankind shall see,Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom—The attainable goal of the Free.
MARRIAGE AND THE HOME.
By John R. Coryell.
YOU remember Punch's advice to the young man about to be married—don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a terrible failure?
We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the institution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.
Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime, disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst—a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated[24] by nothing in the physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind. Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn; but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already married to each other.
The constituents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman and the savage, exulting, unrelenting passion of the man are produced children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which tend to produce the best individuals.
Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told, that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is the meaning of that solemn formula, which most of us have been taught, that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and blush that go to any reference to sex, sign or manifestation of sex? Is it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of misconceptions, sex-superstitions, immoral dogmas and probably physical disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son, fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful phenomena of sex-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the attitude of the average parent: 'Talked to him about that? Not I. Let him learn as I did. No one ever told me.' But some one had told him, as his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books, whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things, but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a glass of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of sex manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange stories based on sex relation with any stranger with whom he might ride for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within bounds.
And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into that awful life of legalized prostitution which is called marriage.
Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very identity into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children; you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely?
And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man, whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over her and her master.
Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women, dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey—the only thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down, down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition, their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave.
And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel! Nevertheless, she is the power behind the throne. And if the man possess her, does she not equally possess him? Is not monogamy the mainstay of our morals? Is not God to be thanked that he has given us light to see the horrors of polygamy? Oh, that shocking thing, polygamy! How the husbands of the land rise up to defend their firesides from it! No Smoots shall get into our Senate. That virtuous Senate!
Why if every practising polygamist went home from the Congress there would not be a quorum left to do business. Monogamy! Why it is the most shocking phase of the hypocrisy due to marriage. There is no such condition known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe the fable of monogamy?
What has monogamy or polygamy or polyandry to do with this matter? I assume that it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish? And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course, should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have many or few or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural; avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave, giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can be given them; and which cannot be given them under the prevailing system. It is only when a woman is free to choose the father of her child that the child can hope for even a partial payment of the debt that was due it from its parents from the moment they took the responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The old and current notion is that the child is a chattel.
Abraham never offers an apology for making little Isaac carry wood and then mount the sacrificial pile. Indeed we are asked to marvel at the heroism of the father. Then we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. As if the child were the property of the parent. And yet there must always have been naughty children asking pointed questions, for it was long ago found necessary to try to scare them by a divine fulmination. Honor thy father and thy mother[29] that thy days may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself; stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth and ignorance; wilfully robbing him of his birthright of individuality by forcing him to conform to methods of thought and conduct which his own experience tells him no man can or does conform to from the moment he wins his freedom or learns the hideous lesson of that hypocrisy which he is sure in the end to discover that his father practices. What right has any father to make a sacrifice of his child? What is his title to the love or gratitude or self-abnegation of his child? Is it that the child is the unconsidered consequence of the legal rape of some poor woman who has been unfitted for the office forced upon her, by a life mentally dwarfed, morally twisted and physically mutilated? Is it that the child is haled out of nothingness to be inoculated, perhaps, with germs of disease in the first instance and then half nourished for nine months in a body which has been robbed of its vitality by the mutilation and torture to which it has been subjected at the behest of fashion?
The highest duty of a parent is to so treat his child that it will enter upon the struggle of life prepared to obtain the utmost happiness from it.
If anyone fancies I have been too severe in my strictures I would ask him to read what Mrs. Gilman has to say on the subject of home. It is true that she does not come to the same conclusion that I do. She would have women economically independent, and she would have children taken care of by those especially fitted for the task, leaving mothers and fathers free to go their separate ways. But how could there be separate ways so long as the slavery of marriage remained? Woman must be not only economically free, but altogether free. As I have said, motherhood is not an affair of morals; it is a function. Marriage, on the other hand, is a matter of morals; and hideously immoral it is, too. Then why not have motherhood without its immoral, artificial adjunct, marriage?
You see I do not ask for easy divorce as a solution of the problem of marriage. I set my face sternly against divorce. I am one with the church in that. I only demand that there shall be no marriage at all, that there shall be no fastening of life-long slavery on woman. Let woman mother children or not, as she will. Let her say who shall be the father of her child and of each child. Let motherhood be deemed not even honorable, but only natural.
Can anyone believe that if men and women were free to decide whether or not they would be parents, they would not in the end, seeing their duty in the light of their knowledge, fit themselves for parenthood before taking upon themselves its responsibilities?
I would like to say that I have no fear of the odium of the designation of iconoclast. Nor do I quake lest some one triumphantly ask me what I will put in the place of marriage and the home. As well might one demand what I would give in the place of smallpox if I were able to eradicate it. I am not concerned to find a substitute for such perversion of sex activity. If men and women choose to live together in freedom, fathering and mothering their children according to a rule grown out of freedom, and directed by expediency, I fancy they would be, at least, as happy as they can be now, tied together by a hard, unpleasant knot. And if an economically free woman chose to have six children by six different fathers, as a wise woman might well do, I believe she could be trusted to secure those children from want quite as well as the mother-slave of to-day, who bears her children at the will of an irresponsible man, and then, often enough, has to take care of them and him too.
'Wealth protects and animates art and literature, as the dew enlivens the fields.'
Nonsense! Wealth animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail.
THE MODERN NEWSPAPER.
Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.
Figure first, then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed, building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging. Engineers, who have never had time to wash since their birth, fly about with oil cans, while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor car, leaping out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to 'hustle,' getting wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are waiting get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the parts of this complex, lunatic machine working hysterically toward a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last, the only things that seem to travel slowly in those tearing, vibrating premises, are the hands of the clock.
Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those stresses. Then, in the small hours, in the now dark and deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every door; bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles.
Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people are reading—reading headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land.
Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing.
—From H. G. Wells 'In the Days of the Comet.'
A VISIT TO SING SING.
By A Moralist.
I WAS ennuyé; the everlasting decency and respectability of my surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of reasons. And they were uninteresting.
'Oh,' said I to myself, 'these are the people of the ruts; they go that way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be some persons who do not conform. Where are they?'
Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that monument of our civilization on the Hudson River, and why finally I made up my mind to visit it.
I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district, who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls of the building, and I exchanged with him a five-dollar bill for an order to admit me.
'I suppose,' I said to the attendant who did the honors of the place for me, 'that these persons who are garbed alike and who affect the same tonsorial effect are those who have been unskillful in their non-conformity.'
'They are prisoners,' he replied. I bit my lip and looked as smug as I remembered one should who as yet has the right of egress as well as ingress in an institution of that character.
At that moment my eyes fell on a face that seemed familiar to me, and as I studied it I saw with surprise that I had come upon a man who had once been a schoolmate of mine.
Now I had always believed that if a person had done wrong, he would be conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working; for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow, met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess that such a blow to my theory filled me with indignation.
I stepped toward him, all my moral superiority betraying itself in the self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in his relations with others.
'Why are you here?' I asked him.
'Are you not a little impertinent?' he asked. 'I do not inquire of you why you are here.'
'That is obvious, to say the least,' I answered loftily.
'Obvious from your pharisaical expression, perhaps,' he said good-naturedly. 'But never mind! We look at the matter from different points of view. To me it is a greater indiscretion to annoy a helpless prisoner with 'holier-than-thou' questions than it would be to attend[34] the Charity Ball in pajamas. But of course you do not see it in the same light.'
'Pardon me if I annoyed you,' I said stiffly.
'Don't mention it,' he replied, with the humorous twinkle still playing in his eyes. 'And to prove that I bear no hard feeling, I will ask you some questions.'
Naturally I was embarrassed at such an exhibition of hardihood in one in his situation, but I said I would be pleased to answer him to the best of my ability.
'It is some time since I was away from this retreat on a vacation,' he said, with an easy assurance that was indescribably shocking to one of correct principles, 'and I would like to know if all the rascals have yet been put in prison.'
I pushed my insurance policy a little deeper into my pocket and replied, with conviction:
'Certainly not; but you must not forget that no man is guilty until he has been proven so.'
'Ah, yes,' he said; 'and that a man may pride himself on his honesty on the secure ground that he has not yet reached the penitentiary. Yes, of course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christians pro tem, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise our bill of fare?'
'Oh,' I answered vaguely, 'there are still reformers of all sorts in the world.'
'Reformers!' he cried, his face lighting up with a new interest. 'Ah! you mean those profound thinkers who seek to cure every disease of the social body by means of legislation. Yes, yes! tell me about them! Society still believes in them?'
'Believes in them!' I cried indignantly. 'Surely it does. Why, the great political parties are responding to the cry of the downtrodden masses, and—'
'Oh,' he said dreamily, 'they are still responding?'
'What do you mean by still responding?' I demanded curtly.
'Why, I remember that in my time, too, the people always responded. The party leaders would say to them that they were in a bad way and needed help. The people would cry out in joy to think their leaders had discovered this. Then the leaders would wink at each other and jump upon the platforms and explain to the people that what was needed was a new law of some sort. The people would weep for happiness at such wisdom and would beg their leaders to get together and make the law. And the law that the leaders would make when they got together was one that would put the people still more in their power. So that is still going on?'
I recognized that he was ironical, but I answered with a sneer:
'The people get what they deserve, and what they wish. They have only to demand through the ballot box, you know.'
'Ah, yes,' he murmured with a grin, 'I had forgotten the ballot box. Dear me! how could I have forgotten the ballot box?'
Providentially the keeper came to notify me that my time was up, and I turned away.
'One thing more,' cried the prisoner; 'is it still the case that the American people enjoy their freedom best when they are enslaved in some way?'
'You are outrageous,' I exclaimed; 'the American people are not enslaved in any way. It is true they are restricted for their own good by those more capable of judging than they. That must always be the case.'
'I don't know about must,' he sighed, 'but I am sure it will always be the case as long as a man's idea of freedom is his ability to impose some slavish notion on his brother.'
'Good-bye,' I said, with a recurrence to my smirk of pharisaical pity, 'I am sorry to see you here.'
'Oh, don't be troubled on my account,' he answered; 'on the whole, I am satisfied.'
'Satisfied! Impossible!' I cried.
'Why impossible? Consider that I shall never again be compelled to associate with decent, honest folk. Oh, I have cause to be satisfied; I am here on a life sentence.'
THE OLD AND THE NEW DRAMA.
By Max Baginski.
THE inscription over the Drama in olden times used to be, 'Man, look into this mirror of life; your soul will be gripped in its innermost depths, anguish and dread will take possession of you in the face of this rage of human desire and passion. Go ye, atone and make good.'
Even Schiller entertained this view when he called the Stage a moral institution. It was also from this standpoint that the Drama was expected to show the terrible consequences of uncontrolled human passion, and that these consequences should teach man to overcome himself. 'To conquer oneself is man's greatest triumph.'
This ascetic tendency, incidentally part of chastisement and acquired resignation, one can trace in every investigation of the value and meaning of the Drama, though in different forms. The avenging Nemesis, always at the heels of the sinner, may be placated by means of rigid self-control and self-denial. This, too, was Schopenhauer's idea of the Drama. In it, his eye perceived with horror that human relation became disastrously interwoven; that guilt and atonement made light of the human race, which merely served as a target for the principles of good and evil. Guilt and atonement reign because the blind force of life will not resign itself, but, on the contrary, is ever ready to yield itself to the struggle of the passions. Mountains of guilt pile themselves on the top of each other, while purifying fires ever flame up into the heavens.
In the idea that Life in itself is a great guilt, Schopenhauer coincides with the teachings of Christ, though otherwise he has little regard for them. With Christ, he recognized in the chastisement of the body a purification of the mind; the inner man, who thus escapes from close physical intimacy, as if from bad company. The spiritual man appears before the physical as a saint and a Pharisee. In reality, he is the intellectual cause of the so-called bad deeds of the human body, its path indicator and teacher. But, once the mischief is accomplished, he puts on a pious air and denies all responsibility for the deed. Wherever the idea of guilt, the fear of sin prevails, the mind becomes traitor to the body: 'I know him not and will have nothing to do with him.' Whenever man entertains the belief in good and evil, he is bound to pretend the good and do the evil. And yet the understanding of all human occurrences begins, as with the Zarathustra philosopher, beyond good and evil.
The modern drama is, in its profoundest depths, an attempt to ignore good and evil in its analysis of human manifestations. It aims to get at a complete whole, out of each strong, healthy emotion, out of each absorbing mood that carries and urges one forward from the beginning to the end. It represents the World as it reflects itself in each passion, in each quivering life; not trying to confine and to judge, to condemn or to praise; not acting merely in the capacity of a cold observer; but striving to grow in oneness with Life; to become color, tone and light; to absorb universal sorrow as one's own; universal joy as one's own; to feel every emotion as it manifests itself in a natural way; to be one's self, yet oblivious of self.
The modern dramatist tries to understand and to explain. Goodness is no longer entitled to a reward, like a pupil who knows his lesson; nor is evil condemned to an eternal Hell. Both belong together in the sphere of all that is human. Often enough it is seen that evil triumphs over good, while virtue, ever highly praised in words, is rarely practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so fondly cherished by our grandfathers.
To-day we no longer look for the force of fate outside of human activity. It lives and weaves its own tragedies and comedies with us and within us. It has its roots in our social, political and economic surroundings, in our physical, mental and psychic capacities. (Did not the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac lie in his gigantic nose?) With others, fate lies in their vocation in life, in their mental and emotional tendencies, which either submerge[38] them into the hurry and rush of a commonplace existence, or bring them into the most annoying conflicts with the dicta of society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life. Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every step, he must inevitably become a Revolutionist. And, again, his life may become tragic in the struggle with our powerful institutions and traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity and admit his right to direct his own world.
The old conception of the drama paid little or no attention to the importance of the influences of social conditions. It was the individual alone who had to carry the weight of all responsibility. But is not the tragedy greater, the suffering of the individual increased, by influences he cannot control, the existing social and moral conditions? And is it not true that the very best and most beautiful in the human breast cannot and will not bow down to the commands of the commonplace and everyday conditions? Out of the anachronisms of society and its relation to the individual grow the strongest motives of the modern drama. Pure personal conflicts are no longer considered important enough to bring about a dramatic climax. A play must contain the beating of the waves, the deep breath of life; and its strong invigorating breeze can never fail in bringing about a dramatic effect upon our emotions. The new drama means reproduction of nature in all its phases, the social and psychological included. It embraces, analyzes and enriches all life. It goes hand in hand with the longing for materially and mentally harmonious institutions. It rehabilitates the human body, establishes it in its proper place and dignity, and brings about the long deferred reconciliation between the mind and the body.
Full of enthusiasm, with the pulse of time throbbing in his veins, the modern dramatist compiles mountains of material for the better understanding of Man, and the influences that mould and form him. He no longer presents capital acts, extraordinary events, or melodramatic expressions. It is life in all its complexity, that is being unfolded before us, and so we come closer to the source of the forces that destroy and build up again, the forces that make for individual character and direct the world at large. Life, as a whole, is being dealt with, and not mere particles. Formerly our eyes were dazzled by a display of costumes and scenery, while the heart remained unmoved. This no longer satisfies. One must feel the warmth of life, in order to respond, to be gripped.
The sphere of the drama has widened most marvellously in all directions, and only ends where human limitations begin. Together with this, a marked deepening of the inner world has taken place. Still there are those who have much to say about the vulgarity contained in the modern drama, and how its inaugurators and following present the ugly and untruthful. Untrue and ugly, indeed, for those who are buried under a mass of inherited views and prejudices. The growth of the scope of the drama has increased the number of the participants therein. Formerly it was assumed that the fate of the ordinary man, the man of the masses, was altogether too obscure, too indifferent to serve as material for anything tragic; since those who had never dwelt in the heights of material splendor could not go down to the darkest and lowest abyss. Because of that assumption, the low and humble never gained access to the center of the stage; they were only utilized to represent mobs. Those that were of importance were persons of high position and standing, persons who represented wealth and power with superiority and dignity, yet with shallow and superficial airs. The ensemble was but a mechanism and not an organism; and each participant was stiff and lifeless; each movement was forced and strained. The old fate[40] and hero drama did not spring from within Man and the things about him; it was merely manufactured. Most remarkable incidents, unheard of situations had to be invented, if only to produce, externally, an appearance of coinciding cause and effect; and not a single plot could be without secret doors and vaults, terrible oaths and perjury. If Ibsen, Gorky, Hauptmann, Gabrielle D'Annunzio and others had brought us nothing else but liberation from such grotesque ballast, from such impossibilities as destroy every illusion as to the life import of a play, they would still be entitled to our gratitude and the gratitude of posterity. But they have done more. Out of the confusion of trap doors, secret passages, folding screens, they have led us into the light of day, of undisguised events, with their simple distinct outlines. In this light, the man of the heap gains in life force, importance and depth. The stage no longer offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero, on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the 'Man of Destiny,' by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he presents the legend-hero, Napoleon, as a petty intriguer, with all the inner fear and uneasiness of a plotter. In these days of concerted energy, of the co-operation of numerous hands and brains; in the days when the most far-reaching effect can only be accomplished through the summons of a manifold physical and mental endeavor, the existence of these loud heroes is circumscribed within rather limited lines.
Previous generations could never have grasped the deep tragedy in that famous painting of Millet that inspired Edwin Markham to write his 'Man with the Hoe.' Our generation, however, is thrilled by it. And is there not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, pass them by.
The new drama has unveiled this kind of tragedy. It has done away with the lie that sought to produce a violent dramatic effect through a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand Tolstoy's 'Power of Darkness,' wherein but those of the lowest strata appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed. That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the social misery of dull necessity, produces greater soul sensations in the spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's 'Hannele' and fail to be stirred by the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the 'Wizard of Oz.' And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in Zola's 'Germinal' as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of our age even as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's warriors were to his contemporaries?
The world stage ever represents a change of participants. The one who played the part of leading man in one century, may become a clown in another. Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to appear. Once anything lies buried under the bulk of social changes, it can affect coming generations only so far as the excavated skeleton affects the geologist. This must be borne in mind by sincere stage art, if it is not to remain in the stifling atmosphere of tradition, if it does not wish to degrade a noble method, that helps to recognize and disclose all that is rich and deep in the human into a commonplace, hypocritical and stupid method. If the artist's creation is to have any effect, it must contain elements of real life, and must turn its gaze toward the dawn of the morn of a more beautiful and joyous world, with a new and healthy generation, that feels deeply its relationship with all human beings over the universe.
In a report of the Russian government, it is stated that the conduct of the soldiers in the struggles of the streets was such, that in no instance did they transgress the limit which is prescribed to them in their oath as soldiers. This is true. The soldier's oath prescribes murder and cruelty as their patriotic duty.
If government, were it even an ideal Revolutionary government, creates no new force and is of no use whatever in the work of demolition which we have to accomplish, still less can we count on it for the work of reorganization which must follow that of demolition. The economic change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based to-day on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.
Kropotkine.
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.—POLICE PROTECTION.
CHICAGO'S pride are the stockyards, the Standard Oil University, and Miss Jane Addams. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that the sensibility of such a city would suffer as soon as it became known that an obscure person, by the common name of E. G. Smith, was none other than the awful Emma Goldman, and that she had not even presented herself to Mayor Dunne, the platonic lover of Municipal Ownership. However, not much harm came of it.
The Chicago newspapers, who cherish the truth like a costly jewel, made the discovery that the shrewd Miss Smith compromised a number of Chicago's aristocracy and excellencies, among others also Baron von Schlippenbach, consul of the Russian Empire. We consider it our duty to defend this gentleman against such an awful accusation. Miss Smith never visited the house of the Baron, nor did she attend any of his banquets. We know her well and feel confident that she never would put her foot on the threshold of a representative of a government that crushes every free breath, every free word; that sends her very best and noblest sons and daughters to prison or the gallows; that has the children of the soil, the peasants, publicly flogged; and that is responsible for the barbarous slaughter of thousands of Jews.
Miss Jane Addams, too, is quite safe from Miss Smith. True, she invited her to be present at a reception, but, knowing the weak knees of the soup kitchen philanthropy from past experience, Miss Smith called her up on the 'phone and told her that E. G. S. was the dreaded Emma Goldman. It must have been quite a shock to the lady; after all, one cannot afford to hurt the sensibilities of society, so long as one has political and public aspirations. Miss E. G. Smith, being a strong believer in the prevention of cruelty, preferred to leave the purity of the Hull House untouched. After her return to New York, E. G. Smith sent Smith about its business, and started on a lecture tour in her own right, as Emma Goldman.
Cleveland. Dear old friends and co-workers: The work you accomplished was splendid, also the comradely spirit of the young. But why spoil it by bad example of applying for protection from the city authorities? It does not behoove us, who neither believe in their right to prohibit free assembly, nor to permit it, to appeal to them. If the authorities choose to do either, they merely prove their autocracy. Those who love freedom must understand that it is even more distasteful to speak under police protection than it is to suffer under their persecution. However, the meetings were very encouraging and the feeling of solidarity sweet and refreshing.
Buffalo. The shadow of September 6 still haunts the police of that city. Their only vision of an Anarchist is one who is forever lying in wait for human life, which is, of course, very stupid; but stupidity and authority always join forces. Capt. Ward, who, with a squad of police, came to save the innocent citizens of Buffalo, asked if we knew the law, and was quite surprised that that was not our trade; that we had not been employed to disentangle the chaos of the law,—that it was his affair to know the law. However, the Captain showed himself absolutely ignorant of the provisions of the American Constitution. Of course, his superiors knew what they were about when they set the Constitution aside, as old and antiquated, and, instead, enacted a law which gives the average officer a right to invade the head and heart of a man, as to what he thinks and feels. Capt. Ward added an amendment to the anti-Anarchist law. He declared any other language than English a felony, and, since Max Baginski could only avail himself of the German language, he was not permitted to speak. How is that for our law-abiding citizens? A man is brutally prevented from speaking, because he does not know the refined English language of the police force.
Emma Goldman delivered her address in English. It is not likely that Capt. Ward understood enough of that language. However, the audience did, and if the police of this country were not so barefaced, the saviour of Buffalo would have wished himself anywhere rather than to stand exposed as a clown before a large gathering of men and women.
The meeting the following evening was forcibly dispersed before the speakers had arrived. Ignorance is always brutal when it is backed by power.
Toronto. King Edward Hotel, Queen Victoria Manicuring Parlor. It was only when we read these signs that we realized that we were on the soil of the British Empire.
However, the monarchical authorities of Canada were more hospitable and much freer than those of our free Republic. Not a sign of an officer at any of the meetings.
The city? A gray sky, rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German university town. 'Dogs on the street,' Heine writes, 'implore strangers to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony and dulness.'
Rochester. The neighborly influence of the Buffalo police seems to have had a bad effect upon the mental development of the Rochester authorities. The hall was packed with officers at both meetings. The government of Rochester, however, was not saved—the police kept themselves in good order. Some of them seem to have benefited by the lectures. That accounts for the familiarity of one of Rochester's 'finest,' who wanted to shake Emma Goldman's hand. E. G. had to decline. Baron von Schlippenbach or an American representative of law and disorder,—where is the difference?
Syracuse. The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke.
What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity.
Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting, attended largely by 'genuine' Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps, was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded, would turn to his hearers and ask, 'Gentlemen, have I committed some folly?'
Au revoir.
E. G. and M. B.
THE MORAL DEMAND.
A Comedy, in One Act, by Otto Erich Hartleben.
Translated from the German for 'Mother Earth.'
CAST.
Rita Revera, concert singer.
Friedrich Stierwald, owner of firm of 'C. W. Stierwald Sons' in Rudolstadt.
Bertha, Rita's maid.
Time.—End of the nineteenth century.
Place.—A large German fashionable bathing resort.
Scene.—Rita's boudoir. Small room elegantly furnished in Louis XVI. style. In the background, a broad open door, with draperies, which leads into an antechamber. To the right, a piano, in front of which stands a large, comfortable stool.
Rita (enters the antechamber attired in an elaborate ball toilette. She wears a gray silk cloak, a lace fichu, and a parasol. Gaily tripping toward the front, she sings): 'Les envoyées du paradis sont les mascottes, mes amis....' (She lays the parasol on the table and takes off her long white gloves, all the while singing the melody. She interrupts herself and calls aloud) Bertha! Bertha! (Sings) O Bertholina, O Bertholina!
Bertha (walks through the middle): My lady, your pleasure?
(Rita has taken off her cloak and stands in front of the mirror. She is still humming the melody absentmindedly).
(Bertha takes off Rita's wraps.)
Rita (turns around merrily): Tell me, Bertha, why does not the electric bell ring? I must always sing first, must always squander all my flute notes first ere I can entice you to come. What do you suppose that costs? With that I can immediately arrange another charity matinée. Terrible thing, isn't it?
Bertha: Yes. The man has not yet repaired it.
Rita: O, Bertholina, why has the man not yet repaired it?
Bertha: Yes. The man intended to come early in the morning.
Rita: The man has often wanted to do so. He does not seem to possess a strong character. (She points to her cloak) Dust it well before placing it in the wardrobe. The dust is simply terrible in this place ... and this they call a fresh-air resort. Has anybody called?
Bertha: Yes, my lady, the Count. He has——
Rita: Well, yes; I mean anyone else?
Bertha: No. No one.
Rita: Hm! Let me have my dressing gown.
(Bertha goes to the sleeping chamber to the left.)
Rita (steps in front of the mirror, singing softly): 'Les envoyées du paradis....' (Suddenly raising her voice, she asks Bertha) How long did he wait?
Bertha: What?
Rita: I would like to know how long he waited.
Bertha: An hour.
Rita (to herself): He does not love me any more. (Loudly) But during that time he might have at least repaired the bell. He is of no use whatever. (She laughs.)
Bertha: The Count came directly from the matinée and asked me where your ladyship had gone to dine. Naturally I did not know.
Rita: Did he ask—anything else?
Bertha: No, he looked at the photographs.
Rita (in the door): Well? And does he expect to come again to-day?
Bertha: Yes, certainly. At four o'clock.
Rita (looks at the clock): Oh, but that's boring. Now it is already half-past three. One cannot even drink coffee in peace. Hurry, Bertha, prepare the coffee.
(Bertha leaves the room, carrying the articles of attire.)
(Rita, after a pause, singing a melancholy melody.)
(Friedrich Stierwald, a man very carefully dressed in black, about thirty years of age, with a black crêpe around his stiff hat, enters from the rear into the antechamber, followed by Bertha.)
Bertha: But the lady is not well.
Friedrich: Please tell the lady that I am passing through here, and that I must speak with her about a[48] very pressing matter. It is absolutely necessary. Please! (He gives her money and his card.)
Bertha: Yes, I shall take your card, but I fear she will not receive you.
Friedrich: Why not? O, yes! Just go——
Bertha: This morning she sang at a charity matinée and so——
Friedrich: I know, I know. Listen! (Rita's singing has grown louder) Don't you hear how she sings? Oh, do go!
Bertha (shaking her head): Well, then—wait a moment. (She passes through the room to the half-opened door of the sleeping apartment, knocks) Dear lady!
Rita (from within): Well? What's the matter?
Bertha (at the door): Oh, this gentleman here—he wishes to see you very much. He is passing through here.
Rita (within; laughs): Come in.
(Bertha disappears.)
(Friedrich has walked up to the middle door, where he remains standing.)
Rita: Well. Who is it? Friedrich—— Hmm—— I shall come immediately.
Bertha (comes out and looks at Friedrich in surprise): My lady wishes you to await her. (She walks away, after having taken another glance at Friedrich.)
(Friedrich looks about embarrassed and shyly.)
(Rita enters attired in a tasteful dressing gown, but remains standing in the door.)
Friedrich (bows; softly): Good day.
(Rita looks at him with an ironical smile and remains silent.)
Friedrich: You remember me? Don't you?
Rita (quietly): Strange. You—come to see me? What has become of your good training? (Laughs.) Have you lost all sense of shame?
Friedrich (stretches out his hand, as if imploring): Oh, I beg of you, I beg of you; not this tone! I really came to explain everything to you, everything. And possibly to set things aright.
Rita: You—with me! (She shakes her head.) Incredible! But, please, since you are here, sit down. With what can you serve me?
Friedrich (seriously): Miss Hattenbach, I really should——
Rita (lightly): Pardon me, my name is Revera. Rita Revera.
Friedrich: I know that you call yourself by that name now. But you won't expect me, an old friend of your family, to make use of this romantic, theatrical name. For me you are now, as heretofore, the daughter of the esteemed house of Hattenbach, with which I——
Rita (quickly and sharply): With which your father transacts business, I know.
Friedrich (with emphasis): With which I now am myself associated.
Rita: Is it possible? And your father?
Friedrich (seriously): If I had the slightest inkling of your address, yes, even your present name, I should not have missed to announce to you the sudden death of my father.
Rita (after pause): Oh, he is dead. I see you still wear mourning. How long ago is it?
Friedrich: Half a year. Since then I am looking for you, and I hope you will not forbid me to address you now, as of yore, with that name, which is so highly esteemed in our native city.
Rita (smiling friendly): Your solemnity—is delightful. Golden! But sit down.
Friedrich (remains standing; he is hurt): I must confess, Miss Hattenbach, that I was not prepared for such a reception from you. I hoped that I might expect, after these four or five years, that you would receive me differently than with this—with this—how shall I say?
Rita: Toleration.
Friedrich: No, with this arrogance.
Rita: How?
Friedrich (controlling himself): I beg your pardon. I am sorry to have said that.
Rita (after a pause, hostile): You wish to be taken seriously? (She sits down, with a gesture of the hand) Please, what have you to say to me?
Friedrich: Much. Oh, very much. (He also sits down.) But—you are not well to-day?
Rita: Not well? What makes you say so?
Friedrich: Yes, the maid told me so.
Rita: The maid—she is a useful person. That makes me think. You certainly expect to stay here some time, do you not?
Friedrich: With your permission. I have much to tell you.
Rita: I thought so. (Calling loudly) Bertha! Bertha! Do you suppose one could get an electric bell repaired here? Impossible.
Bertha (enters): My lady?
Rita: Bertha, when the Count comes—now I am really sick.
Bertha (nods): Very well. (She leaves.)
Rita (calls after her): And where is the coffee? I shall famish.
Bertha (outside): Immediately.
Friedrich: The—the Count—did you say?
Rita: Yes, quite a fine fellow otherwise, but—would not fit in now. I wanted to say: I am passionately fond of electric bells. You know they have a fabulous charm for me. One only needs to touch them softly, ever so softly, with the small finger, and still cause a terrible noise. Fine—is it not? You wanted to talk about serious matters. It seems so to me.
Friedrich: Yes. And I beg of you, Miss Erna——
Rita: Erna?
Friedrich: Erna!
Rita: Oh, well!
Friedrich (continuing): I beg of you; be really and truly serious. Yes? Listen to what I have to say to you. Be assured that it comes from an honest, warm heart. During the years in which I have not seen you, I have grown to be a serious man—perhaps, too serious for my age—but my feelings for you have remained young, quite young. Do you hear me, Erna?
Rita (leaning back in the rocking chair, with a sigh): I hear.
Friedrich: And you know, Erna, how I have always loved you from my earliest youth, yes, even sooner than I myself suspected. You know that, yes?
(Rita is silent and does not look at him.)
Friedrich: When I was still a foolish schoolboy I already called you my betrothed, and I could not but think otherwise than that I would some day call you my wife. You certainly know that, don't you?
Rita (reserved): Yes, I know it.
Friedrich: Well, then you ought to be able to understand what dreadful feelings overcame me when I discovered, sooner than you or the world, the affection of my father for you. That was—no, you cannot grasp it.
Rita (looks at him searchingly): Sooner than I and all the world?
Friedrich: Oh, a great deal sooner ... that was.... That time was the beginning of the hardest innermost struggles for me. What was I to do? (He sighs deeply.) Ah, Miss Erna, we people are really——
Rita: Yes, yes.
Friedrich: We are dreadfully shallow-minded. How seldom one of us can really live as he would like to. Must we not always and forever consider others—and our surroundings?
Rita: Must?
Friedrich: Well, yes, we do so, at least. And when it is our own father! For, look here, Erna, I never would have been able to oppose my father! I was used, as you well know, from childhood to always look up to my father with the greatest respect. He used to be severe, my father, proud and inaccessible, but—if I may be permitted to say so, he was an excellent man.
Rita: Well?
Friedrich (eagerly): Yes, indeed! You must remember that it was he alone who established our business by means of his powerful energy and untiring diligence. Only now I myself have undertaken the management of the establishment. I am able to see what an immense work he has accomplished.
Rita (simply): Yes, he was an able business man.
Friedrich: In every respect! Ability personified, and he had grown to be fifty-two years of age and was still, still—how shall I say?
Rita: Still able.
Friedrich: Well, yes; I mean a vigorous man in his best years. For fifteen years he had been a widower,[52] he had worked, worked unceasingly, and then—the house was well established—he could think of placing some of the work upon younger shoulders. He could think of enjoying his life once more.
Rita (softly): That is——
Friedrich (continuing): And he thought he had found, in you, the one who would bring back to him youth and the joy of life.
Rita (irritated): Yes, but then you ought to—(Breaks off.) Oh, it is not worth while.
Friedrich: How? I should have been man enough to say: No, I forbid it; that is a folly of age. I, your son, forbid it. I demand her for myself. The young fortune is meant for me—not for you?——No, Erna, I could not do that. I could not do that.
Rita: No.
Friedrich: I, the young clerk, with no future before me!
Rita: No!
Friedrich: My entire training and my conceptions urged me to consider it my duty to simply stand aside and stifle my affection, as I did—as I already told you even before any other person had an idea of the intentions of my father. I gradually grew away from you.
Rita (amused): Gradually—yes, I recollect. You suddenly became formal. Indeed, very nice!
Friedrich: I thought——
(Bertha comes with the coffee and serves.)
Rita: Will you take a cup with me?
Friedrich (thoughtlessly): I thought——(Correcting himself) pardon me! I thank you!
Rita: I hope it will not disturb you if I drink my coffee while you continue.
Friedrich: Please (embarrassed). I thought it a proper thing. I hoped that my cold and distant attitude would check a possible existing affection for me.
Rita: Possible existing affection! Fie! Now you are beginning to lie! (She jumps up and walks nervously through the room.) As though you had not positively known that! (Stepping in front of him) Or what did you take me for when I kissed you?
Friedrich (very much frightened, also rises): O, Erna, I always——
Rita (laughs): You are delightful! Delightful! Still the same bashful boy—who does not dare—(she laughs and sits down again.) Delightful.
Friedrich (after a silence, hesitatingly): Well, are you going to allow me to call you Erna again, as of yore?
Rita: As of yore. (She sighs, then gaily) If you care to.
Friedrich (happy): Yes? May I?
Rita (heartily): O, yes, Fritz. That's better, isn't it? It sounds more natural, eh?
Friedrich (presses her hand and sighs): Yes, really. You take a heavy load from me. Everything that I want to say to you can be done so much better in the familiar tone.
Rita: Oh! Have you still so much to say to me?
Friedrich: Well—but now tell me first: how was it possible for you to undertake such a step. What prompted you to leave so suddenly? Erna, Erna, how could you do that?
Rita (proudly): How I could? Can you ask me that? Do you really not know it?
Friedrich (softly): Oh, yes; I do know it, but—it takes so much to do that.
Rita: Not more than was in me.
Friedrich: One thing I must confess to you, although it was really bad of me. But I knew no way out of it. I felt relieved after you had gone.
Rita: Well, then, that was your heroism.
Friedrich: Do not misunderstand me. I knew my father had——
Rita: Yes, yes—but do not talk about it any more.
Friedrich: You are right. It was boyish of me. It did not last long, and then I mourned for you—not less than your parents. Oh, Erna! If you would see your parents now. They have aged terribly. Your father has lost his humor altogether, and is giving full vent to his old passion for red wine. Your mother is always ailing, hardly ever leaves the house, and both, even though they never lose a word about it, cannot reconcile themselves to the thought that their only child left them.
Rita (after a pause, awakens from her meditation, harshly): Perhaps you were sent by my father?
Friedrich: No—why?
Rita: Then I would show you the door.
Friedrich: Erna!
Rita: A man, who ventured to pay his debts with me——
Friedrich: How so; what do you mean?
Rita: Oh—let's drop that. Times were bad. But to-day the house of Hattenbach enjoys its good old standing, as you say, and has overcome the crisis. Then your father must have had some consideration—without me. Well, then.——And Rudolstadt still stands—on the old spot. That's the main thing. But now let us talk about something else, I beg of you.
Friedrich: No, no, Erna. What you allude to, that——do you really believe my father had——
Rita: Your father had grown used to buy and attain everything in life through money. Why not buy me also? And he had already received the promise—not from me, but from my father. But I am free! I ran away and am my own mistress! (With haughtiness.) A young girl, all alone! Down with the gang!
(Friedrich is silent and holds his head.)
Rita (steps up to him and touches his shoulder, in a friendly manner): Don't be sad. At that time your father was the stronger, and——Life is not otherwise. After all, one must assert oneself.
Friedrich: But he robbed you of your happiness.
Rita (jovially): Who knows? It is just as well.
Friedrich (surprised): Is that possible? Do you call that happiness, this being alone?
Rita: Yes. That is MY happiness—my freedom, and I love it with jealousy, for I fought for it myself.
Friedrich (bitterly): A great happiness! Outside of family ties, outside the ranks of respectable society.
Rita (laughs aloud, but without bitterness): Respectable society! Yes. I fled from that—thank Heaven. (harshly) But if you do not come in the name of my father, what do you want here? Why do you come? For what purpose? What do you want of me?
Friedrich: Erna, you ask that in a strange manner.
Rita: Well, yes. I have a suspicion that you—begrudge me my liberty. How did you find me, anyway?
Friedrich: Yes, that was hard enough.
Rita: Rita Revera is not so unknown.
Friedrich: Rita Revera! Oh, no! How often I have read that name these last years—in the newspapers in Berlin, on various placards, in large letters. But how could I ever have thought that you were meant by it?
Rita (laughs): Why did you not go to the 'Winter Garden' when you were in Berlin?
Friedrich: I never frequent such places.
Rita: Pardon me! Oh, I always forget the old customs.
Friedrich: Oh, please, please, dear Erna; not in this tone of voice!
Rita: Which tone?
Friedrich: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to the world in which I live—that we could hardly understand each other.
Rita: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal—how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need—but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it?
Friedrich (looks at her calmly): Well, is there anything wrong about it?
Rita: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me?
Friedrich: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear, silvery, childlike laughter. Right[56] in the midst of my petty scruples it resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do you still remember that time, Erna?
(Rita is silent.)
Bertha (enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses): My lady—from the Count.
Rita (jumps up, nervously excited): Roses! My dark roses! Give them to me! Ah! (She holds them toward Friedrich and asks) Did he say anything?
Bertha: No, said nothing, but——
Friedrich (shoves the bouquet, which she holds up closely to his face, aside): I thank you.
Rita (without noticing him, to Bertha): Well?
Bertha (pointing to the bouquet): The Count has written something on a card.
Rita: His card? Where? (She searches among the flowers) Oh, here! (She reads; then softly to Bertha) It is all right.
(Bertha leaves.)
Rita (reads again): 'Pour prendre congé.' (With an easy sigh) Yes, yes.
Friedrich: What is the matter?
Rita: Sad! His education was hardly half finished and he already forsakes me.
Friedrich: What do you mean? I do not understand you at all.
Rita (her mind is occupied): Too bad. Now he'll grow entirely stupid.
Friedrich (rises importantly): Erna, answer me. What relationship existed between you and the Count?
Rita (laughs): What business is that of yours?
Friedrich (solemnly): Erna! Whatever it might have been, this will not do any longer.
Rita (gaily): No, no; you see it is already ended.
Friedrich: No, Erna, that must all be ended. You must get out of all this—entirely—and forever.
Rita (looks at him surprised and inquiringly): Hm! Strange person.
Friedrich (grows more eager and walks up and down in the room): Such a life is immoral. You must recognize it. Yes, and I forbid you to live on in this fashion. I have the right to demand it of you.
Rita (interrupts him sharply): Demand? You demand something of me?
Friedrich: Yes, indeed, demand! Not for me—no—in the name of morals. That which I ask of you is simply a moral demand, do you understand, a moral demand, which must be expected of every woman.
Rita: 'Must!' And why?
Friedrich: Because—because—because—well, dear me—because—otherwise everything will stop!
Rita: What will stop? Life?
Friedrich: No, but morals.
Rita: Ah, I thank you. Now I understand you. One must be moral because—otherwise morality will stop.
Friedrich: Why, yes. That is very simple.
Rita: Yes—now, please, what would I have to do in order to fulfill your demand? I am curious like a child now, and shall listen obediently. (She sits down again.)
Friedrich (also sits down and grasps her hand, warmly): Well, see, my dear Erna, everything can still be undone. In Rudolstadt everybody believes you are in England with relatives. Even if you have never been there——
Rita: Often enough. My best engagements.
Friedrich: So much the better. Then you certainly speak English?
Rita: Of course.
Friedrich: And you are acquainted with English customs. Excellent. Oh, Erna. Your father will be pleased, he once confessed to me, when he had a little too much wine. You know him: he grows sentimental then.
Rita (to herself): They are all that way.
Friedrich: How?
Rita: Oh, nothing. Please continue. Well—I could come back?
Friedrich: Certainly! Fortunately, during these last years, since you have grown so famous, nobody has——
Rita: I have grown notorious only within a year.
Friedrich: Well, most likely nobody in Rudolstadt has ever seen you on the boards. In one word, you must return.
Rita: From England?
Friedrich: Yes, nothing lies in the way. And your mother will be overjoyed.
Rita: Nay, nay.
Friedrich: How well that you have taken a different name.
Rita: Ah, that is it. Yes, I believe that. Then they know that I am Rita Revera.
Friedrich: I wrote them. They will receive you with open arms. Erna! I beg of you! I entreat you; come with me! It is still time. To-day. You cannot know, but anybody from Rudolstadt who knows might come to the theatre and——
Rita (decidedly): No one from Rudolstadt will do that. They are too well trained for that. You see it by your own person. But go on! If I would care to, if I really would return—what then?
Friedrich: Then? Well, then, you would be in the midst of the family and society again—and then——
Rita: And then?
Friedrich: Then, after some time has elapsed and you feel at home and when all is forgotten, as though nothing had ever happened——
Rita: But a great deal has happened.
Friedrich: Erna, you must not take me for such a Philistine that I would mind that. At heart I am unprejudiced. No, really, I know (softly) my own fault, and I know Life. I know very well, and I cannot ask it of you, that you, in a career like yours, you——
Rita: Hm?
Friedrich: Well, that you should have remained entirely faultless. And I do not ask it of you either.
Rita: You do well at that.
Friedrich: I mean, whatever has happened within these four years—lies beyond us, does not concern me—but shall not concern you any longer either. Rita Revera has ceased to be—Erna Hattenbach returns to her family.
Rita: Lovely, very lovely. Hm!—but then, what then? Shall I start a cooking school?
Friedrich (with a gentle reproach): But, Erna! Don't you understand me? Could you think of anything else than—— Of course, I shall marry you then.
(Rita looks at him puzzled.)
Friedrich: But that is self-evident. Why should I have looked you up otherwise? Why should I be here? But, dear Erna, don't look so stunned.
Rita (still stares at him): 'Simply—marry.' Strange. (She turns around towards the open piano, plays and sings softly) Farilon, farila, farilette.
Friedrich (has risen): Erna! Do not torment me!
Rita: Torment? No. That would not be right. You are a good fellow. Give me a kiss. (She rises.)
Friedrich (embraces and kisses her): My Erna! Oh, you have grown so much prettier! So much prettier!
(Rita leans her head on his shoulder.)
Friedrich: But now come. Let us not lose one moment.
(Rita does not move.)
Friedrich: If possible let everything be.... Come! (He pushes her with gentle force) You cry?
Rita (hastily wipes the tears from her eyes, controls herself): O, nonsense. Rita Revera does not cry—she laughs. (Laughs forcedly.)
Friedrich: Erna, do not use that name. I do not care to hear it again!
Rita: Oh—you do not want to hear it any more. You would like to command me. You come here and assume that that which life and hard times have made of me you can wipe out in a half hour! No! You do not know life and know nothing of me. (Harshly) My name is Revera, and I shall not marry a merchant from Rudolstadt.
Friedrich: How is that? You still hesitate?
Rita: Do I look as though I hesitated? (She steps up closer to him.) Do you know, Fred, that during the years after my escape I often went hungry, brutally hungry? Do you know that I ran about in the most frightful dives, with rattling plate, collecting pennies and insults? Do you know what it means to humiliate oneself for dry bread? You see; that has been my school. Do you understand that I had to become an entirely different person or go to ruin? One who owes everything to himself, who is proud of himself, but who no longer respects anything, above all, no conventional measures and weights? And do you understand, Fred, that it would be base on my part were I to follow you to the Philistine?
Friedrich (after a pause, sadly): No, I do not understand that.
Rita (again gaily): I thought so. Shall I dread there every suspicion and tremble before every fool, whereas I can breathe free air, enjoy sunshine and the best conscience. You know that pretty part in the Walküre? (She sings):
'Greet Rudolstadt for me,
Greet my father and mother
And all the heroes....
I shall not follow you to them!'
Now you know. (She sits down at the piano again.)
Friedrich (after silence): Even if you have lived through hard times, that still does not give you the right to disregard the duties of morals and customs.
Rita (plays and sings): 'Farilon, farila, farilette—'
Friedrich: I cannot understand how you can refuse me, when I offer you the opportunity of returning to ordered circumstances.
Rita: I do not love the 'ordered' circumstances. On the contrary, I must have something to train.
Friedrich: And I? I shall never be anything to you any more? You thrust me also aside in your stubbornness.
Rita: But not at all. Why?
Friedrich: How so? Did you not state just now that you would never marry a merchant from Rudolstadt.
Rita: Certainly——
Friedrich: Do you see? You cannot be so cold and heartless towards me? (Flattering) Why did you kiss me before? I know you also yearn in your innermost heart for those times in which we secretly saw and found each other. You also, and, even if you deny it, I felt it before when you cried. (Softly) Erna! Come along, come along with me! Come! Become my dear wife!
Rita (looks at him quietly): No, I shall not do such a thing.
Friedrich (starts nervously; after a pause): Erna! Is that your last word?
Rita: Yes.
Friedrich: Consider well what you say!
Rita: I know what I am about.
Friedrich: Erna! You want—to remain what you are?
Rita: Yes. That's just what I want.
Friedrich (remains for some time struggling, then grasps his hat): Then—adieu! (He hurries toward the left into the bedroom.)
Rita (calls smiling): Halt! Not there.
Friedrich (returns, confused): Pardon me, I——
Rita: Poor Fred, did you stray into my bedroom? There is the door. (Long pause. Several times he tries to speak. She laughs gently. Then she sings and plays the song from 'Mamselle Nitouche'):
A minuit, après la fête,
Rev'naient Babet et Cadet;
Cristi! la nuit est complète,
Faut nous dépêcher, Babet.
Tâche d'en profiter, grosse bête!
Farilon, farila, farilette.
J'ai trop peur, disait Cadet—
J'ai pas peur, disait Babet—
Larirette, larire,
Larirette, larire.— — —
(Friedrich at first listens against his will, even makes a step toward the door. By and by he becomes fascinated and finally is charmed. When she finishes, he puts his stiff hat on the table and walks toward her with a blissful smile.)
Rita: Now? You even smile? Did I impress you?
Friedrich (drops down on his knees in front of her): Oh, Erna, you are the most charming woman on earth. (He kisses her hands wildly.)
Rita (stoops down to him, softly and merrily): Why run away? Why? If you still love me, can you run off—you mule?
Friedrich: Oh, I'll remain—I remain with you.
Rita: It was well that you missed the door.
Friedrich: Oh, Erna——
Rita: But now you'll call me Rita—do you understand? Well? Are you going to—are you going to be good?
Friedrich: Rita! Rita! Everything you wish.
Rita: Everything I wish. (She kisses him.) And now tell me about your moral demand. Yes? You are delightful when you talk about it. So delightful.
Benj. R. Tucker
Publisher and Bookseller
has opened a Book Store at
225 Fourth Ave., Room 13, New York CityHere will be carried, ultimately, the most complete line of advanced literature to be found anywhere in the world. More than one thousand titles in the English language already in stock. A still larger stock, in foreign languages, will be put in gradually. A full catalogue will be ready soon of the greatest interest to all those in search of the literature.
Which, in morals, leads away from superstition,Which, in politics, leads away from government, andWhich, in art, leads away from Tradition.
'LIBERTY'
BENJ. R. TUCKER, Editor
An Anarchistic journal, expounding the doctrine that in Equal Liberty is to be found the most satisfactory solution of social questions, and that majority rule, or democracy, equally with monarchical rule, is a denial of Equal Liberty.
APPRECIATIONS
G. BERNARD SHAW, author of 'Man and Superman': ''Liberty' is a lively paper, in which the usual proportions of a half-pennyworth of discussion to an intolerable deal of balderdash are reversed.'
WILLIAM DOUGLAS O'CONNOR, author of 'The Good Gray Poet': 'The editor of 'Liberty' would be the Gavroche of the Revolution, If he were not its Enjolras.'
FRANK STEPHENS, well-known Single-Tax champion, Philadelphia: ''Liberty' is a paper which reforms reformers.'
BOLTON HALL, author of 'Even As You and I': ''Liberty' shows us the profit of Anarchy, and is the prophet of Anarchy.'
ALLEN KELLY, formerly chief editorial writer on the Philadelphia 'North American': ''Liberty' is my philosophical Polaris. I ascertain the variations of my economic compass by taking a sight at her whenever she is visible.'
SAMUEL W. COOPER, counsellor at law, Philadelphia: ''Liberty' is a journal that Thomas Jefferson would have loved.'
EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN, Judge of the Illinois Circuit Court: 'I have seen much in 'Liberty' that I agreed with, and much that I disagreed with, but I never saw any cant, hypocrisy, or insincerity in it, which makes it an almost unique publication.'
Published Bimonthly. Twelve Issues, $1.00Single Copies, 10 Cents
Address: R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, New York City
M. N. MAISEL'S
. . BOOK STORE . .
194 E. Broadway, New York
SPECIAL SALEHerbert Spencer. The Authorized Copyright Works. (Appleton's edition.) First Principles, 1 vol.; Principles of Biology, 2 vols.; Principles of Psychology, 2 vols.; Principles of Sociology, 3 vols.; Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. 8vo. 10 vols., cloth, new Published at $20.00. My Price $9.50
Charles Darwin. The Authorized Copyright Works. Descent of Man, 1 vol.; Origin of Species, 2 vols.; Emotional Expressions, 1 vol.; Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols.; Insectivorous Plants, 1 vol.; Vegetable Mould, 1 vol.; Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. 10 vols., cloth, new Published at $25.00. My Price, $9.00
I have only a few series of these sets and will not be able to supply at these prices after stock is gone.
More than 15,000 volumes always on hand.
Fine Sets; Reference Works; General Literature; Scientific, Philosophical, Liberal, Progressive and Reform Books.
Most of the Books in stock, new or second-hand, are sold at from 25 to 75 per cent discount from Publishers price.
Weekly Importations fromGermany, Russia, France and England.
MEETINGS
Progressive Library 706 Forsyth Street. Meeting every Sunday evening.
Hugh O. Pentecost lectures every Sunday, 11 A. M., at Lyric Hall, Sixth avenue (near Forty-second Street.)
Brooklyn Philosophical Association. Meets every Sunday, 3 P. M., at Long Island Business College, 143 So. 8th street.
Sunrise Club. Meets every other Monday for dinner and after discussion at some place designated by the President.
Manhattan Liberal Club. Meets every Friday, 8 P. M., at German Masonic Hall, 220 East Fifteenth street.
Harlem Liberal Alliance. Every Friday, 8 P. M., in Madison Hall, 1666 Madison avenue.
Liberal Art Society. Meets every Friday, 8.30 P. M., at Terrace Lyceum, 206 East Broadway.
'Mother Earth'
For Sale at all the above mentioned places
10 Cents a Copy . . One Dollar a Year
THE BOOKS OF ERNEST CROSBYGarrison the Non-Resistant. 16mo, cloth, 144 pages, with photogravure portrait, 50c.; by mail . . 55c.
Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable. A collection of chants in the cause of justice and brotherhood. 12mo, cloth, 188 pages, $1.50; by mail, $1.62. Paper, 40c.; by mail . . 44c.
Captain Jinks, Hero. A keen satire on our recent wars, in which the parallel between savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. Profusely illustrated by Dan Beard. 12mo, cloth, 400 pages, postpaid . . $1.50
Swords and Plowshares. A collection of poems filled with the hatred of war and the love of nature. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 12mo, cloth, 126 pages, $1.20; by mail . . $1.29
Tolstoy and His Message. 'A concise and sympathetic account of the life, character and philosophy of the great Russian.'—New York Press. 'A genuinely illuminative interpretation of the great philosopher's being and purpose.'—Philadelphia Item. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 16mo, cloth, 93 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster. An essay on education and punishment with Tolstoy's curious experiments in teaching as a text. 16mo, cloth, 94 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 53c.
Broad-Cast. New chants and songs of labor, life and freedom. This latest volume of poems by the author of 'Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable' and 'Swords and Plowshares' conveys the same message delivered with equal power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet. An illuminative essay, with selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid . . 20c.
THE BOOKS OF BOLTON HALL
Free America. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 75c.; by mail . . 80c.
The Game of Life. A new volume of 111 fables. Most of them have been published from time to time in Life, Collier's, The Outlook, The Century, The Independent, The Ram's Horn, The Pilgrim, The Christian Endeavor World, The Rubric, The New Voice, The Philistine and other papers and magazines. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, postpaid . . $1.00
Even as You and I. This is a presentation, by means of popular and simple allegories, of the doctrine of Henry George and the principle which underlies it. A part of the volume is an account of Tolstoy's philosophy, drawn largely from the Russian's difficult work, 'Of Life.' This section is called 'True Life,' and follows a series of thirty-three clever parables. Count Tolstoy wrote to Mr. Hall: 'I have received your book, and have read it. I think it is very good, and renders in a concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book.' 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 50 c.; by mail . . 54c.
Books to be had through Mother Earth
Work and Wages. By Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers. Shows that the real wages of the laborer, as measured by his standard of living, are actually lower now than in the fifteenth century. Cloth . . $1.00
Civilization, Its Cause and Cure. By Edward Carpenter. Cloth . . $1.00
England's Ideal, and Other Papers on Social Subjects. By Edward Carpenter. Edward Carpenter is at once a profound student of social problems, an essayist with a most charming style, and a writer of true poetic insight. Everything he writes is worth reading. Cloth . . $1.00
The Social Revolution. By Karl Kautsky. Translated by A. M. and May Wood Simons. Cloth . . 50c.
The Origin and Growth of Village Communities in India. By B. H. Baden-Powell. A scientific study of a remarkable survival of a phase of primitive communism in the British dominions to-day. Cloth . . $1.00
American Communities. By William Alfred Hinds. Mr. Hinds was for many years a resident of one of these colonies and has visited, personally, scores of others, which particularly fits him for the task. Cloth, 433 pages, with 17 full-page illustrations . . $1.00
The Sale of an Appetite. By Paul Lafargue. This book by one of the foremost socialists of Europe is a notable work of art considered merely as a story and at the same time it is one of the most stirring indictments of the capitalist system ever written. Cloth, illustrated . . 50c.
The Triumph of Life. By Wilhelm Boelsche. The German critics of this book all agree that it is more interesting than his previous work on 'The Evolution of Man,' and those who have read the former work will realize what this means. The book is the story of the victory of life over the planet earth and is told in a marvelously vivid and picturesque manner. Cloth . . 50c.
Poems of Walt Whitman. We have secured a reprint of Whitman's famous 'Leaves of Grass' for the benefit of those who, having read Mrs. Maynard's charming introduction, may desire to read the poet. Nearly all of Whitman's poems are contained therein, and John Burroughs has written a biographical introduction.
TO YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE.
I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you,
None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself.
Cloth, 341 pages . . 75c.
Crime and Criminals. By Clarence S. Darrow. This is an address delivered to the prisoners at the county jail in Chicago. It shows the real cause of what is called crime and the real way to put an end to it. Paper . . 10c.
Katharine Breshkovsky—'For Russia's Freedom.' By Ernest Poole. This is the true story of a Russian woman revolutionist who has been addressing immense crowds in American cities. 'Daughter of a nobleman and earnest philanthropist; then revolutionist, hard-labor convict, and exile for twenty-three years in Siberia; and now a heroic old woman of sixty-one, she has plunged again into the dangerous struggle for freedom.' Paper . . 10c.
All Orders, Money Prepaid, to be sent to E. GOLDMAN, Box 217,Madison Square Station, New York City
Tidings of May
The month of May is a grinning satire on the mode of living of human beings of the present day.
The May sun, with its magic warmth, gives life to so much beauty, so much value.
The dead, grayish brown of the forest and woods is transformed into a rich, intoxicating, delicate, fragrant green.
Golden sun-rays lure flowers and grass from the soil, and kiss branch and tree into blossom and bloom.
Tillers of the soil are beginning their activity with plough, shovel, rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and maturity the seeds lying in her womb.
A great festival seems at hand for which Mother Earth has adorned herself with garments of the richest and most beautiful hues.
What does civilized humanity do with all this splendor? It speculates with it. Usurers, who gamble with the necessities of life, will take possession of Nature's gifts, of wheat and corn, fruit and flowers, and will carry on a shameless trade with them, while millions of toilers, both in country and city, will be permitted to partake of the earth's riches only in medicinal doses and at exorbitant prices.
May's generous promise to mankind, that they were to receive in abundance, is being broken and undone by the existing arrangements of society.
The Spring sends its glad tidings to man through the jubilant songs that stream from the throats of her feathered messengers. 'Behold,' they sing, 'I have such wealth to give away, but you know not how to take. You count and bargain and weigh and measure, rather than feast at my heavily laden tables. You crawl about on the ground, bent by worry and dread, rather than drink in the free balmy air!'
The irony of May is neither cold nor hard. It contains a mild yet convincing appeal to mankind to finally break the power of the Winter not only in Nature, but in our social life,—to free itself from the hard and fixed traditions of a dead past.
ENVY.
By Walt Whitman.
When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house;But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and longThrough youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were,Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away, filled with the bitterest envy.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
A young man had an Ideal which he cherished as the most beautiful and greatest treasure he had on earth. He promised himself never to part with it, come what might.
His surroundings, however, repeated from morn till night that one can not feed on Ideals, and that one must become practical if he wishes to get on in life.
When he attempted the practical, he realized that his Ideal could never become reconciled to it. This, at first, caused him deep suffering, but he soon conceived a pleasant thought: 'Why should I expose my precious jewel to the vulgarity, coarseness and filth of a practical life? I will put it into a jewel case and hide it in a secluded spot.'
From time to time, especially when business was bad, he stole over to the case containing his Ideal, to delight in its splendor. Indeed, the world was shabby compared with that!
Meanwhile he married and his business began to improve. The members of his party had already begun to discuss the possibility of putting him up as a candidate for Alderman.
He visited his Ideal at longer intervals now. He had made a very unpleasant discovery,—his Ideal had lessened in size and weight in proportion to the practical opulence of his mind. It grew old and full of wrinkles, which aroused his suspicions. After all, the practical people were right in making light of Ideals. Did he not observe with his own eyes how his Ideal had faded?
It had been overlooked for a long time. Once more he stole over to the safety vault containing his Ideal. It was at a time when he had suffered a severe business loss. With great yearning in his breast, he lifted the cover of the case. He was worn from practical life and his heart and head felt heavy. He found the case empty. His Ideal had vanished, evaporated!—It dawned upon him that he had proven false to the Ideal, and not the Ideal to him.
Pity and sympathy have been celebrating a great feast within the last few weeks. When they look into the mirror of public opinion they find their own reflex touchingly beautiful, big, very human. Want was about to commit self-destruction in abolishing poverty, tears and the despair of suffering humanity forever.
The 'heart' of New York, the 'heart' of the country, the 'heart' of the entire world throbs for San Francisco. The press says so, at least.
No doubt a large amount in checks and banknotes was sent to the city of the Golden Gate. Money, in these days, is the criterion of emotions and sentiments; so that the pity of one who gives $10,000 must appear incomparably greater than the pity of one who contributes a small sum which was perhaps intended to buy shoes for the children, or to pay the grocery bill. A large sum is always loud and boastful in the way it appears in the newspapers. The delicate tact and fine taste of the various editors see to it that the names of the donors of large sums be printed in heavy type.
After all, can not one every day and in every large city observe the same phenomenon that has followed the disaster in San Francisco? Surely there were homeless, starved, despaired, wretched beings in San Francisco before the earthquake and the fire, yet the public's pity and sympathy haughtily passed them by; and official sympathy and compassion had nothing but the police station and the workhouse to give them.
And now,—what is really being done now? Humanitarianism is exhibiting itself in a low and vulgar manner, and superficiality and bad taste are stalking about in peacock fashion.
The newspapers are full of praise for the bravery of the militia in their defense of property. A man was instantly shot as he walked out of a saloon with his arms full of champagne bottles, and another was shot for carrying off a sack of coffee, etc. How strange that the 'brave boys' of the militia,—who, by the way, had to be severely disciplined because of their beastly drunkenness,—showed so much noble indignation against a few clumsy thieves! During the strikes and labor conflicts it is usually their mission to protect the property of skillful thieves,—legal thieves, of course.
Finally what is going to be the end of the great display of superficial sentimentality for the stricken city? An all-around good deal: Moneyed people, contractors, real estate speculators will make large sums of money. Indeed it is not at all unlikely that within a few months good Christian capitalists will secretly thank their Lord that he sent the earthquake.
As an employer, the United States Government is certainly tolerant and liberal, especially so far as the highly remunerative offices are concerned.
The President, for instance, loves to deliver himself of moral sermons. Recently he spoke of the people who criticise government and society and breed discontent. He considers them dangerous and entertains little regard for them. He ought not be blamed for that, since, as the first clerk of the State, it is his duty to represent its interests and dignity.
The most ordinary business agent, though he may be convinced of the corruption of his firm, will take good care to keep this fact from the public. Business morals demand it.
Besides, no one will expect or desire that the President should become a Revolutionist. This would certainly be no gain of ours, nor would the State suffer harm. Surely there are enough professional politicians who do not lack talent for the calling of doorkeepers on a large scale.
As to the moral sermons against the undesirable and obnoxious element, all that can be said, from a practical standpoint, is, that their originality and wisdom are in no proportion to the salary the sermonizer receives. Competition among preachers of penitence and servility is almost as great as among patent medicine quacks. Four or five thousand a year can easily buy the services of a corpulent, reverend gentleman of some prominence.
The dangers of the first of May, when France was to be ruined by the 'mob' of socialists and anarchists, was very fantastically described by the Paris correspondents of the American newspapers. These gentlemen seem to have known everything. They discovered that the cause of the threatened revolution was to be found in the irresponsible good nature and kindness of the French government.
Just show 'Satan' Anarchy a finger, and straightway he will seize the entire arm. Especially M. Clemenceau was severely censured as being altogether too good a fellow to make a reliable minister. There he is with France near the abyss of a social revolution! That is the manner in which history is being manufactured for boarding-school young ladies.
The social revolution may come, but surely not because of the kindness or good nature of the government. France needed a newspaper boom for her elections: 'The republic is in danger; for goodness' sake give us your vote on election day!'
In order that the citizens might feel the proper horror, trade-union leaders, anarchists and even a few royalistic scare-crows were arrested; at the same time the sympathy and devotion of the government for its people manifested itself in the reign of the military terror in the strike regions.
The real seriousness of the situation, the correspondents failed to grasp. How could they? since they got their wisdom in the ante-chamber of the ministry.
The revolutionary labor organizations care little for the good will or the Jesuit kindness of the authorities. They continue with their work, propagate the idea of direct action, and strengthen the anti-military movement, the result of which is already being felt among the soldiers and officers.
The officer who jumped upon the platform at the Bourse du Travail, expressing his solidarity with the workers and declaring that he would not fire on them, was immediately arrested; but this will only influence others to follow the good example.
In the old fables the lion is described as supreme judge and not the mule or the wether.
In Cleveland things are different. Several weeks ago Olga Nethersole gave a performance of Sappho there. Whereupon the police felt moved to perform an operation on the play, for moral reasons, of course. The staircase scene was ordered to be left out altogether.
Ye poor, depraved artists, how low ye might sink, were the police and Comstock not here to watch over the moral qualities of your productions!
If one observes one of these prosaic fellows on the corner, terribly bored, and with his entire intellect concentrated on his club, and how out of pure ennui he is constantly recapitulating the number of his brass buttons, one can hardly realize that such an individual has been entrusted with the power to decide the fate of an artistic production.
1792 the French people marched through the streets singing:
O, what is it the people cry?They ask for all equality.The poor no more shall beIn slavish misery;The idle rich shall flee.O, what is it the people need?They ask for bread and iron and lead.The iron to win our pay,The lead our foes to slay,The bread our friends to feed.The soldiers at Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, who were ordered by their superiors to fire into a crowd of strikers and wounded and killed innocent men and women, do not sing the Carmagnole; they sing:
'My country, 'tis of thee,Sweet land of Liberty!'If the ruling powers continue to maintain peace and order with iron and blood it may happen that the meaningless national hymn may be drowned by the Carmagnole, pealing forth like thunder from the throats of the masses.
To the credit of human nature be it said, it is not altogether hopeless. Since tyranny has existed, human nature has ever rebelled against it.
Real slavery exists only when the oppressed consider their fate as something normal, something self-evident.
There is greater security for tyranny in slavish thoughts, indifference and pettiness than in cannons and swords.
'THIS MAN GORKY.'
By Margaret Grant.
THE women of America are aroused as never before. They always are aroused to the defense of their firesides. Even those women who live in flats are awake to the need for defending their radiators or their gas stoves; it is inherent in the nature of woman, it seems.
Most of the women's societies and clubs have spoken in no uncertain terms concerning the outrage that has been put upon the civilization of this great country by the conduct of this man Gorky. And, in fact, it is a thing not to be borne.
As for me, I belong to the Woman's Association for the Regulation of the Morals of Others, a society which is second to none in its activity and usefulness, but which has seen fit to defer its own discussion of this man Gorky's conduct until most of the other women's societies have spoken.
We have just had our meeting, and I think that if this man Gorky should read an account of our proceedings, he would certainly get out of this outraged country with all the celerity of which he is capable. But, of course, he is only a foreigner after all and probably will not comprehend the exquisite purity of our morals.
I want to say that in our meetings we do not slavishly follow those parliamentary rules which men have made for their guidance, but allow ourselves some latitude in discussion. And we do not invite some man to come and do all the talking, as is the case in some women's clubs.
Mrs. Blanderocks was in the chair. We began with an informal discussion of the best way of preventing the common people from dressing so as not to be distinguished from the upper classes, but there was no heart in the talk, for we all felt that it was only preliminary. It was my friend Sarah Warner who changed the subject.
'The Woman's State Republican Association held its annual meeting at Delmonico's yesterday,' she said, quietly drawing a newspaper clipping from her pocket-book.
'And had some men there to amuse them and to tell them what to do,' said Mrs. Blanderocks with cutting irony.
We all laughed heartily. We meet at Mrs. Blanderocks' house, and she always provides a beautiful luncheon.
'But Mrs. Flint said some things that I would like to read to you,' said Sarah. 'It won't take long. I cut this out of the 'Times' this morning.'
'What is it about?' some one asked.
'Gorky,' Sarah answered, closing her eyes in a way to express volumes.
You could hear all the members catch their breath. This was what they had come for. I broke the oppressive silence.
'I foresee,' I said, 'that in the discussion of this subject there will be said things likely to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and I move that all unmarried women under the age of twenty-five be excluded from the meeting for as long as this man is under discussion.'
A fierce cry of rage rose from all parts of the crowded room. I did not understand. I could see no one who would be affected by the rule. Mrs. Blanderocks raised her hand to command silence and said coldly:
'The motion is out of order. By a special provision of our constitution it is the inalienable right of all unmarried women to be under twenty-five. We will be as careful in our language as the subject will permit. Mrs. Warner will please read the words of Mrs. Flint.'
I was shocked to think I had made such a mistake. Sarah rose and read in a clear, sharp voice from the clipping:
'Should not we as women take some action against this man? People of such character should not be allowed in this country. Of course when he arrived it was not known how he was living, but he came here and expected to be received; and I think he should be deported. Gorky is the embodiment of Socialism.'
Everybody applauded violently. I was puzzled and asked a question as soon as I could make myself heard.
'Suppose Gorky is a Socialist,' I said; 'what has that to do with his morals?'
'Everything,' replied Mrs. Blanderocks, haughtily.
'Socialists don't believe in marriage,' said Sarah Warner, taking another clipping from her pocket-book and reading: ''Mrs. Cornelia Robinson said: When the question of uniform divorce law is taken up, we shall find that the Socialists are against it as a body. It is not that they are opposed to divorce, but they do not believe in marriage.''
'And does she know?' I asked.
'Would she say it publicly if it were not true?' demanded Mrs. Blanderocks, glaring disapprovingly at me.
I rose to my feet. I will say for myself that my desire for knowledge is greater even than my shyness, and usually overcomes it.
'I want to make a motion,' I said, 'that this man Gorky be deported—' (loud applause)—'but before doing so I would like some one to explain in as plain words as the nature of the subject will permit, just what he has been guilty of.' Dead silence broken by a voice saying: 'He's a foreigner.'
'I'll tell you what he has done,' cried Sarah Warner; 'he came into this country pretending that the woman who was with him was his wife; he allowed her to be registered at the hotel as his wife; he permitted her to sleep under the same roof with pure men and women—'
'I would like to ask Mrs. Warner,' said a lady in a remote corner of the room, 'if she will vouch for the purity of the men?'
'Perhaps,' said Mrs. Blanderocks, gravely, 'it will be better if the word men be stricken from the record. Do you object, Mrs. Warner?'
'It was a slip of the tongue,' Sarah answered, 'and I am grateful to the member who called attention to it; though I will say that I think there are some pure men.'
'We are discussing Gorky now,' said Mrs. Blanderocks with an indulgent smile.
'True,' answered Sarah, beaming back at the chairwoman; 'and I was saying that he had subjected the pure women of the hotel to the unspeakable indignity of having to sleep under the same roof with the woman he called his wife.'
'I would like to ask,' I interposed timidly, 'if it is right for a woman to sleep under the same roof with an impure man, or is it only an impure woman who is injurious?'
'A woman has to sleep under some roof,' came in the voice of the woman in the corner.
'I think Mrs. Grant would show better taste if she did not press such a question,' said another voice. 'Will Mrs. Warner be good enough to describe the exact status—I think status is right—of the woman he tried to pass as his wife?'
'She was his——' Sarah had a fit of coughing, 'she was not his wife. I do not care to be more explicit.'
'Perhaps,' I said, groping for light, 'it would be better if I made my motion read that she should be deported from the country, since it is her immorality that counts.'
'And let those Republican Association women stand for more morality than we do?' cried Mrs. Blanderocks. 'No, you cannot make your motion too strong.'
'Oh, then,' I said, with a sigh of relief, 'I will move that Gorky and all other men, immoral in the same way, shall be deported from the country.'
'Then who is to take care of us women?' demanded the voice in the corner.
'Do be reasonable, Margaret,' said Sarah Warner, 'we can't drive all the men out of the country, and don't want to, but we can fix a standard of morals to astonish the world, and there could be no better way than by making an example of this man Gorky. Don't you see that he is a foreigner and can't very well know that our men are just as bad as he is? Besides, isn't he a Socialist? We would have been willing to condone his relations with that woman if only he'd hid them respectably as our men do, but to come here with his free ideas—— Well, I'm willing to let the Russians have all the freedom they want, and I would have given my mite toward stirring up trouble over there, but we have all the freedom we want over here, and a little more, too, if I know anything about it.'
'Very well,' I replied, 'I will withdraw the motion and make one to have a committee appointed to investigate the matter and find out the whole truth about it.'
'What is there to find out?' demanded Sarah, aghast.
'Well, you know he insists that she is his wife. Maybe she is by Russian law or custom.'
'Perfectly absurd! His own wife and he separated because they couldn't be happy together. Was ever anything more ridiculous?'
'As if happiness had anything to do with marriage!' said the voice from the corner.
Everybody laughed and applauded as if something very funny had been said.
'Well, anyhow,' I insisted, for I can be obstinate when a thing isn't clear to me, 'if they both thought they were justified in calling themselves man and wife, and if the people in Russia thought so, too, why should we make any fuss about it?'
'Pardon me, Mrs. Grant,' said Mrs. Blanderocks, suavely, 'if I say that your words are very silly. In the first place, the Russians are barbarians, as we all know; and, in the next place, the law is the law, and the law says that a man may not have two wives. A man who does is a bigamist. A man who has a wife and yet lives with another woman is an adulterer. Pardon me for using such a word, but it was forced from me. Now, this man Gorky, who may be a very great genius for all I know—I never read any of his stuff—but he isn't above the law: not above the moral law anyhow, and the moral law is the same all over the world. He says he and his wife parted because they were unhappy together, which is a very flimsy excuse for immorality. Then he says that his wife is living now with a man she loves and is happy with.'
'Which makes a bad matter worse,' interposed Sarah Warner. 'No one has any business to be happy in immorality.'
'What is morality for,' demanded the voice from the corner, 'if it isn't to make people unhappy?'
Everybody screamed with laughter over that, and Mrs. Blanderocks went so far as to raise her eyebrows at Sarah Warner, who bit her lip to keep from smiling.
'But,' said I, for I had been reading the papers, too, 'he says the reason they were not divorced was because the Church would not permit it.'
'If the laws of his country were opposed to this divorce,' said Mrs. Blanderocks, triumphantly, 'all the more reason why he should be ashamed of living with this actress in such an open, defiant way.'
'The Church has nothing to do with divorces in this country,' I said, 'yet many of our best people are divorced.'
'The law permits it,' said Mrs. Blanderocks curtly.
'Who makes the law?' I asked, determined to get at the bottom of the thing if I could.
'The people through the Legislature,' was the prompt answer.
'Well,' I said, very timidly, not knowing but I was quite in the wrong, 'it seems that the people of Russia not being able to make laws nevertheless recognize the separation of a man and his wife as proper, and permit them to take other husbands and wives without loss of standing.'
'A law's a law,' said Sarah, sternly; 'and a law should be sacred. The very idea of anybody pretending to be above the law like this man Gorky! I would like to know what would become of the holy institution of matrimony if it could be trifled with in such a fashion?'
'You want Russia to be free from the rule of the Tsar, don't you?' I asked.
'Certainly, he is a tyrant and an irresponsible weakling, unfit to govern a great people. Of course, we want Russia to be free. The people of Russia are entitled to be free, to govern themselves.'
'Do you think they ought to be allowed to make their own laws?' I asked.
'Of course.'
'Then, why do you say that Gorky is not properly divorced from his first wife and married to his second? The people of Russia approve.'
'Margaret Grant!' cried Sarah, outraged and voicing the horror of the other members, 'I sometimes wonder if you have any respect at all for the law. How can you speak as you do? If men and women could dispense with the law in that way what would become of society?'
'But this state used to permit men and women to live together without any ceremony and so become man and wife,' I said.
'Well, we don't permit it now,' retorted Sarah, grimly.
'If they want to live together now,' cried the voice from the corner, 'they must pretend they don't, even if everybody knows they do.'
Some of the members laughed at that, but Mrs. Blanderocks thought that was going too far and said so in her coldest manner.
'I see nothing funny in that. We cannot change the natures of men, but we can insist upon their hiding their baser conduct and the degraded portions of their lives from our view.'
'But,' said I, 'Gorky evidently considers this woman his wife, and had no idea that anybody would think otherwise.'
'The point is,' said Sarah Warner, in exasperation, 'and I think I voice the sentiments of this organization, that he was not legally divorced from his first wife and that, therefore, he cannot be legally married to this woman. A law is a law, no matter who makes it. The law is sacred and must not be tampered with.'
'How about the Supreme Court on divorces in Dakota?' demanded the voice from the corner.
A dead silence fell on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but rose to the occasion.
'Ladies,' she said in a solemn tone, 'I deeply regret that this subject has been touched upon in a spirit of levity. It was my intention, at the proper time, to introduce a resolution of sympathy for those ladies who have been so summarily and I may say brutally unmarried by the unfeeling wretches who sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It is awful to think that our highly respected sisters, whose wealth alone should have protected them, have been told by the highest court in the land that they have been living in shame all this time, and that their children are not legitimate. Ladies, I call your attention to the fact that many of our own members are thus branded by those judges. It is infamous. It is more than infamous—it is a reason why women should sit on the judicial bench.'
'Yes,' I said, 'it seems impossible for men to comprehend the mental or emotional processes of women.'
'True, too true,' murmured our President, giving me a look of gratitude. 'I remember how the men of this country cried out against us a few years ago because they could not understand why we send flowers and tender letters to a poor, handsome negro who had first outraged and then murdered a woman.'
'Yes,' I said, 'and no doubt they will pretend not to understand our indignation against this man Gorky, who thinks the customs of his own country justify him his terrible conduct. But we must be careful how we word our condemnation of this man lest he should somehow learn of what our Supreme Court has so wickedly done and retort on us that these, our wealthiest and most respected citizens, not being legally divorced and hence not being legally married again, are no better than he and his so-called wife.'
The ladies looked at each other in consternation. Evidently the thought had not suggested itself to them. Mrs. X. Y. Z. Asterbilt (née Clewbel) rose and in a voice choked with emotion said:
'Speaking for myself as well as for some of the other ladies, members of this organization, who are temporarily déclassée, so to speak, by this decree of the Supreme Court, I beg that you will do nothing to call undue attention to us, until we have arranged matters so that our wealth will enable us to have that legislation which is necessary to make us respectable women again.'
'Is it true,' I asked, 'that you have sent an invitation to Madame Andreieva to meet you to discuss the steps to be taken to reinstate yourselves?'
'It is true, but the extraordinary creature returned word that as a lady of good standing in her own country she did not feel that she could afford to associate with women whom the courts of this country held to be living in shame.'
'Did you ever!' cried Mrs. Blanderocks. 'But it shows us that we must be careful. Mrs. Grant, you have had experience in such matters, suppose you retire and draw up a set of resolutions that will not expose us to the ribald and unseemly comments of the light-minded.'
Of course I accepted the task, fully realizing its gravity, and following is the resolution I brought back with me:
'Whereas, Maxim Gorky, recognized in the world of letters as a man of genius, and in the world at large as a man of great soul, high purpose and pure nature, having come to this country accompanied by a lady whom he considers and treats as his wife; and
'Whereas, The wealthy, and therefore the better classes, tumbled all over themselves in order to exploit him as a lion; and
'Whereas, He had not the wisdom and craft and sense of puritanical respectability to pretend that he did not know the lady he believed his wife, and to whom he believes himself united by a law higher than that of man; and
'Whereas, He was guileless enough to believe he had come to a free country where purity of motive and of conduct would take precedence of hollow and rotten forms; and
'Whereas, He did not know that the American people practise polygamy secretly, while condemning it in words, and that the United States Senate has been nearly two years in pretending to try to find a polygamist in their midst; and
'Whereas, He was so injudicious as to come here with a defective divorce just at a time when our Supreme Court was making the divorce of some of us, the gilded favorites of fortune, defective; and
'Whereas, He had the audacity to proclaim himself a Socialist, which is the same thing as saying that he is opposed to special privilege, and is in favor of the abolition of property in land and in the tools of labor—in other and plainer words, is against Us; and
'Whereas, He is only a foreigner, anyhow, and no longer available as a toy and plaything for us; therefore be it
'Resolved, That this man, Gorky, be used as a means of proclaiming our extraordinary virtue to the world at large, as a robber cries stop thief in order to direct attention from himself; that accordingly he be treated with the utmost outrageous discourtesy and hounded from hotel to hotel on the ground that such places by no chance harbor men and women unless they have passed through the matrimonial mill; that we withdraw our patronage from the revolution in Russia—not being seriously interested in it anyhow—and that we will show our contempt for revolutionary patriots by entertaining the rottenest grand duke in Russia if only he will come over to us, bringing his whole harem if he wish; that he is a reproach to us while he remains in this country, and that it is the sense of this great organization that he and the lady who is his wife in the highest sense shall be deported.'
The resolution was not passed.
I have been expelled from the association.
COMRADE.
By Maxim Gorky.Translated from the French translation by S. Persky, published in 'L'Aurore,' Paris.
ALL in that city was strange, incomprehensible. Churches in great number pointed their many-tinted steeples toward the sky, in gleaming colors; but the walls and the chimneys of the factories rose still higher, and the temples were crushed between the massive façades of commercial houses, like marvelous flowers sprung up among the ruins, out of the dust. And when the bells called the faithful to prayer, their brazen sounds, sliding along the iron roofs, vanished, leaving no traces in the narrow gaps which separated the houses.
They were always large, and sometimes beautiful, these dwellings. Deformed people, ciphers, ran about like gray mice in the tortuous streets from morning till evening; and their eyes, full of covetousness, looked for bread or for some distraction; other men placed at the crossways watched with a vigilant and ferocious air, that the weak should, without murmuring, submit themselves to the strong. The strong were the rich: everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold; that is why each was the enemy of his neighbor, and cruelty reigned mistress.
Sometimes the sun shone over the city, but life therein was always wan, and the people like shadows. At night they lit a mass of joyous lights; and then famishing women went out into the streets to sell their caresses to the highest bidder. Everywhere floated an odor of victuals, and the sullen and voracious look of the people grew. Over the city hovered a groan of misery, stifled, without strength to make itself heard.
Every one led an irksome, unquiet life; a general hostility was the rule. A few citizens only considered themselves just, but these were the most cruel, and their ferocity provoked that of the herd. All wanted to live; and no one knew or could follow freely the pathway of his desires; like an insatiable monster, the Present enveloped in its powerful and vigorous arms the man who marched toward the future, and in that slimy embrace sapped away his strength. Full of anguish and perplexity, the man paused, powerless before the hideous aspect of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,—and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human creatures tormented by life.
Tedium and inquietude reigned everywhere, and sometimes terror. And the dull and somber city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence.
In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egoism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of Riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. Secretly they brought into these wretched holes tiny fertile seeds of a doctrine simple and grand;—and sometimes rudely, with lightnings in their eyes, and sometimes mild and tender, they sowed this clear and burning truth in the sombre hearts of these slaves, transformed into mute, blind instruments by the strength of the rapacious, by the will of the cruel. And these sullen beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words,—the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated with the bitterness of humiliation, had resounded a simple word:
Comrade.
It was not a new word; they had heard it and pronounced it themselves; but until then it had seemed to them void of sense, like all other words dulled by usage, and which one may forget without losing anything. But now this word, strong and clear, had another sound; a soul was singing in it,—the facets of it shone brilliant as a diamond. The wretched accepted this word, and at first uttered it gently, cradling it in their hearts like a mother rocking her new-born child and admiring it. And the more they searched the luminous soul of the word, the more fascinating it seemed to them.
'Comrade,' said they.
And they felt that this word had come to unite the whole world, to lift all men up to the summits of liberty and bind them with new ties, the strong ties of mutual respect, respect for the liberties of others in the name of one's own liberty.
When this word had engraved itself upon the hearts of the slaves, they ceased to be slaves; and one day they announced their transformation to the city in this great human formula:
I will not.
Then life was suspended, for it is they who are the motor force of life, they and no other. The water supply stopped, the fire went out, the city was plunged in darkness. The masters began to tremble like children. Fear invaded the hearts of the oppressors. Suffocating in the fumes of their own dejection, disconcerted and terrified by the strength of the revolt, they dissimulated the rage which they felt against it.
The phantom of Famine rose up before them, and their children wailed plaintively in the darkness. The houses and the temples, enveloped in shadow, melted into an inanimate chaos of iron and stone; a menacing silence filled the streets with a clamminess as of death; life ceased, for the force which created it had become conscious of itself; and enslaved humanity had found the magic and invincible word to express its will; it had enfranchised itself from the yoke; with its own eyes it had seen its might,—the might of the creator.
These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness; it was but a pitiable mass of stone and wood. The blind windows of the houses looked upon the street with a cold and sullen air, and out on the highway marched with valiant step the real masters of life. They, too, were hungry, more than the others perhaps; but they were used to it, and the suffering of their bodies was not so sharp as the suffering of the old masters of life; it did not extinguish the fire in their souls. They glowed with the consciousness of their own strength, the presentiment of victory sparkled in their eyes. They went about in the streets of the city which had been their narrow and sombre prison, wherein they had been overwhelmed with contempt, wherein their souls had been loaded with abuse, and they saw the great importance of their work, and thus was unveiled to them the sacred right they had to become the masters of life, its creators and its lawgivers.
And the lifegiving word of union presented itself to them with a new face, with a blinding clearness:
'Comrade.'
There among lying words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;—far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred its coming.
The prostitute who, but the evening before, was but a hungry beast, sadly waiting on the muddy pavement to be accosted by some one who would buy her caresses, the prostitute, too, heard this word, but was undecided whether to repeat it. A man the like of whom she had never seen till then approached her, laid his hand upon her shoulder and said to her in an affectionate tone, 'Comrade.' And she gave a little embarrassed smile, ready to cry with the joy her wounded heart experienced for the first time. Tears of pure gaiety shone in her eyes, which, the night before, had looked at the world with a stupid and insolent expression of a starving animal. In all the streets of the city the outcasts celebrated the triumph of their reunion with the great family of workers of the entire world; and the dead eyes of the houses looked on with an air more and more cold and menacing.
The beggar to whom but the night before an obol was thrown, price of the compassion of the well-fed, the beggar also heard this word; and it was the first alms which aroused a feeling of gratitude in his poor heart, gnawed by misery.
A coachman, a great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse, this man imbruted by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer-by: 'Well, Comrade!' He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer-by, the joyous smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly glance at him and answered, shaking his head: 'Thanks, comrade; I will go on foot; I am not going far.'
'Ah, the fine fellow!' exclaimed the coachman enthusiastically; he stirred in his seat, winking his eyes gaily, and started off somewhere with a great clatter.
The people went in groups crowded together on the pavements, and the great word destined to unite the world burst out more and more often among them, like a spark: 'Comrade.' A policeman, bearded, fierce, and filled with the consciousness of his own importance, approached the crowd surrounding an old orator at the corner of a street, and, after having listened to the discourse, he said slowly: 'Assemblages are interdicted ... disperse....' And after a moment's silence, lowering his eyes, he added, in a lower tone, 'Comrades.'
The pride of young combatants was depicted in the faces of those who carried the word in their hearts, who had given it flesh and blood and the appeal to union; one felt that the strength they so generously poured into this living word was indestructible, inexhaustible.
Here and there blind troops of armed men, dressed in gray, gathered and formed ranks in silence; it was the fury of the oppressors preparing to repulse the wave of justice.
And in the narrow streets of the immense city, between the cold and silent walls raised by the hands of ignored creators, the noble belief in Man and in Fraternity grew and ripened.
'Comrade.'—Sometimes in one corner, sometimes in another, the fire burst out. Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, melt them into one,—the heart of the world, the heart of beings noble and just;—into one united family of workers.
In the streets of the dead city, created by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty reigned, faith in humanity and in victory over self and over the evil of the world grew and ripened. And in the vague chaos of a dull and troubled existence, a simple word, profound as the heart, shone like a star, like a light guiding toward the future: Comrade.
ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
By E. G.
ON the 18th of this month the workhouse at Hoboken, Pa., will open its iron gates for Alexander Berkman. One buried alive for fourteen years will emerge from his tomb. That was not the intention of those who indicted Berkman. In the kindness of their Christian hearts they saw to it that he be sentenced to twenty-one years in the penitentiary and one year in the workhouse, hoping that that would equal a death penalty, only with a slow, refined execution. To achieve the feat of sending a man to a gradual death, the authorities of Pittsburg at the command of Mammon trampled upon their much-beloved laws and the legality of court proceedings. These laws in Pennsylvania called for seven years imprisonment for the attempt to kill, but that did not satisfy the law-abiding citizen H. C. Frick. He saw to it that one indictment was multiplied into six. He knew full well that he would meet with no opposition from petrified injustice and the servile stupidity of the judge and jury before whom Alexander Berkman was tried.
In looking over the events of 1892 and the causes that led up to the act of Alexander Berkman, one beholds Mammon seated upon a throne built of human bodies, without a trace of sympathy on its Gorgon brow for the creatures it controls. These victims, bent and worn, with the reflex of the glow of the steel and iron furnaces in their haggard faces, carry their sacrificial offerings to the ever-insatiable monster, capitalism. In its greed, however, it reaches out for more; it neither sees the gleam of hate in the sunken eyes of its slaves, nor can it hear the murmurs of discontent and rebellion coming forth from their heaving breasts. Yet, discontent continues until one day it raises its mighty voice and demands to be heard:
Human conditions! higher pay! fewer hours in the inferno at Homestead, the stronghold of the 'philanthropist' Carnegie!
He was far away, however, enjoying a much needed rest from hard labor, in Scotland, his native country. Besides he knew he had left a worthy representative in H. C. Frick, who could take care that the voice of discontent was strangled in a fitting manner,—and Mr. Carnegie had judged rightly.
Frick, who was quite experienced in the art of disposing of rebellious spirits (he had had a number of them shot in the coke regions in 1890), immediately issued an order for Pinkerton men, the vilest creatures in the human family, who are engaged in the trade of murder for $2 per day.
The strikers declared that they would not permit these men to land, but money and power walk shrewd and cunning paths. The Pinkerton blood-hounds were packed into a boat and were to be smuggled into Homestead by way of water in the stillness of night. The amalgamated steel workers learned of this contemptible trick and prepared to meet the foe. They gathered by the shores of the Monongahela River armed with sticks and stones, but ere they had time for an attack a violent fire was opened from the boat that neared the shore, and within an hour eleven strikers lay dead from the bullets of Frick's hirelings.
Every beast is satisfied when it has devoured its prey,—not so the human beast. After the killing of the strikers H. C. Frick had the families of the dead evicted from their homes, which had been sold to the workingmen on the instalment plan and at the exorbitant prices usual in such cases.
Out of these homes the wives and children of the men struggling for a living wage were thrown into the street and left without shelter. There was one exception only. A woman who had given birth to a baby two days previous and who, regardless of her delicate condition, defended her home and succeeded in driving the sheriff from the house with a poker.
Everyone stood aghast at such brutality, at such inhumanity to man, in this great free republic of ours. It seemed as if the cup of human endurance had been filled to the brim, as if out of the ranks of the outraged masses some one would rise to call those to account who had caused it all.
And some one rose in mighty indignation against the horrors of wealth and power. It was Alexander Berkman!
A youth with a vision of a grand and beautiful world based upon freedom and harmony, and with boundless sympathy for the suffering of the masses. One whose deep, sensitive nature could not endure the barbarisms of our times. Such was the personality of the man who staked his life as a protest against tyranny and iniquity; and such has Alexander Berkman remained all these long, dreary fourteen years.
Nothing was left undone to crush the body and spirit of this man; but sorrow and suffering make for sacred force, and those who have never felt it will fail to realize how it is that Alexander Berkman will return to those who loved and esteemed him, to those whom he loved so well, and still loves so well,—the oppressed and down-trodden millions—with the same intense, sweet spirit and with a clearer and grander vision of a world of human justice and equality.
UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES.
By Voltairine De Cleyre
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.)
How many drops must gather to the skiesBefore the cloud-burst comes, we may not know;How hot the fires in under hells must glowEre the volcano's scalding lavas rise,Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!He may not say how many blows must fall,How many lives be broken on the wheel,How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall,How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;But certain is the harvest time of Hate!And when weak moans, by an indignant worldRe-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,Who listens hears the mutterings of Fate!
THE WHITE TERROR.
I.—The Flogging of a Student.
(By an Eye-Witness—M. Kirilov, of the 'Russ.')
December 18th. Near the Gorbaty Bridge, Moscow. A group of soldiers of various arms and an officer. Great animation, jokes, cries, gesticulation, contented faces. A student has fallen into their hands.
'Well, boys, make room,' says the officer. 'The performance begins!'
'Take off your trousers,' says the officer, turning to the student. The latter is pale, silent, and does not move.
'Trousers off!' cries the officer, in rage; but the student, without a drop of blood in his face, whiter than the snow, does not move, but only looks around in silence with horrified eyes and meets everywhere the triumphant faces of his tormentors. He drops his head and remains silent as before.
'Well, then, boys, we must assist our dear student; his hands, poor thing, are frost bitten and do not obey.'
The voice of the officer changes; it becomes sweet and smooth. He looks at the student with pleasure.
'Take off his dear little trousers!' he orders his soldiers. The latter unbutton and tear down his trousers. The student does not resist. Then he is thrown on the ground.
'Give him beans, boys!'
Two powerfully-built soldiers step forward, holding whips in their hands.
The flogging begins. It lasts a long time, accompanied by loud laughter, jokes and noise. The student is silent all the time and lies with his face buried in the snow. He is constantly being asked whether he feels allright, and is kicked with the boots on his head.
'Halt!' cries the officer at last, when the whole body of the student has been covered with blood. The excited soldiers do not leave off at once, but continue for some time. At last they stop.
'Please, sir, won't you allow us, too, to have a little game?' smilingly ask a couple of artillery soldiers, saluting the officer.
'Well, have a go at him,' says the officer kindly.
The second shift gets to work, and turning up their sleeves, takes over the bloody whips and resumes the flogging of the student, who still, as before, is lying in the snow without uttering a word. Only his body still thrills instinctively as the soldiers get more and more excited and the blows become more and more frequent.
'Sir, we, too, want some of the lark,' impatiently interfered some of the dragoons, and having received the permission of the officer, substituted themselves for the artillery men and with new force and zeal began to flog the student, who still lay strictly as before, only his body scarcely moving.
'Well, here you are, you got your higher education—all the three faculties!' somebody joked as the flogging at last stopped and the student lay motionless in the snow.
But he was not flogged to death. He was taken to the other side of the river and there shot.
II.—Lieutenant Schmidt, of the Sevastopol Mutiny, after being captured.
(From a letter received by Prof. Miliukov from a lady correspondent who saw Schmidt in the Fortress and had the tale from his own lips.)
....He only remembers how the officers of the 'Rostislavl' posted him naked, with a broken leg, between two sentries in their mess-room and approached him in turns, shaking their fists in his face and abusing him in the vilest terms. Schmidt's son, who, for some unaccountable reason, had been kept in fortress for two months, said to me: 'I cannot tell you how they abused my father, the terms are unpronounceable.' Schmidt himself spoke to me sobbingly of the painful treatment meted out to him by the officers.... For twenty-four hours the two of them, father and son, were kept stark naked and without food, under a fierce electric light, on the open deck. They lay together, pressing against each other so as to warm themselves, and everyone who passed looked at them, and those who wanted, abused them. When Schmidt, being wounded, asked for a drop of water, the senior officer shouted at him: 'Silence, or I'll stop your gullet with my fist.'
PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.
By Theodore Schroeder.
HISTORY serves no purpose to those who cannot, or do not avail themselves of it as a means of learning helpful lessons, for present use. From a few sources not readily accessible to the masses, I have copied a partial summary of paternalistic legislation which even the most devout devotees to mass or ruling class wisdom would now decline to defend.
It is helpful, perhaps, to look back to the persistent fallacious assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that which now flits over our faces as we read the following:—
The earliest sumptuary law was passed 215 B. C., enacted that no woman should own more than half an ounce of gold or wear a dress of different colors, or ride in a carriage in the city or in any town or within a mile of it, unless on occasion of public sacrifices. This law was repealed in twenty years. In 181 B. C. a law was passed limiting the number of guests at entertainments. In 161 B. C. it was provided that at certain festivals named the expense of entertainments should not exceed 100 asses, and on ten other days of each month should not exceed 10 asses. Later on it was allowed that 200 asses, valued at about $300, be spent upon marriage days.
A statute under Julian extended the privileges of extravagance on certain occasions to the equivalent of $10, and $50 upon marriage feasts. Under Tiberius, $100 was made the limit of expense for entertainments. Julius Cæsar proposed another law by which actual magistrates, or magistrates elect, should not dine abroad except at certain prescribed places.
Sumptuary laws, that is to say, laws which profess to regulate minutely what people shall eat and drink, what guests they shall entertain, what clothes they shall wear, what armor they shall possess, what limit shall be put to their property, what expense they shall incur at their funerals, were considered by the Early and Middle Ages as absolutely necessary for the proper government of mankind.
Tiberius issued an edict against people kissing each other when they met and against tavern keepers selling pastry. Lycurgus even prohibited finely decorated ceilings and doors. In England the statutes of laborers, reciting the pestilence and scarcity of servants, made it compulsory on every person who had no merchandise, craft or land on which to live, to serve at fixed wages, otherwise to be committed to gaol till he found sureties. At a latter day, all men between twelve and sixty not employed were compelled to hire themselves as servants in husbandry; and unmarried women between twelve and forty were also liable to be hired, otherwise to be imprisoned. All this, of course, was to compel people of modest wealth to remain among the laboring class purely for their own good. (?) But they were quite impartial in enforcing benefits, since the Star Chamber also assumed to fine persons for not accepting knighthood.
Compulsion was also used at the time of the Reformation, to uphold the Protestant faith and keep people in the right way. Refusing to confess or receive the sacrament was first made subject to fine or imprisonment, and a second offense was a felony punishable by death, and involved forfeiture of land and goods. Those who, having no lawful excuse, failed to attend the parish church, in the time of Elizabeth, were fined twelve pence—at that time a considerable sum. This penalty was afterwards altered to twenty pounds a month, but those were exempted who did not obstinately refuse. The penalty on all above sixteen who neglected to go for a month was abjuration of the realm; and to return to the realm thereafter was felony. And two-thirds of the rent of the offender's lands might also be seized till he conformed.
An ordinance of Edward III., in 1336, prohibited any man having more than two courses at any meal. Each mess was to have only two sorts of victuals, and it was prescribed how far one could mix sauce with his pottage, except on feast days, when three courses, at most, were allowable.
The Licinian law limited the quantity of meat to be used. The Orcian law limited the expense of a private entertainment and the number of guests. And for like reasons, the censors degraded a senator because ten pounds weight of silver plate was found in his house. Julius Cæsar was almost as good a reformer as our modern Puritans. He restrained certain classes from using litters, embroidered robes and jewels; limited the extent of feasts; enabled bailiffs to break into the houses of rich citizens and snatch the forbidden meats from off the tables. And we are told that the markets swarmed with informers, who profited by proving the guilt of all who bought and sold there. So in Carthage a law was passed to restrain the exorbitant expenses of marriage feasts, it having been found that the great Hanno took occasion of his daughter's marriage to feast and corrupt the Senate and the populace, and gained them over to his designs.
The Vhennic Court established by Charlemagne in Westphalia put every Saxon to death who broke his fast during Lent. James II. of Arragon, in 1234, ordained that his subjects should not have more than two dishes, and each dressed in one way only, unless it was game of his own killing.
The Statute of Diet of 1363 enjoined that servants of lords should have once a day flesh or fish, and remnants of milk, butter and cheese; and above all, ploughmen were to eat moderately. And the proclamations of Edward IV. and Henry VIII. used to restrain excess in eating and drinking. All previous statutes as to abstaining from meat and fasting were repealed in the time of Edward VI. by new enactments, and in order that fishermen might live, all persons were bound under penalty to eat fish on Fridays or Saturdays, or in Lent, the old and the sick excepted. The penalty in Queen Elizabeth's time was no less than three pounds or three months' imprisonment, but at the same time added that whoever preached or taught that eating of fish was necessary for the saving of the soul of man, or was the service of God, was to be punished as a spreader of false news. And care was taken to announce that the eating of fish was enforced not out of superstition, but solely out of respect to the increase of fishermen and mariners. The exemption of the sick from these penalties was abolished by James I., and justices were authorized to enter victualing houses and search and forfeit the meat found there. All these preposterous enactments were swept away in the reign of Victoria.
Of all the petty subjects threatening the cognizance of the law, none seems to have given more trouble to the ancient and mediæval legislatures than that of dress. * * * Yet views of morality, of repressing luxury and vice, of benefiting manufacturers, of keeping all degrees of mankind in their proper places, have induced the legislature to interfere, where interference, in order to be thorough, would require to be as endless as it would be objectless.
Solon prohibited women from going out of the town with more than three dresses. Zaleucus is said to have invented an ingenious method of circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear ear-rings—a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation, and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434, passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table, clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage. About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur.
The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so that they might not be mistaken for other women. And this was the law in the City of London, as appears from records of 1351 and 1382.
The views and objects of English legislators as to the general subject of dress, however preposterous in our eyes, were grave and serious enough. They were so confident of their ground that it was recited that 'wearing inordinate and excessive apparel was a displeasure to God, was an impoverishing of the realm and enriching other strange realms and countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of the realm, and leading to robberies.'
The Statute of Diet and Apparel in 1363, and the later statutes, minutely fixed the proper dress for all classes according to their estate, and the price they were to pay; handicraftsmen were not to wear clothes above forty shillings, and their families were not to wear silk or velvet. And so with gentlemen and esquires, merchants, knights and clergy, according to graduations. Ploughmen were to wear a blanket and a linen girdle. No female belonging to the family of a servant in husbandry was to wear a girdle garnished with silver. Every person beneath a lord was to wear a jacket reaching to his knees, and none but a lord was to wear pikes to his shoes exceeding two inches. (1463.) Nobody but a member of the royal family was to wear cloth of gold or purple silk, and none under a knight to wear velvet, damask or satin, or foreign wool, or fur of sable. It is true, notwithstanding all these restrictions, that a license of the king enabled the licensee to wear anything. For one whose income was under twenty pounds, to wear silk in his night-cap was to incur three months' imprisonment or a fine of ten pounds a day. And all above the age of six, except ladies and gentlemen, were bound to wear on the Sabbath day a cap of knitted wool. These statutes of apparel were not repealed till the reign of James I.
Sometimes, though rarely, a legislature has gone the length of suddenly compelling an entire change of dress among a people, for reasons at the time thought urgent.
In China a law was passed to compel the Tartars to wear Chinese clothes, and to compel the Chinese to cut their hair, with a view to unite the two races. And it was said there were many who preferred martyrdom to obedience.
So late as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to all, as impeding their agility in scaling the craggy steeps of their native fastnesses. In 1748 the punishment assigned by the act of 1746 was changed into compulsory service in the army.
Plato says it is one of the unwritten laws of nature that a man shall not go naked into the market-place or wear woman's clothes. The Mosaic law forbade men to wear women's clothes, which was thought to be a mode of discountenancing the Assyrian rites of Venus. The early Christians, following a passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.), treated the practice of men and women wearing each other's clothes as confounding the order of nature, and as liable to heavy censure of anathema.
There was formerly rigorous punishment of persons poaching game with blackened faces. Those who hunted in forests with faces disguised were declared to be felons. And as disguises led to crime, and mummers often were pretenders, all who assumed disguise or visors as mummers, and attempted to enter houses or committed assaults in highways, were liable to be arrested and committed to prison for three months, without bail.
The Mosaic law prohibited the practice of using alhenna, or putting an indelible color on the skin, as was done on occasions of mourning, or in resemblance of the dead, or in honor of some idol. And two fashions of wearing the beard and hair were prohibited, as has been supposed, on account of idolatrous association. Even Bacon said he wondered there was no penal law against painting the face.
(To be Continued.)
LIBERTY IN COMMON LIFE.
By Bolton Hall.IT seems to me that none of us see how far-reaching freedom will be.
The Socialists have abundantly shown that if only the wastes of production and distribution were saved, two or three hours' labor per day would produce all that we produce now. If, in addition to this saving, the land, including all the resources of nature, were opened to labor, so that all workers would use the best parts of the earth to the best advantage, wealth would be so abundant that interest would disappear.
Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the restrictions on the issue of money and our crazy banking system, interest is decreasing so that we find it hard to get 4 per cent. here.
Suppose to-day the mortgages and railroad bonds, which are forms of ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what interest could we get? Certainly not one per cent.
Were the restrictions on production of the tariff, taxes on products of labor, patent monopolies, hindrances to the making of money through franchise privileges done away with, and above all were private appropriation of rent abolished, wealth would not be so abundant and so easy to obtain that it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account of what he had 'lent' to another. With the disappearance, at once, of interest and of the fear of poverty the motive for accumulations of more than would be sufficient to provide against disability or old age will disappear, while such small but universal accumulations made available by a system of mutual banking will provide ample capital for all needed enterprises.
Co-operation will spring up as a labor-saving device, and the great abilities of the trust managers will be turned to public service instead of public plunder.
Henry George is wrong in thinking that the increased demand for capital due to free opportunities for labor would increase interest. If it did, it would perpetuate a form of slavery. He omits to notice that the very use of the capital would reproduce wealth and capital so much more abundantly that it would destroy the motive for accumulation.
The time will come—it is even now at hand—when dollars and meals and goods will be given to those who ask these as freely as candies or water or cigars are offered to visitors. If I am wrong in this, then I am wasting my efforts, as far as sincere efforts can be wasted.
If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the wrong road.
At present, hardly any one favors these views—of course, not plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for the land one uses as a form of tax; not even single taxers, as yet, because they are wedded to the theory of Henry George.
My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth.
The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action against reaction, so that all is and always must be well.
Do not shy at truth for fear of its logical consequence.
STATISTICS.
By H. Kelly.
(Special Cable Despatch to 'The Sun.')
'London.—The result of the first organized census of the British Empire is issued in a Blue Book. It shows that the empire consists of an approximate area of 11,908,378 square miles, or more than one-fifth of the entire land area of the world.
'The population is about 400,000,000, of whom 54,000,000 are whites. The population is roughly distributed as follows: In Asia, 300,000,000; Africa, 43,000,000; Europe, 42,000,000; America, 7,500,000, and Australasia, 5,000,000.
'The most populous city after London is Calcutta. The highest proportion of married persons is in India, Natal, Cyprus and Canada. The lowest is in the West Indies. Depression in the birth rate is general almost everywhere, but is most remarkable in Australasia. The proportion of insane persons in the colonies is much below that in the United Kingdom. Insanity is markedly decreasing in India, despite consanguineous marriages. Indeed, the theory that such marriages produce mental unsoundness is little supported by these statistics.'
To those who read without preconceived notions, the figures given above show how history repeats itself. The British Empire is decaying at the centre, and the census just taken proves it conclusively. The proportion of insane in the colonies, even in poor famine-stricken India, is 'much below' that in the United Kingdom. Striking as these figures on insanity are, they convey but a part of the truth as to the real condition of the people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as all reference to their material well-being (if we were Christians we would add and spiritual, for over one million people in these countries never heard of God) is carefully omitted. Charles Booth, author of that truly great work, 'Life and Labor in London,' seventeen volumes, estimates that 30 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom live in a state of poverty, and Seebohm Rowntree, author of 'Poverty, A Study of Town Life,' puts it at 27.84 per cent. Mr. Rowntree also states that an average of one person in five, or 20 per cent. of the population, die in some public institution, i. e., prison, poor-house, hospital or insane asylum. These statements are depressing enough as they are, but they become worse when we learn that the standard of living upon which they are based are those enjoyed—we use the word advisedly—by poor-house inmates. Think of this, ye Pharisees, Christian and otherwise, 30 per cent. of the population of the British Isles living under such conditions! These are not the idle statements of long-haired reformers or yellow journalists, but of two very estimable Christian gentlemen, both of them manufacturers and successful business men. They are different from the ordinary exploiter only in the sense of being honest and humane enough to recognize that something is radically wrong with modern civilization and make an earnest attempt to remedy it.
In this connection it is worthy of note that when the proprietors of the London 'Daily News' had a systematic canvas and investigation made into the housing conditions in London, some six or seven years ago, it was found that 900,000 people, one-fifth of the population, were living in violation of the law. This was the case notwithstanding that the law says 400 cubic feet of air space for each adult and 200 cubic feet for each child must be provided, whereas Professor Huxley, who at one time was a physician in the East End of London, said at least 800 cubic feet for an adult and 400 cubic feet for a child was absolutely necessary to keep the air in a fair state of purity.
It was and is the proud boast of millions of people that they are co-inheritors of this glorious empire, an empire the greatest the world has ever seen: 400,000,000 souls and an area so vast that the sun never sets on all its parts at one time. Pete Curran, the Trade Unionist and Socialist, once remarked he knew parts of the empire upon which the sun never shone, and Pete knew.
Glory and aggrandizement based upon injustice brings its own reward, and when a people subjugate and exploit another, they must inevitably pay the price of their own brutality and injustice. The handwriting is on the wall in the shape of the present census report. Decaying at the centre, the British Empire is rapidly going the way of the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, and her name will be synonymous with injustice as theirs are. Nations no more than individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. Not freedom to exploit a weaker person or people, not justice before the law which is a mockery and a sham, but freedom for each to live his own life in his own way, and justice to all in the shape of equal opportunity to the earth and all it may contain.
This lesson applies equally to America, and if any of my countrymen are so blind as not to see it, they deserve pity rather than censure, and it is to be hoped their awakening will not long be delayed.
GERHART HAUPTMANN WITH THE WEAVERS OF SILESIA.
By Max Baginski.
WHEN I look at the last engraving in the illustrated edition of 'Hannele,' at the Angel of Death with the impenetrable brow, over whom Hannele passes into the region of beauty, I have the consciousness, that that is Gerhart Hauptmann, such is the inexhaustible wealth of his inner world.
The stress of the life effort and the certainty of death, groping forth from delicate intimacies, ripened the fineness and sweetness of this man's soul. The picture contains transitoriness, finiteness, yet also a vista of new formation, new land.
Of Gerhart Hauptmann one can say, his art has given meaning to the idea of human love, which in this period is looked upon with suspicious eyes as a bad coin, a new impetus, the reality and symbolic depth of which grips the heart. Out of his books one can draw life more than literature. A strong soul-similarity with Tolstoi might be observed, I think, if Hauptmann were a fighting spirit.
I met the poet among the weavers of the Eulengebirge, Silesia, in the districts of greatest human misery, February, 1891, in Langenbielau, the large Silesian weaving village. One evening, on my return from a journey, I was informed that a tall gentleman in black had inquired for me. The name of the stranger was Gerhart Hauptmann, who came to study the conditions of the weaving districts. The visitor had taken lodgings in the 'Preussischen Hof,' where I called on him the same evening, with joyous expectation. The name of Gerhart Hauptmann in those days seemed to contain a watchword, a battle call: not only against the unimportant thrones of literature at that time but also against social oppression, prejudices and moral crippling. Hauptmann's first drama, 'Vor Sonnenaufgang,' had just appeared and been produced by the Free Stage in Berlin; and had operated like an explosive. It was followed by a flood of vicious and vile criticism. The literary clique little imagined that the future held great success for such 'stuff' both in book form and on the stage.
This lamentable lack of judgment misled the various pot-boiler writers to attack the new tendency with the most repulsive arguments. One leading paper of those days wrote of Hauptmann as an individual of a pronounced criminal physiognomy, of whom one could expect nothing else but dirty, appalling things.
Such literary highway assaults made one feel doubly happy over the fact, that together with Hauptmann were a few splendidly armed fighters, like the aged Fontane, with his great poise and fine exactness.
The first impression of Hauptmann was that he was not a man of easy social carriage, rather discreet, almost shy, and uncommunicative. An absorbed, deep dreamer, yet a keen observer of the human all too human, not easily led astray, not Goethe, rather Hoelderlin.
The guest room of the 'Preussischen Hof' contained many empty benches. The keeper thereof had ample time to meditate over the mission of the strange gentleman, in the weaving districts. I learned the next morning that he had quite decided that Hauptmann was some government emissary, intrusted with examining the prevailing distress of the weavers. One thing, however, appeared suspicious, the man associated with the 'Reds,' who, according to the government newspaper, only exaggerated the need and poverty to incite the people for their own political ends.
Whether or not the misery of the weavers that winter had reached such a point as to warrant an official investigation, had been the topic of discussion for weeks. The State Attorney, too, had taken an active part in the matter. The criticism in the labor paper, 'The Proletarian,' of which I was the editor, that the exorbitant profit-making methods of the manufacturers, which left the workers nothing to live on, were met with a number of indictments against the paper on the following grounds: 'It was indictable to incite the public at the moment when the prevailing poverty was in itself sufficient to arouse the people and cause danger; that this was criminal, and therefore punishable. The distress was thereby officially acknowledged; was that not sufficient? Why then hold the conditions up before the special attention of the people?'
We mapped out a tour through the home-weaving settlements. At Langenbielau, the textile industry had to a large extent been carried on in mills and factories and at a higher wage. Misery was not so appalling and hopeless there, as in the huts of the home weavers.
The following days unrolled a horrible picture before the eyes of the poet. The figures of Baumann and Ansorge from his play 'The Weavers' became real.
With mute accusation on their lips, they moved before the human eye in tangible shape; yet one longed to believe they were only phantoms. They lived, but how they lived was a burning shame to civilization. Huts, standing deep in the snow, like whitened sepulchres, and despair staring from every nook, in these days of paternal care, just as at the time of the famine that swept across the district in 1844.
Strewn among the hills and valleys lay bits of industry that had been passed by technical progress, as so many damned, spooklike spots; and yet those, who vegetated, worked and gradually perished here, were compelled to compete with the great productive giants of steel and iron machinery.
The poet entered these homes not with the spirit of a cool observer, nor as a samaritan,—he came as man to man, with no appearance of one stooping to poor Lazarus. Indeed, it seemed as though Hauptmann walked with a much steadier gait in the path of human misery, than on the road of conventionality.
Steinseifersdorf, situated beyond Peterswaldau. A bare snow field, spread about huts of clay, shingles and branches, without a sign of life. Neither a cat, dog nor sparrow, not even chimney smoke, to indicate the activity of the inhabitants. Heated dwellings in this stretch of land are luxuries, difficult of achievement; and how is one to prepare a warm meal out of nothing?
We attempted to enter one of the huts to the right; there was no path leading to it, so that we were compelled to work our way through the deep snow. Was it possible that human beings breathed within? The old weather-worn shanty looked as if the slightest breeze would tumble it over. The few wooden steps, leading to the entrance, creaked underneath our steps, and our knock was met with dead silence. We knocked again, and this time heard a faint step slowly moving toward the door; a heavy wooden bolt was moved aside, and we perceived a human face, with the expression of a wounded, frightened animal. Like a delinquent, caught at the offense, the human being at the door stared at the invaders. Not a ray of hope enlivened the dead expression. No doubt the man had long ceased to expect amelioration of his needs from his fellow beings. The figure was covered with rags, and what rags! Not the kind of rags, that tramps wear and which they throw off when luck strikes them, but eternal rags, that seemed to have grown to the skin, to have mingled with it so long that they had become part of it,—disgustingly filthy, but the only cover he had and that he could not throw away.
The man, about fifty years of age, was silent and led us through a dirty, cold gray entry into a room. In front of the loom we observed the drooping figure of a woman, a cold oven, four dirty, wet walls, at one of them a wooden bunk also covered with rags that served as bedding; nothing else. The man murmured something to the woman, she rose; both had inflamed eyes, water dripping from them with the same monotony as from the walls.
Hauptmann began to speak hesitatingly, depressed by the sight of such misery. He received a few harsh replies. The last piece of cloth had been delivered some time since; there was neither bread, flour, potatoes, coal nor wood in the house; in fact, no food or fuel of any sort. This was said in a subdued, fearful voice, as if they expected severe censure or punishment. Hauptmann gave the woman some money. The thought of going without leaving sufficient for a supply of food at least for the next few days, was agony.
On the widening of the road stood the village inn. The guest room showed little comfort, the innkeeper looked worn and in bad spirits. No trade. Innkeepers of factory towns are better off. They can afford guest rooms of a higher order, since they enjoy the patronage of bookkeepers, clerks and teachers. In Steinseifersdorf one had to depend on the weavers, and that did not bring enough for a square meal, especially in the winter. The wife of the innkeeper assured us that the misery in Kaschbach, a neighboring village, was even greater, even more awful. It was getting late, so we decided to go there the following day.
Our conversation on our ride homeward dwelt on the fate of these unfortunates, condemned by modern industrialism to a life of the Inferno. I asked Hauptmann what an effect an artistic, dramatic representation of such a fate could possibly have. He replied that his inclinations were more for summernight's dreams toward sunny vistas, but that an impelling inner force urged him to use this appalling want as an object of his art. As for the hoped-for effect, human beings are not insensible; even the most satisfied, the most comfortable or rich must be gripped in his innermost depths when pictures of such terrible human wretchedness are being unrolled before him. Every human being is related to another.
My remark that the right of possession has the tendency to blind those who are part of it, Hauptmann would not accept as generally true. He was anxious to bring the sympathies of the wealthy into energetic activity; sympathies that would, of course, bring to the poor real relief from their hideous conditions. He added that the poverty of the masses had at times tortured him to such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to their own conditions.
At that time, I believe, Hauptmann had already completed his 'Weavers.' His journey into the weaving district was not to collect material for the structure of that tremendous play, rather than it was devoted to details, localities and landscapes. He had already drawn up the outline for his other play, 'College Crampton,' portraying a genial and joyous man, of whom narrowness and miserableness of surroundings make a caricature and who is finally wrecked.
Langenbielau, after our journey through the Golgatha of poverty, seemed a place of relief. The mills, with the increasing noise of machines that dulls the ears and racks the nerves, are by no means an elevating sight, but they bring the workingmen together and awaken their feeling and understanding of solidarity and the necessity for concerted action. Here, in spite of sunken chests, great fatigue, poor nourishment, one felt the breeze of the struggling proletarian mind that indicated a new land of regeneration, beyond the misery of our times.
For one of the evenings a gathering of the older weavers was arranged. Hauptmann had a plate set for each one. During the meal a lively discussion developed. There was one weaver, Mathias, very bony, and with a skin like parchment, very poor, but blessed with many children. He related of a bet he had won. The owner of the tavern where we were having our feast had expressed doubt as to the ability of Mathias to consume three pounds of pork at once. He volunteered to do it, if the meat would be paid for and a quantity of beer added to it. A neighbor was intrusted with the preparation of the roast. At the appointed hour Mathias appeared, together with two other men as witnesses of the contest. The prize eating began, when Mathias was confronted by an obstacle: Five children belonging to the neighbor surrounded the table, with their eyes widely opened at the unusual sight of a roast. Their little faces expressed great desire and their mouths began to water. The prize eater felt very uncomfortable before the longing look of the children. He imagined himself a hard-hearted guzzler, only concerned about his own stomach. He forgot the bet, cut up some of the meat and was about to place it before the children, when a howl of protest arose. This was not permitted, if he wanted to win he would have to eat the entire roast himself. Mathias submitted, but dropped his eyes in shame before the children. Time and again he involuntarily passed portions of meat to them, but his attempts were frustrated by renewed protests. He could not continue, however, until the little ones were taken out into the cold. There was no other place, since the only room was taken up by the parties concerned in the contest. They might have been put into the cold, dark garret, but that would have been too cruel and would have made Mathias unable to carry out the feat. The undertaking was finished, but the winner felt quite wretched; he was conscious of having committed a great sin against the simplest of human demands.
The conversation turned to the uprising of the weavers in 1844. Many incidents of those days were related. Various legend-like and fantastic stories told. Also names of people of the neighborhood who had participated in that historic event.
The entire affair was very informal and simple, and not an atom of the oppressive atmosphere one feels in the relations between the members of the upper and lower stations of life.
The next morning we started for Kaschbach. The place looked even more dismal than the one we had visited the day previous. In one of the huts a weaver, with a swollen arm in a sling, led us into a corner of the room. On a bunk covered with straw and rags lay a woman with a little baby near her. Its body was covered with a terrible rash, perfectly bare, almost hidden within the floor rags. The shy father, himself in pain, stood near, the personification of helplessness. If only there were food in the house! The district physician? He would have been compelled to prescribe food, light, warmth and sanitation for every hut he visited, if he did not wish his science to prove a mockery. He could not do that, so he came but rarely. Humanitarianism, thus far your name is impotency! All that could be done was to leave money and hurry out into the air.
The next abode might be considered pleasant compared with the previous one. Two elderly people, not so worn and wan, and not so ragged. The man was weaving, still having some work at times; his wife, very pleasant and amiable, was almost ready to praise the good fortune of their home. 'We are better off than our neighbors,' she said with some pride. She pointed to a freshly cut loaf of bread, to the fire in the oven, to a table and a real bed—a great fortune, indeed. The walls were covered with some colored prints, representing virtue, patience, endurance to the end. One picture showed the return of the prodigal son, one the ejection of Hagar from the house of Abraham. Our hostess could boast of the luxury of a coffee mill even, and, after she had ground and brewed the coffee, we were invited to partake of it, which we gratefully did. Local and general affairs were talked over; the man, quite talkative, but careful and reticent in his remarks, especially when religious and political questions were approached. His remarks were kept within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence toward strangers.
Hauptmann sat on a low stool, and, while we were sipping our coffee, the woman petted him tenderly on the brow. 'Yes, yes, young man, Want, the awfulness of Want, but we cannot complain.' At our departure, she pointed to a hut nearby and said: 'The people in there are nearly starved.' It was not exaggerated. When we entered, we saw a woman in the dismal gray of the room, surrounded by a number of crying children. Two or three of the maturer girls, thin and pale and drawn out by the Procrustean bed of poverty, secretly wiped the last drops of tears from their suffering faces. Hunger reigned supreme within these walls. The woman, in the last stage of pregnancy, suffered the keenest under the lamentations of the younger children, to whom she could give no food. The husband had been gone two days on a begging tramp. He would surely bring home something, though it was very difficult to get anything in this neighborhood. One must tramp a long distance for a piece of bread. Yesterday they could still obtain a few potatoes, but to-day she had nothing more to give, nor did she know what to tell the children. She had implored the minister to let her have something to eat, if only a few morsels, but he had nothing himself, he said. The tightly pressed lips of the older girls trembled violently, every breath of the family was despair. Our presence had silenced the cries of the children with the frost-bitten faces, but when we left, they again would tear the heart of their mother, their weak little voices calling for bread.
No one could expect such fatalism from these starving little ones, that they should coolly and philosophically analyse the 'economic necessity' that condemned their parents to a desperate battle with hunger. The only thing that could perform miracles here was a coin. The poor woman did not dare to believe that she actually held one in her hand. That which was to secure these unfortunates relief from death, at the same moment fostered elsewhere conceit, corruption and extravagance, and is being used for the conversion of heathen to brotherly love. The terrible sight of this mother and her little ones conjured up the heartlessness and emptiness of all philanthropy and charity for dumb misery. Greatest of all social crimes, that makes the possibility of stilling the hunger of the little children dependent on money.
One morning Hauptmann and I went on foot to Reichenbach, where I introduced him to an old weaver, a Socialist, who had participated in the co-operative scheme proposed by Bismarck. The old man had much of interest to relate of this venture, that had been very meagerly assisted by the government. He said that the association could have survived, had it not been for the conspiracy of the manufacturers, who had a large capital at their disposal. The result of this, for the co-operative movement, was the closing of the market. At one time all the weaving products sent to the Leipzig Fair had to be transported back; a clandestine but effective boycott had made the sale thereof impossible. With much more gusto he related the days of Lassalle's agitation—that had brought life into the still limbs of the masses, a great change had seemed to be at hand. The wife of our old friend, too, had hoped for the change; but now, she remarked somewhat resigned, 'we old people would rejoice if we were confident that the young generation would live to bring about the change.'
In this house we met a widow with a thirteen-year-old daughter. Hauptmann found the child very striking. She had beautiful, soft, golden-blond hair, deep-set eyes and a very delicate, pale complexion. I learned later that he sent her occasional gifts. And when I read 'Hannele' I could not rid myself of the thought that the vision of this child from Reichenbach must have haunted him when he created this drama.
That was my last outing with Hauptmann in the textile regions. A few months later I visited him at his home, located in the woods, close to the edge of a mountain.
Still later, when I was serving a term of imprisonment at the Schweidnitzer prison for my sins in exercising too much freedom of the press, I was overjoyed one morning by the news that Hauptmann had sent me a box of books. Through his kindness, Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer and other authors have illumined many dreary days of my cell life.
All the books reached me safely but the 'Weavers,' which had just been published at that time, and that I could not get hold of, in spite of every effort. The inspector had strict orders to consider that book as contraband.
Every time I went into the office to change one book for another, I saw the 'Weavers' on the table. The temptation to shove the book under my jacket at an opportune moment was very great and trying, but unfortunately the State Attorney had instilled the idea into the head of the inspector that it was a very dangerous work; he never took his eyes from it.
Gerhart Hauptmann remained to the Schweidnitzer prison administration the most dangerous, prohibited author.DISAPPOINTED ECONOMISTS.
Teachers and economists represent the bees as models of diligence. Behold how these little hard workers gather the honey together! Not a sign of obstinacy. They never insist on a certain number of hours for their workday, nor do they crave time for leisure, meditation or rest. Indeed, they employ all their energies, so that the owner of the beehive shall gain high profits.
No matter if they gather a thousandfold as much honey as they can consume, they never seek iniquity. Man takes all their wealth from them, and in the spring, in the beautiful month of May, when the flower cups begin to fill, the little hustlers resume their work again without complaint and without murmur.
Probably some economists regret that workmen are not endowed by nature with such an instinct for work as would let them feel nothing else but the desire to accumulate wealth for others.
It is too bad, indeed, that house builders, railroad workers, miners, garment workers and farmers are creatures with thinking faculties. That they should be able to analyze, to compare, to draw conclusions is really very unfortunate for the 'Captains of Industry.'
Next to the bee, the Asiatic coolie is the favorite ideal of the every-day economist. In one respect he surpasses the bee—he does not destroy drones.
VITAL ART.
Anny Mali Hicks.
IN order to estimate the value of any movement, whether social, economic, ethical or esthetic, it must be studied in its relation and attitude to general progress. Its effectiveness should be judged by what it contributes to the growth of the universal conscience. That 'no man liveth unto himself alone' is never so true as now, because now it is more generally realized. Therefore, any expression which concerns itself solely with its own special field of action finds itself soon set aside, and presently becoming divorced from reality, ends as a sporadic type. Any expression, however, which responds to the larger life gains a vitality which insures its continuance.
Thus, the effort to apply certain truths not new in themselves, is a tendency to work in harmony with progress. The effort to apply principle, however imperfectly expressed, is important, not because of its results, but because of the desire to relate theory and action in a conduct of life. Almost every type of expression is undergoing its phase of application. Esthetics have somewhat aligned themselves to the others, but at last there is a movement, known as the arts and crafts movement, more properly called applied esthetics, which is the effort to relate art to life. The old banality, 'Art for Art's sake,' is obsolete, and the vital meaning of art is in a more rational and beautiful expression of life, as it were, the continent art of living well.
This is the ideal and educational aspect of applied esthetics. Within the limits of its exclusive circle and within the radius of its special activities there is a trend to contentment with the production of objects of 'worth and virtue.' The object of luxury, which in fact has no vital meaning to either the producer or consumer. Were the production of such things to be its only aim, it would soon defeat its own end. But this movement has in reality wider and more democratic ideals. Because of its power to stimulate self-expression and the creative impulses, its greatest and most vital influence is more social than artistic. It principally concerns itself with the desire of the worker to express in his work whatever impulse for beauty may be his. There is no surer way of feeling the pressure of present economic conditions. The value of applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an effort to get at its cause. It has been said that the most important part of progress is to make people think; it is vastly more important that they should feel. The average individual is not discontented with his surroundings, else he would go to work to change them. As a product of them he is benumbed by their mechanical influence, and consequently expresses himself within their limits. He is the mouthpiece of existing conditions, and, accordingly, acts in law-abiding fashion.
The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontaneous form of art, which is without purpose other than the expression of an impulse? This alone fosters the growth of the emotions.
Art, like justice, has many crimes committed in its name, and much called so that is merely a methodical and imitative performance. It is in no wise that spontaneous expression of life which, coming simply and directly as an impulse, takes a decorative or applied form. All the beginnings of art grew up in this way. In primitive peoples it is the first expression of emotional life, which comes after the material need is satisfied. The savage makes his spade or fish spear from the necessity of physical preservation. Thus from the joy of living he applies to it his feeling for beauty.
The earliest forms of art were all applied. Stone carving was applied to architecture, thus colored stones, called mosaics, as wall decorations; from these to the fresco; from the fresco to the pictorial form of painting. To-day the final degeneration of art is in the easel picture, which as an object detached and disassociated from its surroundings, takes refuge in the story-telling phase to justify its raison d'être. But, alas for the easel picture! alas, also, for the usual illustration, without which most literature would be so difficult to understand. In each case the one is there to help out the other's deficiency. Two important expressions of art, in a state of insubordination. It is the opera over again, where music and drama keep up an undignified race for prominence. Supposing an illustration were decorative in character echoing in a minor manner the suggested theme, would that not be a fitting background for the story-telling art? The Greeks knew very well what they were about when they introduced the relatively subordinate but decoratively important chorus into their dramas. This as well expresses their sense of relative proportion as does their sculpture and architecture.
What is decorative art, if not a sense of beauty applied to objects of use? That these need the emotional element as well as their element of service is as essential as the life breath in the body. It is the spark of divine fire which relates the actual to the ideal, resulting in the reality. It removes from our surroundings any influence which is solely mechanical. Applied art is alike because of its association with that which is necessary to life.
The test is necessity, not alone the physical, but likewise the emotional necessity, for all sides of our nature must be developed if life is to have full meaning and come to its maturity. The influence of applied esthetics is more vital because it is unconsciously absorbed through constant association. Imagine surroundings where everything which did not have a distinct use were eliminated and where everything else was distinctly fitted to its use. If this were put into practice in the usual household, a certain simplicity would be the result, to say the least. Most things with which we surround ourselves are neither useful nor beautiful. They are either so absurdly over-ornamented as to have their usefulness completely impaired, or else they are the usual mechanical device equally complicated and hideous. Ornament is usually an anomaly, added to cover structural defect. If the relation of the parts to the whole is perfect, beauty is there. But being accustomed to the over-ornamented and wholly mechanical, we do not resent their presence. For what, indeed, is habit not responsible? Even such innocent objects as pictures hang on our walls until they are scarcely noticed by us. Why not change them to suit our moods? Why not, indeed? There are so many of them, in the first place—and one remembers the time and trouble, even the family dissension which it took to hang them. But no one cares much, no one is alive enough to care much—the economic struggle which deadens our other senses is responsible for this also.
No unit of the social body can disentangle itself from existing conditions. Each is affected by all its influences. Some are more, some less, some are so much a part that they are not conscious. These last also suffer, but without knowing why. Vital education would show them. But the factory system pervades the school and art school as well as the factory.
What if the underlying force of education were spontaneous expression, instead of the limited method or system? The cry of the teacher is always, 'It is very well to be spontaneous, but we must deal with the child en masse.' The remedy for that is simple, because there is no real necessity to deal with children en masse. It is so much easier to apply the same system to each varied unit of a mass than to discover and help the individual expression of each. The basis of vital art, of vital education, is self-expression; from it and through it comes self-control. Self-repression is as socially uneconomic as jails and standing armies. If, instead of building prisons where human life is entombed, libraries where literature moulds, museums where art becomes archaic, why not establish centers of education, where spontaneous expression is encouraged, and where the soul, mind, and hand are simultaneously developed.
Think of a state where each individual working out from its own standpoint, truly without hypocrisy, would contribute his quota of individual life to the life of the whole. Pleasing himself in his work without fear. Then would come the true democracy, possible only under just economic conditions, where each has equal opportunity for self-expression. Then can the higher emotional life develop necessary to all human growth.How smoothly everything might run along in this world of material supremacy, if only the workers were made up of such a desirable mixture as the bees and coolies.
Fortunately, Fate hath not willed it so.
KRISTOFER HANSTEEN.
By Voltairine De Cleyre.'OF the earth, unearthly—'
The sentence remained unfinished as I had written it two years and a half ago when Disease laid its hand on me, and all my MSS. ended in a dash. It was a description of Kristofer Hansteen, an explanation of his work in Norway. And now that I am ready to pick up the thread of life again, I read that he is dead—of the earth no more, he who hardly ever belonged to it. At this moment the most insistent memory I have of that delicate, half-aërial personality are the words: 'When the doctors told me that I might perhaps not live longer than spring, I thought: 'If I die, what will become of Anarchism in Norway?'' He had no other idea of his meaning in life than this.
Somewhere fluctuant in my memory runs broken music—you have heard it?—'an ineffectual angel, beating his luminous wings within the void,'—something like that,—words descriptive of Shelley—they haunt me whenever I would recall Kristofer Hansteen. Perhaps to those who had known him in his youth, before his body was consumed like a half-spent taper, he might have seemed less spirit-like; but when I met him, three years ago this coming August, his eyes were already burning with ethereal fires, the pallor of waste was on the high, fine forehead, the cough racked him constantly, and there was upon the whole being the unnameable evanescence of the autumn leaf; only—his autumn came in summer.
The utter incapacity of the man before the common, practical requirements of life would have been irritating to ordinary individuals. The getting of a meal or the clothing of the body with reference to the weather, were things that he thought of vaguely, uncomfortably, only with forced attention. What he saw clearly, entranced by the vision, was the future—the free future. He had been touched by the wan wizard of Olive Schreiner's Dream of Wild Bees, and 'the ideal was real to him.' The things about him, other people's realities, were shadows—oppressive shadows, indeed, but they did not concern him deeply. It was the great currents of life he saw as real things, and among all the confusion of world-movements he could trace the shining stream that ran towards liberty; and with his hectic face and burning eyes he followed it, torn by the cough and parched by the fever.
The Hansteens are a well-known family in Norway, clever and often eccentric, Kristofer's aunt, Aosta Hansteen, at the time of my visit an old lady over eighty, having fought many a battle for the equality of woman both in Norway and America. Artist, linguist, and literary woman of marked ability, but, after the manner of her cotemporaries, rather outlandish and even outrageous in her attacks on masculine prerogative, she is a target for satirists and wits, few of whom, however, approach her virility of intellect. Her father, Kristofer's grandfather, was an astronomer and mathematician. In his youth Kristofer had gone afoot through the 'dals' of Norway, and when he took me through the art galleries of Kristiania he was a most interesting guide, through his actual acquaintance with the scenes and the characters of the dalesmen depicted. He knew the lights upon the snow and rocks, just what time of the year shone on the leaves, where the wood-paths wound, the dim glories of the mist upon the fjords, the mountain stairways in their craggy walls, and the veiled colors of the summer midnight. And he knew the development of Norwegian art life and literary life, as one who wanders always in those paths, mysteriously lit.
Our hours of fraternization were few but memorable. He was a frequent visitor at the house of Olav Kringen, the editor of the daily Social Democrat, a big, kindly Norseman, who had remembered me from America, and who had defended me in his paper against the ridiculous charge in the ordinary press that I had come there to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm. Through the efforts of Hansteen and the kindliness and largemindedness of Kringen and his Socialistic comrades, I spoke before the Socialistic League of Youth in their hall in Kristiania. The hall was crowded, over eight hundred being present, and there was some little money in excess of expenses, which was given to me. I shared it with Hansteen, and he looked up with a bright flash in his dark eyes: 'Now,' said he, ''Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner.' 'Til Frihet' (Towards Freedom) was his paper; and would you know how it came out? He set it up in his free moments, he did the mechanical work; and then, being too poor to pay for its delivery through the post, except the few copies that were sent abroad, he took it from house to house himself, over the hills of Kristiania!—he, a consumptive, the cough rending him!
There was a driving rain the night I left the city; he wore no rubbers or gum-coat. I was in hopes that he might think the propaganda deserved that its one active worker should get a pair of rubbers, since he must carry papers through the rain. I reminded him that he should keep his feet dry; he only glanced at them as if they were no concern of his, and—''Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner.'
It was in 'Til Frihet' that he had been guilty of high treason. It happened once that King Oscar, in temporary retirement from public king-business, had left over to the Crown Prince the execution of certain matters, which according to the 'Ground Law' of Norway could not be so left; whereupon Comrade Hansteen printed an editorial saying, 'Oscar has broken the ground-law, and there is no more a King in Norway.' For this he was charged with high treason, and to escape imprisonment he went to England, where he remained about a year among the London comrades. On his return, there was some threat of carrying out the prosecution, but, probably to avoid wider publication of the king's 'treason,' the matter was dropped. Previous to that Comrade Hansteen had had experience of prison life. In a May-day procession, ostensibly to include all labor reform or revolutionary parties, he, declaring that Anarchists should be given place too, marched, carrying a red flag. The chief of police directed a subordinate to take the flag away from him. Easily enough done, but not, as an evidence of unwilling submission, before he had struck the official in the face with his hand. That little hand, weak and delicate as a woman's! An ordinary man would have pushed it aside like a feather and thought no more of it; but the official paid tribute to the big will behind the puny flesh by sentencing him to seven months in prison.
My ignorance of Norwegian prevents my giving any adequate idea of his work. I know he was the author of a little pamphlet, 'Det frie samfund' (Free Society), and that he had translated and published one of Krapotkin's works (whether 'The State' or 'The Conquest of Bread,' I do not now remember), which he had issued in a series of instalments, intended ultimately to be bound together. As I recall the deep earnestness of his face in speaking of the difficulties he had had in getting it out, and the unsolved difficulties still facing its completion, I find myself wanting to pray that he saw that precious labor finished. It was so much to him. And I prophecy that the time will come when young Norwegians will treasure up those sacrificial fragments as dearer than any richer and fuller literature. They are the heart's blood of a dying man—the harbinger of the anarchistic movement in Norway.
I cannot say good-bye to him forever without a word concerning his personal existence, as incomprehensible to the practical as his social dreams perhaps. He had strong love of home and children; and once he said, the tone touched with melancholy: 'It used to pain me to think that I should die and have no son; but now I am contented that I have no son.' One knew it was the wrenching cough that made him 'contented.' A practical man would have rejoiced to be guiltless of transmitting the inheritance, but one could see the dreamer grieved. His eyes would grow humid looking at his little daughters; and indeed they were bright, beautiful children, though not like him. In his early wanderings he had met and loved a simple peasant woman, unlettered, but with sound and serviceable common sense, and with the beauty of perfect honesty shining in her big Norse-blue eyes. It was then and it is now a wonder to me how in that mystical brain of his, replete with abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, he placed his love for wife and children; strong and tender as it was, one could appreciate at once that he had no sense of the burden of practical life which his wife seemed to have taken up as naturally hers. The whole world of the imagination wherein he so constantly moved seemed entirely without her ken, yet this did not seem to trouble either. Nor did the fact that his unworldliness doubled her portion of responsibility seem to cause him to reflect that she was kept too busy, like Martha of old, to 'choose that good part' which he had chosen. Thinking of it now, still with some sense of puzzlement, I believe his love for human creatures, and especially within the family relation, were of that deep, still, yearning kind we feel towards the woods and hills of home; the silent, unobtrusive presence fills us with rest and certainty, and we are all unease when we miss it; yet we take it for granted, and seldom dwell upon it in our active thoughts, or realize the part it plays in us; it belongs to the dark wells of being.
Dear, falling star of the northland,—so you have gone out, and—it was not yet morning.
FIFTY YEARS OF BAD LUCK.
By Sadakichi Hartmann.
EVERY occupant of the ramshackle, old-fashioned studio building on Broadway knew old Melville, the landscape painter, who had roughed life within its dilapidated walls for more than a score of years. In former years the studio building had been quite fashionable and respectable; there is hardly a painter of reputation in New York to-day who has not, once in his life, occupied a room on the top floor. But in these days of 'modern improvements,' of running water and steam heat, of elevators and electric lights, it has lost its standing and is inhabited by a rather precarious and suspicious clan of pseudo artists, mountebanks who vegetate on the outskirts of art; 'buckeye painters,' who turn out a dozen 20x30 canvases a day for the export trade to Africa and Australia; unscrupulous fabricators of Corots and Daubignys, picture drummers who make such rascality profitable, illustrators of advertising pamphlets, and so-called frescoe painters, who ornament ceilings with sentimental clouds, with two or three cupids thrown in according to the price they extort from ignorant parvenues.
And yet, no matter on what by-roads these soldiers of fortune wandered to earn their dubious livelihood, they all respected the white-bearded tenant, in his shabby gray suit, a suit which he wore at all seasons, and which time seemed to have treated just as unkindly as the bent and emaciated form of its wearer. Old Melville gave offense to nobody, and always had a pleasant word for everybody, but, as he was not talkative, and the other tenants were too busy to bother an old man painting, nobody knew much about his mode of living, the standard of his art, or his past history.
Very few had ever entered his studio—he had neither patrons nor intimate friends—and very likely they would not have enjoyed their visit. A peculiar gloomy atmosphere pervaded the room, almost sickening in its frugality, and as its skylight lay north, the sun never touched it. It had something chilly and uncanny about it even in summer. The floor was bare, furniture there was none, except an old worn-out kitchen table and chair, an easel and an old box which served as a bookcase for a few ragged unbound volumes. The comfort of a bed was an unknown luxury to him; he slept on the floor, on a mattress which in daytime was hidden with his scant wardrobe and cooking utensils in a corner, behind a gray faded curtain. His pictures, simple pieces of canvas with tattered edges, nailed to the four walls, leaving hardly an inch uncovered, were the only decoration and furnished a most peculiar wall paper, which heightened the dreariness of the room.
There was after all a good deal of merit to old Melville's landscapes; on an average they were much better than many of those hung 'on the line'; the only disagreeable quality was their sombreness of tone. He invariably got them hopelessly muddy in color, despite their resembling the color dreams of a young impressionist painter at the start. He worked at them so long until they became blurred and blotchy, dark like his life, a sad reflection of his unprofitable career.
It was nearly thirty years ago that he had left his native town and had come to New York as a boy of sixteen. He already knew something of life then; at an early age he had been obliged to help to support his family, and had served an apprenticeship as printer and sign painter. In New York he determined to become an artist: a landscape painter, who would paint sunshine as had never been done before; but many years elapsed before he could pursue his ambition. Any amount of obstacles were put in his way. He had married and had children, and could only paint in leisure hours, all his other time being taken up in the endeavor to provide for his family, by inferior work, inferior decoration, etc. Not before years of incessant vicissitudes, heart-rending domestic troubles and sorrow, not before his poor wife had died of consumption—that awful day when he had to run about all day in the rain to borrow money enough to bury her!—and his children had been put in a charitable institution, he took up painting as a profession. Then the hard times, which are proverbial with struggling artists without means, began; only they were easier to bear, as he was suffering alone. In days of dispossess and starvation he had at least his art to console him, and he remained true to her in all those years of misery, and never degraded himself again to 'pot boiling.' In hours of despair, he also tried his hand at it, but simply 'couldn't do it.' Now and then he had a stroke of luck, a moderate success, but popularity and fame would not come. His pictures were steadily refused by the Academy. Every year he made a new effort, but in vain.
One day, when one of his large pictures was exhibited in the show window of a fashionable art store, a rich collector stepped out of his carriage and, entering the store, asked, 'How much do you want for the Inness you have in the window?' The picture dealer answered, 'It is no Inness, but just as good a piece of work.' 'No Inness!' ejaculated the man who wanted to buy a name, 'then I don't want it,' and abruptly left the store. This event, trifling as it was, threw a pale halo over old Melville's whole life and gave him strength to overcome many a severe trial. He hoped on, persevering in his grim fight for existence, despite failures and humiliation.
But the years passed by, and he still sat there in his studio, and in its emptiness, its walls covered with his dark and unsold pictures, whose tone seemed to grow darker with every year. He was one of those sensitive beings who continually suffer from the harsh realities of life, who are as naive as children, and therefore as easily disillusionized, and nevertheless cannot renounce their belief in the ideal. Not a day passed that he did not sit several hours before his easel, trying to paint sunshine as it really is. Nobody in this busy world, however, took notice of his efforts or comprehended the pathos of old Melville's life, those fifty years of bad luck. And yet such martyr-like devotion to art, such a glorious lifelong struggle against fate and circumstances, is so rare in modern times that one might expect the whole world to talk about it in astonished admiration.
And how did he manage to get along all this time, these twenty-five years or more, since 'pot boiling' had become an unpardonable crime to him? Now and then he borrowed a dollar or so, that lasted him for quite a while, as his wants were almost reduced to nothing. Of course he was always behind in the rent, but as he sometimes sold a sketch, he managed somehow to keep his studio. He did not eat more than once a day. 'Too much eating is of no use,' he consoled himself, and in this respect he had many colleagues in the fraternity of art, as more than one-half of our artists do not manage to get enough to eat, which fact may explain why many paint so insipidly.
A few days before his sudden death, an old gentleman, a chance acquaintance, was talking with him about the muddy coloring of the pictures. Old Melville's eyes wandered over the four walls representing a life's work; at first he ardently argued in their favor, but finally gave in that they, perhaps, were a little bit too dark. 'Why do you not take a studio where you can see real sunlight; there is one empty now with Southern exposure, right in this building.' Old Melville shook his head, murmuring some excuses of 'can't afford it,' of 'being used so long to this one,' but his visitor insisted, 'he would pay the rent and fix matters with the landlord.' The good soul did not understand much about painting, about tones and values, but merely wanted to get the old man into a more cheerful room.
It was difficult for old Melville to take leave of his studio, in which he had seen a quarter of a century roll by, which he had entered as a man in the best years of his life, and now left as an old man; but when he had moved into the new room, the walls of which were an agreeable gray, he exclaimed, 'How nice and light!' After arranging his few earthly possessions, he brought out a new canvas, opened a side window, sat down once more before his easel, and gazed intently at the sunshine streaming in and playing on the newly painted and varnished floor.
For years he had wielded the brush every day, but on this day he somehow could not paint; he could not find the right harmony. He at first attributed it to a cold which he had contracted, but later on, irritated and somewhat frightened, he mumbled to himself, 'I fear I can't paint in this room.' And thus he sat musing at his easel with the blank canvas before him, blank as once his youth had been, full of possibilities of a successful career, when suddenly an inspiration came upon him. He saw before him the orchard of his father's little Canadian farm, with the old apple trees in bloom, bathed in the sweet and subtle sunlight of spring, a scene that for years had lain hidden among the faint, almost forgotten memories of his childhood days, but now by some trick of memory was conjured up with appalling distinctiveness. This he wished to realize in paint, and should he perish in the effort!
Feverishly he seized his palette and brushes, for hours and hours he painted—the sunlight had long vanished from his studio floor, a chill wind blew through the open window and played with his gray locks—and when the brush at last glided from his hand he had accomplished his lifelong aim—he had painted sunshine.
Slowly he sank back in his chair, the arms hanging limp at his sides, and his chin falling on his chest, an attitude a painter might adopt gazing at a masterpiece he had just accomplished—in this case old Melville's painting hours were over for evermore, his eyes could no longer see the colors of this world. Like a soldier he had died at his post of duty, and serene happiness over this final victory lay on his features. In every life some ideal happiness is hidden, which may be found, and for which we should prospect all our days. Old Melville had attained his little bit of sunshine rather late in life, but he had called it his own, at least for however short a moment, while most of us others, whom life treats less scurvily, blinded by foolish and selfish desire, cannot even succeed in grasping material happiness, which crosses our roads quite often enough and stands at times right near us, without being recognized.
And the fate of old Melville's pictures? Who knows if they may not some day, when their colors have mellowed, be discovered in some garret, and re-enter the art world in a more dignified manner? True enough, they will not set the world on fire, yet they may be at least appreciated as the sincere efforts of a man who loved his art above all else, and, despite deficiencies, had a keen understanding for nature and considerable ability to express it. Whatever their future may be, his work has not been in vain. It is the cruel law of human life that hundreds of men must drudge their whole lives away in order that one may succeed, not a bit better than they; in the same way in art, hundreds of talents must struggle and suffer in vain that one may reach the cloud-wrapped summit of popularity and fame. And that road is sure to lead over many corpses, and many of the nobler altruistic qualities of man have to be left far behind in the valley of unknown names.
Life was brutal to you, old Melville! But this way or that way, what is the difference?
There was a time when in the name of God and of true faith in Him men were destroyed, tortured, executed, beaten in scores and hundreds of thousands. We, from the height of our attainments, now look down upon the men who did these things.
But we are wrong. Amongst us there are many such people, the difference lies only here—that those men of old did these things then in the name of God, and of His true service, whilst now those who commit the same evil amongst us do so in the name of 'the people,' 'for the true service of the people.'—Leo Tolstoy.
Books to be had through Mother Earth
The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia; Their Migration to Canada. By Joseph Elkins . . $2.00
Moribund Society and Anarchism. By Jean Grave . . 25c.
Education and Heredity. By J. M. Guyau . . $1.25
A Sketch of Morality—Independent of Obligation and Sanction. By J. M. Guyau . . $1.00
American Communities: New and Old Communistic, Semi-Communistic, and Co-Operative. By W. A. Hinds . . $1.00
History of the French Revolution. (An excellent work for students. It begins with a sketch of history of the earliest times; the decline of the ancient empires, the rise of the French monarchy, and traces the causes which made the Revolution inevitable. The philosophic conclusion is unsurpassed, and the position taken, laying a foundation for the philosophy of freedom, is bound to attract the attention of thinkers.) By C. L. James. Reduced to . . 50c.
Origin of Anarchism. By C. L. James . . 5c.
Fields, Factories, and Workshops. By Peter Kropotkin . . 50c.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. By Peter Kropotkin. Reduced to . . $1.20
Memoirs of a Revolutionist. By Peter Kropotkin. Reduced to . . $1.60
Modern Science and Anarchism. By Peter Kropotkin . . 25c.
Ideals of Russian Literature. By Peter Kropotkin . . $2.00
The State: Its Role in History. By Peter Kropotkin . . 10c.
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal. By Peter Kropotkin . . 5c.
The Wage System. By P. Kropotkin . . 5c.
Anarchist Morality. By P. Kropotkin . . 5c.
History of Civilization In England. By Henry Thomas Buckle . . $2.00
England's Ideal and other Papers on Social Subjects. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Civilization: Its Cause and Cure. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Love's Coming of Age. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Towards Democracy. By Ed. Carpenter . . $2.50
The Chicago Martyrs: The Famous Speeches of the Eight Anarchists in Judge Gary's Court, and Gov. Altgeld's Reasons for Pardoning Fielden, Neebe and Schwab . . 25c.
Books to be had through Mother Earth
Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History. By Antonio Labriola . . $1.00
Wealth Against Commonwealth. By H. D. Lloyd . . $1.00
Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. By O. Mason. Leather, reduced to $1.50. Cloth, reduced to . . $1.00
Superstition in All Ages. By Jean Meslier. Cloth . . $1.00
News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest. By William Morris . . 60c.
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Friedrich Nietzsche . . $2.50
Rights of Man. By Thomas Paine . . 25c.
The Martyrdom of Man. By Winwood Reade . . $1.00
The Science of Life. By J. Arthur Thomson . . 75c.
Pages of Socialist History. By W. Tcherkesoff . . 25c.
The Slavery of Our Times. By Leo Tolstoy . . 75c.
Bethink Yourself. By Leo Tolstoy . . 10c.
Church and State. By Leo Tolstoy . . 15c.
Volney's Ruins: or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature . . 75c.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol. By Oscar Wilde . . 10c.
The Soul of Man under Socialism. By Oscar Wilde . . 50c.
De Profundis. By Oscar Wilde . . $1.25
Intentions. By Oscar Wilde . . $1.50
Plays. By Oscar Wilde. 2 vols . . $2.50
Life Without a Master. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
The New Dispensation. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
Living Thoughts. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
Paris and the Social Revolution. By J. Sanborn . . $3.50
Anarchism: Is It All a Dream? By E. Malatesta and J. F. Morton, M.A. . . 5c.
Who Is the Enemy; Anthony Comstock or You? A Study of the Censorship. By Edwin C. Walker . . 25c.
All Orders, Money Prepaid, to be sent to E. GOLDMAN, Box 217,Madison Square Station, New York City.
THE BOOKS OF ERNEST CROSBY
Garrison the Non-Resistant. 16mo, cloth, 144 pages, with photogravure portrait, 50c.; by mail . . 55c.
Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable. A collection of chants in the cause of justice and brotherhood. 12mo, cloth, 188 pages, $1.50; by mail, $1.62. Paper, 40c.; by mail . . 44c.
Captain Jinks, Hero. A keen satire on our recent wars, in which the parallel between savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. Profusely illustrated by Dan Beard. 12mo, cloth, 400 pages, postpaid . . $1.50
Swords and Plowshares. A collection of poems filled with the hatred of war and the love of nature. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 12mo, cloth, 126 pages, $1.20; by mail . . $1.29
Tolstoy and His Message. 'A concise and sympathetic account of the life, character and philosophy of the great Russian.'—New York Press. 'A genuinely illuminative interpretation of the great philosopher's being and purpose.'—Philadelphia Item. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 16mo, cloth, 93 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster. An essay on education and punishment with Tolstoy's curious experiments in teaching as a text. 16mo, cloth, 94 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 53c.
Broad-Cast. New chants and songs of labor, life and freedom. This latest volume of poems by the author of 'Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable' and 'Swords and Plowshares' conveys the same message delivered with equal power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet. An illuminative essay, with selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid . . 20c.
THE BOOKS OF BOLTON HALL
Free America. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 75c.; by mail . . 80c.
The Game of Life. A new volume of 111 fables. Most of them have been published from time to time in Life, Collier's, The Outlook, The Century, The Independent, The Ram's Horn, The Pilgrim, The Christian Endeavor World, The Rubric, The New Voice, The Philistine and other papers and magazines. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, postpaid . . $1.00
Even as You and I. This is a presentation, by means of popular and simple allegories, of the doctrine of Henry George and the principle which underlies it. A part of the volume is an account of Tolstoy's philosophy, drawn largely from the Russian's difficult work, 'Of Life.' This section is called 'True Life,' and follows a series of thirty-three clever parables. Count Tolstoy wrote to Mr. Hall: 'I have received your book, and have read it. I think it is very good, and renders in a concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book.' 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 50 c.; by mail . . 54c.
MRS. GRUNDY.
By Viroqua Daniels.
Her will is law. She holds despotic sway.Her wont has been to show the narrow wayWherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave,From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave.
'Obey! Obey!' with sternness she commands.The high, the low, in great or little lands.She folds us all within her ample gown.A forward act is met with angry frown.
The lisping babes are taught her local speech;Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech.They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,- In everything the little tots obey.
The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims.They play her games. They sing her holy hymns.They question not; accept both truth and fiction,(The OLD is right, within her jurisdiction!).
Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow.She with contempt or ridicule may cow.They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate,At variance with the programs on her slate.
Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown,Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone.With great ado, they publicly conform-Vain, cowards, vain; revolt MUST raise a storm!
The 'indiscreet,' when hidden from her sight,Attempt to live as they consider 'right.'Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhereThe searchlight turn, and loudly shout, 'Beware!'
In tyranny the Mistress is supreme.'Obedience,' that is her endless theme.Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen,Her aid is sought by bosses over men.
Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised.From Ignorance, her bulky body body's sized.When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury.But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury.
Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foeTo ev'ry kind of progress, that we know,So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing.Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring.
A GREETING.
By Alexander Berkman.Dear Friends:-
I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of four teen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;-'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx-and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't-but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians.
It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning-my first breath of freedom in fourteen years-it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly. 'Welcome Home!' It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.
I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I was retired from the world-that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century-at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that, is different now-I thought as I left the prison-for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, 'its own mother wouldn't know it again.' And that -thought made me doubly happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in, the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellowmen.
Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils-automobiles you call them-and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads-talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps-and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any -ground at all.
These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face only. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings,. down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dias of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.
With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning, into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet. . . .
No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real. improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rationel, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization.
But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization?
Simply this:-a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie-the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams und unnameable able crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book, of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstitiion, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mighter and greater nation of the ancient world.
It is because of these thing that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways.
And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that nobelest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to be new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood.
HENRIK IBSEN
M.B.
I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of 'the sole Truth,' 'the only true principle.' The waves of his sould would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life.
He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society—he found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social foundations—its pillars shook: they were rotten.
The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust, and pain. In this mood he wrote 'The League of Youth,' in which he exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their ideals.
In 'The Enemy of the People' Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule. Doctor Stockmann—that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.
'What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!' cried the Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in 'Nora' (The Doll's House), 'Wild Duck,' and in 'The Ghosts'—living pictures revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of 'our sacred institutions,' 'our holy hearthstone.' In 'Rosmersholm' Ibsen ignored even the inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing them of the joy of life.
The moralists howled long and loud.
'Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?'
Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.
But can one read 'Brand' or 'Peer Gynt' and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves was a nightmare.
His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.
The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His attitude towards himself in his last work, 'When We Dead Awaken,' is that of the most unprejudiced judge.
What is the result?
We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down. Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.
A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress—for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes—which, by the way, is the real field of activity of the journalistic profession.
We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few 'happy' exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company against the slugging system of the reporters.
Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street—there the reporters made some miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons, of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of the Reds.
'Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of your members to take the life of some ruler?' they asked.
One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. 'Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in three days.'
This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They fled in terror.
Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th. He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with the following question, 'Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the battle of freedom, in your young days?'
'If the reports of my men are correct—and I am confident my men are more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet—you were even a Revolutionist?'
Carl Schurz nodded.
'And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?'
'There was no money in them,' Carl replied, sulkily.
The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, 'Add 5,000 tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary sinner.'
No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?
If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they would soon behold this trinity—the thief, the liar, and the hangman.
Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest force—love—must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire father-in-law for marrying his daughter.
Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, 'The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary.' How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of their capital!
Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the importance of those that give.
Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!
Again, philanthropy as a money mania—in one instance it feeds the clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.
Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries, maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding sea horses.
Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity, pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it all.
The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:
'Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of 'Crime in Chicago' was discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.
The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the same voice called:
'Down with America! Up with Anarchy!'
There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.
The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion and cries of 'Police!' 'They're murdering them!' 'Help!' rang out.
Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however, with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave, and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to Havel, said:
'That's all right, father.'
Ben Bansig saved Chicago,—there can be no dispute about that. As to Sercombe, the editor of To-Morrow, he deserves recognition. I suggest that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.
Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter—who, as I can authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel—can console themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.
That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the 'immoral conduct' of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and the dear little piggies grunt!
Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as its helpmates.
The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.
A LETTER.
Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.
Dear Editor:—I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised article for 'M. E.' Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit the story.
It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse—I have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love, honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred institutions, I sent them about their business.
Much as I realize the importance of my articles for Mother Earth, you cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for Earth's sake.
I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts; therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary—the curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment—objects to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening, and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for 'Mother Earth?'
But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my meetings were very successful, and that Mother Earth is being received with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.
After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police, just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, 'No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority and law.'
After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.
I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of Mother Earth, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care and affection.
Emma Goldman.
LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.
By Emile Janvion.AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.
Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be considered as the natural consequence of the latter.
Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character.
Our instruction should be integral, rational, and mixed.
Integral—Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free ensemble, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age.
Rational—Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction God, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection.
Mixed—Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness.
To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance.
To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the pros and cons of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.
That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly.
THE ANTICHRIST.
From 'The Antichrist,' by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Title, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York.
I make war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has thenlogical blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight-of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the false mode of seeing,-he demands that no other mode of perspective be longer of sacrosanct any value, after he has made his own with the names of 'God,' 'salvation,' and 'eternity.' I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly subterranean form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, must needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the judgment of value is turned right about, the concepts of 'true' and 'false' are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called 'true,' what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called 'false.'
Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a 'Transvaluation of all Values,' an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of 'true' and 'untrue.' The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the methods. All methods, all presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with 'honest' men-he passed for an 'enemy of God,' a despiser of truth, a possessed' person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala . . . We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us-their concept of that which truth ought to be, which the service of truth ought to be: every thou shalt' has been hitherto directed against us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent mistrustful mode all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible. -In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a picturesque effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our modesty was longest against the taste of mankind . . . Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God---.
The Christian concept of God-God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit-is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal yea, In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of 'this world,' for every lie of 'another world!' In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!
That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have. got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of decadence. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts-they have created no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an ultimatum and maximum of the God-shaping force, of the creator spiritus in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotone-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all decadence instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction!
Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible-the story of God's mortal terror of science? It has not been understood. This priest-book par excellence begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently 'God' has only one great danger.-
The old God, entire 'spirit,' entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man-man is entertaining . . . But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The first mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining-he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an 'animal'-God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium-but of other things also! Woman was the second mistake of God.-'Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera'-every priest knows that: 'from woman comes all the mischief in the world'-every priest knows that likewise. Consequently, science also comes from her . . . Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.-What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his greatest mistake, he had created a rival, science makes godlike; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!-Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself-it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alone is morality.-'Thou shalt not know;'-the rest follows therefrom.-By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one defend one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,-thoughts are bad thoughts . . Man shall not think-and the 'priest in himself'; contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all sickness,-nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not permit man to think, . . . And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,-what to do!The old God contrives war, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war . . . ).
War, among other things, a great disturber of science!-Incredible! Knowledge, the emancipation from the priest, augments even in spite of wars.-And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: 'man has become scientific,-- there is no help for it, he must be drowned!'
--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the entire psychology of the priest.-The priest knows only one great danger: that is science, -the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,-one must have superfluous time, one must have superfluous intellect in order to 'perceive' . . . Consequently man must be made unfortunate,-this has at all times been the logic of the priest. -One makes out what has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:-'sin' . . . The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole 'moral order of the world,' have been devised in opposition to science, -in opposition to a severance of man from the priest . . . Man is not to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is not to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to suffer . . . And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. A Saviour is needed.-The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of 'grace,' of 'salvation,' and of 'forgiveness'- lies through and through, and without any psychological reality-have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!-And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer 'natural,' but are supposed to be brought about by the conseptual spectres of superstition, by 'God,' by 'spirits,' by 'souls,' as mere 'moral' consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed-the greatest crime against mankind has been committed. Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation par excellence, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest rules by the invention of sin.
I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its 'humanitarian' blessings! To do away with any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it created states of distress in order to perpetuate itself eternally . . . The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state, of distress! ...-'Humanitarian' blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity! -Parasitism as the sole praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,-against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself . . .
This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,-I have letters for making even the blind see . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is, sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean,-I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!
BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.
By PETER KROPOTKIN.
IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father-a practical gardener-in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches-it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could 'idle' at a wheelwright's shop, so as to be come later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.
We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. 'The man of science,' they say, 'must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry.'
It may be objected that nevertheless There is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars-the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry-and of science as well, as I am about to prove-that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.
What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: 'The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers-not men of science nor trained engineers-have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?
'At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers have invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those 'nearly to nothings,' of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions-those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine-not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings- who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for naive improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together-unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions.' Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.
Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination, of both kinds of activities; and instead of 'technical education,' which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science-and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manuel production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being -accomplished in our miserably organized society. . .
The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections-the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical seetion. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge, of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences -so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated with their own hands , and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus-all for the trade-and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers-workers with university education -highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.
Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted-according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston-in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch-the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.
In America the same system has - been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual TrainingSchool, and later on in the Boston Technical School the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops-but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of 'through the hand to the brain,' and vice versa, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys work with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room, Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.
The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school. 1 It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment-not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments-has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skiled laborer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.
It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not took at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the Kindergarten--German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand-has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know I-low to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the 'lower classes only.' They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.
* * * * * * * * *
The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a clay would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work-if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age-say of forty or more-ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.
Footnote1. What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good institutions of the early part of his reign.
MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE
By Henriette Fuerth.
(Translated from the German for Mother Earth by Anny Mali Hicks.)
Knowledge becomes under-standing only when its scopeincludes the origin, the develop-ment and the conclusion ofthings.—Bachofen, 'Right toMotherhood.'
'THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far removed from its own.'
There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,—ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of sex relation.
But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion.
But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits.
And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer sex relations, encompassing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free individual. Then only will it be possible to base these needs and demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and spiritual phenomena.
But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else, subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much talked of marriage bond of to-day,—which is considered the cornerstone of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms, whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples of sex relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force.
'Goddesses enthroned in solitude,
Surrounded not by time or place,
These are the mothers!
About them formed and formless,
Eternal stability and endless change
In images of all created life.'
Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths.
And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child comes to them, with eyes brimming with childlike love and affection, against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which is a form men have given their sex relations, and established from the standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or change.
OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.
By Arthur G. Everett, N—M.
THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera—though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power—failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco.
Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that they dread to close their eyes in slumber.
While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women—yes, women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick baby down—and that without any justification other than the order of their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities—a natural result of governmental control—hence they are doing all they can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it seemed they else must be burned up—the excuse the soldiers gave for shooting them—and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot wounds.
Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in his possession and refusing to give it up—that the soldiers had plenty is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that they could walk with but difficulty—of their insulting women, and even far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject, 'Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity.' In this regard the same writer says most truly:
'The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,' according to their own definition of the term.'
In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.
These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism—the true name for Governmental Control—to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S. inscribed thereon to bring to the surface—like a plaster on a boil—all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.
THE GENIUS OF WAR
By John Francis Valter.
I am the Genius of War.My standard's the Skull and the Bones.I raise my voice—I stamp my foot,And legions rise out of the ground.Armies advance and retreat,Poisoned, diseased and maimed:All that is left is a grewsome aspectTo the moonlight, the ghouls and Me.All this to a laudable end:—The general has his star;Shylock his four per cent;The contractor's wife a costly gemTo enhance her vulgar charms;The mother a harvest of tears;The wife a broken heart;The unborn babe a prenatal curse;While I have my surfeit of blood.
DIGNITY SPEAKS.'Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law. Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary of the authority of governments. I am supreme.
Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit.
'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself—it enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this accomplished, the man himself is dead.
The Law! See how the timid masses cower at the mere mention of my name. See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature.
The Majesty of the Law!
It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd—we must not be disturbed in our orgies.
The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that.
As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that rest upon those to whose care God, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire to emphasize the necessity of wise stewardship.
In the meantime, I exploit the 'poor brothers' and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on my investments.
I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a noble humanitarian.
As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization.
Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood....
I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven. Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned!
For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement.
Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people—individually and collectively—to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols—were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be.
The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face—then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide.'PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.
By Theodore Schroeder.
(Continuation.)
HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from Wordsworth Donisthorpe:
'They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen's game, under pain of twelve months imprisonment.
'For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a goose fourpence.
'Esquires and gentlemen under the estate of a knight shall not wear cloth of a higher price than four and a half marks, they shall wear no cloth of gold nor silk nor silver, nor no manner of clothing embroidered, ring button nor brooch of gold nor of silver, nor nothing of stone nor no manner of fur; and their wives and daughters shall be of the same condition as to their vesture and apparel, without any turning-up or purfle or apparel of gold, silver nor of stone.
'Because that servants and labourers will not nor by long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the swineherd 6s., a woman labourer 6s., a dey 6s., a driver of the plough 7s. at the most, and every other labourer and servant according to his degree; and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without clothing, courtesy, or other reward by covenant. If any give or take by covenant more than is above specified, at the first that they shall be thereof attained, as well the givers as the takers, shall pay the value of the excess so taken, and at the second time of their attainer the double value of such excess, and at the third time the treble value of such excess, and if the taker so attained have nothing whereof to pay the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment.'
Our puritan fathers had the same paternal solicitude as all other tyrants. They made it a crime to disregard the Sabbath, or to deny Scripture, or the truth of Christianity or of the Trinity. In the records of the colony for September 1639 it is written: 'For as much as it is evident unto this court that the common custom of drinking one to another, is a mere useless ceremony, and draweth on that abominable practice of drinking healths, and is also an occasion of much waste of the good creatures, and of many other sin,' etc. Then it declares that such is a reproach to a Christian commonwealth, 'wherein the least evils are not to be tolerated.'
In the instructions of the Massachusetts Company to Endicott and his Council, the trade in tobacco is only allowed to the 'old planters,' 'if they conceive that they cannot otherwise provide for their livelihood.' It is left to the discretion of Endicott and his Council 'to give way for the present to their planting of it, in such manner and with such restrictions' as they may think fitting. 'But,' it is added, 'we absolutely forbid the sale of it or the use of it by any of our own particular (private) men's servants, unless upon urgent occasion, for the benefit of health, and taken privately.' In the Records of the Colony of Massachusetts for September 3, 1634, 'it is ordered that victuallers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be taken into their houses, under penalty of 5s. for every offence to be paid by the victualler, and 12d. by the party that takes it.' 'Further it is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly under the penalty of 2s. 6d., nor privately in his own house or in the house of another before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence.'
The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against 'excess and bravery in apparel' are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all the minutiæ of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra 'slash,' or a needless garniture of 'lace.' Against this last-named article the zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In 1634 it was ordered 'that no person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes.' In 1636 it was enacted 'that no person, after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall< any tailor set any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every offence,—provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon garments or linen.' Again, three years later, a new edict was launched at this obnoxious material, because 'there is much complaint of the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others.' The law of 1634 was indeed repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. 'We acknowledge it,' say they, 'to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact rules to confine all sorts of persons'; and so, leaving the wealthier class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for 'people of mean condition.' It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no one whose estate is not of the value of £200 'shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per yard or silk hoods or scarfs'; and moreover, the selectmen of the town are required to fine anybody whom 'they shall judge to exceed their rank and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any respect'! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids 'children and servants' to wear any apparel 'exceeding the quality and condition of their persons or estate,' 'the grand jury and country court of the shire' being judges of the offence.
One provision of the law of 1634 against 'new and immodest fashions' is too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: 'Moreover, it is agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature, to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of (except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great veils, long wings, etc.).' What intolerable tyranny of private surveillance is indicated in the phrase, 'what any man shall judge to be uncomely'!
In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of 'strong waters' to the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence and prohibition; since, after declaring that 'drunkenness is a vice to be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus,' it goes on to assert that 'any strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken away.' But it would seem that 'the cause,' in the eyes of our Puritan lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law chiefly enacts that none but 'vintners' shall have permission to retail wine and 'strong water.' It is also permitted to constables to search any tavern, or even any private house, 'suspected to sell wine contrary to this order.' Moreover, no person is 'to drink or tipple at unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,'—the 'unseasonable' time being declared to be after nine in the evening.
But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved to confess: 'It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof.' It therefore orders, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience.
In 1636 one 'Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined £5 for slighting the magistrates,' etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, 'that Robert Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company, under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and £5 for the second.' What was the efficacy of the whipping or the 'scarlet letter,' we are not informed.
Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: 'True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the protection of a government solicitous for the people's good.' Such has always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say, finds many endorsements even to this day.
It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of course according to other people's conception of right. That is precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims of the paternalistic laws above described.
Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by that hollow phrase, 'Liberty under the Law.' Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words: 'Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.'
AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT.
By MAX BAGINSKI.
TRADE unionism represents to the working man the most natural form of association with his fellow-brother. This medium became a necessity for him when he was confronted by modern industrialism and the power of capitalism. It dawned on him that the individual producer had not a shadow of a chance with the owner of the means of production, who, together with the economic power, enjoyed the protection of the State with its various weapons of warfare and coercion. In the face of such a giant master all the appeals of the workingman to the love of justice and common humanity went up into smoke.
The beginning of modern industry found the producer in abject slavery and without the understanding of an organized form of resistance. Exploitation reigned su preme, ever seeking to sap the last drop of strength of its victims. No mercy for the common man, nor any con sideration shown for his life, his health, growth and development. Capitalism's only aim was the accumulation of profits, of wealth and power, and to this moloch every thing else was ruthlessly sacrificed.
This spirit of accumulation did not admit of the right of the masses to think, feel, or demand; it merely con sidered them a class of coolies, specially created, as it were, for their masters' use.
This notion is still in vogue to-day, and if the con ditions of the workers at this moment are somewhat better, somewhat more endurable, it is not thanks to the milk of human kindness of the money power. Whatsoever the workingmen have achieved in the way of better human conditions, -- a higher standard of living, or a partial re cognition of their rights, -- they have wrenched from their enemies through a hard and bitter struggle that required great endurance, tremendous courage and many sacri fices.
The tendency to treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this tendency no longer goes un challenged; it is being met with tremendous opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been comfortably seated on their backs for centuries past.
The first unskilled attempt on the part of the people to gain a clear conception of their position brought out blind hatred against the technical methods of exploitation instead of hatred against the latter.
In England, for instance, the workingmen considered machinery their deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of produc tion, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlighten ment has passed.
The first trade-unionistic attempts have met with the same ferocious persecution that Anarchism is being met with to-day. Even as to-day capital avails itself of the strongest weapons of government in its attack upon labor. The authorities were not slow in passing laws against trade unionism and every effort for organi zation was at that time considered high treason, or ganizers and all those who participated in strikes were considered aides and abettors of crime and conspiracy, punishable with long years of imprisonment and, in many cases, even with death.
At the behest of Money, the State sent human blood hounds on the trail of the man who in any way was suspected in participating in the trade-union movement. The most villainous and brutal methods were employed to counteract the growth and success of labor organiza tions. The powers that be recognized the great force that is contained in organized labor as the means of the regeneration of society much quicker than the working men themselves. They felt this force hanging like a Da mocles sword over their heads, which danger made them dread the future, and nothing was left undone to nip this force in the bud.
The fundamental principle of trade unionism is of a revolutionary character and, as such, it never was and never can be a mere palliative for the adjustment of Labor to Capital. Hence, it must aim at the social and economic reconstruction of society.
Many labor leaders in this country, who consider their duty performed when they sit themselves at the table of wealth and authority, trying to bring about peace and harmony between Capital and Labor, might greatly profit by the history of trade-unionism and the various eco nomic struggles it has fought.
Only ignorance can account for the birth of such superficial stuff on the labor question as the book of John Mitchell that has been launched upon the market through loud and vulgar advertisement. Nothing could have disproved the fitness of Mr. Mitchell for a labor leader so drastically as this book.
As already stated, the violent attempt to kill trade unionism or its organizations have proven futile. The swelling tide of the labor movement could not be stopped. The social and economic problem brought to light by modern industry demanded a hearing, produced various theories and an extensive literature on the subject -- a literature that spoke with a tongue of fire of the awful existence of the oppressed millions, their trials, their tribulations, the uncertainty, the dangers surrounding them; it spoke of the terrible results of their conditions, of the lives crippled, of the hopes marred; a literature that demanded to know why it is that those who toil are condemned to want and poverty, while those who never produced were living in affluence and extravagance.
Well-meaning people have even attempted to prove that Capital and Labor are twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital, and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious child into submission.
Along with the forcible subjection of organized labor, the minds of the people were confused and blurred by the sugar-coated promises of politicians who assured them that the trade unions ought to be organized by the law, and that all labor quarrels ought to be settled by political and legal means. Indeed, legislatures even discussed a few labor-protective laws that either never saw the light of day, or, if really enacted, were set aside or overridden by the possessing class as an obstacle to profit-making.
Every government, no matter what political basis it rests upon, acts in unison with wealth, and therefore it never passed any legislation in behalf of the producing element of the country that would seriously benefit the great bulk of the people or in any way aim at any change of wage-slaving or economic subjugation.
Every step of improvement the workingmen have made is due solely to their own economic efforts and not to any legal or political aid ever given them, and through their own endeavors only can ever come the reconstruction of the economic and social conditions of society. Just as little as the workingmen can expect from legislative methods can they gain from trade-unionistic efforts that attempt to better economic conditions along the basic lines of the present industrial system.
The cardinal fault of the trade-union movement of this country lies in the fact that its hopes and ideals rest upon the present social status; these ideals ever rotate in the same circle and, therefore, cannot bear intellectual and material fruit. Condemned to pasture in the lean meadows of capitalistic economy, trade-unionism drags on a mis erable existence, satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the heavily laden tables of their lordly masters.
True social science has amply proved the futility of a reconciliation between the two opposing forces; the existence of the one force representing possession, wealth and power inevitably has a paralizing effect upon its opposing force -- Labor.
Trade-unionistic tactics of to-day unfortunately still travel the path marked out for Labor by the powers that be, while the majority of the labor leaders waste the time paid for by their organizations in listening to or discussing with capitalists sweet nothings in the form of arbitration or reconciliation, and are apparently unaware of the fundamental difference between the body they represent and the powers they bow to. And thus it happens that labor organizations are being brutally attacked, that the militia and soldiers are maiming their brothers in the various strike regions while the leaders are being dined and wined. The American Federation of Labor is lobbying in Washington, begging for legal protection, and in return venal justice sends Winchester rifles and drunken militiamen into the disturbed labor districts. Recently the American Federation of Labor made an alleged radical step in deciding to put up labor candidates for Congress -- an old and threadbare political move -- thereby sacrificing whatever honest men and clear heads they may have in their ranks. Such tactics are not worth a single drop of sweat of the workingmen, since they are not only contradictory to the basic principles of trade unionism, but even useless and impractical.
Pity for and indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike, and therewith give the enemy a chance to prepare his means of combat. For months the papers of the money power bring long interviews with labor leaders, giving detailed descriptions of the ways and means of the proposed strikes, or the results of negotiations with this or that mine magnate. The more often these negotia tions are reported, the more glory to the so-called leaders, for the more often their names appear in the papers; the more 'reasonable' the utterances of these gentlemen (which means that they are neither fish nor flesh, neither warm nor cold), the surer they grow of the sympathy of the most reactionary element in the country or of an in vitation to the White House to join the Chief Magistrate at dinner. Labor leaders of such caliber fail to consider that every strike is a labor event upon the success or failure of which thousands of lives depend; rather do they see in it an opportunity to push their own insig nificant personalities into prominence. Instead of leading their organized hosts to victory, they disclose their super ficiality in their zeal not to injure their reputation for 'respectability.'
The workingmen? Be it victory or defeat, they must take up the reins of every strike themselves; as it is, they play the dupes of the shrewd attorneys on both sides, unaware of the price the trickery and cunning of these men cost them.
As I said before, the unions negotiate strikes for days and weeks and months beforehand, even allowing their men to work overtime in order to produce all the commodities to continue business while the strike is going on.
The printers, for instance, worked late into the night on magazines that were being got ready four months in advance, and the miners who discussed the strike so long until every remnant of enthusiasm was gone.
What wonder, then, that strikes fail? As long as the employer is in a position to say, 'Strike if you will; I do not need you; I can fill my orders; I know that hunger will drive you back into the mine and factory, I can wait,' there is no hope for the success of the strike.
Such have been the results of the legal trade union methods.
The history of the labor struggle of this country shows an incident that warrants the hope for an energetic, revo lutionary trade union agitation. That is the eight-hour movement of 1886 which culminated in the death of five labor leaders. That movement contained the true element of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings and politicians.
That which specifically characterized the event of 1886 as a revolutionary factor was the fact that the eight-hour workday could never be accomplished through lobbying with politicians, but through the direct and economic weapon, the general strike.
The desire to demonstrate the efficacy of this weapon gave birth to the idea of celebrating the first of May as an appropriate day for Labor's festival. On that day the workingmen were to give the first practical demon stration of the power of the general strike as an at least one-day protest against oppression and tyranny, and which day were gradually to become the means for the final overthrow of economic and social dependence.
One may suggest that the tragedy of the 11th of November of 1887 has stamped the general strike as a futile method, but this is not true. The battle of liberation cannot be put a stop to by the brutality and rascality of the ruling powers. The vicious anger and the wild hatred that strangled our brothers in Chicago are the safest guarantee that their activity struck a potentially fatal blow to government and capital.
Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Gompers run the risk of dying upon the gallows of sacred capitalistic Justitia; her ladyship is not at all as blind as some suppose her to be; on the contrary, she has a very keen eye for all that may prove beneficial or dangerous to the society that draws its subsistence from the lives' blood of its people. She has quite made up her mind that the gentle men in the ranks of Labor to-day lead the people about in a circle and never will urge them out into the open, towards liberation.
(To be continued.)REFINED CRUELTY.
By Anna Mercy.CIVILIZATION has eliminated none of the qualities that marked the age of savagery. The cruelties which especially characterized primitive man is exercised as much to-day as in the days of cannibalism.
Civilization has been the refining agent of our qualities. Just as a number of chemicals put into a crucible are refined by a certain acid, while yet the original substances remain, though in different forms, so has civilization refined and remolded the crude elements of our nature, leaving the essence of our primitive qualities the same.
The subtlety with which cruelty is exercised to-day makes of it a far-reaching and far more destructive force than formerly. Instead of attacking our neighbors with sticks and stones and tomahawks, and forcing them into captivity in order that they may work for us, we obtain the same or even better results by numerous subtle methods. We instill respect for law, wealth and morality. We withdraw the land and other natural resources from general use. With a show of generous sentiment, allow the lambs we have shorn to assist us in the shearing of other lambs.
Every morning and every evening we see a long procession of men and women going or coming from the work, at which they have given up their life force for the sake of a mere pittance. Look at these men and women! There they go, evidently free! No shackles are on their hands or feet, no overseer keeps them in check by club or gun. There they go voluntarily to their prison factories, offices, stores, in the morning; and in the evening, when the glorious sun is hidden from sight, they come out again, haggard and worn, to creep to their prison homes.
When the savage desires to rob you, he may attempt to strangle and maim you. But the civilized man scorns such crude methods. He builds cheap tenements in which you may gradually and surely choke to death; and not satisfied with that, he, with a great show of kindness, prepares your foods for you, that they may slowly, very slowly, but surely, hasten your deliverance. Babies are not frankly murdered any more, but they are served with nice, adulterated milk, which accomplishes the same purpose in a quieter way.
Under the name of law many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment, capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin garment on and needs to be covered up a little more.
Even in our every-day relations with each other, we use many and varied forms of refined cruelty. When displeased, we no longer beat each other, but we use the subtler forces of sarcasm, irony, slander, neglect. We regard directness a rudeness, when in reality it is the greatest kindness imaginable. Instead of being positive and direct in our dealings with each other, we constantly exercise a passive cruelty, in other words, the cruelty of refinement. We are evasive, delusive, subdued, falsified. But we deceive with dignity, tell falsehoods fluently, use words and cold behavior as daggers.
To-day we do not turn away an unwelcome visitor, but we announce that we are not at home; or we slander him behind his back. When we love we pretend to be modest and indifferent, while, in an indirect way, we attempt to build walls around the person we love. There is nothing free in the expression of our emotions, for we are subdued, crushed; we are civilized!
Everything is sham and hypocrisy, and hidden daggers are everywhere, in one form or another. These daggers are concealed under kindness, charity, benevolence, morality, law, and are, therefore, difficult to deal with. The blades are thrust into the back; you can feel them, but you cannot grapple with them.
Our inherent cruelty is best illustrated in the treatment we give those who are absolutely in our power—little children and the dumb animals. With what authority do we elicit respect and obedience from our little people! With rod in hand and with venomous tongues we begin the process of subjugating and civilizing our little free, emotional people. In the name of 'their highest good' do we mould them to be actors, that they may properly enact the tragedy of life as we had enacted it before them!
The dumb animals receive the cream of our refined cruelty. In order to appear civilized, we drive in carriages pulled by horses whose spinal columns have been docked, whose necks are held stiff by tight check reins, whose eyes are blinded by 'fashionable' devices.
There used to be cannibalism and human sacrifices; there used to be religious prostitution and the murder of weak children and of girls; there used to be bloody revenge and the slaughter of whole populations, judicial tortures, quarterings, burnings at the stake, the lash, and slavery, which have disappeared. But if we have outlived these dreadful customs and institutions, this does not prove that there do not exist institutions and customs amongst us which have become as abhorrent to enlightened reason and conscience as those which have in their time been abolished and have become for us only a dreadful remembrance. The way of human perfecting is endless, and at every moment of historical life there are superstitions, deceits, pernicious and evil institutions already outlived by men and belonging to the past; there are others which appear to us in the far mists of the future; and there are some which we are now living through and whose over-living forms the object of our life. Such in our time is capital punishment and all punishment in general. Such is prostitution, such is the work of militarism, war, and such is the nearest and most obvious evil, private property in land.
'THE JUNGLE.'
A Recension by Veritas.'THE JUNGLE,' a recent story by Upton Sinclair, is a nightmare of horrors, of which the worst horror is that it is not a phantom of the night, but claims to be true history of one phase of our twentieth-century civilization. Nothing but the book itself could represent its own tragic power. In my opinion it is the most terrible book ever written.
It is for the most part a tale of the abattoirs, those unspeakable survivals in our Christendom in which man reeks his savage and sensual will on the lesser animals; and indirectly it is a story of the moral abattoirs of politics, economics, society, religion and the home, where the victims are of the species human, and where man's inhumanity to man is as selfish and relentless as his age-long cruelty to his brothers and sisters just behind him in the great procession.
Possibly the title is inappropriate. There is a 'law of the pack,' which is observed in the genuine jungle, but these human beasts appear to have all of the jungle's vices and few of its virtues. The author might have called his history, 'The Slaughter House,' or, perhaps, plain 'Hell.'
It is a common saying about a packing house, 'We use all of the hog except the squeal.' This author uses the squeal, or, rather, the wild death shrieks of agony of the ten millions of living creatures tortured to death every year in Chicago and the other tens of millions elsewhere, to pander to the old brutal, inhuman thirst of humanity for a diet of blood. The billions of the slain have found a voice at last, and if I mistake not this cry of anguish from the 'killing-beds' shall not sound on until men, whose ancestors once were cannibals, shall cease to devour even the corpses of their murdered animal relatives. But while 'The Jungle' will undoubtedly make more vegetarians, it would take more than the practice of universal vegetarianism to cause the book to fulfil its mission; for this is a story of Civilization's Inferno and of the crisis of the world, a recital of conditions for which, when once comprehended, there can be no remedy but the revolution of revolutions, the event toward which the ages ran, the establishment of a genuine political, industrial and social democracy.[2]
If the story be dramatized and Mrs. Fiske take the part of Ona, her presentation will make Tess seem like a pastoral idyll in comparison.
The book is great even from a political standpoint.
But more than this, it is a great moral appeal. Not in Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens does the moral passion burn with purer or intenser light than in these pages.
I should not advise children or very delicately constituted women to read it.
I have said it is a book of horrors. I started to mark the passages of peculiar tragedy and found that I was marking every page, and yet it is a justifiable book and a necessary book.
The author tells as facts the story of 'diseased meat,' and worse, the preparation in the night time of the bodies of the cattle which have died from known and unknown causes before reaching the slaughter pens, and the distribution of the effects, with the rest of the intentional killing of the day; he describes the preparation of 'embalmed beef' from cattle covered with boils; he even narrates the story of 'men who fell into the vats,' and 'sometimes they would be overlooked for days till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard'; he writes of the making of smoked sausage out of waste potatoes by the use of chemicals and out of spoiled meat as well; and he further speaks of rats which were 'nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things which went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.'
But the worst of the story is a tale of the condition of the workers at Packingtown and elsewhere. It is the story of strong men who justly hated their work; of men, for no fault of their own, cast out in middle life to die; of weeping children driven with whips to their ignoble toil; of disease-producing conditions in winter, only surpassed by the deadly summer; of people working with their feet upon the ice and their heads enveloped in hot steam; of the perpetual stench which infests their nostrils, the sores which universally covered their bodies; of the terrible pace set by the continual 'speeding up' of the pace makers, goaded to a pitch of frenzy; of accidents commonplace in every family; of the garbage pile of refuse from the tables of more fortunate citizens, from which many were forced to satisfy their hunger; of the terrors of the black list, the shut-down, the strike and the lockout; and of the universal swindle, whether a man bought a house, or doctored tea, coffee, sugar or flour.
It is still further a story of the moral enormities and monstrosities of the almost universal graft, 'the plants honeycombed with rottenness. The bosses grafted off the men and they grafted off each other, and some day the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.'
When the men were set to perform some peculiarly immoral act, they would say, 'Now we are working for the church,' referring to the benefactions of the proprietors to religious institutions.
It tells the story of the training of the children in vice, of girls forced into immorality, so that a girl without virtue would stand a better chance than a decent one. It is a tale of the terrible ending of old Antanas by saltpeter poisoning; of Jonas, no one knows how, possibly he fell into the vats; of little Kristoforas by convulsions; of little Antanas by falling into a pit before the door of his house; of Marija, in a house of shame; of Stanislovas, who was eaten by rats; and of beautiful little Ona, to the description of whose ending no other than the author's pen could do justice.
The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house, but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern commercial and political practises.
No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this.
Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, 'like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to lower the temperature.'
'The Jungle' is the boiling over of our social volcano and shows us what is in it. It is a danger signal!
We are all indicted and must stand our trial. There rests upon us the obligation to ascertain the facts. The author of 'The Jungle' lived in Packingtown for months, and the eminently respectable publishers who are now issuing the book sent a shrewd lawyer to Chicago to report as to whether the statements in it were exaggerated, and his report confirmed the assertions of the author.
This book is a call to immediate action.
The Lithuanian hero found his solution of the problems suggested in Socialism. The solution lies either in that direction or in something better, and it behooves those who warn us against Socialistic experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy. Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in practice would modify or abolish the evils of our modern conditions.
'The masters, lords and rulers of all lands,' the thinkers and workers of our time must speedily give themselves to the understanding and application of some adequate remedy, or there will be blood, woe and tears almost without end, 'when this dumb terror shall reply to God, after the silence of the centuries.'
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Genuine or not genuine: we live right now in a democracy. If, in spite of that, such diabolical crimes as Sinclair describes them are committed daily, then this only proves that democracy is no panacea for them. Why should it, if criminals of the Armour kind realize profits out of their wholesale poisoning of such dimensions that they can easily buy all the glory of the people's sovereignty.—Editor.
THE GAME IS UP.
By Sadakichi Hartmann.'HELLO, Morrison, may I come in?' The door stood slightly ajar.
Morrison came to the door—the complexion of his face was sallow and his eyes had a peculiar look—he recognized his visitor, hesitated for a moment whether he should admit him, then opened the door and made a sort of mock courtesy.
'Cleaning up?' the tall, lean man asked as he entered the little hall room.
'Yes,' and a wistful smile glided over Morrison's pale face; 'cleaning up for good.'
The room had a peculiar appearance. There was no disorder and yet a lot of things were lying about; it looked as if the lodger intended to go away on a long journey and had tried to straighten up matters previous to his departure. The visitor gazed curiously about the room. He had a strange foreboding, but forced himself to ask in a jocular mood: 'Going to Egypt again?'
'Farther than that this time, but it won't take so long; the journey I am contemplating will be over by to-morrow evening, I hope.'
'What do you mean?'
'The game is up.'
The tall, lean man made no immediate reply, he merely gazed steadily into the face of his friend. He had always suspected that it would come to this some day. He really wondered that Morrison had not done it long ago. If any man had a right to dispose of his life it was surely Morrison. He had endured more than most human beings. His case was absolutely hopeless.
'Is there no way out of it?'
Morrison shook his head. He wanted to say something, but his voice failed him. He stepped to the dresser near the window, looked into the mirror and arranged his faded, threadbare tie. It was pitiful to see how shabbily he was dressed. He no longer set the fashion as in his days of success, years ago in Boston.
'Would money help you?' and the tall, lean visitor fumbled in his pockets. Although fairly well dressed, he was hard up most of the time and only ventured to broach the subject as he just happened to have a few dollars to spare that day.
'No, what good would the little do that you could give me?' and he continued to adjust matters and tuck things away in his trunk.
'There, you are right again, not much. But I won forty dollars on the track; I sometimes go out there,' he added as a sort of excuse, 'as it is impossible to live on literature alone. I could spare ten.'
'Can you really spare them? I won't be able to return them, you know. I would like to have them. I suppose you will refuse to let me buy a revolver with them. I have all sorts of poisons,' he pointed to some little bottles, 'but I would prefer not to use them, it wouldn't be esthetical, and then I want to go away to some place where nobody knows me. I don't want to be identified.'
The literary man slowly pulled a small roll out of his pocket. He thought of his wife and children who needed the money. It was really foolish to have made that offer. Well, it was probably the last service he could render his friend. Morrison was serious about his departure, there was no doubt about that. 'Here!'
'Thanks,' Morrison answered, though he did not take the money right away. He looked about absentmindedly, as in a dream. This was friendship indeed. He had not believed that anybody could so completely enter another man's state of mind. Not a word of opposition. This was glorious! They had known each other for more than seventeen years. They had often drifted apart and, somehow, had always met again. They had never been very intimate, they had merely respected each other for the work they had accomplished, each in his profession; although they differed largely in ideas. Morrison was a sculptor, and almost an ancient Greek in his feelings for the beauty of lines. The tall, lean man, on the other hand, was a strange mixture of a visionary and brutal realist. They both were cynics, however, that found life rather futile. With the literary man this was merely a theoretical view point, while Morrison was really embittered with life. The incidents of this afternoon had surprised him. He was deeply moved and felt as if he should give utterance to his emotions. He remembered that his attitude towards his friend had been rather arrogant at times. He now felt sorry for it, but somehow could not form his sentiments and thoughts into coherent sentences.
'Thanks,' he simply repeated, 'Has anybody seen you enter the house?'
'No, the door was open and I walked right up. Why do you ask?'
'I don't want anybody to be mixed up in this affair, as it only concerns me.'
The literary man smiled: 'Could any man influence you one way or another? As far as I can make out you are beyond mortal influence.'
A pause ensued. Morrison threw the last thing into his trunk. 'Well, I am ready. Everything is settled.'
'How about your statues?'
'Pshaw!' Morrison shrugged his shoulders. 'Nobody was interested in them while I lived. Why should I bother to think what might become of them after my death?'
The author nodded and scowled at the same time. He was not satisfied with the answer. But there were still other things on his mind. He was used to analyze everything to shreds and tatters. 'Are you not afraid that you might make a botch out of the whole job?'
Morrison weighed the question in his mind, then shook his head and answered: 'No, there is hardly a chance for it now. I have been tuned up to it, trained myself to it, so to speak. The fruit is ripe. It has to fall. It would be awful, though—' he added, with an after-thought. 'Do you remember my emerald ring? I had to pawn it, but I kept the poison which was hidden under the stone. I will take that if anything goes wrong.'
'Would you object to my company?' asked the tall, lean man, 'I mean until all is over. I, myself, am not quite ready yet for any such heroical performances.'
'Oh, don't think of it,' the sculptor ejaculated; notwithstanding, the tone of his voice indicated that he would not object, that he would even prefer a traveling companion for the last few hours of his life.
'Well, I'll go with you. Where are you going?'
'To New Haven. It's a nice trip.' Morrison carefully brushed his hair and clothes, there came a flush to his face as he realized how shabby his clothes really were. The tall, lean man was delicate enough to look away as if he had not noticed anything.
A few moments later they left the room. Morrison locked the door and they went out into the street. They did not talk much, merely commonplace phrases that did not bear upon the subject. Both were occupied with their own thoughts, and strange thoughts they must have been. They leisurely strolled to a store of sporting outfits, bought a revolver and cartridges, had their shoes shined at the next corner, and slowly wended their way toward the depot. Their actions were almost mechanical. Suicide is an attack of insanity, a sort of mental plague. If one has caught the fever, one is doomed. There is no escape from it. At the same time it is contagious. The literary man was somewhat infected by it. All his interests in life seemed to be dulled, obliterated as it were. He could only think the one thought, 'Morrison is going to kill himself. But who knows, he may, after all, turn up next week with the excuse that he had changed his mind. No, not he!—it was really too bad!' Morrison, on the other hand, grew quite cheerful. With him the idea that he would do it, had become so matter-of-fact, that he ceased to think of it. Nothing could influence him any more. Even if some vague current of soul activity should revolt at the very last moment, he was certain that his hand would mechanically perform the task.
'Only one return ticket,' he whispered as he approached the ticket office. 'Oh, I almost forgot,' replied his friend.
During the trip they silently sat opposite each other, smoking. Now and then Morrison pointed out the beautiful sights. He seemed to be familiar with the scenery. At their arrival in New Haven, at dusk, they at once adjourned to a hotel and sat down at a table in the bar-room. They began to talk about art, they discussed commercialism, the lack of appreciation and the vanity of all serious work, at least as far as art is concerned. They began to relate reminiscences of their student years, and reviewed the hopes and ambitions of their youth. If they had been realized, what wonders they would have accomplished!
'I gave the other side a chance. They never responded. I waited for ten long years, and now, it's all up. Let us have another drink, waiter, the last.' They clinked glasses. 'And now for a decent departure as in the good old times, when Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, preached suicide in Alexandria—'
They arose. It had grown dark. They sauntered forth into the night. Morrison seemed to know where he was going. 'I once spent very pleasant days out here,' he explained, 'years, I hardly remember how many years ago.' After that they did not converse any more. They finally arrived at a beautiful avenue of old elms that extended far into the country. Its deep, dark vista was lit up only by the shimmer of a distant lake.
Morrison stopped, seized his friend's hand, shook it, and said in a firm voice: 'Good-bye.'
'Good-bye.'
And Morrison walked away. It was so dark that in a few moments his form became invisible. Only his footsteps could still be heard. They grew fainter and fainter. The tall, lean man stared after his friend into the blackness of the night. His eyes grew dim.
A few rain drops fell on his face and hands. 'I hope it won't rain,' he murmured, 'it might make dying more difficult, but no—the sky is clear.' Then he slightly bent forward and listened eagerly. Everything was calm, motionless, as in suspense. Nobody passed through the avenue. Only in the adjoining side streets pedestrians flitted by like ghosts.
So this was the end! After having struggled bravely for years, after living up to high ideals as well as one could, to go down a long, dark avenue—a falling star flashed across the tree tops.
The tall, lean man pressed his hand to his heart, although he was not certain of having heard a report, he felt, that his friend had arrived at the goal of his life's journey. The game was up!
Books to be had through Mother Earth
The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia; Their Migration to Canada. By Joseph Elkins . . $2.00
Moribund Society and Anarchism. By Jean Grave . . 25c.
Education and Heredity. By J. M. Guyau . . $1.25
A Sketch of Morality—Independent of Obligation and Sanction. By J. M. Guyau . . $1.00
American Communities: New and Old Communistic, Semi-Communistic, and Co-Operative. By W. A. Hinds . . $1.00
History of the French Revolution. (An excellent work for students. It begins with a sketch of history of the earliest times; the decline of the ancient empires, the rise of the French monarchy, and traces the causes which made the Revolution inevitable. The philosophic conclusion is unsurpassed, and the position taken, laying a foundation for the philosophy of freedom, is bound to attract the attention of thinkers.) By C. L. James. Reduced to . . 50c.
Origin of Anarchism. By C. L. James . . 5c.
Fields, Factories, and Workshops. By Peter Kropotkin . . 50c.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. By Peter Kropotkin. Reduced to . . $1.20
Memoirs of a Revolutionist. By Peter Kropotkin. Reduced to . . $1.60
Modern Science and Anarchism. By Peter Kropotkin . . 25c.
Ideals of Russian Literature. By Peter Kropotkin . . $2.00
The State: Its Role in History. By Peter Kropotkin . . 10c.
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal. By Peter Kropotkin . . 5c.
The Wage System. By P. Kropotkin . . 5c.
Anarchist Morality. By P. Kropotkin . . 5c.
History of Civilization In England. By Henry Thomas Buckle . . $2.00
England's Ideal and other Papers on Social Subjects. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Civilization: Its Cause and Cure. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Love's Coming of Age. By Ed. Carpenter . . $1.00
Towards Democracy. By Ed. Carpenter . . $2.50
The Chicago Martyrs: The Famous Speeches of the Eight Anarchists in Judge Gary's Court, and Gov. Altgeld's Reasons for Pardoning Fielden, Neebe and Schwab . . 25c.
Books to be had through Mother Earth
Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History. By Antonio Labriola . . $1.00
Wealth Against Commonwealth. By H. D. Lloyd . . $1.00
Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. By O. Mason. Leather, reduced to $1.50. Cloth, reduced to . . $1.00
Superstition in All Ages. By Jean Meslier. Cloth . . $1.00
News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest. By William Morris . . 60c.
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Friedrich Nietzsche . . $2.50
Rights of Man. By Thomas Paine . . 25c.
The Martyrdom of Man. By Winwood Reade . . $1.00
The Science of Life. By J. Arthur Thomson . . 75c.
Pages of Socialist History. By W. Tcherkesoff . . 25c.
The Slavery of Our Times. By Leo Tolstoy . . 75c.
Bethink Yourself. By Leo Tolstoy . . 10c.
Church and State. By Leo Tolstoy . . 15c.
Volney's Ruins: or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature . . 75c.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol. By Oscar Wilde . . 10c.
The Soul of Man under Socialism. By Oscar Wilde . . 50c.
De Profundis. By Oscar Wilde . . $1.25
Intentions. By Oscar Wilde . . $1.50
Plays. By Oscar Wilde. 2 vols . . $2.50
Life Without a Master. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
The New Dispensation. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
Living Thoughts. By J. Wilson, Ph.D. . . $1.50
Paris and the Social Revolution. By J. Sanborn . . $3.50
Anarchism: Is It All a Dream? By E. Malatesta and J. F. Morton, M.A. . . 5c.
Who Is the Enemy; Anthony Comstock or You? A Study of the Censorship. By Edwin C. Walker . . 25c.
All Orders, Money Prepaid, to be sent to E. GOLDMAN, Box 217,Madison Square Station, New York City.
THE BOOKS OF ERNEST CROSBY
Garrison the Non-Resistant. 16mo, cloth, 144 pages, with photogravure portrait, 50c.; by mail . . 55c.
Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable. A collection of chants in the cause of justice and brotherhood. 12mo, cloth, 188 pages, $1.50; by mail, $1.62. Paper, 40c.; by mail . . 44c.
Captain Jinks, Hero. A keen satire on our recent wars, in which the parallel between savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. Profusely illustrated by Dan Beard. 12mo, cloth, 400 pages, postpaid . . $1.50
Swords and Plowshares. A collection of poems filled with the hatred of war and the love of nature. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 12mo, cloth, 126 pages, $1.20; by mail . . $1.29
Tolstoy and His Message. 'A concise and sympathetic account of the life, character and philosophy of the great Russian.'—New York Press. 'A genuinely illuminative interpretation of the great philosopher's being and purpose.'—Philadelphia Item. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 16mo, cloth, 93 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster. An essay on education and punishment with Tolstoy's curious experiments in teaching as a text. 16mo, cloth, 94 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 53c.
Broad-Cast. New chants and songs of labor, life and freedom. This latest volume of poems by the author of 'Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable' and 'Swords and Plowshares' conveys the same message delivered with equal power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail . . 54c.
Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet. An illuminative essay, with selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid . . 20c.
THE BOOKS OF BOLTON HALL
Free America. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 75c.; by mail . . 80c.
The Game of Life. A new volume of 111 fables. Most of them have been published from time to time in Life, Collier's, The Outlook, The Century, The Independent, The Ram's Horn, The Pilgrim, The Christian Endeavor World, The Rubric, The New Voice, The Philistine and other papers and magazines. 16mo, cloth, ornamental, postpaid . . $1.00
Even as You and I. This is a presentation, by means of popular and simple allegories, of the doctrine of Henry George and the principle which underlies it. A part of the volume is an account of Tolstoy's philosophy, drawn largely from the Russian's difficult work, 'Of Life.' This section is called 'True Life,' and follows a series of thirty-three clever parables. Count Tolstoy wrote to Mr. Hall: 'I have received your book, and have read it. I think it is very good, and renders in a concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book.' 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 50 c.; by mail . . 54c.
LIGHT!
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
(From Songs Before Sunrise.)
Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunderAll clouds and chains that in one bondage bindEyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;There goes no fire from heaven before their thunderNor are the links not malleable that windRound the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;The hands are mighty were the head not blindPriest is the staff of king,And chains and clouds one thing,And fettered flesh, with devastated mindOpen thy soul to see,Slave! and thy feet are free;Thy bonds and thy belief are one in kind,And of thy fears thine irons wroughtHang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine ownthought.
closed a few unpleasant features of the stockyards which really cannot be easily avoided in such a tremendous industry, but which will eventually be remedied.
People of this and other countries, you may now buy the stockyard products in good faith! The wisdom of paternal government stands sponsor for them.
In this way the good reputation of our national industry and commerce will be rescued from obloquy. The people will continue to be fed on carcasses and Government will again have proved itself the faithful agent and patron saint of Capitalism.
Too much common sense in this country! Common sense may suffice to discredit the story that the universe was created in six days or the legend of the Virgin Mary and the Child. Equally so may common sense be a necessary adjunct of horse-traders. But common sense is never sufficient to pave the way for great, liberating ideas. To accomplish the latter one must bear in mind the words of the father of Saint Simon. Every morning, when awakening his son, he greeted him with the following words, 'Remember, my son, one must have enthusiasm to carry out great deeds.'
Several years ago the Italian king lamented the fact that his is a very dangerous profession. The same plaint was uttered by the Spanish king during the recent excitement in Madrid. The poor young man seems to eternally see the terrible bombs flying about his long kingly ears. Why will these reigning gentlemen not withdraw from their dangerous profession? Their parasite existence is as useless as it is injurious; it is neither necessary nor beneficial; it is a burden and a curse to humanity.
They really should welcome every bomb-thrower as an Omen that their divine right has reached an end.
AUTHORITY.
BY SAMUEL BUTLERAuthority intoxicates,And makes mere sots of magistrates;The fumes of it invade the brain,And make men giddy, proud and vain:By this the fool commands the wise,The noble-with the base complies,The sot assumes the rule of wit,And cowards make the brave submit.THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.
BY PETER KROPOTKIN
The Russian Revolution has lately entered into a new phase. Dark gloom hung about the country during the months of January to April. Now it is all bright hopes owing to the unexpected results of the Duma elections all turning in favor of the Radicals. But before speaking of the new hopes, let us cast a glance on that terrible gloomy period which the country has just lived through.
In every revolution a number of local uprisings is always required to prepare the great successful effort of the people. So it has been in Russia. We have had the local uprisings at Moscow, in the Baltic provinces, in the Caucasus and in the villages of Central Russia. And each of these uprisings, remaining local, was followed by a terrible repression.
The General Strike, declared at Moscow in January last, did not succeed. The working men had suffered too much during the great General Strike in October, 1905, and the partial strikes which followed . And when the provocations of the Government compelled the Moscow workingmen to strike, the movement did not generalize. Only a few factories on the Presnya and a few railway lines joined it. The Grand Trunk--Moscow to St. Petersburg--continued to work, and troops were brought on it to Moscow.
As to the troops stationed at Moscow itself they showed signs of deep discontent, and probably would have sided with the people if the strike had been general and a crowd of 300,000 workingmen had flooded the streets, as they did flood in October last. But when they saw that the General Strike had failed they obeyed their commanders.
And yet the week during which a handful of armed revolutionists--less than 2,000--and the workers on strike in the Presnya fought against the artillery and the soldiers, and when several miles of barricades were built by the crowd--by the man and the boy in the street-- this week proved how wrong were all the 'fire-side revolutionists' when they proclaimed the impossibility of street warfare in a revolution.
As to the Letts and the Esthonians in the Baltic provinces, their uprising against their haughty and rapacious German landlords was a great movement. All over a large country the peasants and the artisans of the small towns rose up. They nominated their own municipalities, they sent away the German judges, refused to work for the landlords, paid no rents,--proceeded in short as if they were free. And if their uprising was finally drowned in blood, it has shown at least what the peasants must do all over Russia. In fact the latent insurrection continues still.
The repression which followed the uprising was terrible. The British press has not told one-tenth of the atrocities which were committed by the imperial troops in the Baltic provinces, along the Moscow to Kazan railway line, in the Caucasus, in Siberia, or in the Russian villages. And when we tried to tell the truth about these atrocities, either in some widely read English review, or before large public meetings, we always felt the dead wall of some inexplicable opposition rising against us. The treaty or agreement which has been concluded a few days ago between the Governments of Great Britain and Russia explains now the cause of the opposition to the divulgation in this country of facts which were openly published in the Russian papers, in Russia itself.
The repression was a story of a wholesale murder, accomplished by the troops systematically, in cold blood. Modern history knows only one similarly savage repression: the wholesale murders by the middle-class army at Paris after the defeat of the Commune, in May, 1871. And yet these murders were committed after a fierce fight, in the lurid light of burning Paris.
The detachment of the guard which was sent along the Moscow-Kazan line had not one single shot fired against it. The revolutionists had already left the line and disbanded when that regiment came. But at every station Colonel Minn, head of this detachment, and his officers, shot from ten to thirty men, simply taking their names from lists supplied to the troops by the secret police. They shot them without any simulation of a trial, or even of identification. They shot them in batches, without any warning. Shot anyhow, from behind, into the heap. Colonel Minn shot them simply with his revolver.
As to the peasants in the Baltic provinces it was still worse. Whole villages were flogged. Those men whom a local landlord would name as 'dangerous' were shot on the spot, without any further inquiries--very often a son for his fattier, one brother for another, an Ivanovsky for an Ivanitsky. . . . It was such an orgy of flogging and killing that a young officer, having himself executed several men in this way, shot himself next day when he realized what he had done.
In Siberia, in the Caucasus, the horrors were even more revolting. And in the villages of Russia, where the peasants had shown signs of unrest, the same executions went on, sometimes with an unimaginable cruelty, as was, for instance, the case in Tamboff, with that governor's aid, Luzhenovsky, whom the heroic girl Spiridonova killed. 'When I came to the villages and saw the old men who had grown insane after having been tortured under the whips, and when I had spoken to the mother of the girl who had flung herself into the well after the Cossacks had violated her, I felt that life was impossible so long as that man, Luzhenovsky, would go on unpunished.' Thus spoke this heroic girl on her trial.
But worse than that was in store. All the world has shuddered when it learned the tortures to which Miss Spiridonova was submitted by the police officer Zhdanoff and the Cossack officer Abramoff after her arrest. The tortures of our Montjuich comrades and brothers fade before the sufferings which were inflicted upon this girl. And all over Russia there was lately a sigh of satisfaction when that Abramoff was killed and the revolutionist who killed that beast made his escape, and again the other day when it was known that the other beast, Zhdanoff, had met the same fate.
The gloominess which prevailed in Russia when the Witte-Durnovo ministry had inaugurated the wholesale shooting of the rebels could not be described without quoting pages from the Russian newspapers. Over 70, 000 people were arrested; the prisons were full to overflowing. Batches of exiles began to be sent, as of old, by mere order of the Administration, to Siberia. The old exiles, returning under the amnesty of November 2, 1905, meeting on their way home the batches of the Witte-Durnovo exiles. The revolutionists of all sections of the Socialist party, Revolutionary Socialists, Anarchists, and even Social Democrats, took to revolver and bomb, and every day one could read in the Russian papers that one, two, or more functionaries of the Crown had been killed by the revolutionists in revenge for the atrocities they had committed. Scores of men and women, like Spiridonova, the sisters lzmailovitch, and so many other heroic women and young men, felt sick of life under such a system of Asiatic rule, and made the vow of taking revenge upon the executioners.
It was under such conditions that the elections to the Duma took place. And now the few supporters of the Tsar had to discover that their satraps had overdone the oppression. Various measures were taken by the Government to manipulate the elections so as to have a crushing majority in their favor. The Liberal candidates were arrested, the meetings forbidden, the newspapers confiscated--every governor of a province acting as a Persian satrape on his own responsibility. Those who spoke or went about for the advanced candidates were most unceremoniously searched and sent to jail. . . . And all that was--labor lost!
The reaction had developed within these three months such a bitter hatred against the Government that none but opposition candidates had any chance of being listened to and elected. 'Are you against these wild beasts or for them?' This was the only question that was asked.
And the Constitutional Democrats obtained a crushing majority in the Duma (pronounce Dooma), such a majority that the Russian Government is now perplexed as to what is to be done next.
The Revolutionary Socialists and the Social Democrats abstained from taking any part in the elections, and therefore there are very few avowed Socialists in the Duma. But apart from that the Duma contains all those middle-class Radicals whose names have come to the front during the last thirty years as foes of autocracy.
The most interesting element in the Duma are the peasants, who have nearly 120 representatives elected. With the exception of some thirty men, who are of unsettled opinion, the peasant representatives are absolutely and entirely with the most advanced Radicals in political matters, and with the Socialist workingmen in all the labor demands. But, in addition to that, they put forward the great question--the greatest of our century--the land question.
'No one who does not till the land himself has any right to the land. Only those who work on it with their own hands, and every one of those who does so, must have access to the land. The land is the nation's property, and the nation must dispose of it according to its needs.' This is their opinion--their faith, and no economists of any camp will shake it.
'Eighty years ago we were settled in these prairies,' one of those peasants said the other day. That land was a desert. 'We have made the value of all this region; but half of it was taken by the landlords (in accordance with the law, of course; but we, peasants, do not admit that a law could be a law once it is unjust). It was taken by the landlords--we must have it back.'
'But if you take that land, and there are other villages in the neighborhood which have no land but their poor allotments, what then ?'
'Then they have a right to it, just as we have. But not the landlords !'
There is all the Social Question, all the Socialist wisdom, in these plain words.
'If the peasants seize the land, then the factory hands will apply the same reasoning to the factories!' exclaim the terrified correspondents of the English papers in reporting such plain talk.Yes, they will. Undoubtedly they will. They must. Because, if they don't do it all our civilization must go to wreck and ruin--like the Roman, the Greek, the Egyptian, the Babylonian civilizations went to the ground.
Another important feature. The Russian peasants don't trust their representatives. These men from the plough have understood the gist of parliamentarism better than those who have grown infected gradually by Parliament worship. Their election fell upon this or that man; but they knew they must not trust him. Election is somewhat of a piece of gambling. And therefore a number of private peasant delegates are now seen in the galleries of the Russian Duma, whom their villages have sent to keep watch over their representatives in Parliament. They know that these representatives will soon be spoiled and bribed one way or another. So they sent delegates--mostly old, respected peasants, not fine in words, not of the self-advertising class, men who never would be elected, but who will honestly keep their, eye upon the M.P.'s.
However, although the Duma has been only a few days together, a general feeling grows in Russia that all this electioneering is not yet the proper thing. 'What can the Duma do?' they ask all over Russia. 'If the Government doesn't want it they will send it away. How can 500 men resist the Government if they make up their minds to send them back to their homes?'
And so, all over Russia the feeling grows that the Parliament and its debates are not the right thing yet. It is only a preliminary to something else which is to come. 'They will express our needs; they will agree upon. certain things' . . . but a feeling grows in Russia that the action will have to come from the people.
And the underground work, the slow work of maturing convictions and of grouping together, goes on all over Russia as a preparation to something infinitely more important than all the debates of the Duma.
They don't even pronounce the name of this more important thing. Perhaps most of them don't know its name. But we know it and we may tell it. It is the Revolution: the only real remedy for the redress of wrongs.
THE LAW OF THE 'SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.'
BY EMMA LEE.
The law of the 'Survival of the Fittest' is the Fetich with which every man who has succeeded in life at the expense of his less fortunate fellow-man conjures.
If he would only take the trouble to reason it out, he would find that this 'law' is far from immutable. In prehistoric times, when the world was young, the 'law' operated on the individual.
Learned men tell us that in this era of the world's youth men were born, lived and died with no companionship save that which the (immutable) law of Being necessitated.
Literally every men's hand was against that of every other man.
Then came the era of the Patriarch, in which the weaker members of a family were protected by the stronger. The 'law' shifted. It was no longer man against man, but family against family.
Next we, find the Tribal era.
Again the 'law' shifted to meet the growing demands of human advancement. No longer family against family, but tribe against tribe.
Following the Tribal era came that of nations--countries. Again the 'law' shifted.
No longer was it tribe against tribe--but one nation against others.
This era is fast disappearing and the time is not far distant when the 'law' will operate between but two classes in all the world--the class that hath and the class that hath not.
The ushering in of the dawn of the day when class distinctions no longer exist will sign the death warrant of that much vaunted 'Law of the Survival of the Fittest.'
Russell Sage EMMA GOLDMAN IThe Kingdom of Peace MILO A. TOWNSEND 3Observations and Comments 4A Hero of the Russian Revolution 7Modern Science and Anarchism PETER KROPOTKIN 9The Beggar IWAN TURGENJEFF 21The Inheritors JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 22Prisons and Crime ALEXANDER BERKMAN 23Aphorisms J. M. GOTTESMAN 29Modesty MARGARET GRANT 30Zola's Vision of the Future 34Morality as Antinaturalness FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 41The Revolutionary Spirit in French Literature(Continuation) ALVAN F. SANBORN 46The Triumph of Youth 55Advertisements 63
RUSSELL SAGE.
By EMMA GOLDMAN.What an indictment against Society! Impure and poisonous, indeed, must have been the soil that nurtured such a plant.
The champions of the capitalistic system assert that the majority will ever have to live in poverty and misery, and that millions of backs are to remain forever bent, to sustain the magnificent structure called civilization.
Were we all to toil to produce the mere necessities of life-they say-who would foster art, poetry, and literature? Surely, there must be a select few. By their culture and aestheticism by their refinement and beauty, they illuminate and elevate those predestined to a life of darkness and despair.
Such is the philosophy of capitalism. But even this philosophy, absurd as it is, will fail to justify the life of Russell Sage. It would search in vain for even the faintest reflex of himself, or of his tremendous wealth, in the lives of those that dwell in the abyss.
Russell Sage! Accumulation, with him, was not a means, but rather the sole aim of life. The notion that the social mission of wealth is philanthropy and charity was brutally caricatured by the personality of this man. Not even his own life derived any benefit from his riches, let alone the lives of others. Indeed, he serves as the most striking proof of our social insanity, which suffers thousands to starve, that a, few calculating human machines may pile dividends upon dividends.
THE KINGDOM OF PEACE
By Milo A. Townsend
Within, are the Fountains of Peace,Within, are the riches of soul-The riches alone that can last,While billows of ocean shall roll.The riches which dwell in the mindWe may take wherever we go-While money which men seek and hoard,Proves often the soul's overthrow.Though millions a man may possess,Very poor he still may remain,Poor in all that is noble and great-Rich only in gewgaws and gain.Within is the Kingdom of Peace,Which only the true soul can know-This kingdom enthroned in 'the light,'Truth alone can ever bestow.Without are the deserts of Care,Where Mammon sits brooding and grim-Then seek for the Kingdom of Peace-The world's lights are fleeting and dim.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTSThe religion and philosophy of the enslaved lean towards fatalism. Self-humiliation is a source of satisfaction to those that see the cause of their misery in destiny or in some supreme power, rather than in their own cowardice and weakness.
We throw our responsibilities into the refuse of metaphysics, which are supposed to hide somewhere beyond the drawn draperies of this world.
Fatalism is the most convenient excuse for all those that are unable or unwilling to strive for freedom.
'But, surely, fatalism is not to be found here. Is it not rather an Oriental growth?'
'You are mistaken, ladies and gentlemen. We are much more fatalistic than the East. There, Allah is Providence; here, conditions are Almighty.'
We continually prate about the inexorability of conditions; we assert that man is their product. What does he want? Liberty? Independence? How stupid! He is not a free agent, and therefore he must submit to conditions. But as the latter are notorious for their caprice, it often happens that they transform political mountebanks into presidents of the Republic, while genius and talent go begging at the doors.
This barbaric belief in the superiority of conditions and the helplessness of the individual is our greatest curse. It robs men of hope and strength; it deprives them of all power to hate and love. It makes submissive slaves of them.
Man must cease to look upon himself as a mere tool; he must break the fetters that leave him no space for initiative; thus he will become the creator, instead of the created.
Our highest aim should be to master conditions, rather than remain subservient to them.
* * *
Christ is the type of martyrs that burden and enslave, rather than liberate.
The gospel teaches that he suffered for humanity and that he died on the cross to save men from sin. Mankind has paid dearly for it since. In the name of the one that was crucified all have to do penance. His disciples carried his agony all over the world, preaching hatred of joy. How dared life's joy to raise its head! Has he not shed tears of blood ? Has he not called, in despair, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!'?
This Saviour disproves the idea that man can be redeemed through external forces. From the proclaimed redemption he has inherited only the duty to renounce and to chastise himself. If he dares to refuse participation in the martyrdom of the Nazarene, he is condemned as vicious, impure, and immoral.
There is no redemption; there is only sanctified selfabnegation, self-humiliation.
Only saints and puritans find satisfaction in ashes and sackcloth.
Was Christ really confident that his sacrifice would be appreciated? What if the sinners were proud, proud of having sinned? What if they disdained to listen to him who persisted in bearing the cross for all? What if they proclaimed their courage to be all-sufficient unto themselves?
A full and strong personality may succumb to its own rich and insatiable nature, to its inability to bow and submit; it never can break or crumble because of forces outside itself.
***
The attempt on the part of the Russian Government to appear modern by checking the Revolution through parliamentary methods has proved a dismal failure.
Edged in on all sides, her industrial and business life crippled, her financial heart deeply wounded, she deemed it diplomatic to throw a bone to the Revolution. This sumptuous meal might so elate the people, that they would cease to rebel.
There are the Liberals and the Constitutional Democrats, for instance, who really desire nothing more for Russia than a government according to the political pattern of Western Europe. A few concessions might enlist their co-operation, which would tend to isolate the Revolution and stamp it as a crime against the Government, so eager and ready to consider all modern political demands.
The intention, however, was to continue her despotic régime,--the Duma could prate to its heart's content, so long as it gave the monster on the Russian throne a chance to recuperate from the horrors of the barricades.
If the Duma could be used as a shield, to check the anger and hatred of the people, it will have served its purpose.
This speculation of the Russian autocracy was based upon the experience of other Governments with revolutions. The West-European revolutionary movement of 1848 failed miserably: then, too, the people were promised political rights; popular representation was the arena for acrobatic exercises; while the constituents searched for worthy men to represent the nation, the reactionaries prepared a counter revolution, which culminated in the forcible expulsion of the representatives of the people from the halls of Parliament. The autocracy hoped for a similar development of events. It failed to realize that economic and social motives of revolutions have grown more powerful within the last decades than the political.
The Russian revolution, unlike the revolution of '48, is not to be checked with a constitution on paper. It is much more concerned with the economic and social, rather than the political reconstruction of Russia. It is because of this that the Duma failed to enthuse the great majority of the revolutionists. The latter have grasped the truth that the Parliament is a hindrance, rather than an incentive, to the organization of society.
The battle between the old and the new social powers can not be fought in the Chamber of Deputies. The question is no longer, 'Will the Conservatives or the Democrats triumph?' but rather, 'Is the possessing class to continue to exploit society for its own benefit?' It would seem that the people have reached that stage of development which must end in the overthrow of the system of tyranny and robbery.
It is this spirit which carried the Duma far beyond the boundary line of their original intentions.
Had the Government to deal with the representatives only, a compromise might have been brought about. But beyond the Duma-by-the Grace-of-the-Tsar rose the revolutionary waves, the peasant, and the workingman. These care little for political theories: the one demands the land, the other the product of his labor-Socialism or Anarchist communism. They have no desire to patch up the sores on the social body with petty political court plaster, as was the ambition of Witte arid his colleagues. Their aim is the expropriation of the wealth stolen from them.
The Duma was compelled to flirt with the revolution. As the latter's child it could not very well aid Tsarism in its barbaric overthrow of the insurrection. Its popular leanings aroused the ire of the decaying autocracy and thus the Duma was abolished.
It was not a very clever move. It will only hasten the downfall of Tsarism with all its horrors.
A HERO OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.
As to those who fought in the insurgent bands and those who were most compromised as members of the strike committee, their lives were saved by a courageous engine-driver, Ukhtomsky. At the last moment, when the insurrection was crushed and it seemed already impossible to pierce the ring of troops which held all the outlet from Moscow, Ukhtomsky offered to take the most compromised insurgents and strikers on a train and to break through the iron ring. This he did most successfully under a hail of bullets from the machine guns. He was arrested later on quite accidentally, having come to a railway station while a Semenovsk detachment was there. The officer looked through the portraits supplied to the troops by the spies, and at once recognized him. 'You are the engine-driver Ukhtomsky,' said he; 'you will be shot.' 'So I thought,' calmly replied the prisoner, and before dying he narrated the following: 'When all roads leading out of Moscow were occupied by the troops, I undertook to take the insurgents and our strike committee men in a train through your ring. You had already placed machine guns in the orchards-menacing the line. In this dangerous--quite open-space on the railway curve I developed a speed of sixty miles per hour. I myself drove the engine. The pressure in the boiler I brought up to fifteen atmospheres--the very limit for the bolier. The danger was not from machine guns, but from the boiler bursting. I went not only with open draught doors, but also with an accelerated speed of the syphon. And as we ran at this speed along the curve the machine guns began to rattle. Still, the real danger lay in our speed, in the possibility of being thrown off the metals down the embankment. However, I regulated the steam with an experienced hand, feeling that I had on my responsibility the lives of those whom you tracked. You wounded six men, but nobody was killed. All are now safe and far away. You will not have them.'
He quietly spoke before his death to the soldiers and won their sympathies. He stood upright and calmly looked on them. When the first volley was fired the three workers with whom he was shot fell dead, but not one single bullet had been fired at Ukhtomsky. None of the soldiers would kill him. The officer ordered a second volley to be fired--and then he fell on the snow with a terrible expression of agony in his eyes. The captain discharged a revolver at his head.
MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM
By Peter Kropotkin
(Continued.)
To predict what direction science will take in its further development is, evidently, impossible. As long as men of science depend upon the rich and the governments, so long will they of necessity remain subject to influence from this quarter; and this, of course, can again arrest for a time the development of science. But one thing is certain: in the form that science is now assuming there is no longer any need of the hypothesis which Laplace considered useless, or of the metaphysical 'words' which Goethe ridiculed. The book of nature, the book of organic life, and that of human development, can already be read without resorting to the power of a creator, a mystical 'vital force,' an immortal soul, Hegel's trilogy, or the endowment of abstract symbols with real life. Mechanical phenomena, in their ever-increasing complexity, suffice for the explanation of nature and the whole of organic and social life. There is much, very much, in the world that is still unknown to us--much that is dark and incomprehensible; and of such unexplained gaps new ones will always be disclosed as soon as the old ones have been filled up. Butwe do not know of , and do not see the possibility of discovering, any domain in which the phenomena observed in the fall of a stone, or in the impact of two billiard balls, or in a chemical reaction--that is, mechanical phenomena--should prove inadequate to the necessary explanations.
III.
It was natural that, as soon as science had attained such generalizations, the need of a synthetic philosophy should be felt; a philosophy which, no longer discussing 'the essence of things,' 'first causes,' the 'aim of life,' and similar symbolic expressions, and repudiating all sorts of anthropomorphism (the endowment of natural phenomena with human characteristics), should be a digest and unification of all our knowledge; a philosophy which, proceeding from the simple to the complex, would furnish a key to the understanding of all nature, in its entirety, and, through that, indicate to us the lines of further research and the means of discovering new, yet unknown, correlations (so-called laws), while at the same time it would inspire us with confidence in the correctness of our conclusions, however much they may differ from current superstitions. ---- Such attempts at a constructive synthetic philosophy were made several times during the nineteenth century, the chief of them being those of Auguste Comte and of Herbert Spencer. On these two we shall have to dwell. The need of such a philosophy as this was admitted already in the eighteenth century--by the philosopher and economist Turgot and, subsequently, even more clearly by Saint-Simon. As has been stated above, the encyclopaedists, and likewise Voltaire in his 'Philosophical Dictionary, ' had already begun to construct it. In a more rigorous, scientific form which would satisfy the requirements of the exact sciences, it was now undertaken by Auguste Comte. It is well known that Comte acquitted himself very ably of his task so far as the exact sciences were concerned. He was quite right in including the science of life (Biology) and that of human societies (Sociology) in the circle of sciences compassed by his positive philosophy; and his philosophy has had a great influence upon all scientists and philosophers of the nineteenth century. But why was it that this great philosopher proved so weak the moment he took up, in his 'Positive Politics,' the study of social institutions, especially those of modern times? This is the question which most admirers of Comte have asked themselves. How could such a broad and strong mind come to the religion which Comte preached in the closing years of his life? Littre and Mill, it is well known, refused even to recognize Comte's 'Politics' as part of his philosophy; they considered it the product of a weakened mind; while others utterly failed in their endeavors to discover a unity of method in the two works.1 And yet the contradiction between the two parts of Comte's philosophy is in the highest degree characteristic and throws a bright light upon the problems of our own time. When Comte had finished his 'Course of Positive Philosophy,' lie undoubtedly must have perceived that he had not yet touched upon the most important point--namely, the origin in man of the moral principle and the influence of this principle upon human life. He was bound to account for the origin of this principle, to explain it by the same phenomena by which he had explained life in general, and to show why man feels the necessity of obeying his moral sense, or, at least, of reckoning with it. But for this he was lacking in knowledge (at the time he wrote this was quite natural) as well as in boldness. So, in lieu of the God of all religions, whom man must worship and to whom he must appeal in order to be virtuous, he placed Humanity, writ large. To this new idol he ordered us to pray, that we might develop in ourselves the moral concept. But once this step had been takenonce it was found necessary to pay homage to something standing outside of and higher than the individual in order to retain man on the moral path-all the rest followed naturally. Even the ritualism of Comte's religion moulded itself very naturally upon the model of all the preceding positive religions. Once Conde would not admit that everything that is moral in man grew out of observation of nature and from the very conditions of men living in societies,-this step was necessary. He did not see that the moral sentiment in man is as deeply rooted as all the rest of his physical constitution inherited by him from his slow evolution; that the moral concept in man had made its first appearance in the animal societies which existed long before man had appeared upon earth; and that, consequently, whatever may be the inclinations of separate individuals, this concept must persist in mankind as long as the human species does not begin to deteriorate,--the anti-moral activity of separate men inevitably calling forth a counter-activity on the part of those who surround them, just as action causes reaction in the physical world. Comte did not understand this, and therefore he was compelled to invent a new idol-Humanity-in order that it should constantly recall man to the moral path. Like Saint-Simon, Fourier, and almost all his other contemporaries, Comte thus paid his tribute to the Christian education be had received. Without a struggle of the evil principles with the good--in which the two should be equally matched--and without man's application in prayer to the good principle and its apostles on earth for maintaining him in the virtuous path, Christianity cannot be conceived. And Comte, dominated from childhood by this Christian idea, reverted to it as soon as he found himself face to face with the question of morality and the means of fortifying it in the heart of man.
IV.
But it must not be forgotten that Comte wrote his Positivist Philosophy long before the years 1856-1862, which, as stated above, suddenly widened the horizon of science and the world-concept of every educated man. The works which appeared in these five or six years have wrought so complete a change in the views on nature, on life in general, and on the life of human societies, that it has no parallel in the whole history of science for the past two thousand years. That which had been but vaguely understood--sometimes only guessed at by the encyclopoedists, and that which the best minds in the first half of the nineteenth century had so much difficulty in explaining, appeared now in the full armor of science; and it presented itself so thoroughly investigated through the inductive-deductive method that every other method was at once adjudged imperfect, false and--unnecessary. Let us, then, dwell a little longer upon the results obtained in these years, that we may better appreciate the next attempt at a synthetic philosophy, which was made by Herbert Spencer. Grove, Clausius, Helmholtz, Joule, and a whole group of physicists and astronomers,--as also Kirchhoff, who discovered the spectroscopic analysis and gave us the means of determining the composition of the most distant stars,--these, in rapid succession at the end of the fifties, proved the unity of nature throughout the inorganic world. To talk of certain mysterious, imponderable fluids-calorific, magnetic, electrical--at once became impossible. It was shown that the mechanical motion of molecules which takes place in the waves of the sea or in the vibrations of a bell or a tuning fork, was adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of heat, light, electricity and magnetism; that we can measure them and weigh their energy. More than this: that in the heavenly bodies most remote from us the same vibration of molecules takes place, with the same effects. Nay, the mass movements of the heavenly bodies themselves, which run through space according to the laws of universal gravitation, represent, in all likelihood, nothing else than the resultants of these vibrations of light and electricity, transmitted for billions and trillions of miles through interstellar space. The same calorific and electrical vibrations of molecules of matter proved also adequate to explain all chemical phenomena. And then, the very life of plants and animals, in its infinitely varied manifestations, has been found to be nothing else than a continually going on exchange of molecules in that wide range of very complex, and hence unstable and easily decomposed, chemical cornpounds from which are built the tissues of every living being,
Then, already during those years it was understood--and for the past ten years it has been still more firmly established-that the life of the cells of the nervous system and their property of transmitting vibrations from one to the other, afforded a mechanical explanation of the nervous life of animals. Owing to these investigations, we can now understand, without leaving the domain of purely physiological observations, how impressions and images are produced and retained in the brain, how their mutual effects result in the association of ideas (every new impression awakening impressions previously stored tip), and hence also--in thought. Of course, very much still remains to be done and to be discovered in this vast domain; science, scarcely freed yet from the metaphysics which so long hampered it, is only now beginning to explore the wide field of physical psychology. But the start has already been made, and a solid foundation is laid for further labors. The old-fashioned classification of phenomena into two sets, which the German philosopher Kant endeavored to establish,--one concerned with investigations 'in time and space' (theworld of physical phenomena) and the other 'in time only' (the world of spiritual phenomena),--now falls of itself. And to the question once asked by the Russian physiologist, Setchenov: 'By whom and how should psychology be studied?' science has already given the answer: 'By physiologists, and by the physiological method.' And, indeed, the recent labors of the physiologists have already succeeded in shedding incomparably more light than all the intricate discussions of the metaphysicists, upon the mechanism of thought; the awakening of impressions, their retention and transmission. In this, its cheif stronghold, metaphysics was thus worsted. The field in which it considered itself invincible has now been taken possession of by natural science and materialist philosophy, and these two are promoting the growth of knowledge in this direction faster than centuries of metaphysical speculation have done. ----- In these same years another important step was made. Darwin's book on 'The Origin of Species' appeared and eclipsed all the rest. Already in the last century Buffon (apparently even Linnaeus), and on the threshold of the nineteenth century Lamarck, had ventured to maintain that the existing species of plants and animals are not fixed forms; that they are variable and vary continually even now. The very fact of family likeness which exists between groups of forms- Lamarck pointed out-is a proof of their common descent from a common ancestry. Thus, for example, the various forms of meadow buttercups, water buttercups, and all other buttercups which we see on our meadows and swamps, must have been produced by the action of environment upon descendants from one common type of ancestors. Likewise, the present species of wolves, dogs, jackals and foxes did not exist in a remote past, but there was in their stead one kind of animals out of which, under various conditions, the wolves, the dogs, the jackals and the foxes have gradually evolved. But in the eighteenth century such heresies as these had to be uttered with great circumspection. The Church
was still very powerful then, and for such heretical views the naturalist had to reckon with prison, torture, or the lunatic asylum. The 'heretics' consequently were cautious in their expressions. Now, however, Darwin and A. R. Wallace could boldly maintain so great a heresy. Darwin even ventured to declare that man, too, had originated, in the same way of slow physiological evolution, from some lower forms of ape-like animals; that his 'immortal spirit' and his 'moral soul' are as much a product of evolution as the mind and the moral habits of the ant or the chimpanzee. We know what storms then broke out upon Darwin and, especially, upon his bold and gifted disciple, Huxley, who sharply emphasized just those conclusions from Darwin's work which were most dreaded by the clergy. It was a fierce battle, but, owing to the support of the masses of the public, the victory was won, nevertheless, by the Darwinians; and the result was that an entirely new and extremely important science-Biology, the science of life in all its manifestations-has grown up under our very eyes during the last forty years. At the same time Darwin's work furnished a new key to the understanding of all sorts of phenomena-physical, vital, and social. It opened up a new road for their investigation. The idea of a continuous development (evolution) and a continual adaptation to changing environment, found a much wider application than the origin of species. It was applied to the study of all nature, as well as to men and their social institutions, and it disclosed in these branches entirely unknown horizons, giving explanations of facts which hitherto had seemed quite inexplicable. Owing to the impulse given by Darwin's work to all natural sciences, Biology was created, which, in Herbert Spencer's hands, soon explained to us how the countless forms of living beings inhabiting the earth may have developed, and enabled Haeckel to make the first attempt at formulating a genealogy of all animals, man included. In the same way a solid foundation for the history of the development of man's customs, manners, beliefs and institutions was laid down--a history the want of which was strongly felt by the eighteenth century philosophers and by Auguste Comte. At the present time this history can be written without resorting to either the formulae of Hegelean metaphysics or to 'innate ideas' and 'inspiration from without'--without any of those dead formulae behind which, concealed by words as by clouds, was always hidden the same ancient ignorance and the same superstition. Owing, on the one hand, to the labors of the naturalists, and, on the other, to those of Henry Maine and his followers, who applied the same inductive method to the study of primitive customs and laws that have grown out of them, it became possible in recent years to place the history of the origin and development of human institutions upon as firm a basis as that of the development of any form of plants or animals. It would, of course, be extremely unfair to forget the enormous work that was done earlier-already in the thirties-towards the working out of the history of institutions by the school of Augustin Thierry in France, by that of Maurer and the 'Germanists' in Germany, and in Russia, somewhat later, by Kostomarov, Belyaev and others. In fact, the principle of evolution had been applied to the study of manners and institutions, and also to languages, from the time of the encyclopaedists. But to obtain correct, scientific deductions from all this mass of work became possible only when the scientists could look upon the established facts in the same way as the naturalist regards the continuous development of the organs of a plant or of a new species. The metaphysical formulae have helped, in their time, to make certain approximate generalizations. Especially did they stimulate the slumbering thought, disturbing it by their vague hints as to the unity of life in nature. At a time when the inductive generalizations of the encyclopaedists and their English predecessors were almost forgotten (in the first half of the nineteenth century), and when it required--some civic courage to speak of the unity of physical and spiritual nature-the obscure metaphysics still upheld the tendency toward generalization. But those generalizations were established either by means of the dialectic method or by means of a semi-conscious induction, and, therefore, were always characterized by a hopeless indefiniteness. The former kind of generalizations was deduced by means of really fallacious syllogisms--similar to those by which in ancient times certain Greeks used to prove that the planets must move in circles 'because the circle is the most perfect curve'; and the meagerness of the premises would then be concealed by misty words, and, worse still, by an obscure and clumsy exposition. As to the semi-conscious inductionís which were made here and there, they were based upon a very limited circle of observations-similar to the broad but unwarranted generalization of Weissmann, which have recently created some sensation. Then, as the induction was unconscious, the generalizations were put forth in the shape of hard and fast laws, while in reality they were but simple supposition s--hypotheses, or beginnings only of generalizations, which, far from being 'laws,' required yet the very first verification by observation. Finally, all these broad deductions, expressed as they were in most abstract forms-as, for instance, the Hegelcan 'thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,'--left full play for the individual to come to the most varied and often opposite practical conclusions, so that they could give birth, for instance, to Bakunin's revolutionary enthusiasm and to the Dresden Revolution, to the revolutionary Jacobinism of Marx and to the recognition of the 'reasonableness of what exists,' which reconciled so many Germans to the reaction then existing-to say nothing of the recent vagaries of the so-called Russian Marxists.
V
Since Anthropology--the history of man's physiological development and of his religious, political ideals, and economic institutions-came to be studied exactly as all other natural sciences are studied, it was found possible, not only to shed a new light upon this history, but to divest it for ever of the metaphysics which had hindered this study in exactly the same way as the Biblical teachings had hindered the study of Geology. It would seem, therefore, that when the construction of a synthetic philosophy was undertaken by Herbert Spencer, he should have been able, armed as lie was with all the latest conquests of science, to build it without falling into the errors made by Comte in his 'Positive Politics.' And yet Spencer's synthetic philosophy, though it undoubtedly represents an enormous step in advance (complete as it is without religion and religious rites), still contains in its sociological part mistakes as gross as are found in the former work. The fact is that, having reached in his analysis the psychology of societies, Spencer did not remain true to his rigorously scientific method, and failed to accept all the conclusions to which it had led him. Thus, for example, Spencer admits that the land ought not to become the property of individuals, who, in consequence of their right to raise rents, would hinder others from extracting front the soil all that could be extracted from it under improved methods of cultivation; or would even simply keep it out of use in the expectation that its market price will be raised by the labor of others. An arrangement such as this he considers inexpedient and full of dangers for society. But, while admitting this in the case of the land, be did not venture to extend this conclusion to all other forms of accumulated wealth--for example, to mines, harbors, and factories. Or, again, while protesting against the interference of government in the life of society, and giving to one of his books a title which is equivalent to a revolutionary programme, 'The Individual vs. The State,' he, little by little, tinder the pretext of the defensive activity of the State, ended by reconstructing the State in its entirety, such as it is to-day, only slightly limiting its attributes. These and other inconsistencies are probably accounted for by the fact that the sociological part of Spencer's philosophy was formulated in his mind (under the influence of the English, radical movement) much earlier than its natural--scientific part-namely, before 1851, when the anthropological investigation of human institutions was in its rudimentary stage. In consequence of this, Spencer like Comte, did not take up the investigation of these institutions by themselves, without preconceived conclusions. Moreover, as soon as he came in his work to social philosophy--to Sociology-lie began to make use of a new method, a most unreliable one-the method of analogies-which he, of course, never resorted to in the study of physical phenomena. This new method permitted him to justify a whole series of preconceived theories. Consequently, we do not possess as yet a philosophy constructed in both its parts-natural sciences and sociology -with the aid of the same scientific method. Then, Spencer, it must also be added, is the man least suited for the study of primitive institutions. In this respect he is distinguished even among the English, who generally do not enter readily into foreign modes of life and thought. 'We are a people of Roman law, and the Irish are common-law people: therefore we do not understand each other,' a very intelligent Englishman once remarked to me. The history of the Englishmen's relations with the 'lower races' is full of like misunderstandings. And we see them in Spencer's writings at every step. He is quite incapable of understanding the customs and ways of thinking of the savage, the 'blood revenge' of the Icelandic saga, or the stormy life, filled with struggles, of the mediaeval cities. The moral ideas of these stages of civilization are absolutely strange to him; and he sees in them only 'savagery,' 'despotism,' and 'cruelty.' Finally-what is still more important-Spencer, like Huxley and many others, utterly misunderstood the meaning of 'the struggle for existence.' He saw in it, not only a struggle between different species of animals (wolves devouring rabbits, birds feeding on insects, etc.), but also a desperate struggle for food, for living-room, among the different members within every species--a struggle which, in reality, does not assume anything like the proportions he imagined. How far Darwin himself was to blame for this misunderstanding of the real meaning of the struggle for existence, we cannot discuss here. But certain it is that when, twelve years after 'The Origin of Species,' Darwin published his 'Descent of Man,' he already understood struggle for life in a different sense. 'Those communities,' he wrote in the latter work, 'which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.' The chapter devoted by Darwin to this subject could have formed the basis of an entirely different and most wholesome view of nature and of the development of human societies (the significance of which Goethe had already foreseen). But it passed unnoticed. Only in 1879 do we find, in a lecture by the Russian zoologist Kessler, a clear understanding of mutual aid and the struggle for life. 'For the progressive development of a species,' Kessler pointed out, citing several examples, 'the law of mutual aid is of far greater importance than the law of mutual struggle.' Soon after this Louis Buchner published his book 'Love,' in which he showed the importance of sympathy among animals for the development of moral concepts; but, in introducing the idea of love and sympathy instead of simple sociability, he needlessly limited the sphere of his investigations. To prove and further to develop Kessler's excellent idea, extending it to man, was an easy step. If we turn our minds to a close observation of nature and to an unprejudiced history of human institutions, we soon discover that Mutual Aid really appears, not only as the most powerful weapon in the struggle for existence against the hostile forces of nature and all other enemies, but also as the chief factor of progressive evolution. To the weakest animals it assures longevity (and hence an accumulation of mental experience), the possibility of rearing its progeny, and intellectual progress. And those animal species among which Mutual Aid is practiced most, not only succeed best in getting their livelihood, but also stand at the head of their respective class (of insects, birds, mammals) as regards the superiority of their physical and mental development. This fundamental fact of nature Spencer did not perceive. The struggle for existence within every species, the 'free fight' for every morsel of food, Tennyson's 'Nature, red in tooth and claw with ravine'--he accepted as a fact requiring no proof, as an axiom. Only in recent years did he begin in some degree to understand the meaning of mutual aid in the animal world, and to collect notes and make experiments in this direction. But even then he still thought of primitive man as of a beast who lived only by snatching, with tooth and claw, the last morsel of food from the mouth of his fellowmen. Of course, having based the sociological part of his philosophy on so false a premise, Spencer was no longer able to build tip the sociological part of his synthetic philosophy without falling into a series of errors.
(To be Continued.)
Footnotes
1 None that know the author's fairness of mind will be likely to accuse him of partiality in the scathing criticism he here makes of the Apostle of Positivism. Lest any reader be inclined to do so, however, it may not be amiss to cite on this point the opinion of a critic unquestionably conservative and. presumably, impartial-an opinion I came upon by mere chance while engaged on this translation. Scattered through pages 560 to 563 of Falckenberg's 'History of Modern Philosophy' (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1893), I find the following estimate of Comte and his uneven work: 'The extraordinary character of which [Comte's philosophy] has given occasion to his critics to make a complete division between the second, ,subjective or sentimental period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to be transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, the positivistic period. . . . Beneath the surface of the most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte from the beginning. . . . The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings is extremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. . . . Comte's school divided into two groupsthe apostates, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlier doctrine, and the faithful. '-Translator.
THE STREAMLET.From the Russian of Ezekiel Leavitt.
By ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.
In the cold North, between the stony rocks,A lonely streamlet, sorrowfully flowed.Foaming the spray dashed, and the rocks looked down,As if they whispered, 'Whither leads thy road?
'Why hast thou come here to the wilderness,A tardy guest? In this lone desert grayThy waters in the darkness will dry up;Thou canst not through the passes break thy way.'Clear, pearly spray fell on the rocks like tears,Gleaming like steel, the streamlet wound alongSoftly, as if it answered to the rocks:'Oh, ye are wrong! Rocks, ye are wholly wrong!
'Ye laugh at me in pride: 'We rocks are strong;Thou, streamlet, weak. We ne'er shall be o'erthrown!'Rocks, laugh not! Granite does not last for aye;Continual dropping hollows out the stone.'
_________________________________________________________________________________
be introduced into the mutual covenant of all federated bodies of workingmen as the very first necessity. It recommends that an understanding be sought between the united federations of workers and the anti-militarist organizations. Meanwhile local groups continue to meet and effect distribution of anti-militarist placards and literature.
There seems to be a reappearance of the perennial idea of a universal language; this time it is 'Esperanto'; and the avidity with which it is being seized and propagated by our European comrades is evidence sufficient that there are certain demands for international information which could be more easily, supplied through the channel of a universal language than the roundabout courses now open. An appeal has been issued for help to bring out a journal in the new tongue.
A new anarchist monthly, En Marcha, has appeared in Uruguay. Those who read Spanish, and are curious to know the progress of radical ideas in the less aggressive countries of the earth, should get it. Address, 'Centro International de Estudios Social, Rio Negro, 274, Montevideo.'
The free communist group of Stockel-Bois, Belgium, has changed the name of its paper, 'The Insurgent,' to 'The Emancipator'; this as the result of the conference of delegates from all over Belgium, recently held at Stockel-Bois. Perhaps the new name gains in mellifluousness what it loses in force.
Colony experiments are multiplying in France and the Netherlands, chiefly through the efforts of the young comrades who are not content to be warned by the failures of their elders, and who insist that they desire to try and to make their own failures if needs be, but to try at any rate. In this they are right. However disheartened we may be with our own attempts or those of our generation, let us not restrain the young from pursuing the ideal of a free life as they see it. Failure in trying to get what you want is better than success in getting what you don't want.
Alexander Herzen, Jr., son of the great Alex Herzen, who was the stormy friend of that storm-petrel Bakounine, died recently at Lausanne, Switzerland. His was the life of the quiet savant, having been, since 1881, professor of physiology at the University there. Nevertheless he was one of the strong and steadfast supports of freedom in moral life, having written well on the subject: 'What is morality?' from the standpoint of the freeman.
NOTICE.
On November 3d the first number of the new Anarchist labor paper, 'The Voice of Labor,' will be issued at 127 Ossulston street, London N.W., England. The object is to bring the English workers into line with the advanced movement of other countries, pointing out to them the futilities, imbecilities and the chicanery of politics, and encouraging them to orginize along economic and revolutionary lines. Among the contributors will be P. Kropotkin, A. Marsh (Musicians' Union), John Turner1 (Shop Assistants--Retail Clerks--Union), T. H. Keell (London Society of Compositors), and other well-known writers. An American letter by H. Kelly dealing with labor matters in this country will appear weekly. All who wish to get a clear, sane view of the labor movement in Great Britain should read the 'Voice of Labor'; it will contain eight pages; the price is one dollar a year. Send subscriptions to the 'Voice of Labor,' 127 Ossulston street, London N.W., England, or to H. Kelly, 210 East 13th street, New York City.
1Those who were desirous of hearing Mr. Turner in this country, but were unable to do so owing to his deportation by the U. S. Government, will through this medium have the opportunity of learning some of his views.
EDUCATION UNDER REACTIONIST SPAIN.It is a well-known fact that popular instruction in Spain is sadly neglected, almost as much as in Turkey and Russia. What little is given is poor in quantity as well as in quality, chiefly in the latter respect, as it rests under the control, more or less, of priests and monks, who take care that the modern tendencies are as much ignored as possible by the underpaid, starving schoolmasters, whose will is generally subservient to that of the Church.
A good friend of ours, Professor Francisco Ferrer, who spent several years of his life in Paris as an exile, was in the habit, amongst the circle of friends he made in the French capital, of complaining bitterly of the imperfection of the whole of the Spanish education system, and of telling with much enthusiasm what he would do in the way of public instruction if he had the needed financial support. A wealthy lady who was much impressed with his theories left him a considerable portion of her fortune, and Ferrer at once went to Barcelona and started La Escuela Moderna (the Modern School), in praise of which it is enough to say that its success was so marvelous, from the very beginning, that branches had to be established in numerous parts of Spain.
Besides providing good teachers, Ferrer turned his attention to the lack of suitable text-books and reading-books for children in Spain, and provided both by suitable translations and adaptations of French standard works, and by appealing successfully to native talent.
Amongst the works thus published there are, besides translations from Reclus, Kropotkin, Malato, Jean Grave, Letourneau, Paraf-Juval, Engerand, etc., textbooks written in Spanish by Buen and Vargas, professors of the Barcelona University, by Ramon Cajal, the greatest Spanish naturalist, by our Spanish friends, Anselmo Lorenzo, Nicolas Estervanez, Dr. Lluria, Federico Urales, Mrs. Jacquinet, Pi Arsuaga, etc. Needless to say, all these books are decidedly rationalist and frankly revolutionary in tendency--just what is needed to prepare a new generation of free citizens. This precisely explains the hatred and animosity entertained towards Ferrer and his work by the two most potent factors in the Spanish State--the Romish Church and the Army. Their representatives waited only for an opportunity to act, and the opportunity sought came on the occasion of the attempt on the lives of the Spanish sovereigns by Mateo Morral.
Morral, who had rather large private means, enriched the Library of La Escuela Moderna, and volunteered to act as librarian. After he had committed suicide, his acquaintance with Ferrer was found a sufficient motive for arresting the latter and seizing his fortune, or rather the money left him in trust for a purpose.
Those who are acquainted with the ways of Spanish justice in political matters--as revealed to the world by Montiuich, Mano-Negra and Alcalá affairs--will not need to be told that the Spanish inquisitors have more than one way of proving guilty any man they want to get rid of.
Several prominent Freethinkers and Revolutionists, as well as all our comrades on the Continent and in England, are now making a vigorous fight on behalf of justice. Press campaigns have already been started by many independent papers in Spain; by the Tribuna and Messagiero in Italy; by the Labour Leader in England; the Express in Belgium; by L'Intransigeant Echo de Paris, Action, Temps Nouveaux, Courrier Européen, Petite République, Dépêche, and many others in France.
A first victory has already been gained by this agitation. The Spanish government, who intended to submit Ferrer to a court martial, which in Spain always condemns the accused, whether they are guilty or not, has at length decided to remit the affair to a civil tribunal.
Now we must demand a prompt and a fair trial, and compel the Spanish government to allow the Rationalist schools, which have all been closed throughout Spain, to reopen their doors and to continue without hindrance the work of education and emancipation.
FANATACISM.
BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC
I hate your hypocritic race,Who prate about pretended grace;With tabernacle phizzes,Who think Oninipotence to charm,By faces longer than my arm!O, what a set of quizzes!I hate your wretches, wild and sad,like gloomy wights in Bedlam mad,Or vile Old Bailey* culprits;Who, with a sacrilegious zeal,Death and damnation dare to dealFrom barn-erected pulpits.I hate that hangman's aspect bluff,In him, whose disposition's rough,The porcupine surpasses;Who thinks that heaven is in his power,Because his sullen looks rnight sourA barrel of molasses.
* English Insane Asylum and Prison.
POLICE BRUTALITY.
Liberty by the grace of the police and the might of the club was again brought home to us in the most brutal and unspeakable manner. A club of young boys and girls, peaceably assembled Saturday night, October 27th, to listen to a discourse as to whether or not Leon Czolgosz was an Anarchist. At the close of the meeting three of the speakers--Julius Edelson, M. Moscow, and M. Bubinstein--were arrested and. placed under $1,000 bail each. Tuesday, October 30th, a meeting was called to protest against the arrest of these boys and the suppression of free speech. Mr. Bolton Hall, H. Kelly, Max Baginski and myself were announced to speak. The meeting proceeded in absolute order, with Julius Edelson, who had meanwhile been released on bail through Mr. Bolton Hall, as the first speaker. He had spoken barely twenty minutes when several detectives jumped on the platform and placed him under arrest, while twenty-five police officers began to club the audience out of the hall. A young girl of eighteen, Pauline Slotnikoff, was pulled off a chair and brutally dragged across the floor of the hall, tearing her clothing and bruising her outrageously. Another girl, fourteen years of age, Rebccca Edelson, was roughly handled and put under arrest because she failed to leave the hall as quickly as ordered. The same was done to three other women--Annie Pastor, Rose Rogin, and Lelia Smitt--for no other reason except that they were unable to reach the bottom of the stairs fast enough to suit the officers. I was about to leave when one, of the officers struck me in the back, and put me under arrest.Fortunately, Mr. Bolton Hall and H. Kelly could not be present at the meeting; they, too, might have been clubbed out of the hall.Six women and four men were packed like sardines into a patrol-wagon and hustled off to the station house, where we were kept in vile air and subjected to vulgar and brutal annoyance by the police until the following morning; then we were brought before a magistrate and put under $1,000 bail each for assault. Fancy girls of fourteen and eighteen, of delicate physique, assaulting twenty-five two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders!If we as a nation were not such unspeakable hypocrites, we should long since have placed a club instead of a torch in the hand of the Goddess of Liberty--the police mace is not merely the symbol, but the very essence of our 'liberty and order.'
EMMA GOLDMAN.
Adverts
CollegeRegents Civil ServiceCommercial Depts.
You can't strike fire by rubbing your nose. You must use means adequate. Neither can you succeed without fit tools and proper methods. The question then becomes, 'HOW CAN YOU BEST GAIN SUCCESS?'We answer, 'By having a proper preparatory education.' Figures show that with an education you have forty chances of success to one of your uneducated brother.Where can you get the essentials of a High-School course without, its useless frills and its four years?Where can you prepare for a profession in less than a year and a, half? Our hundreds of graduates have all been satisfied on this point. We can satisfy you.Year after year it becomes more difficult for young men and women who must depend upon their own energy in the struggle of life to enter a Professional College.Two years ago 28 counts admitted you to study Law. Last year you needed 48 counts; this year you must have 60 counts. Last year you could have studied Pharmacy without a single count; only last month you could have entered with 12 counts, but now an applicant must show 15 counts. To enter a College of Dentistry, 63 counts is needed instead of the 48 of last year, or the 36 of two years ago. This year the Medical Colleges require 63 counts instead of 48 and are also discussing a five-year attendance at College instead of four.We therefore say again, 'YOU DARE NOT LOSE TIME.'Begin with us this month, and you wil come under the old law, and no matter what changes are made in the entrance requirements it will be no concern of yours.JOIN OUR SCHOOL NOW. Wherever you live you will find one of our Schools in your neighborhood. We have two Schools downtown, a branch School UP-TOWN at 8 EAST 116th STREET, near Fifth Avenue, and one School in Brooklyn.
ABRAHAM RUBINSTEINPrincipal Evening Dep.MORRIS R, FINKELSTEIN, A. B.Principal Day Dep.Uptown SchoolM. SCHONBERG, Mgr.Brooklyn SchoolA. MILLER, Mgr.
Manhattan Preparatory SchoolChartered by the State of New York
RESPECTABILITY
By GEORGE E. BOWEN.
I saw society itself create,Then prop with mocking laws its flimsy state.
Saw custom out of idle habit springAnd o'er the mob its rule of iron swing.
Saw vanities arise—small vapors, first;That choked life's withering heart with fumes accursed.
Saw lust and greed their common creed enthroneAbove the fanes love's Arcady had known.
Saw wars and pestilence with hate despoilThe precious fruitage of all human toil.
Saw manhood bought and sold within the martOf soulless commerce—but the cheapest part.
Yet more I saw in the red lists of greedTo feed the clamor of imperial need:
Brown brothers of the wild to slaughter fed,That peace might follow where the cannon led.
Brown brothers—shackled, body, mind and soul,That Christian commerce win its sacred goal.
Brown brothers—noble in their native might,Made servile to their saving ones of white.
This much society at last attained—That man's redemption from the brute be gained.
Thus, in the name of commerce came a raceWith sword and bible its sure means of grace,
To civilize the earth,. ounce round again,Where primal systems fixed their laws in vain.
And who most scattered waste and want abroadFound favor with the mass, himself and God.
But these immaculate, accepted hosts,Invincible by oft repeated boasts,
Saved for their proudly undisputed fameThe sting and sorrow of a woman's shame.
I saw great masters of the land and sea—Princes of men, as mighty moderns be,
Seal fast the law that gave their passion rein,But held their weak companion's tears in vain.
Saw women of their favor—(duly wed)—Sneer at their consorts of some brothel bed,
Then clutch the lying faith a priest had taughtTo brace the pact by lust and lucre wrought.
Saw my astonished eyes, by fashion's sign,Its creatures curse the miracle divine,—
Denounce with fury, for the social good,The unrecorded joy of motherhood.
Saw, wantonly, these sisters (safely bought)Cast out the one no licensed swain had sought,
While, by the cross whose open arms they wore,Anathema upon her soul they swore.
Thus have men grown out of primeval spawnTo meet the duties of a social dawn.
Thus have they climbed thro ages gone to dust,To save at last their cheap, ignoble lust.
So now they bluster to their holy task,Tricked out in many a smug and shameless mask.
Frenzied they rush to reach the templed spaceWhere grin the idols: Pelf and Power and Place.
Here, at the doorway of all progress made,Men pause to wipe their feet, their souls afraid.
Think you, some Persian rug outspreads its art?Laugh lightly! 'Tis a woman's broken heart.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
With this issue MOTHER EARTH enters upon her second year's journey, with colors flying. Last year's path was thorny, but not without fruitful results. The first anniversary was celebrated by more than four hundred friends from New York, Brooklyn and New Jersey, while those who could not attend gave evidence of their interest and appreciation by sending contributions.
We are grateful to our friends, and we promise to use our best efforts towards still further improving the educatiorial and literary standard of MOTHER EARTH. Those whose subscription has expired at the end of the first year will greatly aid us by sending in their renewals, so that we may know on how many of our old friends we may count.
* * *
The characteristic features of the Thaw case are: poverty, the power of money, venality of woman's love, man's greediness to possess. The central figure in this tragedy is a young woman—an article of sexual luxury, surrounded by prospective buyers. The purchaser regards her in the light of his private property, as he would his horse.
The young girl soon learns to play her part: the poverty-stricken mother looks upon the beauty of her (laughter as a future source of revenue; nothing offers such opportunities for 'friendships' with rich men as the chorus.
Such men are seducers; yet still more so, the seduced. Woman's virtue, to them, is a tempting morsel; but while they are lavishing their money, they become the victims of subtle deceit Priding themselves on their victory over innocence, they are conquered by woman's cunning. Stanford Whites and Thaws can purchase bodies, but their combined wealth could not buy a single soul. That is the tragedy of such lives, as well as the comedy. Their victim is at the same time the avenger of her sex-slavery. Is she, the marketable thing, to be faithful? The master satiated, the slave is once more on the market. Serving White, she must still look out for another possible buyer. She meets Thaw—a simpleton, whose intellect would not suffice to make him a successful bootblack; but he is rich. He is a more promising catch than White; the latter, a man of 'experience,' is not so easily tricked. Thaw would guarantee the continuation of the life of luxury, to which she has become accustomed; he would even marry her, that she may realize her dream of an idle, rich, parasitic life.
Some marriages become prostitution; in this case, prostitution became marriage. The latter legalized the woman's swindle and caused the man's violent folly. But for the wedding, it would have been simply a case of prostitution, like a thousand other similar cases, characteristic of our good, moral society. Marriage, legalizing and complicating things, made the murder possible.
Because of the marriage—and the man's wealth—the girl became the legal property of Thaw; it was the latter's 'duty' to guard the 'honor' of the woman, not to speak of his own 'honor.' As lover, his honor was of no consideration; it became operative with the marriage. Her marriage forced the woman into greater deceit. She must no longer openly market her charms; tact and diplomacy are necessary to preserve marital decorum. She continues her relations with White; perhaps she even cares for him more than for her husband. The latter sees in her virtuous innocence persecuted; he believes implicitly her wild stories of the Bluebeard White. Finally he feels that morality demands vindication. He kills White and imagines that he has delivered his wife from her hated persecutor; he was 'instrumental in the triumph of decency over vice.'
The hangman condemns; the free-minded man strive& to understand. The question here is not who was right or who was wrong; rather, whether it is not necessary and possible to create a social atmosphere, where woman should cease to be a commodity, and mankind in general be delivered from the curse of money-greed and morality.
* * *
Why should the rich not rejoice and go to church? The latter teaches that 'the rich and the poor we must always have with us,' thus serving as the pillar of the parasitic existence of the wealthy. Why should the rich not love the State? The latter, by cunning and violence, guards their stolen wealth against the hungry producers.
The rich should also love the army; the latter secures to them possession of the Philippines and other islands; it tyrannizes over the natives and presses profits from them—for the rich.
But the poor—why should they care for these institutions? Those who continue to do so are the victims of a false education, misleading teachings and mental inertia.
* * *
Karl Marx taught his diciples that economics are the foundation of politics. His modern apostles have, how ever, reversed his teaching; their motto is, 'Let us win political power; then we shall revolutionize the economic conditions.' They have endeavored to transplant the center of revolution from the factory to Parliament, from the Street to the counting room. Hence the transformation of economic revolutionary Socialism into a political reform-movement. The strength of the latter depends on votes, not on revolutionaries. A parliamentary party must limit its activities to the constitution and laws of the country, thus aiding in upholding existing institutions. It cannot put itself outside of the law, since such a position would stamp all political activity on its part illogical and absurd.
Every government represents the legislative and administrative power of the bourgeoisie; the revolutionary proletarian must oppose it, rather than try to reform it.
Existing institutions can only be strengthened by the use of political power; to believe in their overthrow by such means is utopian. The social revolution begins where the belief in government and the present 'order' ceases.
Herein lies the folly of parliamentary Socialists: at tempting to smuggle the social revolution under cover of reform, they merely succeeded in turning reformers and politicians.
By such means the German Social-Democracy had achieved great political 'success.' During many years it was the beacon of all parliamentary Socialists; soon it will serve as a sad example of what a true Labor Party should not be.
The January elections in Germany prove that the Socialistic power of political enlistment is exhausted. They have profited little by compromising with the Philistines, the lower middle class and the Clerical Party. They took good care to keep clear from the revolutionary and Anarchist element; indeed, their leaders were ever busy in keeping the party 'pure.' The energetic and progressive elements of the proletariat found the atmosphere of the party too stifling—they either left or were expelled. It was that very fear of offending popular prejudices that resulted in the Socialistic failure during the last elections.
The Socialists of Germany are between two fires—the revolutionary proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Gradually they must lose the confidence of the former, since their tactics condemn the working man to continue passively to suffer exploitation and oppression. Neither can they gain the confidence of the bourgeoisie, since the latter naturally prefers the safe representation of the fried parties—the Conservative and the Liberal. Revolutionary Socialists welcome the débacle of the parliamentary card-house. They have long since realized the fatality of political success; the mass, however, must first experience the reductium ad absurdum, ere it can find the proper solution.
* * *
The régime of the Tsar is daily becoming more anæmic. It is spilling the blood of the noblest children of Russia in thick streams, but the precious fluid serves to strengthen the revolution and to make Tsarism weak and lifeless. Lacking internal vitality, the Russian despotism believes to have found a much-needed stimulant in the Duma. The latter is to save the knout; it should bring 'order' out of the existing chaos and rehabilitate an ignominious government.
In case of success, European and American financiers would regain their confidence in the autocracy, and more cash would be forthcoming to aid in suppressing the revolution.
* * *
Ideals do not pay. If we happen to possess any remnants of old convictions, we should put them on the shelf with other bric-a-brac, to be occasionally admired in a pensive mood.
Is it not a proof of a 'fine soul' to talk of the asinineties of one's youthful days? When business is slack, it is rather pleasant to recollect 'those wild things.' Of course, one must not forget himself so far as to call back to life old ideals and, perchance, become active in their behalf.
Thus philosophise the 'wise,' the 'practical,' the matter-of-fact people; they shrug their shoulders, assuring us that life must be taken as it is, not as it should be. But what is life? Life spells hypocrisy; the world is peopled with sneaks, renegades and cowards. A few thousand more or less of this calibre—what does it matter?! The competition among them is constantly growing more intense; soon the ex-idealist realizes that he has been doubly cheated: he has bartered the best part of himself for profit, and now he finds himself sadly disappointed in his expectations.
THE RED MONTHTHERE are days in history that should be prohibited I by governments; days of an exciting, destructive character, possessing the power of rousing the elemental forces of men into activity; days apparently unrelated to the rest of the year.
Our immigration laws prohibit the landing of persons who disbelieve in organized government, thus barring Anarchists from our joyful shores. Alas, what an in effectual method of keeping out 'obnoxious elements'! To properly protect the subjects of this country against the spirit of rebellion, it is necessary to banish the historical dates, when organized governments have been forcibly overthrown.
Ye Legislators, to the front! You have a great task to perform. 'Tis of little avail to expel the John Turners, so long as the lessons of revolutionary history— and their pernicious ideas—are accessible to the people. March is the red month in the modern history of Europe. America has not as yet experienced such dangerous events;—too dangerous for power and authority. The war of 1776 was, after all, but a territorial, not a national revolution: the refuse of all countries, thrown into the American pot, could hardly be called a Nation. The Monroe doctrine existed before it was conceived by Monroe. 'English lords may continue to rob the Irish peasants and oppress the industrial slaves of Lancashire and Manchester, as they please; on American soil we can exploit labor oirse1ves.' Such were the arguments of the newly-baked American patriots, who saw in this country the greatest source of wealth and power. European revolutions had a different aspect; there the Nations were swept by the fires of social and economic regeneration.
March eighteenth and nineteenth, 1848, arc memorable in the history of Prussia. Citizens, students and work men of Berlin fought the hireling army of the government, on barricades. Tue throne began to totter. The people carried their fallen dead before the palace and demanded that the king pay his respects to the noble dead. The storm of March had performed a miracle: for once the king obeyed the people.
The Revolution spread through Germany, Austria and France. Unfortunately, however, the revolutionarylo THE RED MONTH triumph was of short duration; within a few months the fatal grip of the reaction stifled every free expression. To-day, the revolution of 1848 seems quite dilettant. In their grand fight for a noble cause the people had neglected the most important thing; they failed to destroy the very basis of all tyranny—its material existence: they had too much reverence for property. The treasury remained in the hands of the reactionaries; with sufficient means to buy uniformed assassins, the government speedily subdued the people. As usual, Labor proved the greatest victim; it achieved a few shallow political rights, remaining economically enslaved as before.
Twenty-three years later another March storm swept the rotten foundations of Society—the Paris Commune. On the eighteenth of March, 1871, the proletariat of Paris rose in arms against the dictatorship of the abominable wretch Thiers, who had attempted to force a new monrchy upon poor, exhausted France, still bleeding from the wounds made by German bayonets.
Men, women and children rushed into the streets and took possession of arms and ammunition; within a few hours the Commune was proclaimed and the red banner displayed from the Hotel de Ville, the City Hall. What joy I What inspiration I This time it was no mere political uprising; the people demanded not a mere change of government, but social and economic reconstruction. The grand ideals of Socialism, Communism and Anarchism had inspired the people with new hope. Again it was the stupid respect for property that finally caused the fall of the Commune, resulting in the terrible slaughter of thirty thousand people.
But the Red Month was not in vain. It has taught us important lessons. No government, whatever reform- mask it may affect, can ever banish the spirit of rebellion from the hearts of the exploited and oppressed millions. The hand of the sacred month of March has written this unforgetable lesson, in letters of blood, upon the minds of those who think.
And we have learned, further, that if the coming revolution is to be successful, the revolutionaries must emancipate themselves from their old traditions, their reverence for stolen property, their moral notions.
May the lessons of the past guide us in the comingstorms of March.
HUGH O. PENTECOST
By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.
EIGHTEEN or nineteen years ago, away out in a sleepy little Michigan town, there fell into my hands a tiny bit of a paper 'no bigger than a man's hand'; there were only four sheets of it, but every word was vibrant with life and power. It was written by Hugh O. Pentecost and T. B. McCready, and at this hour I feel my eyes opening wide again as they did that morning with the light and the movement in the swinging lines. They were Single-Taxers then, but with an alarming freedom in their handling of it that must have made the orthodox Georgeites tremble for what was likely to come next; and for what did come next. From week to week the little paper grew in thought, and grew in size, and grew in force. McCready wrote comments on life as it passed, and Pentecost delivered speeches which were printed; and it was often hard to tell who said the best things and said them best. One great quality they had in common: their thoughts were naked and not ashamed. They were moving towards a rising sun, and if from week to week the light broke farther, wider, higher, and things came out with a different face than they had appeared in the semi-twilight of a month before, neither McCready nor Pentecost shrank from owning it; and men who were thinking along with them felt not the respect of a pupil for a teacher, but the free comradeship of fellow-seekers. There was such a world of good humor in it, such a frankness, such a fearlessness in reversing themselves! and such fire in it all!
Only,—even those of us who were already Anarchists, and who saw things coming our way, naturally with satisfaction, could not but feel startled at times, and a little dubious, too, at the unwonted speed the Twentieth Century was making. Willy-nilly, the question would intrude: 'Can the man who so easily, so rapidly changes his mind, have had time to ground himself well? Will not he who so readily deserts his old position desert the new as readily?'- It was at the time this question was obtruding itself most insistently upon me, in spite of the genuine delight I felt in reading Pentecost's speeches,
12 HUGH O. PENTECOST
that my first opportunity to hear him came. I remember so well the remarks he made concerning those self-same lightning changes, which, apparently, others must have questioned him about. 'People say that I change my mind too rapidly. Why, it is perfectly delightful to find out you have mind enough to change !' Still we kept on shaking our heads over our own good fortune (for Pentecost had now become unequivocally opposed to all law, and while he never called himself an Anarchist in the paper, he even went as far as that in a private letter which I have seen, wherein he said: 'Any one who advances logically along the lines that I have done, must land in Anarchy, and that is where I have landed.') I recall that in discussing Mr. Pentecost with Dr. Gertrude Kelly, not long after this, she expressed her opinion that be was an 'immoral character,' in that being himself in a developing state of mind, not certain of himself, he nevertheless undertook to teach others; that he pronounced himself before knowing what he was talking about, and upset other people's minds without giving them clear ideas. Remembering all this now, I cannot help thinking that Dr. Kelly was right, and yet I am unspeakably glad that Pentecost and McCready spoke when they did and as they did. The Twentieth Century was the most interesting type of the 'free platform' we have seen in this country within my knowledge; it blew like a breath out of the world of the making of things, it bubbled with life, and was indifferent to consistency. It had grown from the tiny paperlet to a sixteen-page journal, and never lost its principal character of eager questioning.
Then there came a heavy blow: McCready, sunny McCready, of the laughing words; funny, McCready, with his gay tilt-riding at the ponderous Knights of the Present Order; tender McCready, with the brimming sympathies; loving McCready was dead, and half the light of the 'Twentieth Century' went out.
Nay, more than half. For already there was creeping into the editorials of Pentecost a lassitude, a heaviness, that told of the dying fire. The contributors gave as before, and there were many good ones. But the peculiar glory of the paper, its brilliant editor was somehow a little spiritless. Words went around. The man had sacrificed too much; he had been a wealthy preacher of a wealthy church. He had forsaken wealth to follow his ideals of truth, and though the crowd that followed him had grown larger and larger, it was not the crowd that could give him the material things he had once enjoyed. And then we heard that Mr. Pentecost was studying law; and then that he had given up the 'Twentieth Century.' And then we heard little more of him till the black thing fell. And when it fell I was glad that McCready was dead and would never know. The daily papers told us first, but of course we did not believe them. We waited till we saw it all in the 'Twentieth Century' itself, and then we had to know that Hugh O. Pentecost, the man who had so effectually demonstrated the iniquity of laws, had mocked at law-worship, done his best to destroy it, had sought and all but received an Assistant District Attorneyship. All but. It was his own ghost that saved him; for the daily papers of the opposition had dragged out the files of the 'Twentieth Century,' hunted through them for the most Anarchistic of his speeches, reprinted and spread them broadcast—unmindful that they were doing the Anarchists good service thereby, so that they won their point —and asked the voters: Is this the man for a District Attorneyship? So great was the pressure brought upon the chief who had promised him the position, that he was compelled to retract his promise to Pentecost, after the election, and when the latter came prepared to take the oath of office he was met by a definite refusal. Thereupon appeared Mr. Pentecost's recantation of heresy. In all my life I have never read a document so utterly devoid of human dignity, so utterly currish. There is a piece of detestable slang which is the sole expression fit for it: 'The Baby Act.' Not only did Mr. Pentecost renounce his former beliefs in liberty, but he took refuge in the pitiable explanation that he, a cloud-land dreamer, had been misled by his innocence into the defense of Parsons, Spies, etc., who, now he had been convinced, had been properly enough hanged. Poor, delicate lamb deceived by ravenous wolves! That was the tenor of the story. Had it been all true, a man would have bitten out his tongue rather than have told such truth. All this is many years ago, and gentler spirits than mine have overlooked and almost forgotten it, in the redemption of his after years. But when the sum of his life is cast up, Justice says, let it not be for gotten that he had within him the Benedict Arnold, and had the times been such as are in Russia now, he would have sold the lives of men as then he sold his conscience for a mess of pottage.
'After Death the Resurrection.' That recantation was the putrefaction of a dead soul. There came a quickening. For a few years he was silent; then one day we heard that Pentecost was speaking—again back on the side of liberalism! I confess I heard it with rage. 'Let him have the decency to keep still,' I said. 'If he is really sincere, let him be a radical, long enough to prove his sincerity, without talking.' Others said I was too harsh, and I think they were right. But I could not forget that sentence about the Chicago men.
For all the years since 1892 I had not seen him. I avoided him as sedulously as I could whenever requests for speeches would have brought us in contact. To all descriptions of his splendid addresses I sneered back: 'What is he now?' At length it fell out, about a year ago, that we were both to address a Moyer and Haywood protest meeting in Philadelphia. In such a cause I did not think I had a right to refuse to speak; so I swallowed my dislike, but remarked to the chairman, Geo. Brown, 'Don't you steer me up against Pentecost. I don't want to have to speak to him.' Geo. Brown is nothing if not mischief-loving. He wanted to see the fur fly. Incidentally he wanted to tell Pentecost that he himself was still a little sore over that recantation, but, while fond of seeing other people rage, he dislikes to say disagreeable things. So he did just what I told him not to do. I am glad now that he did. There was nothing for it but to say what I felt. I remember the hurt look, hurt and surprised, on Pentecost's face when Brown said, 'Here is a lady who has a grudge against you.' I plunged in; his mouth and eyes saddened, inexpressibly. 'The District Attorneyship? Yes, it was all wrong, all wrong. But wasn't that a long time ago?' I admitted it was; but was that an excuse? No, it was no excuse; there could be no excuse. He knew that; he didn't offer any; his mind had been in a condition of moral slump, and influences had been used on him; but he knew that didn't justify him. 'Of course, If I had got it, I would have accepted and gone on with it—' I interrupted him: 'It was your luck, Mr. Pentecost, that you didn't get it.'—'It was. No one realized that better than I. No one was happier than I that I didn't get it.—It was through the efforts of Mrs. Pentecost that the offer had been obtained.'—'And what you said of your having been deceived into the defense of Parsons and the rest ?'—He didn't remember having worded the matter quite so pitiably as I said; but what he meant was that lie had been misinformed; he had thought these men had never preached force or counseled it, while later information had led him to believe there had been a conspiracy, as the State contended. However, for any evidence that went before the court, the men were never proven guilty, and that he stood by, as he had stood in the old days of '86, when, to the best of his belief, he was the first public man who had spoken in their defense. He seemed to take great satisfaction in that memory, and repeated it on the platform later on. As for the rest, he bad done his best. He had kept silent for a while; and now for ten years he had worked in New York, and he thought those who knew his work would bear witness to his sincerity. What more could he say?
And what more could he say? When a man has done wrong, and owned it, and done his best to retrieve him self, he has done all. My bitterness melted, and we shook hands then.
His speech was, as always, strong, graceful, effective. But it was the trained lawyer speaking; not the old in spired prophet of liberty. The menace in his final sentence showed that if he had once deprecated forcible resistance as preached by the Chicago men, he had shifted that ground, too; for he said that if the powers of Idaho refused fair trial to these men, annihilated all attempts at peaceable justice, then—'LET THEM TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES.'
Before he went he said to me: 'I am glad we have had this talk. I would not want you to feel unkind to- -wards me, for you have not a better friend than I am.' I give the sentence, because it shows his personal mag
THE SONG OF THE EARTH
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bulkely, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Merian, Flint,Possessed the land which rendered to their toilHay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and woodEach of these landlords walked amidst his farm,Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's and my name's.How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!I fancy these pre waters and the flagsKnow me, as does my dog: we sympathize ;And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds;And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boysEarth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feetClear of the grave.They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,And sighed for all that bounded their domain;'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,And misty lowland, where to go for peat.The land is well, - lies fairly to the south.'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and backTo find the sit-fast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who addsHim to his land, a lump of mould the more.Hear what the Earth says:-
EARTH-SONG
'Mine and yours;Mine, not yours.Earth Endures;Stars abide-Shine down in the old sea;Old are the shores;But where are old men?I who have seen much,Such have I never seen.
'They lawyer's deedRan sure,'In tail,To them, and to their heirsWho shall succeed,Without fail,For evermore.'
'Here is the land,Shaggy with wood,With its old valley,Mound and flood.But the heritors?Fled like the flood's foam.The lawyer, and the laws,And the kingdom,Clean swept herefrom.
'They called me theirs,Who so controlled me;Yet every oneWished to stay, and is gone.How am I theirs,If they cannot hold me,But I hold them?'
When I heard the Earth-song,I was no longer brave;My avarice cooled,Like lust in the chill of the grave.
* * *
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTSAs long as the capitalists of Europe and America could, with the aid of their respective governments, carry their 'civilization' into Asia and force the latter's truly cultured people to buy their shoddy wares, there existed no yellow peril. Only when the 'heathens' began to practically apply the lessons taught them by their white 'benefactors'; when they, too, began to propagate civilization -- lo! suddenly we perceived the yellow peril.
'Guard your most sacred possessions, ye nations of Europe!' cried the German Emperor, and the international boodlers applauded unanimously. Many working-men, especially those of America, joined in the cry; even some revolutionists were deluded into belief that the competition of Asiatic labor was dangerous to their ideas. How unjustified this fear has fully been demonstrated within the last few years by the remarkable spreading of social revolutionary ideas among the Japanese and Chinese. The intellectuals of these nations are as familiar with modern radical ideas as the people of America and Europe. The labor question is now no less acute in those countries than with us.
A very hopeful sign of the times is the recent organization of the 'Social Revolutionary Party of Japanese in America,' whose aim it is to enlighten their countrymen with regard to existing social conditions and to prepare them for the social revolution.
Herewith we publish the proclamation of the new organization, a remarkable document, which indicates that the American workingmen have a great deal to learn from their 'heathen' brothers:
'We proclaim to the people of the whole world the organization of the Social Revolutionary Party of Japanese in America.
Who says that labor is divine, while a few people are fed and clothed well and millions are suffering from poverty and hunger?
What is life for, when one man takes away the rights and liberty of millions that he may live in luxury and ease?
What is the dignity of a nation when the lives of millions are sacrificed in war to satisfy a few men's ambition and vanity?
Yes, labor is intolerable, life is miserable, the nation is cruel, and society is unjust.
The cries of the sufferers all over the world are increasing day after day, and the enthusiastic attempts to abolish these torments and to try to secure true liberty and happiness and peace are increasing month after month.
How can a man who has heart and soul look at suffering humanity without a feeling of sympathy or a desire to assist in the alleviation of the wrongs?
It is our duty to revolutionize this unjust system of society and make it a beautiful, free, happy one, both to the honor of our forefathers, and for the benefit of our sons. It is not only our duty, but it is our right.
The purpose of our revolutionary society is to realize this fact, and to discharge this duty and secure our rights.
Come, those who are interested, and join us. Do not hesitate!
Our Program:1.We shall abolish the industrial, economic competitive system of to-day, which breeds pauperism, and let the people who own the nation's wealth.2.We shall endeavor to destroy traditional and superstitious ideas of class lines, and will try to insure equal rights for all.3.We shall endeavor to abolish racial prejudice and learn to realize the true meaning of the brotherhood of men.4.In order to accomplish the above stated purposes we recognize the necessity of uniting with the comrades of the world.'
* * *
If anything more was necessary to convince the American public of the existence of a capitalistic conspiracy to hang Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, and destroy the Western Federation of Miners, the high-handed interference of Theodore Roosevelt has accomplished that.
To curry favor with the pirates whose stolen millions sent him to the White House, our political desperado did not hesitate to stoop to the use of his official position against the Idaho defendants. Such base attempts to influence justice have seldom been witnessed outside of Morocco and Turkey.
We say, to influence justice ; because the private opinion of a professional politician as to the moral worth of the representatives of revolutionary ideas is a matter of entire indifference to the latter. It is self-evident that the chief lackey of the plutocrats cannot consider the opponents of the latter as anything but 'undesirable citizens.' There are many citizens, however - and by no means the worst - who look upon the White House parasites as highly undesirable citizens.
It is time that the American people, and especially organized labor, should realize that the White House is the very last place to look for justice, a 'square deal,' or even common decency.
* * *
We mourn the tragic fate of William McLaughlin - better known as 'Billy' -late Inspector of Police, Chief of the New York Detective Bureau, and Head of the 'Anarchist Squad,' of recent creation. Yesterday a power in the land ; to-day a mere Captain of Westchester, familiarly known as Goatville, with nothing to do but sign his name in the blotter twice a day. The salary is a paltry two thousand five hundred a year, and but little graft. The Sun, whose editor claims friendship with 'Billy,' informs us that the former detective is rich - his wealth, no doubt, saved from the yearly salary of three thousand five hundred - and that he is expected to resign at once. Others say that 'he is game and will stick it out.' All of this is very sad for a man who can buy twenty-thousand dollar houses and live like a bank president on a salary of three thousand five hundred a year. Such a genius deserves to be chancellor of the exchequer of a South American Republic. Alas, poor William!
* * *
Our friend Luigi Galleani was tried during the last week of April for alleged participation in the Paterson riots of 1902. We are happy to state that the trial resulted in a disagreement, seven jurymen voting for conviction and five for acquittal. We do not think that the District Attorney of Paterson will seek new laurels by bringing Galleani to trial again. It is to be hoped that he will not succeed in finding twelve men to send our innocent brother to prison.
On the heels of the trial comes the information that William McQueen - whose five-year sentence for 'complicity' in the Paterson troubles had almost expired - was pardoned on condition that he leave at once our hospitable shores. The Paterson capitalists and their political lackeys may now rest in peace.
* * *
Maurice Donnay, an enfant terrible of French literature, has recently been elected member of the Academic Francaise. Loyalty, rather than literary merit, is nowadays the key that unlocks the door of immorality ; mere loyalty is often sufficient ; merit alone - never. Maurice Donnay is one of the few possessing both.
Besides Antaloe France and Jules Lemaitre, he is now the only artist in the Academy who considers industrious erudition, alexandrines of proper measure and fine sounding parliamentary speeches as meritorious literary productions.
Ten years ago, however, he would have knocked for admittance in vain. All his poetic finesse, his manifold talents and power of ingenious observation did not suffice to open the door, until he had conclusively proven by one of his recent mediocre plays that he was eligible to immortality.
His receptive soul must often suffer tortuous hours by the incarceration of his wild spirit within the confines of academic respectability. In truth, but once has he succeeded in taming down his genius to the strict requirements of a conventional play. In all his following works his artistic spirit soon manifested itself by rising above all literary dogmas and puritanic morality.
The academic sedateness demanded by the mossy institution from its Immortals will hardly prove a sufficient guarantee against an occasional 'bad break' - no more than Donnay's erudite engineer training prevented his public appearance as chansonnier in the Chat Noir of Rodolphe Salis.
The eternal fitness of things: the p&eolig;ns of peace sung by professional exponents of war.
The peace farce of recent date was as fiendish a caricature of the Brotherhood of Man as Satan could desire. A glance at the list of participants is sufficient to characterize the sincerity of those friends of peace.The parvenu steel king in the role of chief peace-maker, - ye gods, what a spectacle!
Having had his praises sung on Founders' Day, at Pittsburg, the hero of Skibo and Homestead, this chief beneficiary of the war on classes, came to New York to witness his triumph as king of peace. As such he was felicitated by his imperial brothers, Oily Bill and Terrible Teddy, and decorated by the French Government with the cross of the Legion of Honor. This honor, however, is now of such questionable quality that it may properly be said of an honest man thus decorated : 'He has been dishonored with the Legion of Honor.'
* * *
In the sign of prosperity.
On the benches in Madison Square cower, chilled, human debris - ragged, dirty, hollow-eyed, mere caricatures of man ....
It is not permitted to sleep in the parks. Soon comes the night stick, awakening the dozing ; the policeman drives the frightened wretches out of the park. They go, resigned in the abyss of despair, further - further!
At Union Square the cruel performance is repeated. The nearer we approach the lower part of the city, the more pronounced and heartrending the misery and suffering. From foul-smelling alleys and filthy hallways there comes the sound of heavy breathing and low coughing. The dark steps of the railroad tunnel are plastered with the forbidding figures of unemployed and homeless - men for whom there is no room in all the forest of houses and who cannot afford the price of a night's lodging ; men to whom work is a luxury, unattainable by those run down at the heels and whose shoes are tied with strings ; men past vice or virtue ; men who have long since forgotten to live and are too misery-stupified to cross the threshold of the land of the dead.
In the sign of prosperity.
* * *
THE FIRST MAY AND THE GENERAL STRIKE
WITH the Spring awakening of Nature the dormant energies of the people are revivified - the oppressed feel their self-consciousness and the joy of combat stirring within them.
Stormy March - the red month of revolution ; stirring May - the fighting month of the proletariat striving for independence.
The basic revolutionary idea of the first of May has characterized all the battles of labor in modern times, and the historic origin and development of that idea prove its great significance for the labor movement.
The May idea - in the relation of its revolutionary spirit to labor struggles - first manifested itself in the economic battles of the Knights of Labor. The final theoretical aim of that organization - founded by Uriah S. Stephens and fellow workers in 1869, and bearing a pronounced radical character in the beginning of its history - was the emancipation of the working classes by means of direct economic action. Its first practical demand was the eight-hour day, and the agitation to that end was an unusually strenuous one. Several strikes of the Knights of Labor were practically General Strikes. The various economic battles of that period, supported by the American Federation of Labor during its young days, culminated , on the first of May, 1886, in a great strike, which gradually assumed almost national proportions. The workingmen of a number of large cities, especially those of Chicago, ceased their work on that day and proclaimed a strike in favor of the eight-hour day. They thus served notice on their capitalistic masters that henceforth they will not be submissively exploited by the unlimited greed of the capitalists, who had appropriated the means of production created by the many generations of labor, thus usurping the position of masters - the kind masters who had cordially leave labor the alternative of either prostituting their brawn or dying with the families of starvation.
The manly attitude of labor in 1886 was the result of a resolution passed by the Labor Congress held at St. Louis, one year previously. Great demonstrations of a pronounced social revolutionary character took place all over the country, culminating in the strike of two hundred thousand workingmen, the majority of whom were successful in winning the eight-hour day.
But great principles of historic significance never triumph without a blood baptism. Such was also the case in 1886. The determination of the workingmen to decide to sell to the purchasers of labor was looked upon by the exploiters as the height of assumption, and condemned accordingly. Individual capitalists, though unwilling, were nevertheless forced to submit to the demands of organized labor ; perceiving, however, in the self-respecting attitude of the working masses a peril threatening the very foundations of the capitalistic economic system, they thirsted for revenge ; nothing less would satisfy the cannibalistic masters but human sacrifices : the most devoted and advanced representatives of the movement - Parsons, Spies, Engel, Fischer and Lingg - were the victims.
The names of our murdered brothers, sacrificed to propitiate an enraged Moloch, will forever remain indivisibly linked with the idea of the first of May. It was the Anarchists that bore the brunt of those economic battles.
In vain, however, did organized capital hope to strangle the labor movement on the scaffold ; a bitter disappointment awaited the exploiters. True, the movement had suffered an eclipse, but only a temporary one. Quickly rallying its forces, it grew with renewed vigor and energy.
In December, 1888, the American Federation of Labor decided to make another attempt to win the eight-hour day, and again by means of direct economic action. The strike was to be initiated by a gigantic demonstration on the first of May, 1890.
In the meantime there assembled at Paris (1889) an International Labor Congress. A resolution was offered to join the demonstration, and the day which three years previously initiated the eight-hour movement became the slogan of the international proletariat, awakened to the realization of the revolutionary character of its final emancipation. Chicago was to serve as an example.
Unfortunately, however, the direction was not followed. The majority of the congress consisting of political parliamentarists, believers in indirect action, they purposely ignored the essential import of the first of May, so dearly bought on the battlefield ; they decided that henceforth the first of May was to be 'consecrated to the dignity of labor,' thus perverting the revolutionary significance of the great day into a mere appear to the powers that be to grant the favor of an eight-hour day. Thus the parliamentarists degraded the noble meaning of the historic day.
The first of may 'consecrated to the dignity of labor!' As if slavery could be dignified by anything save revolutionary action. As long as labor remains mere prostitution, selling its producing power for money, and as long as the majority of mankind are excluded from the blessings of civilization, the first of May must remain the revolutionary battle cry of labor's economic emancipation.
The effect of the Paris resolution soon manifested itself : the revolutionary energy of the masses became dormant ; the wage slaves limited their activity to mere appeals to their masters for alleviation and to political action, either independent of, or in fusion with, the bourgeois parties, as is the case in England and America. They quietly suffered their representatives in Parliament and Congress to defend and strengthen their enemy, the government. They remained passive while their alleged leaders made deals with the exploiters, hobnobbed with the bourgeois, and were banquetted by the exploiters, while oppression steadily grew in proportion and intensity, and all attempts of the wage slaves to throw off their yoke were suppressed in the most merciless manner.
Only a small minority of the working class, especially in the Latin countries, remained true to the revolutionary spirit of the first of May ; but the effect of their noble efforts was materially minimized by their international isolation, repressed as they were by the constantly growing power of the governments, strengthened by the reactionary political activity of the labor bodies.
But the disastrous defeats suffered by labor on the field of parliamentarism and pure-and-simple unionism have radically changed the situation in recent years. To-day we stand on the threshold of a new era in the emancipation of labor : the dissatisfaction with the former tactics is constantly growing, and the demand is being voiced for the most energetic weapon at the command of labor - the General Strike
It is quite explicable that the more progressive workingmen of the world should hail with enthusiasm the idea of the General Strike. The latter is the truest reflex of the crisis of economic contrasts and the most decisive expression of the intelligent dissatisfaction of the proletariat.
Bitter experience has gradually forced upon organized labor the realization that it is difficult, if not impossible, for isolated unions and trades to successfully wage war against organized capital ; for capital is organized, into national as well as international bodies, co-operating in their exploitation and oppression of labor. To be successful, therefore, modern strikes must constantly assume ever larger proportions, involving the solidaric co-operation of all the branches of an affected industry - an idea gradually gaining recognition in the trades unions. This explains the occurrence of sympathetic strikes, in which men in related industries cease work in brotherly co-operation with their striking bothers - evidences of solidarity so terrifying to the capitalistic class.
Solidaric strikes do not represent the battle of an isolated union or trade with an individual capitalist or group of capitalists ; they are the war of the proletariat class with its organized enemy, the capitalist regime. The solidaric strike is the prologue of the General Strike.
The modern worker has ceased to be the slave of the individual capitalist ; to-day, the capitalist class is his master. However great his occasional victories on the economic field, he still remains a wage slave. It is, therefore, not sufficient for labor unions to strive to merely lessen the pressure of the capitalistic heel ; progressive workingmen's organizations can have but one worthy object -- to achieve their full economic stature by complete emancipation from wage slavery.
That is the true mission of trades unions. They bear the germs of a potential social revolution ; aye, more - they are the factors that will fashion the system of production and distribution in the coming free society.
The proletariat of Europe has already awakened to a realization of his great mission ; it remains for the American workers to decide whether they will continue, as before, to be satisfied with the crumbs off the board of the wealthy. Let us hope that they will soon awaken to the full perception of their great historic mission, bearing in mind the battle scars of former years. Especially at this time, when organized capital of America - the most powerful and greedy of the world - is again attempting to repeat the tragedy of 1887, American labor must warn the overbearing masters with a decisive 'Thus far and no further!'
* * *
ON THE ROAD
By Emma Goldman(Continuation)
CHICAGO. City of the greatest American crime! City of that black Friday when four brave sons of the people were strangled to death - Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fischer, and you young giant who preferred to take your own life rather than allow the hangman to desecrate you with his filthy touch. You noble free spirits who walked along the open road, believing its call to be 'the call of battle, of rebellion.' 'Tis therefore you went 'with angry enemies, with desertion.'
O for the indifference, the inertia of those whose cowardice permitted you to die, to be strangled - the very people for whom you had given your life's blood.
O city of shame and disgrace! City of gloom and smoke, filth and stench. You are rotten with stockyards and slums, poverty and crime. What will become of you on the day of reckoning, when your children will awaken to consciousness? Will their battle for liberty and human dignity cleanse your past? Or will they demolish you with their wrath, their hatred, their revenge for all you have made them endure?
As my train neared this hole, bellowing suffocating smoke and dust, covering the sky with a dark, gloomy cloth, on the morning of the eighteenth of March, I thought of you, Paris. Great, glorious Paris! Cradle of rebellion, mother of that glad, joyous day, thirty-six years ago, when your flying colors proclaimed brotherhood and peace in the grand spirit of the Commune. What a contrast between you and Chicago! The one inspiring, urging on to rebellion and liberty ; the other making her children mercenary and indifferent, clumsily self-satisfied. What a contrast! What an awful contrast!
I arrived at Chicago at the high tide of politics, the various parties wrangling, huckstering and wrestling for political supremacy, each claiming to stand for a principle : the greatest good of the people.
What Bernard Shaw says of the English in 'The Man of Destiny' holds equally good with us in this country : 'When the Englishman wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently till there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he wants. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it colonization. When he wants a market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary, he flies to arms in defence of Christianity, fights for it, conquers for it, and takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores he puts a chaplain on board his ship, mails a flag with a cross onto his top gallant mast and sails to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles, he robs you on business principles, he enslaves you on imperial principles, he bullies you on manly principles.'
No better picture could be drawn of our own good people, especially our politicians Of course they do not want the job of mayor, governor or president ; of course they do not want to get fat as the proverbial seven cows ; it is only for a principle that they enter politics, for the dear people's sake, for municipal ownership's sake, for the sake of purifying our bad morals, for good government, for child labor laws, factory improvement, for anything and everything, only not for their own sake. 'Tis for the sake of principle our politicians fight, lie and abuse one another ; for the sake of principle they invest their money in land robbery, in cotton mills where the children of the dear majority are forced to work under the industrial lash, or in stockyards and packing houses where human beings are made to rot in filth.
For the sake of principle liberals, the Single Taxers, have made a compact with the Democratic Party, hailing Dunne, Hearst and others of their caliber as the Messiahs of the people, and indulging in the same cheap methods of abuse and attack. One of our Single Tax brothers was elated over the discovery that his opponent lived with a 'nigger.' 'We'll use it against him. It is sure to kill his chances,' said our 'liberal' friend, and no doubt it is. Just think, advanced people prying into the private life of a man and publicly dissecting it for the sake of a political job, - I beg your pardon, for the sake of principle. How coarse, how vulgar 'principle' has made man.
And our Socialist friend, is he not ready to string up anyone who disputes 'economic determinism' and 'the materialistic conception of history' ? For the sake of his principle he will kick anyone out of the party who dares doubt the infallibility of political action ; he will denounce us as dynamiters, when we venture to suggest some other method. For the sake of principle the Socialistic paper of Chicago devotes its front page to the discussion of 'gowns for the ladies,' and a Socialistic candidate appeals for votes on the ground that he has a good law practice and an income of a hundred thousand dollars. And the majority goes into the trap and allows itself to be humbugged - for the sake of a principle.
While in Chicago I delivered nine lectures before various nationalities - Jewish, Bohemians, Danish, not to forget of course the dear, fortunate natives who make the Social Science League their headquarters. Whether it was due to the subject, 'The Revolutionary Spirit of the Modern Drama,' or to the innate curiosity of the Americans, I do not know ; at any rate the meeting at the Masonic Temple was the largest and most interesting. Two real life professors from the Chicago University, quite a host of students from the same institution, as well as lawyers, politicians and workingmen packed the hall. Great strides must have been made in the last few years to bring out instructors and students from the Rockefeller College. It is not so very long ago that Tolstoi's picture was turned face to the wall because he dared criticise the endower of that hall of learning.
Some naive people were so enthusiastic over my lecture that they suggested to one of the professors that he invite me to the University to repeat my lecture. Alas, they forgot the 'principle' for the sake of which the good professor could not invite the Anarchist, Emma Goldman, to the College. Probably he thought that at the sound of Anarchism the University buildings would crumble to pieces, as the walls of Jericho did at the sound of the Jewish trumpet. No one can blame the professor - 'principle' before freedom of knowledge.
Life in Chicago has always been hateful and trying to me, but the great kindness at the home of my dear comrades, Annie and Jack Livshis, and especially the untiring goodness and the fine tact at the discretion of the Anarchistic Mother, Annie, helped to overcome my aversion to the jungle city.
Cincinnati. The old sensational speculations as to whether I will or will not be allowed to speak in that city greeted me in the newspapers when I arrived. Madam Alice R. Longworth living on Walnut Hill, it was quite reckless of the city fathers to alow dangerous utterances at Cincinnati. However, Anarchism has been heard at three large meetings, and Walnut Hill is still intact. America is full of parasites - Anarchism has greater things to do than to bother about some particular member. It has to build character, to develop individuality, to clear the human mind of spooks and shadows. It has to call men and women 'out from the dark refinement, out from behind the screen, out from traditions and prejudices - into the open road.'
St. Louis. Some people seem to be incapable of learning that Anarchism and dirty halls in squalid sections of the city are not synonymous. True, Anarchism does not exclude the poor, the dirty or the tramp any more than the sun excludes them, but it does not make a virtue of filth. It seems to me that so long as people remain satisfied with their present conditions, absolutely indifferent to cleanliness, air and beauty, they cannot possibly feel the burning shame of their lives, nor will they strive for anything that might lift them out of the ugliness of their existence. I do not censor anyone, for I am convinced that the boys of St. Louis tried their best ; yet I am grieved that they should be satisfied with so little. True, the halls were cheap, but through the future of Mother Earth depends upon the success of this tour, I cannot even for her sake speak in dingy little halls, dark and gloomy, with the dust and smoke making it impossible to breathe.
Minneapolis. Those who believe that only organizations or groups can accomplish things should profit by the example of Minneapolis, where two energetic workers did wonders.
The population of this city is composed of shopkeepers, bankers, doctors and lawyers - not the element that is usually interested in radical ideas. Nor were such ideas ever put before them. Anarchism was a spook, an evil spirit in that town, but daring is the only way to success. The audiences that thronged the halls for three successive evenings far surpassed in number and intelligence the most optimistic expectations. When I looked into the earnest faces, I felt that here were people who did not come to see but to hear, to be enlightened and to learn, and I was grateful to my good star, or rather the energy and perseverance of the two comrades who made such meetings possible.
The world is full of freaks - the Minneapolis Spook Club can certainly boast a large following. This organization is composed of professional men only, and they are known for their purity and morality, they never suffered the evil spirit of woman to invade their sanctum before. But thanks to the generosity of a friend, the rigid rules of the Spook Club were temporarily set aside. Possibly the members thought that one could not be a woman and an Anarchist at the same time. The angelic chastity of the Spookers would have been quite discomforting to me, were it not for the presence of a few daughters of that arch seducer Eve, who helped to bring some wit and humor into the dead atmosphere of statute and dissecting room wisdom. Specialists were there a-plenty, doctors enough to create any amount of disease, lawyers and a real live judge to induce one to commit crime, bump interpreters and bump producers, and so forth ; all important and awe inspiring gentlemen, but as innocent of the great questions of the day as new born bobs , their heads full of spooks and fears of all that their lack of wisdom could not grasp.
Winnipeg. The dirty crows - as a certain French artist named the priests - who infest the streets and cars of Montreal are not as numerous in Winnipeg, but the horrors of their creed are as dominant here as there - the creed that has for centuries gone about killing, burning and torturing is still holding the Canadian people in power, befogging their minds as in ages past.
The city was white on my arrival ; everything in the tight clutches of grim winter ; apparently not a sign of life or warmth. But the greetings of my comrades and the enthusiasm of the audiences soon convinced me that all was not cold or dead. Spring, the great awakener of life and growth, was stirring in the hearts of those who had come to hear me.
Men and women from every nook in the world gather at Winnipeg, the land of promise. They are soon made to realize, however, that the causes which drove them from their native shores - oppression, greed and robbery - are quite at home in this new, white land. The true great promise lies in all these nations coming together, to look one another in the face, to learn for the first time the real force that makes for wealth. Men and women knowing one another and clasping hands for one common purpose, human brotherhood and solidarity. Yes, Winipeg is the place of promise. It is the fertile soil of growth, life and ideas.
The Radical Club, but two years old, has become a tremendous factor in creating interest in new thought. My six days' visit seemed a dream. Large, eager audiences every evening and twice on Sunday, a beautiful social gathering that united two hundred men, women and children in one family of comrades, and people constantly coming and going during the day, all anxious to learn, made the time pass like a flash. When I stood on the platform of the train bidding a last farewell to a large group of friends, I keenly felt the pains of parting ; but this, too, I felt:
Allons! We must not stop here -However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenientthis dwelling we cannot remain here,However shelter'd this port and however calm thesewaters, we must not anchor here,However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us weare permitted to receive it but a little while.'
I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, alone with my impressions of those who had passed before me in long processions during my stay in Winnipeg. However, the official zeal of the Immigration Inspectors willed it differently. With the usual impudence that goes with authority I was subjected to the 'third degree' : my name, occupation, whether American citizen, how long in America, and whether I had been out of the States before. Evidently the uniformed gentlemen had studied that infamous anti-Anarchist Immigration Law that will not admit 'disbelievers in organized government.' I assured my anxious protector that he would have to let me return, since I had been in America eighteen yeas before that stupid law was passed. Though myself a citizen of the world, my father happened to be privileged enough to become a citizen of this free country. After a long conversation with some others of his ilk, my good friend decided to let me go on. I know from experience that our law makers can do anything they please ; still, I venture to keep me out of this 'sweet land of liberty.' Besides, what are laws for if not to be evaded? No wonder so many 'disbelievers in organized government' have flocked to American since the law against them became operative.
Poor, stupid Immigration Inspector! If you could have foreseen the result of your zeal, you might not have made it so public that the dangerous Emma Goldman was on the train. You got my fellow passengers intensely interested, with the result that I added a seventh meeting to those held at Winnipeg and disposed of a large number of magazines and pamphlets - not in the hall but in the Pullman sleeper. When will our fool governors learn that the best government is the one that governs least or not at all? Never before have I felt as convinced of this truth as on this tour. The rigid laws against Anarchists, passed within the past four or five years, the shameful misrepresentation of Anarchism, and the persecution of its adherents have awakened the most intense interest in our ideas in this country.Still more striking is the tremendous change in the attitude of the press. The papers in Toledo, Toronto, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Winnipeg, especially those of the last two cities, have been remarkable for their fairness and decency in reporting my meetings. Probably they have learned that yellow journal methods, sensational, vulgar, untruthful reports are no longer believed by the thinking readers of newspapers. I wish our Eastern journalists would learn the same lesson and follow the example of one of their colleagues, the editor of the Winnipeg Tribune, who has this to say:
'Emma Goldman has been accused of abusing freedom of speech in Winnipeg, and Anarchism has been denounced as a system that advocates murder. As a matter of fact, Emma Goldman indulged, while in Winnipeg, in no dangerous rant and made no statement that deserved more than moderate criticism of its wisdom or logic. Also, as a matter of fact, the man who claims that Anarchism teaches bomb-throwing and violence doesn't know what he is talking about. Anarchism is an ideal doctrine that is now, and always will be, utterly impracticable. Some of the gentles and most gifted men of the world believe in it. The fact alone that Tolstoi is an Anarchist is conclusive proof that it teaches no violence.
'We all have a right to laugh at Anarchy as a wild dream. We all have a right to agree or disagree with the teachings of Emma Goldman. But we should not make ourselves ridiculous by criticising a lecturer for the things that she did not say, nor by denouncing as a violent and bloody a doctrine that preaches the opposite of violence.'
(To be continued.)
* * *
SOCIALISM AND FATALISM
By H. Kelly.
THE relation between the two theories, roughly defined as Socialism and Fatalism, respectively, is more real than apparent. By Socialism I mean the Marxian brand, known in Europe as Social Democracy : the collective ownership of the land, means of production, distribution and exchange, controlled and regulated by a democratic State. Fatalism - the doctrine of inevitability : what is, had to be ; what was, will be. Leaving out of the question the law of gravitation, change of seasons and other natural phenomena, and applying the inevitability theory to individuals, fatalism is neither more nor less than a state of mind, resulting from repeated suggestion and repetition.
To illustrate. A fortune teller, after her palm has been crossed by a (the inevitable) piece of silver, solemnly informs a young lady of impressionable years that she will be married twice. The girl repeats the suggestion to herself and her friends throughout a number of years, until she finally becomes convinced that she must get married twice - and she does. Ergo, the fortune teller is vindicated.
Social Democrats have repeated the half-truth that man is the creature of circumstance and environment so often, that in the end their actions are moulded to fit their theory: they lose all individuality and initiative, becoming mere creatures of the ideas they have mouthed, without will or desire to act differently from the people they despise and look upon with contempt.
It has long been recognized by advanced thinkers that different races and different countries will work out their salvation in their own particular way and time. Anarchism and Socialism are theories applicable to the whole human race, but it is more than probably that certain countries will attempt the practical application of the new ideas before others and, necessarily, with certain modifications. If we compare France with Turkey, England with Persia, America with India, we appreciate the fact that things do not work out the same in all countries and with all races. Capitalism is common to them all, yet how differently it manifests itself in the development of the various countries.
Social Democracy, as taught by Marx and Engels, was expected to develop along similar lines in all countries. In fact, we have witnessed in recent years the spectacle, still extant, of the Social Democrats of Russia advocating a system whereby the peasants were to be deprived of their land and driven into the cities ; because, forsooth, in order to reach Socialism it is necessary to go through a period of industrialism of the kind we have in England and America. It is for this reason that Social Democrats have failed so signally to make converts among the peasants, while the Socialist Revolutionists, who advocated the retention of the land by the peasants, succeeded so well with the latter. All doubt on this point will be dissipated by consulting the current Russian revolutionary periodicals.
Collectivism was supposed to mean the same thing all over the globe ; yet time has proven the contrary.
European Socialists have rather a poor opinion of, amounting in some cases to positive contempt for, the intellectual ability of their American comrades. They will not be surprised to hear that we are evolving a set of Socialists here who, though worshiping Marx, hold ideas positively ludicrous in their heterodoxy to his gospel, as set forth in the Communist Manifesto. Heterodoxy is sometimes as foolish as orthodoxy. Some Socialists say that there is no reason why millionaires should not exist under Socialism ; others claim that even titles - purely for merit, or course - my be bestowed under that 'Democratic Republic.' In amazement we rub our eyes and wonder if the Collectivist ship has not slipped her moorings and the old religion lost its hold on its disciples. Wages will exist under Collectivism, we are told, and if a Melba refuses to sing unless we pay her ten or twenty times the amount that ordinary mortals receive, we will comply ; for as Mr. Wilshire says, we can't make her sing, and to put her on a bread and water diet is both impracticable and inhuman. There will always be, he says, lovers of a beautiful voice who will be willing to give this gentle rebel a portion of their remuneration in order to enjoy her golden notes. It's true, she will not be allowed to invest these 'hours of labor' in any land or enterprise where unearned increment or exploitation is possible, but she can spend them in marble palaces, steam yachts or hogsheads of champagne. Leaving the solution of this 'new Socialism' to others more apt at solving puzzles than myself, I will now pass on to the tactics advocated and practiced by American Socialists.
Inspired with the belief that capital is concentrating so rapidly that we shall soon have a great financial panic - with millions of men out of work and, therefore, lacking food, which condition will result in a Social Revolution - Mr. Gaylord Wilshire floats a gold mining company with shares valued at twenty-five million dollars, and uses the pages of a Socialist publication, Wilshire's Magazine, to sell the stock. Mr. Wilshire's efforts on behalf of Socialism have been in the past sincere, if undistinguished ; there is no reason why we should doubt his honesty of purpose now. His intention, we are informed, is to make a fortune and use it to help on the revolution. Quite as laudable and more respectable - he is nothing if not respectable - than those Anarchists who used to advocate stealing for the propaganda and ended by stealing for themselves. Of course, if this mine succeeds (Mr. Wilshire estimates that there is over three billion dollars worth of ore there), it will make all the shareholders rich and increase the number of the middle class by some scores of thousands. With righteous indignation against any 'comrade' who openly seeks to defy and upset the law of gravitation (concentration of capital and abolition of the middle class) and jeopardize the honor of the movement, the National Executive of the party, who are proletarian lawyers, editors and so forth, are moved to protest. The situation is peculiar. If the mine is a failure, poor comrades lose their money ; if a success, they become middle-class exploiters. It is but natural that the most vigorous protestant against Mr. Wilshire is Mr. Hillquit, the 'historian' of the party. The latter has been in the censuring business aforetime - only, on a never to be forgotten occasion, he was the censured - and it is quite natural he should be indignant over any violation of party ethics. In the language of his campaign literature, Mr. Hillquit is 'a rising young lawyer' ; he is firmly grounded in Marxian fatalism and is reputed in some quarters to be worth no less than one hundred thousand dollars of unconcentrated capital. Far be it from me to suggest that the filthy lucre accumulated by this thrifty young man is invested in tenement houses or factories á la Frederick Engels ; or that he is drawing a beggarly four percent from a savings bank. It is, to use a colloquialism, a 'cinch' that his money is buried in some sub-cellar where its contaminating influence is safely quarantined from the 'comrades' and the 'movement.'
The campaign waged by Mr. Hillquit last fall, as Congressional candidate from the ninth district, was undoubtedly the last word in political opportunism; the most charitable person, if free from party prejudice, can have nothing but contempt for methods which differed in no particular from a rotten Tammany or a debauched Republican party. If this gentleman enjoys but one-forth of the income he is credited with, he receives considerably more from his law practice than he would as Congressman ; as is the case of Mr. Wilshire, we may absolve him from any desire to profit financially by going to Congress. (In passing we may add that the mileage graft and other extras paid Congressmen are so great that on a salary of five thousand dollars per year a certain Congressman from my State, Missouri, had saved eleven thousand dollars in two years, besides paying all his expenses. Congressional salaries have recently been increased to seven thousand five hundred dollars a year.) While not doubting Mr. Hillquit's honesty, we are not clear as to the principles he holds in trying to ride into office by the methods he pursued.
For a generation the workers have been told that a vote for a Socialist candidate is a vote for Socialism ; how pale and sickly that sounds in the light of the campaign we have been speaking of. The voters of the ninth Congressional district were urged to vote for the party candidate on the grounds that 'Mr. Hillquit is a rising young lawyer and a Russian Jew ; he will look after the interests of the Jews in Russia ; be the spokesman for the Russian revolution ; the workers of the ninth district are among the poorest paid in the United States, living in the most overcrowded und unsanitary conditions' ; finally the voters were instructed how they could split the ticket, voting for Tammany or the Republican party and still electing the Socialist Congressional candidate. We have here an appeal to race prejudice and snobbishness, and the implication that a Socialist Congressman could increase wages, improve local sanitary conditions, and reduce overcrowding, when the veriest child at schools knows that Congress has nothing ever to do with such matters.
It may be said: 'Yes, all that you say is true, but did not the party censure Mr. Hillquit?' Yes, after the election! Not a word of disapprobation was heard during the campaign, and it requires a mind singularly inexperienced in politics to conceive of any member of the Socialist party raising the question, had the party candidate been elected. The end would have justified the means ; an attack upon the honor or good faith of the first Socialist Congressman would have been considered high treason. In fact, it is doubtful if the question would have even arisen, had it not been for the instructions regarding the split ticket. This was the real crime ; the other incidents were trifles. The answer of a member of the Executive of the party to my protest against such dishonest tactics was that my objections were 'petty, even childish, and they bored him.'
When it is pointed out that every reform or revolutionary movement must, in order to have nay real or lasting success, have an ethical basis, and the morals of the party be judged by its meanest member, we are informed that it is a utopian doctrine long since exploded or that we do not understand Socialism ; further, that Socialism will come, not because it is just or demanded by the people, but because it is necessary. Socialists, such as those we have mentioned - they are typical, representing fairly accurately the party at large - have repeated so often that capitalist politics are rotten, and men's ethics, religion and every-day actions are governed and determined by the manner in which they obtain their livelihood, that they have arrived at the point where their actions conform to their theories. Socialism is inevitable, and man is the creature of circumstance and environment ; the fact that I, who advocate the abolition of exploitation and point out its evil effects, am myself an exploiter, does not affect the sum total of human happiness or misery, or the ultimate realization of Socialism. The individual counts for nothing ; Socialism is inevitable. Acting on this basis, our politics are as corrupt, proportionally, as our environment, and we exploit in the name of a principle. Truly a wonderful philosophy, this fatalistic Socialism which justifies everything from exploitation to the beating of one's wife, on the ground that 'we are the creatures of our environment and victims of the present system.' It is the proud boast of the advocates of Socialism that there are no less than thirty million Socialists in the world. Of course there are not, but if there were, and if each one of them considered himself an individual, conscious of his powers as well as of his limitations - a human entity of sufficiently intelligent to understand the necessity of a social change, as well as to realize the importance of the individual as a determining social factor ; if to this understanding were added a moral concept of exploitation, what a mighty revolution those thirty millions could accomplish!
* * *
FLASHES FROM THE FLINT
By Victor Robinson.
THE history of progress is written in one word: disobedience.
What is all this talk I hear about a Redeemer and a coming Messiah? The world has but one Savior, and his name is Freedom!
Authority is the dam which has blocked the river of civilization ; it is the clog in the wheel of improvement, the barnacle on the ship of science, the dark cloud which obscures the dawn of day.
Where God is king, the people are devils.
The reformer in prison is more free than the conservative who imprisoned him, for the chains of superstition in a man's mind are more cruel than the fetters of iron on the convict's ankles.
* * *
STIRNER: 'THE EGO AND HIS OWN'By Max Baginski.
I.
Benjamin R. Tucker has published the first English translation of 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,' written in 1845 by the ingenuous German thinker Kaspar Schmidt under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The book has been translated by Steven T. Byington, assisted by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm. Mr. Tucker, however, informs us in his Preface to the book that 'the responsibility for special errors and imperfections' properly rests on his shoulders. He is therefore also responsible for the Introduction by the late Dr. J. L. Walker, whose narrow-minded conception of Stirner is suggestive of Individualistic idolatry.
Stirner said: 'Ich hab' mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt.' ('I have set my cause on naught.')1 It seems that the Individualist Anarchists have set their cause on Stirner. Already they have sent money to Bayreuth and Berlin, for the purpose of having the customary memorial tables nailed to the places of Stirner's birth and death. Like the devout pilgrims wending their way Bayreuth-wards, lost in awed admiration of the musical genius of Richard Wagner, so will the Stirner worshipers soon begin to infest Bayreuth and incidentally cause a raise in the hotel charges. The publishers of Baedeker will do well to take note of this prophecy, that the attention of the traveling mob be called to the Stirner shrines.
A harmless bourgeois cult. Involuntarily I am reminded of another theoretic Individualist Anarchist, P. J. Proudhon, who wrote after the Paris February Revolution : 'Willy-nilly, we must now resign ourselves to be Philistines.'
Possibly Dr. J. L. Walker had in mind such resignation when he contemptuously referred in his Introduction to Stirner's book to the 'so-called revolutionary movement' of 1848. We regret that the learned doctor is dead; perhaps we could have successfully demonstrated to him that this revolution - in so far as it was aggressively active - proved of the greatest benefit to at least one country, sweeping away, as it did, most of the remnants of feudalism in Prussia. It were not their evolutionists who compromised the revolution and caused the reaction ; the responsibility for the latter rests rather on the champions of passive resistance, á la Tucker and Mackay.
Walker did not scruple to insinuate that Nietzsche had read Stirner and possibly stolen his ideas in order to bedeck himself with them ; he had omitted, however, to mention Stirner. Why? That the world might not discover the plagiarism. The disciple Walker proves himself not a little obsessed by the god-like attributes of his master, as he suspiciously exclaims: 'Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read everything, and not read Stirner?'
Good psychologic reasons stamp this imputation as unworthy of credence.
Nietzsche is reflected in his works as the veriest fanatic of truthfulness with regard to himself. Sincerity and frankness are his passion - not in the sense of wishing to 'justify' himself before others : he would have scorned that, as Stirner would - it is his inner tenderness and purity which imperatively impel him to be truthful with himself. With more justice than any of his literary contemporaries could Nietzsche say of himself : 'Ich wohne in meinem eignen Haus,' 2 and what reason had he to plagiarize? Was he in need of stolen ideas - he, whose very abundance of ideas proved fatal to him?
Add to this the fact that the further and higher Nietzsche went on his heroic road, the more alone he felt himself. Not alone like the misanthrope, but as one who, overflowing with wealth, would vain make wonderful gifts, but finds no ears to hear, no hands capable to take.
How terribly he suffered through his mental isolation is evidenced by numerous places in his works. He searched the past and the present for harmonious accords, for ideas and sentiments congenial to his nature. How ardently he reveres Richard Wagner and how deep his grief to find their ways so far apart! In his latter works Nietzsche became the most uncompromising component of Schopenhaur's philosophy ; yet that did not prevent his paying sincere tribute to the thinker Schopenhaur, as when he exclaims:
'Seht ihn euch an --Niemandem war er untertan.'3
Were Nietzsche acquainted with Stirner's book, he would have joyfully paid it - we may justly assume - the tribute of appreciative recognition, as he did in the case of Stendhal and Dostoyevsky, in whom he saw kindred spirits. Of the latter Nietzsche says that he had learned more psychology from him than from all the textbooks extant. That surely does not look like studied concealment of his literary sources.
In my estimation there is no great intellectual kinship between Stirner and KNietzsche. True, both are fighting for the liberation of individuality. Both proclaim the right of the individual to unlimited development, as against all 'holiness,' all sacrosanct pretensions of self-denial, all Christian and moral Puritanism ; yet how different is Nietzsche's Individualism from that of Stirner!
The Individualism of Stirner is fenced in. On the inside stalks the all-too-abstract I, who is like unto an individual as seen under X-rays. 'Don't disturb my circle!' cries this I to the people outside the fence. It is a somewhat stilted I. Karl Marx parodied Stirner's Einzigkeit by saying that it first saw the light in the narrow little Berlin street, the Kupfergraben. That was malicious. In truth, however, it cannot be denied that Stirner's Individualism is not free from a certain stiffness and rigidity. The Individualism of Nietzsche, on the other hand, is an exulting slogan, a jubilant war-cry ; more, it joyfully embraces humanity and the whole world, absorbs them, and, thus enriched, in turn penetrates life with elementary force.
But why contrast these two great personalities? Let us rather repeat with M. Messer - who wrote an essay on Stirner - Goethe's saying with regard to himself and Schiller: 'Seid froh, dass ihr solche zwei Kerle habt.'4
That the champions of pure-and-simple Individualism can be as captious and petty towards other individualities as the average moralist is proven by the extremely tactless remark in Tucker's Preface about Stirner's swetheard, Marie Daehnhard. Stirner dedicated his book to her ; for that he must now be censored by Mackay-Tucker in the following manner:
Mackay's investigations have brought to light the Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no Eigene. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy.'
No doubt Tucker is firmly convinced that Individualism and Einzigkeit are synonymous with Tuckerism. FOrtunately, it's a mistake.
Max Stirner and Marie Daehnhardt surely knew better what they had in common at the time of the dedication than Tucker-Mackay knows now.
But we must not take the matter too seriously. Stirner belongs to those whom even their admirers and literary executors cannot kill off. Mr. Traubel and the Conservator have not as yet succeeded in disgusting me with Walt Whitman ; neither can the Individualists Anarchists succeed in robbing me of Stirner.
A great fault of the translation is the failure to describe the contemporary intellectual atmosphere of Germany in Stirner's time. The American reader is left in total ignorance as to the conditions and personalities against which the ideas of Stirner were directed. This is, moreover, dishonest - undesignedly so, no doubt - with regard to the Communists. Stirner's controversy was specifically with Wilhelm Weitling - who, by the way, is probably quite unknown to most American readers ; it were therefore no more than common honesty to state that the Communism of Weitling bears but a mere external resemblance to modern Communism as expounded, among others, by Kropotkin and Reclus. Modern Communism has ceased to be a mere invention, to be forced upon society ; it is rather a Weltanschauung founded on biology, psychology and economy.
The English edition of 'The Ego and his Own' impresses one with the fact that the translator spared no pains to give an adequate and complete work ; unfortunately, he has not quite succeeded. It is a case of too much philogy and too liter intuitive perception. Stirner himself is partly responsible for this, because in spite of his rebellion against all spooks, he is past master in playing with abstractions.
II.
Stirner's 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum' was a revolutionary deed. It is the rebellion of the individual against those 'sacred principles' in the name of which he was ever oppressed and subjected. Stirner exposes, so to say, the metaphysics of tyrannical forces. Luter nailed his ninety-five accusations against Popery to the door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg ; Stirner's declaration of independence of the individual throws down the challenge to ALL things 'sacred' - in morals, family and State. He tears off the mask of our 'inviolable institutions' and discovers behind them nothing but - spooks. GOD, SPIRIT, IDEAS, TRUTH, HUMANITY, PATRIOTISM - all these are to Stirner mere masks, behind which - as from the holy mountain - issue commands, the Kantian categoric imperatives, all signed to suppress the individuality, to train and drill it and thus to rob it of all initiative, independence and Eigenheit All these things claim to be good in themselves, to be cultivated for their own sake and all exact respect and subjection, all demand admiration, worship and the humiliation of the individual.
Against all this is directed the rebellion of the I with its Eigenheit and Einzigkeit. It withholds respect and obedience. It shakes from its feet the dust of 'eternal truths' and proclaims the emancipation of the individual from the mastery of ideals and ideas; henceforth the free, self-owning Ego must master them. He is no more awed by the 'good' ; neither does he condemn the 'bad.' He is sans religion, sans morals, sans State. The conception of Justice, Right, General Good are no more binding upon him ; at the most , he uses them for his own ends
To Stirner, the Ego is the centre of the world ; wherever it looks, it finds the world its own - to the extent of its power. If this Ego could appropriate the entire world, it would thereby establish its right to it. It would be the universal monopolist. Stirner does not say that he wants his liberty to be limited by the equal liberty of others ; on the contrary, he believes that his freedom and Eigenheit are bounded only by his power to attain. If Napoleon uses humanity as a football, why don't they rebel?
The liberty demanded by his democratic and liberal contemporaries was to Stirner as mere alms thrown to a beggar.
J. L. Walker entirely misunderstands the very spirit of Stirner when he states in his Introduction : 'In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty.' Stirner has nothing but contempt for political liberty. He regards it in the light of a doubtful favor that the powerful grant to the powerless. He, as Eigener would scorn to accept political liberty if he could have it for the asking. He scoffs at those who ask for human right and beg liberty and independence, instead of taking what belongs to them by virtue of their power.
It is this very criticism of political liberty that constitutes one of the most ingenuous parts of Stirner's book. This is best proven by the following quotation:5
''Political liberty,' what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No ; on the contrary, the individual's subjection in the State and to the State laws. But why 'liberty'? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it ; because one is a - citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as 'supreme head of the State.' . . .'Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free ; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free ; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty , but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me ; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave.'
Stirner is anti-democratic as well as anti-moral He did not believe that the individual would be freed from his moral fetters by 'humanizing the diety,' as advocated by Ludwig Feuerbach ; that were but to substitute moral despotism for religious. The divine had grown senile and enervated ; something more virile was required to further keep man in subjection.
By embodying the 'God idea' in man, the moral commands are transformed into his very mental essence, thus enslaving him to his own mind instead of to something external ; thus would the former merely external slavery be supplanted by an inner thraldom through his ethical fear of being immoral. We could rebel against a mere external God ; the moral, however, becoming synonymous with the human, is thus made ineradicable. Man's dependence and servitude reach in this humanizing of the divine their highest triumph - freed from the thraldom of an external force he is now the more intensely the slave of his own 'inner moral necessity.'
Every good Christian carries God in his heart; every god moralist and Puritan , his moral gendarme.
The freethinkers have abolished the personal God and then absorbed the ethical microbe, thus inoculating themselves with moral scrofula. They proudly proclaimed their ability to be moral without divine help, never suspecting that it is this very morality that forges the chains of man's subjugation. The rulers would cheerfully ignore the belief in God if convinced that moral commands would suffice to perpetuate man in his bondage. While the 'hell of a sick conscience' is in yourself - in your bones and blood - your slavery is guaranteed.
In this connection Stirner says :
'Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its external bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you - prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint 'Oh dear!' monaed itself away, and - the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new - prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon! how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!'
The the chains fall one by one from the sovereign I. It rises ever higher above all 'sacred commands' which have woven his strait-jacket.
That is the great liberating deed of Stirner.
Abstractly considered, the Ego is now einzig ; but how about his Eigentum?6 We have now reached the point in Stirner's philosophy where mere abstractions do not suffice.
The resolving of society into einzige individuals leads, economically considered, to negation. Stirner's life is itself the best proof of the powerlessness of the individual forced to carry on a solitary battle in opposition to existing conditions.
Stirner demolishes all spooks ; yet, forced by material need to contract debts which he cannot pay, the power of the 'spooks' proves greater than that of his Eigenheit : his creditors send him to prison. Stirner himself declares free competition to be a mere gamble, which can only emphasize the artificial superiority of toadies and time-servers over the less proficient. But he is also opposed to Communism which, in his opinion, would make ragamuffins of us all, by depriving the individual of his property.
This objection, however, does not apply to a very large number of individuals, who do not possess property anyhow ; they become ragamuffins because they are continually compelled to battle for property and existence, thus sacrificing their Eigenheit and Einzigkeit.
Why were the lives of most of our poets, thinkers, artists and inventors a martyrdom? Because their in individualities were so eigen and einzig that they could not successfully compete in the low struggle for property and existence. In that struggle they had to market their individuality to secure means of livelihood. What is the cause of our corruption of character and our hypocritical suppression of convictions? It is because the individual does not own himself, and is not permitted to be his true self. He has become a mere market commodity, an instrument for the accumulation of property - for others.
What business has an individual, a Stinerian, an Eigener in a newspaper office, for instance, where intellectual power and ability are prostituted for the enrichment of the publisher and shareholders. Individuality is stretched on the Procrustes of bed of business ; in the attempt to secure his livelihood - very often in the most uncongenial manner - he sacrifices his Eigenheit, thus suffering the loss of the very thing he prizes most highly and enjoys the best.
If our individuality were to be made the price of breathing, what ado there would be about the violence done to personality! And yet our very right to food, drink and shelter is only too often conditioned upon our loss of individuality. These things are granted to the propertyless millions (and how scantily!) only in exchange for their individuality - they become the mere instruments of industry.
Stirner loftily ignores the fact that property is the enemy of individuality , - that the degree of success in the competitive struggle is proportionate to the measure in which we disown and turn traitors to our individuality. We may possibly except only those who are rich by inheritance ; such persons can, to a certain degree, live in their own way. But that by no means expresses the power, the Eigenheit of the heir's individuality. The privilege of inheriting may, indeed, belong to the veriest numskull full of prejudice and spooks, as well as to the Eigener. This leads to petty bourgeois and parvenu Individualism which narrows rather than broadens the horizon of the Eigener.
Modern Communists are more individualistic than Stirner. To them, not merely religion, morality, family and State are spooks, but property also is no more than a spook, in whose name the individual is enslaved - and how enslaved! The individuality is nowadays held in far stronger bondage by property, than by the combined power of State, religion and morality.
Modern Communists do not say that the individual should do this or that in the name of Society. They say : 'The liberty and Eigenheit of the individual demand that economic conditions - production and distribution of the means of existence - should be organized thus and thus for his sake.' Hence follows that organization in the obedience or despotism. The prime condition is that the individual should not be forced to humiliate and lower himself for the sake of property and subsistence. Communism thus creates a basis for the liberty and Eigenheit of the individual. I am a Communist because I am an Individualist.
Fully as heartily the Communists concur with Stirner when he puts the word take in place of demand - that leads to the dissolution of property, to expropriation.
Individualism and Communism go hand in hand.
1. Erroneously translated by Byington: 'All things are nothing to me.' Return
2. Literally, 'I live in my own house.' Return
3. 'Observe him - he is mastered by no one.' Return
4. 'Rejoice that you have two such capital fellows.' Return
5. We quote Byington's version.Return
6. Meaning, in this connection, property. Return
* * *
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
A discreet intimation to all those whose subscription has long since expired. We hate to leave an old friend behind. If you feel likewise, send in your dollar.
* * *
L I B E R T Y
By A. T. Heist.
WHEN I speak to my 'intelligent' friends about the beauty of individual independence and personal liberty, I am informed that we are all dependent both upon nature and one another, and that, therefore, there can be no such thing as human independence or human liberty. Such stupid ones are confounding absolute freedom with civil or social liberty, and think that by disbelieving the existence of the former they are denying the possibility of the latter.
Many who esteem themselves to be 'radical' libertarians also seem to me to have blurred notions about the nature and limitations of liberty. For this reason I write, hoping that by so doing I will clarify my own vision a little, and that of some readers a great deal.
It may be just as well to being by stating some matters that are not involved in my idea of liberty. It seems to me that no scientific conception of human freedom can imply the idea of freedom from the operation of natural law, either in the physical world or in the social organism. Neither can it involved the assumption of the lawlessness of human volition, for be it remembered that most people still cling to the old 'free will' superstition. I say, then, that every rational conception of human freedom must be grounded upon the demonstrated fact that each of us, even in the realm of the intellect, is always subject to the uniformity and universality of the reign of natural law.
Liberty under subjection to universal natural law only means that every person shall be permitted to find his own happiness in his own most perfect adjustment to the conditions of his own well being, under the natural law of the social organism, operating without interruption or interference from any artificial state-made or other abnormal conditions, such as actually subvert the normal operations of natural law. In this last clause I have in mind the intervention of mental disease, through which unhealthy condition there might be produced such effects as are an invasive subversion of the natural law of the social organism.
May be this generalization is too abstruse for some. In the fear of this I shall endeavor to make it more plain and particular by re-stating the formula as applied separately to physical liberty, intellectual liberty and civil liberty.
When I appply my formula about liberty to the bodily life of man, I come to this conclusion : physical liberty for the human infant means the universal admission of its claim to develop an unmutilated and undeformed full maturity. From this it follows that parents are guilty of invasive conduct towards their child, whenever they contribute, even though unconsciously and remotely, toward their offspring's failure to reach the full stature of an unmutilated and undeformed manhood.
For the healthy adult physical liberty means the exercise of all his faculties in freedom from all artificial, man-made restraints, and so long as the indulgence of his capacities does not in itself constitute an unwelcome, artificial restraint or invasion upon another.
But here I come again to the difficult task of stating what I mean by artificial restraints, since, in the broadest sense, even limitations of human contrivance are a part of nature. By artificial restraints I mean those restraints of human contrivance which find the necessity for their existence solely in the special attitude of mind of those individuals who restrain or invade, and which restrictions would be avoidable, because unnecessary, except for that special psychologic necessity.
For the infant, intellectual liberty under natural law must mean the universal admission of his claim to be instructed in the laws of nature, under which term I include not only things and their forces, but men and their ways, and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to live inharmony with those laws.
For the adult, intellectual liberty under natural law can only mean that his opportunity for the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge shall be unrestricted by any artificial hindrance of human contrivance, so long as the means employed are not in themselves a direct impairment of another's equal liberty. It seems to me that one's liberty cannot include the destruction of another's liberty uninvited by that other. Academically this is incontrovertible, practically the difficulty lies in drawing the line.
Already I have invited controversy over the difficult question which involves the existence , within the social organism, of a natural limitation upon the liberty of each, by the just claim of another to an equality of liberty. This is the crux of the whole discussion about the existence and province of government.
The tyrannies of states consist only in the action of some official persons, under the claim of rightful power confirmed in them by a dominant social influence, and exercised against other persons who decline to be voluntarily submissive. If, then, I admit the claim of right, on the part of any citizen, to impair the equal liberty of another, it seems to me that I am also justifying the rightfulness of the assumption of tyrannous governmental power. This follows because government is only a combination of individuals and has the same right to invade that any one of the citizens possesses and yields to it. At the same time, by conceding the right to invade, I am admitting that there is no possible appeal against tyranny by actual or threatened force, except by opposing violence, and that no motive exists for joining the forces of resistance to tyranny except a desire to secure the power to supplant the tyrant.
To make this entirely clear, we must bear in mind the difference between the liberty which may be unanimously conceded power to revoke the permission. So long as the rightful power to destroy any liberty is admitted, there can be no real liberty, but only a temporary semblance of it, due to a mere transitory lenience of a tyrant, acting upon considerations of expedience and not upon an abdication of authoritative rightful power.
If, on the contrary, we assume that there is a rational appeal for the cessation of tyranny, its object must be to seek the abolition of the inequalities of liberty, since tyranny cannot otherwise manifest itself, and since not to seek equality of liberty is to be content with inequality of liberty - that is, with tyranny. Furthermore, a rational appeal for liberty must find its materials in nature - in the natural law of the social organism.
This, then, brings me to the point of stating what I mean by civil liberty. TO me, civil liberty means living in social relations with my fellow man, subject only to nature's law of justice. Whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. If it declares and enforces what is not known to be in accord with the natural law of the social organism, it may or may not be in accord with it. It may or may not be tyrannous. When the state declares that to be law which is in conflict with natural law or with natural justice, the enforcement of such a rule of conduct against those who do not willingly conform, is always tyranny.
The natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity. Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation.
I must add a few words descriptive of my conception of natural liberty and natural justice. Natural liberty, untempered by the requirements of equal liberty or of any artificial restraints, necessarily implies the right of each to invade the other even to killing him, and this from any motive or impulse which may enter even a disordered brain. Such a conception of liberty would imply the liberty to enslave, if only the power existed.
Natural liberty, restrained only by imminent danger of retaliation for invasion, is a liberty which can be maintained at an equality only by considerations of expediency personal to each individual ; it necessarily admits the right to invade, whenever the power and personal expediency are combined in the same individual or group.
Either of the foregoing conceptions of liberty seems to involve equality of opportunity in exercising the power to abridge the greatest liberty consistent with an equality of liberty, and to impair that equality. This is the very essence of tyranny, whether accomplished by, or without, organized government.
Natural liberty, limited by natural justice, implies the knowledge that in the very nature of man and of human relations, there exists a natural law of justice demanding for each equality of opportunity with all others in subjecting nature's forces to pleasure-giving ends. To the extent of our relatively perfect knowledge of this law of natural justice, and of our conscious submission to it do we attain the highest human liberty for all. Whether that natural liberty, as limited only by the requirements of natural justice, be maintained by the help of organized government, or without it, is quite immaterial. In the fact of its maintenance exists the essence of liberty.
We are happy just to the degree in which we live in perfect accord with all the phases of natural law, and are free just to the extent that we suffer no artificial interference with our efforts to adjust to it. The progress of liberty depends upon our advancement in the knowledge of natural justice, and progressively living more and more nearly in exact conformity to its demands. The ideal liberty can be attained only when every human knows all there is to know about the natural law of the social organism, and when everybody is willing to allow everybody else to live in harmony with that law, then every one will be his own legislator and his own governor. Only then will the absolute of natural liberty be possible, because only then will no one be tempted to exercise the right to invade the greatest liberty consistent with an equality of liberty.
* * *
MOTHER EARTH SUSTAINING FUND
RECEIPTS.*
Balance on hand in April ................... $70.20Proceeds from Emma Goldman's lectures in Cincinnati, Ohio..... 20.00Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in St. Louis, Mo. 30.00Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Minneapolis, Minn. ..... 45.00Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Winnipeg, Man.. 140.00Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Denver...... 35.00Emil N. Ling, Winnipeg ....................... 1.00H. Korbgoweit, Mt. Pleasant, Pa .............. 1.00John Daycompay, Long Island City ............. 4.00Russian Tea Party, Philadelphia, per N. Notkin 15.00Harlem Liberal Alliance, New York ............ 10.16$376.36
• * : Figures quoted represents proceeds from meetings after traveling expenses have been deducted. Return
* * *
THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST CONFERENCEUPON comrade Emma Goldman's departure from Winnipeg, the local Anarchist group held a meeting to discuss matters pertaining to the International Anarchist Conference, which is to take place at Amsterdam, Holland, in August, 1907.
After a thorough consideration of the subject we came to the conclusion that:a. Considering the prominence of a comrade Emma Goldman as an Anarchist propagandist in the United States and Canada, andb. In view of the fact that her repeated tours of America have made her thoroughly familiar with the movement, both general and local, andc. Believing her fully competent to advise the International Conference as to the spirit and trend of the Anarchist movement in America, as well as to report to us - upon her return - the proceedings at Amsterdam with a view of our profiting by the ideas and suggestions advanced at the latter ; therefore
We unanimously agree to use our best efforts to enable comrade Emma Goldman to take part in the Amsterdam Conference - not, of course, as our representative authorized to act in our behalf, but as a comrade whose participation in the Conference cannot fail to prove beneficial to our friends abroad, as well as to the movement at home.
It is further agreed to publish this communication in the Anarchist press of the country, calling upon the various groups to co-operate with us in this project.J. RICHMAN, Secretary Winnipeg Group.
* * *
AN International Anarchist Conference is to take place at Amsterdam, Holland, in August. It is superfluous to enlarge upon the importance of having an American attend the Conference ; we have no assurance, however, that such will be the case.
To insure the attendance of a comrade of ability, we therefore suggest that Emma Goldman be requested to attend. Expenses to be defrayed by voluntary subscription ; all money for this purpose to be forwarded to J. M. Livshis (1245 Milwaukee avenue, Chicago), who has been selected to act as a treasurer of the Conference fund.
Those who favor this plan are urged to act at once, as time is very pressing. All contributions will be acknowledged by receipt, and published in Mother Earth and The Demonstrator.
JULIUS BLOOMFELD.BEN CAPES.J. M. LIVSHISM. RUBENSTEIN.J. FOX.S. HAMMERSMARK.M. NEWMAN.
* * *
TRUTH IN COMBAT
By W. F. Barnard
Or friendless under night's cold stars,Or pilloried in the sun's hot glow,Or vile betrayed by kissing foe,Or bound and gagged behind steel bars,Or swathing round thy battle scars,Or bleeding, with life ebbing lowThy spirit none could overthrowThrough all thy long uncounted wars.
For thou art mightier than the mightOf every form of legioned lies;Stronger in strength than those that rise,By thee sore-stricken, still to fight;Stronger than day or than the night:Triumphant from thy first-drawn breathTill torture leaves thee at the lastImmortal on the lips of death.
* * *
GIORDANO BRUNO
By T. F. Meade.
THE motto of Galileo was that no man can teach the truth to others; he can only aid them find it. Such an aid was Michael Bakunin. The world will know Bakunin better anon. He was a firebrand burning with the love of truth, and he had to light dull, dead minds. Toiling here or there, in mine, factory or field, he almost immediately divined the man with the most magnetism, the greatest facility of speech; the man the most receptive of ideas and most fired by truth. Bakunin began at once to inoculate him with the virus of revolution. He poured it into him in his magnificent, brilliant, overpowering way, till the man was hot as his mentor. Then Bakunin quit work and locality, and sought new fields.
Thomas Paine so burned. He left England to help America revolt. As soon as it had gained its independence, he set sail for France where revolution was in the throes of birth.
Such scalding blood coursed through the veins of Giordano Bruno. His thought reached far towards the infinite and be longed to fire this world with it. He called himself 'The Awakener,' believing it to be his mission to announce the truth, not to develop or establish it. To fling away the awful yoke of the time-the Church and the Inquisition-required the courage of Luther, Calvin and Savonarola, and much more than that of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. But Bruno 'prayed to be all arms and eyes, a new Briareus and a new Argus, that he might penetrate and embrace the whole of the infinite universe.' He had never enough. He loved and sought the truth, and howled it everywhere. 'He who drinks of this Elysian nectar,' he said, 'bums with an ardor that the ocean cannot quench nor the cold of Arctic temper.'
Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, Italy, in 1548. He was burned at the stake at Rome in 1600 Entering a Dominican order at the age of sixteen, by 1576 Bruno had questioned one hundred and thirty beliefs of the Church. He probably felt that there was no hope for him when they counted up his heresies and were about to try him; feeling the circumscribing atmosphere of the place and realizing that his best thought could never be heard there, he fled. From then until 1590 - in only fourteen years- - this remarkable man constructed the philosophy pedestal on which the monument of modern philosophy has been erected; he propounded facts, theories and fancies, then held wild and visionary, but which modern science is now approaching. Bruno said: 'Difficulty is ordained to deter mean spirits. Rare, heroic and divine men pass over the road of difficulty and compel necessity to yield them the palm of immortality.' He continued on his way, always advancing into the fairy realm of the intellect and science until he approached confines which scientists are only now revisiting. He was driven from place to place by the authority of the time, or he found it well to leave-Naples, Genoa, Turin, Venice, Padua, Geneva, Toulouse, Paris, London, Oxford, Wittenberg, Frankfort, Zurich, Rome. But he talked on. He was uttering that splendid cry, still to bring balm to Many hearts in the thraldom of 'The Wolf of Rome':
'A time shall come, a new desired age, when the Gods shall lie in Orcus and the dread of everlasting punishment shall vanish from the world.'
Great men generally believe their age is in sight of a revolution. And posterity believes the great men were chiefly the cause of the revolution, when they only made waves in the stormy sea. Bruno thought his age would tee the change and he preached the New World though he was the only one who foresaw and wanted it. He began by rejecting in Christianity the doctrine of a supernatural interference with nature for the benefit of one special person or people. Miracles, he claimed, were impostures or a kind of magic. He hated the way the priests dwelt on the morbid side of Christ's life, his sufferings and death, the religion of hysterics, emotions and ignorance; he propounded a religion of human love and reasoned knowledge.
'The perfecting of the individual soul' was his anarchic slogan. 'Evidence, evidence. Observation, observation,' he was always asking for and aiming at, and he cautioned, 'Doubt all things.'
Here is the foundation of the Cartesian philosophy.
It was in the sixteenth century that this man lived the close of the Dark Ages. Ingersoll calls Bruno the 'first star of the morning after the long night.' Copernicus dared not give forth this discovery of the heliocentric system, except as a cryptogram in 1543 as he died, and it had to wait to be flung in the teeth of the Church and science, till Bruno - born five years afterwards - boldy proclaimed it. Bruno himself tells us what kind of age it was. He says the monks of CAstello in Genoa held up the tail of an ass for the people to kiss, telling them it was the tail of the ass that carried Christ from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. The tail of Balaam's ass was preserved in the Church of St. John Lateran at Rome. Three coals which roasted St Lawrence were adored in as many Roman churches. The table-cloth on which the Lord's Last Supper was eaten was at Limousin. Murder and suspicion so reigned that it was the custom for the Pope (according to Montaigne), when at mass at St. Peter's, to drink from the chalice by means of an instrument that was a precaution against poison.
Bruno is justly credited with having modified all the sources of modern philosophy, of which he has as high claim to be considered the founder as Bacon or Descartes. He proclaimed the New World while he was as high claim to be considered the founder as Bacon or Descartes. He proclaimed the New World while he was laughed to scorn ; his theories were to become demonstrations in the hands of Kepler, Huygens, Newton and Herschel ; one may trace his ideas filtered through many minds ; of the philosophers who represent the main line of development of modern thought on the Continent in the 17th century-Descartes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Leibnitz - there is not one who has not been accused of having borrowed his chief doctrine without acknowledgment from Bruno; he propounded the philosophy of the Absolute almost two centuries before Schelling and Hegel- was the forerunner of Immanuel Kant. Thomas exercised a Davidson said of Bruno: 'His thought has exercised a determining influence on many great minds, as on Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel, and through them on Goethe, Coleridge and Emerson, though these last have risen to but one side of Bruno's thought.'
During the ignorance and superstition of the time in which Bruno lived, his daring mind figured on the theory of the centre of gravity of the planets; other worlds than ours; the orbits and character of comets; and the imperfect sphericity of the earth. He upheld the Copernican system but went far beyond it in his intuition of the infinity of the universe, of the identity of the earth with the matter of the planets and stars, and of the possibility of such living beings- inhabiting them as inhabit the earth. The earth and stars themselves, he said, were living organisms, so there are not seven planets or wandering stars, but myriads such, for every world is in motion. He taught the eternity of matter and he insisted that the earth was not the centre of the universe. His theory of optimism Leibnitz borrowed; and that of the perfectibility of man, Herbert Spencer. Bruno's 'Shadow of Ideas' seems to Dr. Brunton to forestall Pasteur's famous doctrine of asymmetry and non-symmetry. Bruno anticipated Lessing's teaching that myths may contain foreshadowings of truths and should be interpreted by the spirit and not by the letter. He speaks of gradual changes brought about on the surface of the earth, the seas and islands, the configuration of the land, the climate in different countries, by the constant if imperceptible operations of natural causes. lie descants on the true nature of mountains, which he calls only excrescences as compared to the real mountain, or the large continents that slope upwards from the sea.
Bruno was the first to propound the theory of evolution, in support of which Darwin and Haeckel marshaled so much proof. It was not known to ancient philosophy, though hints of it had been made.
Bruno used to speak of the soul as matter under certain forms, and in many passages he definitely describes monism. No wonder he 'paralyzed his audiences at Oxford with astonishment and indignation.'
Bruno has been pictured as vulgarly stern, repulsively severe in manner and speech, vituperative and galling, impatient with ignorance and stupidity. It is claimed by many people that this is a necessary fault of some great men at certain times. They are needed to wipe aside the ignorant as one might a row of wooden figures, the argument being that when an obvious truth is hindered in its progress by the dull brute, he ought to be summarily treated. This side of Bruno has overshadowed, through the vehemence with which his enemies have accentuated it, a very beautiful and essential phase of his genius. Bruno was a poet as well as a philosopher, and the combination made him that imaginative, scientific scholar, who enlarged the boundaries of the visible universe, and who delved in the fields of solid thought till he had plunged into the fairyland of romance, and even beyond. His romantic nature led him far from the dry-as-dust spirit of scientists; his thought soared into the empyrean, establishing by his tremendous wealth of learning and exquisite fancy the great nexus between reality and ideality.
Bruno's mysticism is very peculiar. It contains more intricacies and ambiguities than the mysticism of the present day, because it embraced magic, and Bruno has even been accused of allowing the ignorant - and the intelligent, too-to think that he had ponderous secrets locked up in his weighty brain. His mysticism has been compared to that of the Bhagavad Gita. This would open up a tremendous field of research. But with his rationalism, his love of nature, his ideality, his boundless imagination, his scholarship, his undoubted kinship with the Muses, his optimism, his so-called Pantheism, Bruno's mysticism is surely the forecast, the fundament of the transcendentalism of the New England school, which has proved itself the open sesame to the inviting, almost appalling, realm of Christian Science, Mental Science and New Thought. Bruno's bold asseveration that 'mind is common to all things in Nature' is the knob of the door of the New Thought. The great door, so long locked-since Bruno's time-swings gingerly open on what seems to be a dark, damp cave, but our eyes are piercing the gloom and we are perceiving that the cave is one of those magnificent rooms entered by Ajib, the Kalendar, in the 'Thousand and One Nights,' proving to be a glorified garden, itself only the propylaea of a sublime new world.
Giordano Bruno was burned alive February 17, 1600 Many liberals date from this epoch, 1907 being E. M. 307, the year 307 of the Era of Man. He was arrested in May, 1592, in Venice and taken to Rome by the Inquisition. Bruno was not beard of from January, 1593, to January, 1599, having been all that time in a dungeon in the Eternal City. Then he was convicted of heresy on eight counts, and asked to recant. He refused, saying: 'I ought not to recant and I will not recant.' He was sentenced to die, 'with as great clemency as possible and without effusion of blood,' the cold-blooded phrase for burning alive. Yet he said calmly to his murderers: 'It may be you fear more to deliver the judgment than I to hear it.'
His death took place on the Campo di Flora. In 1889 a statue of Bruno was unveiled there. It is just outside the Pope's window in the Vatican. That day the Pope fasted and prayed.
La vita nuova, the New Italy, is represented by Giordano Bruno. The awakening people have established him as their champion, their symbol of liberty, of the intellect, of the pursuit of truth, of a life that spreads out beyond the Alp, beyond the seas - the international brotherhood of man.
Col. Ingersoll pronounced Bruno 'one of the greatest men this world has produced. He was nobler than inspired men, grander than the prophets, greater and purer than the Apostles. Above all the theologians of the world, above the makers of creeds, above the founders of religions rose this severe, unselfish and intrepid man. The first of all the world who died for truth without the expectation of reward.'
The verdict of Professor Davidson is very striking: 'Bruno's thought is of infinite value. It is the loftiest yet attained.'
This is high praise. Yet when we look over the life and accomplishments of this wonderful man, when we sound his thought, when we realize the outgrowth of his philosophy, try to compass his idealism, attempt to fathom his realism, his naturalism, his rationalism, and then, too, gaze into the beautiful domain of his fancy and his sublime imaginative power, we approach the possibility that if there has ever been the superlatively great in man it lay in Giordano Bruno.
* * *
ON GOVERNMENT
Translated 'from the Greek' by Bolton Hall
Plato, having laid a brick in the path, stood aside to see what might befall; the first man who stumbled over it said nothing, but went his way. 'There,' said the Philosopher, 'is a Conservative Citizen, the backbone of our Institutions!'
The next one fell on his face and railed upon the Tetrarch, but he also left the brick, and went On his way. 'That is a Good Government man,' said Plato. 'He will one day found a Goo-Goo Club!'
The third also broke his shins, and, having called upon Pluto, removed the brick in the path.
'That man,' said Plato, 'is a Reformer; he believes in doing 'ye nexte Thinge.'' Then Plato replaced the brick in the path.
But a certain man came along and when he had stubbed his toe, he took up the brick and hurled it at the Philosopher. 'That,' said Plato, as he dodged the brick, 'is an Anarchist; he is dangerous to the Government.'
But he was not; he was only a Nihilist. - From Life.
NOTE.
This parable, except the last line, appeared in the April issue of Mother Earth. Mr. Hall has since called my attention to the failure to give Life credit, as well as to the omission of the last sentence. I take pleasure in making public my reply to Mr. Hall, by the latter's request.
'My dear Mr. Hall: The failure to give Life credit was accidental. The omission of the final phrase, 'But he was not; he was only a Nihilist,' was intentional.
'I confess that I failed to appreciate the relation of the last sentence to the context; in fact, I considered it quite irrelevant. A friend of mine being present when I read the proof, I consulted him; but he, too, could not fathom the purpose of 'He was a Nihilist.'
'Your letter has enlightened me on this point. You used the word Nihilist in the sense of terrorist But I am a Russian - to me, Nihilism is by no means synonymous with terrorism; no, not even suggestive of violence.
'It was Turguéneff who originated the term Nihilist ('Fathers and Sons') prior to the introduction of terroristic tactics in Russia.
'The term was intended to characterize the 'sons,' the new ones, the Russian modems, who had emancipated themselves from the ideas and ideals of their 'fathers,' and who, consequently, denied all existing institutions and beliefs.
'To them, nihil est - at least Turguéneff thought so; therefore he labelled them Nihilists. The Nihilists themselves subsequently accepted the name originally used in derision.
'In fine, neither so far as Turguéneff himself was concerned, nor in the popular Russian mind, did Nihilism ever stand for terrorism. In Russia, Nihilism was the social and political equivalent of universal atheism, so to speak.
'Knowing you to be a progressive radical, it never occurred to me that you had used the term Nihilist in any other than its legitimate sense.
'As the thing stands, you say, it directly advocates violence. Indeed, 'tis true that different minds see different meanings in the same thing.
'To my mind, the Anarchist in your parable was the only one of all those that passed, who had courage enough to resent the action of the fool philosopher. Experience taught him that it was not sufficient to remove the stone from the path, so long as the wise fool was there to put the stone back again. The wise one needed a lesson, and he got it.
'To say, as you do, that the moral of the story, as it stands, teaches violence, seems rather far-fetched. To me it means, if anything, that it is worse than useless to attempt to abolish an evil, while ignoring the cause of the same.
'However, all that is merely apropos. My personal interpretation of the meaning of the story is of no consequence. Since you are the author of the parable, I owe you an apology for having omitted the last sentence. I shall gladly carry out your wishes in the matter of correction.'
Alexander Berkman.
* * *
THREE QUOTATIONS AND A COMMENT
By H. K.
'The latest idiocy of the violent revolutionaries is the murder of an Italian professor for criticising their methods. How can one work with such people for free speech. They claim the right to murder and deny others the liberty to condemn it.' - Liberty, December, 1906
'Alexander Berkman told a New York Times reporter the other day that the Individualist Anarchist has vague ideas and can achieve nothing. This is the opinion that naturally would be held by one who thinks that vast progress toward the acme of human achievement is made when a knife is stuck into a millionaire.' - Liberty, April, 1907.
'I have been engaged for more than thirty years in the propaganda of Anarchism, and have achieved some things of which I am proud.' - Liberty, April, 1907.
Why this modesty? Or is it lack of space that prevents an enumeration of those virtues which are a hundredfold? Allow us to remove the offending bushel which hides the shining light and so render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's Immortality awaits the editor of Liberty for having defined the rights of motherhood; aye, even to the right of a mother to throw her child into the fire. Society in general and the Anarchists in particular can never repay the debt they owe him for his definition of contract rights: do we not know that in an Anarchist society a contract will be enforced to the last ducat when made with a drowning man. For these and many other benefactions do we pay homage; but all, even the publication of 'Instead of a Book,' pale into insignificance compared to the service the editor of Liberty has rendered society by the 'exposure' of the violent revolutionaries and Anarchist Communists. True, the information upon which those 'exposures' were based was derived from a 'reptile press' and reading John Henry Mackay, but a great mind like his cannot be expected to concern itself with the mere details of confirming facts ( ? ) before commenting upon them; it were a waste of time and - might spoil the comment.
The editor of the 'Pioneer Organ of Anarchism' is some ten or twelve years past the allotted span of Dr. Osler judging by the last two or three numbers of Liberty, he has fairly earned his right to the lethal chamber.
When a man reads newspapers he is justly under suspicion; when he believes them he should be placed under the care of a trained nurse; when he quotes them he has reached the armchair and photograph album stage, and his soul will soon be with God. A silent toast to the editor of Liberty-he was a great man, if badly brought up. (Apologies to Talleyrand.)
* * *
ON THE EVE
By Leopold Kampf.
REVIEWA DRAMA in three acts, dealing with characters and scenes in the present Russian revolution. The first act pictures a secret press and the capture of the same by the police. The second, preparation for the killing of a governor responsible for the torture of the prisoners, and for interference with a procession of strikers. The third, the consummation of the plot. Incidentally are introduced many characters, who serve to exhibit the devotion, the unselfishness of the revolutionists, and the methods whereby they are compelled to work. The whole is strung on a thin love-story, - the attraction of the terrorist for a young girl who is extremely devoted to the cause of liberty, dramatic interest centering in the scene where the lover's human nature, asserting itself, contends with his resolve to kill the governor and pleads for his 'young happiness,' and in the last act where the young girl, at her lover's request, places the candle in the window as the signal for the killing.
However much we wish that we could speak only in praise of this work, because of its purpose, truth compels us to say that were it not for the actual condition of Russia, which is such that almost any word aiming to arouse sympathy with that heroic struggle strikes an answering chord in freedom lovers the world over, the drama would not be tolerated. It is disconnected, incoherent, and, worse than all, bombastic. The author makes his heroine, who is engaged in an active practical struggle with the Russian police system, wander off in an oration to the half dozen comrades who surround her, all as convinced as herself, entangle herself in a mass of false rhetoric, and shock all our sense of the fitness of metaphors by 'swinging the bell Of blood.' This he has evidently considered his climatic expression, and he iterates and reiterates it throughout the remainder of the play with intrusive pertinacity. If he had been content with saying it once, and letting us forget it! But no: till the very end that impossible 'bell' keeps on 'swinging.' It spoils even the last really heart-rending scene where the maddened girl repeats in her raving: 'The bell must swing-the bell must ring. . . . Onward brothers. . . . The bell of blood.'
Numbers of characters are introduced apparently for no purpose but to make a speech and disappear. One passage in particular, which the author himself indicates for omission in the performance, has been introduced merely to express the attitude of the active strugglers towards European indifference. It contains the following passage: 'Yes, you sympathize with us in Europe, don't you? Perhaps even start beggarly subscriptions for us? Ah, you mean well, you mean to be noble I But where you have shed a pint of blood, we must shed whole seas of it. For a hundred years we have fought like this, and you look on -- calmly, cynically - resting on your liberties. And our desperate struggling you watch only as a kind of horse race-who will win. And I really don't know which is the favorite -the Russian people or the house of the Romanoffs. It is a stain on the nations of our day which they will never be able to wipe out!'
The person to whom this speech is addressed, having been created for the purpose of listening to it, is then shoved off the boards and is seen no more. The accusation is just, but the manner of getting it in is as inartistic as its truth is bitter.
European criticism has credited the piece with much poetic merit. This does not appear in the translation; but if the author has, in the original, really imbued the drama with poetic fervor, it is simply renewed proof of the inadaptability of the poetic form to dramatic requirements.
* * *
BOOKS RECEIVEDThe Ego and His Own. Max Stirner. Translated from the German by Steven T. Byington. Benj. R. Tucker, New York. On The Eve. Leopold Kampf. The Conquest of Bread. P. Kropotkin. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. $1.00 net. Studies in Socialism. Jean Jaurès. Translated from the French by Mildred Minturn. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. Three Acres and Liberty. Bolton Hall. The Macmillan Co., New York. Before Adam.Jack London. The Macmillan Co., New York.Felicity. Clara E. Laughlin. Illustrated. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
* * *
INTERNATIONAL NOTES
FRANCE.Our comrades of the Saint Germain colony (founded for the threefold purpose of maintaining a farm, a school and a press) have had their littler internal troubles, as well as other colonies. These being reported to the police commissioner, he arose one morning happy in the thought that at last the hated intruders on his preserves were about to disappear. What was his disenchantment to find the walls of the churches and stores decorated with multicolored placards proclaiming Anarchist principles. No sooner were they torn down in one place than they appeared in another. There is a lot of fun in posting placards ; besides, it keeps the comrades busy and prevents quarrels.
The latest colonizing experiment is announced as in formation at Paris with the following purposes : 'We do not want to be wage-slaves ; we do not want to be traders ; we do not want to make fraud and trickery our constant means of existence. We wish nothing from the crowd, nor will we yield anything to them. We wish to produce, neither exploiting nor exploited.' Five persons announce themselves as the nucleus of this attempt. Meanwhile more failures are reported, the Corsican colony among these.
The second volume of the works of Michael Bakunin, edited by James Guillaume, the author's friend, has just appeared. It contains three pamphlets : 'The Bears of Berne and the Bear of St. Petersburg' (1870) ; 'Letters to a Frenchman' (1870) ; 'The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution' (1870-71). Published by Stock.
In an interesting interview with Louis Grandidier, recently released after serving nine months of his year's sentence, Le Libertaire reports him as saying :: 'Bourgeois society has pardoned me, but I have not pardoned bourgeois society. This long time at war with it, I will not lay down my arms till it has succumbed, or until I succumb ; which last is of no great importance ; others will take up the gun when I shall have let it fall.'
GERMANY.
The most interesting news of the month is the report of the Conference of the Anarchist Federation of Germany, held March 31st and April 1st. The program had been announced as follows: Reports fo Business Committee ; Report of Grievance Committee ; Reports of Delegates ; Speech on the Necessity of Organization, by Sepp Oerter ; On the Ideas and Tactics of Anarchism, by Dr. Friedeberg ; Anti-militarist Propaganda, by H. Dewes ; Anarchism and Religion, by Aug. Kettenbach ; The Press, by P. Frauböse ; Discussion concerning the Amsterdam Congress. The place of meeting first chosen was Offenbach. The police, however, forbade the meeting ; reason : the anti-militarist discussion. Then it was sought to hold the conference at FRankfurt; but the chief of police likewise forbade the meeting, without giving any reason. To find out whether the prohibition was a general order by the government of Hesse, the town of Mühlheim was next chosen ; but the same prohibition greeted them. Satisfied that the order proceeded from the provincial government, it was now decided to hold the conference at Mannheim, where previous Anarchist conferences have been held. The delegates arrived on Sunday morning, and were met by police in civilian dress, who dogged them about till their arrival at the meeting place ; two were arrested and detained for two hours at the police station. The rest came together about four P. M. at a hotel. Before anything had been done, however, the police commissioner appeared and declared that the conference could not be held either in Mannheim or its suburbs. Half an hour later a second body of police appeared, and demanded that all present (some 50 persons) accompany them to the police station. Seeing no way out of it, the delegates formed in a procession to the station, where, after having their names inscribed, they were let go.
They then agreed to march to the cemetery, in memory of the martyrs of March, thinking that they should somehow contrive means on the way to get rid of the detectives who were dropping out. From the cemetery they turned towards Feudeheim and boarded a steam street car ; the remaining detectives, who had not been able to keep up with the rapid march, were lost. On the other side of the Neckar, the comrades got out and began holding the conference as they walked ; being tired, they presently turned into an open field, and there sitting and lying on the ground, like our old Saxon forefathers, they held their meeting. The question of organization was earnestly discussed, the general spirit being in favor of closer organization. When the discussion closed it was eleven P. M. The delegates were tired, cold and hungry. The meeting was adjourned for refreshments. Then it appeared that the best thing to do was to continue the night session. As they were no longer within the precincts of the Mannheim prohibition, they could proceed openly, and having commissioned a few comrades to secure a place at a hotel the whole body (consisting now of 42 delegates) found themselves installed at midnight, ready to continue the discussion.
The meeting was prolonged till the afternoon of the next day, when having completed their work they adjourned. A few of the comrades, unable to resist a triumph over the police, telegraphed their compliments to the chief. In a quarter of an hour the police appeared, only to find the nest empty. A number of delegates were afterwards arrested at the stations, but immediately released.
Dr. Friedeberg and Comrade Karfunkelstein were arrested in Mannheim on the Tuesday following the conference ; but after the usual station-house indignities they were realsed.
It will be remembered that at Bremerhaven a number of comrades were arrested and detained without formal charge, and after nine weeks released with the exception of one. This one, Karl Lehman, committed suicide in prison on the seventh of January. But not till the fifth of April were any of his relatives informed of his death. No special reasons for his detention were given when the rest were released, nor are the causes of his suicide yet known. His real offence was anti-militarist agitation.
SWITZERLAND.
In September, 1906, Tatiana Léontiva, a young Russian girl, killed, in a hotel at Interlaken, one M. Müller, a rich landholder, by mistake for Durnovo, the Russian butcher. Tried by the courts of Berne, she has been sentenced to four years' imprisonment and twenty years interdiction from the canton of Berne. Before the court she said ' 'I regret that I did not kill Durnovo ; but the man whom I killed in his place was a bourgeois, consequently an enemy ; hence my regret is diminished.' Mlle. Léontiva had been so mistreated by Judge Launer during her imprisonment that inquest into his behavior was ordered.
Henry Mieville, a blacksmith of Chaux-de-Fonds, having refused to join a military company, has been sentenced to four months in prison and three months' deprivation of civil rights. Jacques Schmid, of Zurich, ordered the service, likewise refused in an interesting letter concluding with these words :: 'My ideal is a social state in which all intellectual supremacy, all material subjugation of man by man shall be impossible.' He has been arrested and by this time sentenced.
During the recent general strike at Vevey, a sympathize agitation followed at Lausanne, of so lively a nature that the local governments decided to suppress it. The 'Maison du Peuple' of Lausanne was occupied by the military, the Communist Printing House was closed, at Vevey the union meetings were dispersed by troops. All foreigners were ordered expelled, whereby Sebastien Faure, then in Lausanne for the purpose of giving a freethought lecture, was hastily reconducted to the French frontier.
ITALYDuring a recent conference of Socialists at Bologna, a split occurred between the partisans of legislative action and direct action, the latter being in the majority. These greeted the epithet 'Anarchists' with cheers, and the minority withdrew.
On the 25th of March it was decided to hold an Italian Anarchist conference at Rome during the month of June. Duration, four or five days ; purposes, to arrange propagandist meetings, and prepare for the Amsterdam Congress.
ENGLAND
The Voice of Labour, owing to financial pressure, has reduced its size one-half ; also its price. Still it is large enough to contain interesting reports and comments on the trade union and suffragist movements in England.
BOHEMIA
The comrades of Práce announce a forthcoming paper for children.
An entire edition of Kropotkin's 'Words of a Rebel' has been confiscated.
JAPAN
A daily revolutionary Socialist paper, Heimin Shimbun, is out at Tokyo. If some Japanese-American comrade will kindly offer to give us an idea of its contents we shall be glad to send him copies.
THE MARTYRS OF HELL
By LOLA RIDGE.
Not your martyers anointed of heavenThe ages are red where they trod;But the hunted—the world's bitter leaven,Who smote at your imbecile God:A being to pander and fawn to;To propitiate, flatter, and dreadAs a thing that your souls are in pawn to,A dealer that barters the dead;Who gloats with a vengeance unsated,And sells the lost souls in His snaresWho were trapped in the lusts He created—For incense and masses and prayers.They are crushed in the coils of your halters:'Twere well, by the creeds ye have nursed,To send up a cry from your altars,A mass for the martyers accursed.Just a passionate prayer for reprieval.For the Brotherhood not understood—For the heroes who died for the evil.Believing the evil was good.Here's a toast that has never been given;Listen, thralls of the Book and the Bell:To the souls of the martyrs unshriven,The bondmen who dared to rebel —To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers,Who dreamed of a world overthrown;They who died for the millions of toilers,Few — fronting the nations alone;To the Outlawed of men and the Branded,Whether hated or hating they fell,I pledge the devoted, red-handed,Unfaltering heroes of hell!
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
IT is fashionable among a certain element of the intellectual base to insist that, after all, progress is but a fiction. We are today no nearer the solution of Life's problems—so runs their legend — than were the ancients. The Greek philosophers were no less profound than their modern colleagues; we think the same thoughts, live essentially the same lives, and just as ineffectively question the ever mute Sphinx.
'Tis a fallacy of the poor in faith, the weak in sight and hope. We have not, indeed, solved all the problems that have vexed mankind since the dawn of civilization. But life is a tangled skein whose threads must be unwound laboriously, one by one.
Aeons have rolled into the ocean of eternity ere man first struck the mental flint that discovered to him the very presence of Life's Sphinx. The scales of superstition and ignorance fell one by one from his sight, till at last he dimly beheld the tangled skein. And as the light grew, and the waters of time clarified man's vision, his unsteady hand groped among the threads, tugging here and there, seeking the beginning or end, ever seeking in darkness. In vain he pleaded for aid, divine or human; in vain he implored. Yet not all in vain: his cries strengthened his voice, and his tears purified his sight. The agony of suffering was slowly piercing the tangle, and the enigma was imperceptibly dissolving in the tears of his great need. And lo! suddenly he beheld a beautiful maiden, and in her hand he saw firmly grasped the loose end of life's woof.
Nor could the liberating Ariadne altogether unravel the tangled skein. But the modern Theseus is following her through the winding paths of the labyrinth, out into the open road of final solution.
And the maiden's name was Mechanical Invention.
***
THE smug and self-satisfied are but too apt to forget that they live in houses built on sand. They follow the usual course of their lives, make profits out of the widows and orphans, and proclaim with pious unction that we live in the best of all worlds.
But once in a while something happens, a link in the social chain is broken, and the whole rotten fabric begins to totter and threatens to fall. Then the good people wake up and wonder what has disturbed the even tenor of their lives. One after another they miss their customary pleasures, and grow angry at the deprivation. Soon they realize their very existence imperiled, and consternation reigns in the camp of respectable stupidity.
What happened? Tis the slave becoming unruly. The greedy workingman again making impertinent demands. Only the workingman. But the whole elaborate structure is trembling and its very foundations seem to be sinking. The recent strike of the French postal and telegraph employees has shaken respectable society to its very core. It is, indeed, terrible to realize that our leisure and comforts, nay, our very necessaries, depend upon the good will of mere labor. Why, if labor were so minded it could suddenly stop all the wheels of civilization; not a stroke of work could be done; we might even be degraded to the pangs of vulgar hunger.
Why, it is terrible.
***
IT is probably the first time in the history of modern labor that the tremendous power of solidaric effort has been so conclusively demonstrated. Never before have we witnessed such a convincing object lesson as to the efficacy of direct action and the invincible strength of co-operation. The General Strike of the workmen of but one department of industry was sufficient to put a great country absolutely at the mercy of the strikers. What, then, would happen if the producers of several or of all industrial departments were to assert their rights to life, backing such assertion by a general national and international strike?
Mighty Labor, the world is yours, if you but will it.
***
IT is to be hoped that the organized labor of this country will soon grow out of its diapers and attain manhood.
If the United Mine Workers intend to follow the usual ridiculous tactics of 'preparing' for a strike by protracted dilly-dallying with the operators, it were the part of wisdom to capitulate at once. Much time, energy, and suffering would thus be obviated. But if the miners really want to make their demands heard and respected, they cannot afford to waste time in baby-acting, conferring and carrying on long palavers with the mine owners. The latter merely want to prepare themselves—with scabs and millions of tons of mined coal.
The Achilles of capitalism has but one vulnerable spot: the pocket. To force the exploiters to make concessions, the producers must use drastic methods, acting quickly, energetically, effectively. Instead of preparing the enemy by interminable and profitless discussions and parleys, he should be treated as an enemy. Nor should the interests of labor be entrusted to weak, incompetent, or treacherous leaders. Direct action is the motto. Solidaric cooperation of rank and file, the means. If you strike, strike hard. The method of sudden and complete cessation of work, a determined stand, and no compromise, will alone ensure speedy victory.
***
WE learn from recent statistics that crime in New York keeps ahead of the city's growth. The same holds true of the county and State. While population has increased four per cent., the rise in crime has grown ten per cent. The overcrowded condition of penitentiaries and prisons in New York State is not peculiar to the later. Information from many other States indicates that similar conditions also prevail there. The prison officials, almost without exception, attribute the increase of crime to 'two circumstances: the hard times and the influx of aliens.'
The two circumstances are, in reality, but different aspects of one and the same cause. For, indeed, the influx of aliens is but an indication of the hard times prevalent in European countries. Hard times in America and increased immigration from abroad merely mean that the masses everywhere, in all countries, are suffering want and poverty. Yet these masses work and produce. Why are they in want? What becomes of the products they create in such abundance?
The answer to this question will at the same time explain the prevalence of crime. Monopoly and privilege, aided by government, have divorced the producers from the machinery of production. Helpless without the latter, labor is forced to sell its power for whatever pittance the lords of the land and the captains of industry are willing to give. Deprived of the full equivalent of their work, the masses cannot buy back their products. Hence 'overproduction,' in the midst of nameless misery, hard times, and 'superfluous' labor power.
What is the jobless man to do ? Unemployment has become the chief problem of our civilization. It fills our prisons, builds new ones and overcrowds them, and still crime is on the increase, and hard times grow harder. And all the while the masters of life wax more insolent and reckless, turning the earth into a furnace of misery and suffering, and the State continues to torture and murder the children of its own iniquity.
But the hour of atonement is approaching. The ghost will not down.
***
IT would seem that in our Christian civilization the difference between right and wrong is one of terminology only. Thus the hungry man who takes a loaf of bread is a thief; but he who steals four-fifths of your product is called a manufacturer. To appropriate a dollar that does not belong to you is robbery; to grab a million acres is business. If you kill in sudden passion, it is murder. If you electrocute your enemy with deliberate preparation, it is justice.
When a wrong is right is decided, in all orderly communities, by the government. That is a body composed of the most learned, incorruptible, and unselfish social elements. The decisions of government are based on a book of classified right and wrong. This sacred book is called the Law. The Law is steadily enlarged by the addition of new laws, abolishing former laws. Laws may contradict and nullify each other, but the Law is unchangeable. Laws come and go, but the Law remains intact. The Law is always the Right. It cannot err. It knows no distinction of sex or color. It kills alike male and female, white and black. It knows neither pity nor mercy. Only Duty: the duty of upholding the Existing, the Accepted Fact, the Law and its Makers.
Great is the Law. It transcends right and wrong. Tis the Law.
ANARCHISM AND MALTHUSBy C. L. JAMES.
JOHN STUART MILL, who knew little about the difference between Anarchism and Socialism, but sympathized with both, as far as he understood them, has left on record the sentiment that the Malthusian theory, long considered the fatal objection to Socialism, might prove the strongest argument in its favor. Being much of that opinion myself, I have long desired Malthus, a writer of whom everybody talks and whom nobody reads, to be more generally understood. His life and character strike me as very irrelevant to his reasonings; but since prejudice always insists on getting them in, and generally tells lies about them, here is the truth. Daniel Malthus was the friend and executor of Rousseau. It need not be said, he was a radical. He was also an author to whom some literary merit is attributed; but he always wrote anonymously. His social grade was that of an English 'gentleman,' living on an income derived from some sort of stock. That he was pretty rich, and that he met with financial reverses, may be inferred from the facts that he passed through the University of Cambridge as a student in the most expensive class; but his son, Thomas Robert Malthus, the economist, was sent there on a cheaper plan; at which time we also find that the family, though increased, had moved into a smaller house than that where he was born. Here, during the winter of 1797, the father and son had some arguments about the merits of Political Justice, a book recently published by William Godwin (husband of Mary Wollestonecraft, and father-in-law of Percy Bysche Shelley). Godwin was an Anarchist of that early unscientific type which preceded Marx and Proudhon. Like his French contemporary, Condorcet, he vaguely entertained those ideas to which Saint Simon, about twenty-four years later, gave precision. That prodigious increase of wealth-producing arts which marked the last quarter of the eighteenth century was transforming military into industrial organization. The trades of the soldier, the legislator, the judge, the jailer, the sovereign, and the hangman, would soon be discarded as useless by a generation whom commerce was bringing to understand human solidarity. Commerce itself, by its effect in cheapening the means of life, would be obliged to make way for Communism. The Golden Age, the Paradisiacal State, was not only before, instead of behind us—it was at the door. The courageous optimism, which could think so when the greatest of popular revolutions was, after fearful bloodshed, in the act of transformation into a conquering military despotism, does credit to Godwin's heart, and his imagination; and the elder Malthus was delighted. But the younger pointed out difficulties. In Godwin's Utopia, life was to be maintained so easily that the 'struggle for existence' (a phrase used by Malthus) would have ceased and population, naturally, would increase fast. For things had by no means come to that in the United States, where the settlers were still killing Indians and working negro slaves; where they had fought seven years against a tax, and were in the act of domestic rebellion for cheap whiskey. Yet even in the United States living was so easy, that population, aside from immigration, doubled every twenty-five years. No such rate of increase could possibly continue. As this is a point on which ignorant critics of Malthus continually blunder, we will try to get it clear. The ignorant critics speak about destructive effects of this increase as if it were equally remote with the earth's falling into the sun, or the extinction of the sun itself. But anyone who can use a table of logarithms may convince himself in five minutes that the progeny of one Adam and Eve, doubling every twenty-five years, would pack like oranges in a box, not after geologic aeons, but in a few centuries. Of course no such result is possible. Yet it would evidently happen but that something hinders. What does? Increase of the death rate. This comes in various forms, all horrible to contemplate. Densely peopled countries, India, China, Egypt, Ireland, are mostly very liable to famine. Those happier in this respect have had dire experience that crowding and pestilence go together. Even where these destroying angels spare to smite for the sins of the people, the mortality of cities, notwithstanding all their opulence and knowledge, is invariably higher than that of the poorer, ruder country. But above all other things, war has been not only a check on overpopulation, but a proof that even very ignorant people know a check is needed. That they may not starve, cannibals fight and cut each other. Shepherds, indeed, cannot starve while their flocks are fed; for the flocks increase faster than the men.* But the flocks must have food as well as the men; and, because they increase faster, they reach the limit beyond which they cannot be supported, sooner. Then the shepherd-peoples also resort to war. They sweep across three continents under the black banner of Mahomet, or, perhaps, they are defeated, and almost annihilated, in a battle like that of Aqua Sextiae, by the richer and more civilized neighbors whose territories they have invaded. Either way, the problem of over-population is solved for some time, so far as they are concerned with it. In agricultural countries, war is less popular. But when a government able to suppress it through a wide region arises, famine takes its place, unless the birth-rate be reduced at the same time. A great object-lesson of the kind had recently been seen in India. The first of her recorded famines on a large scale occurred under Anrungzebe,— the first sovereign who really ruled all India. And observe, this could be attributed to nothing but cessation of war, which, when famine threatened, had previously offered a more hopeful way of dying; for, except cessation of war, there had been no important change in the customs of India to account for so terrible a change in the results. The alternative of war or famine is likewise so generally understood that, though backward agricultural peoples are less pugnacious than the cattle-breeders, war was everywhere, always, the principal fact in their history, till it ended, as war normally does, in extensive conquests like those of the Great Moguls. In the highest state of civilization, where there are important manufactures and extensive commerce, there is less war than anywhere else. But even so typically modern a country as England had been at war fifty years in the preceding hundred, and if we clear our minds of cant about 'rights,' 'international law,' 'the balance of power,' and other diplomatic flim-flam, we shall find that the true object of a modern war is a commercial advantage; that nations get ready to fight for a commercial advantage when the pressure of increasing population makes the advantage sufficiently necessary. That increase of the population is the fundamental cause of war,—'teterrina causa belli'—as it always was. Now, Mr. Godwin is witness that war is the cause of government, slavery, serfdom, laws, punishments, un-equal distribution of wealth. If, therefore, his Utopia, which is to banish all such things, were established, it could not last; and we should soon have them all back unless a way be found of checking propagation. But, in truth, too much is conceded in supposing his Utopia established at all. Since men were cannibals, some slow approaches to it have, indeed, been made. The tortoise of industry may be tiring out the hares of lust and plunder; but Mr. Godwin himself shows us that they are a long way ahead of her still; and to imagine them laid asleep by his Arcadian rhetoric is to show ignorance of human nature. All which led Malthus Jr. to another series of reflections. What he called Positive Checks on population—those which increase the death-rate—are inevitable, if propagation goes on at American speed, which, under Utopian conditions, it should exceed. But, generally speaking, it does not go on so fast. There are, then, Checks on population, of a different sort—Preventive—those which diminish the birth-rate. It is evident that there are many checks of this kind—among them vicious practices. But on these, Malthus, a clergyman, had no mercy. He classed them as Positive Checks,— appearing to hold, rather dogmatically, that they restrain increase as much by raising the death-rate as by lowering the birth-rate; nor did he withhold this censure from the least injurious among them, such as those afterwards proposed by the Malthusian Socialist, Robert Owen.[2] The only check, which Malthus would admit to be truly Preventive, or Prudential, is continence. This check is, certainly, far from inefficacious. The lowest savages, who graze like apes, know, indeed, nothing about it. But in the stage of hunting nomadism, a young man is not allowed to marry till the cruel rites of barbarian confirmation have proved him fit for his father's trade of war. If he cannot pass, he is good for nothing but a priest; and where priests do not fight (as sometimes they do) the general rule is that they are celibates. Among cattle-raising nomads, polygamy prevails; and men who are not smart enough to acquire stock can get no wives. In the agricultural state, and still more the commercial, it is mere commonplace that to marry without the means of supporting a family is imprudent. Thus, from the lowest conditions of man to the highest, we find continence increasing uniformly with civilization, except as superstition sometimes intervenes to cause a factitious increase, which, we may suspect, of being rather apparent than real. In that increasing celibacy whose causes are economic, much, no doubt, is loose; but much is genuine. It requires some force of character, some foresight, some judgment, to do what Jacob did for Rachel. Yet this is what many young men do in all social states, from the nomadic shepherds upwards, but increasingly. If the qualities they show be among those which make success in the battle of life, as they very clearly are, has not Godwin's materialistic philosophy confounded effect with cause? Is it not this improvement of habits which has made increase in wealth and knowledge? If the latter tails, as we see it has so far failed, to 'substitute the industrial régime for the military,' is not that because the improvement of habits is by no means as general as are some of its superficial effects? A beggar may be made more comfortable in London than a king in Darkest Africa; but there is no making a fool anything else than a fool, or saving him from being pushed to the worst place among competitors wherever he may happen to live. From these discussions sprang the famous essay of Malthus which was published in 1798. The prodigious sensation which it immediately produced caused five editions to follow during the author's life. The second, and most important, appeared in 1803. This book, with expansions, revisions, replies to critics,—in short, the subject of this book, variously handled—is coextensive with Malthus' literary activity. (He had, indeed, written an earlier pamphlet called The Crisis, in defense of Pitt's administration; but, by his father's advice, he kept it out of print.) The first edition of the Essay described its topic as the Principle of Population viewed with relation to the Future Improvement of Mankind. The motive of a critique on Godwin's Political Justice was still in Malthus' mind. He had also another reason for introducing his study in this way. Professing to be a Christian, and having recently taken holy orders, he knew well enough that he would be attacked on the ground of impugning the Divine goodness; and that no one would be so savage as his fellow-priests for this and other reasons. He, therefore, must have his theory about the future improvement of mankind, which, if not so rose-colored as Godwin's, must be sufficient for the pious purpose of vindicating the ways of God to man. Malthus professes, accordingly, to desire the future improvement of mankind as much as Godwin can desire it.' The only question between them is about practicable means. Having argued as above that Godwin's Utopia, if set up, would fall; and, moreover, that it could not be set up, without a radical change in regard to an important relation which Godwin had forgotten to mention; Malthus proceeds to contend that his law of population, though it may seem hard to rebellious flesh, is, in truth, the law of human progress from the brute state of the lowest savage upwards. As distinctly as his most illustrious pupil, Darwin, does Malthus perceive that 'the struggle for existence' is what makes us progressively better fitted to exist.' It is also what makes us more worthy. Terrible as have been the struggles, it is to them we owe it that we are not picking worms out of rotten trees, or ranging the sea-shore for carrion. It is because our ancestors were cannibals that they have, everywhere except in the most inaccessible jungles and islands, exterminated those weaker brothers of theirs who could be content with wild fruits or dead fish. That, as here, so at every later step in the struggle, whether between nations or individuals, the world has been made better by the success of the strongest, bravest, and shrewdest, can scarcely, indeed, be disputed, but it will not be adequately understood without our realizing that the improvement has been moral, no less than physical and intellectual. On a general view, it seems evident enough that the vices—sloth, cowardice, conceit, spite, envy, vanity, ill-temper, gluttony, lasciviousness,—are decided handicaps in the struggle, which must be, and are, wearing down, through the ill-success of those in whom they principally prevail. Of two only—avarice and falsehood—can it be pretended that they help anyone to outdo competitors. But too is allowed in granting that they generally do. They may help an individual on a pinch. But compare nations, classes, sects, parties, whose lives are longer than those of individuals—nay, compare, not two but many, individuals—and it will be clear enough that neither piggishness nor rascality pays; that cunning, though an advantage in itself, is no such advantage as a reputation for veracity; that though generosity is often imprudent, it is not prudent to lack generosity. And thus the cynical saying that prudence is the only virtue God rewards may be transfigured into this reverent sentiment that all the virtues can be deduced from the promises of one who will grant a sure reward to even prudence. Thus the actual causes of past improvement guide us to the process of future. The general direction is that in which Godwin can see no obstacles. War, slavery, punishments, in equalities of fortune and station, and the passions which cause them, are very bad things, to be avoided by everyman, for himself, no less than for the sake of humanity. The man, who will not fight if he can help it, is wiser than the bully. But it does not do to forget that the best-tempered men will fight for life and those things without which life is worthless; that it is the direction of advantage in such necessary strife which has displaced those who thought fighting a sufficient end by those who very reluctantly adopt it as a means; that the one great error, of imprudence in giving life before providing material to support life, will continue as long as committed, to make the struggle for existence inevitable. In the second edition of the Essay, all this elaborate Theodice disappears. [3] So do many rhetorical passages, chief among them the famous one about 'Nature's mighty feast,' which all the world quotes, and generally garbles. There was a reason for this change. Malthus was now a famous man. Attacks on his doctrines from the side of superstition had come, of course: but they did not amount to as much as he expected; and he had ceased to care for them.[4] By Socialists, if the term at this early date be proper, his work had been rather well received than otherwise—Godwin particularly using expressions which implied that he had learned by it; as, from his life and associations we should infer, he easily might. The day when demolishing Malthus appeared a part of every radical's appointed task did not come till Ricardo (died 1823) had drawn certain inferences from the theory of Malthus, about which more anon. Of more interest to Malthus' scientific mind were criticisms on statistical and other positive grounds. to keep strictly within facts. Even the title was altered accordingly. His subject is declared to be, not the future improvement, but the past history and present prospects of mankind. In the substance of his reasoning there was one modification which his opponents naturally worked for all it was worth. In the edition of 1798 he had described the positive checks on population as 'Vice and Misery,' the preventive as based upon 'the fear of them.' A criticism, in which he admitted force, was that he had said nothing about hope. Ambition, the desire of improving one's condition, is certainly a chief cause of continence, and this is something more than fear of vice and misery for oneself or his posterity. Acknowledging this, the tone of theorizing is certainly more optimistic than before. This change in Malthus' language, rather than his meaning, together with the confession that he should have been more explicit at first, is the basis of the criticism often made by Coleridge and others, that the theory is a truism from which nothing can be inferred. That it is no truism, but an extremely complicated equation, may certainly be inferred from the facility with which critics misunderstand it, the multiplicity of ways in which they manage to do that, and the oft-recurring argument ad verccundum—it is very strange that Menu, Confucius, Moses, Solon, Cato, even the ascetic Roman Catholic publicists, should have held up increasing the species as a sacred duty; and that discovering the direful results of doing so should have been reserved for Mal- thus![5] Of the four subsequent editions, nothing need be said here, except that they become progressively more statistical, comprehensive, and bold, until even friendly critics thought he would have been clearer for taking less pains to be clear.
(To be continued.)
[1] This is one of Henry George's arguments to show that population may increase indefinitely—an argument utterly idiotic as the next sentence shows.
[2] If he were wrong in this, he at least had something to say. Under the Roman Empire celibacy, of course, as a rule, improves, which, even under the Republic, had become a common way of avoiding the pecuniary pressure, increased to immense proportions. This saved the Roman peace from ending in famine, like the Mogul. But it did not avert dissolution of the Empire. Malthus would have been quite in the ordinary way of thinking if he attributed Roman misfortunes to Roman vice; and maintained that a chaste celibacy might have had better results.
[3] George says that the Malthusian theory did not originally involve the idea of progress. Referred even to the later editions of Malthus, this is incorrect; but for the first it is ridiculous, and shows at once that George never read what Malthus wrote in 1798.
[4] Those acquainted with Malthus in after life say he was one of the gentlest and most amiable of men; which we are also told about Ricardo and Adam Smith. But there are letters of his tutor extant, from which it appears that he had been a most pugnacious boy; and a phrenologist, reading his works with knowledge of their occasions, would find ground on every page for saying: 'Firmness and combativeness, Large!' Malthus said that the charges of discouraging benevolence, and commending infanticide and abortion, etc., etc., gave him pain, when they were honest misunderstandings; but, considered as polemical tricks, he had learned to despise them, and got over answering.
[5] George, whose 'refutation of Malthus' is useful because it gives in epitome those of every one else, with exquisite consistency, suggests both these views; sometimes wondering ironically that this great truth never was discovered before; sometimes intimating that it does not amount to a great truth, because everybody knows all the truth there is in it. and governs himself accordingly. That Malthus actually stated all the truth there is in this, would never be suspected by a reader of George.
Volume IV June, 1909 No.4
CONTENTS
Freedom in America. Poem. Walter Crane .. 97Observations and comments . . . . . . . . . . . 98The Movement for Free Speech . . . . . . . . . 103A Demand for Free Speech . . . . . . . . . . . 107Our Friends, the Enemy. . . . . . . . 110A Visit to Yonkers. H. Kelly . . . . . 111The French Revolution. Hippolyte Havel. 116A Scientist on a Scientist? D.M. Kider 119What We Did to Bernard Carlin. Grace Potter 121The Release of Michael Costello. Voltairine de Cleyre 125
EMMA GOLDMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . PUBLISHERALEXANDER BERKMAN . . . . . . . . . EDITOR
Office: 210 East 13th Street, New York CityPrice, 10 Cents per Copy One Dollar per Year
Mid SummerDance and Ice Cream PartyWill be given byMother EarthSaturday Eve, September 18th, 1909at Terrrace Lyceum, 206 East BroadwayTicket, 20 Cents Hat Check,10 Cents
The Terror in Russia
By PETER KROPOTKIN
A BOOK OF FACTS, containing valuable and reliable information about the present conditions in Russia.
Price, 15 Cents
Mother Earth, 210 E. 13th St., New York
FREETHOUGHT
By Edward H. Guillaume
Great word, that fill'st my mind with calm delight,I love to feel, but cannot hope to tell,How, like the noonday sun, thou dost dispelThe mists of error that impede our sight!What noble dreams, what yearning hopes excite!What memories, too, awake at the sound of thee,Like a myriad ripples on a wind-swept sea!How full and irresistible thy might!Thou casuist to grow pale the tyrant's cheek;Thou art the knell that loud proclaims the fallOf despots and of priests, and those who seekTo crush the human mind beneath their thrall:Thou dost avenge all wrong, make strong the weak --Nobility and heritage of all.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise'Was the cant they handed slaves in long ago.Where ignorance is hell, ' tis cowards who disguiseThe things that every freeman ought to know.
Again and again it is being demonstrated by history and experience that the truest reality is -- the ideal.
The Timid, Lacking hope or vision, lose themselves in fear, discourage magnify difficulties, and shrink back in terror from possible danger.
The bold, inspired by the ideal, courageously face apparently insurmountable obstacles, defy danger, dare and do, and ultimately conquer.
Numerous are the instances of this eternal truth. the present revolution in Spain is a case in point. It is comparatively recently that the Anarchists have initiated their anti-militarist propaganda. Scornfully the world smiled at their lilliputian effort Even alleged radicals, when not directly antagonistic, shook their wise heads, pityingly: 'Visionaries ! An Impossible task.'
But timidity lacks the power to discourage the social pioneer, whose wagon is hitched to a star. His vision armors him with determination and perseverance. His faith makes him impressnable to scorn or ridicule. THe visionary, the impractical idealist -- he is the inevitable conqueror.
Arduous labor, his; and dangerous. But the sympathy of fellow workers, the understanding of congenial spirits is a powerful sustainer. Gradually he forges on and on, courageously and confidently, step by step he paves his way, he rises, falls and rises again, and forward and upward he strives, ever beholding his beckoning star. And then, lo! thousands are following him, and the whole country rings with the cry, Down with War !
Behold Spain!
And then again he labors. The owls hoot, the wolves give chase. But on and on he goes. Now parrying, now attacking, yet never lured into by-ways. He carries the banner of Liberty. Anarchy is his ideal. Revolution his road. Along his way he sows the seeds of discontent and plants the trees of Better Things. Woods and valleys he traverses, the song of Life and Joy on his lips, and over hill and mountains floats the echo of his voice, 'The General Strike.' On and on he goes, hated, jeered, driven. An enemy of society -- a dangerous lunatic -- an impractical visionary --
Then, lo! Behold Belgium, France, Russia, Spain, Sweden.
And on he goes, carrying the banner of Liberty. Anarchy is his ideal, Revolution his road.
* * *
THE Legal farce of 'judging' the Hindu student, Madar Lal Dhingra, forcibly reminds one of the circumstances attending the judicial murder of Robert Emmet. Indeed, the comparison is highly appropriate, since British rule in India to-day is, in all essentials, an exact replica of the condition of Ireland in emmet's time.
But a whole century has passed since the hanging of the leaders of the 'United Irishmen'; in the perspective of the decades the world celebrates Robert Emmet as a great patriot and noble martyr. But Dhingra is 'a common murderer.' The difference is merely one of time. Indeed, the Indian student has but trodden in the foot-steps of the great Irishman; the very spirit of Robert Emmet vibrates in the Hindu's dying words, ' What I whale done, you would expect every true Englishman to do. If the Germans have no right to take possession of England, neither has England the right to take possession of India, oppressing and tyrannizing my country-men.'
Prophetically Dhingra foresees the time that will justify him and his act. His clear vision inspires him with the challenge to his judges, 'I am proud to receive the honor you have thus bestowed upon me!' Full Well he knows that history repeats itself, and that in his case, as in Emmet's, posterity will see in his present judges the real and only criminals, and that its voice will echo the brave words of Krishnavarma and all sincere revolutionists, 'Political assassination is no crime.'
* * *
ANOTHER Judas Is carrot unmasked in the person of 'General Harting'; Russian peasants flogged to death for inability to pay exorbitant taxes; the prisons overcrowded; politicals tortured; the hangman busy at his trade; an unbroken line of Russia's noblest sons and daughters stretching across the snow of Siberia -- such is the prelude to the Tsar's visit to England.
Acclaimed by the international flunkeys in and out of uniform, Nicholas goes a-visiting, proclaiming the gospel of good-will and peace. Civilized mankind stands aghast at the spectacle: his mouth runs honey, while his hands drip blood, each drop the life of a tortured, murdered innocent.
Very timely, indeed, is the exposure of the terrible conditions prevailing in Russia, as set forth in facts and figures by Peter Kropotkin in his latest work. 'The Terror in Russia.' The data contained in the book form the basis of the speech delivered by Comrade Kropotkin on the occasion of the meeting of welcome to Vera Figner, the venerable Russian revolutionist who septa twenty-three years in the schlüsselburg fortress. Kropotkin's speech delivered June 23rd, at the South Place Institute, London, is reproduced, in part, in this issue.
The horrors of the Tsar's rule, as depicted in 'The Terror of Russia.' will shock the civilized world. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition fade into insignificance as compared with the terrible brutality of the Cossack régime. We recommend the book to the thoughtful consideration of all friends of Russia. May it prove a clarion call to awaken the conscience of the world to the imperative necessity of wiping off the curse of official Russia from the face of the earth.
* * *
Not since the historic days of Homestead has Pennsylvania witnessed such a momentous clash of capital and labor as in the present strike of the employees of the Pressed Steel Car Company at McKee's Rocks.
This struggle once more proves the infamy of the business elements and the servility of the press. The strikers have been almost unanimously condemned for 'disturbing business' and interfering with the gathering of profits. And that in view of the admitted fact that the Pressed Steel works are a veritable shambles, that the strikers were forced to slave for the most pitiable wages and were treated with indescribable arrogance and brutality by the officials of the car company.
Driven to desperation, the workingmen declared a strike, demanding a living wage and more decent treatment. Little enough, indeed. Yet the company promptly refused the demand, and a prominent Pittsburg daily commented, editorially: 'People that strike from any cause hardly ever deserve much sympathy. But when they interfere with business and disturb order they must be brought to terms by all means, rather than be negotiated with.'
The Process of bringing the strikers to terms 'by all means' then began. President Hoffstott, of the Pressed Steel Car Company, proved himself a worth disciple of the notorious Frick, of Homestead-Pinkerton fame. With the aid of the State constabulary he introduced a reign of blood, resorting to the vilest plutocratic methods of eviction, arrest, and indiscriminate shooting down, with the single object of terrorizing the strikers into submission.
But the spirit of intelligent revolt is not to be broken so easily. Unorganized though the strikers were, they made a brave and determined resistance. Whipped into unity by their terrible condition, they formed a force that the combined strength of capital and state have so far found impossible to overcome.
Gradually, yet surely, the intelligent co-operation and manly stand of the McKee's Rocks 'foreign strikers' are compelling the respect of the country. Whatever the result of the strike may be, those underpaid and persecuted workers have already won a great moral victory.
* * *
THERE are signs of a tardy awakening in at least one direction. The police, the detectives, and all that monstrous army for which the grinding of the criminal condemnation mill means place and profit, have so overplayed their part that the storm is rising. Books such as 'The Turn of the Balance' and '9009' have been published, and by their obvious veracity and tense indignation are compelling the attention of a hitherto indifferent public. Periodical literature is beginning to bristle with the subject, and this is a sure sign, for the men who make their living by writing for our magazines have an unerring nose for the topic that is really alive.
Here and there a man escapes from prison — one among thousands, or rather tens of thousands — who has the capacity and the powerful position that enables him to talk, and talk with some chance of being heard. They have a man of that type in California, Griffith J. Griffith, who, as luck would have it, is a man of means, a speaker, and a trained writer by profession. He has been telling stories of his experiences in San Quentin — the scene of '9009' — and is making the good, easy citizens of California sit up.
They have formed a Prison Reform League there, which is endeavoring to arouse the entire country to our treatment of crime and criminals. It is issuing syndicate letters and much other literature denouncing that treatment as founded on revenge and worthy only of the Dark Ages. It is adding its mite to the exposure of the conditions prevailing in southern convict camps — a crime of international proportions — and is doing what it can to throw light on the mediaeval tortures applied to helpless prisoners among communities that fancy they are civilized.
Probation leagues have sprung up — we note their formation in Chicago and St. Paul, and others may have escaped us. They voice the same general complaint: that this society is manufacturing criminals wholesale; that it is actuated solely by the fiendish policy of revenge; that its deterrent punishments do not deter; that it gives men no chance, and that so long as it continues in that folly it will be tearing itself to pieces. We may think the work of many of these leagues and writers insufficient; we may feel that they have not yet struck the root of the evil; but they are doing a great work as stirrers of discontent. They are making people think, and to make them think is to make them disgusted with affairs as they are run at present by our unspeakable politicians and their henchmen.
We Anarchists have good cause to know how true is the proverb that when you want to hang a dog, you must give him a bad name. The literature that is being born from these prison revelations will go far toward shaking that national self-complacency which has been the hardest of all enemies to combat. A good many highly respectable gentlemen are going to get the worst of names, and the entire machinery for the administration of what, with an irony never equalled in history, is known as 'Justice' is destined to find itself in the foulest of odor before many years have passed. Thus the harvest ripens, and the dawn of a new era grows brighter on the old horizon.
* * *
A RATHER expedient, if not ingenious, defence has been advanced by the United States Senator, who, charged with assaulting a negro dining-car waiter, justified his act by declaring, 'I did not strike a man. I slapped a nigger.' The judge proved his respect for the law and its makers by agreeing with the Senator.
This case is by no means an isolated one. Nor is the attitude of the senatorial pugilist towards the negro exclusively southern, as some are inclined to believe. The argument that 'slapping a nigger' is not 'striking a man' holds good practically throughout the country. But few white people in this enlightened land have risen to the level of recognizing in the negro a fellow-man, a social equal. To the great majority a difference of color is, per se, an evidence of inferiority. Even some radicals are not entirely free from this most stupid of prejudices. And yet, impartially speaking, the spirit which sees in the colored man 'only a nigger' is itself convincing proof of a mental kink, of intellectual immaturity.
* * *
THE recent grant of old-age pensions in Great Britain has called forth much discussion of the perennial question of poverty. As is usual, the newspaper philosophers are more voluminous than illuminative. Especially is common sense at a premium in the learned disquisitions. As to originality, it is terra incognita. Exploded theories of fatalistic, religious, pseudo-Malthusian, etc., conceptions of poverty are rehashed with an air of self-satisfied finality. None, evidently, dare analyze the vital relation of poverty to capitalist economics. One publication, however, suggests in a spirit of bantering levity, the various 'possibilities' that would result if the hundred thousand unemployed of New York decided to steal rather than starve.
The suggestion may be worthy of serious consideration. What would society do with a hundred thousand 'criminals' determined to eat rather than die of hunger? And suppose the unemployed all over the country were to follow the example of their New York brothers. The prisons could not hold one-fiftieth of the number. What would then happen if the poor, the underfed, the starving decided that it is as senseless as it is disgraceful to hunger amidst plenty?
They would eat and grow strong and forever forget that things are more sacred than lives.
* * *
THE sight of a woman riding astride has so shocked the virtuous sensibilities of a Georgia legislator that he hastened to introduce a bill, making the practice a felony. If the bill is to become a law, it will be as criminal for a woman to ride in a natural and comfortable manner as it is to live so.
The Georgia Solon is no doubt consistent. Woman cannot be suffered to discard the shackles of hoary custom that have from time immemorial kept her the submissive slave of man. Riding astride, for a woman, is an open defiance of established usage, hence immoral. Encouragement in this particular would doubtlessly lead to woman's gradual emancipation from other accepted facts. What would then become of the supremacy of men like our virtuous Solon ?
* * *
A BRIGHT little magazinelet, Freeland, has reached this office. It contains 64 pages, the contents of which are thus characterized in the publisher's prospectus: 'Devoted to economics and politics, critical in basis, libertarian in tendency, and constructive in method, favoring the largest individual development within the bounds of the law of equal freedom.'
Address Alexander Horr, Station Box 2010, San Francisco, Cal.
ON PATRIOTISM
By B. RUSSELL HERTS.
THERE is a feeling in the heart of man to-day which has swayed the course of history for near a thousand years, which has established empires, dethroned monarchs and popes, built up continents, forced friends and families into separation; which has given birth to sorrow and rejoicing, love and hatred, cruelty, crime, and inspiration for ten centuries, and which is now one of the greatest ethical, psychological, and sociological influences upon the mind of the twentieth-century man.
Here in America is the spirit of Patriotism especially powerful, for it has been the cause and explanation of our conduct ever since the memorable days nearly a century and a half ago, when our first patriots cried out for 'freedom' and 'representation.' It is in great measure responsible for all of our noble deeds, for our speeches, our sacrifices, our panics, bloodshed, and crimes. And through the decades as our country grew and prospered, it has grown and prospered, until to-day there is a kinship of national reverence between all the Europeans, Asiatics, and Negroes within the land, and the presence of Patriotism in one's soul is taken as one of the fundamental tests of character. So far has this proceeded that he who does not hasten to rise and uncover at the opening strains of the national melody, who does not believe and claim America to be capable of all things, who does not deem it a sacred duty to go forth, if called, and crush his brother-being upon the battlefield, is gazed upon, for the most part, with fear and hatred, mingled with a touch of scorn.
In this centennial year of our greatest president, when thousands of speeches have been sounding in every corner of the land, when thousands more of written works plentifully decorated with the words 'heroism,' 'Patriotism,' 'American,' are circulated and read in every home, is it not well to cease our impassioned declaiming, our joyous singing, even our loving reverence, for a moment, and give ourselves to the task of verifying the absoluteness, the fundamentality, the value of the glorious Patriotism which impels us to all these exhibitions?
Whence comes it? Is it eternal? And, if not, what is its cause and origin, and more especially, in this pragmatic age, why does it exist? What is its contribution to human happiness and progress?
In judging present matters, or preparing for those of the future, we have only our knowledge of the past as a foundation for assumptions. Let us review and employ what economics has taught us, and that we may reach the fundamental, let us revert to the borderland of the pre-historic.
At the earliest times which we have thus far been enabled to study, man presents himself to us in a state of what has been called 'individual economy.' His chief cares were the finding of food, and the securing of protection against the ravages of beasts, the encroachments of neighboring men, and the terrors of nature. To this stage succeeded that in which the family became the typical economic entity, when man began to realize the pleasure and usefulness of domestic life, and to protect against his enemies not only himself and his personal belongings, but also his home and all the kinsmen who gathered thereabout. Thus came the clan into being, and man's love became inclusive of his relatives.
Gradually the more civilized sections of mankind retired from their nomadic existence and settled into groups, each occupying a definite territorial district. The necessity for some scheme for the production and distribution of goods, and for the insurance of government and protection, became immediately apparent. The formation of the town or city was the result. In order to render this organization secure and powerful, it was necessary for the individual to pledge himself to protect his city in times of danger, and to assist it in the acquirement of wealth and authority. Thus was a measure of the love and loyalty, formerly lavished upon the family, transferred to the community.
During medieval times men unconsciously began to realize that geographical, linguistic, and other features contributed to render desirable the formation of larger units than that of the town. So we find extensive territories, each containing many cities, the people of which speak the same language, possess substantially the same political point of view, and dwell within certain barriers difficult of passage, each held together by the love and loyalty of their inhabitants. City warfare ceases and allegiance is transferred from the smaller to the larger group.
The nation being a recent development, it is clear that national feeling has had but a limited existence. But, it may be answered, the sentiment of which Patriotism is an outgrowth has been man's ever since we know of his presence on earth. The contention must be admitted: the quality in which we so greatly delight is directly traceable to the self-love of the savage. Broadened, extended, it is, but only because the economic unit is more embracing now than ever before. Egotism for the nation is but an extension of personal egotism, and the national selfishness which prompts a man to seek the aggrandizement of one people at the expense of another is but the descendent of primitive man's lust for power and mastery.
The world is now divided into nations, and national feeling is universally respected. Yet is the nation anyless arbitrary, any more fundamental, a division, than was the family or the city? Has our reverence for the typical, temporary economic group, having passed through many stages at last reached its fixed and final form?
Let one gaze guardedly into the future and he perceives a stage beyond: a stage when material barriers shall disappear, and race hatreds be no more; when national prejudices, national egotism, national selfishness, even national love shall be swallowed up in a new spirit — the spirit of humanitarianism, the only possible Patriotism in a state of international economy.
There is, indeed, considerable evidence that this transition is soon actually to be consummated. The improvements of the last half-century in transportation have destroyed the importance of national geographical barriers, while the proposed universal language may remove the present national linguistic differences; the peace conferences are gradually imposing upon us a recognition of the desirability of uprooting national hatreds, while the recent advancement of such countries as Japan is teaching us the absurdity of national self-satisfaction. Moral, social, and political questions of world-significance are everywhere usurping the place in men's minds previously occupied by interest in national affairs, so that now, in the discussions of scientists, Anarchists, capitalists, unionists, Socialists, nationality is practically a negligible quantity.
Many deplore this condition. To them the gradually waning sentiment is a symbol of all that is great and noble in an accomplishment of modern times. They see that Patriotism has been essential to man's uplifting, and so they insist that it is still desirable. They demand the continuation of war because, in the past, man has lost, and therefore enobled, his personality through deeds of valor. They are like those who would restore the Church to its place of power, and re-establish its tyrannies and extravagances, because long ago on account, or in spite, of these, a Bramante, a Rafael, a Michael Angelo has been nursed in its bosom. Is it their serious belief that those lips must be wet with new-sucked blood from which the breath of inspiration is to come, or that the meadows must be manured with lies and wretchedness and crime, on the produce of which genius is to be reared? Six thousand years, at least, it was, before mankind could mould a Michael Angelo; if this hypothesis were true, one might well wish six thousand times as long to pass before such another were given to the world.
But man is confident that it is not so. Religion was alone in its inspiration, the Church alone in its patronage of artists, because thought and activity were over-shadowed by these forces. Man's creative capacity demands material to mould: these themes were at hand, and all else was forbidden. It has been the same with war. So long as war exists as a significant and spectacular element in modern life, it will continue to be a theme of poets and painters. But does this import that its withdrawal will mean the death of the inspiration which gave birth to the poems and pictures which deal with war? Would it not simply signify the transference of this to another field — perhaps to one of the many fields as yet unrecognized as fit for the purposes of art? In the work of the moderns do we not already see the puffing, plunging engine with its newly-realized harmony of creaks and crashings; the stern, pale steamship clearing the stormiest sea with perfect precision, the mud-, or soot-, or grease-begrimed laborer cognizant of the nobility, because of the usefulness, of his task — do we not daily see these and a hundred such subjects usurping the places of the discarded topics of past decades? For the purposes of art physical strife between men has served its term — man is moving to a music vibrant, powerful, inspiring far beyond the clash of arms.
Then there be those who tell us that, while war is waging its death struggle, nationality is a youth newly-awakened to his power. They would destroy what has become apparently repellent to them, but at the same time retain the economic and political conditions from which this has arisen. The thing is impossible. The existence of nationality signifies the continuance in each nation of the desire for its own aggrandisement. Such a competition implies conflict, and harmony is, and must be, the aim of those who would annihilate war. Conflict has existed and thrived under every state of society thus far known to history. There is but one condition conceivable to the mind of man under which war cannot exist — that in which no final economic group is recognized.
Every change through which man has passed has made him more humanitarian: the love of family being less selfish and personal than the love of self, that of city than that of family, and the fleeting feeling of to-day a step still in advance; so that the state of internationality is the logical and natural outcome. This appears to be the final, fundamental form, for we can imagine nought beyond, Desired or repugnant to us as the change may be, it yet remains inevitable — imminent.
We are told that as long as honor and self-respect live among peoples, so long will war persist. History itself confutes this. In the evolution of the ages even honor is subject to mutation. We remember that the abolition of duelling was opposed, and for many years retarded by the supremacy of the feeling of personal honor — under the name of chivalry. Now we find the destruction of national duelling opposed by the appeal to national honor under the name of Patriotism. Duelling has been over-thrown and chivalry is but remembered. National duelling, war, will be abolished, and for the accomplishment of this Patriotism must perish. There can be only one fatherland for the man whom it is the most divine task of civilization to produce: the world; and his Patriotism will not evince itself in the stolid love of self, family, city, or State, but in the sacrifice of all for humanity!
THE SPANISH UPRISING
By Emma Goldman
WITHIN the last two weeks organized authority has been shaken to its very foundations by the revolutionary uprising in Spain.
To think that neither the influence of religion, with its power to dull the human mind, nor the army with its lead and iron methods, no longer serves as a safeguard against revolution! Moreover, the rebels, once having thrown off the bridle, know no bounds. They actually 'burn churches and outrage nuns.' What beasts! What brutes!
In view of the fact that these blood-curdling stories emanate from a servile and prostitute press, ever ready to malign and misrepresent the least revolt against tyranny, one will do well to carefully weigh and measure these reports. But even if they were true, if the Spanish people really burned churches and maltreated the cuervos negros* what of it? Has not the Catholic Church, especially in Latin countries, driven the people to despair; has it not for centuries lived off their sweat and blood; has it not used every means to lash them into submission and rob them of their energies and manhood ? Were the people of Spain to retaliate a million-fold, it would sink into insignificance compared with the countless crimes and black terror of the Catholic Church.
Politicians and vote hucksters only can maintain the lie that religion is a 'private affair.' Revolutionists the world over have realized long ago that religion is one of the greatest obstacles to the emancipation of mankind, hence the strongest support of tyranny and oppression.
The most striking feature of the present uprising does not consist in what has or has not been done to churches and nuns. Much rather it is to be found in the tremendous anti-military spirit and the recognition of that most effective weapon, the General Strike.
While it is true that the Moroccan war — a struggle for the enrichment of a handful of speculators — has fanned the spark of popular discontent into fire, it is much more true that the anti-militarist agitation, carried on in Latin countries for years, has paved the way for the present revolt.
Militarism, like the church, is one of the strongest bulwarks of our present system. This has become particularly apparent during recent years. Governments employ armies not merely to subdue weaker nations and conquer territory, but to silence the slightest cry of discontent at home. Realizing this, the revolutionary elements in every land have inaugurated a wide-spread agitation against militarism. The present Spanish uprising — the most heroic and inspiring revolutionary event of recent years — is the direct result of those efforts. And the General Strike?
True, a leading German Socialist not long ago declared the General Strike to be general nonsense; and when asked if the workers of the world should prevent the possible coalition of European powers against the Russian Revolution by the declaration of a General Strike, he scornfully ridiculed the suggestion. How foolish the 'Sage of Berlin' must feel in face of the fact that the General Strike has since proved such a tremendous weapon in the hands of labor.
Yet another cause, no doubt, aided in preparing the Spanish uprising — the memory of Montjuich, that hell of the modern Spanish Inquisition.
Twelve years ago a bomb exploded during a religious procession at Barcelona. Immediately three hundred workingmen were arrested and tortured in the most fiendish manner: hot irons, the thumbscrew, and rack were employed to extort confessions. When, finally, the majority of the victims perished, and a cry of indignation arose all over Europe, the few survivors of the torture were released. Perchance among the participants in the present revolt are friends and relatives of those victims. This, together with the unspeakable oppression, exploitation, and forced military service suffered by the Spanish people, sufficiently explains the present revolution.
I am not optimistic enough to hope that the heroic and self-sacrificing efforts of our Spanish brothers will forever abolish torture and tyranny. But as a forerunner of a greater and more effective storm they are wonderfully encouraging and invigorating. Those who have the revolutionary spirit can learn from Spanish events the great power of anti-militarism and the General Strike.*Black Crows -- popular expression of scorn for the black clergy.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF RUSSIA*
By PETER KROPOTKIN.
NEVER were the conditions of Russia so desperately bad as they are now. Neither during the depressing years of the reign of Alexander III., nor during the wild reaction of the last years of Alexander II., nor even during the mad despotism of Nicholas I., did the orgies of the defenders of autocracy reach the climax they have attained now. Even that little, that microscopically little, that had been obtained in Russia for some protection of the individual from the bureaucracy, is now wiped off from life as something unworthy, useless, harmful.
From the very first day of his accession to the throne, Nicholas II. permitted himself, In virtue of his own personal will, surreptitiously to alter the established Constitution of Finland. In his very first manifesto, issued on the day of his father's death, he ordered the words, 'Grand Duke of Finland,' to be taken out of the title of the Emperor of Russia. By a stroke of his pen he thus abolished the ninety-year old autonomy of a nation which peacefully followed its own development; he tore to pieces the treaties of annexation of Finland; he gave the lie to the oath taken by his father and grandfather.
His first act was to put himself above the binding laws of the country. And now, for fourteen years in succession, he patronizes those who trample under foot all the concessions that give however slight a guarantee to the individual's personal safety against the outrageous attacks of the rulers of Russia — the gangs of hooligans who find their immunity by entering the ranks of the present rulers of Russia. undertaken the rooting out of all the best forces of the Russian nation. Such a bacchanalia of savagery and cruelty Russia has not seen since the times of the half- mad Tsar, John IV. — also surrounded by fortune-tellers — the murderer of his own son. Thus it is that in the twentieth century Russia has again to live through that shameful page of her history.
The abolition of the old-established rights of the nationalities allied with Russia in the Caucasus and Finland; the sending of hundreds of students as soldiers to Port Arthur, as a punishment for disturbances; the surrender of the schools into the hands of the illiterate priests, church cantors, and bell ringers; the bribing of the army by doubling the pay of the officers in those parts of the Empire where the state of siege was introduced; the surrender of the most vital parts of the State organization to all sorts of adventurers, like Bezobrazoff and Stoessel, provided they would grovel at the feet of 'our father the Tsar' and 'our mothers the Empresses'; and finally, the handing over of all the life of Russia to the adventurer Von Plehve and his secret agents, because that man had promised Nicholas II. in 1903 to maintain autocracy by secret police rule for another ten years — this is what Russia got during the first ten years of his reign from Nicholas II., whom the plunderers of Russia now call their father.
And now, after the defeat of the first efforts of the Revolution, Russia has been given up to a band of thieves, murderers, and criminals against all the moral conceptions of mankind. The prisons are overcrowded; many of them contain three and four times more inmates than they were built for. And such an overcrowding is bound to continue, because the present rulers of Russia are prosecuting now, before their packed courts, thousands of persons, for all they have done and said during the years of relative liberty, 1905 and 1906. All that was considered then as necessary and desirable for the renovation of Russia, is prosecuted now. A book issued at that time, a meeting convoked to discuss the strike which compelled Nicholas II. to make his first concessions, a speech delivered at a meeting, or even in court by a lawyer, or in the Duma by a Deputy — all this is now prosecuted. And in these prosecutions they have returned to the ways and habits that were dear to the mad Tsar John and his pet, B'asmanoff — they have reintroduced torture.
Yes, they torture now in Russia — it is an established fact; and when a court in Warsaw, in Riga, or in South Russia has condemned, no matter how mildly, some of these torturers to imprisonment, it is sufficient for one of the modern pets of the present Tsar — that is, for Dr. Dubrovin, the president of the Union of Russian Men — to ask Nicholas II. to pardon the condemned torturers, and these wild beasts are pardoned at once; and the Prime Minister is not ashamed to hurry to wire to the respective Governor this new token of the Tsar's solicitude for his subjects.
Friends, these are not tales that I tell you! This is what stands in black upon white in all the daily papers published in Russia itself. This is said openly in the Duma; this is the matter of decisions of the Russian Courts. Just quite lately it has been disclosed before a court in Finland that the murderers of the two members of the Duma, Hertzenstein and Yollos, both, please mark, most pacific men, whose great crime was to be specialists in financial matters and matters concerning the misery of the Russian peasants — it appears now that the murderers of these two men were members of the secret police staff, and at the same time were in the service of that same Union of Russian Men whose badge the Tsar has been wearing till quite lately, whom he declared to be his most loyal subjects. The president of that Union, that same Dr. Dubrovin whom Nicholas II. receives personally, and to whom he lately again handed £1,000, is now prosecuted by a Finnish court — the murder of Hertzenstein took place in Finland — as an accomplice to the murder and as the paymaster for it; and his accomplice Kraskovsky has already been arrested a few days ago in Russia. These are the men whom the Tsar describes as his only loyal subjects.
The prisons are overcrowded. Typhus — hunger typhus, eruptive and recurrent typhus — ravages the prisons of thirty-five provinces, and there from spreads amongst the soldiers of the garrison and the warders in the cities. In the Lukoyanoff prison, 2,500 prisoners have already died from typhus, 1,300 in the main Kieff prison, and so on all over Russia. These are the official figures. Persons ill with typhus, with wandering minds, and a temperature of 104 degrees, are brought to court — there were three such cases — and the jurors are compelled to refuse to act, and the president of the court-martial says to the prosecutor: 'But look yourself at the man; you will see he cannot be tried!'
Worse than that. Men wandering in mind from typhus are brought to the scaffold in that state and hanged, under the very windows of one of the Duma Deputies detained at Moscow, who has described it in full in a letter to the Duma. As to the scenes that take place at the executions, of which they need such a number to maintain their scandalous rule — and for which they hire assassins in the prisons — these scenes are so horrible that I will not describe them. Tolstoi has told some of them to the world. Have these horrors been stopped by M. Stolypin or his master ? No! They continue! They have grown worse!
Friends, it is with a bleeding heart that I describe to you these horrors. They are not mere horrors for me. They tell me the tale of how low Russia has sunk to tolerate them — to find men to give them support. But I will ask you, Has ever anything worse happened in Turkey while it was under the rule of that man whom Gladstone had the courage to call in the eyes of Europe, 'the Assassin'?
Turkey has shaken off the rule of the assassin. That will be done in Russia as well.
It certainly will. It is a fact that Russia is no more what it was before the movement of 1905-6. You will not find now at St. Petersburg 70,000 men willing to go to the Tsar with a petition, carrying his portrait and ikons, as they did on Bloody Sunday, when for a whole week before it everything was organized, with the full knowledge of Nicholas II., by his uncle and cousins, to massacre thousands of these much too confiding men. Now you will not find, even in the remotest villages, men so simple as to trust the Tsar.
That has been won by our martyrs.
A new Russia has been born during these three or four years, a Russia which has tasted liberty and will never more return under the old yoke. It looks very quiet now; but it is no more in the circles of the intellectuals, it is in the factories, it is especially in the villages amidst the peasants, that the spirit of revolt is growing. That spirit they will not kill by hangings and shootings. By the blood they make flow, they only prepare rivers of blood; and surely the day is not far off when not only the 'loyal' subjects from Dubrovin's gangs, but all those who are supporting the present regime by their slavish attitude or indifference, will have to repent their present slavishness or their indifference.*Part of a speech delivered June 23rd at the South Place Institute at a meeting of welcome to Vera Figner. Reprinted from the London Freedom.* * *
SOCIALISTS AND POLITICS
By H. KELLY.
IF man were not so divinely inconsistent, the world would be a dull and uninteresting place to live in; which is an excellent reason why we should extol consistency.
Socialists all over the world advocate the 'conquest of political power' as the one and only method of destroying capitalism and the inauguration of the Cooperative Commonwealth. It is true Socialists differ in their methods of electioneering, some indulging in phrases sweet to the ear, as 'voting a means of gauging their strength,' 'serving notice on the capitalist,' and so on, to differentiate them from their — to them — less revolutionary brethren; but as the needle turns to the pole, so do all Marxian's in the end turn to the 'conquest of political power' by parliamentary methods. And here let us say that by 'political' methods the Socialists really mean parliamentary methods. Acts of regicide, General Strike, or armed uprising may be, and usually are, political in character, but they are decidedly not parliamentary. It may safely be assumed that not more than one per cent, of the Socialists mean anything but electioneering when they speak of the conquest of political power, as a visit to their meetings or perusal of their publications will prove.
The strength of the Socialist movement is computed at eleven million, which means that in countries where there is full or partial suffrage eleven million adults voted for Socialist candidates for office. With this in mind, we are sometimes amused, but more often impatient, at their fulminations against the inevitable result of their tactics, the case of N. Briand being the latest in point.
The advent of N. Briand, former revolutionary Socialist and anti-militarist, to the place of Prime Minister of France is not surprising and should not give rise to congratulation or condemnation. It was the natural and logical conclusion of a policy and that thing the Socialists dilate on so strongly — environment. It is true, M. Lepine, Prefect of Police of Paris, will still continue to suppress, wherever possible, revolutionary demonstrations; anti-militarists will be condemned by 'Comrade' Briand as by his capitalistic predecessors; private plunder protected with due diligence; in short, things will continue precisely as they did under the 'red republican' and former revolutionist M. Clemenceau. Why? The answer is obvious. France is still a prey to the fetich of property, church, government, patriotism, and other superstitions, and M. Briand accepts office with the tacit, if not outspoken, recognition of this fact and an informal promise to his employers not to run counter to them. In this respect he is no different from any man elected or appointed to office. While a member of the Combes Cabinet, Clemenceau brought a storm of censure upon his head for temporizing with strikers and marching under the red flag. He did temporize with them, and if his previous struggles for liberty count for anything in our estimation of his character, he was doubtlessly quite sincere in his promises to try and remedy the strikers' grievances. The strikers had been tricked so often they declined to accept his promises. Thus he was face to face with two problems, resign from office or call out the troops to crush them. He chose the latter, with results well known. It was the same with Millerand, when he ordered out troops to suppress strikers, and we assume he will act the same as a member of Briand's Cabinet as of Wedlock-Rousseau's. The same with John Burns in his attack on the unemployed. When a man is elected or appointed to a governmental office, his position is analogous to the man hired by a private capitalist. His business is to look after the interests of his employer. The Socialists see this quite clearly as long as it relates merely to what may be defined as a cabinet of a capitalistic government; but they cannot see it from any other angle. If a Socialist were elected governor of New York State in November he would be expected to obey the laws; if he did not, he would be impeached. If called on for troops to suppress strikers, he would be compelled to furnish them or prove they were not needed. It's true, Altgeld refused to call out troops in the Pullman strike, but his reasons were those of any honest man, a believer in capitalism. That is, they were not needed because the strikers were not committing acts of violence. The action of Briand, Viviani, and Millerand in entering a 'Republican Cabinet' is no more and no less inconsistent than any Socialist Mayor in France — there are a number of them — who is at present defending capitalistic interests by enforcing capitalistic laws on behalf of property and sending people to jail for disobeying those laws. Parliamentarians are aware that Socialism will never hinge on one bill in Congress or the Legislature; and until such time as they would be in full power, and able and willing to change the laws they found on the statute books, they would be supposed to enforce them. If a Socialist were elected Mayor of New York it would be his duty to jail (through his Commissioner of Police) hungry women who stole bread, and strikers who 'slugged' 'scabs' for taking their jobs; and in this respect he would be no worse than those who enter a 'capitalistic cabinet.' Life is a compromise, true enough; but if a modicum of purity and self-respect is to be maintained, politics must be eschewed. It is as certain as anything can be that the Socialists now denouncing Briand — and rightly so — as a traitor, for cooperating with capitalists in the formation of a Republican cabinet, will at the next election make promises equally dishonest because equally impossible of realization. It may be honest and to the best interests of Socialism to flirt with Prohibition and restriction of immigration; but in the light of the Communist Manifesto they make strange bed-fellows, and we have no doubt many a Socialist will have to wrestle with his conscience before swallowing the platform, adopted by the last Socialist convention. Our own opinion of platforms was voiced by Horace Greely, who said: 'Platforms were made to spit on.'
ANARCHISM AND MALTHUS
By C. L. JAMES.
(Concluded)
REFUTATIONS continue to rain, however. Of these criticisms which show only the writer's limited acquaintance with his subject (and they are the immense majority) it is unnecessary to say more. There are, however, two kinds not uncommonly heard from persons who know what they are talking about. One disputes the validity of the geometric and arithmetical ratios.[1] A sufficient reply was given by Mill. The increase of unchecked population is geometrical. That of food may be more than arithmetical. But what is the use of talking about increase of food when geometrical increase of population, if it did not bring back the Positive Check in other ways, as, of course, it would, must soon restore that Check in the inexorable form of crowding? The other criticism, much more practical, is perhaps intended only as a criticism, not a refutation; but if this be meant the critic sought to say so, — first, in order to clear themselves of identification with the Sadlers, Godwins, Coleridges, De Quinceys, Georges, and others whose refuted refutations ring hollow down the corridors of time; secondly, that they may avoid exercising a pernicious influence upon readers less informed than themselves. The criticism is based on the obvious fact that since Malthus wrote, wealth, at least in England, has increased much faster than population — a fact from whose significance the one word emigration takes a great deal — but here become possible suggestions which make this criticism a phase of the others — we do not know what intenser cultivation may effect — the actual habits of mankind are not such as to bring in the Positive Check, etc., etc.' Speak unto us smooth things; prophesy unto us deceits!' We do know that intenser cultivation will never banish need for the Prudential Check: and the habits of mankind are such as to invite the Positive when they are such as to invite wars for a harbor or a diamond mine every few years. I am sorry to say that Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, contains passages which are adapted (I cannot believe intended) to encourage in careless readers the loose idea that 'everything is lovely' except certain human institutions (which, saving only the subjection of women, are not causes but effects).
To conclude the story of Malthus. One of the lies is that he had thirteen children! He had three, of whom only two survived him. His wife came from a part of England which he is known to have visited many years before. It is probable there was a long engagement. Malthus certainly was a good deal older at marriage than the average. His life and teachings appear, therefore, to have been entirely consistent. Among the many attempts to refute him one was by suggesting that man in his developed state might be above the desire of sex, and that the need for propagation might be superseded by terrestrial immortality! Malthus treated this fully as respectfully as it deserved. He said that, while bondage to the desire was a potent source of vice and misery, the desire itself was a principal source of the moral virtues and of happiness, with which it would be by no means desirable, if it were credible, that mankind in general should dispense. The effect of these discussions on Godwin's active imagination may be seen on comparing his famous novels. Caleb Williams (1794) gives no hint of anything supernatural. It is a powerful arraignment of 'Things As They Are.' In St. Leon (1832) the hero attains terrestrial immortality, and, like the Wandering Jew, finds it the greatest of all imaginable curses; but, pervading the story is the sub thought of Godwin's invincible Optimism — a Salathiel, a St. Leon, would not be miserable in a world where all the people were immortal. The time which Godwin chose for his attempt at refuting Malthus is also significant — it was in 1820, when Ricardo was deducing from the Malthusian theory corollaries whose legitimacy no one then seems to have disputed except Malthus himself. Malthus died, from disease of the heart, in 1834, the sixty-eighth year of his age. Godwin followed on the 7th of April, 1836. Of the two, Malthus had best maintained his philosophic dignity. The Anarchist Godwin stooped to accept a sinecure office from the Liberal administration of Earl Grey. Malthus declined the tardy favor offered by government to him. 'In their death,' says the best biographer of Malthus, 'they were still divided; but, si quis piorumanimis locus, they are divided no longer, and think hard thoughts of each other no more.'
Before the eyes of both there was growing up a power unobserved of either, but predestined to solve their problem. Commerce could never cheapen itself out of existence while population, varying with cheapness of food, kept up the struggle for existence: nor, though commerce which cannot do that teaches solidarity, could it prevent recurrence of those crises when 'the eyeless I howls in darkness.' But increase of the Prudential Check on population has always kept up with, or rather it has gone before and been the source of, economic progress. Its increase has depended on that of hope, this on increase of liberty, increase of liberty on those 'accidents' by which Providence has from time to time interfered to give men intent on enslaving each other and themselves another call to reflection. If, then, there be a tendency in the bourgeois system which brings liberty and hope to women; from that we really may expect revolutionary changes. For the female is the less amorous sex. The last proposition, which certainly does sound rather like a stock assertion, may have been unknown to both Godwin and Malthus. But no reader of Darwin can help knowing that it has been demonstrated by exhaustive application to every animal species and been found the clue to progress through heredity. Women have never chosen to breed food for gun powder. They have submitted to do so only because they could not help themselves. Now there is in the bourgeois system a tendency which, by bringing liberty and hope to women, promises far more energetic restraint on propagation than the world has ever known, — a tendency which capitalists view with indifference; reactionaries, and Socialists, not infrequently, with alarm; judicious friends of humanity, with unmixed satisfaction. The wages paid directly to women in the factories first afforded to proletarian women, unprotected by settlements and other contrivances of the rich, a means to live which was not easily taken from them. True to the maxim that it is not misery but hope which works improvement, they, who till now had been well enough content not to own themselves, became refractory the moment the had something to lose. The entire modern movement for the property rights of married women, equality of pay with men for all working women, opening of all the trades to women, political equality of the sexes, easy divorce, began with employment of women as bread-winners, which came in as a necessity of the bourgeois situation. That complete emancipation of women, defect in food for gunpowder, cessation of war, the down-fall of those appliances for plunder which war created, are all threatened by this movement, there can be no occasion for me to prove. Mr. Roosevelt will show you that — and afterwards gnash his teeth.
The Malthusian Theory is the fatal objection to every form of Socialism, even if called Anarchism, which encourages man to think that he can enslave women and escape the most righteous retribution of being a slave him-self. It is the strongest possible argument for that kind of Socialism or Anarchism which proposes, through complete emancipation of women, to abolish the fundamental tyranny from whence all others spring.
*To illustrate again the facility with which these things may be misunderstood, dependent on the complexity of that relation which some try to evade by calling it a truism — I have said here, in the name of Malthus, too, that what enables a high rate of propagation to go on is increase of the death-rate. But the death-rate, from all causes and in all places of statistical census taken together, has decreased notably since we began to have reliable returns (which is only since about 17o0 A. D.); and what little we know about earlier times indicates that the death-rate has always decreased, on the whole, since men emerged from the grazing state of savagery, where the average duration of life is said to be only thirteen years. How do these statements agree? Simply enough. Who said propagation had gone on un slackened? The reasoning of Malthus, and mine, has all been to the effect that the Prudential Check has gained on the Positive almost continuously since men emerged from utter barbarism, except where increased facility of living has, for a time, caused it to be neglected. Wherever that happens — as when a prairie changes into a Chicago — we may see that the death rate does increase as soon as that facility of living which relaxed the Prudential Check encourages propagation sufficiently to recall the Positive.
* * *
OUR FIGHT
By E. G.
OF all the forces that help to enslave man, that of habit is the most pernicious. Not a superstition or prejudice ran compare in its binding and fettering influence on human action with the power of habit.
Take, for instance, the police of New York or other cities. For years they have practiced the habit of stop-ping meetings, clubbing audiences, bullying speakers and hall keepers. Had they met with any real opposition, interference might never have become a habit.
After all, the police are not interested in whatever a speaker may say; nor is their official zeal so very intense that they would go out of their way to annoy people. It is simply the habit of annoying or interference, that's all.
It is also the force of habit that will make the people submit, meekly, to police bullying.
The public has endured arbitrary, brutal treatment so long, until it has gotten quite used to it. The inevitable result is that the police invade the people's rights, sup-press free speech, act brutally, because of the same reason that makes the public cringe and bow and submit; namely, the force of habit.
Sometimes, however, two habits may clash and then it will depend on the strength of either as to who shall remain the victor.
The habit of rebellion, for instance, has overcome the most deeply rooted habit of submission. True, there are not many with whom rebellion becomes a habit. Most people are inspired by the moment and then slink back into the old indifferent state. But there are a few whose very blood nurtures rebellion into a habit; and though they meet with a thousand obstacles, they will continue to rebel, even if their lives were at stake. Such must have been the force that gave birth to the Free Speech Committee. If it were not for the habit of rebellion, the men and women who formed themselves into that fighting body could never have undertaken such a task. First, there was the time-worn habit of the police to grow violently mad at the 'red sounding' term of Anarchism and Emma Goldman.
Second, there was the habit of inconsistency on the part of many radicals, who stand for free speech, with a 'but' dangling at free speech.
Third, the Committee realized that the interest in principles is not so great as to induce many people to part with some of their worldly goods; yet money was needed. But, habit came along and cried, Onward. What else was there to do but heed?
On May 23rd the police habit of interference reached its culminating point in the breaking up of a literary meeting, the forcible eviction of an audience, and the impudent police declaration that Emma Goldman will never again be allowed to speak in New York.
Two months later Emma Goldman, did speak in a public meeting, and what is more, not a single uniformed officer was present.
How wonderful! Nothing so very wonderful, except the clash of habits in open battle with the habit of rebellion carrying off the victory.
No doubt, the change in the police department of New York City may have had something to do with the new methods of the police. New York is too cosmopolitan and advanced a city to stand for a military regime. Bingham, while a tin soldier, was nevertheless possessed by the military spirit. What he could not suppress with iron methods, he would make impossible with lies and meanness. The new Commissioner probably has more brains, is therefore amenable to reason. At any rate, we welcome the change. But it is not that alone that has helped to disperse the cloud of despotism that made every Anarchist public utterance in New York impossible.
The credit is due chiefly to the strenuous efforts of the Free Speech Committee.
The demand for free speech, signed by a hundred public-spirited men and women and circulated all over the country, worked like magic.
The protest meeting at Cooper Union aroused a great deal of enthusiasm, while the broad-minded attitude of the Chicago Public and the St. Louis Mirror contributed towards the enlightenment of some 'good' people as to the real status of free speech. But most of all it was the unceasing energy of a few optimistic spirits who persevered in exercising 'hypnotic influence' on police headquarters.
Thus it came to pass that free speech could be re-established in New York City, partially at least, and that Newark, Jersey City, and Brooklyn have also been rescued from the habit of police invasion.
All this, however, should lead no one astray. So long as free speech must go knocking at the doors of every chief or captain, it is nowhere at home and there fore never safe.
The Free Speech Committee realizes this; it is there-fore determined to continue in its habit of opposition to invasion until free speech can assert itself without special privileges.
There are scores of cities in America where free speech has been thrown upon the dust-heap. The Free Speech Committee means to carry its fight into these benighted towns. Philadelphia, Providence, Worcester, Buffalo, Chicago, Indianapolis are to be treated to a dose of the rebellious habit until free speech becomes a reality.
Ours is a material world, and while the spirit is one of the greatest assets for a good fight, material aid is needed. If the readers of MOTHER EARTH, too, have the habit of rebellion, they will feel impelled to send part of it in the form of a check to our valued Chairman, Leonard Abbott, 41 W. 25th Street, New York City.
The habit of being a target for the police is quite strong with me. I do not mind it a bit, as they are poor shots, and therefore can inflict no vital wound.
I shall therefore go right on to every place in the land and leave it only when I have established free speech as a right, and not as a privilege.
FRANSISCO FERRER
Charles E. Hooper.
Still groans Prometheus bound, and still descends,From yon man-fashioned Phantom of the skies,The triple-headed bird of prey that blendsWarfare with greed and sacerdotal lies.
Soldiers of Truth, they death-drops we salute;In them Humanity is heart renewed;Dried be the tear, the rising curse be mute;In blood lies Liberty's beatitude.
But what of Spain—priest-trampled Spain? Who knowsTo-morrow's doom of infamy or fame?At least in they loved country still live thoseWho burn to spread they martyred spirit's flame.
'Long lie the Modern School'—They message, flungStraight to the murderous muzzles ere they spedDestruction to a brain too finely strung,Re-echoed, links the living to the dead;
The living, not in guilty Spain alone,But wheresoever men have eyes to seeAnd hearts to feel: There, ready, stands the throne,Reared by Light-yielding labors like thine own,That waits thy spirit's King, the World-community.
--London Literary Guide.OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
THE whole history of the Catholic Church has been An uninterrupted orgy of violence and crime, persecution and murder. The vicars of the meek Carpenter who taught 'Love thine enemies' have ever preached his gospel with rack and thumbscrem. Fire and sword were their good Christian weapons. Darkness and ignorance their supreme opportunity. The terrible result is all too evident in countries ruled by the Church. Ignorance and poverty are most frightful in proportion To Catholic influence. Spain is its stronghold. Fearfully The black beast of Rome guards her ancient domain. She trembles at the approach of light. Justly she sees in the torch of science the threatened destruction of her tyrannical power. The Educator is her most feared enemy.
In the present, as in the past, the Church dreads nothing more than ideas,--ideas of liberty, of light and justice. Their touch-bearers are blasphemers, heretics. They must die, for the greater glory of the Church and The continued reign of superstition and darkness.
Thus Ferrer had to die. Nay, more. He had to expiate a double heresy, for he blasphemed both Church and State. Too wide his view to be confined to the peril of priestcraft. Too clear his sight not to realize the blight of authority, civil no less than religious, that holds mankind in bondage. Full well he knew that in the lexicon of the State Liberty has no more lace than Light in that of the Church. Against both these powers of darkness Francisco Ferrer was a mighty protestant. He opposed to their pernicious, enslaving activity the most efficacious method: the enlightenment of the child. He knew that an enslaved child meant a free man. But this great crime neither Church nor State could forgive. The black Shylocks demanded their pound of flesh. A servile government readily acquiesced, and thus the noblest, truest friend of mankind was assassinated.
* * *
SELDOM has the solidarity of governments beenmore convincingly demonstrated than by the Ferrer case. Governments often deem it necessary to make hostile demonstrations against each other. Usually it is the stronger taking advantage of the weaker power, for thebenefit of home capitalists, or to divert popular discontent into artificial channels, this fanning the fires of jingoism, so conducive to the interests of despotism.
But in the Ferrer case the various States have given a remarkable proof of solidarity. No European government found a single work of censure for the farcical trail and atrocious murder at Montjuich. And our own government, forever pretending to be truly representative, -- why has it ignored popular indignation at Ferrer's assassination? Why does it remain mute in the face of the world-wide protest? Neither Federal nor State government dared to utter a word in condemnation of the foulest deed of the twentieth century.
The powers at Washington never lose time in espressing, unauthorized, 'the sympathy of the American people' for some royal idiot overtaken by the hand of an avenging Nemesis. This has been repeatedly done within recent years, without the knowledge or consent of the people; in fact, contrary to their desires and expressed sentiment, and in direct defiance of the American tradition abhorring and tyranny of the Old World despotisms. Why, then, is Washington mute at the outrage committed in Spain? If it may without authorization express the alleged sympathy of the American people for a dead tyrant, may it not voice the expressed indignation of the people at the wrong done to humanity? If the authorities, State and Federal, had possessed the faintest spark of manhood, they should have first expressed to the people of Spain and the orphans of Ferrer the sympathy of the American public and its abhorrence of the assassination. They the official representatives in America of the Catholic Church and Spanish government should have been notified that the American people could not tolerate in their midst the official presence of assassins' agents.
Such should have been the attitude of a government having even the faintest pretentions to being representa- tive of the nation. But such pretentions are the veriest hypocrisy. Goverments represent nothing but chicanery, fraud, and the violence of the few toward the many. The very essence of governments is suppression and mer- der. Their mission is to defend and preserve existing conditions of injustice, oppression, and tyranny—and this is why all governments are solidaric.
* * *
LET no one deceive himself with the belief that the dastardly crime of Montjuich would not be possible in these United States.
It may seem like a far cry from American to Spain. And yet the comparison is justified. Indeed, this country has but scant reason to point the finger of scorn at benighted Spain, in the fond belief that we are more civilized, more progressive.
If the possibility of a Ferrer outrage may serve as a criterion of the people's place in the ethical progress of the world, then the 'land of the free and the home of the brave' properly belongs in the utmost rear of the march.
Just twenty-two years ago a tragedy was enacted upon the stage of American life which, for brutality and monstrous malignity, far overshadows the terrible hapenings in Spain. Eight of the noblest of men were torn from the midst of their friends and condemned to death under circumstances closely resembling the martyrdom of Ferrer. As in the case of the Spanish educator, the only crime of our Chicago comrades consisted in their loyal service to humanity. They had raised their voices in protest against social injustice and devoted their lived to the enlightenment of their fellow-men. This was the most unpardonable crime man could be guilty of—in Spain as in America,--a crime punishable with death.
The circumstances surrounding the trail of our Chicago martyrs were also peculiarly like those of Ferrer's. Perjury and false evidence were resorted to by an American court to accomplish the fiendish plot against the men Accused of complicity in the Haymarket bomb incident. Not a shred of evidence could be proved by Governor AltGeld, who liberated the three imprisoned Anarchists. But lack of evidence could be no obstacle to the infamous cabal of authority and privilege: in spite of their proved innocence five men were judicially slaughtered.
If anything, the Chicago court was more brutal, more atrocious than that of Spain. The latter at least has the excuse—pitiable as it is—of an actual condition of martial law. Nothing of the kind existed in Chicago, in 1887. Our comrades were tried, not by a court marital, like Ferrer, but by a civil tribunal which decreed the slaying of the Anarchists by resorting to every conceivable perfidy within the range of judicial authority.
* * *
TO those who still cling to the ragged edges of American liberty, the latest governmental outrages should furnish sufficient proof that liberty is no more.
The President of a 'free' people, embraces the tyrant of Mexico, whose dark and criminal deeds surpass eve those of the Russian autocracy. The government of a 'free' country lends itself as hangman of the personal rights and liberties of people whose only offence consists in daring to oppose the despotic régime of the Mexican Tsar. At the latter's request De Lara, a cultured Mexican residing at Los Angeles, has been arrested, Refused a trail, and is about to be turned over to the Tender mercies of the Weyler of Mexico.
In our own city, a brilliant writer and cartoonist, Carlo De Fornaro, well known in artistic circles, has been convicted of criminal libel, because be, too, had dared to raise his voice in behalf of his outraged country. In the work, 'Diaz, Tsar of Mexico,' Fornaro boldly tore the mask off the hypocritical face of Perfidious Diaz, that the world might see him as he is.
The portrait drawn by the pen of this gifted artist Was the writing on the wall which evidently disturbed the slumbers of the Mexican oppressor. Criticism and the truth are ever a menace to tyranny. The Mexican government had successfully suppressed free expression in its own country and has now went its representative to accomplish the same result in America. That Diaz could fully rely on his colleagues in Washington to do his bidding is best proved by the outrageous action of the jury which found Fornaro guilty of libeling —Diaz. As if the English tongue is rich enough in strong expressions to libel a Diaz.
The thinking element of the West has awakened to the danger of Mexican rule in America, inasmuch as they have inaugurated a tremendous agitation in behalf of De Lara. Shall we in the East not follow their commendable example? A strong vigorous movement should immediately be started in behalf of Fornaro, in behalf of free speech. It behooves us to lend our assistance in freeing Mexico, for the time is not far when we shall need the assistance of Mexico to free us.
* * *
THE killing of Prince Ito by a Korean patriot Marks an important step in the awakening of that unfortunate country. The birth of the individual revolutionist historically precedes national revolt. And surely Korea has sufficient cause to rejoice over the deed of her son, more courageous than his brothers. For Ito, as Resident General of Korea, proved a veritable demon in the ferocious suppression of every aspiration of the Koreans for national independence and well-being. His administration reduced that country to the last extreme slavery. The shot that laid Ito low was but the echo of a people's desperate cry For relief.
* * *
IT is no exaggeration to say that Samuel Gompers is The most perniciously reactionary factor in the American labor movement. It is he, chiefly, who is responsible for the present pitiful, helpless condition of the organized workingmen of this country. His whole official life has been devoted to instilling the belief that the true solution of the labor question is to be found in the 'closer approach of capital and labor.' He has preached the gospel of harmony between master and slave till the workers have grown to look upon the exploiting parasites as their true benefactors. His craft union methods and tactics have encouraged internal strife and robbed the workers of their initiative and independence. They have been persistently drilled to rely on the authority of their leaders—in and out of the union—and their minds poisoned and their energy paralyzed by the sanctity of contracts. Self-help and direct economic action have been tabooed, legal justice eulogized, and the courts apotheosized till labor has become emasculated of all manhood.
Not content with having degraded and debauched American labor, Gompers undertook to carry his pernicious gospel to the workers of Europe. On his recent trip abroad he exhausted the colors of the rainbow in painting the prosperity an power of the American workingmen. He was inexpressibly shocked by the miserable condition of the wage slaves of the Old World; he severely [criticized] their ineffective methods of fighting the encroachments of capital, contrasting them with the enlightened and successful tactics of the 'world's most powerful labor body,' the A. F. of L.
Having thus satisfactorily—to himself, chiefly—accomplished this mission, Gompers set sail for American, the Eldorado of labor.
But oh, the ironly of fate! The last strains of his Swan-like song has scarcely left his lips, when the electric wire flashed the news to Gompers that the Court of Appeals had ordered him to be thrown into prison! It has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, declaring— in essence—that American labor had no rights as against capital, and no standing in the courts of law. Did Gompers, the head of the 'world's most powerful Labor body,' indignantly protest against this infamous Judicial raping of his organization? Not he. He is too Loyal a slave to rebel against sacred decisions of the august Judiciary. In the last issue of the American Federationist Gompers servilely proclaims his unshaken faith in the ultimate triumph of justice and calls upon the faithful to—appeal to the higher court.
Sancta Simplicitas, if not worse. Has Gompers the courage to call upon American labor to proclaim a General Strike as a protest against the court's decision, . . . . but, then, neither Gompers nor his organization has the courage of virile manhood.
* * *
FOR years New York and Brooklyn have been police-ridden cities. So much so that one was not quite safe from them in his own home. As to outrages on fundamental principles, that was an open daily exercise of the police.
Since the removal of the military police Commissioner Bingham, his successor has tried to rescue free speech, at least, from the clutches of his subordinates, and especially to free hallkeepers from the police reign of terror.
Like all reforms, the efforts of our new Commissioner have succeeded in relieving the agony, but not in curing the disease. There are still numerous precincts where captains reign supreme, bullying hall owners and preventing the holding of meetings.
One of there heroes, Captain Shaw, has just been removed to Brooklyn, where he continues his old tactics practiced for many years in New York.
A meeting of Comrade Goldman was stopped November 5th in the habitual sneaky way: intimidation of the hallkeeper. When Captain Shaw was confronted by the order of his superior to keep hands off the meeting, the brave knight lied himself our of the difficultly, throwing the blame on the lights in the hall, which had suddenly refused to burn. Our friends procured from the Commissioner permission to hold an open air meeting, at which they addressed—during an hour and a half—an audience of three thousand people attracted by the police closing the hall.
The meeting was unusually quiet and orderly, which did not seem to please the Brooklyn police. Suddenly a sergeant appeared on the scene, roughly demanding our permit. When Comrade Reitman did not comply quick enough with the demand, he was placed under arrest. The following morning he was fined five dollars for the terrible offence of having told the policeman that it was none of his business whether we had a permit. Not a policeman's business to meddle in the free exercise of a right? No this business to break up a peaceful meeting? That was, indeed, a crime.
The comic side of the affair was furnished by His Majesty, Capt. Shaw. He appeared before the Judge to swear out a warrant for Comrade Emma Goldman, who, he said, had called him a grafter and had attacked the Catholic Church. Even a Brooklyn judge could see the humor of the situation. He would not issue the warrant, but went out of his way to tell our comrade that he knew her theories stood for kindness. It is to be regretted, however that the Judge doesn't know enough of them to practice kindness in the courts. The brutality and coarseness of the officers that morning were the most disgraceful scene we have witnessed in a long time.
* * *
THE industrial Workers of the World of Spokane, Wash., are setting a splendid example of fighting the enemies of speech. The local authorities had suddenly decided to stop the I. W. W. open-air meetings. Our Spokane comrades have been carrying on an energetic propaganda, striking at the very vitals on Mammon by their fearless denunciation of the employment sharks—the modern eunuchs of capitalism. Hence the attempt to throttle free speech.
But our friends were not to be so easily daunted. They insisted on their rights. They were not naïve enough to believe that anything would be 'granted' them. They had the courage to demand and take their rights, by continuing to hold open-air meetings, police orders to the contrary notwithstanding. The energy and determination of the brave fighters resulted in numerous arrests: Comrade Elisabeth Gurley Flynn and two other I. W. W. organizers, as well as the editors of the Industrial Worker and the secretary of the Central Committee of the I. W. W. unions, were Thrown into jail. But prison and threats of bodily injury could not discourage these devoted men and Women. No sooner was one speaker dragged off the platform than another took his place. Scores of fighters stood ready to assert their right of free speech, so that the Spokane prison is now overfilled, and plenty of comrades are on hand to continue the fight.
That these methods of establishing our rights are the proper ones has already been proved by Comrade Flynn and others at Missoula, Mont. There the number of I. W. W. people willing and ready to go to prison for free speech so overtaxed the town jail's capacity that the authorities were forced to cry for mercy. They feared the town would go into bankruptcy if our comrades persisted in becoming the city's free boarders. Thus freedom of speech was established in Missoula. Thus also—and thus alone—will it have to be established everywhere.
* * *
THE case of Comrades Schreiber and Adams, now before the Supreme Court of New Jersey, has again demonstrated to what depths government will stoop in its persecution of Anarchists.
Schreiber and Adams were convicted last June in The Trenton court of 'conspiracy to rob' (no robbery had taken place), on the exclusive testimony of a certain New York police spy and his assistants. The evidence against them was so flimsy, the trial such a farce, that the Machinist Union (of which Schreiber was a most active member) took up the matter, raised funds and appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
The arguments of counsel before the latter body are sufficient to convince even a prejudiced mind that the verdict of guilty against Schreiber and Adam was the direct result of police conspirators seeking promotion. Of course, the underlying reason for the prosecution was the circumstance of the prisoners' being Anarchists.
Our experience with authority has been of a character to exclude surprise at any atrocity government might commit. But that workingmen, strikers at that, should lend themselves the willing tools of a police outrage, is very sad indeed. We blush for American labor to acknowledge that the jury which condemned Schreiber and Adams consisted almost exclusively of striking hatters.
* * *
WE hail the resurrection of the Firebrand, the fort-nightly Anarchist review published and edited by Ross Winn. In these days of general apathy and ever-growing encroachment of despotism every additional champion of Liberty is a valuable aid in the service of humanity. Comrade Winn is especially fitted for the task: he is a born fighter, with a clear, broad outlook, and a sharp and fearless pen. The trumpet calls, the need is great—Welcome, Comrade!
Those wishing to subscribe for the Firebrand may Address Ross Winn, Mt. Juliet, Tenn., or the office of
MOTHER EARTH.
LADY
By W. C. OWEN.
Fast and faster the dancers fly;Gaily my lady flashes by;Bright on her bosom jewels gleam;While in the depths, 'mid heat and steam,Where gases creep and stones fly thick,The diamond digger swings his pick —But who wants to knowOf the depths belowWhere labor is weavingIts shroud of woe?Bravely my lady sweeps along,Greedily viewed by the envious throng;The wealth of a world on her shoulders lies;While, over the way, with weary eyes,Stitch by stitch, through an endless day,Her seamstress toils and receives as pay —But a lady so fairOne should always spareThe tedious taleOr a life of care.The wine glows red in my lady's glass;Many and merry the jests that pass;Loving laughter and winning smileCircle from lip to lip, the whileClothed in rags, at her very gates,Gaunt-eyed hunger in silence waits——But sights like theseWould little pleaseMy lady in herHours of ease.Sweetly humble my lady's faceAs she bends her knee at the throne of grace;She thinks of the sin and sorrow and shame;Thinks of the story of him who cameFrom the starry regions of infinite spaceWith a message of love to the human race,—So my lady will give a charity feteAnd wear a gown of the latest date.
* * *
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
THERE is, even among radicals, a certain bourgeois attitude of mind which scoffs at every suggestion of the people's power for solidaric effort, mutual help, and free coöperation. All such could profitably employ a leisure hour by studying the wonderful spirit of the striking shirt-waist makers.
In the face of tremendous odds, practically without organization, more than fifteen thousand workers have dared to defy their masters and have struck for better conditions. The loyalty, self-sacrifice, and perseverance manifested by the strikers—most of them in actual want—are nothing short of heroic. Exposed to the brutal persecution of the police and the 'mercy' of prejudiced judges,—not to speak of the rigors of a severe winter, involving untold misery and suffering—the strikers have remained steadfast and loyal to a de-gree seldom paralleled in labor troubles. Practically no desertions have taken place from their ranks. Rare-ly have working men and women given such a convincing demonstration of conscious solidarity and sin-gleness of purpose.
This strike but gives one a glimpse into the grand possibilities of a people inspired by a common cause and the will to achieve.
* * *
THE devotion and energy of the strikers seemed, at the beginning of the strike, to promise a speedy victory. If their efforts have so far not proved as suc-cessful as expected, the cause is probably to be found in the manner the struggle has been conducted.
Various factors have no doubt contributed to the prolongation of the waist-makers' strike. But it must not be forgotten that the longer such a fight is drawn out, the less chance for the workingmen to win, since both their treasury and power of resistance are thus severely sapped. In the struggle between master and slave, the latter—to be successful—must strike quickly and, above all, as hard as possible. Those who are conducting the present strike have apparently ignored this most vital consideration.
Further, it is questionable whether the practice of settling with individual manufacturers (the employees of the latter resuming work) is really beneficial to the strike. Whatever benefit small groups of strikers may thus gain is more than offset by the opportunity afforded to the larger manufacturers to have their work done secretly in the 'settled' shops. Again, the depletion of the ranks is a source of suspicion and distrust, and tends to minimize the importance of the strike. On the whole, the practice of gradual settling weakens rather than strengthens the cause at stake.
But still more serious is the failure of the strike leaders to demand the active coöperation of other labor bodies. That, apparently, was not considered as important as dilly-dallying with arbitration and wasting time currying favor with rich ladies whose leisure hangs heavy on their hands.
No attempt has been made to interest even the directly allied trades of the Garment Workers in a sympathetic General Strike. And yet such a step should have been suggested by all the experience of the past. In modern days of centralized industry and the thorough organization of capital, no strike of ordinary proportions, of a single branch of a great industry, has much chance of success. The standing army of Hunger, eager for the least crumb, and the uniformed army of police and military are both at the instant service of capital. In a test of mere financial endurance labor is necessarily the loser. Its sole hope lies in hitting quick and hard, but no single branch of any industry can deliver such a blow. It requires the combined strength of all the departments of any given industry.
But whatever the outcome of the present strike, the waist-makers, as well as the workers at large, are learning the urgent and valuable lesson of industrial organization and the General Strike.
* * *
THE comparative silence of the capitalist press in regard to the Spokane free speech fight is calculated to create the impression that the fight is over. Such, however, is by no means the case. In spite of the systematic police outrages, our Spokane comrades have not in the least abated their efforts; on the contrary, they are more than ever determined to continue the struggle till they conquer the right of free speech.
The local authorities have followed the conviction of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn* with another trump card. Realizing that the I. W. W. had a powerful weapon of publicity in their organ, the Industrial Worker, the police raided the I. W. W. headquarters, confiscating the whole issue as it came from the press, and destroying seven thousand copies. This was supplemented by the arrest of four men on the charge of selling the 'libellous and incendiary' paper. But all these and similar outrages have failed to terrorize our friends. The Industrial Worker continues its appearance, being now issued at Seattle, Wash., fully prepared to wage war relentlessly and energetically, if the friends of free speech and an unmuzzled press will aid this great struggle, financially as well as morally.
* * *
THE Russian government has absolutely ignored the petition sent to Premier Stolypin by five hundred prominent Americans, asking a 'fair trial' for Nicholas Tchaikovsky and Catharine Breshkovskaia. Almost two months have passed since the petition was sent, yet so far neither reply nor even an acknowledgment has been received. This attitude of the Russian government is not merely a direct slap in the face of the signers of the petition. It presages a sinister intention. Those familiar with the spirit of the Tsar's autocracy have good cause to fear the worst for the two noble veterans of the Russian Revolution.
*The money (3o.oo) collected at several E. G. lectures for Comrade Flynn has been forwarded directly to the latter, who is at present out on bail pending the appeal of her case.
The similarity between Russia and Spain has been repeatedly pointed out in these pages. In the brutal stifling of every popular aspiration towards liberty, in the fiendishness of political suppression and religious intolerance, and—above all—in the defiance of all sense of fair play toward political prisoners, Russia is synonymous with Spain. The hasty assassination of Ferrer was dictated by the fear of a potential world protest. Russia may follow the example of Spain, if the voice of the civilized world does not make itself heard before it is too late.
* * *
THE frequent and terrible disasters in American coal mines, resulting in an inquiry begun in 1908, have finally brought to light information of a very striking character.
Statistics gathered by the Geological Survey show 2,061 miners killed and 4,800 injured in the coal mines in 1906, and 3,125 killed and 5,800 injured in 1907. The death rate for 1907 was 4.86 for every 1,000 men employed. The European coal producing countries show a death rate in mines of 1 in every 1,000 employed, and not more than 2. In other words, for every miner killed in European coal mines, from 2 to 4 are killed in the United States.
The natural question arises, Why is the death rate in American coal mines so much greater than in Europe? The question is vital if we bear in mind that—according to the conservative estimates of the government experts—more than 30,000 miners have been killed in the United States since 1889.
Some light on the question is thrown by the data for 1908. The public was aroused over the great mine disasters of 1906 and 1907. The general agitation which followed forced Congress to appropriate a large sum for the investigation of the causes of mine fatalities. Remarkable coincidence: the statistics for the year 1908 show a decided decrease in the number of deaths in the coal mines, as compared with those of the previous year: 2,450 in 1908, as against 3,125 in 1907— a decrease of 675.
Six hundred and seventy-five of the country's most useful men saved, within one year, from a terrible and premature death! That is a very great gain, indeed, due chiefly to the active popular protest against the wilful slaughter of miners through the insatiable greed and criminal negligence of the coal barons. The work of the experimental stations further proves beyond doubt that the majority of accidents could be avoided by improving the conditions of the mines, introducing safety appliances, and otherwise forcing the operators to a higher sense of responsibility toward the producers of the coal.
Europe has long since awakened to this necessity, hence the reduction in the death rate in their coal mines. Yet neither Europe nor America can make mining or similar work really safe as long as the principle of commercial competition makes things more valuable than human lives.
* * *
THE sporadic investigations into our reform and penal institutions all bear a striking similarity of refrain: cruelty to prisoners, overcrowded conditions, 'irregularities' in the accounts.
The investigator's berth is rather a comfortable one, but when will the gullible public realize that such investigations are worse than wasted effort? The intelligent observer needs no 'special inspectors' to discover to him the corruption and barbarity of our institutions. The prison is but the perfected copy of the latter, with all that such perfection implies. There is nothing more brutalizing than authority. The irresponsible sway of prison wardens merely accentuates this truth. Humanity and kindness are not to be expected in an environment the very atmosphere of which breathes violence and suppression. As to corruption and graft, these are the very life of our com-petitive system, with the penitentiary as its natural outlet. What concerns the overcrowded condition of our prisons, 'tis merely an evidence that crime is growing faster than we can build jails. Verily, the great increase of crime is no credit to our industrial system, with its wage slavery, unemployment, and starvation.
It is a very serious condition that confronts us. Superficial investigation of already well-known facts will avail nothing. More penitentiaries will not solve the problem. Our reformers will have to dig deeper to strike the root of graft, abuse, and crime, in and out of prison.
* * *
SADAKICHI HARTMANN, well known to our to readers, has managed somehow to publish a little magazine of his own, called The Stylus, devoted to art and self expression. The subscription price is rather high, i. e., $3.00, but the editor contends that there are so few people anyhow who are interested in art that those who are will gladly pay the admission. If you are interested, write for a sample copy to The Stylus Publishing Co., 122 East 25th street, Room 505, New York.
* * *
FRIENDS and Readers of MOTHER EARTH: We have heard of late a great deal of the wonderful wave of prosperity. We don't know whether it has yet reached you, but we at the office of MOTHER EARTH haven't noticed even a ripple of it.
As usual, we are placed before the alternative of either burying the magazine or invading the country, that is, going on a lecture tour. Feeling deeply with you and not wishing you to go to the expense of wearing mourning, the publisher of this magazine has decided to inflict herself on poor humanity.
Dates have already been arranged for Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis. The friends in other cities who are desirous of having Comrade Emma Goldman lecture will please communicate with M. E. (210 East I3th St., New York). All mail will be forwarded.
The work in behalf of free speech has not been in vain, after all. Two years ago our Comrade was forcibly dragged off the platform in Chicago; now she is to address a number of meetings in that city.
In Detroit she was stopped three years ago, and when arrangements for lectures were begun this time the local Chief of Police expressed his determination to follow the established precedent. However, persistency and the keeping of the free speech issue constantly before the public are having a salutary effect.
THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC
By EMMA GOLDMAN.
OUR reformers have suddenly made a great discovery: the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these 'unheard of conditions' in our midst, and the lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror.
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?
It is significant that whenever the public mind is to 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.
To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic by George Kibbe Turner and others (and by the way, a very superficial investigation), has discovered anything new is, to say the least, very foolish. Prostitution was 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 so far 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, etc.
What really is 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. George Kibbe Turner and all other scribblers know the cause well enough, but it doesn't pay to say anything about it. It is so much more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things. Yet no less an authority than Dr. Sanger, the author of 'The History of Prostitution,'** although not a radical, has this 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.'
The economic reason given for prostitution in the above quotation can be found in all works of any consequence dealing with the question. Nor is it necessary to seek information in books; one has but to observe every-day life to realize that there are thousands of girls working for two or three dollars a week, withering away in factories and shops, while life passes by in all its joy and glory, leaving them behind. What else are they to do? However, 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 (which I will speak of again later on). Also it will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to learn that out of 2,000 cases 490 were married women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently there was not much of a guarantee for their safety and purity in the sanctity of marriage.
** It is a significant fact that Dr. Sanger's book has been excluded from the U. S. mails. Evidently the authorities are not anxious that the public be informed as to the true cause of prostitution.
The very last to cry out against prostitution is our 'respectable' class, since it was that class that ushered in prostitution, from Moses to Trinity Church. Dr. H. Bloss, Dr. Alfred Blaschko, Dr. W. W. Sanger, and other eminent writers on this subject convincingly prove that prostitution originated with the so-called upper classes. I quote Dr. Sanger:
'Our most ancient and historical records are believed to be the books of Moses; according to them it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among the Jews, many centuries before Christ. Moses appears to have connived at the intercourse of Jewish young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an Ethiopian woman himself. Assyrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other neighbors of the Jews established themselves as prostitutes in the land of Israel. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the less Chief of Israel.' Moses evidently believed that therein lay the greatest safeguard for the daughters of his own people. We shall see presently that the Christians were not so considerate of their own daughters, since they did not employ foreigners for that purpose.
The history of the Christian Church will also serve as a history of prostitution, since the two always went hand in hand and furnished thereby great revenues for the Church.
Dr. Sanger cites the case of Pope Clement II., who issued a bull that all prostitutes were to pay a certain amount of their earnings, or that those living on prostitution were compelled to give half their income to the Church. Pope Sixtus IV. received 20,000 ducats from a single brothel, which, incidentally, he himself had built. Nor is it unknown that a great many cloisters and nunneries were in reality nothing else than brothels. In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that direction. At least, it does not openly demand tribute from prostitutes. It 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 on 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.
Never, however, did prostitution reach its present depraved and criminal position, because at no time in past ages was prostitution persecuted and hounded as it is to-day, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, where Phariseeism is at its height, where each one is busy hiding the skeletons in his own home by pointing to the sore of the other fellow.
But I must not lose sight of the present issue, the white slave traffic. I have already spoken of the economic cause, but I think a cause much deeper and by far of greater importance is the complete ignorance on sex matters. It is a conceded fact that woman has been 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 people 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 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 to many.
Having been looked upon as a mere sex-commodity, the woman's honor, decency, morality, and usefulness have become a part of her sex life. Thus 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. This state of affairs finds a masterly portrayal in Zola's 'Fecundity.'
Girls, mere children, work in crowded, overheated 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 haven't any 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 certainly is the most natural thing that a climax should follow. 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 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 or State.
The girl finds herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition are 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 throwing her down. Thus society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of.
Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How would America ever retain her virtue if she didn't have Europe to 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, hut 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 only 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, they are Americanized in habits and appearance,—a thing absolutely impossible unless they have 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 can not be earned in shops or factories. The equanimity of the moralists is not disturbed by the respectable woman gratifying her clothesophobia by marrying for money; why are they so outraged if the poor girl sells herself for the same reason? The only difference lies in the amount received, and of course in the seal society either gives or withholds.
I am sure that no one will accuse me of nationalist tendencies. I am glad to say that I have developed out of that, 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 fact inherent in the lives of these people. No one but the most superficial will claim that the 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, unless 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 a large number of Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any other purpose, is simply not to know the Jewish psychology.
On the other hand, it speaks of very little business ability on the part of importers of the white slaves, if they assume that the girls from the peasant regions of Poland, Bohemia, or Hungary in their native peasant crude state and attire would make a profitable business investment. These poor ignorant girls, in their undeveloped state, with their shawls about their heads, look much too unattractive to even the most stupid man. It therefore follows that before they can be made fit for business, they, too, must be Americanized, which would require not merely a week or a month, but considerable time. They must at least learn the rudiments of English, but more than anything else they must learn American shrewdness, in order to protect themselves against the many uniformed cadets, who prey on them and fleece them at every step.
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 origin of the cadets, as an institution, can be traced to the Lexow investigation in New York City, in 1894. Thanks to that moral spasm, keepers of brothels, as well as unfortunate victims of the street, 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 value, the unfortunate 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 to 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 confute this modern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter.
The serious student of this problem realizes that legislative enactments, stringent laws, and similar methods can not possibly eradicate, nor even ameliorate this evil. Those best familiar with the subject agree on this vital point. Dr. Alfred Blaschko, an eminent authority, convincingly proves in his 'Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert' that governmental suppression and moral crusades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secret channels, multiplying its dangers to the community. In this claim he is supported by such thorough students as Havelock Ellis, Dr. H. Bloss, and others.
Mere suppression and barbaric enactment 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 anyone 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.
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 an actual 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.IOKANAAN TO SALOME
To Miss Mary Garden, with her permission.By WILLIAM MOUNTAIN.
THOU beauteous serpent and thou ancient shame!Thou wonder and thou wounder of the earth!Eden was darkened when thy beauty came,And cursed was the day that gave thee birth.
Mad men have painted thee on prison walls,In dark delirious hours when their chainsSeemed loosed from aching limbs, but left them thrallsTo dreams from which they woke to fiercer pains.
Thou art the world's desire and all its sin!Things long forgotten flame in thy swift eye;Dead lusts that long but never solace win,Remorse that gnaws, and starved satiety.
The languorous East is sleeping in thy face,The fiery West burns in thy purple veins,And all the smouldering passions of the raceFlare in the souls of them thy lust disdains.
Dead loves and ghosts of unremembered days,And far-off yearnings kindle at thy kiss;Long-buried hopes thy hot caresses raise,Unwilling shapes from time's unplumbed abyss.
Thou art the world's delight since life began;Euphrates knew thee and the sacred Nile;The primal instinct of the earliest manUprears in him who sickens 'neath thy smile.
Thy beauty is the lily in decay,Thy singing like the sirens of the sea;Lo, thou art her whose memory is dismay,The sorrows of mankind thy progeny.
Thou art a symbol of the earth-old ache,The ever-blooming flower of desire,The dream of beauty for its own fair sake,The cry for joy e'en from the funeral pyre.
Thy voice is sweeter than the camel bellThat tinkles when the weary caravanRests by the city gates; but down in hellIts breath the fires of the unhappy fan.
Thy hair's a forest, shadowy, sweet as myrrh,Where grief might swoon and heaven find in its scent;Thy mouth's a ruby, thy lips lovelierThan all the jewels of the Orient.
Thine eyes are like the fairest stars of eve,And thy feet touch the tile like flowers that fall;I dare not watch thy unveiled bosom heaveLest His sworn prophet prove love's willing thrall.
For I could be the dust beneath thy feet,To trample, shod with lust and wet with tears;For oh! the odor of thy breath is sweet,And thy sad smile is older than the years.
Thy hair winds round the world, thy passion streamsAlmost a glory from thy finger-tips;How might the weary yield to happy dreams,And suck nepenthe from thy fatal lips!
Thine arms embrace the earth, the stars, the sun,Thy shadow flares across the frightened sky;The desert conquered first or thou hadst won!Ah, slay me, Herod, for I fain would die.
* * *
ANARCHIST SYMPOSUM***
PROUDHON.
PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON, the French Anarchist, born in 1809, and writing between the years 1848 and 1863, takes the same position as that occupied by the American Abolitionist, Wendell Phillips, when he said: 'God has given mankind one, and only one, rule to success—utter and exact justice. That, he has guaranteed, shall always be expediency.' His central conception is that of Herbert Spencer, as expressed by the latter in his 'Plea for Liberty,' namely that 'justice' is the cement that holds society together. The following quotations from his writings illustrate his views:
'Justice is the central star which governs societies; the pole about which the political world revolves; the principle and rule of all transactions. Nothing is done among men that is not in the name of right; nothing without invoking justice.'
He scoffs at the idea of the law representing justice, as will be seen from the following passages:
'Laws and ordinances fall like hail on the poor populace. After a while the political soil wil be covered with a layer of paper, and all the geologists will have to do will be to list it under the name of papyraceous formation, among the epochs of the earth's history. . . . Do you believe that the populace, or the government itself, can keep its sanity in this labyrinth?
'I am ready to make terms, but I will have no laws; I acknowledge none; I protest against every order which an ostensibly necessary authority shall please to impose on my free will. Laws! We know what they are and what they are worth. Cobwebs for the powerful and rich; chains which no steel can break for the little and the poor; fishers' nets in the hands of the government.'
Proudhon's conception of the future is that men and women, living under conditions of equal freedom, instead of being governed by laws imposed by external authority, will govern themselves by voluntary contracts. On this head he says:***The Symposium will consist of extracts from the world's greatest thinkers and writers on the subject of Anarchism, including Proudhon, Warren, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Stirner, and others. Some of the quotations are according to Steven T. Byington's translation.'That I may remain free, that I may be subjected to no law but my own, and that I may govern myself, the edifice of society must be rebuilt upon the idea of CONTRACT.'
Proudhon has no belief in the State as a protector or righter of wrongs. He rejects it absolutely as being an involuntary relation, and declares emphatically that 'the government of man by man is slavery.' He asserts (and in this respect Herbert Spencer agrees with him entirely) that the extent to which the rule of authority does or does not prevail is an absolutely true test of the civilization or barbarism of any given society; that the lower the general intellectual development of any given society, the more it is characterized by the authority of man over man.
Government by party is fully as objectionable, in Proudhon's view, as government by a Tsar, as will be seen from the following passage:
'All parties without exception, in so far as they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism; and there will be no liberty for citizens, nor order for societies, no union among workingmen, till in the political catechism the renunciation of authority shall have replaced faith in authority. No more parties, no more authority, absolute liberty of man and citizen—there, in three words, is my political and social confession of faith.'
'Authority, government, power, State—these words all denote the same thing—each man sees in it the means of oppressing and exploiting his fellows. Absolutists, doctrinaires, demagogues, and Socialists turn their eyes incessantly to authority.'
Criticising the methods of acquiring wealth, then in vogue, Proudhon—in one of his earlier publications—made use of the expression 'property is robbery.' This unfortunate but catchy phrase was taken up immediately, and has been employed industriously ever since as proof that Proudhon was a Communist. He was at constant pains to refute this misrepresentation. Writing in 1850, he said:
'What I sought for as far back as 1840 in defining property, what I am wanting now, is not a destruction; I have said it till I am tired. That would have been to fall with Rousseau, Plato, Louis Blanc himself, and all the adversaries of property, into Communism, against which I protest with all my might; what I ask for property is a oalance—that is, justice.
Proudhon declares in the most emphatic manner that his whole aim is to give each man the full product of his labor, and his position is that this will be possible only under conditions of freedom, wherein men and women, standing on a footing of equal opportunity, determine for themselves what they shall give and what they shall receive in return, binding themselves by their own voluntary contracts.
As to the method by which the transformation that he regards as absolutely necessary is to be accomplished, Proudhon speaks with no uncertain voice. He rejects most positively all suggestions of an artificially created, violent revolution, declaring that the new conditions will appear only 'as soon as the idea is popularized.' He mocks the physical force advocates, say-ing: 'Accomplish the revolution, they say, and after this everything will be cleared up. As if the revolution itself could be accomplished without a leading idea.'
'To secure justice to one's self by bloodshed is an extremity to which the Californians, gathered since yesterday to seek for gold, may be reduced; but may the luck of France preserve us from it.'
'Despite the violence which we witness I do not believe that hereafter liberty will need to use force to claim its rights and avenge its wrongs. Reason will serve us better; and patience, like the revolution, is invincible.'
To those who object that the educational method is an impossibility, since the professions, the middle class, and the powers that be are impervious to reason, and the populace, brutalized by servitude, remains hopelessly indifferent, he replies: 'Don't worry. Just as the lack of ideas makes one lose the most promising games, war against ideas can only push forward the revolution. Do you not see already that the régime of authority, of inequality, of predestination, of eternal salvation, and of reasons of State is daily becoming more intolerable for the well-to-do classes, whose conscience and reason it tortures, than for the mass, whose stomach cries out against it?'
In consequence of his holding these opinions, those who profess the 'class struggle' doctrine in its narrowest sense and believe that the social question is a stomach question, to be settled solely by those whose stomachs are affected, speak contemptuously of Proudhon as a middle-class philosopher.
* * *
MONKEY VS. MAN
GO to the monkey, thou voter, consider his ways and be wise. Do the monkeys pay ground rent to the descendants of the first old ape who discovered the valleys where the monkeys live? Do they hire the trees from the chimpanzee who first found the forest?
Do they buy the cocoanuts from the great-great grandchildren of the gorilla who invented a way to crack them ?
Do they allow two or three monkeys to form a corporation and obtain control of all the paths that lead through the woods?
Do they permit some smart young monkey, with superior business ability, to claim all the springs of water in the forest as his own, because of some alleged bargain made by their ancestors 500 years ago?
Do they allow a smart gang of monkey lawyers to so tangle up their conceptions of ownership that a few will obtain possession of everything?
Do they appoint a few monkeys to govern them and then allow those appointed monkeys to rob the tribe and mismanage all its affairs?
Do they build up a monkey city and then hand over the land, and the paths, and the trees, and the springs, and the fruits, to a few monkeys who sat on a log and chattered while all the work was going on ?
* * *
FOR THE REVOLUTION IN SPAIN
AN APPEAL FOR SOLIDARITY
AFTER the recent bloody events in Spain, caused by the war in Morocco, when the Spanish proletariat protested against that horrible slaughter, undertaken solely for the profit of a few capitalists; after all the brutalities perpetrated by the Civil Guards against the defenseless women and children who were massacred in the streets of Barcelona, because they refused to let their fathers, brothers, and husbands go to the national shambles; after the unmerciful and ferocious persecutions of propagandists of radical ideas, by means of imprisonment, exiles, and death; after reactionary clericalism had vented its insatiable thirst for martyr's blood and had murdered the great educator, Francisco Ferrer, the man who tried to regenerate the Spanish people by working for the enlightenment of the child and by teaching principles of right and justice; after this orgy of violence and crime, executed in the name or religion, capitalism, and the State,—we, the torch-bearers of liberty, acting in the name of civilization, do intend to continue the fight in Spain, so that we may destroy the shameful monarchy of the insane Alfonso XIII., who is ruled by the high clergy, the genuine representatives of the Inquisition of Torquemada, and who hold the people in darkness and ignorance, and continue the old reactionary traditions and absurd superstitions.
We are convinced that while the present conditions in Spain continue there will be no chance for the people to be educated in the new ideas of progress, but that they will be ignorant and servile; and that there will always be danger to men who, like Ferrer, may try to continue the generous work of this martyr of the Modern School.
At the beginning of our efforts, we known that obstacles will be found in the road of the struggle; but we count on many good fighters who will triumph or perish for the principles of right and justice in their desire to put an end to all the infamy consummated for so many centuries in the land of the Inquisition.OUR OBJECT.
All those who reject the reactionary ideas of absolutism, are on our side, and we wish to fight all together, without regard to individual principles or separative ideas, forming a radical 'block' in order to overthrow the present régime, and to open the road for more advanced institutions.
WHO WE ARE: SOLIDARITY NECESSARY.
We, the 'Pro-Spanish Revolutionary Committee' of New York, are a branch of the 'Revolutionary Party,' with headquarters in Paris, composed of Spanish revolutionists, but enjoying the co-operation of intelligent and generous foreign fighters, who conduct an international agitation in all the principal cities of Europe. In order to raise the means for this purpose, we are appointed in this city, as representatives of the radical Spanish colony, to collect money in the United States from all who are willing to help toward the total destruction of Spanish Reaction.
We hope that all the radical fighters of all countries will give us a hand, because our cause is the cause of all sufferers and slaves throughout the world. We must show a practical revolutionary alliance facing the power of our tyrants and making effective a strong solidarity among the international proletariat.
In the name of civilization and progress, we call upon the radical people to assist us in the struggle against despotism and barbarism.
Shall we be heard?
Yours for the Revolution,
AGUSTIN CASTAÑEDAJAIME VIDALJOSE RUBIOAQUILINO CHAOENRIQUE BENAVIDESRUFINO ALONSOMANUEL MARTIÑEZ MANUEL VASQUEZGAYETANO SOIM´EMANUEL VALD´ESMATEO FIGERROTTALFONSO MORELLOENRIQUE ALVAREZHERMEÑEGILDO GAUNDO
LEOPOLDO GARCIA
New York, December 15, 1909.
N. B.—All the contributions for this purpose should be sent to the treasurer, A. Castañeda, 72 Liberty St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
J. VIDAL, Secretary.
THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL
By FEDOR DOSTOYEVSKY.****
BEFORE the altar in a splendid church, glistening with gold and silver and lit up by a multitude of candles, stood a priest arrayed in beautiful robe and gorgeous mantle. He' was a portly, dignified man, with ruddy cheeks and well-kept beard. His voice was sonorous and his mien haughty. His appearance was in keeping with the church, which glowed and shone with luxury.
The congregation, however, presented a different picture. It consisted mostly of poor workingmen and peasants, old women and beggars. Their clothing was shabby and exhaled the peculiar odor of poverty. Their thin facesbore the marks of hunger and their hands the marks of toil. It was a picture of want and misery.
The priest burned incense before the holy pictures, and then piously and solemnly raised his voice and preached.
'My dear brethren in Christ,' he said, 'our dear Lord gave you life, and it is your duty to be satisfied with it. But are you satisfied ? No.
'First of all, you do not have enough faith in our dear Lord and His saints and miracles. You do not give as freely as you should from your earnings to the holy church.
'In the second place, you do not obey the authorities. You oppose the powers of the world, the Tsar and his officers. You despise the laws.
'It is written in the Bible, 'Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and give unto God that which is God's.' But you do not do it! And do you know what this means ? This is a deadly sin. Indeed, I tell you, it is the devil who is tempting you to go his way. It is he who tempts your souls, and you imagine it is your own free-will that prompts you to act in this way. His will it is, not yours.
**** Fedor Dostoyevsky achieved fame as the author of two of the most powerful psychical studies ever penned: 'Poor Folk' and 'Crime and Punishment,' both of which have been translated into most European languages. During his incarceration, for political reasons, in the terrible fortress of SS. Peter and Paul—an imprisonment which ruined his constitution and caused his early death—he wrote the following sketch upon the wall of his cell.
He is waiting for your death. He is burning with eagerness to possess your souls. He will dance before the flames of hell, in which your souls will suffer agonies.
'Therefore, I warn you, my brethren, I admonish you to leave the path of damnation. There is still time. O God, have mercy!'
The people listened, trembling. They believed the priest's solemn words. They sighed and crossed themselves, and fervently kissed the floor. The priest also crossed himself, turned his back to the people—and smiled.
It so happened that the devil was just passing by the church while the priest was speaking thus to the people. He heard his name mentioned, so he stood by the open window and listened. He saw the people kiss the priest's hand. He saw how the priest, bending before a gilded picture of some saint, hastily pocketed the money which the poor people had put down there for the holy church. This provoked the devil, and no sooner did the priest leave the church than he ran after him and caught hold of his holy mantle.
'Hello, you fat little father!' he said. '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 who 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 the workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The over-seer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls to the ground overcome by hard work 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 hardship 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 were frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter—did you not know that they are in hell right here, before they die?'
The priest hung his head. He did not know where to look in his confusion.
The devil smiled maliciously. 'Yes, little father, you are going to say that the world likes to be cheated. Well, now!' And he released his hold.
The priest tucked up his long mantle and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
The devil watched and laughed.
* * *
This story came into my mind while listening to the sermon of the prison chaplain, and I wrote it down on the wall to-day, December 13, 1849.
A PRISONER.
INTERNATIONAL NOTES
GERMANY.
The Anarchist Conference held recently at Leipzig did not bring about the desired result. Indeed, it merely served to aggravate existing friction. The decision of the Congress concerning the reorganization of the German Anarchist Federation has not been accepted by most of the groups, on the ground that it is too centralistic and authoritarian. The groups favor federative organization.
The Berlin Revolutionar has suspended publication. In its place another paper, Der Anarchist, has made its appearance in Leipzig. Thus the Anarchist movement of Germany now possesses three papers: Der Freie Arbeiter, having a circulation of 5,000; Der Anarchist, with 2,000 subscribers, and Der Socialist, of Berlin, with a like number of readers.
SWITZERLAND.
The Anti-Militaristic Congress, called by the Federative Committee of the Roman Trades Federation and the Anarchist papers Voix du Peuple and Le Reveil, took place at Bienne, amid great attendance. In spite of the opposition of the Socialists, who showed them-selves true patriots, the Congress proved very successful. It was the unanimous decision of the delegates to continue the anti-militarist propaganda with all possible energy and vigor.
ENGLAND.
While the International Press Congress was holding its sessions in London, and a high government official was eulogizing the grand English liberty of the press, our Comrade Guy A. Aldred was convicted in Old Bailey to a year's imprisonment on the charge of 'seditious libel,' resulting from the fact that Aldred published one number of the Indian Sociologist. The latter is the organ of the Hindu revolutionists, edited by Krishna Varma, who was forced to flee to Paris, his liberty being threatened by the government of Great Britain.
After the killing of Sir Curzon Wyllie by the Hindu revolutionist Dingra, the former publisher of the Sociologist, A. Fletcher Horsley—an ordinary printer in no way interested in the movement for India's liberation— was condemned to four months' hard labor. As no printer could be found willing to risk incarceration by publishing the paper, Comrade Aldred offered his services, which circumstance resulted in the charge of seditious libel and imprisonment.
Evidently the boasted English liberty of the press is no less a humbug than its 'free' speech. The condemnation by an English court of John Most and Vladimir Bourtzeff, some years ago, at the instigation of the Russian government, has long since characterized the quality of English liberty, not to mention the treatment of Irish Nationalists.
* * *
The oppressive and repressive measures employed by the British government in India do not seem to achieve the ends desired. The attitude of that much-exploited country is well voiced by the Free Hindusthan:
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 that 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.
The Hindu publication. Band Mataram, of Calcutta, suppressed by the government, is now published in Switzerland. All communications should be addressed to Madame Cama, Poste Restante, Geneve.
SPAIN.
The fall of Maura's cabinet did not result in the expected cessation of reactionary outrages. The 'liberal' régime of Moret has proved as tyrannous as that of his predecessor. The courts-martial of Barcelona continue their bloody work: to the long list of those doomed to death, forced labor, and deportation, and those still suffering in the fortress, forty-two new condemnations have been added, among them two death sentences, ten life imprisonments, and the rest condemned to long years of hard labor.
The Paris Committee for the defence of the victims of the Spanish reaction is determined to continue its war against the 'liberal' tyranny in order to arouse the Spanish people to the necessity of abolishing the terrible autocracy of the present régime. It is doing its utmost to waken the conscience of the international proletariat to the point of boycotting Spanish goods, and thus striking at the very vitals of Spanish capitalism.
Comrade Charles Malato writes us from Paris:
Dear Comrades: I have just received your letter including a check for $93.00 (478 francs) which you collected for the imprisoned comrades. I shall immediately consult with Comrades Charles Albert and Moreno about the disposition of the money.
There are still in the Barcelona jails over a hundred prisoners. We are now intensifying our campaign to prevent the execution of the twelve comrades, including three women, sentenced to death.
We have just held a massmeeting, with Soledad Villa franca, the companion and co-worker of Ferrer, as our chief speaker. It was a triumph for us, who claim the right of free love and free union as against the hypocrisy of legality, to witness the respect and enthusiastic sympathy with which our friend Soledad was welcomed.
I will do everything possible to comply with your request to procure Ferrer's works. He wrote many articles; yet, being extremely modest, he rarely signed them. He was principally an organizer and founder of schools, libraries, and reviews. During his incarceration in 1906-07 he wrote two important manuscripts,—one about rational morality, the other about federative communism. But, unfortunately, those works have been destroyed by the police in Mongat
* * *
The Spanish correspondent of a French paper thus describes the burial of Francisco Ferrer:
It was by a very special favor that the relations of the victim were allowed to be present at his burial. Ferrer remained visible in his open coffin, according to the Spanish custom, until the last moment. The modest coffin of blackened pine was brought down in the night. Ferrer was stretched out in the same gray garments which have been seen in his latest photographs. His head was wrapped in blood-stained bandages, but this sinister turban did not conceal the broken bones and the fragments of his oozing brain. His right cheek-bone was broken in, and an open wound stretched up to his temples. His throat was bleeding a little, and had been stopped up with a handful of chalk. In the middle of his forehead a small orifice revealed the passage of a bullet, which had gone out at the top of his skull. His face was bloodless ; but his hands were swollen and black, and added to the sinister horror of the spectacle. When the coffin was lifted for burial, I noticed that it had been standing on a big pool of blood, and all through the funeral procession the horrible box left traces of its passage along the road. The authorities would not allow burial in a private tomb, and the remains were consigned to the common ditch. The family, however, was permitted to put a stone to indicate where he had been buried. His mother was taken ill during this painful ceremony. It is related that this poor old woman came to the office of the Castle of Montjuich the previous evening asking to see her son, not knowing that he had already been shot. Permission was refused without any explanations being given.
FORS CLAVIGERA
MAY 1886-1910
Sweet height of Spring! thou bring'st to meThoughts timed but ill with linnet's song,With breathing bud, with robing tree,With evening sunshine ling'ring long.
Thoughts on a throng convened when airsOf freedom, trill'd a witch, who charm'dTo steep, with dreams that boon was theirs,Though, wakeful, Pow'r drew nigh them, arm'd.
Fierce bound! mad flight, of course!-a breath:A bolt of bursting thunder, hurl'dBy hands unknown whose deed of deathThe siren hus'd;-and woke the world.
That hour my soul espoused a causeWhich, like Pandora, call'd from hellA swarm of ills, resolved as laws;But with them she brought Hope as well!
That evil fortunes mate in MayIs told; but did this idle wordPortend, perchance, that festful dayWhen Wrong, matured, shall clasp-the Sword?
Hark! 'round our globe, the moan of hateEpithalamium sounds once more!The bells ring: and Key-bearing FateStands, veil'd and mute, before the door!
C. L. JAMES.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
THE First of May is THE holiday of the revolutionary proletariat. It represents the protest of awakened labor against industrial slavery and social injustice. It crystallizes the expression of intelligent dissatisfaction, the demand for better and higher things.
As such, the day is of tremendous significance. The voluntary stoppage of labor on that day is in itself a declaration of war, the bugle call to the exploited to form their ranks for the coming combat. The street demonstrations signify the springtime of awakened hope and life, the overflow of energies gathered in the long winter night.
Thus the First of May is labor's Declaration of Independence from all the forces of oppression, tyranny, and exploitation,-a declaration whose efficacy and ultimate success depend on labor's determined, uncompromising stand against the powers of darkness.
Unfortunately, the workers-especially those of America-have failed fully to grasp the revolutionary purpose of labor's great day. They have permitted themselves to be led-and, consequently, misled-by false and blind counsellors. Gradually the First of May has been shorn of its elemental meaning and force, and emasculated into an inane Sunday best parade, by the grace of the very powers against whom the protest is directed.
The First of May, 1910, falling on a Sunday, the calendar was revolutionized to guard against the revolutionizing of the proletariat: the demonstrations, by order of the authorities, took place on the preceding Saturday, April 30th. This stupid pusillanimity of labor robbed the day of all its revolutionary significance, and merely served to demonstrate the weakness of the giant whose mission is the overthrow of the capitalist régime.
LEISURE is a lost art. Our mechanical age has hopelessly involved the simple business of life, has made it inextricably complicate and complex. We are so busy making a living we have no time to live.
The dance around the golden calf is strenuous and exhausting. Modern commercial and industrial conditions make even the mere gaining of a livelihood a matter of ceaseless effort. No leisure is left for thought or study. Serious reading, life's purest joy, is a luxury. The average man, in office or factory, reads practically nothing save the daily paper. The press thus naturally becomes his chief, if not sole, source of information on all matters of vital social interest.
Evidently, the press wields a tremendous power. It not merely voices, it directly shapes and moulds public opinion and sentiment. This it does, not only through editorial channels representing the publishers' and advertisers' interests; but even more by doctoring the news of day, giving, undue prominence to certain features, minimizing and often entirely suppressing others.
With the press in capitalist hands, marshalling an army of editorial and news hirelings, a demoralized, readymade public opinion is the result. The situation is fraught with the gravest danger. The more pronounced the social contrasts and economic inequalities, the more vicious the influence of the press. Unpopular ideas and their advocates are wilfully and persistently misrepresented, ridiculed, and suppressed, and the public mind systematically prejudiced in favor of things as they are. Among the chief sufferers of this corrupt situation is the labor movement, the hand of capitalism reaching even to the Associated Press-the very fountain-head of the world's information-falsifying and suppressing the truth in the struggle of capital and labor.
The public school, the college, the pulpit,-all are being vitiated by the malignant influence of capitalist power. But none of them exercises as evil a spell over the social consciousness as a perverted press.
THE most disgusting of all forms of hypocrisy is that which is obvious. To try to deceive is hypocritical; but to write that which the writer knows that his readers do not believe is nauseating.
The editorials, fake telegrams, and descriptive articles written on the death of one Edward, late parasite-in-chief of the British Empire, are the most sickening thing we have seen in a long time, and that is saying a good deal. To show 'our grief' we use miles of flag and bunting, speech and article, and-last but not least-the cablegram, thus 'proving' our love for the kinsmen beyond the sea over the loss of as great a libertine as modern times can show. 'President Taft sends Queen Nation's sympathy,'-which means nothing more or less than that 'our President' has cabled a wilful lie. There surely is not a single individual in these United States, above the reasoning power of an infant, but knows that the nation does not care one iota whether Edward or George sits on the British throne. The sycophancy of the ruling classes over the death of this libertine and parasite is so disgusting, one wonders with Thomas Paine 'whether they have lost all sense of honor or ever had any to lose.'
N0 words could so forcibly characterize the dominance of greed-the cheapness of the workman's life and the criminal negligence of the employers-as the accident report just issued by the National Association of Manufacturers. According to the conservative statistics gathered by the Association, over five hundred thousand workingmen were injured in the United States during the last year.
Staggering as these figures are, their sinister meaning is emphasized by the admission that this awful number of accidents was due entirely to preventable causes. 'Preventable causes' euphoniously covers a multitude of capitalist sins. We are informed by the Association report that 'ninety-nine per cent. of the employers have this subject deeply at heart, and it will be thoroughly considered' at the coming annual convention of the Manufacturers' Association.
Certainly, it is very laudable on the part of the employers to give their serious attention to this important question of preventing accidents to their employees. Without any covert intention of minimizing the much talked-of risks of the manufacturers, we make bold casually to mention the circumstance that some risk is also involved in the production of wealth by means of the capital 'risked' by the employer. Mere incident though this be, the fact is neither an invention of the Anarchist nor a discovery of the Manufacturers, Association. The question naturally arises, Were the employers here to fore ignorant of it? If not, whence this sudden humanitarian awakening?
Some light on this question is thrown by the President of the Association, Mr. John Kirby, Jr. 'Practically every large manufacturer,' he assures us, 'has joined in the movement. The question of appliances for preventing accidents to workmen and accident indemnity are at present receiving more attention than any other issues in the field of industry. They are questions of vital im portance to our members from an economic as well as humanitarian standpoint.'
We may safely ignore the humanitarianism of the employer toward his employee. Its quality is too evident ice to in practice require restatement. But the economic consideration is Important indeed. The growing public sentiment in favor of employers' liability has evidentlyappealed to Mammon's most sensitive spot,-the pocket. No intelligent worker will be misled by this sudden altruism, calcium-lighted the dark lantern of capitalist benevolence. The tender care of the worker on the part of the capitalist can be measured exactly by dollars and cents, to be coined from the producers' blood and bone. Self -respecting labor scoffs at the philanthrophy of hypocrisy. The Man with the Hoe will straighten his back when his benevolent rider is thrown off, and not before.
OCCASIONALLY even a governmentalist may catch a glimpse of the light. Of course, it is not always practical or politic, especially for a District Attorney, to speak the truth. But sometimes it is hard to suppress. Thus, in an unguarded moment, the official defender of the accumulated stupidity of the ages, called law, permitted himself the luxury of a wider vision. What he said is nothing new to those that dare to think. But such a public confession on the part of the District Attorney of New York is a noteworthy sign of the times. Said he, in reference to crime:
'Some of the noblest acts of history have been crimes. There is nothing necessarily wrong about a crime, Crime is the violation of a written criminal statute. That's all. A statute may be vicious. It may prohibit something which it is perfectly right to do. The people who participated in the Boston Tea Party were guilty of grand larceny. The Minute Men who at Concord Bridge fired the shot heard round the world were criminals. Those who assisted the slaves by means of the underground railroad were guilty of a felony.'
But can an honest man hold such views and still continue to send to death or prison violators of laws 'prohibiting something which it is perfectly right to do'?
THE tenth annual convention of the Workmen's Circle closed after a five days' session. The convention has earned congratulations on the work accomplished, which was mostly of an eminently progressive character. It is bound to have a salutary effect upon the further life and growth of the Circle.
The truest friendship expresses itself not merely in laudation, but perhaps even more in sincere criticism. We would therefore suggest to all friends of the Circle that a spirit of the broadest tolerance is the very foundation of a progressive movement. The Circle should discourage an intolerant attitude towards its well-meaning critics. Partiality, financial and otherwise, toward those who praise us indiscriminately, in and out of season, -means opening the doors to favoritism. To be just to all, partial to none, must be the motto of every earnest endeavor, by individual or organization.
In this connection it is well for the Circle to remember that it is a non-political body. It is equally incorrect to label it Socialist or Anarchist. The Circle is a mutualhelp organization, welcoming into its midst all earnest men and women who strive for the abolition of wage slavery, irrespective of political faith and affiliation. For the Circle, or its convention, to presume to prescribe or proscribe certain political activities to its members or delegates, were an unpardonable usurpation of authority, contrary to the very purpose of the Circle's existence.
This has been the spirit in which the Circle was born and reared. Some mistakes have been made. We have offended, now and then, against the beneficent spirit of justice and tolerance. But may we in future jealously guard the genius of liberty, that our light may grow into great fires pointing the way of labor's emancipation.
THE intellectual level Of a country or nation is best judged by the things which arouse a people's greatest interest and enthusiasm.
Ancient Athens went into raptures over her philosophers, poets, and singers. The glory that was Greece is still with us. Rome deified her Caesars, and was swallowed up by the despised barbarians. Mediaeval Europe was inspired by her mystics and reformers. Hence the Reformation. In modern Europe enthusiasm waxes over art or poetry, constitutions and revolutions, financial budgets and political rights. But greater than all is our own sweet land of liberty, the home of the brave, where an eighty-million headed nation rises as one man to the Olympian heights of California to witness the most momentous event of the centuries: the Jeffries-Johnson fisticuffs.
MR. KEIR HARDIE has called the attention of the Parliament to the prevalence in India of the practice of torturing untried prisoners, for the purpose of extorting evidence from them.
Though the British Penal Code of 1860, which contains the existing criminal law of India, expressly forbids A ' torture of prisoners, the practice seems to be quite general in India. We read in the report of the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon about-five years ago: 'Though physical torture which leaves' external marks is rare, moral pressure, often of the most serious character, leaving no marks of physical violence, but amounting to very effective torture, is quite common.' The practice of torturing prisoners is so widespread in India that the judicial tribunals often set aside the confessions of prisoners on the ground that they were probably extorted by physical or moral agony.
One of the most hideous cases of torture came to light recently as a result of an official investigation. A woman was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband, although she declared that the confession was wrung from her by terrible torture. According to the sworn testimony of the prison surgeon, he found the woman 'terribly inflamed and ulcerated, a condition which, in my opinion, could only have been caused by an assault similar to that described by the prisoner.' The assault so described was that the police tied a rope round her feet, suspended her from a rafter of the roof, and then tortured her by means of red pepper in a manner which cannot be quoted here. Is it surprising, under these conditions, that England's cruel rule in India has lately been tempered by assassination ?
THE KINGBy HARRY WEIR BOLAND.
Bury him, then, face downward in the dust,And o'er his grave may lizards creep, may allVile spineless things which on the earth do crawlThrive on his marrow while corroding rustEats his faint heart that knew not Self to trust,And may his honeyed spirit turn to gall;May Terror, which has held him in its thrall,Pursue him till in deep hell he is thrust.
Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness;Fair Hope's voice called him from his barren fen;Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace.His lips forever framed a thoughtless yesWhen Tyranny enslaved the minds of men,And Courage looked on his averted face.
THE FIRST OF MAY
By H. KELLY.
The workingmen who march today, or who come together in meetings, will gain all those things to which they aspire just as soon as they make an equally effective demonstration at the ballot box.-N. Y. Call, April 30, 1910.T IS twenty-one years since the resolution, proposed by a Knights of Labor del egate to the International
Socialist Congress at Paris, that May First be set aside as a day when labor all over the world should show its solidarity, was adopted. Proposed and accepted as labor's declaration of independence it was a revolutionary step; at least it was so recognized by the Anarchists and, we believe, by a very large section of the general labor movement.
That the workers must win their freedom from capitalism and wage slavery on the economic battlefield, instead of the political, is a truism. And yet, owing to the false prophets of Socialism, a large section of the workers are hoodwinked into believing that the contrary is the case. Men capable of reasoning logically on matters pertaining to man's other activities, reason like children when discussing the efficacy of putting pieces of paper into ballot boxes. It matters not that we live ten years after the time promised by Marx as the date when the bourgeoisie shall have disappeared, and that they are with us in increased numbers. With the pontiffs of Socialism it is merely a pleasure deferred, and the facts and figures of daily life are denied with a vigor worthy of a better cause. To call attention to the fact that the Standard Oil Co. had half a million shareholders and shares, just prior to the panic, selling at $750 each, has no effect on this type of mind. Blinded by Rockefeller's millions, the Social Democrat refuses to admit that a man holding a share of stock valued at $750, paying high dividends, is a capitalist and exploiter. He says that the trusts are crushing the middle class out of existence and, the Standard Oil Co. being a trust, it cannot manufacture exploiters; it must destroy them. To admit otherwise is 'agin his principles.'
The department store is another superstition with him. He points with pardonable pride to it as a proof of that wonderful discovery of Marx which ranks the latter with Darwin. That the said department store is a series of small shops under one roof and owned by a large number of shareholders, all parasites plundering the people proportionately to the number of shares held, is lost on him similarly with his belief in politics. In fact, the Social Democratic theory of politics and that of the concentration of capital stand and will fall together. If the middle class were being squeezed out and dropped into the ranks of the workers, they would in all probability augment the working class vote; if not, they would swell the capitalist vote. The latter is what they are doing, and while the poitical Socialists deny this fact, their principles have grown so emasculated as to become more and more acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
1-Home rule for the city.2-Initiative and referendum.3-Better schools.4-Municipal ownership.5-Penny lunches.6-Street car company to sprinkle streets.7-Trade union conditions of labor.8-A seat for every passenger in the street cars, lifting jacks, automatic brakes, and fenders.9-Three cent street car fare.10-Eight hour day for labor.11-Cheaper gas.12-Cheaper ice by means of municipal plant.13-Cheaper coal and wood by means of municipal coal and wood yards.14-Cheaper and better light, and more of it, by means of municipal plant.15-Corporations to pay their full share of taxes.16-Clean street cars. Glasgow cleans and disinfects cars every day, it is pointed out.17-Street closets and comfort stations.18-Work for the unemployed at union wages and eight hour days.19-Widows who do washing for support of families to have water rates remitted by city.20-Cheap bread, by requiring standard weight in every loaf.
Not one of the above reforms, promised by the new Social Democratic administration at Milwaukee, is objectionable to the bourgeoisie as a class. Of course we know that many of these reforms will not even be attempted, as for instance, Home Rule for the city and Initiative and Referendum are matters determined by the State government; while the reforms promised in the street car service, such as three cent fares, are mere talk, since the company has its franchise from the State, granted for some fifty years. 'Comrades must not expect the impossible of us,' says Mayor Seidel. 'We feel sure the intelligent ones will not.' Victor Berger, the most reactionary force in the American Socialist movement, is in the saddle at Milwaukee, and the very most that may be expected is an honest attempt to conduct the affairs of the city along constitutional, i. e. bourgeois lines. It may be urged that an honest official is better than a dishonest one. Yes, but what of the 'class war,' the 'working class kept down to the point of mere subsistence' ? If these theories are true, of what value to the starved and stunted wage slave and the 'jobless worker' are these so-called reforms. It cannot be urged too strongly that it is no part of the Anarchist or Socialist to administer bourgeois government more efficiently. It is their business to destroy capitalism, and on the ruins of that system found the Free Commune or Socialist Common- wealth. With Mayor Gaynor at the head of the New York City government, the city bids fair to have the best administration in its history; but the bread line is still with us, and the capitalist's right to exploit his wage slaves is still unquestioned. Politics will not, because it cannot, touch fundamental questions, and if the 'Milwaukee Victory' were duplicated in every city in America, the capitalist question would remain unsolved, unless the exploited themselves rose in revolt against their oppressors and took possession of the land, railways, factories, etc.
In due time the 'Milwaukee Victory' will become a legend like the 'three million Socialists in Germany,' and- like all legends-interesting as such, but disappointing when tested in the furnace of fact. After 'Comrade' Seidel and the Socialist administration have become a part of Milwaukee history, our query will be in regard to the 'three million Socialists,' What have they done? We have been asking that about the German Social Democratic party for some years, and the answer has invariably been: 'Well, we are in the minority yet, but when we are in the majority-'
Socialists all over the world will be interested in one reform Mayor Seidel inaugurated immediately after assuming office. He increased the hours of labor for municipal employees from six to eight a day. Every capitalist paper in the country has applauded this 'Socialist reform,' as well they might, for this is 'efficiency in government' with a vengeance, and has no doubt brought the Co-operative Commonwealth several laps nearer. True to the party platform, which calls for eight hours a day even when it means increasing the hours instead of decreasing them.
Hard on the news of Milwaukee comes the announcement that Karl Kautsky, 'scientific theorist,' as the press calls him' has considerable hopes the German Social Democrats will double their vote at the next election and gain a majority over all parties in the Reichstag. He supplements this hope with another, that the party will not jeopardize their chances by acting rashly and advocating a general strike. We have no fear of such a thing happening. There are too many reactionary forces in the party, on the one hand, and too large and varied a membership on the other. If we thought for a moment there was the slightest possibility of such a victory ( ?) at the polls, we would join our prayers to Kautsky's against that rashness ( ?) of a general strike, that the world might witness on a gigantic scale the impotence of voting. Nothing short of such a miracle will convince some people. Kautsky in his 'Social Revolution and the Day After' is careful to distinguish between 'scientific Socialism' and 'Utopian Socialism,' the latter being 'the day after,' which is mere prophecy. His hopes of victory belong to 'Utopian Socialism,' and should not be taken more seriously than Upton Sinclair's dream of a national Socialist victory in America in 1912. It were easy to extend the date and still maintain a reputation as a prophet.
It is now about a year since the Social Democrats fulminated against Briand for forming a 'Capitalist Ministry' in France; traitor was a mild term for him. The fulminations were due to the fact that he had gone back on his principles and was lending himself to a perpetuation of capitalism, in so far as that is possible with a system doomed to death in accordance with Marx's theory. We had occasion to point out then, and repeat it now, that in so far as he lent himself to the upholding of the present system, by enforcing laws defending private property, he was not one whit different from any elected official. We have not heard that the man or woman out of employment through no fault of their own is immune from punishment for expropriating the necessaries of life in cities governed by Socialists. We 'do not expect the impossible' from Comrade Seidel at Milwaukee, and we are sure that private property will be defended with as much zeal and vigor against the starving man or woman as in a stronghold of capitalism. To assert they must govern according to the laws or, as Victor Berger would say, 'to an antiquated charter,' is begging the question. No one forced M . Millerand to order out troops to shoot down strikers; no one forced M. Briand to form a 'Capitalist Ministry,' and no one forces 'Comrade' Seidel to assume an office wherein he will be compelled to defend capitalist institutions, which he began doing the moment he assumed office. Of course, Socialism is inevitable (?), and to assert that the individual plays any part in the history of man is to indulge in 'hero worship' ' a form of heresy against 'Scientific Socialism.'
We are of the opinion that the club of 'Comrade' Seidel's policeman will be found as hard as M. Lepine's, and sweat shops, slum dwellings, unemployment, and all the evils attendant on capitalism will be equally abhorrent to the victims whether the government be called Socialist or Capitalist.
There are two ways of breaking down the present system, and two only. One, by active revolutionary opposition; the other, by refusing to co-operate in any way whatsoever with the governing classes or their supporters. The latter is only a theory; but, while it has never been tested to the limit, as a theory it seems inpregnable. The former has been tested on many a battlefield, and when the fulcrum is great enough, existing governments or institutions fall.
This brings us back to the First of May, and our recent epoch-macking general strike at Philadelphia. Many bourgeois writers have tried to picture the struggle as a failure, and now comes that erstwhile 'anarch of Art,' Mr. James Huneker, to prove that the general strike is impossible and the Philadelphia affair a fiasco. Reviewing the book called 'La Vague Rouge' (the Red Wave), by J. H. Rosny, Sr., in a two column article in the N. Y. Sun of April 27th, our art critic proves to his entire satisfaction that the general strike is a hopeless, impracticable dream and a pernicious idea causing 'discomfort, misery, crime, etc.' Says our art critic, turned sociologist for the nonce: 'We hope to see slain some day that silliest of superstitions, the general strike.' To those who would glean in unfamiliar fields we would say, Beware of the ditches and pitfalls. For the benefit of amateur sociologists like Mr. Huneker, we would say: First, the Philadelphia strike was not a general strike; it was a sympathetic strike of various trades of one city to obtain certain concessions for the members of one union It had no definite revolutionary aim, but was a spontaneous outburst of sympathy of labor for members of a downtrodden trade, and, as such, it was magnificent. Second, far from being a failure it was a brilliant, scintillating success, as was pointed out in MOTHER EARTH for April, in an article by Voltairine de Cleyre, from which we quote: 'Six different companies in as many cities have raised the trolley men's wages since this strike.' To those who, like our art critic, are in receipt of comfortable incomes, the loss of ten or a dozen lives may seem too high a price to pay for a mere rise in wages; but who can tell how many lives have been saved by this mere raising of wages in six cities as the result of a strike in one, or how many years have been added to the trolley men's lives by the increased comforts obtained. The Socialist administration of Milwaukee has, as the first fruits of a twenty-five year agitation, raised the hours of labor, while the strike of Philadelphia raised wages. The general strike, purely as an idea, has inspired millions of working people all over the world to resist oppression and has wrung concessions from exploiters everywhere. It is a great inspirational force, not only for the direct tangible benefits it has won, but as a great moral neutralizer of the poisonous and fatally noxious influence of politics in the revolutionary movement throughout the world. Slowly but surely the idea of the First of May spreads, an idea which spells solidarity of labor and the direct, conscious revolutionary defy of the exploiter. We do not claim the workingman is turning from politics; we do not know. But we do say that side by side with this flirting with old superstitions there grows a revolutionary spirit of which the Philadelphia strike stands forth as a beacon light. The First of May is but a symbol, the germinating of spring, the awakening of labor. The emancipation of labor which it portends will come because labor is becoming conscious of its strength and, its rights. Emancipation is its goal; Direct Action its method. That is the real significance of the First of May.
MY CREEDBy MAGAR THORNE.
HAD never taken the trouble to formulate a creed, having for creed the rejection of all creedsuntil one night it was presented to me in a dream, and I found it was -quite simple. In this dream I saw a diabolic face which changed shortly into a seraphic one; and then again into a demoniac face.
I find from this that life has never presented itself to me as a matter of conduct, but as a material for criticism; that I have refused to have convictions; that I have defended nothing entirely and condemned nothing wholly; that I have found good in everything from certain points of view, and bad in everythink from certain other points of view; that I have made it a matter of calculation, arbitrarily to find for the bad in anything an equal amount of good, and for the good of bad. I have shown to my own satisfaction that it is never the whole man which commits a fault; that, indeed, it is not so much the man who commits an unique fault, as the universal fault which subjects the man to the tender levities of the human race; that in the worst faults humanity only recognizes itself; and that hatred and punishment are not so much the outgrowth of differences between Society
and the individual, as of a damnable and too-obvious likeness. Mankind torturing its criminals is very ridiculously like an ugly woman taking that pathetic revenge which is expressed by the smashing of mirrors.
It is quite possible, I think, for even the good man to be mistaken; and to be mistaken is a degree worse than to be bad. I have noted that the sinning individual is certainly as apt to be a prophet, as is the virtuous mob to be an army generalled by the good Devil himself; and that I find much that is lovable in the Devil, who, in his dishonor, is admirably honest. Is it not rather tedious to repeat that the younger generation is seldom educated by the older, but rather by the two or three whom the older generation condemned?
I could never approve a law that incarcerates for life because it does not take into account the affecting truth that, as a general rule, a man is only what he was yesterday, and-just as accurately-that tomorrow a man is not at all what he was yesterday; nor does it consider that a man is always a child in his infinite potentiality, never a machine of calculated efficiency. Progress is eked out by men at fifty turning into something very different to what they were at forty-nine; even in the lexicon of senility the law is not 'I am,' but 'I become.' Nor could I approve a law which takes life because it does not consider that it is taking, not a life, but a future of which its philosophy cannot dream.
In these matters in which Society takes a high hand, however, it is well to remember that if one cannot rescue oneself from degradation, one can rescue one's degradation from infamy by undergoing it well. I am almost willing to think, too, that it is much better to end a frivolous life in a noble rage, than to live with a purpose and die for nothing but a disease. And we are too little ready, nowadays, to acknowledge the principle by which nothing mitigates so thoroughly as a lack of mitigating circumstances.
Enfin, I find in Christ much of Pierrot, and in Pierrot a great deal that Pierrot would refuse to believe about himself.
THE DOMINANT IDEA
By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.
ON EVERYTHING that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea-an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern, immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying bodies-living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass-blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air.
Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning-glory vines up over a secondstory balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple-dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun-seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened,some cut-worm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead,-all but the top which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and pitied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid-NIGHT, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon-faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. I gazed at them in dumb wonder. Dear, dead vine, whose will had been so strong to bloom, that in the hour of its sudden cut off from the feeding earth, it sent the last sap to its blossoms; and, not waiting for the morning, brought them forth in storm and flash, as white night-glories, which should have been the children of the sun.
In the daylight we all came to look at the wonder, marveling much, and saying, 'Surely these must be the last.' But every day for three days the dead vine bloomed; and even a week after, when every leaf was dry and brown, and so thin you could see through it, one last bud, dwarfed, weak, a very baby of a blossom, but still white and delicate, with five purple flecks, like those on the live vine beside it, opened and waved at the stars, and waited for the early sun. Over death and decay the Dominant Idea smiled: the vine was in the world to bloom, to bear white trumpet blossoms dashed with purple; and it held its will beyond death.
Our modern teaching is, that ideas are but attendant phenomena, impotent to determine the actions or relations of life, as the image in the glass which should say to the body it reflects: 'I shall shape thee.' In truth we know that directly the body goes from before the mirror, the transient image is nothingness; but the real body has its being to live, and will live it, heedless of vanished phantoms of itself, in response to the ever-shifting pressure of things without it.
It is thus that the so-called Materialist Conception of History, the modern Socialists, and a positive majority of Anarchists would have us look upon the world of ideas,-shifting, unreal reflections, having naught to do in the determination of Man's life, but so many mirror appearances of certain material relations, wholly powerless to act upon the course of material things. Mind to them is in itself a blank mirror, though in fact never wholly blank, because always facing the reality of the material and bound to reflect some shadow. To-day I am somebody, tomorrow somebody else, if the scenes have shifted; my Ego is a gibbering phantom, pirouetting in the glass, gesticulating, transforming, hourly or momentarily, gleaming with the phosphor light of a deceptive unreality, melting like the mist upon the hills. Rocks, fields, woods, streams, houses, goods, flesh, blood , bone, sinew,-these are realities, with definite parts to play, with essential characters that abide under all changes; but my Ego does not abide; it is manufactured afresh with every change of these.
I think this unqualified determinism of the material, is a great and lamentable error in our modern progressive movement; and while I believe it was a wholesome antidote to the long-continued blunder of Middle Age theology, viz., that Mind was an utterly irresponsible entity making laws of its own after the manner of an Absolute Emperor, without logic, sequence, or relation, ruler over matter, and its own supreme determinant, not excepting God (who was himself the same sort of a mind writ large)-while I do believe that the modern reconception of Materialism has done a wholesome thing in pricking the bubble of such conceit and restoring man and his 'soul' to its 'place in nature,' I nevertheless believe that to this also there is a limit; and that the absolute sway of Matter is quite as mischievous an error as the unrelated nature of Mind; even that in its direct action upon personal conduct, it has the more ill effect of the two. For if the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel. the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self -excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. 'My conditions have made me so,' they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it! To be sure, the influence of such a character rarely reaches as far as that of the principled persecutor; but for every one of the latter, there are a hundred of these easy, doughy characters who will fit any baking tin, to whom determinist self-excusing appeals; so the balance of evil between the two doctrines ,is about maintained.
What we need is a true appraisement of the power and rôle of the Idea. I do not think I am able to give such a true appraisement: I do not think that any one-even much greater intellects than mine-will be able to do it for a long time to come. But I am at least able to suggest it, to show its necessity, to give a rude approximation of it.
And first, against the accepted formula of modern Materialism, 'Men are what circumstances make them,' I set the opposing declaration, 'Circumstances are what men make them;' and I contend that both these things are true up to the point where the combating powers are equalized, or one is overthrown. In other words, my conception of mind, or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely.
All over the kingdom of life, I have said, one may see dominant ideas working, if one but trains his eyes to look for them and recognize them. In the human world there have been many dominant ideas. I cannot conceive that ever, at any time, the struggle of the body before dissolution can have been aught but agony. If the reasoning that insecurity of conditions, the expectation of suffering, are circumstances which make the soul of man uneasy, shrinking, timid, what answer will you give to the challenge of old Ragnar Lodbrog, to that triumphant death-song hurled out, not by one cast to his death in the heat of battle, but under slow prison torture, bitten by serpents, and yet singing: 'The goddesses of death invite me awaynow end I my song. The hours of my life are run out. I shall smile when I die'? Nor can it be said that this is an exceptional instance, not to be accounted for by the usual operation of general law, for old King Lodbrog the Skalder did only what his fathers did, and his sons and his friends and his enemies, through long generations; they set the force of a dominant idea, the idea of the superascendant ego, against the force of torture and of death, ending life as they wished to end it, with a smile on their lips. But a few years ago, did we not read how the helpless Kaffirs, victimized by the English for the contumacy of the Boers, having been forced to dig the trenches wherein for pleasant sport they were to be shot, were lined up on the edge, and seeing death facing them, began to chant barbaric strains of triumph, smiling as they fell? Let us admit that such exultant defiance was Owing to ignorance, to primitive beliefs in gods and hereafters; but let us admit also that it shows the power of an idea dominant.
Everywhere in the shells of dead societies, as in the shells of the sea-slime, we shall see the force of purposive action, of intent within holding its purpose against obstacles without.
I think there is no one in the world who can look upon the steadfast, far-staring face of an Egyptian carving, or read a description of Egypt's monuments, or gaze upon the mummied clay of its old dead men, without feeling that the dominant idea of that people in that age was to be enduring and to work enduring things, with the immobility of their great still sky upon them and the stare of the desert in them. One must feel that whatever other ideas animated them, and expressed themselves in their lives, this was the dominant idea. That which was must remain, no matter at what cost, even if it were to break the everlasting hills: an idea which made the live humanity, beneath it, born and nurtured in the coffins of caste, groan and writhe and gnaw its bandages till in the fullness of time it passed away: and still the granite mould of it stares with empty eyes out across the world, the stern old memory of the Thing-that-was.
I think no one can look upon the marbles wherein Greek genius wrought the figuring of its soul without feeling an apprehension that the things are going to leap and fly; that in a moment one is like to be set upon by heroes with spears in their hands, by serpents that will coil around him; to be trodden by horses that may trample and flee; to be smitten by these gods that have as little of the idea of stone in them as a dragon-fly, one instant poised upon a wind-swayed petal edge. I think no one can look upon them without realizing at once that those figures came out of the boil of life; they seem like rising bubbles about to float into the air, but beneath them other bubbles rising, and others, and others,-there will be no end of-it. When one's eyes are upon one group, one feels that behind one, perhaps, a figure is uptoeing to seize the darts of the air and hurl them on one's head; one must keep whirling to face the miracle that appears about to be wrought-stone leaping! And this though nearly every one is minus some of the glory the old Greek wrought into it so long ago; even the broken stumps of arms and legs live. And the dominant idea is Activity, and the beauty and strength of it. Change, swift, ever-circling Change! The making of things and the casting of them away, as children cast away their toys, not interested that these shall endure, so that they themselves realize incessant activity. Full of creative power, what matter if the creature perished. So there was an endless procession of changing shapes in their schools, their philosophies, their dramas, their poems, till at last it wore itself to death. And the marvel passed away from the world. But still their marbles live to show what manner of thoughts dominated them.
And if we wish to know what master-thought ruled the lives of men when the mediaeval period had had time to ripen it, one has only at this day to stray into some quaint, out-of-the-way English village, where a strong old towered Church yet stands in the midst of little straw-thatched cottages, like a brooding mother-hen surrounded by her chickens. Everywhere the greatening of God, and the lessening of Man: the Church so looming, the home so little. The search for the spirit, for the enduring thing (not the poor endurance of granite which in the ages crumbles, but the eternal), the etenal,-and contempt for the body which perishes, manifest in studied uncleanliness, in mortifications of the flesh, as if the spirit should have spat its scorn upon it.
Such was the dominant idea of that middle age which has been too much cursed by modernists. For the men who built the castles and the cathedrals, were men of mighty works, though they made no books, and though their souls spread crippled wings, because of their very endeavors to soar too high. The spirit of voluntary subordination for the accomplishment of a great work, which proclaimed the aspiration of the common soul, that was the spirit wrought into the cathedral stones; and it is not wholly to be condemned.
In waking dream, when the shadow-shapes of world-ideas swim before the vision, one sees the Middle-Age Soul an ill-contorted, half-formless thing, with dragon wings and a great, dark, tense face, strained sunward with blind eyes.
(To be continued.)
LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN THE LIFE OF AN AVANT-GUARD
By EMMA GOLDMAN.
DENVER is not unlike a prison. Its inhabitants, too, have been sent there 'to do time.' That which makes the position of the prisoner preferable, is the consolation that the State will feed him and that some day his time will expire. The majority of Denverites have no such cheerful outlook, Although arriving there with hopes of a speedy return, it's usually imprisonment for life.
We all know the paralizing effect of the daily grind for existence, even for most of us who can boast an average physique. How much more paralizing must it be for those who go to Denver as a last resort to rescue life from its downward path?
Under such conditions and in such an atmosphere people are not interested in abstract ideas. 'To hell with Bebel's speech,' said the consumptive in 'Sanin,' in reply to the query of his companion enthused over the latest word- battle in the Reichstag. 'I am interested in one thing-Life, and how long I may still see the sky, the stars.'
Artzibasheff, himself a victim of tuberculosis, understands the psychology of these people only too well.
And yet, those who attended our meetings in Denver must have been interested. Else they would not have come, night after night. Or was it merely to get away from the grim reality? If so, I am happy to have furnished that opportunity, even though it was but for the moment.The Ferrer lecture and the one on 'Marriage and Love' brought the largest audience. Particularly the latter. Sex is a vital factor, after all; few people realize how very vital it must be for the exiles of Denver.
Fair newspaper treatment of an Anarchist is as scarce as light in the life of the avant-guard. One must therefore consider it an event if three papers in one city, during almost a week, devoted columns to verbatim reports of Anarchistic lectures, not to forget the extraordinary discovery of the dramatic critic of the Denver Times, to wit: 'Emma Goldman is being treated as an enemy of society because, with Dr. Stockman, she is pointing out the ills and defects of society.' 0, for the naivety of an American dramatic critic! As if that was not the crime of all crimes, to point to the swamps of society.
CHEYENNE.-Even woman's votes have failed to affect the grey matter of the police. Yet my sisters still believe in the miraculous power of woman suffrage. Wyoming can boast women politicians, but the police are just as stupid as in other States, and a little more, as our dear editor has already described in a delightfully humorous comment in the April issue. I shall, therefore, only add that the danger signal was hoisted in Cheyenne by the Acting Mayor. The poor fellow was quite a nonentity in his town. To make himself conspicuous, he set the town afire, and when the smoke was over, he found he had only burned his own fingers. By noon of the day after our arrest the 'hero' came slinking into our lawyer's office, whining' 'Please, sir, I'll be good. IT never do it again.' As for the majesty -of the law, four meetings instead of the original two, and the sale of a quantity of literature, helped to make her majesty appear pretty flat and silly.
I cannot close this very important chapter without expressing our thanks to the faithful few in Denver, who came to the rescue the moment they heard of our arrest. The money they sent helped us to reimburse, in a small measure, the attorney who was instrumental in setting the dislocated funny bone of the Acting Mayor.
SALT LAKE CITY.-The Mormon husband may be as agreeable around the house as the Christian dears, but as builder of cities the Mormons are certainly superior.
I have traveled through the length and breadth of this very Christian country, but I know of no city that can compare with the stronghold of the Mormons. Nothing mean about these people, whatever else they may be. They could not indulge in many wives if they were small or miserly. No wonder they are so generous with their city.
Spacious, beautifully laid out, and spotlessly clean, Salt Lake City has much more the appearance of an European than an American city, where every inch of ground is mutilated for business purposes. As regards public buildings, the Mormons are almost as extravagant as in the number of wives. Quite a variety of them, each one a joy to the eye.
My dear old friend Thurston Brown (who lost a fat church because he dared, as few did, give reasons for Czolgosz's act), together with Comrade Cline, of Salt Lake City, arranged two meetings, which proved the most successful of the second part of our tour. The audiences were large and remarkably appreciative, which was best proved by the quantity of literature purchased.
A drive into the glorious country surrounding Salt Lake City, with Comrade and Mrs. Cline, added to our short but delightful visit to the Mormons.
RENO, NEV.-The divorce mill of America. What a farce the marriage institution is, anyway. Here are thousands of women flocking to Reno, to buy their freedom from one owner in order to sell it more profitably to another. Thus a well known lady married the second man four hours after she was divorced from the first. These respectable women do have it easy. No heartache, no soul agony of the free woman, who suffers a thousand torments in the transitory period between an old and new experience. just a piece of paper bought for so many dollars, and all is proper. What shallowness, what terrible hypocrisy. Yet these same respectable ladies of
Reno hold up their hands in holy horror when they hear of a free relationship of the free woman, who would never think of giving herself to any man, except when she loves. Some of these good women were perfectly scandalized when Emma Goldman registered in the same hotel. No, they could not stand for that. Either they or Emma Goldman must go. And the hotel keeper, poor lackey. The ladies have money; never mind their lack of character, or provincialism. Emma Goldman was told to get out. It would have been surprising if she hadn't. Respectability is indeed a shallow thing.
The greatest farce of Reno, however, is that in democratic America divorce is but an exclusively aristocratic privilege. The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the 'sanctity of the home' are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.
Reno, the divorce mill of America, needed more than any other place to learn the cause of the failure of marriage and the meaning of love. Not the kind that is bought and sold, but the kind that is free as the elements to give itself in abundance or to deny itself in the same measure.
The beginning was made in Reno. I spoke on Anarchism, and on Marriage and Love. What I said may have been Greek to some. But that a few did understand, their faces betrayed. Theirs was the expression of the blind beholding the light of day for the first time.
To accomplish this much it was worth going even to Reno. The supreme effort of the avant-guard is onward, ever onward.
ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUM
TOLSTOY.
TOLSTOY asks how it is that the people submit to oppressive governments, and answers that it is owing to 'a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain.'
The first means is the 'hypnotization of the people,' leading them to the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld.' It is accomplished by 'fomenting the two forces of superstition called religion and patriotism.'
The second means that the State employs is the bribery of a small class, to which it gives official positions and special privileges.
The third means is intimidation, which 'consists in setting down the present State order-of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic -as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it.
The fourth means is to 'separate a certain part of all the men, whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special, stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon.' 'Intimidation bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money; hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based.'
Tolstoy is positive that the conditions that he describes so graphically cannot endure much longer, for he says: 'To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life.'
To those who fear that it will be impossible for the masses to come together and co-operate without a State center around which to gather, he replies that danger of isolation no longer exists. 'The means of intercourse have developed extraordinarily. For the forming of societies, associations, corporations; for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are not needed; nay, in most cases, they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends.'
With remorseless logic Tolstoy points out that the same objections that are made to the forcible rule of the few hold good as against the attempts of the many to overthrow that rule by force. He insists that the existing regime is to he wrecked , not by revolutionary enemies from outside, but by passive resistance from within; men refusing to do at the behest of the ruling powers that which their consciences tell them is unjust, and wrong; and he points out that already in Russia men are refusing on these very grounds to pay taxes, to take the general oath of allegiance, to exercise police functions, and to serve in the army.
In a word, Tolstoy conceives that the great change for which he longs can be brought about only by a previous change in our conceptions, knowledge, and aims; by our taking larger and wiser views of the meaning of life, and that the way to quicken such change-which must come sooner or later-is, first, to speak out our opinions with perfect frankness, and, secondly and still more important, to act up to our convictions.
As regards the first he says: 'If we would only stop lying and acting as if we did not see the truth; if we would only testify to the truth that summons us and boldly confess it, it would at once turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, millions of men in the same situation as ourselves; that they see the truth like us; are afraid, like us, of remaining isolated if they confess it, and are only waiting, like us, for the rest to testify to it.'
To enforce his argument that it is most important of all that we should make our lives square with our convictions, he uses the following illustration: 'Men in their present situation are like bees that have left their hive and are hanging on a twig in a great mass, The situation of the bees on the twig is a temporary one and absolutely must be changed. They must take flight and seek a new abode. Every bee knows that, and wishes to make an end of its own suffering condition and that of the others, but this cannot be done so long as the others do not help. But all cannot rise at once, for one hangs over another and hinders it from letting go; therefore all remain hanging. One might think that there was no way out of this situation for the bees, and there would be none, were it not that each bee is an independent living being. But it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees.'
He gives another forcible illustration along the same line of thought: 'The passage of men from one order of life to another does not take place steadily, as the sand in the hour-glass runs out, one grain after another from the first to the last, but rather as a vessel that has been sunk into water fills itself. At first the water gets in only on one side, slowly and uniformly; but then its weight makes the vessel sink, and now the thing takes in, all at once, all the water that it can hold.'
I have left to the last the consideration of Tolstoy's views on the subject of property, although they seem to some the most important part of his teaching, because, as has been shown already, Tolstoy deprecates all endeavors to dictate the mould in which the society of the future shall be cast, saying that it will be 'as circumstances and men shall make it.' But Tolstoy is the strongest of Communists, believing that the law of love, on which he bases all his views of life (since he holds that it alone gives us true happiness) requires that we should at all times be willing to share our possessions.
He declares that it is a 'crime that tens of thousands of hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings are living in Moscow, while I, with a few thousand others, have tenderloin and sturgeon for dinner, and cover horses and floors with blankets and carpets. He considers himself (tan accomplice in this unending and uninterrupted crime so long as I still have a superfluous bit of bread while another has no bread at all.' He further explains that the evil significance of property is specially felt in the case of such things as are necessary to the production of wealth, and notably as regards land and tools-a position in which the Socialists will all agree with him-showing that the propertyless is thus compelled to hand over more and more of the products of his toil to the non-worker. The dependence of the poor on the rich becomes most prominent when we pass to a consideration of money, for, as the saying is, 'he who has money has in his pocket those who have none.'
In direct line with his main attack on government, as being the incarnation of force, Tolstoy points out, in passage after passage, that the dominion of the propertied rests on physical force. 'If men hand over the greatest part of the product of their labor to the capitalist or landlord, though they, as do all laborers now, hold this to be unjust , ' this is done 'only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not.'
He declares his belief that the existing r^eacute;gime will be replaced by societies in which men will be held together by the mutual respect which, by an inherent characteristic of human nature, men who are less advanced in knowledge always pay to those whom they recognize as more advanced, and that in this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory, for 'the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes.'
This last sentence shows how basic with Tolstov is his objection to all external rule, his insistence throughout being that the individual must act in accordance with the dictates of his own reason. It must be stated, however, that Tolstoy distinctly refuses, even more emphatically than does Proudhon, to map out the future, his answer to the question of the form that it will take being: 'The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it. We are not at this moment able to get perfectly clear ideas of it. The details of a new order of life cannot be known to us; they have to be worked out by ourselves. Life consists only in learning to know the unknown, and putting our action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of the individual, in this the life of human societies and of humanity.'
But he is certain that the change that lies before us will be an approach to the truth and its realization. 'How can the forms in which truth appears be brought to naught by an approach to the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means will they be brought to naught. Only that which was false in the forms of its appearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine will but unfold itself the more splendidly.' Thus Tolstoy, who has a profound belief in the wisdom, beneficence, and righteousness of the entire scheme of life, is the most optimistic of revolutionists.
Nevertheless he faces the questions that are asked as to what defense there will be against enemies when the State shall have disappeared. As regards the protection against bad men, he says that they are not 'special creatures like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like committing crimes as little as we do,' and he adds, 'we know that the activity of governments, with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not correspond to the present stage of morality; their prisons, tortures, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals.'
The army and the police are those who render the régime of property possible. 'If there did not exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any -one whatever at the word of command, no one would dare assert, as the non-laboring landlords do so confidently, that the soil which surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man who does not work on it.' 'It would not come into the head of the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes, nor would any one say that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit.'
'Man lives not to be served but to serve, and in exerting his powers for others he finds the most complete realization of his highest and truest individuality.'
We have given much space to Tolstoy because he is unquestionably the foremost writer of the day, and his honesty and power are alike beyond cavil. In this combination lies the secret of his strength.LIBERAL OPPONENTS AND CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS OF UNABRIDGED FREE SPEECH.*
By THEODORE SCHROEDER.
IN the present contest for the unabridged freedom of speech guaranteed by our Constitutions, the sources of irritation and agitation are three. The first is Socialist groups, among which the most acute recent crisis came in Spokane, Washington. The issue there was one of time, place, and manner, rather than a question of the subject matter of the offending speeches. No doubt, the real secret motive behind the police activity was a vague hatred and fear of Socialism, but no definite issue was made over the right to advocate any specific doctrine. The only issue tendered by the authorities was as to the right to use the streets for purposes of agitation, and the right to conspire to violate alleged ordinances regulative of street oratory. These issues are of practical importance, as a means to an end for those wishing to use this method of propagating their tenets, but seldom offer definite controversy over free speech principles, such as are capable of academic discussion.
The second source of free speech agitation has come chiefly through my own effort in defense of freedom of sex- discussion, which naturally lead me to a consideration of the right to advocate other doctrines of disapproved, and even criminal, tendencies. Here definite statements of principles are asserted and denied. On these issues some of our liberal friends have taken sides, and their contentions will be somewhat discussed. My consideration of the right to advocate crime connects me in a subordinate way with another center of free speech interests.
The third focus of irritation in relation to free speech is Emma Goldman, in her effort to secure a hearing for Anarchism. The reason assigned for suppressing Emma Goldman's speech is the fear that evil consequences will come as the result of her utterances. It is believed that these evils arise directly from her intellectual attack upon religion,. the legally maintained family, and from her attacks upon our economic structure and coercive government.
It is claimed that because of these elements, or of some of them, her speeches have a tendency to lawlessness and riot. It is seldom claimed, and never truthfully claimed, that any riots have followed her speeches. Once she was convicted and punished on the pretense of inciting to riot, though no riot occurred. The official justification for suppressing Emma Goldman is in effect the assertion of a rightful power officially to suppress in advance of utterance, and punish after the fact, all discussions which are suspected or believed, even remotely and indirectly, to produce evil results. (However, I am glad to see that the hysteria over Miss Goldman and Anarchism is subsiding a little.)
The issues and arguments thus presented by the suppression of Miss Goldman, and of sex-discussion, should be fairly and frankly answered, or supported by our liberal friends. It seems to me that this has not been done, and I am going to call attention to this record for the purpose of exhibiting what seem to me to be the evasions and mistakes my liberal friends have made, in the hope that some may be dissuaded from the repetition of their folly, which may have been induced by an excessive zeal for retaining a speaking acquaintance with respectability.
One of the first essays I wrote in defense of freedom for sex-discussion was a paper presented to the XV International Medical Congress held in Lisbon, Portugal.1 There I argued that the only thing common to all 'obscenity,' is a subjective emotional condition. In other words, I tried to make a scientific demonstration that unto the pure all things are pure. Later, I wrote of obscenity and witchcraft as twin superstitions, asserting that both would cease to be when people ceased to believe in them. Now let us see how our liberal friends met the argument made in support of that contention.*Condensed from a lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Philosophical Association, March 13, 1910.
OUR LIBERAL EDITORS.
The Truth Seeker, probably the best of our Agnostic papers, editorially expressed its unconscious desire tohelp Mr. Comstock. The late editor wrote: 'We have little confidence in this argument and would enjoy seeing it demolished.'2 I promptly sent the editor another copy of the essay and a letter requesting that he demolish the argument, by pointing out errors of fact or logic. Profound silence was the only answer. However, other liberal friends were not disposed of so easily.
The editor of Secular Thought, the best free thought paper published in Canada, wrote: 'In our humble opinion, such an argument is childish in the extreme,'3 but he did not even attempt to answer it.
Dr. Robinson, who edits several magazines and claims to be a 'sane radical,' without criticising my argument assured his readers that 'This argument is exceedingly childish.'4 He also thought a popular dogmatism was a sufficient answer.
Mr. Comstock showed himself to be in entire harmony with these dogmatizing liberals. He comments in these words: 'It is all right, from the mere standpoint of debate and discussion, to theorize and say that there is no such thing as an obscene book or picture. The man who says it simply proclaims himself either an ignoramus, or is so ethereal that there is no suitable place on earth for him.'5 In a letter to me he explained that he was too busy to point out defects in my argument.
HAVELOCK ELLIS' STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX
Since these liberals thought it unadvisable to answer my argument, and were satisfied merely to express their emotional disapproval of my conclusions, I may content myself with an approving quotation, from one who does not advertise his radicalism, but is a mere scientist and happens to be the world's most famous sexual psychologist. The following words are from his last (sixth) volume of 'Studies in the Psychology of Sex:' 'Anything which sexually excites a prurient mind is , it is true, 'obscene' for that mind, for, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder remarks, obscenity is 'the contribution of the reading mind.''6 I think with this endorsement of my conclusion, and my unanswered argument, I can let this issue rest.
Dr. Robinson made argumentative comment which is in the nature of a confession and avoidance. He wrote: 'And so [as in the case of beauty and ugliness] it is in regard to obscenity. The thing in itself is not obscene; in the midst of the desert, or at the bottom of the sea, it is not obscene. But if it induces some people, however small a number, to commit indecent, unhealthy things, then that thing is indecent, and no amount of sophistry can do away with the fact.'7 He of course fails to see that he is only restating the argument formerly made in support of witchcraft. How absurd for a man with some of the credentials of a scientist, to argue that something which is not obscene in itself can be made so by vote. Had he read my argument intelligently he would have seen that by his last test even 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' comes under his condemnation as an obscene book.
There is another type of comment upon my argument, also in the nature of a confession and avoidance because it does not attack the argument itself, but which deserves more explicit criticism than it has hitherto received. The matter is well presented by the editor of Secular Thought, who no doubt believed he had delivered a stunning blow when he wrote this: 'Would Mr. Schroeder take a virtuous and modest lady friend to a Seeley dinner? If not, why not? The lady would not see anything obscene, because nothing objectively obscene exists, and consequently she would not blush or be shocked in the least. Would he take home a brutal coarse-mouthed jade from the Bowery and expect his wife to be entertained by her filthy jests? Would he show a number of so-called 'obscene' transparent picture-cards to his daughters and expect them to be edified thereby? Have Free Speech extremists made an alliance with Christian Scientists?'8
If a woman is afflicted with the modesty of-prurient prudery, then I would not take her either to a Seeley dinner or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If she was modest only in the sense of having a clean healthy mind and body, I might take her to either place. Sucha woman as I have postulated has viewed her own body without shame, or injury to herself, and would not be any more injured by other sights of mere nudity in art or nature. The experience of art students in life studies is a proof. If I refused to take a woman to a Seeley dinner, it would not be because there was any obscenity in the mere nudity of the dancer, but on account of the probable obscenity in the mind of other spectators, and who, by reason thereof, might make themselves disagreeable. It is these disagreeable experiences which come from associating with the coarse-mouthed jade of the Bowery, or the spiritualized sensualism of the lewd purists, or the impudence of the avowed voluptuary, which alone makes truly decent people avoid nudity, when such are around. It is not the - obscenity in the nudity, but that obscenity which is in the minds of some excessively lewd co-spectators, which I would seek to avoid, for myself and for my women friends. It is evident, therefore, that the questions propounded by the editor of Secular Thought do not in the least degree impair or answer my argument.9VARIOUS CONCEPTIONS OF FREEDOM.
From the comment presently to be quoted it appears that these editors, like Mr. Comstock, believe in a limited liberty by permission and do not see that my only object is to secure an unabridged and an unabridgable freedom of utterance as a matter of constitutionally guaranteed, natural right. I am opposed to all mere psychologic crimes; they are not. Failing to see this difference, they scold me for injuring this cause of freedom because I am asking for a liberty which they are willing to destroy. One of these editors thus condemned my effort to secure unabridged freedom of utterance: 'We certainly look for and work for more liberal laws than those under which we live at present, but we imagine they can only be enacted through an enlightened public sentiment, and we think their advent will be retarded rather than assisted by such ultra-rationalism as that of Mr. Schroeder.'10
Dr. Robinson scolded me for seeking the unabridged right to hear and read, which by the constitution is guaranteed to me and every other adult. This is what he mid: 'I wish to add that you would do the cause of free press if you admitted openly that you a much greater service do draw the line at nasty 'literature' and filthy 'art,' the purpose of which is exclusively to pander to the vices of immature youths and degenerate roués. If you claim that we must not draw the line anywhere, you destroy your usefulness, and rational normal people cease to consideryou seriously.'11
So strenuous is he in his insistence that I should be content with a limited intellectual liberty as a matter of permission only, that he even thought it necessary to falsify my contention. In an article on 'What we would have to maintain to find favor with certain 'Radicals,'' he wrote a paragraph manifestly intended for me. It reads thus: 'That there is no such thing as obscenity, and that all the pornographic filth sold secretly to young boys and old roués is pure and noble literature, and is declared filthy only by mentally strabismic and over-sensitive purists.'12
The editor of The Humanitarian Review, in order to justify himself in the matter of abridging my freedom to read what I please, was unconsciously driven to adopt the Anarchist position that the co-operation of which the State is the embodiment, has its moral justification only in the consent of the entire community. He wrote: 'There is not, never was, and never can be such a thing as absolute liberty or freedom (of speech or other kind of human conduct) of men in association.***** Society has the right, by his own agreement with it, to restrain him from doing (or saying, if you will) things harmful to society or any of its individual members.'13If I denied ever having made such an agreement, I suppose this 'rationalist' would tell me I was simply ignorant of what I had done in a former incarnation.
Thus this 'liberal' editor justifies every persecution which has ever blighted the human intellect, for all persecutors have claimed that the persecuted one uttered something 'harmful to society.' If by that phrase he had meant an actually realized material injury, he would have agreed with me. But he is evidently willing to punish imaginary and constructive injuries.
SIR OLIVER LODGE ON OBSCENITY.
Now let me contrast the foregoing views with those of mere conservative scientists and thinkers who believe in more intellectual liberty than these radicals whom I have quoted. Sir Oliver Lodge recently said: 'And lower than these [trashy, cheap novels] there lurks in holes and corners pernicious trash written apparently with the object of corrupting youth-if that horrible and barely human suggestion can be tolerated; but this is not literature, nor does it pretend to be, or if it does, it can only do so by obvious cant. The way to root out this abomination is to cultivate the soil round the growing organism, to strengthen the phagocytes of its own system, to make it immune to the attacks of vermin.'14
I will quote another who had similar views and yet was so conservative and respectable that even MR. Comstock says he ought to have known better:
'The tares of error must be left to grow in the same field with the wheat of truth, 'until the harvest' that is, until they bear their natural fruits and their true character reveals itself in actual deeds-when they may be rooted up, in the persons of those who illustrate them, and cast into the fiery furnace of the law!'15THE NUPTIAL OF FILTH AND AGNOSTICISM.
I am now going to quote a few paragraphs from authors who imagined themselves to be great antagonists, and I am sure that few could guess their names, merely from reading the following extracts, or, knowing their names, few could guess which part belongs to each.
'Suppose some man has been indicted, and suppose he is guilty. Suppose he has endeavored to soil the human mind. Suppose he has been willing to make money by pandering to the lowest passions in the human breast.
What will that [defense] committee do with him then? We will say, 'Go on; let the law take itscourse. **'***There is not a man here but is in favor, when these books and pictures come into the control of the United States, of burning them up when they are manifestly obscene. You don't want any grand jury there. ***** It is easy to talk right-so easy to be right, that I never care to have the luxury of being wrong.' * * *
'I believe in liberty as much as any man who breathes. * * * Every man should be allowed to write, publish, and send through the mails his thoughts upon any subject, expressed in a decent and becoming manner.'16 'I accord to every man the fullest scope for his views and convictions. He may shout from the housetop, or print them over the face of every fence and building for all I care.'
'There never had been a man arrested under these laws, except for sending obscene and immoral articles or ad- vertisements through the mails; there was but one reason why these laws should be repealed, and that was, because it interfered with their infamous traffic, and prevented these scoundrels from using the mails of the United States for their base purposes.'17 'I am not in favor of the repeal of those laws. I never have been, and I never expected to be.'18
'It is a question, not of principle, but of means.'19
Thus Ingersoll and Comstock are quite in harmony that something ought to be suppressed by arbitrary and lawless power, without accusation or trial. However, they were not agreed as to all that should be included within the arbitrary power. Ingersoll as a lawyer saw that frequently evil results came from the fact that obscenity could not be defined. He sought to remedy this by having the statute so amended as to make intent the essence of the offence. When the motive of the accused was to benefit society, no matter how mistaken he might be, Ingersoll would acquit. This much is to be credited to his generous impulses. He did not see that courts would have wiped out such a statute by saying that the accused must be presumed to have the intended the evil consequences, which a hostile judge would imaginatively and prospectively ascribe to the indicated literature, as the natural consequences of the act of the accused person.
Ingersoll failed to see another thing. In proposing to punish a man for having an evil intention, independent of any actual and material injury having flowed from it, he too was getting back to the evil basis of all persecution, namely a proposal to punish the mere psychologic crime of having an evil state of mind which had actually injured no -one. That Ingersoll should have been guilty of this does not speak well for his intellect. Of this proposition I shall have more to say later on.
LIBERALS ON THE RIGHT TO ADVOCATE CRIME.
I soon saw that the Constitutions made no exception for any particular class of intellectual 'evils,' but protected them all alike, so long as the mere utterance of one's sentiments was the only factor involved. Thus the advocate of crime might be punished as an accessory before the fact if a crime actually resulted from his advocacy, but could not be punished for his utterance, merely as such. Upon this proposition several of my radical friends took more or less definite issue with me. Mr. Edwin C. Walker, who usually sees very clearly in such matters, yet failed to see the importance of a precedent allowing one exception to unabridged freedom, wrote the following words:
'Even to argue for the right or alleged right to advocate the performance of criminal acts, on the ground that without unrestricted freedom for such advocacy of invasion the right to liberty of expression is denied, is to sacrifice essential substance to empty form. * * * * * What may or may not be a theoretical right in the premises is relatively unimportant; what is important, is the fact that to insist that we have such a right is to menace and cripple our defensible right of expression, to seriously limit, if not destroy, our opportunity to teach and persuade. It is enough for us to affirm the right and benefit of the utmost freedom for the discussion of all suggested peaceful changes in belief and society, and to keep it ever before all the authorities that in the long run their tenure of office depends far more on non interference with even the most incendiary utterance than on suppression of that utterance.'20
A century ago, when a similar argument was made for the unimportance of a little tax levied for the support of a particular church, Dr. Priestly made the answer that 'A penny of a tax is a trifle, but a power imposing that tax is never considered as a trifle, because it may imply absolute servitude in all who submit to it!' The few who may care to exercise the right to advocate what everybody else admits an evil may be relatively unimportant, but the power to suppress them merely on account of a speech the evil tendency of which is only speculatively, prospectively, and imaginatively ascertained, is the admission of a power to enslave the mind of all, and upon all subjects. Our Constitutions make no distinction.
Mr. Walker is very much interested in the question of freedom for sex-discussion. I can best show the evil of his admitting the power to suppress any mere expression of opinion by quoting an address made before the National Purity Federation by the Rev. Charles Carverno. He said:
'Let us look at a case that is somewhat plain. The police of this city will break up a gathering and prohibit speeches whose intent, or 'evident tendency, is to excite to acts of Anarchy. Why should not the same attitude be observed and the same action taken when a play is put on the boards whose tendency -is to cultivate indifference to sex crime? There is sex Anarchy as well as political or civic Anarchy. It is as important that society be protected against the one as against the other. The family, and that too predominately monogamic, is older than the State it is the MORE basic condition and relation.'21 Thus do Mr. Walker's chickens come home to roost, if I may adapt that homely proverb. We need to learn the solidarity of all liberty.
Mr. Louis Post, who edits the best American newspaper devoted to fundamental democracy, attacks my argument more directly. He said: 'To us it seems that the man who so advises another to commit a crime as to make himself an accessory before the fact, if the crime be actually committed, should be criminally liable though the crime be not committed.' * * * 'If it be destructive of freedom of speech to punish advocacy of crime when the crime advocated does not result, then it must be destructive of freedom of speech to punish advocacy of crime when the crime advocated does result. * * * Without the criminal intent, of course they should not be [punished]. But with the criminal intent, why not punish, whether the intended injury occurs or not ?'22
ON PUNISHING UNDESIRABLE STATES OF MIND.
Like Ingersoll, in the case of 'obscenity,' Post, in the case of advocacy of crime, would punish a mere undesirable state of mind, although no actual or material injury to any one has actually resulted therefrom. According to my way of thinking, this proposition implies the uttermost limit of outrage upon liberty of conscience. If there exists a power which can punish any mere psychologic 'crime,' I see no reason why it may not punish every other psychologic offense, for then no limit exists which ignorance, passion, or idiosyncrasy need respect.
Montesquieu tells us of a case of inquisition to discover, and punish, a man for having an unpopular state of mind. He says: 'Marsyas dreamed that he had cut Dionysius's throat. Dionysius put him to death, pretending that he would never have dreamed of such a thing by night if he had not thought it by day. This was a most tyrannical action, for though it had been the subject of his thoughts, he had made no attempt toward it. The laws do not take upon them to punish any but overt acts.'23 This inference as to a 'criminal' state of mind was no less logical than those which usually underlie the determination of criminal intent. It was as proper to punish that unpopular state of mind, or desire, as though it had been ascertained by other evidence.
But that was in Greece about fifteen hundred years ago, and yet substantially the same thing occurred only a few centuries ago, though the 'undesirable' state of mind was revealed in a little different manner. Fabian, in his Chronicle, tells us of a Welshman 'drawen, hanged, and quartered for prophesying of the kyng his Majesties death.'24 But why not, if any mere state of mind, unaccompanied by actual injury, can be made a subject of criminal punishment?
If under obscenity laws we may punish the expression or promotion in others, of an undesirable state of mind, why not punish the existence of such an undesirable state of mind even before verbal expression? Why wait until the harm of publicity is achieved? Then why not establish inquisitions to discover the existence of such undesirable states of mind and punish them? We already compel immigrants to disclose their mental condition, and if they have that undesirable state of mind known as non-resistant Anarchism we punish them, by denying them admittance to the United States. If we admit the existence of a power to punish any mere state of mind, any mere psychologic offense, entirely separate from any actual injury to any one, then it becomes a mere matter of legislative discretion to determine what states of mind shall be punishable, and a mere matter of judicial speculation how the existence of the prohibited state of mind shall be discovered, or proven. I cannot agree with these radical friends that such a power either ought to be, or is vested in any body of American legislators. In this matter I prefer to stand with those eminent and conservative gentlemen whom I shall now quote in support of my own contention. These are some of the conservative friends of unabridged freedom of utterance as a matter of acknowledged natural right.
LORD MACAULAY.
'The true distinction [between persecution and punishment) is perfectly obvious. To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime is not persecution. To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution; and is, in every case, foolish and wicked. * * *
'Let it pass) however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable consequence of making any attempt.'25
'It is altogether impossible to reason from the opinions which a man professes to his feelings and his actions and in fact no person is such a fool as to reason thus, except when he wants a pretext for persecuting his neighbors. * * * It was in this way that our ancestors reasoned, and that some people in our own time still reason about the Catholics. A Papist believes himself bound to obey the pope. The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen Elizabeth. Therefore, every Papist is a traitor. Therefore every Papist ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. To this logic we owe some of the most hateful laws that ever disgraced our history. Surely the answer lies on the surface. The church of Rome may have commanded them to do many things which they have never done. She enjoins her priests to observe strict purity. You are always taunting them with their licentiousness. * * * When we know that many of these people do not care enough for their religion to go without beef on a Friday for it, why should we think that they will run the risk of being racked and hanged for it?'26
A. J. WILLARD.
'The most general office of speech is to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of one in others. In this sense the liberty of speech is absolute, according to the principles of the law. It is impossible to conceive of an actionable wrong existing solely on the ground that one has attempted to impart his thoughts and feelings to another, unless some public law affords such remedy, or unless such speech is accompanied by some action that is an aggression on the rights of another. * * * 'It [speech] is a means of combining and constituting the common or mutual action of individuals, and, therefore, must be examined as among the means of performing such actions as depend upon co-operation. It would follow that, when an action is unlawful, speech used as a means to such end would partake of that unlawful character. This results from the fact that what is said, as well as what is done, may form a part of a transaction, and thus the lawful or unlawful character imputed to such transaction must affect all the elements of that transaction. Speech in this way may be part of the means of connecting the action of rioters or conspirators against governments. It may even point the nature and tendency of the actions which it accompanies, and thus become a means of conferring upon them the legal character of lawfulness or unlawfulness. * * * 'In all these cases, even where the character of what is spoken determines the legal character of what is done, it is the act alone that can convert the mere use of words into violations of right. Again, speech may be used for purposes of deception, and in that case, as in the cases previously mentioned, the act of wrong is not consummated by the speech alone, but by the action produced by the speech.
'In the instance of slander, words uttered may be attended by consequences rendering them injurious to the right of character. In these cases the wrong consists in what is actually or presumably done by individuals, by society at large-, or by the community, as a consequence of words spoken; the words in such a case being the cause of injurious consequences, are regarded as in themselves injurious.27
SIR LESLIE STEPHENS.'The doctrine of toleration requires a positive as well as a negative statement. It is not only wrong to burn a man on account of his creed, but it is right to encourage the open avowal and defense of every opinion sincerely maintained. Every man who saysfrankly and fully what he thinks, is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions. * * * Toleration, in fact, as I have understood it, is a necessary correlative to a respect for truthfulness. So far as we can lay it down as an absolute principle that every man should be thoroughly trustworthy and therefore truthful, we are bound to respect every manifestation of truthfulness. * * *
'A man must not be punished for openly avowing any principles whatever. * * * Toleration implies that a man is to be allowed to profess and maintain any principles that he pleases; not that he should be allowed in all cases to act upon his principles, especially to act upon them to the injury of others. No limitation whatever need be put upon this principle in the case supposed. I, for one, am fully prepared to listen to any arguments for the propriety of theft or murder, or if it be possible, of immorality in the abstract. No doctrine, however well established, should be protected from discussion. The reasons have been already assigned. If, as a matter of fact, any appreciable number of persons are so inclined to advocate murder on principle, I should wish them to state their opinions openly and fearlessly, because I should think that the shortest way of exploding the principle and of ascertaining the true causes of such a perversion of moral sentiment. Such a state of things implies the existence of evils which cannot be really cured till their cause is known, and the shortest way to discover the cause is to give a hearing to the alleged reasons .28
I will quote another who, though not to be classified as a conservative, was yet conservative enough to be elected to the English Parliament. In America he would have been denounced as an 'undesirable citizen' and treated as an object of suspicion.
AUBERON HERBERT.
'Of all the miserable, unprofitable, inglorious wars in the world is the war against words. Let men say just what they like. Let them propose to cut every throat and burn every house-if so they like it. We have nothing to do with a man's words or a man's thoughts, except to put against them better words or better thoughts, and so to win in the great moral and intellectual duel that is always going on, and on which all progress depends,'29
I think I have made it plain that there are scientists and other thoughtful persons who believe in freedom of utterance as an unabridgable right, while some professing radicals believe in it only as an abridgable liberty-by permission. In this respect I am quite willing to be classed with these conservative non-liberals.30
FREE SPEECH FUND
RECEIPTS.
Balance, as per March M. E., $140.78. Per Mr. Spanier, Denver, Colo.: Mr. Singman, 50c.; Mr. Lewin, 50c.; Mr. Letwin, 50c.: Mr. Citron, 50c.; Mr. Tivin, 50c,; Mr. Morris, 25c.: Mr. Goldberg, 50c,; Mr. Teback, 25c.; Mr. Sabinsky, 25c.: Mr. Tobatshuck, 25c.: Mr. Kaudritzer, 25c.: Mr. Spanier, 50c.: Mr. Lesson, 25c.: Mr. Tobin, 25c.: Mr. Feman, $1.00. Per A. Vogl, Denver, Colo.: J. H. Tilden, $10.00; A Friend, $5.00; Whitehead & Vogl, $5.00; Dr. Spivak I $1.00. Frank Monroe, $2.00. Per S. Oliveras, New York, $1.50; F. Barone, Prairie Creek, Ark., $1.00; A Friend, 50c. Total-$173.03.
EXPENDITURES.
Cheyenne F. S. Fight: Lawyer, $25.00; Telegr., Stenogr., Postage, $12.75; Loss through police interference, $38.25. Total-$76.00.
Receipts $173-03
Expenditures 76.00
Balance ............................. $97-03
FootnotesFootnote 1) See Proceedings, also Albany Law Journal, July, 1906.
Footnote 2) Truth Seeker, June 29, 1907.
Footnote 3) Secular Thought, August, 1907, P. 312.
Footnote 4) Altruria, June, 1907, P. 1
Footnote 5)The Light, January, 1907, p. 61.
Footnote 6)Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 6, P. 54.
Footnote 7) Altruia, --- 1907, p. 2.
Footnote 8) Secular Thought, Aug., 1907, P. 312.
Footnote 9) See Psychologic Study of Modesty in Medical Council, January, 1909.
Footnote 10) Secular Thought, Aug., 1907, P. 311.
Footnote 11) Altruria, June, 1907, P. 3.
Footnote 12) Altruria, March, 1908. (Italics are mine. T. S.)
Footnote 13) Humantarian Review, September, 1908, p. 108.
Footnote 14 ) Fortnightly Review, Feb. 1910, P. 264. (Italics are mine. T.S.)
Footnote I5) Oliver Johnson, Orange Jour. N. J., Aug. 24, 1878, requoted from 'Frauds Exposed.'
Footnote 16) Ingersoll, As He Is, pp. 124-128-129-131-116.
Footnote 17) 'Frauds Exposed,' by Anthony Comstock, pp. 402-420-421.
Footnote 18) Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 129.
Footnote 19) Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 129. Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 132.20) Liberty and Assassination, by E. C. Walker.
21) The Light, Nov. 1906, p. 236.
22)The Public, May 15, 1908, pp. 147-148.
23)Spirits of the Laws, V. I., P. 232, Aldine edition.
24) See end of Fabian's Chronicle, which he nameth the Concordance of Histories.
25) Macaulay's 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews.'
26)Macaulay's 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews.'
27)'The Law of Personal Rights,' PP. 349-351, by Willard. Italics are mine. T. S.)
28) Macaulay's 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews.' 26) Macaulay's 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews.'
29)Auberon Herbert Westminster Gazette, Nov. 22, 1 1893
30) For a more elaborate defense of my views on the precise point here involved see 'The Historical Interpretation of Unabridged Freedom of Speech,' in Central Law Journal, through March, 1910.
ANARCHY - Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of, invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
The anti-clerical movement in Spain sounds like an echo from the eighteenth century. It sharply accentuates the spiritual darkness still supreme in that priest-ridden country.
If social justice and liberty be the test of civilization, no nation can be said to be truly civilized. But humanity is gradually advancing toward the ultimate goal. In that progress there are degrees, but Spain has unfortunately remained far behind in the forward march. All but the most backward nations have long since passed the milestone of religious toleration, at least theoretically. But Spain is even now in the throes of a struggle, the extreme of which does not exceed the demand that non-Cathoic religions my be publicly practiced, and that religious orders shall be taxed and subject to the secular power, similar to other societies.
The separation of Church and State in Spain may still belong to the future. But ultimately it must come. And when it does, the result will be due to the leaven now at work in that country - the leaven, the original germs of which have been planted by the noble band of men whose devotion and high purpose were so brilliantly typified by the martyred Francisco Ferrer.
* * *
LEST the foul murder of Francisco Ferrer be forgotten, we call our readers' attention to the international demonstration to take place October 13, 1910. On that day the liberty-loving world will commemorate the first anniversary of the black deed committed by the power of darkness which is now facing its ultimate extinction in Spain and Portugal.
The American Ferrer Association, whose headquarters are in New York, will hold a commemoration meeting in Cooper Union, October 13. It is urging upon all sympathizers with Ferrer and his work to arrange similar meetings all over the country - on the same date, if possible. The Association is also preparing a Ferrer memorial issue, which will contain valuable documents and articles on the life and work of our martyred comrade.
All those willing to aid in the work, or desiring to order in advance copies of the memorial, should communicate with the Secretary of the Association, Mr. Van der Weyde, 241 Fifth avenue, New York.
* * *
THE puerility and blindness of the American Federation of Labor pass all comprehension. That 'powerful' organization calmly continues claiming victories for labor in the face of constantly growing oppression, sweeping injunctions, and almost uniform defeat in strikes.
For almost two decades the Federation has practiced the principles of craft unionism, with its resultant internal divisions and external policy of vacillation, compromise, and servility. The net result of twenty years of such 'struggle' is evidenced by the Draconian injunction of Judge Richardson, of the Superior Court of Boston, Mass. The injunction is the most vicious assault that organized labor has had to sustain from the courts. Not only does it prohibit the Photo Engravers' Union from conducting a strike against a certain Boston firm, but it also formulates general rules as to when the workers may or may not strike. It further paves the way for an almost total prohibition of union support to striking members, even when the latter are engaged in a 'lawful' strike.
Thus the chains of slavery are continually tightening around American labor. Are the fetters not yet sufficiently galling to open the workmen's eyes to the futility of conservative methods and craft disorganization? to convince them that the old methods of fighting exploitation have resulted in failure and defeat, and that only a united industrial army, determined and revolutionary, can hope to wage a successful war for economic independence?
* * *
THE death of James W. Van Cleave, president of the Bucks Stove & Range Company, no doubt afforded that concern a much-desired opportunity to recede from its former position of fighting organized labor.
Van Cleave, incidentally also president of the National Association of Manufacturers, was the bitterest foe of unions. He was a strong man, but hopelessly near-sighted as a captain of industry. His successor, the new president of the Bucks Company, sees much further. He knows that an apparently friendly attitude towards labor organizations is far more conducive to successful exploitation than open enmity. Accordingly, he hastened to enter into an agreement with the American Federation of Labor, unionizing the Bucks Stove & Range Company.
Claiming the changed attitude of the company as a victory for labor, Secretary Morrison, of the A. F. of L., evidently failed to realize the true significance of his explanation. The agreement, Mr. Morrison says, is a manifestation of the steady growth of sentiment among employers in favor of the principles for which the A. F. of L. stands. Such agreements are satisfactory to employers, promote peace of mind among employees, and are conducive to good workmanship.
Quite true. And as long as 'to be satisfactory to employers' is the ideal of the Gompers-Morrison organization, capitalism has nothing to fear in its stronghold. Indeed, it can afford to co-operate on the friendliest terms with Messr. Gompers, Morrison, et al.
* * *
WHETHER West or East, North or South, the local and State authorities rush to the aid of the employers, strikers are clubbed and shot down, and 'law and order' vindicated.
The proverbial peace of Warsaw reigns in the strike regions. In Columbus, Ohio, the troops help to run the street cars; in Brooklyn, N.Y., the police protect the interests of the Sugar Trust. At both places the good fathers of the Church advise the strikers to return to work, to be quiet and patient, though their wives and children starve to death.
It is remarkable what an amount of gratuitous advice labor receives. But still more remarkable is the fact that the generous advice, from whatever source, always sounds the same note : Be patient, keep quiet. Even our step-brothers, the Socialists, join the chorus, in no uncertain voice.
Unfortunately, the wage slave generally follows this advice - with evident results. Exploitation grows more intense, poverty constantly increases, the spirit of manly resistance is paralyzed. Some day the toilers may awaken to this all-too-evident fact. They will then realize that salvation from the terrible economic hell lies not in servile submission to robbery and extortion, but in organized, determined resistance with every weapon at hand.
* * *
THE New York Socialists are jubilant over the official approval of Mayor Gaynor who has declared them the most law-abiding citizens in the community. It only remains now to secure the O.K. of Taft to make the triumph of Socialism complete.
The first fruits of that triumph have already revolutionized the Socialist-ruled city of Milwaukee. Indeed, the change is so tremendous as to astonish even the much-experienced Victor Berger himself. He thus analyzes the situation in his Social Democratic Herald:
We have been in power now for almost three months. Now, what have we done for the working class as such? What measures have we passed and carried out that are of interest to the city collectively?
Let's see. We have abolished the three-headed board of public works and have put in a one-man commissioner. A good measure if our man makes good-but not a Socialist measure in itself.
We have passed an ordinance establishing the cost unit system. Also a very good thing and of great interest to the city collectively. But as yet we could not secure the right man to take the job, so this can hardly be called an accomplishment now.
We have introduced a number of ordinances to compel the street car company to give efficient and decent service. But so far there has been very little accomplished in that respect. The street car service is as irregular and insufficient as ever. The indecent overcrowding of cars is still going on.
It is much too early to pride ourselves on our success in Milwaukee. Only one thing is certain.
The most dangerous part of the situation is that some of our comrades seem to forget that we are a Socialist party. They not only begin to imitate the ways and methods of old parties, but even their reasoning and their thoughts are getting to be more bourgeois and less proletarian. To some of these men the hold of office - whatever they office may be - seems to be the final aim of the Socialist party. And even some of the aldermen seem to have lost their Socialist class consciousness - if they ever had any. Instead of that they seem to make it a point 'to be agreeable' to the old party politicians. Their kindness extends even to the memory of the old capitalist and grafters' regime.
Socialism may indeed be proud of its Milwaukee achievements 'in the interest of the collectivity and the working class as such.'
* * *
WITHIN the past three years over four thousand men have deserted from the United States army. Evidently the soldier's lot in the land of the free is not as alluring as Uncle Sam tries to make it appear in his broadcast advertisements for recruits.
The government has been deeply considering the question of desertion. At last it has solved the perplexing problem : more circulars should be sent out, containing accurate description of the deserters and offering a reward for their capture. All apprehended deserters should be punished with the utmost rigor.
It could not be expected, of course, that the government should stoop to a consideration of the causes leading to desertion. The brutal treatment, underfeeding and underpaying - these are matters beneath the government's notice. Indeed, a 'strong' government should rather consider the advisability of conscription. It holds out a rich promise for a 'great power.' Other monarchies have it, why not America?
* * *
JOHN KENNETH TURNER'S articles on 'Barbarous Mexico,' now running in the Appeal to Reason, are of the first importance to all revolutionists and should be studied carefully. Turner proves that the United States has, to all intents and purposes, annexed Mexico, the investment of $900,000,000 by American capitalists being the real governing power, and Diaz a mere tool of Washington.
He also shows that the leading monopolists of the United States - The Guggenheims, Standard Oil, etc., have seized the natural resources of Mexico, gained control of her railroads, and made themselves her masters. To do this they have not hesitated to bring about such tragedies as that of the war in which the Yaquis were decimated and driven into the most atrocious chattel slavery, American capitalists having bought their lands through connivance with Diaz and other American officials.
Furthermore, he proves conclusively that at this moment American capitalists are engaged in buying and selling Mexican slaves, just as the Southerners bought and sold them before the civil war. Thus the people of this country face the fact that their war was fought in vain, and that their government is today conniving actively in the perpetration of the very crime they shed oceans of blood to make impossible.
The work Turner is doing will prove infinitely more potent than the capture of Milwaukee or three academic harangues of 'Scientific Socialism' that have plagued our ears so long. It is putting putrid facts under the public's nose - facts so putrid that their stench cannot be stifled. For Turner shows us the pirates in the saddle ; a country raped in the name of business ; the most brutal form of chattel slavery again in vogue, and Americans active in the traffic.
* * *
SOME friends of Mother Earth, with a peculiar lack of the sense of proportion, have been led astray by the account of the lecture tour, contained in the last issue.
Thus one correspondent writes: 'I am so glad you have succeeded in placing the magazine on a safe financial basis.' Another informs us that he 'rejoices to learn that Mother Earth is out of financial difficulties.' A third sends congratulations on 'having made the magazine self-supporting,' and so forth.
Evidently our good correspondents are not the only ones who have gathered such an altogether exaggerated notion from the report. At any rate, our subscribers seem to have forgotten to remit during the last month, and as to our generous contributors - they apparently do not feel 'called,' since 'prosperity has overtaken' our publication.
For more the benefit of all concerned, we will state that, considering the expenses of a magazine, the surplus of five hundred dollars is barely sufficient to tide Mother Earth over the few summer months. As to having the magazine on a safe material basis, or out of financial difficulties, - that is out of the question, at least until the social revolution arrives. We therefore very gently call the attention of our readers to the eternal struggle for existence of a magazine like Mother Earth.
* * *
A SONG OF ACADEMIC LIBERTY
By Ida Ahlborn Weeks.
Arise, who bend o'er song and story,Who search for truth in her retreat;What profits all your learned gloryIf freedom suffer a defeat?Arise and listen! Down the agesThe shackles on the thinker ring;And what ye read on placid pagesWas once condemned by priest and king.
O ye who guard the sacred portalsWith vigilance of heart and brain,Through which the troop of the immortalsComes ever with their glistering train -O thinker, teacher, seer, bestowingSuch guardian service, shall ye beThe slaves of tyrants, all unknowingThe highest gifts are from the free?
Shall ye not see a Hamlet's passionPortrayed upon the tragic stage?Must truth be right to you in fashionWhen it is duly stamped with age?Shall ye not dare condemn the writerWho writes from vanity and greed?And dare to be the public smiterOf men who mount by evil deed?
Of old did Galileo mutterAs he recanted, 'yet it moves'? -Ye, too, below your breath must utterWhat blinded custom disapproves.O ye, for truth who groan in travail,Shall ye be driven to obeyThe barren slaves who basely cavilAt life and life's imperious way?
For you no sword that cleaves asunder,And not for you the piercing ball;But Eloquence has still her thunder, -The people are the open hall.The law that underlies our nationIs still to tyranny a foe;And to your help comes all creationWhen once ye are in freedoms's throe.
* * *
MARX VS. NIETZSCHEA REVIEW OF 'MEN VS. THE MAN'By Wm. C. Owen.
EVERYONE has heard of the man who apologized for the length of his letter with the plea that he had had no time to make it shorter.This has been my own experience with this correspondence between R. R. La Monte and H. L. Mencken, published under the title of 'men vs. The man, ' by Henry Hold & Co., New York. Mr. La Monte announces himself on the first page as a 'faithful follower' of Karl Marx, and is therefore, to me at least, a Socialist of the authoritarian type. Mr. Mencken, on the other hand, is a noted interpreter of Nietzsche, from the 'Redbeard' standpoint; that is to say , he is an individualist who believes that, by the basic law of nature, to the victor belong the spoils. Obviously the two men have nothing whatever in common save mutual discontent, yet their debate rips open the whole social question.
It was easy to make voluminous notes and mark paragraphs, on each of which an essay could be written. But to squeeze the discussion into a single article was a problem. However, since La Monte relies manly on Marxian economics and Mencken on biology, I found my criticism falling naturally into two sections, the first of which deals with La Monte's Socialist view.
As an orthodox Socialist La Monte proclaims that the advent of a new order is inevitable and gives reasons for his faith. First, society is organized today on lines that differ essentially from all antecedent forms, production being not for use but profit. Interrupt sale, and panic ensues. Secondly, panics are due to the diminished purchasing power of the workers, whose wages enable them to buy back only a portion of what their labor produces, thus leaving the market glutted. Thirdly, this condition makes a revolution inevitable, and we shall have a choice only between placing in power 'an oligarchy of Nietzschean Immoralists' or making 'the means of life the common property of all,' so abolishing poverty forever. Fourthly, we shall choose the latter alternative because the factory system is drilling us out of individualism and into collectivism. Fifthly, the revolution will be facilitated unspeakably by the automatic extinction of the middle class, as to which he makes this prophesy: 'Within a decade, as a social force or factor, they will be negligible.'
The foregoing is a full synopsis of La Monte's position, which is the orthodox Socialist position. For my part, I hold that each of the five statements is erroneous, and I shall examine them in detail.
(1) It is the universal Socialist catchword that modern production is for profit. But, unfortunately, for the argument, production always has been for profit. Man is instinctively a trader, and it has been pointed out repeatedly that his fact differentiates him most clearly from the other animals, who look only to the satisfaction of their own individual needs. The real distinction, as I see it, between society today and that of a hundred years ago is not that we produce for profit, but that we produce for profit on a vastly larger scale, improved means of communication having made the world our market. It is a difference of degree and not of kind, and I submit that the trouble is not profit, but the diversion of profit to those who have not earned it - a diversion due to the inequalities begotten by monopoly.
(2) In the dictum that panics come from decrease of purchasing power there appears to me to lurk an appalling confusion of thought. If I, a publisher, cut in half the wages previously paid by me to La Monte, a writer, La Monte will have simply less while I shall have more to spend. The book market will not be glutted, all that will happen being that the distribution of wealth will be changed, I becoming richer and La Monte poorer. Henceforth he will be able to make less demands on the labor market, but I shall make greater, and in each case the market will answer the demand by furnishing the required supply. Panics come, as the word implies, from loss of confidence, which may arise from various causes, among others from the glutting of the market by wild speculation or from ignorance of its actual demands. The latter has been a frequent cause of panics in the past, when little was known of the actual requirements of the market, and statistics, trade journals, etc., were still in their infancy. To-day, however, the gauging of the market's needs is becoming one of the exact sciences. Our last panic, that of 1907, came at a time when factories were rushed with orders, and was a monopoly-manufactured panic, underconsumption having nothing to do with it. Surplus value, or - to use a term I prefer - unearned increment , has simply the effect of distributing wealth inequitably, but wealth may be distributed with utter inequity, as it has been for ages, without any glutting of the market. Between surplus value and panics there is, in my opinion, no connection, and the Socialist philosophy on that head seems to me false and one that leads to deplorable conclusions, making them rely on expectations that are doomed to disappointment.
Thirdly, La Monte's dogmatic declaration that the inevitable can be must be either to a Nietzschean oligarchy or a collectivism of the Marxian type seems to me preposterous presumption. Single Taxers, for instance believe that with free land and the abolition of special privilege society will abolish poverty, competition becoming the purest form of social co-operation. The Individualist Anarchists of the Tucker school, who follow Proudhon, Josiah Warren, etc., believe, as do the Single Taxers, that the land must be freed, but consider that monopoly of the medium of exchange - money - also must be abolished. Both these groups, together with the Anarchist Communists, believe that, given equality of opportunity, society would arrange itself spontaneously along decentralized lines and not under centralized authority. There is a world of difference between these schools and that of Marx, and it seems to me supremely ridiculous on the part of Mr. La Monte to assert that there are only two possible alternatives. I myself consider that most radical changes will and must be made, but I would lay long odds that they will not be to any great extent along the lines of the present Socialist platform, and that the Socialist platform itself will change materially. Nothing ends as it began, metamorphosis being a universal law.
Fourthly : La Monte argues that the machine system is drilling us for such a centralized collectivism as Karl Marx visioned, and thereby rendering that the next imperative step in social evolution. To me this is one of those loose generalizations any one can make. You might argue similarly that congregation in cities makes us co-operators, whereas nowhere is life conducted in so narrowly selfish, cut-throat a fashion as in a great metropolis, where one may occupy a house for years without even knowing the name of one's next-door neighbor. I question seriously whether there was not more true co-operation among the handicraftsmen of the past, and among the villagers who toiled side by side in the fields before harvesters were invented. Consider how the French peasant, for example, to-day co-operates in the hiring of machinery. But, however this may be - and absolute proof is of necessity lacking - the factory system affects only a small proportion of the population. The enormous residue is receiving, as I submit, not a drilling for the Co-operative Commonwealth, but daily instruction in the individualistic need of looking after 'Number One.' If you are prophesying as to the future this point is of importance.
Fifthly: The middle class 'is fast disappearing before the advance of the trust and the department store' and 'within a decade, as a social force or factor, they will be negligible.' Here La Monte indorses the leading dogma of his master - that the big swallows up the little capital, and that the bourgeoisie is destined to dig its own grave. This fatalistic philosophy, which has taken the backbone out of the Socialist movement for the last two generations, was, to my thinking, the profoundest error into which Karl Marx fell ; and he fell into it precisely because he was a dialectician, who reasoned from assumed premises, and not an inductive scientist who built on facts.For even when he wrote, the middle class in Germany was rising to power, and for the last fifty years in every country its growth has kept pace with the development of capitalism. Thus the United States, which is the most advanced of all capitalist countries, has the largest and most powerful middle class, whereas in Russia and Mexico, where capitalism is still in its infancy, the middle class is but now coming into being. Tcherkesoff, in his 'Pages of Socialist History,' has given the absolute proof of this as it applies to Europe, and I could more than duplicate it for this country did space permit. A single instance. The owner of an automobile does not belong to the proletariat. Here in Los Angeles, a city of some 325,000 inhabitants, there are 12,000 automobile owners, the number having increased one-third within the last twelve months. Only a humorist would see in this the impending bankruptcy of the middle class.
It appears to me that Marx, engrossed in his study of the capitalist as manufacturer and distributor of goods, lost sight of the far greater enterprises that engage his activities - activities in which combination, and not competition, plays the most important part. The very titles of the Trusts which dominate the modern field of industry - such as oil trust, lumber trust, coal trust, copper trust, railroad trust, etc. - should suggest to us that in the seizure of natural resources capitalism has dealt the masses its deadliest blow. And in this great robbery combination, and not competition, has been the weapon. Companies without number are formed to exploit this and that form of natural wealth, and invariably the first aim of the promoters is to 'interest money' - to combine. It has not been a question of the big capitalistic fish eating up the little capitalistic fish, but of the capitalists, as a species, making a terrific onslaught on the proletariat spawn.
Moreover, in answer to the claim that all wealth is centering in a few hands, Kropotkin - a hated Anarchist, of course, but somewhat of a scientist - has shown in 'Fields, Factories, and Workshops' that decentralization has been a most marked feature of recent industrial development. A century ago England was the workshop of the world. To-day each country is doing its own manufacturing, even China having joined the procession.On this Pacific coast thirty years ago San Francisco was the distributing center from Arizona to British Columbia. To-day she has a hundred rivals in towns that have become manufacturing and jobbing centers. I may add that in 'Anarchy vs. Socialism' I have given my reasons for thinking we are on the eve of an infinitely vaster decentralization movement.
La Monte says: 'If one fact stands out above another in modern financial history it is that stock companies are the most efficient means ever devised to transfer the savings of the middle and working classes to the pockets of the lords of finance.' La Monte, the middle class is composed mainly of business men. They know what is to their own interest, believe me, far better than you, a literary person, do; and they would not run more and more to the formation of joint stock companies if it was their experience that they lost money by so doing. The fact is that the invention of joint stock companies has rendered capital infinitely more fluid, and has given moneyed men, of all grades, far greater opportunities of combining their means for the exploitation of the workers than they previously enjoyed. It is one of the great causes of the increase of the middle class and the impoverishment of the workingman, for it has led directly to the bringing of natural opportunities under corporate control on a scale impossible to individual effort.
I have now dealt with La Monte's five central positions, and it is needless to say that they are the five central positions of the orthodox Socialist movement in which he is an active worker. I submit that I have shown good reasons for holding that each of those positions is false - most tragically false - and if they are false the matter is no light one. For, while the Socialist movement will continue to grow throughout the world, thanks to certain vitally true instincts that inspire it, this false philosophy is imposing on us a spurious Socialism which may pick us out of the frying pan of one slavery only to land us in the hotter fire of another. This is what Herbert Spencer, Renan, Tolstoy and many other thinkers have feared, and their fears are not to be dismissed, at the behest of mere rhetoricians, without examination. At any rate, all errors will retard the progress of the movement, making the transition to the new order slower and more painful.
This criticism grows too long, but I wish to give an illustration of the looseness of speech in which leading Socialist lights have indulged - a looseness that always means inexact thought. La Monte quotes with approval the following from Ferdinand Lasalle : 'Its (the working class') interest is in truth the interest of the whole of humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, and its domination is the domination of all.' I remark that freedom and domination are incompatible terms, the one being contradiction of the other. It is precisely the domination of the working class, operating through the tyranny of the majority, that we, passionately attached to freedom, regard with such apprehension. But on this head Menchen is eloquent, and it is time to turn to him.
Meanwhile, since I have criticised La Monte freely, I wish to quote one sentence from him of which I approve most heartily. In his third letter he says : 'What vast wealth in practice consists of are (sic) certain legal papers that give their holders the power to compel other men to work for them.' Correct, eternally correct. But cannot that monstrous iniquity be abolished without the erection of the clumsy structure Marxian Socialism sketches?
(To be continued.)
* * *
NOTE
About October 15th I intend starting on a lecture tour which will extend as far as Chicago, or perhaps farther west. Organizations and Comrades wishing to arrange lectures should kindly communicate with me at once.VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE531 N. Marshall StreetPhiladelphia, Pa.
* * *
ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUMEmerson
NOTHING is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statutory right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or act.
Is not the State a question? All society is divided in opinion on the subject of the State. Nobody loves it, great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance ; and the only defense set up, is the fear of doing worse in disorganizing.
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints as well as the solar system ; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange, too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them dares to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen ; and men of talent and women of superior sentiment cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men - if indeed I can speak in the plural number - more exactly I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for one moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word 'politic,' which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick.
This undertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers as in a pair, only not so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but when a quarter of the human race assumes to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic besides private ones. For any laws but those which men can make for themselves are laughable.
This is the history of governments - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rules from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. The tendency of the times favors the idea of self-government, and leave the individual for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution which work with more energy than we believe, while we depend upon artificial restraints. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions, nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an end.
Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. For according to the order of nature which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus: there will always be a government of force where men are selfish ; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post office, of the highways, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered.
* * *
AN IMMORAL WRITER By Hippolyte Havel.
GENIUS without end has been discovered of late by our critics and art connoisseurs, and quickly transplanted to our shores. True, it takes several decades for our discoverers to find really great talent. Still, what can one expect : all good things require time. A work of art must first be stamped with the approval of European connoisseurs before it can hope to receive tardy artistic appreciation and commercial value in America. We are modest - the rehashed fully satisfies us. Was not Frank Wedekind discovered for us but lately, and - wonderful to say - Przybyszewski, the German-Polish genius, now also celebrates here his resurrection. The good Stanislaus would certainly never have dreamed of it. After he had given up German as the vehicle of his artistic expression and passed through repeated accouchements in Polish, his original German offsprings are suddenly discovered by our critics and translated into English. If our discoveries continue at the same rate, the American public may within a decade or two become acquainted with a truly great artist, one whose works are being read and passionately discussed in Russia, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan - M. Artzibashev.
At present, however, there is slender hope of such a contingency. Do not our successful translators consider Artzibashev immoral? As patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel, so the final argument of the impotent critic against a disliked author is an appeal to morality. He is conclusively annihilated by such critics with the charge of demoralizing the youth, and is damned vicious. No eminent artist ever escaped this charge ; it would almost seem as if it were the ultimate crown of genius.
But Artzibashev is not an ordinary sinner. He is not merely a demoralizer of youth, morally; nay, even worse : he is the enemy of governmentally ordered life ; in fact, an Anarchist. This the partisans of State find impossible to forgive him.
Next to Andreiev and Gorki, Artzibashev is the most prominent personality in modern Russian literature. Since the appearance of his novel 'Sanin,' he must be classed with those whose names are inseparably connected with the annals of their time. In the history of Russian literature 'Sanin' will find its deserved place among masterpieces, of Gogol Gontcharov, Dostoyevski, Turgeniev, and Tolstoy. Its socio-historical significance cannot be doubted. Intellectual Europe is agreed upon it.
* * *
M. Artzibashev was born in 1878 in a small city of Southern Russia. By descent he is aTartar, yet with a considerable mixture of other blood ; his great-grandfather on the maternal side was no less a man than Kosciusko, the famous Polish patriot. His father was a small landowner, living in straightened circumstances. His mother died when he was but three years old, bequeathing to him tuberculosis as his sole inheritance. After a course in a provincial gymnasium, Artzibashev, at the age of sixteen, entered an art school. Like Goethe, he was enthused with art, believing to possess the talent of a painter. He fared badly : he lived in squalid quarters, often suffering hunger ; but worse than all , he even lacked money for colors. To earn a living he drew caricatures and wrote sketches for obscure papers. Some of his writings, especially 'Pasha Tumanov' - dealing with the then suicide epidemic among the college youth - attracted the attention of Miroliubov, the publisher of a magazine of liberal tendencies. Among the collaborators on the latter were Maxim Gorki, Leonid Andreiev, A. Kuprin, and other modern writers. Miroliubov, recognizing the talent of young Artzibashev, offered him to join the editorial staff and thus paved the way for his future literary career.
It was during this period, seven years ago, that Artzibashev wrote his famous work, 'Sanin.' The manuscript was declined by several publishers, who feared to offend against the censorship. The revolution came. The emotional life of the people underwent a tremendous change. All classes manifested a ravenous hunger for literature. The editors of 'Sovremenni Mir,' which had previously declined 'Sanin,' now remembered the work and hastened to publish it.
This circumstance is not generally known. The public was led to believe by the Russian critics that 'Sanin' was the product of reaction, and that Artzibashev followed the modernist tendencies of the decadent school, manifesting themselves in Russian literature with the downfall of the Revolution. In reality, however, the 'Sanin' manuscript had already been perused by prominent writers in 1903, two years before the great upheaval.
Following 'Sanin,' Artzibashev wrote a collection of splendid sketches, among them 'Millions' and 'The Death of Ivan Lande.' The latter assured his fame in Russian letters. Various works, written during this period by Artzibashev for propaganda purposes, came under the ban of the censor, and only the timely success of the Revolution saved the author from prison.
Artzibashev is now living in Crimea, undergoing - according to a letter to his translator - treatment for consumption, 'without special hop of cure.'
* * *
'Sanin' has caused an almost unprecedented division in the ranks of intellectual Russia. Its effect can be compared only with that produced by such works as 'Yevgeni Oniegin,' 'Fathers and Sons,' 'What's To Be Done,' and 'Kreutzer Sonata.' Even if its purely artistic qualities had not stamped 'Sanin' as one of the most important literary events, socio-historic reasons would have impressed upon the work lasting significance. Its social effects alone characterize 'Sanin' above the class of merely literary effort.
Similarly to Turgeniev's 'Fathers and Songs,' 'Sanin' was understood neither by the reactionists nor revolutionists. At the same time that the government confiscated the romance, the revolutionists stigmatized ARtzibashev as the ally of the reaction. But most of all 'Sanin' was misinterpreted by 'the youngest youth.' A wild sexual intoxication followed upon the publication of the book. The college youth formed themselves into associations for the unhindered practice of eroticism. They called themselves Saninists, claiming to live the vies of Artzibashev's hero.
These excesses are easily explained psychologically. The Revolution was suppressed ; the intellectuals withdrew ; the revolutionary parties became disintegrated. General weariness took the place of activity. But the stimulated energies would not be so easily stemmed : the wakened emotions demanded satisfaction. Such feelings dissolve themselves most readily in sexual passion. Because of its erotic suggestiveness, 'Sanin' became the programme of the young generation. A misinterpretation, from which almost all extraordinary works have in their day suffered.
In his 'Reminiscences' Goethe says in regard to 'Werther's Leiden':
The influence of this book was so great and unusual because it appeared at exactly the right moment. As it requires but a small fuse to explode a tremendous mine, so the explosion which thereupon followed among the public was so strong because the young generation had already undermined itself, and the shock so terrific, because everyone, being filled with exaggerated demands, unsatisfied passions, and imaginary sufferings, was about to explode. the public cannot be expected to receive a spiritual work in a spiritual manner. In reality only the contents, the material, were considered; to it was added the old prejudice concerning the printed word : namely, that its purpose must be didactic. But true art has none : it neither praises nor condemns ; it merely presents the emotions and actions in their sequence, and thus it enlightens and teaches.
These splendid words apply precisely to 'Sanin.' Artzibashev wrote neither a defence nor a slander of the Russian youth. He pictured in Sanin a new type of Russian life, a type whose spirit lives in the strongest and most daring representatives of new Russia. Sanin is an individuality which has broken with all the views dominant in modern life, an individuality which has withdrawn from all political parties, however revolutionary, - a man who stands alone.
The book is an apotheosis of individualism. Were a classification attempted, Sanin would have to be characterized as a Stirnerian, an Individualist Anarchist. He represents the reaction against the old type of revolutionist, who did not consider his own individuality, and who devoted his whole life to the 'cause,' to the people. But Artzibashev did not content himself with portraying merely the ordinary, self-satisfied Stirnerian. In 'The Workman Shevyriov,' from the 'Stories of the Revolution,' he pictures the complement of Sanin in the active revolutionary Individualist.
Sanin and Shevyriov give a complete view of Artzibashev's social and political beliefs. Either total aloofness from the problems of the day, and the free development of one's individuality, - that is Sanin ; or Shevyriov's intense participation in the struggle with every fiber of his being, perishing in active resistance.
The post-revolutionary period, beginning with the October manifesto of 1905, followed within two years by the downfall of the great social expectations, serves as the background of the 'Stories of the Revolution.'
The original unity of the Revolution is broken, its tremendous energy paralyzed. In place of the great Socialist parties, side-tracked by parliamentarism, we find the actions of separate organizations of Anarchists and Maximialists, partly loosely connected with each other, but mostly operating independently. In their midst are the solitary figures, those who believe in nothing except themselves, and who, protesting by deed, perish.
In this milieu live the types described in the 'Stories of the Revolution.' They contain powerful characterizations of great psychologic depth. These stories are a part of Artzibashev's Weltanschauung. They are, as he himself states, the sermon of his dearest ideas, his political faith : Anarchism.
My development - Artzibashev writes in a short autobiography - has been strongly influenced by Tolstoy, although I have never shared his opinion regarding 'resist not evil.' He overwhelmed me only as an artist, and it has been difficult for me to free my style from his influence. Almost a similar role Dostoyevsky and partly Tchechov played in my life. Victor Huge and Goethe also stood before me. These five names are those of my teachers and literary masters. Much has been written about Nietzsche's influence on me. The assertion always seemed to me peculiar, for the simple reason that I am not familiar with Nietzsche. I am better acquainted with Max Stirner, whose views I share.
* * *
THE PARABLE OF THE BENEFACTORBy Lillian Browne.
ONCE a village was stricken with famine and pestilence. The people were rotting with disease, and, indifferent to life, listlessly awaited Death's release. Yet, so persistent is Life, and so reluctant to resign his reign, he created an intolerable thirst and tormented even the weakest with hopeless desire.
By chance a stranger came to the village gates which with astonishment he beheld unguarded. He saw the ravages of disease and death and, although footsore and weary, turned back to a hillside where a clear, unpolluted stream shone sparkling in the sunlight. The earthen jar which he brought from the dried-up cistern was large and heavy. This he filled with cool, clean water and, bending his back, walked with careful haste back to the village.
Many times he traveled back and forth between the village gates and the hillside stream and often he tottered with weariness. And the people began to bless their benefactor and to say : 'God has sent us a saint from Heaven in our hour of dire distress.'
And some began to revive, and a few crawled to the spring
Back and forth the stranger went, until exhausted, he fell under his burden and the earthen jar broke into a thousand fragments where he stumbled to the ground.
And they who awaited his coming became fevered and impatient ; and they who crawled to the spring cursed the stranger, saying : 'He was a wicked fellow. See, he wasted the water and broke the urn.'
* * *
PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE GHETTOTHE ESTHETIC SIDE OF JEWTOWNBy Sadakichi Hartmann.
WHAT strange part of the city have we strayed to? Are we really in New York, at the beginning of the twentieth century, or have we suddenly been conveyed to some European town of the medieval times? The sight that greets our eye reminds us indeed of the various descriptions which we have read of Italian Ghettos and the Judengassen of Prague and Amsterdam.
Everywhere Hebrew faces and Hebrew signs, and the incessant chatter of 'Yiddish,' the queer jargon of the street, which all Jews, no matter of what nationality, use in their daily life of bargaining, surrounds us on all sides.
No mistake, we are in Jewtown. No other part of the city bears such an outlandish aspect and is so overcrowded in its thoroughfares. The traffic is so dense that it threatens to reach the neighboring districts and inundate all New York.
Hucksters' and peddlers' carts and wagons long the curb form two rows of booths in the streets, and along the houses, beneath old shreds of awnings are tow other rows, where the same perpetual marketing goes on. Marketing of a very peculiar order, for everything has to be ridiculously cheap to find a buyer. The push-car market in Hester and the adjoining side street is like an ambulating department store, which restricts itself to a lively trade in damaged goods. It is an avalanche of eatables (reported as 'not entirely unwholesome' by the Health Department), queer staples emptied on counters improvised on ash barrels, cases torn asunder and barrels turned upside down, with their contents poured on the sidewalks ; bags of white and blue bed-tick and loaves of bread in the shape of giant crullers bursting out of them. And everywhere women, young and old alike, with odd shawls and head coverings, rummage with both hands in the displayed wares and jabber about the quality, which is never beyond suspicion, and the price, which, no matter how low, is still too high. How they haggle about the fraction of a cent, how anxiously they figure and pluck at each purchase, even if it is only a bit of frowsy soup green.
To the Gentile, the aristocratic uptowner, the scene is like a nightmare. It reminds him involuntarily of some cheap dining-room of vast dimensions, which being open night and day is still warm and greasy from the previous meal, its huge table cloth in the form of paving stones, covered with remnants and refuse. A restaurant, where the orders to clear away are never given, and where clean linen are unknown things.
And as a fitting background to this poverty and filth loom long rows of tenement houses, dusty bright walls with broken windows, shutters dangling on one hinge, and grimy fire escapes crowded with every sort of refuse. Each of these fire escapes is a rag shop in miniature. Bedding is being aired on the black railings. The family wash flutters gaily in the wind and forms a sort of canopy to that open-air lumber room. These are boxes which serve as impromptu ice-boxes, battered cook-pots and stewing pans used to make the Sabbath broth, faded rugs, heaps of rags, shapeless mattresses, on which two families may sleep at night, a lot of objects without a name that have ceased to have either color or form, all innumerable times washed by the rain, bleached in the sun, and again and again covered with the rising dust and dirt of the street.
Yes, life in Jewtown with its sunless backyards and dark alleyways, its damp cellars and ramshackle rooms, has at the first glance but little grace and few poetic charms. To the curious sightseer it appears doubly bold and materialistic. The pleasures are even scantier than its fare, as it needs must be with a community which has but one passion : that of thrift. The synagogues of Bayard street, where venerable-bearded men with quaint skull-caps and long skirted caftans worship as in the days of Israel, only add to the gloom.
Yet Jewtown, despite all its social shortcomings and hygienic disadvantages, has its esthetic side, which we, who know the Ghetto largely from Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda' and Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto,' or from an accidental visit to Baxter or Ludlow streets, should not overlook.
The Hebrew quarter is undoubtedly the most picturesque part of New York City, i. e., the one which would lend itself most easily to esthetic interpretation. It overflows with suggestions. Its very dinginess and squalor render it interesting. For filth - as disagreeable as it is in actual contact - is the great harmonizer in the pictorial arts, the wizard who can render every scene and object - even the humblest one - picturesque. It generalizes each pictorial vision and takes out all discordant notes. Rembrandt realized this ; each of his genre pictures is a glorification of human squalor, taken by the quivering rays of the supernatural light. And Raffaelli, whose paintings look as if drawn with colored chalks and stained with mud, has become the modern champion of pictorial dirt. He has accomplished with his suburban scenes, almost too realistic in their filth and poverty-stricken atmosphere, a feat similar to Zola, who never tired of delineating the seemy side of Parisian life, and whose fertile pen has transformed many a heap of refuse into a heap of roses.
Look at Whistler's Thames etchings. They will show you that a modern dwelling, clean and comfortable, can never have the same pictorial fascination as a ramshackle structure in some waste logicality of the river frontage, the haunts of vagabondage and pauperism. Even an ordinary garbage dump with its heaps of shining tin cans, will convince us of the truth. It contains such a wealth of subtle values and warm color notes and varieties of texture, that it should send, not only painters but every person in search of the picturesque into ecstacies. The New York Ghetto is full of such pictorial incidents, and I know of no place with promises more artistic possibilities for out-of-door photography than this curious hive of human industry in the lower East-side.
The settings for a picture are ready at every moment of the day. They surround one on all sides. One never need to wish for a composition. The crowd takes care of that.
This is the true drama of life that is enacted here along the curbstones. Humorous and pathetic scenes follow each other in endless variety.
The army of peddlers, who have neither a stand nor a cart, but carry all their wares in a basket, or dangling over their shoulders, carelessly make their way through the hubbub of the crowd. How they ever get rid of their notions is a mystery. The competition is a most bitter one. They seem to move in brigades of half a dozen ore more, and if one of them is on the verge of making a bargain, the other will cut his price until nearly all profit is gone. The suspender peddler, one of the most characteristic figures of Jewtown, in particular never seems to make a sale. There are so many of them and their article is an absolute luxury, as for Jacob A. Riis so aptly remarks: 'The pants of Jewtown hang down with a common accord, as if they had never known the support of suspenders.'
Everybody seems to peddle one thing or another in these thoroughfares. Even the womenfolk engage in the precarious business, and every bargain is sure to form an interesting group. Some dispense their wares from old tubs and peach baskets, other perambulate whole dried goods stores in cast-off baby carriages. Space is at a premium in Jewtown. Almost every hallway, cellar, and alleyway has been turned into a shop. How picturesque are some of the second-hand stores and old clo' shops with their 'pullers in,' and above all else the antiquarian shops which are littered with brass and copper ware of every description. Nothing is so bad that it could not be turned to some use. Everywhere in the midst of overcrowded tenements, the same pushing, struggling, babbling, and shouting. No matter whether of Bulgarian, Roumanian, Russian, or Polish origin, they can all understand each other. Their gesticulations alone seem to be sufficient for that.
And through this ceaseless traffic and clamor now and then men, groaning under heavy burdens of unsown garments, stagger along the sidewalk and disappear in the dark hallway of some Ludlow street tenement. They represent the dark side of Jewtown which neither legislation nor charity can altogether improve, but we have no time to follow them to the qualmy rooms of the sweatshops , - the pictures there are too dreary, and we are only in search of the picturesque.
What a chance to study types! One occasional visit would soon make us acquainted with the candle women, the instalment peddler, the Thora teacher, the Schatchen, and the Chasen (i. e. prayer leader), five types found nowhere on American ground save in the Ghetto. We would learn to differentiate between the orthodox Jews who still keep up the habit of owning three special sets of clothes, one for holidays, one for half holidays, and one for every day life, and the young bucks of Jewtown in their semi-fashionable dress who do not even hesitate to dive into a Gentile restaurant.
How impressive the old men look. Whole chapters of the Bible seem to be personified in them. They smile sadly, absent-mindedly into their long, white beards, as they sit on the curbstones, their lean hands folded across their knees. Frugality is their life's philosophy. They are attired in cast-off garments, picked up God knows where. Their favorite head covering seems to be the crowns of old felt hats, out of which they have made skull caps by cutting off the brims.
The women also are interesting. What anatomical peculiarities and features of ethnological interest. The shriveled up old ones are hideous in their emaciation and disheveled hair, and resemble witches. Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. With their colored petticoats, and shawls covering their shoulders, with their black hair plaited in thick tresses or looped up behind the ears, some have the grand air of Oriental queens, fallen to the very depths of penury. And the children - there is always a whole flock of them on the move. They overflow the streets and make a crowd wherever there is an empty spot. Their tatters beggar all description. Here a baby crawls about, dressed in an old chintz curtain, there a boy has a man's dress coat, from which the tails have been torn, flapping against his calves. And how dirty they are, one might mistake them for Florentine bronzes, those charming little figures of the Renaissance period.
Jewtown is a world in itself, and a world unknown to most of us. I believe it would be a grateful task to explore it. Very little has been done until now.
True enough, Jewtown has its own literature. The names of Peretz and Gordin are on every tongue. Sheikevitch was the Alexander Dumas of the Ghetto and wrote more than two hundred volumes. There is no lack of other talented writers. I only mention Sholem Aleichem, Seiffert, Biabeck, and the poets Rosenfeld, Reisen, Winchevsky. But they write in Hebrew and Yiddish, and tell us but little of their own people. People who live in squalor do not wish to be reminded of it. For realistic glimpses of Jewtown we have to turn to the writings of Bernstein and Abraham Cahan, who have grown up in the milieu of the Tenth Ward. They have contributed a few charming episodes to our literature, but until now nothing of importance or of lasting value.
The artists, with the exception of a few illustrators, have run shy of these subjects, and the East-side art leagues, with localism as their aim, consist of too young an element who have shown much more than enthusiasm.
Perhaps the photographer will be the first to conquer their domain. He will any way be able to give us instantaneous fragments of life, but if rendered in their most concise aspects, they may after all reflect a good deal of the true character of the children of the ghetto, who despite their lifelong hunt for wealth can boat of qualities which, with their warm breath of sympathy and spasms of joy, appeal to the recognition of every observer.
* * *
TO FRIENDSHIP
Hail thou, Friendship!Earliest red of morningOf my highest longing!Endless oftenSeemed the path, the night, to me;And all lifeHateful, without aim!Now will I live doublyThat in thine eyes have beheldVictory and dawn,Thou dearest Goddess!-Friedrich Nietzsche.
* * *
INTERNATIONAL NOTES
GUSTAVE HERVE, the famous anti-militarist and editor of La Guerre Sociale, is now serving a four-year sentence at Clarevout, the prison wherein were, at one time, incarcerated Peter Kropotkin and Jean Grave.
In taking leave from his comrades, Herve wrote: 'Though not as speedily as our impatience would have, we are nevertheless marching onward. This certainty should serve as a great impetus to all those who have retained their faith in, and enthusiasm for, a brighter future. I beg of my friends and comrades not to fret on my account. I feel strong enough to face, like Blanqui, thirty-two years' imprisonment, if need be. Nor would that for one moment even cause me to look upon life from its unpleasant side, nor rob me of my unbounded faith in our ideal. I wish Briand as much peace of mind at the moment of his zenith as I shall enjoy in my cell. With a serene conscience prison life even is endurable.'
* * *
L'Ere Nouvelle which has been suspended for some time, is again being published by our indefatigable comrade, E. Armand. The issue just received contains, among other interesting contributions, translations from Mother Earth articles by Bolton Hall, James F. Morton, Victor Robinson, and Sadakichi Hartmann.
Address: L'Ere Nouvelle, 29, rue de Recouvrance, Orleans, France.
* * *
The big and little tyrants of the Latin republics believe with the trustocrats of Europe and America that brutal methods can suppress the increasing power of the workers' awakened consciousness. How stupid this belief is has recently been demonstrated in Argentine. As reported in Mother Earth, several hundred thousand workers were arrested and many more deported ; a number of labor organizations were dissolved, and the Anarchist and Socialist publications suppressed. Yet the zeal and devotion of our Argentine comrades have remained undaunted. An anti-Anarchist law has been passed, with the object of exterminating by severe punishment the 'ringleaders.' By the provisions of the new statue, the residence of Anarchists in the republic is rigorously interdicted. Representatives of navigation companies, captains, or agents who knowingly engage in the bringing of Anarchists to this country will be liable to heavy fine or imprisonment. Capital punishment is provided for those who are responsible for any Anarchistic movement resulting in death.
* * *
Since the overthrow of absolutism in Turkey, the labor movement has been growing tremendously. The weekly paper Ichtisch, which leans strongly toward revolutionary Socialism, contains several instructive articles about the condition of workers in factory and field ; also biographies of Anarchists and Socialists : Bakunin, Proudhon, Blanqui, Lassalle, Fourile, and others.
* * *
The annual convention of the Anarchists of Germany has just closed. Twenty-three cities were represented by forty-five delegates.
The report of the committee on written and oral propaganda called forth considerable discussion, and resulted in the very commendable decision to avoid as much as possible all personal disputes in the press.
The congress further recommended that, in case of a national general strike - which the Social Democrats intent proclaiming as a demand for equal suffrage - the Anarchists should join as a matter of solidarity, though repudiating the political action as a useless and injurious waste of energy.
The congress also recommends to Anarchists at large to actively participate in the next International Anarchist Congress, to take place in 1911.
The Anarchist movement of Germany now publishes the following four organs : Der freie Arbeiter, Der Anarchist, Der Weckruf, and Der Socialist..
* * *
We recommend to the Yiddish-reading comrades the new monthly, Freie Gesellschaft, published at New York. The three numbers which have so far been issued contain good articles of theoretic and literary interest. Address: 30 Canal Street, New York. Price $1.00 per year.
BOOKS RECEIVED
LE CONCOURS POUR LE MONUMENT FRANCISO FERRER.Bruxelles, Belgium.HOMMANGE A FERRER.Emile Caudelier. Bruxelles, Belgium.LE CRIME DE MONTJUICH.Alfred Naguet. Bruxelles, Belgium.THE FAMOUS SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT CHICAGO ANARCHISTS IN COURT.Lucy E. Parsons, Chicago, Illinois.ELEVEN BLIND LEADERS B. H. Williams, New Castle, PA.AMEN Lewis J. Duncan, Butte, Mont. LE TRADIZIONI AMERICANE E L'ANARCHISMO Voltairine de Cleyre. Sciarpa Nera. Milano LIFE'S BEAUTIFUL BATTLE J. William Lloyd, Box 511, Westfild, N. J. THE ETIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OUR CENSORSHIP OF SEX-LITERATURE Theodore Schroeder, New York THE HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF UNABRIDGED FREEDOM OF SPEECH Theodore Schroeder, New YorkA LOBBY FOR LIBERTY Theordore Schroeder, Editorial Review Co., New York THE LEGEND OF THE HILLS A play. Cleveland Rodgers, New York. THE FREE PRESS PERSECUTION Free Press Publishing Company, New Castle, Pa.PACIFISME ET ANTIMILITARISME Victor Dave. Petite Bibliotheque des 'Hommes du Jour,' Paris , France FERNAND PELLOUTIER Victory Dave. Portraits d'Hier, Paris, France TYPES FROM CITY STREETS Hutchins Hapgood. Funk & Wagnalls, New York I WELCOME DISORDER Joseph A. Labadie. Detroit.REFLEXIONS SUR L'INDIVIDUALISME Manuel Devaldes. 'Le Libertaire,' Paris, France. THE FREE PRESS PERSECUTION Free Press Publishing Company, Drawer 644, New Castle, Pa.
Vol. VI MARCH, 1911 No. 1
TO THE GENERATION KNOCKINGAT THE DOORBy JOHN DAVIDSON.
Break-break it open; let the knocker rust;Consider no 'Shalt not,' nor no man's 'must';And, being entered, promptly take the lead,Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream;Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;High hearts and you are destiny enough.The mystery and the power enshrined in youAre old as time and as the moment new;And none but you can tell what part you play,Nor can you tell until you make essay,For this alone, this always, will succeed,The miracle and magic of the deed.
Our Sixth BirthdayWITH this issue Mother Earth begins her sixth journey through life.
Five years! What an infinitesimal drop in the ocean of eternity; yet how terribly long a time when travelled on a hard, thorny road. With a world of ignorance and prejudice to battle against, a thousand obstacles to overcome, hosts of enemies to face, and with but few friends, MOTHER EARTH has withstood, for five years, the storm and stress of the firing line, and has wavered not.
More than once was she stabbed by the enemy, and hurt by the thrusts of the well-meaning; more than once was her body bruised, her flesh torn by conflicting forces; yet never has she fallen by the wayside, nor her ardor been subdued.
Now that Mother Earth begins her sixth journey, it behooves us to halt a moment and to ponder the question: Was the struggle and pain worth while? has the magazine justified the expectations that gave it life?
Not long ago a f friend wrote to us: Why don't you give up? Why waste your time and energy in a lost cause? Mother Earth has not reached the people you had hoped to reach, nor does the magazine satisfy even some of our own comrades, because-as they say-more reading matter than is contained in MOTHER EARTH can be had in the ordinary magazines, for ten cents.
Viewed from the dominant standpoint of success, our friend is right. In that sese Mother Earth has failed. Our circulation is still far from the fifty-thousand mark; our subscribers, too, do not represent the multitudes. Nor is our financial rating such that we need feel any anxiety lest a Wall Street panic break our bank. Again, Mother Earth has lost in averdupois; it began as a heavyweight of sixty-four pages, but is now reduced to the lightweight class.
But since when do Anarchists measure success by quantity? Are numbers, weight, or following the true criterion of success? Should not the latter consist, first of all, in adherence to the chosen purpose, no matter at what cost? Indeed, the only success of any value has been the failure of men and women who struggled, suffered, and bled for an ideal, rather than give up, or be silenced.
Mother EARTH is such a success. Without a party to back her, with little or no support from her own ranks, and consistently refusing to be gagged by a profitable advertising department, she has bravely weathered the strain of five years, stormy enough to have broken many a strong spirit. She has created an atmosphere for herself which few Anarchist publications in America have been able to equal. She has gathered around her a coterie of men and women who are among the best in the country, and, finally, she has acted as a leaven of thought in quarters least expected by those who are ready with advice, yet unable to help.
Many an editor of our better-class dailies has found in MOTHER EARTH a source of information and inspira- and though they would be loth to admit it, it is nevertheless true that they have used our magazine for copy on numerous occasions. That, among other things, may help to account for the decided change in the tone of the press towards Anarchism and Anarchists.
But for want of space many instances could be cited, showing how well and widely MOTHER EARTH is read by journalists and writers, and what is thought of her merits by those who value quality above quantity.
As to the original raison d'etre of MOTHER EARTH, it was, first of all, to create a medium for the free expres on of our ideas, a medium bold, defiant, and unafraid. That she has proved to the fullest, for neither friend nor foe has been able to gag her.
Secondly, MOTHER EARTH was to serve as a gathering point, as it were, for those, who, struggling to free themselves from the absurdities of the Old, had not yet reached firm footing Suspended between heaven and hell, they have found in MOTHER EARTH the anchor of life.
Thirdly, to infuse new blood into Anarchism, which-in America-had then been running at low ebb for quite some time.
All these purposes, it may be said impartially, the magazine has served faithfully and well.
We cannot claim for MOTHER EARTH hosts of followers, but she has made some friends whose steadfast devotion and generosity has accomplished greater results than would have been possible with a large income. Besides, our magazine would have long ere this been selfsupporting, were it not for the many other issues drawing upon its resources.
We have created an American Anarchist propaganda literature, which has consumed the largest part of the magazine's income; indeed, it is this, more than anything else, which has been such a drain on our funds.
On the whole, we feel that our fighter has more than justified its existence. True, MOTHER EARTH is far from perfect; but, after all, it is the striving for, rather than the attainment of, perfection which is the essence of all effort, of life itself.
The struggle is ever before us. With increased determination and greater enthusiasm MOTHER EARTH enters upon the sixth year, confident that her friends need no other assurance than that the magazine will continue on the great Open Road, with face ever turned toward the Dawn.
EMMA GOLDMAN,ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
TWO intellectuals-American exchange Professors Munsterberg and Smith-recently fell upon each other regarding the question which of them had the better right to be invited to the annual exhibition of naked busts and shoulders at the Berlin court.
Professor Smith claimed priority because the Kaiser had conversed with him thirteen minutes longer than with his learned colleague. Smith asserted that His Majesty even deigned to grin at him once. But Professor Munsterberg angrily retorted that though it was true that the Kaiser had talked with him only a couple of minutes, the royal manner was so gracious as to entirely discount the thirteen minutes of Smith. The matter threatened to cause international complications, when it was finally settled by inviting both sycophants to the court ball.
A couple of country schoolmasters from Darkest Pomerania could not have demeaned themselves worse than these representatives of American science. Of such professional intellectuals Schopenhauer was wont to say, 'They don't live for, but off, science.' There is another well-known adage which fitly characterizes such worthies: Professors and prostitutes are for sale.
THE people of the United States are to be blessed by President Taft with an extra session of Con gress. Is it for the purpose of 'filling the empty mar ket basket,' as the phrase runs? Far from it. The special Danai gift has the sole purpose of obscuring, by superficial legal phraseology, the real causes of the empty market basket. Expropriation of the monopo- lords of land and industry by the dear, victimized patriots is the best and only way to terminate the usury in the necessaries of life. This, it's dead sure, will never be decided by Congress.
THERE are strong indications that Washington is mobilizing troops against the revolution in Mexico, to protect the property interests of the Morgans, Gugenheims, Hearsts, et al. A beautiful prospect for the American soldier, to be maimed or killed for the sake of protecting the dividends of the multi-millionaires, and then be persuaded that he had helped to enhance the honor and glory of his country.
It is high time that anti-militarist arguments begin to be studied in America.
THE greatest triumph of the reigning morality manifestly consists in trials for breach of promise. It seems hardly possible for our merchant order of buy and selling to go much further than counting romance, affection, kisses, and embraces in dollars and cents.
All poets of love songs, dead or living, should be indicted and brought before the American courts. It would be easy to prove against them that they have aroused, a thousandfold, sweet yearnings, emotions, and tender hopes in female hearts, without giving further satisfaction. Surely these sinners should be punished.
To simplify matters, love and proofs of love, genuine or counterfeit, could be sold at auction. For instance: Here, gentlemen, your kind attention, please! Here's a well-preserved daughter of an American millionaire- a European Count-now divorced. What 'm I offered? Five dollars, first bid! Five, ten, twenty. . .
0NE of the fashionable preachers of New York, Dr. Aked, of the Rockefeller Church, threatens to leave his flock to go to the Pacific Coast, where a more remunerative position has been offered to him.
Yes, the priests have inherited from the apostles only the purse and the Judas kiss.
OUR readers no doubt remember the case of Savakar, the Hindu revolutionist, referred to in a previous issue Of MOTHER EARTH.
The English courts sentenced Savakar to be transported to India and to be imprisoned there. On the way the Hindu succeeded in jumping overboard, at Marseille, and swimming safely to land. According to international agreement, Savakar should have been safe, on French soil, from the bloodhounds of England. But French gendarmes arrested and returned him to the English ship, feeling sure that all means are justified toward revolutionists.
They were right. The International Peace Conference, at The Hague, to which the case was submitted, decided that it was lawful to hunt down Savakar on French soil and deliver him into the hands of the British hangman.
Surely the decision would have been quite different had Savakar been an absconded banker instead of a revolutionist.
CONDITIONS in Japan are steadily growing more unbearable. From reliable information we learn about the increased persecution of radicals, numerous arrests of persons suspected of 'political untrustworthi- secret trials, and long imprisonments.
'The government of the little brown men,'-we quote one of our correspondents, a personal friend of the martyred Kotoku-'is mad with thirst for human blood. Katsura asserts that he will spare no one. Hundreds are daily dragged off to the prisons, and none is secure. . . . What can be done? What is the International Socialist Bureau doing? Where is its influence? Can't the various Socialist representatives and newspapers in the different countries be moved to interpellate? . . . Leave nothing undone and arouse the comrades everywhere to the true condition of affairs.' Will the cry of awakening Japan be heard?
WHEN Socialism had not yet become so fatally in fected with the germ of political tuberculosis, it used to preach: The efforts of bourgeois reformists are misleading and useless, since they can work no es sential change in the economic conditions of society upon which are founded our political, moral, and social in stitutions. That is to say, that so long as private prop erty, wage slavery, and capitalism rule economically, no political reforms are worth while, because they cannot in the least alter the character of existing society.
But since their infection with the bacillus of this tuberculosis, the Socialists have been claiming: Give us majorities, political power, and we will accomplish wonderful economic reforms.
In Milwaukee the yearned-for ballot majority has really been achieved, with the result that the Social Democratic politicians now find themselves in the same position as the bourgeois reformists. They can make no vital changes, because their cherished 'economic foundation' faces them at every turn.
Poor Mayor Seidel! His moral heart longs to abolish prostitution in Milwaukee, but-economic interests and the police will not permit it. He would transform the city into a second Eden, but-Milwaukee is so much In debt (like every large city under capitalist regime) that nothing can be done, He would this and he would that, but he succeeds only in giving a poor imitation of the bourgeois reformists, whom the Socialists have always so justly ridiculed. Thus the much-praised 'polit- power of the ploretariat' proves itself, in capitalist practice, a hollow mockery.
One thing, however, has been achieved: a salary of seven thousand five hundred per annum for Victor Berger, the newly elected member of Congress. But it is doubtful whether the proletarian voters of Wisconsin will find sufficient consolation in this only 'practical result.'
THE discussion in the New York Call between Upton Sinclair and Dr. Robinson as to whether fasting is preferable to eating fills us with dread lest a considerable number of donkeys and freak Socialists commit suicide by voluntary starvation. It would be sad, indeed, but we shall try to bear up manfully at the burial ceremonies.
WITH rather poor grace John Mitchell has given up his sinecure in the Civic Federation, after the Convention of the Mine Workers had decided that no official of that veiled plutocratic conspiracy may be a member of the miners' organization.
Reason prompted to obey the resolution of the Convention; but the heart of Mitchell remains with the Civic Federation, as is shown by the letter he addressed to Seth Low. Thus only half the work has been done. Neither one holding an office with the Civic Federation, nor one who strives to impregnate the workers with the spirit of that capitalist organization properly belongs in the labor movement.
The Miners' Union would do well to present John Mitchell, for good and all, as an unconditional free gift to the Civic Federation, In truth, they could well afford, if necessary, to throw some money in with the bargain.
THE friends of MOTHER EARTH will celebrate the Sixth Birthday of our little fighter, Friday, March 17th, at Terrace Lyceum, 206 East Broadway, where speeches, song, music, and 'the light, fantastic toe' will give the proper spirit to the occasion.
We regret that distance will probably make it impossible for our friends 'in the country' to participate in the jollification. But we know that they will be with us in spirit, and we hope they will remember the five-year-old by return mail. A word to the wise is sufficient.
IN THE DAYS OF MARCH
HISTORY relates that on March thirteenth, in the year 44 B. C., Julius Caesar fell a victim to the daggers of the conspirators who defended the old Roman liberties against the rising tide of imperialism. But, evidently, imperialism had not received on that occasion its death blow. After two thousand years it is still alive, and is-if certain prophets are rightabout to plant its banner upon the towers of this Republic. The struggle between Caesar and Brutus has not yet ceased.
It was in the Days of March, 1770, that the first blood of the martyrs of the Colonies was shed in Boston. Six years later the redcoats were ignominiously driven from that city.
In March, 1819, the German student, Karl Sand, killed the Russian spy Kotzebue. The month of March, in the year 1821, witnessed the beginning of the Greek struggle for independence, and in March, 1848, the fires of social upheaval swept the greater part of Europe.
Again it was in the Days of March, 1871, that the people of France rose against their oppressors and proclaimed the Paris Commune. That gigantic attempt toward a social revolution failed after two months and was drowned in blood. A certain statesman of France said, as the Versailles hirelings were murdering the hekatombs: 'We can never kill enough of them.' He may have fancied that the revolution could forever be extinguished in an ocean of blood. What folly! The reaction had thrown down all barriers, trampled all considerations under foot, and let loose every imaginable terror, yet utterly failed to quench the revolutionary fire of even a woman's heart-LOUISE MICHEL, who had fought on the barricades, was dragged through the streets with the captured Communards, beaten with gun and bayonet, and finally thrown into prison. Proudly and defiantly she faced the horrors of the penal colony at Caledonia, endured persecution and agony, and finally returned to France as unbroken in spirit as before. What she had suffered in prison had only served to make her stronger and surer of her convictions. 'Thereis a curse upon power,' she said upon her return; 'therefore I am an Anarchist.'
It was again in the month of March, in the year 1881, that Tsar Alexander II. was called to account. Severest oppression, saints, strict censorship, base espionage, and brutal Cossacks-all these could not save the Tsar from the avenging bomb. There is necessity and justice in the revolutionary acts.
Though sometimes, in our hours of darkness, it may seem as if the oppression of man is an eternal institution, we soon find consolation in the thought that resistance to tyranny is no less eternal.
The Days of March bear witness that ignorance and patience have their limits. They show us that right and liberty are no mere fancies in the misty distance, but that they can be translated into life, realized in the present through acts and deeds.
These Days teach us that there exists no institution whose continued existence is guaranteed by charter or patent. They have torn the veil of political compromise and diplomatic finesse, and demonstrated the power of the multitude, which-in spite of all apathy and systematic obscurantism-still sets in motion the Weltenrad. These Days prove that deeds are more comprehensive than theory.
In December, 1856, John Brown appeared before a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, to champion the cause of the slaves. But already in April of the next year he provided himself with ammunition, fully convinced that the legal procedure would merely sidetrack the issue, without touching the vital problem.
Thus the suffering masses clutch at one failing hope after another. They place their fate in the hands of governments, political parties, quacks, and reformers, till there grows up within their midst an energetic minority, which sees through the deceptive game and resorts to direct action. Strictly speaking, it can be said only of the Days of Revolution that the people act by themselves and for themselves.
The most vital initiative, the best impulses proceeded in the March Days from this minority, which, in times of struggle, becomes the interpreter of the sufferings and wishes of the multitude.
One feels almost an utopian when speaking hopefully of the Revolution in these epigone days of political horse swapping, petitioning, and pale theorizing. Is not everything quiet and orderly? Do not the rich wax steadily richer, their luxury more snobbish? Are not governments growing more invasive, the laws more numerous, and do not the masses continue to gnaw contentedly at the bones of reform thrown at them instead of good meat?
And yet, the Days of March are not in vain on the calendar of history. They point the way to the springtime of humanity. The memory of those Days sheds warmth and inspiration into the heart surcharged with disgust at all 'golden rules,' 'good arguments,' and 'the only correct scientific methods.'
THE PIONEER OF COMMUNIST ANARCHISM IN AMERICA
By MAX BAGINSKI.
THESE lines are in tender memoriam of John Most, who died in Cincinnati, five years ago, on the seventeenth of March, 1906.
In the year 1882 Most came to America, as an exile, and continued the publication of the Freiheit, whose existence had been made impossible in England. After the execution of Alexander II, on the thirteenth of March, 1881, Most voiced his hope in a leading article in the Freiheit\ that all tyrants may thus be served. That article proved too much for the much-boasted-of British freedom. Prussian and Russian spies and diplomats intrigued an interpellation in the British Parliament, as a result of which Most was indicted for 'inciting to kill the reigning sovereigns.' The court sentenced our comrade to sixteen months at hard labor, and life in the prison of free England proved a veritable hell.
Most had previously been incarcerated in German and Austrian prisons, and his treatment there was always that of a political prisoner. In free England, however, he found himself treated even more brutally than the ordinary thief or murderer. His complaints against the barbaric methods elicited the sole reply thatthere were no political prisoners in a f ree country like England.
When he had paid the penalty for the free expression of his opinions, John Most was invited, immediately upon his discharge from prison, to come to America, there to begin an energetic propaganda along revolutionary Anarchist lines. This comradely invitation was signed, among others, by Justus Schwab, whom most of our old-time comrades no doubt still remember.
Most followed the call. An enthusiastic reception meeting in Cooper Union, in which thousands participated, was his greeting in the new land. A tour of agitation followed, during which Most succeeded in organizing a large number of propaganda groups among the German-speaking workingmen.
Most was the first to initiate, on a comparatively extensive scale, the propaganda of Communist Anarchism in America.
The German element in this country was at that time far more mentally alert and energetic than it is to-day: the Bismarckian muzzle-law, the expulsion of hundreds of socialistically inclined proletarians, the suppression of Socialist literature, and the brutal police persecution made the thinking workers rebellious. The lines between governmental and revolutionary Socialism, and between the latter and Anarchism were not so sharply drawn at the time when Most, the fiery agitator of the social revolution, arrived in America. He was an orator of convincing power, his methods direct, his language concise and popular, and he possessed the genius for glowing word-portrayal which had f ar more effect upon his auditors than long theoretic argumentation. He lived and felt entirely with the people, the men of toil. The great tragedy of his latter years was that the very people he loved so well turned from him, many of them even joining the general howl of the capitalistic press, which never abated its denunciations of Most as a veritable monster of degradation and blood-thirstiness.
In the meantime there widened the breach between the ballot-box Socialists on the one hand, and the revolutionary Socialists and Anarchists on the other. Many of those who bad so enthusiastically welcomed Most on his arrival in America, joined the ballot-box party andnow even denounced our comrade because he persisted in warning the people against the game of deception called politics. In this respect hespoke from personal experience: as former member of the Reichstag he felt convinced that parliamentarism could never serve as an aid in the emancipation of the working class.
The American labor movement followed its course. It was- able to stand a Powderly, and it has not even now grown strong enough to rid itself of men like Gompers and Mitchell. Naturally there was no room in it for a Most, a Parsons, a Spies, or a Dyer D. Lum. Gompers, a rising star on the labor firmament, may indeed not have been averse to making use of Lum's superior intellect and experience, even to the extent of signing his articles, it is said. But after he had attained bureaucratic power, he found it more politic to withdraw from such compromising associates.
The German movement, in particular, gradually grew weaker. The atmosphere of this country is not very conducive to the mental development of the Germans; as a rule, they lose here all incentive to intellectual pursuit. They either conserve the ideas they have brought over with them, till these become petrified, or they entirely throw idealism overboard and become 'successful business men,' philistines who are far more concerned with their little house and property than with the great events of the world.
Under these circumstances his exile was growing more and more unbearable for Most, his hounding ever more severe and base, the indifference and apathy of the Germans more impenetrable.
His friends had told Most, upon his arrival: 'Here, at least, you are secure against imprisonment.' Most had waived the remark aside, as altogether too optimistic, saying that it was only a question of time when he would come in conflict with the sham liberties of the Republic. He was only too justified in this view. When, in the eighties, the waves of the labor movement rose to exceptional height, and the proletariat began preparations for a general strike to secure the eight-hour day, the plutocrats and financiers grew alarmed. 'Order'that is, profits-seemed in danger. The lackeys of the press were mobilized to denounce to the police and the courts every expression of rebellious independence on the part of the working people.
In April, 1886, there took place in New York a large meeting, addressed, among others, by Most, who called upon the audience to prepare and arm themselves for the coming great struggle. The speech was taken down stenographically and submitted to the grand jury, which found indictments against John Most, Braunschweig, and Schenk. On the second of July, judge Smyth condemned Most to one year's imprisonment in the penitentiary and five hundred dollars fine, while the other two comrades were doomed to nine months' prison and two hundred and fifty dollars fine.
It was the old wretched method. The police of various cities had systematically interfered with the numerous strikes and committed repeated assaults upon the workingmen, establishing 'order' in the most brutal manner. The violence of the police naturally resulted in bitterness, riots, and killings. But instead of calling the uniformed ruffians to account, the authorities fell upon the spokesmen of the movement, marking them as their victims. The crimes of the guardians of the law were 'legally' laid at the door of the Anarchists: in New York, upon Most; in Chicago, upon Spies and comrades, who-eighteen months later-paid for their love of humanity with their lives.
It became evident that freedom of speech and press was not tolerated in the Republic and that it was as severely persecuted in 'free' America as in Germany, Austria, and England.
That was not Most's only conviction. He was repeatedly condemned to serve at Blackwell's Island. The press had so systematically lied about and misrepresented his ideals and personality that the 'desirable citizen' came to regard our comrade as a veritable Satan. Especially were the German papers venomous in their denunciations and ceaselessly active in the manhunt against one who had sacrificed everything for his ideals.
When McKinley was shot at Buffalo, the Freiheit happened to reprint an article from the then longdeceased radical writer, Karl Heinzen. The article had no bearing whatever upon American conditions, and it was the greatest outrage and travesty upon the most elementary principles of justice that Most was condemned to serve nine months inprison-for reprinting an article written decades before. The New York Staatszeitung, 'leading organ of the German intelligence,' bravely assisted in this shameful proceeding by the most infamous denunciation.
Yet all this persecution and suffering Most could have borne much better than the growing apathy of the very elements to whom he was appealing. He found himself more and more isolated. The struggle for existence of the Freiheit, and his family-grew more difficult. He had dreamed beautiful dreams of the masses who would march side by side with him against the bulwarks of tyranny. And now he discovered himself a revolutionary free lance, standing almost alone. With grim humor he wrote in the Freiheit: 'Henceforth I shall no more say 'we,' but 'I.'' In spite of it all, however, he fought bravely to the very end. His courage and Rabellaisian humor never forsook him. In the latter years there was even a noticeable improvement in his literary originality. After all, in the words of the Chantecler, 'it is beautiful to behold the light when everything around is enveloped in darkness.'
para
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.
ANARCHIST-A believer in Anarchism; one opposed to all forms of coercive government and invasive authority; an advocate of Anarchy, or absence of government, as the ideal of political liberty and social harmony.
ANARCHY-Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of, invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government.
THE PIONEER
To love to live-I choose this as my life,The world is full of chatter, cheap and vain,And painted sights and foolish paven lanes where peoplemoil at pleasure,Getting none, returning yet again for naught and lessthan naught--And o'er-plussed emptiness of heart and soulWhich makes a mock of life and turns it sour.All this I pass; not prudishly, as one who fears to mixwith men,Nor scorning human things,Nor in a cloister mood, seeking aloofness and some mys-tic spellBut rather in a thirst for redder wine,A crave for passions that are ne'er outworn,A lust for one good hack at old Convention statued inthe Square.To those who love the groove, the patterned task, thevested rights,I say, adieu.Give me the thing to do that's not been done,That helps my kind, and yields my spirit wide egress,The ax upon the beech to mark my way,A golden sunset from behind the rugged hills,And, then, should the gods allow,A white arm round my neck entwinedAnd on my lips the kiss of Her who understood andshared.
--Selected.
ON THE TRAILTHE Trail of Life is like a beautiful woman, full of caprice and contradictions. Now it carries you to the sublime heights of expectation, now it hurls you to the very depths of despair, according to momentary whim. Yet like the heartless beauty, the Trail stands in all its radiance, ever luring one to new exploits.
Since we started on this journey the oscillations between hope and despair have repeatedly made us want to give up; but who can resist the Trail? Good or bad, success or failure-the tempteress calls, and poor mortals must follow.
DETROIT proved too weak for the large dose we had prepared for it. Six English meetings were more than the city could stand, its energies being sapped up by the Lady of Rome. Detroit is strongly Catholic; how can one expect to penetrate her tightly sealed mental channels . Yet there were a few faithful, eager for life, who attended every meeting and procured a liberal supply of intellectual ammunition. We realized only too late that four of the six evenings might have been employed to better advantage in nearby towns. We mean to make good on some other occasion.
ANN ARBOR again brought out a large array of students, less vicious than last year, but still very boisterous, especially on the evening of the lecture on Tolstoy. The sage of Yasnaya Poliana knew the emptiness of what passes for education to-day. His serenity would therefore not have been disturbed by the Ann Arbor demonstration of 'learning.' Not being quite so passive as our great Russian, it required much effort to keep sane in Bedlam; nor am I quite sure that I did. But, with lunatic luck, I succeeded in making the students think me the only sane person in the crowd. They toned down considerably at the end, asked a number of good questions, and-what is more-they did not break the chairs, nor raid the literature table, which was a decided improvement on our last year's experience.
The Keystone fraternity, keenly conscious of the shameful outrage on free speech in the City of Brotherly Love, invited us to break bread with them, as a sign of sisterly good-will. The wideawke spirit among these Pennsylvania boys has almost made me feel kindlier toward that Clay and Reyburn hunchbacked city, Philadelphia. Our last year's visit has helped to fertilize the soil. Prof. R. M. Wenley announced a course on Anarchism, of which the first lecture has already been delivered before a large audience. I am not conceited enough to assume that I induced the course, but that we have helped to arouse interest and to prepare the students for the 'shock,' is no doubt true.
GRAND RAPIDS furnished a new experience, doubly pleasant because of the opportunity it offered to meet once more our ex-soldier, William Buwalda. Our readers have probably been wondering what has become of our friend after his release from the tender arms of the government.
William Buwalda has exchanged the iron bands of mental deception for a free and broader outlook upon life, while his soul, dwarfed for fifteen years by the soldier's coat, has since expanded and blossomed out like a flower in the fresh and unrestricted air of mother earth. Our comrade has been left with an old mother to look after his father having died last year. He often longs to go back to the world and to more vital activity, but with his usual simplicity he said, 'What right have I, as a free man, to inflict burdens upon others that I am unwilling to carry?' Therefore he remains to take care of the old lady; yet he has not become rusticated. On the contrary, William Buwalda has used his time well, not merely for extensive reading, but for the absorption and assimilation of our ideals. The old Dutch mother, the kindly hostess moving about in her quaint Dutch surroundings, was like a study of Rembrandt. It made one feel far removed from the mad rush of American life.
Buwalda's efforts for the Grand Rapids meeting proved a great success. It was one of the few splendid affairs of this tour.
CHICAGO, with her thousand sinister memories clutching at one's soul, is anything but an Eldorado. The gloom was increased by miserable weather, truly Chicagoan-wind, rain, and mud. The press, including that yellow sheet, the Daily Socialist, maintained a conspiracyof silence, and most of the preparatory work being done by one comrade, Sam Sivin, a stranger in the city, the prospects, too, looked muddy. Worst of all was the thought of having to go back to Hod Carriers' Hall, a place that would have affected the vocal chords of the trumpets of Jerico. It seemed to make the Chicago visit almost unbearable. But perseverance and lungs carried the day.
Our six English meetings brought out an average of two hundred people, which was very remarkable, considering the obstacles. Brother Reitman, with his usual mesmeric methods, disposed of a phenomenal quantity of literature. The Jewish meetings were, as usual, very large. Last, but not least, was a small but interesting meeting arranged by a group of Lithuanians, whom I addressed on the 'Social Importance of the Modern School.'
Credit for the hardest work is due chiefly to the indefatigable efforts of Sam Sivin and his friend Bessie; but there were also others who helped most faithfully: Edith Adams, our motherly Dr. 'Becky' Yampolsky, our future Medicus Stein, and Comrade Lankis. Dr. J. H. Greer was the guardian angel. He turned his office into an E. G. headquarters, constituted himself ticket and book seller, and acted as knightly host to drive away the spooks, thus helping one to forget the sins of the Jungletown.
My greatest regret regarding Chicago is that I failed to interest our friends in the Kotoku Memorial. There was a lack of speakers; besides, Japan is far away; even Anarchists do not easily overcome distance.
URBANA, the seat of Illinois learning, is like unto the city of the German proverb, where people neither sing nor drink. It is a prohibition town; no wonder the mental lid is down tightly. Only a few students and professors turned out, but they, too, were as dry as Urbana.
The PEORIA meeting had been arranged in one day, in a hall on the outskirts of the city. We were therefore not disappointed in the size of the meeting. Yet while Urbana and Peoria gave small returns in proportion to our efforts, we are glad that we went there. We have driven in the wedge and are sure to meet with greater success next time.
ST. Louis. It seems almost like an idyl to come to the city after the desert of Sahara through which the Trail has led us for nearly two months. But, then, why should not St. Louis prove a rare spot, with Anheuser-Busch and William Marion Reedy as the great attractions. I do not know whether the city could do without Anheuser-Busch, but I am sure it would never be the same without Reedy, who is indeed a fountainhead of wisdom, rare humor, and good fellowship. To realize his importance for the intellectual life of St. Louis, one must have been here and followed his work. Thus with our 'Hobo' I must say, 'Reedy has put St. Louis on the map.' With such a staunch sponsor and with the assistance of other friends, gained through Reedy's efforts, the work in St. Louis proved smooth sailing.
Three meetings at the Odeon Recital Hall were the very best so far, especially the meeting of March 1st, on 'Victims of Morality,' which brought out the largest American audience we have ever had outside of California. The literature sale represented a regular bargain counter, with Ben Reitman and several assistants strenuously busy supplying the demand.
The venture to arouse the ladies who think they are thinking was less successful. It was an unusual venture, to begin with, and as some of our comrades will no doubt say, apostatic on my part to consent. Two lectures in the most exclusive club hall of St. Louis, the Women's Wednesday Club, which resembles the Sorosis of New York:-a parasitic class of women who do not know what to do with their time. I was not at all in doubt as to the numbers that might come to such an affair. I consented to the proposition by our good friends, quaint little Alice Martin and William Marion Reedy, because of the chance it offered to tell those ladies what I thought of them.
'Tolstoy' and 'Justice' were chosen-as 'fit' subjectsfor the occasion: themes that contain enough revolutionary material to make the dear auditors anything but comfortable, and with E. G. as the speaker, they certainly 'got their money's worth,' the price of admission being one dollar. I should not care to make a practice of speaking before the Wednesday Club audiences. Not that I fear to be contaminated. I feel, with Gorki, that ours is a puny age, full of puny people who have not even the vitality to commit great sins. It is the mental apathy of the audience at that place which is so disagreeable, like the sight of dry old bones. I could forgive the rich Americans their money; but their dullness, never. The latter will save me at all times from 'breaking' into society. Much rather should I prefer to break into jail. It is a much more interesting pastime. Yet the experience at the Wednesday Club had also its humorous side, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
Our dear old Comrade Harry Kelly, who left for the Coast after my Sunday lectures, gave the preparatory work the old revolutionary flavor. Ada Capes, Kapicinell, and other friends made me feel, by their devotion, as in olden days when there were fewer personal quibbles and greater zeal for our cause, so sublime and all-absorbing.
What a tremendous power one great individuality may exert is best proved by the new tone of the St. Louis press, created entirely by Mr. Reedy. Not a single paper has indulged in the old-time sensational methods. The reports have been accurate and the editorials unusually analytical. A complete revolution, one might say, judging from the following editorial in the Times:
Miss Emma Goldman, who made addresses in St. Louis yesterday, succeeded in voicing her sentiments without shocking any one very much, apparently, and without necessitating any calls for the trouble wagon.
It becomes apparent that Miss Goldman has a good many ideas which are sound, even though she may have others which are shocking enough; and it may be that those who disapprove most of her and her teachings are those who know least about her and what she has to teach.
There are a good many articles in the Goldman creed which might be given serious thought, and nobody would be any the worse for it. When she maintains that education of the stereotyped kind is not the right kind of education, she only affirms what many highly reputable thinkers have pointed out in a gentler fashion.
When she states her belief in the theory that there are no bad boys and girls, she is in line with the convictions of many a highly praised philanthropist. What is judge Ben Lindsay's creed, except that there are no bad boys and girls?
The trouble with this extraordinary woman is that she is a revolutionist, instead of an evolutionist. She is in a hurry; whereas the wisest men and women know that haste makes waste. Not one of the points made by Miss Goldman in her speeches Yesterday but is being put forth in gentler terms by good people everywhere. But others are encouraged when they realize what growth has been recorded in twenty years-in ten years.Miss Goldman is impatient because she cannot see great advancement since yesterday. Perhaps it is a matter of temperament, rather than of philosophy. Perhaps Miss Goldman is unfortunate only in respect to her temperament.
If our work had accomplished nothing else, this change of sentiment would justify all the hardships and bitter- ness most of us have and are still passing through. The Trail may i have a thousand whims and caprices, but it also has great charms. It is so alluring, one must follow it up to the very end.
I still have two Jewish meetings to address in this city; two lectures in Staunton, I11., before the miners, to which I look forward with great interest; also a meeting at Belleville, Ill., where our martyred Chicago comrades had fought more than one battle.
While MOTHER EARTH will be in the making, we shall have visited the Socialist citadel, Milwaukee. Will it survive us? Also Madison, Wis., where our last visit aroused so much discussion, especially among the students. March 15, 16 and 17 we will be in St. Paul; March 19-22 in Minneapolis. All information can be obtained through F. Kraemer, 1023 Marshall St., N. E., Minneapolis, Minn. March 24th, Sioux City; March 26th and 27th, Omaha, Neb. After that, Des Moines and Kansas City, for ten days.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
DISCUSSION AT MEETINGS
By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.
I HAVE read, in the last issue of MOTHER EARTH, Bolton Hall's opinion on the mixed blessing of discussion after meetings with interest, and-disagreement; mixed also.
I agree that a meeting of fifty with a good discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty with none; but with a bad discussion-nine times in ten it is a bad discussion-meeting of two hundred and fifty and silence is preferable.
For I do not agree that 'almost anything is better than silence'; sometimes silence is better than almost anything; particularly the silence of a 'buffoon.' Nor do I consider newspaper notice such a desirable thing as to be thankful for it at the cost of misrepresentation. If a meeting of fifty people enlightened by a discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty without it, it is also better than two hundred thousand giving a cursory glance at a misrepresentation.
Also I would like to know what evidence Bolton Hall has that the best part of the audience sizes up the discussion well. It may be true, quite likely it is, but how does he know?
So far as I see, the real substitute for the after-benediction gathering is not the public discussion, but what we in Philadelphia used to dub 'the adjourned meeting.' That is the time when the timid and the reticent forget their timidity, and say their say. And it is really always far more interesting than the chairmanized discussion. For all that, I still think the evil of shutting off discussion is probably greater than the evil of 'hot air.'
One comrade has suggested that the lecture committee, expressing itself through the Chairman, reserve the right to have discussion or not; that a good lecture be left for 'the gathering around the stove'; but an inadequate-lecture, or a poor one, be completed or rectified through a select discussion, such speakers being called upon by the Chairman as he knows are able to make good the deficiency.
The trouble is, this gives too much discretion to the Chairman (though as every one knows who has had experience in meetings such discretion is always exercised,more or less, if the Chairman is acquainted with his business. And as a member of the audience I have sometimes been grateful to him for his temporary blindness, or other symptoms of 'benevolent despotism'). However, as Gail Hamilton once wrote: 'I want my husband to be submissive without looking so'; I want the Chairman to be a despot without openly proclaiming himself such,-which is a very frank avowal for an Anarchist! I should be afraid to make it did I not know that 'around the stove' pretty much everybody makes it. But as we all cling to our favorite phantoms, none of us wants the Chairman invested with Dictatorial Powers, notwithstanding our appreciation of the eccentricities of his eyesight; so I fear my comrade's proposition is not acceptable.
I should be glad to hear from others, not only as to the original question, but as to the incidental point of Mr. Hall, that newspaper report is always desirable, even though it be misrepresentation.
THE RIGHT WAYBecause they could not achieve the Right Way, peopleacquired benevolence.
Because they could not achieve the right benevolence,people acquired charitableness.
Because they could not achieve the right charitableness,people acquired courtesy.
Because they could not achieve the right courtesy, peo-ple acquired good manners,
Because they could not achieve the right good mannerspeople acquired good works.
Because they could not achieve the right good works,people acquired law-abidingness.
Because they could not achieveright law-abiding-ness, people made laws.
This shows how far even perfect laws would be fromthe Right Way.
But there cannot be perfect laws;
There cannot even be good laws.
From the Chinese of Lont Lee.
STRAY THOUGHTSBy Wm. C. OWEN.
A TIME-HONORED Latin proverb has it that when war breaks out the voice of law grows silent. I am certain that in politics the voice of truth is drowned by clamarous bids for votes, and it does not seem to matter what politics they are. Here is the Socialist party, for example. If Socialism means anything it is that collectivist ownership for use shall take the place of private ownership for profit. There can be no doubt of this, and modern Socialist literature is to a great extent one song of triumph over the extent to which private enterprise is being driven to the wall. Yet here, in California, the party's candidate for governor, touring the State in a much advertised red car, kept assuring the farmer that Socialism, while freeing them from the transportation and moneysharks, will leave them in possesion of their private farms, to be worked, as now, for private benefit. A desperate effort of my own to set this matter straight almost produced a riot, and never can I find anything but violent contradiction when I tell Socialists they belong to a governmental party. Nevertheless, in a recent number of the Appeal to Reason I find this editorial answer to a question as to what is to be done if the capitalists should decide on a general lock-out: 'If they were to close the shops it would be as good a thing as we could ask. Then, under the plea of emergency, we could take possession of the shops and set all the wheels to moving at once under GOVERNMENTAL MANAGEMENT.' To fish for votes by repudiating your party's cardinal principle seems to me at once the most despicable and suicidal of policies.
My own experience with the rank and file of the Socialist party is that intellectually it has not the remotest conception of where it is actually at, but that all its aspirations are toward Anarchism' . Invariably private conversation with members brings out the declaration that all they want is equality of opportunity, and that the less government they have the better. But let us not deceive ourselves. That may be the aspiration of the proletarian, sick to death of the authoritarianism he learns from the policeman's club, but it is not the aspiration of the preachers and lawyers who have crowded into the party and are doing nearly all its talking, because talking is their trade. Almost invariably the preacher's ruling passion is to lay down the law for others to obey; almost invariably the lawyer longs to regulate the lives of others; and such leaders naturally seek to form a centralized society, of which they shall be directors.
In Los Angeles the Single Taxers are trying to resurrect themselves, and surely there was never time or place wherein they should be more alive. To boom the natural resources of the country, thereby attracting immigration; to shear such immigration to the skin by continuously raising the admission price to those monopolized resources-this has been the game played unceasingly by the moneyed class since the city passed out of the village stage. Never was it played so relentlessly, however, as at present, for we have entered on an era of frenzied municipal enterprise, anticipating the rush of labor that will come with the completion of the Panama canal. Millions are being spent, south of the city, on harbor improvements, and land speculators gloat daily over the real estate ticker as it records the advanced value of their holdings. North of the city gigantic sums are being invested by the municipality in the development of water, and a group of land cormorants is becoming multi-millionaires.
Los Angeles is of interest to the great world of social agitation only as she points a moral and exemplifies a principle. It is because she illustrates with unusual clearness how rotten is the sham of public ownership and operation, while land monopoly remains intact, that I give her, and her Single Tax club, publicity. This craze for municipal-improvements is the undercurrent of the Socialistic tide, and it is crushing us with bureaucracy and land speculation; digging the gulf between Dives and Lazarus wider and deeper than it was ever dug before. If they could wrench themselves free from what seem to me side issues, the Henry George men might do noble work. As it is, their 'cat' has been smothered out of sight and hearing.
ECONOMY AS VIEWED BY AN ANARCHIST
By C. L. JAMES.
(Continuation.)
There was also a dispute between two great Fathers of the orthodox economic church, Ricardo and Malthus as to whether Rent cuts into Profit and Wages. Malthus denied that it affected either. Ricardo, by asserting that it reduced both, supplied the premises of an important Socialistic school whose bestknown representative is Henry George. The fallacies which make these controversies possible appear to me very largely founded in confusion of thought and language between such terms as (aggregate) rent and rent (per acre), interest (aggregate) and (per cent.), even real wages and nominal, though that is acknowledged to be a vulgar error. But they have a deeper root. The orthodox economists, having contracted the habit of generalizing from the capitalist's standpoint, are rarely able to see any other part of an universal truth than what concerns the capitalist, as such. And the Socialistic writers have not been able to correct them, because they, too, general 'zed from a special standpoint. Endeavoring myself to set both right by taking the Standpoint of Universal Man, or the Consumer, I shall most cheerfully acknowledge every anticipation I can find: for it will give me an opportunity to show that a view too limited and partial was what kept from the truth men who often got so very near it.
14. Rent, Profit, and Wages, are commonly assumed to be the shares in Distribution, falling respectively to landlords, capitalists, and laborers.13 But surely there are others. The share which falls to thieves is much too important to be justifiably ignored, if among thieves we include bad governments, corrupt monopolies, pestilent sinecurists, warriors employed in anything else than defense of their own countries, and these are, most deservedly, so classed by the orthodox Economy, which was the precursor and almost became the phoenix progenitor of Anarchism. This share is not like that of children, nursing mothers, beggars, unproductive laborers, who can get only what the producers or the producer's exploiters have had first. If conquerors and their creatures be thieves, as orthodox Economy teaches, the thief gets his share before the producer. There is also an impersonal sharer, Waste, which devours not what the producers choose to give it, for that would be nothing, but all it -can take against their will. Floods, flames, moths, rust, mice, kings, nobles, and pirates, must have their undivided share first. The producer gets only what they leave. The Socialistic writers are not insensible to part of this truth. Before Saint Simon gave them anything like a scientific method , they perceived that existing institutions were founded by barbarians whose, only trade was war, and that the taint of origin pervades them all. Adam Smith partly saw this, too.'14 The reason neither he nor they have adequately reasoned from this historical premise, is that both the main economic schools were in a hurry to begin generalizing either from the capitalist's standpoint or the laborer's. Waste and Plunder, so important to the Consumer, i. e., to man, as man, were dismissed with the remark that they took only from the gross product, and that the laws of the net could be ascertained without considering them. But if, as Adam Smith, all Socialists, and all Historic Economists, perceive, the landlords and capitalists derive peculiar powers from government, an institution whose original purposes were war and Plunder, it evidently is not correct to say that we can get at the law of their share in Distribution without. first considerfrig the laws of Plunder.
15. This error, springing direct from the Original Sin of Political Economy, has been the fruitful parent of others. The definition of Capital as wealth employed to produce more wealth, is incorrect. The wealth consumed in war is not employed to produce wealth but to destroy it; and a bond given by the government to those who lend it money during war is not wealth at all. But to say, as Henry George does actually say, that the bonds of a government are not Capital, is to deny that Rothschild is a capitalist-a palpable reductio ad absurdum; for he is a typical capitalist-a capitalist who is nothing else than a capitalist, whereas most capitalists are also landowners and laborers; which embarasses us when we wish to class them, while he is classable at once and forever as a capitalist. And, as all Capital is not wealth employed to produce wealth, so much wealth employed to produce more wealth-for example, the tools belonging to a man who lets out the work he does with them-are capital in no ordinary tenable sense. For a correct definition of Capital we are indebted to Karl Marx. Capital is that which acquires Surplus Value, or a share in Distribution not due to labor. It may be wealth employed to produce wealth, but is not necessarily. It includes, therefore, slaves, accounts bearing interest, and Land, though this is a peculiar kind, needing, frequently, to be distinguished with much care from (other) Capital15.' This definition certainly has the disadvantage of leaving us without a short term for wealth employed to produce wealth, After considerable embarassment from this lack, I determined to employ the symbol W. P. W.; and I find it very convenient. I shall maintain that W. P. W., as such, works, though it may be Capital, in quite the opposite way to Capital, as such. Capital is, in Wall street phrase, a 'bear': W. P. W. is a 'bull.' W. P. W. raises the value of labor: Capital, as such, always tends to beat it down. 'Orthodox' economy, having thus committed a non distributis medii, in identifying with Capital what is only sometimes a part of Capital, and fallen into the ambiguity of using the word Capital in two inconsistent senses,16 proceeds to give an incorrect account of the process by which both W. P. W. and Capital are brought into being. Because under the existing 'bourgeois' methods of production and trade, most Capital is W. P. W., and because the individual capitalist often17 becomes one by saving money, this theory, still failing to distribute the middle term, asserts that Capital is created by saving money. But in whichever sense the word Capital is to be understood, Capital existed long before there was any money to save. Does Capital mean W. P. W.? Then the forked stick of the Digger; the bow of a more advanced barbarian; a tame horse, dog, cow; a boat, a net, is Capital. What had saving money to do with making these? They were made not by 'adding parsimony to production,' but wholly by production, of that peculiar kind which is called Invention. Now, it is a truth of the first importance that the economic functions are always essentially the same-that they advance, not by creation but only evolution,-a 'simple indefinite homogeneity' becoming a 'complex definite heterogeneity.' All W. P. W., from a raft to a Great Eastern, an Esquimaux sled to a Union Pacific R. R.; a bow to a quick-firing rifled cannon, is produced by Invention, and by nothing but Invention. All the processes of trade-the opening of new markets, the use of bills, notes, banks, stocks, clearing houses, were brought into existence by invention, and by nothing else. Money owes its existence to Invention and its use has very largely given way to that of credit, a somewhat later invention which is admitted to serve all the same purposes. An imperfect system of credit-exchanges still makes cash payments periodically necessary, and the great cash accumulations of bankers very useful; but of these accumulations only a very small part is due to saving; which, moreover, to give it all the praise it has, can accumulate nothing but money, could not do that if all the people tried to save, and would be useless but for that series of exchanges whose end is always unproductive consumption. To suppose an extreme casea favorite device in economic reasoning,-we have seen what not only would happen if all tried to save money-they could not do it, and they would all be poor-but what actually does happen where this process is approached, as in 'Jewtown'-they all are desperately poor. Now suppose, then, that nobody saved money-that every one bought whatever he fancied-what would happen? Since it is evident that if a man who starts with nothing proposes to build or buy a house he must meanwhile abstain from gratifying many desires of a more evanescent character, there might be less substantial comfort than there is. But this does not seem to me quite certain, for the number of such men who build or buy houses has never been great; and, if we inquired into their antecedents we should be apt to find they differed from less provident neighbors rather in their natural tastes than their acquired habits. At any rate, there would then, as now, be productive labor, without which no man starting poor in a pacific society could gratify his desires at all; trade, without which only the simplest desires can be gratified; and invention, which is what improves all the means of gratifying desire. In short, the effect of parsimony even in assisting production of W. P. W. is much exaggerated.
(To be continued)
BOOKS RECEIVED
NEO-MALTHUSISMO Y SOCIALISMO. Alfredo Naguet y G. Hardy. Barcelona, Spain.
THE AMERICAN HOUSE OF LORDS. Morrison 1. Swift. The Supreme Court Reform League, Boston, Mass.
DIE LUGE DES PARLAMENTARISMUS. Pierre Ramus. W. Schouteten, Bruscelles, Belgium.
THE MAN-MADE WORLD OR OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlton Co., N. Y. City.
MIMO SPOLECNOST. Jos. Kucera. Literarni Krouzek, Chicago, 111.
FABIAN ANARCHISM . Alexander Horr. Freeland Pub. Co., San Francisco, Cal.
THE CHASM. George Cram Cook. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York
SINGLE TAX CONFERENCE, 1910. Joseph Fels Fund Commission, Cincinnati, 0.
THE MODERN SCHOOL. Wm. Thurston Brown, Salt Lake City, Utah. ADVENTURE. Jack London. The Macmillan Co., New York. ($1.50)
FootnotesFootnote 13: I am loth, yet it may be needful, to spend space on such remarks as that the same man may be all three of these characters; or that the 'best' land does not mean the richest, but that whose culture pays best, for whatever reason.
Footnote 14: 'He says the origin of Rent is the desire of landlords, a privileged class, to reap what they did not sow. Ricardo assumed to correct him by giving that theory of its origin stated above.
Footnote 15: Even Henry George, than whom no writer has insisted more on the difference between Land and Capital, says that Land Value is only 'Rent commuted, or capitalized.'
Footnote 16: 'That the orthodox economists are aware of something loose about their definition of capital, is evident from their plentiful disagreement.
Footnote 17: 'I can hardly say as a rule. Of the money in even savings banks only a part is 'savings,' the rest representing trades' balances for which the depositors had no immediate use.
Vol. VI APRIL, 1911 No. 2
CONTENTSThe Cry of Toil Rudyard Kipling 33Everlasting Murder M. B 34Observations and Comments 37Brooding PatienceBlood Money GiftsThe Lie of Universal Peace The Slave's GovernmentThe Spirit of the MartyrLaw Versus LaborA Noble CriminalViva Mexico Wm. C. Owen 42The Appeal of Mexico to American LaborRicardo Flores Magon 46On the Trail Emma Goldman 50To the Subscribers to 'The American Journalof Eugenics' Lillian Herman 56Are Kotoku Protests Justified?Emma Goldman Bolton Hall 57Economy as Viewed by an Anarchist(Continuation) C. L. James 62
EMMA GOLDMAN .... PUBLISHERALEXANDER BERKMAN .... EDITOROffice: 55 West 28th Street, New York City Price, 10 Cent* per Copy One Dollar per YearheadTHE CRY OF TOIL
By RUDYARD KIPLING.
We have fed you all for a thousand years,And you hail us still unfed.Though there's never a dollar of your wealthBut marks the workers dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest,And you lie on a crimson wool;For, if blood be the price of all your wealth,Good God! we ha' paid it in full.
There's never a mine blown skyward nowBut we're buried alive for you;There's never a wreck drifts shoreward nowBut we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red,And the factories where we spin;If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,Good God! we ha' paid it in full.
We have fed you all for a thousand years,For that was our doom, you know;From the day when you chained us in your fieldsTo the strike of a week ago.
You ha' eaten our lives and our babies and wives,And we're told its your legal share;But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,Good God! we ha' bought it fair.
EVERLASTING MURDER
By M. B.
WAR or peace—the slaughter continues, for the character of capitalist society is so inexorably murderous that no amount of moralizing can mitigate it.
Horrified we witness the carnival of death, fain to believe that these catastrophes are 'accidental,' exceptional, while in reality the destruction of human life, industrial murder because of greed and inhumanity, is an established institution. In a society where profit is paramount and the fate of the toilers a negligible quantity, what other result can be expected than the most cynical indifference to the lives of the workingmen.
The hundred and forty-five victims of the fire at the shirt-waist factory of Blanck & Harris, in Washington Square, New York, have been murdered by capitalism. The helpers and executioners in the massacre were the owners of the scab shop, the officials of the public safety department, the administration of the City of New York, and the government and legislature at Albany. These are the guilty. But as they control the machinery of 'justice,' they will acquit themselves. Within a few weeks the terrible crime will be all but forgotten and—the business of murder will continue.
May the terrible tragedy help to clarify our vision. Our grief is profound; may it bear emotions and resolves strong and effectual, worthy of our great sorrow.
With terrible clearness this crime has demonstrated how useless are the laws for the protection of the lives of the toilers. The laws are there; the rules and regulations are there; the highly paid officials are there; only the actual protection is not there. Government and officialdom are necessary, it is said, for the protection of life and property. In truth, they are capable of dooming the starving wretch to a few years' prison for stealing fifteen cents. They are indeed most faithful guardians of property. But when it concerns the effective protection of the workman's life against wholesale capitalist murder, the governmental Providence yawns and sleeps in the bureaus; or pretends to sleep, well knowing that it must not seem too watchful if it wishes to enjoy the sympathy and good will of the wealthy pillars of society. This officialdom is the 'stall'* that decoys the capitalist victim. It is not its business to make such crimes as the Triangle fire impossible. Its duty is superficially to mask—by its laws, dignity, and authority—the plutocratic greed which is responsible for such holocausts.
In their simple trustfulness the 'common people' believe that the governmental Providence is ever on the alert to prevent such accidents; meanwhile this good Providence is concerned mainly in removing the obstacles in the way of plutocratic exploitation and ensuring its own position and aggrandizement.
Heavy is the penalty for this error. Because the toilers believe that the government machinery is designed for their protection, they neglect themselves to take steps to insure their safety. Hence official protection is not only useless; it is positively dangerous, often fatal.
May this be the first lesson to be learned from the murder of our comrades. And may we also realize that labor possesses the power, by means of united and direct action, forever to put a stop to the wholesale slaughter of capitalist greed. Henceforth let our motto be: Away with the deceptive hope for salvation from 'representatives,' politicians, and office-holders. Let us act for ourselves, on the spot: the control of the factories should be in the hands of those who work in them; the means: direct action and the general strike, and sabotage which has accomplished such splendid results in the syndicalist movement of France and Italy.
It is the workers—not the landlords, manufacturers, or bosses; not the city or State authorities—that risk in the factories their health and life. It is therefore they who should also have the right to determine the conditions under which they will work and of taking such precautions as may be necessary to safeguard them, not only on paper, but in reality. Labor would indeed deserve to be charged with immaturity and lack of independent judgment, if it will still longer continue to trust its fate to the plutocratic regime and its servants, and be persuaded to abstain from independent direct action. All too long the toilers have felt themselves mere 'hands' and subjects. It is time to remember their rights as human beings and to realize their strength to assert these.
The power of labor seems weak only because it is never fully manifested. The workingmen still fail to realize their tremendous possibilities and the great tasks they could accomplish, because they do not dare to act for themselves, without go-betweens, politicians, and arbitration boards. It is these that paralyze independent action on the part of labor and strive to divert its every effort into channels profitable to capitalism.
Not merely fire-escapes and safe exits can the workers secure by the exercise of their economic power, through direct action and general stoppage of work. They are also able—though naturally after a hard struggle—entirely to abolish the industrial system of wholesale slaughter and exploitation.
Upon this aim to concentrate our efforts, to work for it in the factories and shops, and finally to achieve this noble purpose be our vow at the grave of our hundred and forty-five murdered fellow-workers.
Stall: the assistant of a pickpocket who jostles the passengers in the streetcar, or starts a fight, to give his partner an opportunity to rob the people.THE POWER OF THE PLUTOCRAT
I THINK that nowadays if—I do not say some prominent villain such as Nero, but—some most ordinary man of business wished to make a pond of human blood for diseased rich people to bathe in when ordered to do so by their learned medical advisers, he would not be prevented from arranging it, if only he observed the accepted and respectable forms: that is, did not use violence to make people shed their blood, but got them into such a position that they could not live without shedding it; and if, also, he engaged priests and scientists: the former to consecrate the new pond as they consecrate cannons, ironclads, prisons, and gallows; and the latter to find proofs of the necessity and justifiability of such an institution, as they have found proofs of the necessity for wars and brothels.
Leo Tolstoy
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
IT was truly a procession of gigantic proportions that took place in New York on the fifth of April. For hours the mourning thousands marched, in pouring rain and chilling wind, along the streets of the city. This tremendous army of toil—men, women, and children; young and old—paid tribute to their hundred and forty five fellow-workers that fell victims to the fire in the Triangle shirt-waist factory.
Together with the mourning hosts marched Patience. Enormous, incredible patience that broods and broods and vainly waits for a Messiah to bid halt to the unceasing murder.
The lioness sacrifices her life for her threatened cubs; the timid bird even flies unhesitatingly to the rescue of her young; only man—and especially the workingman— is so tamed by habitual submission that the thought of militant self-protection is foreign to him. He leaves his defense to 'higher powers,' and is forever duped.
Yet, in spite of this inexhaustible patience, these higher powers must have regarded the marching hosts with strong suspicion. They were fearful lest deep in the hearts of the mourners there may seethe the spirit of rebellion and rage, ready to manifest itself. Therefore, police to the front! large numbers of police, to regulate the emotions of the mourners and keep a restraining hand upon their movements and behavior.
Thus we vegetate to day. But the hour may strike when labor will free itself from paralyzing Patience and break the fetters of its deadening thralldom.
NOTICING in the New York Call the statement that Andrew Carnegie had contributed five thousand dollars to the Relief Fund, to aid the families of the Triangle fire victims, I wrote to the chairman of the Relief Fund of the Garment Workers' Union, protesting against the 'philanthropy' of the Homestead murderer. My letter was published in the Call of March 31st, as follows:
CARNEGIE'S DONATION FOR THE VICTIMS.ALEXANDER BERKMAN DENOUNCES ITS ACCEPTANCE BY UNIONRELIEF COMMITTEE
Alexander Berkman, the Anarchist, has sent the following letter to the chairman of the Relief Fund of the Garment Workers' Union:
My Dear Sir—I understand that you have received and accepted a donation from Mr. Andrew Carnegie. I protest against this action, as one utterly debasing and humiliating to the sufferers of the recent calamity and the whole working class of which they are an integral part.
Andrew Carnegie is a worse murderer than those who are responsible for the Triangle disaster. Your memory serves you but poorly if you have forgotten the bloody days of Homestead, the chief inspiration of which was this same Carnegie, from whose hands, stained with blood, you now accept 'gifts.' Andrew Carnegie, Bloody Andy, as they call him in Western Pennsylvania, the original American labor baiter, the destroyer of the Steel Workers' Union, the importer of a Pinkerton army to force labor's submission by wholesale slaughter—from this 'friend of bereaved toilers' you accept 'donations,' him you give an opportunity to play the generous 'Lord of Skibo.'
It's disgusting. What becomes of your beloved class consciousness? Or was it the generous size of the gift which caused you to close an eye? Oh, Andy is no fool, and he knows human nature.
I do not know whether your Relief Committee or the National Red Cross accepted that donation. I am addressing this letter to you, who are actively interested in the relief work, to voice my protest against the victims of capitalist greed being 'relieved' by capitalist 'generosity.'
Do not outrage the survivors of the disaster. Do not desecrate the memory of the murdered workers.
ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
In reply to the above, the following letter appeared in the next issue of the Call:
New York, March 31, 1911.
Editor of The Coll:—The publication in to-day's Call of the Berkman letter under the headline, 'Carnegie's Donation for the Victims—Alexander Berkman Denounces Its Acceptance by Union Relief Committee,' is an error, to say the least, and is therefore calculated to convey an erroneous impression.
The Relief Committee of the Ladies' Waist and Dress Makers' Union has not accepted any donation from Mr. Carnegie. That gentleman made his donation to the American Red Cross Relief Fund.
Since The Call has published daily the actual receipts of the Relief Committee of this union, and as that fund, as reported to-day, only amounted to $2,326.85, the error is apparent, and the publication of the Berkman letter in The Call under the headline above quoted is as inexplicable as the letter itself is characteristic of Mr. Berkman.
Kindly publish this communication at the earliest possible moment in justice to our committee.
WILLIAM MANLY,Chairman, Relief Fund Committee, Ladies' Waist andDress Makers' Union, Local 25.
It seems to me that Mr. Mailly's point is not well taken. My letter states very clearly that 'I do not know whether your (the Union's) Relief Committee or the National Red Cross accepted that donation. I am addressing this letter to you, who are actively interested in the relief work, to voice my protest against the victims of capitalist greed being 'relieved' by capitalist 'generosity.'
That was the purpose of my letter. I wanted to express my protest against the hypocritical philanthropy of a Carnegie who donated his 'gift' to the bereaved families almost on the very day when the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania discharged the innocently imprisoned Andrew Toth, poor 'Praying Andy,' as we familiarly called him, after he had served twenty years in the Allegheny hell because of the perjured testimony of Carnegie's detectives.
What I said in my letter regarding the philanthropy of the notorious butcher of Homestead stands intact.
THE universal peace situation offers a splendid opportunity for a clever caricaturist to distinguish himself by illustrating the 'peaceful' attitude of the Great Powers.
The United States government is anxious for universal peace and—musters her army to the Mexican border, ready to drown the revolution in blood the moment the American speculators give the signal. 'Mexicans, you must obediently permit yourselves to be skinned, or we will shoot you'—that's the peace message of the American neighbor.
The picture is made complete by the American patriot continually whining that the army is too small and that the navy is not sufficiently big and efficient.
The British government, too, is in favor of universal peace. Only the other day one of its leading statesmen declared that the most pressing need of England is a million soldiers, to enable her to compete successfully in the business of man-slaughter.
France is also in favor of universal peace. Too bad that her nearest neighbor is Germany. This situation involves a caricature representing two vicious dogs greedily watching a tempting bone. When France strength her army with twenty thousand men, Germany feels it her duty to add thirty thousand to her forces; and when the German murder-specialists invent an improved cannon, the French jingoes bemoan their unpreparedness for war.
Even Germany would favor universal peace if France was not so near her border line, and if she herself was not so eager to grab a bigger slice of the world-market.
Russia is anxious for universal peace: it needs more leisure for hanging her noblest sons and (laughters, or burying the flower of her youth in the snows of Siberia.
Japan, too, is ready for universal peace. Therefore, its chief concern is to prepare herself for successful competition in war.
That is the picture of universal peace in the international State-menagerie. Will it be with the aid of governments, or against their opposition, that universal peace will be achieved?
THE Diaz regime is making the utmost use of the machinery of corruption and violence at its command to continue the people of Mexico in the slavery from which the Rothschild's, Morgan's, et al. draw such immense dividends. Should the government of Washington actively interfere with the revolution, the words of H. D. Thoreau would be very timely:
'How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.'
THE crime of October thirteenth, 1909—the assassination of Francisco Ferrer—is becoming an ever increasing danger, fraught with terror for the government of Spain. The discussion in the Cortes, in reference to Ferrer's trial and execution, resulted in the breaking up of the Cabinet. This, together with the continually growing anti-militarist propaganda, which is filling the masters with so much anxiety, is part of the just vengeance which the spirit of the murdered tribune of the people is visiting upon his assassins.
ONCE more it has been proved that the Constitution, the supposed cornerstone of popular well-being, is rather an ax for beheading the rights of the people.
Last year the legislature of New York passed the Workingmen's Compulsory Compensation Law. The worshippers of the State-idea were jubilant over the triumph of labor in the important issue of protection for the toilers. But, as usual, their trust in the governmental Providence has again proved a delusion.
Though the new law contained more bone than meat for the workingman, the Court of Appeals, Judge Werner presiding, found the law inimical to the interests of the plutocracy, and as such to be strangled. The Compensation Law was declared unconstitutional because it was designed to hold the employer materially responsible for accidents to his workmen. The constitution does not sanction such interference with the inviolable rights of property. The court quite openly declared that its highest duty is to protect the sacredness of possession, and when a legislature occasionally threatens property privilege, the courts are there to do their duty.
In his decision Judge Werner said:
The right of property rests not upon philosophical or scientific speculations, nor upon the commendable impulses of benevolence or charity, nor yet upon the dictates of natural justice. The right has its foundation in the fundamental law. That can be changed by the people but not by legislatures. In a government like ours, theories of public good or necessity are often so plausible or sound as to command popular approval, but courts are not permitted to forget that the law is the only chart by which this ship of state is to be guided. Law as used in this sense means the basic law and not the very act of legislation which deprives the citizen of his rights, privileges or property. Any other view would lead to the absurdity that the constitutions protect only those rights which the legislatures do not take away.
We should like to call the special attention of our readers, and of the American people as a whole, to the passage regarding the inability of the legislature to change the fundamental right of property; that can be changed by the people only. That is to say, all lawmaking is powerless to alter social conditions; the people alone possess the power to do so.
Perhaps the accumulating experience along these lines will soon suffice to teach the dupes of the ballot box that the Anarchists may be right, after all: that voting merely erves to delude the slaves into the belief of self-government, and that only direct action by the people themselves will accomplish their emancipation.
May the people take the Judge's hint to heart, and together with the fundamental right of property drive legislatures and courts out of the temple.
A 'CRIMINAL' who should not be forgotten by the proletariat and who deserves brotherly sympathy, is the Brooklyn shoemaker Buccafori. One of the most active members of the Industrial Workers, he has always fought in the front ranks of labor; it is due to the energetic efforts of himself and his co-workers that the shoemakers of Brooklyn awoke into rebellion against the unbearable arrogance of the shoe manufacturers.
But the path of such a pioneer is full of thorns. Buccafori has been condemned to ten years prison, because, driven to desperation by the persecution of his foreman, he killed the latter.
The case of Buccafori is one of the many which the crude psychology of dominant justice fails to understand. The judges refused him the right of self-defense, although all the evidence in the case tended to prove the prisoner's justification. But his fellow workers and comrades know that an act like Buccafori's, far from being due to baseness, is rather the deed of a noble character. They will therefore not forsake him. All honor and active aid is due to Buccafori.
Viva Mexico
BY WM. C. Owen.
OF all the heart-breaking experiences that propaganda work has brought me, none begins to equal that through which I find myself passing in connection with the Mexican revolution. That the American public, as a whole, remains indifferent to the struggle now in progress at its very door, is to me the most astounding of revelations. One feels almost tempted to pass over to the capitalist side, allying oneself with those whose eyes are open to their interests.
The Mexican revolution, represented by the Mexican Liberal Party, is literally a Titanic struggle, for it is against the money power of the world. It is inexpressibly vital to every member of the great army of discontent, for it is spending blood and treasure to embody in the lives of fifteen million people those vital economic truths for which the entire labor movement of the world is supposed to be striving. It raises in the most uncompromising form the issue of the man versus the dollar; for it proposes, first and above all, to restore to the people an enormous and immensely rich domain, of which they have been robbed by governmental treason. By so doing it proposes to abolish chattel and wage slavery of a type probably more atrocious than any now existent. Moreover, it proposes to abolish them by methods acknowledged generally as those which alone can give permanent relief; that is to say, by restoring the land to the people and establishing individual liberty.
To accomplish this, an entire nation is in revolt, even those who have not been able to procure arms often joining in the battles. All this is happening at our very gates, on the other side of an imaginary line. Yet the American public, as a whole, still snores on undisturbed.
Here is a quotation from the close of John Kenneth Turner's standard work, Barbarous Mexico: 'In Mexico to-day exists a nation-wide movement to abolish the Diaz system of slavery and autocracy. This movement is quite capable of solving the problems of Mexico without foreign interference. So far it has not succeeded, partly because of the assistance our government has given in the persecution of some of its leaders, and partly because of Diaz' threat—constantly held before the Mexican people—of calling an American army to his aid in case of a serious revolution against him.'
That passage is literally true. The movement is 'nation-wide.' If not interfered with it would succeed, and, by succeeding, aid incalculably the entire movement of revolt with which the world is in labor. It has been interfered with, is being interfered with, and doubtless will be interfered with still more effectively—at the behest of the money power. For all money power is bending every effort to crush, at all points, the gathering attacks upon its throne.
This was the true meaning of the hurried dispatch, last month, of more than thirty thousand troops to the Mexican border, each man carrying two hundred rounds of ball cartridge. For this six warships were dispatched to watch the Gulf of Mexico ports. For this every warship on the Pacific Coast was put in fighting trim.
The outspoken manifesto of the Mexican Liberal Party, in which it declared that it was not fighting for any change of president or cabinet, but for fundamental economic rights, forced the money power's hand; for the sudden call to arms which riveted the world's attention was but the open continuation of a policy that had been prosecuted quietly for years. Three times before, within the last three years, had troops been rushed to the border, and all the civil forces of the government consistently employed to aid Diaz and his financial allies. It is not in Mexican jails alone that those who dared to raise their voices on behalf of Mexican freedom have been interred.
Do the thoughtful and humane of this and other countries understand what actually has taken place? Far and away above all other countries Mexico—rich, phenomenally rich Mexico—has been made within the last generation the gambling board of capital; has been the pawn in a gigantic money-grabbing contest.
Take the case of the Yaquis—brave, industrious, simple people; the best of workers. By the hundreds of thousands these people have been driven from the lands they had cultivated peacefully for centuries; driven at the bayonet's point. Those lands are owned to day by alien millionaires who got them for the merest song; while the Yaqui, delivered at the Yucatan hemp plantation, fetches sixty-five dollars. Two-thirds of them, it is said, die within a year after deportation.
On the tobacco plantations of the Valle National it is even worse. There ninety-five per cent. are reported as dying within the first seven or eight months. Did you ever hear of Aldrich and the highly protected tobacco trust?
Get a mental birds-eye view of this invasion by the money power—the most sweeping and the swiftest on record. Here is the barest outline.
The Morgan-Guggenheim copper merger—did you ever hear of these gentlemen?—is in absolute control of the entire copper output of Mexico.
The Standard Oil Company—the name sounds familiar—has control of most of the crude oil fields of Mexico. According to Regeneration its concessions cover one-eighth of the entire country.
The American Sugar Trust has obtained grants that insure it complete monopoly in the near future.
The Southern Pacific, and allied interests of the E. H. Harriman family, own or control three-fourths of the main line railway mileage of Mexico. The Harriman family also owns two and a half million acres of oil land in the State of Tampico alone.
So it has been going. The dice are shaken, and on the table what was Mexico rolls out as Wall Street.
Now these Mexicans are in revolt; nominally against their own government, but actually against even more powerful slaveholders; foremost among whom is the money power of the United States.
Do not imagine that this revolution has been manufactured by a few ambitious individuals or by a special class. On the contrary, it is a spontaneous uprising of almost the entire people, for well-informed correspondents report nine-tenths of the population as in hearty sympathy. Read the news in Regeneration, special organ of the Mexican Liberal Party, and you will find weekly reports of uprisings in every State and Territory, though admittedly only a small fraction of the actual news gets through. That paper, more than once suppressed and its editors imprisoned, has a circulation of twelve thousand, and it is astonishing how it manages to collect the news of the movement when one considers the difficulty attending the task.
It is recognized that such upheavals as the French and Russian revolutions are to be judged not by the talk-festivals in Paris, St. Petersburg, or other centers of population, but by the spontaneous outbreaks at a thousand and one scattered country points. Tested thus the Mexican movement bears all the marks of a genuine revolution. Peasants rise and oust their masters; there are sharp reprisals and little quarter is given on either side; reports of 'executions' of officials and managers of estates are not infrequent; it seems generally understood that the revolution will succeed or be - drowned in blood.
Along the Southern border of the United States sympathy with the revolution is strong, and the small country papers give many details that the big dailies suppress. The latter publish ridiculously false reports, and endeavor assiduously to convey the impression that the movement is practically confined to the comings and goings of the small armed bands headed by Madero and other leaders. In reality they are but the fringe.
One recognizes that the large dailies of this country are invariably owned by the money power, and the Diaz government has won their enthusiastic allegiance by most generous concessions. For example, one hears much talk nowadays of Limantour, the Mexican Minister of Finance, with whom Madero is said to be in parley, debating terms of peace. During E. H. Harriman's life Limantour was his right hand man in Mexico. Recently Limantour visited New York City, but he denied himself to general callers. Those with whom he held special consultations were Pierpont Morgan, Jr., and Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press.
Such is the situation, necessarily condensed owing to lack of space. What then is to be done? Why, everything; for public apathy must be overcome, and public apathy is the child of public ignorance. The public must be made to understand that slavery is once more under fire, and it will rally as it did in the sixties. It must be made to understand clearly where its clear duty lies, and told plainly that maudlin sympathy wins no battles. Substantial support, in the shape of money, must be given as proof of genuine interest in what is the common cause.
Above all, those who have been declaring for years that capitalism and monopoly must be overthrown— whether they be Socialists, Anarchists, Single Taxers, or unattached—should hear ringing in their ears that call to special effort which at special moments special circumstances imperiously dictate. The question is not Mexican but international; slavery and freedom are again at death-grips.
THE APPEAL OF MEXICO TO AMERICAN LABOR
Headquarters of the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party,519 1/2 E. 4th St., Los Angeles, Cal., U. S. A.
March, 11, 1911.
To SAMUEL E. GOMPERS, President of the American Federation of Labor, 425 G St., N. W., Washington, D. C.
Sir:—The Mexican Liberal Party appeals to you— to you directly and officially, as head of the largest body of organized labor in the United States. It appeals to you in a cause as just and holy as ever history recorded; it makes an appeal, therefore, that you cannot and, we are sure, will not resist.
It is time that the workingmen of the United States speak out, and it is for you to give the word, promptly and decisively.
The slavery against which we are fighting is the slavery your American Federation of Labor was organized to fight. The chains that the money power has fastened on us are the chains against which you fret. Our cause is your cause, but your cause in its extremist, most pitiable and, therefore, most irresistible form.
We are in revolt against unspeakably atrocious slavery, forced on us and supported by the American money power. The Standard Oil Co., the Guggenheims, the Southern Pacific Railway, the Sugar Trust—all that Wall Street autocracy against which you and the great masses of your nation are making such vigorous protest—are the powers against which we of Mexico are in revolt. They have dispossessed us of our lands and rendered us homeless by the hundreds of thousands; they have left us the choice of exile or imprisonment in such hells as the Valle National.
To support this Wall Street inferno, American soldiers are being called to arms. Already by the tens of thousands they are being sent to our borders, that they may aid in stamping out the last spark of that freedom which is supposed to be the basis of your Republic.
It is time for effective protest, and it is you who can make it most effectively.
The issue is clear, unmistakable, beyond evasion. We repeat that our cause is your cause, and we call on you to give it voice—promptly, clearly, and decisively.
Yours, for human liberty,(Signed) R1CARDO FLORES MAGON,For Junta, Mexican Liberal Party.
Offices of the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party,519 1/2 East Fourth Street,Los Angeles, Cal., U. S. A., March 13, 1911.EMMA GOLDMAN, 210 E. 13th St., New York City, N. Y.
Dear Friend and Fellow-Fighter in the Cause of Human Liberty:—I write urging you to exercise on behalf of my countrymen in Mexico the influence you wield over a large section of the American public. Need I spend my breath in telling you that we are fighting the world-wide battle of human emancipation; that our cause is your cause; that we are struggling for what every intelligent man and woman knows as being absolutely indispensable for human happiness and development? I think I need not.
It is well known—has been proved beyond all peradventure of doubt—that, at the behest of the money power, hundreds of thousands of my countrymen have been driven from the lands on and by which they and their forefathers had lived since our history began. Thus they have been forced into such hells as the tobacco plantations of the Valle National and the hemp plantations of Yucatan, or driven into exile across the American border, where they struggle desperately for a starvation wage. Somehow or other men and women must live; or, at least, try to live.
What will become of these millions of men, women and children if the money power has its way? What will be the result if it succeeds in trampling them beneath the heel of militarism? And what will be the effect on the character and standing of the American nation if it suffers itself to be the obedient tool of the money power, and stands before the world the avowed defender of chattel slavery of the most atrocious type? Surely, to ask these questions is to answer them.
The American public does not understand; it cannot see the picture in its awful reality, for it is misled by the willful misrepresentations of those who, having gigantic money interests at stake, are sparing no effort to delude it.
So long as the money power thought the struggle in Mexico was merely to displace one dictator with another it looked on indifferently; for such struggles have been frequent in the history of Latin peoples, and they alter nothing. But to-day it understands quite clearly that its own selfish interests are in the balance; that we are fighting for the restoration of millions and millions of acres of land, given away to foreign syndicates by the fraudulent connivance of Diaz' unspeakable government, and entirely without the consent of the rightful owners, the people; that we are determined that the poor shall come once more into what is justly their own. Therefore to day the money powers in America, backed by the money powers of the world, are calling the American nation to arms.
In such a crisis will you be silent? I think not; indeed I know you cannot be.
Yours for human emancipation,
RICARDO FLORES MAGON.
THE COMING TRANSFORMATION
NO Revolution ever rises above the intellectual level of those who make it, and little is gained where one false notion supplants another. But we must some day, at last and forever, cross the line between Nonsense and Common Sense. And on that day we shall pass from Class Paternalism, originally derived from fetish fiction in times of universal ignorance, to Human Brotherhood in accordance with the nature of things and our growing knowledge of it; from Political Government to Industrial Administration; from Competition in Individualism to Individuality in Co-operation; from War and Despotism, in any form, to Peace and Liberty.
THOMAS CARLYLE.ON THE TRAIL
LEST our friends fear that I am in danger of becoming respectable, I wish to inform them that I am still under the protective wing of the police. STAUNTON, Ill., has proved that police interference may occasionally be deferred, but that it has ceased — never.
At the station in Staunton I was met in a manner befitting a queen, a detachment of police on hand to pay me homage. A few comrades were also there to bring the tidings that the meetings had been suppressed, but that another hail was hastely secured where I might try to speak.
Onward we marched like Tennyson's six hundred, police in front of us, back of us, and on the side of us. The hail was quickly filled, but as the guardians of disorder were bent on stopping the meeting, they arrested Comrade Kobeinell who had corne with me from St. Louis, our champion literature man having preceded me to Milwaukee. The crime of Kobcinell consisted in selling books without a license, — a wretched police pretext to create a disturbance; but these stupids made their calculation without taking into account Anarchist determination. Of course, our comrade had to be escorted to the police station, but on learning his fate ($200 bond), L raced back to the hall where the audience had been waiting patiently. The police made all kinds of threats, but I spoke on that most reviled of all ideas, Anarchism. I then called for volunteers to go on the bond, and the response came without much ado. After the usual red tape Kobcinell was released to appear for trial later on. We then held a German gathering in a private house, attended by quite a crowd, regardless of a two-mile tramp through Staunton mud. A collection was taken to cover the loss of the meeting, to which everyone present contributed. Comrade Kobcinell was dragged back and forth from St. Louis to Staunton, and finally condemned to pay $17.50 fine, although $5 is the legal fine for the offense. Considering that the purchaser of the prohibited article was a detective, our friends will realize that the punishment was not in excess of the crime. Besides, what is the law if not a most contemptible trap for innocent victims, to feed hungry parasites? If not for the disappointment of Comrade Kurnik, who worked faithfully for the success of the meetings, and the great number of miners who had come from afar, I should have enjoyed the experience. Not that I need proof for the devotion of the police. I know only too well that there will always be a chance to exchange the hotel for the station house; therefore there is no danger of being spoiled.
Too bad Diogenes lived in the long ago; else he might have discovered a man in BELLVILLE, Ill. Unfortunately, the man happens to be the mayor of the town — a most unique specimen in American political life. Though, perhaps, not so brilliant as Brand Whitlock, Mayor Kern is none the less unusually well-informed and progressive. His library would make the mouth water of every literary gourmant. But above all, this strange man is remarkably courageous and liberal. I wonder why such people will continue in the political swamp? It must be that the American, like the Schwab, cuts his wisdom teeth at a late age. The truth is, most Americans are sadly deficient in the political wisdom teeth.
MILWAUKEE! Hurrah! The millennium has come. Red flags waving; bands playing the inspiring strains of the Marseillaise; men, women, and children in festive attire; no policeman, no patrol-wagon, no prison, nothing but clas-conscious Comrade Seidel-Berger to look after their flock.
Behüt'dich Gott,Es wär'so schön gewesen;Beliüt'dich Gott,Es hatt'nicht sollen sein.
Seriously, has anything been changed with the ascendency of the Socialist régime? Yes, Mayor Seidel has declarced that the only way the 25,000 unemployed in Milwaukee can be helped now, is to cut the salaries of all the city employees. Really, now? All city employees, including also Mayor Seidel, Congressman Berger and the rest of the official staff? Nixie. No such class-consciousness for theirs. By city employees only the two-dollar-a-day wretches are meant. Surely the Seidels and Genossen are not expected to share their hard-earned thousands with slum proletarians. The latter must starve until economic determinism will determine the entire machinery of government into the hands of Socialist politicians.
Poor stupid voter! If you vill believe in heaven before election, don't complain if you get hell after wards.
However, so long as Milwaukee is being purified, nothing cisc matters. Listen, ye abused wives! Flock to Milwaukee, the beautiful paradise. Here your wayward husbands will be brought back to you from any part of the State or country; here they will be forced to love and feed you, and — if they balk, to jail with them, and don't you forget it.
And you, mothers, desirous to protect your daughters from temptation, tue Municipal Dance Hall is waiting for them, with Grannie Berger to watch over them. As to the Hoboes of the land, Milwaukee is their salvation. Ninety days for vagrancy. Come all ye that are heavily laden and poor in spirit. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, in Milwaukee. Amen.
Our meetings were not very large, but who would expect much in the land of the proletarian's heart's desire. Our Comrades Kopczynski and German must have mustered U the inhabitants of hell, the only place where people still interest themselves in revolutionary ideas; for the rest, all is castor oil with honey.
MADISON, Wis. Last year our visit caused quite a rumpus, a would-be newspaper, the Democrat, suddenly having discovered no end of gAnarchist explosivesh among the professors. And all because the most progressive of them all, Prof. Ross, dared to announce my lecture from his rostrum. The idea of an American professor owning his soul is too awful.
Whether it was in consequence of the attack of last year, or the fact that the legislature was to be coaxed into an appropriation for tue university, the professorial gentlemen gbehavedh this time. Our ad was refused by the college paper. After all, professors too must cat, and the State being the employer of these good men, they must submit.
The students were not deterred; they came in mach larger numbers than last year. Altogether at least a thousand students attended our three lectures. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that if ever solidarity between the workers and the American intellegencia is established. Madison will furnish the largest share.
DULUTH, Minn., was new territory, but it proved worth the effort. Two good meetings and a large quantity of literature vill, no doubt, help to prepare the path for future activities.
ST. PAUL, Minn., was an unlucky number on our itinerary, everything going wrong in that city. Meeting dates mixed, the hail refused at the last moment, and a sudden spell of cold to accentuate the frost of the situation. But the North Pole itself could not paralyze Benjamins ardor. One meeting was arranged, and survived.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., proved the usual stand patter, only more so, owing to the zeal of our Comrades Kraemer, Axelson, and Ruth Olsen. They canvassed the city so carefully that naught hut success was possible. We had six meetings, the last for the students of tite University of Minnesota, and every lecture was well attended. Out of our weeks work resulted the Social Alliance Club, which is to carry on regular propaganda work in Minneapolis. Nearly a hundred friends joined, some money was collected, and a series of lectures arranged which will be held at McEleroy's Hall, Nicollet and 7th Streets. MOTHER EARTH and other Anarchist literature will be on sale at these meet ings.
That there is need for such a club in Minneapolis can be seen from the fact that a number of Socialists, tired of the party discipline and despotism, lost no time in joining our group. The Socialist party is fast drawing its hues closer against individual effort, so that anyone daring to breathe freely is made to go.
One of their ablest men, the editor of The New Time, a little Socialist sheet, was severely censured for bringing the announcement of our meetings, and when the same man, Caspar Richinan, dared to suggest that the monsters who had flogged and tortured the victims of the Red Wing Reform School should be chased into eternity, the brave party held up the entire number and declared war on the editor.
One need not have a prophetic eye to see that the discontent brewing in the party ranks will one of these days cause quite an explosion.
Groups of young artists, living a careless Bohemian life, with ideals for breakfast, paints and brushes for luncheon, and sunsets for supper, are the usual thing in Europe. But to find such a circle in America, living their ideals and caring naught for dollars and cents, is indeed a great event.
The spirit of this extraordinary little band in the Studio of Minneapolis is an American girl, though of foreign parentage, Ruth Olsen. At her age the average American girl dreams only of a good match and nice clothes. Not so our young artist. Breezy and free as the western plains, she is yet deeply absorbed in the most serious problems of life. She is on familiar terms with the best literature of the world and passionately devoted to art.
With her are two other girls and several young men, the insurgents of the Minneapolis Art School, which they have left in protest against its lack of freedom. As Ruth justly says, all great art is Anarchism, the freedom of expression. These young rebels have their own studio where they paint, dream, plan, and live on sandwiches and spaghetti in the most exquisite spirit of mutual helpfulness and solidarity. With more of this idealism, the youth of America, too, may some day, even like the heroes of Russia, give life a different meaning than what it has with us to-day.
OMAHA, Neb., has never been a stormcr. But our small group of friends have remained staunch. Among them, Fred Tomson was more than usually helpful in arranging three meetings in the theatre of which he is the lessee.
The treat of Omaha is dear Mother Fageberg with her five daughters — so full of harmony and good comradship as only true freedom can inspire. The Fagebergs are old radicals who were counted among the many that mourned the death of our martyrs of '87. But unlike so many others, Mother Fageberg has remained true and free. How wonderful old age can be if surounded by harmony, Mother Fageberg is demonstrating. At seventy her spirit is as strong and undaunted as if she were a young rebel. With it goes so much sweetness and humanity that captivates every one's heart.
LINCOLN, Neb., Bryan's town. Judging by the mess this erstwhile American savior has made of himself, Lincoln has nothing to boast of. To us the city was virgin soil, but with usual insistence her maidenly shyness was soon overcome. Our two meetings attracted all sorts and conditions of men and women, mainly students, however.
The miracle of miracles happened there. The law students, usually among the most conservative, invited me to speak before them, and showed genuine interest in the question of law, crime, punishment, etc. I am not optinitstic enough to believe that any of the men will give up the career of lawyer. It's too good a business, this juggling with legal phrases. But that law students will stand for Anarchistic ideas, is a significant sign of the times.
Altogether, the Trail is discovering to us a great many vistas, all ready to be explored.
After Kansas we go to Denver, 14th — 19th of April; Salt Lake City, 22nd — 26th.
Beginning May 1st for 10 days at Los Angeles, then San Diego; Fresno, between 11th — 15th of May. After that San Francisco.
On then, ever onward.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
ANARCHiSM —The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by m.n.made law; the theory that all form, of government rest on violence, and ere therelore wrong end harmful as well as unnece.aery.
ANARCHIST —A believer in Anarchism; one opposed to all form. of coercive government and invasive authority; an advocate of Anarchy, or absence of government, as the ideal of political liberty end social harmony.
TO THE SUBSCRIBERS TO 'THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EUGENICS'MORE than a year has gone by since Moses Harman saw the last number of his much-loved magazine come from the press, and sank to his well-earned rest. That number was dated Jan.-Feb., 1910. In it he said:
'If the readers of Eugenics would know more of the exceptionally courageous and wonderfully persistent battle for free speech in New York and other eastern cities, that has been fought by Emma Goldman and her few steadfast friends, they should send stamps, dimes, or dollars for copies of MOTHER EARTH. The friends of truth and justice everywhere should do what they can to make Miss Goldman's next annual tour a triumphant success.'
Now MOTHER EARTH is to fill out the unexpired subscriptions to Eugenics. Those whose subscriptions have expired will receive sample copies of MOTHER EARTH. I am sure that this arrangement would be satisfactory to my father, and I hope it will please his -friends. He always said that he expected to continue to publish his message to the world as long as he lived, and though he hoped his magazine might continue after his death, he wanted me to feel perfectly free to make any disposition of it which might seem to me best.
It has been very hard for me to definitely give up the publication of Eugenics. My father's life and work-his publications, Lucifer and Eugenics-have been so closely interwoven with my life ever since my childhood, that it is with a mental and physical wrench that the parting is made. Yet Moses Harman was unique. His work was unique. Neither I nor anyone else could fill his place. But his work lives; he lives in the hearts, the lives of unknown numbers. Not only his children (as is promised to the 'righteous') but many, many more 'rise up and call him blessed.'
But I did not start to write a panegyric of my father. I wanted to make a business statement. It will readily be understood that the addition of the subscription list of Eugenics entails a very heavy extra expense on MOTHER EARTH. I trust that prompt subscriptions will balance this increased expenditure. If any subscribers are dissatisfied with this arrangement, I will endeavor to 'square accounts' in some other way, if informed of the fact. I hope to publish one or more volumes of my father's writings, but cannot say when the work will be done. In the mean time, I hope to keep in touch with his friends and mine. The 'latch-string' still hangs out at his old home (1532 Fulton St., Chicago). Volumes of Lucifer, Eugenics, The Right to Be Born Well, Institutional Marriage and other works of Moses Harman may be ordered through MOTHER EARTH.
LILLIAN HARMAN.
* * *
ARE KOTOKU PROTESTS JUSTIFIED?
New York, Feb. 3, 1911.
My DEAR MISS GOLDMAN.
I have just received notice of the 'Kotoku Protest Conference Defense Committee.' It begins: 'The judicial murder by the Japanese government of twelve Anarchists and Socialists'-I have seen no evidence that they are anything but what some people here would call Philospohical Anarchists and very little that they are Socialists; it is certainly unfair to them and confusing to others to lump them all as 'Anarchists and Socialists.' Anarchy and Socialism seem to me (as to Tucker) to be opposite poles of thought, and I think it should be remembered that twelve of them are still in jail awaiting the arbitrary disposal of the Japanese authorities. It appears to me that for Anarchists to meet as such, and protest as such,* and to dub them
Anarchists with the meaning Terrorist that is ordinarily, though erroneously' understood by the word 'Anarchist,' is practically to stab them in the back. The threat in this resolution is particularly ill advised.
I have no doubt whatever that the Anarchistic expressions of sympathy, with the threat of violence that is sent out under that name, would only prejudice the Japanese officials against the prisoners, and there is no question that those are reported.
I joined in these protests because I saw clearly that they would be made anyhow by the Anarchists and, if they were to refrain, probably by hardly anybody else; and as my name is known in connection with some conservative matters, I hoped that it might have a palliative effect. If it had been a question, however, of whether the withholding of my name would have tended to stifle the protest under the much misunderstood name of 'Anarchist,' I should certainly have withheld it-not from any lack of sympathy, but because it seems to me a means ill-adapted to the end that we wish to attain, or at least proposed, namely-to save those persons who are under pretext of conspiracy are being punished for the expression of their opinions.
For the same reason I think that the appeal of the Protest Conference will injure those who remain alive, more than any money we can raise will help them.
Yours very truly,
BOLTON HALL.
* Mr. Hall is in error. The protest meeting was not held by'Anarchists, as such.' The call to organize the Kotoku Protest Conference was issued by Local New York, S. L. P. The participants and speakers at the protest meeting represented all shades of radicalism.-Ed.
February 11, 1911.
My DEAR MR. HALL.
As your letter could not go in the March issue of MOTHER EARTH, and also because I was very busy, I delayed answering yours of the 3rd instant.
To say that I was surprised at the contents of your letter is to express it mildly. I had hoped from you, of all people, that, after knowing me for something like ten years and a great many others who hold the same ideas as I, you would have developed out of the notion that the Anarchists are divided into philosophies and terrorists. But I see that you are still in the thralldom of the superstition so common among a great 'many people.
Now, as a matter of fact, there is not an Anarchist in the whole world who propagates violence, except that all agree-even such ultra respectables as Mr. Tucker-that we have the right to resist oppression.
The term 'Philosophic Anarchist,' as Fred Schulder justly said, is merely a cloak for a great many who hate to be considered fools, and yet haven't the courage to admit that they are opposed to present society. It is not used in any other country except America, and was adopted largely for the very reason that Schulder refers to. It is quite true that there are Anarchists, Individualists and Communists, but these terms only differentiate the particular economic arrangements of society under Anarchism. But to class them into philosophic and terrorist Anarchists is, to my mind, very absurd. Surely you cannot accept that classification merely because of the popular notion of it. Would you, because the popular notion were that Single Tax meant taking away the land from the people, accept this meaning? As a free man, you must be interested in what you stand for. Of course you would try to dissuade the public from its misconception. But you would not give yourself another name merely to satisfy public opinion Would you? I think that the term 'Anarchist' is quite broad enough to cover whatever concept we may have of a society based on individual freedom and collective opportunity. If the public does not understand it, it is my business to educate it, but it cannot be my business to give myself another name merely because the public is ignorant.
Now, as to why the Anarchists have combined in an active protest against the terrible murder in Japan. The Japanese who were recently killed proclaimed themselves as Anarchists without any extra qualification to it. As a matter of fact they were known as 'Kropotkinists,' because they have translated Kropotkin's works. They-were and still are bitterly attacked by the Marxian Socialists, just as we are attacked by them in this country. It certainly would have been downright betrayal to the Japanese victims if their only comrades, the Anarchists, had not taken an active part in their behalf. The very fact that they stood quite isolated in Japan is more reason why we here and in Europe should have expressed as loudly as possible our sympathy with them; at least it must have been something inspiring to know that their comrades all over the world were with them.
I should, of course, be very sorry to hurt those who are still alive and in the hands of the Japanese authorities; but I am quite confident that they would not want me to keep silent simply because I could buy their release by denying them. I am quite sure that were I in their place I should utterly repudiate the sympathy and assistance of any set of so-called 'liberals,' if they gave it to me on the condition that they would deny my Anarchism.
You may lend your name to the protest if you wish, or not-that, of course, is for you to decide. But I cannot believe that you will be like many others who claim to be liberals or radicals; namely, that you would withdraw your name because the people there are Anarchists, or because the Anarchists here have joined their brothers in a protest. If liberalism means anything at all, it means faith in the ideal of liberty, especially in the right of the individual to entertain an ideal of liberty, no matter how little understood by the public at large. At any rate it seems to me that whatever we have accomplished in the past in the way of liberty has been thanks to the staunch and faithful adherence of the pioneers of an idea to their principles.
You know that as well as I, Mr. Hall, and I hope that you will not expect us to betray our principles, or our comrades, because of some petty gain we might accom-plish from the conservative element.
This may seem a little harsh to you. I am sure I do not mean to be, especially with you; but, to tell the truth, I am tired of the compromise that seems to be the fundamental effort of every man and woman in this country. I repudiate any such means of gaining recognition for myself, or of buying redress for those whom I call my comrades. I assure you if the people in Japan would have denied their ideas I should have been very grieved, but I would not have claimed them, because then it would have meant going directly against their desires; but so long as they are brave enough to stand up for the truth, why should I, or my comrades here, be expected to join in the popular howl against them?
Yours very truly, EMMA GOLDMAN.
February 13, 19II.
My DEAR MISS GOLDMAN.
I thought that I had made my letter clear, but yours makes it clearer-that I had not. I have added a few words in the further, though probably futile, effort to make it plain to the careless reader.
You can do whatever you liKe as to publishing my letter, as revised, and your answer, modified as it wiII be to accord with the changes in mine.
I have also made some notes on yours. My objection was and is to methods,' your letter seems to assume that it is to principles (on which there is no disagreement between us).
Language seems to me to be merely one method of communication and the best language that which best conveys our thought and feeling.
If I could find another name that would avoid the misunderstanding of the words 'Single Tax' I would certainly substitute that. In England our movement is called 'Taxation of Land Values,' or 'Ground Rent Taxation.'
But as we already have taxation of land values here, though only a little of it, the change would create a new difficulty while removing a part of the old one.
Still we often debate changing.
Yours cordially,
BOLTON HALL.
* * *
I ASK you to think with me that the worst that can happen to us is to endure tamely the evils that we see; that no trouble or turmoil is so bad as that; that the necessary destruction which reconstruction bears with it must be taken calmly; that everywhere -- in State, in church, in the household -- we must be resolute to endure no tyranny, accept no lie, quail before no fear, although they may come before us disguised as piety, duty or affection, as useful opportunity and good nature, as prudence or kindness.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
ECONOMY AS VIEWED BY AN ANARCHISTBy C. L. JAMES.
(Continuation.)
The chief purpose and result of parsimony actually is to buy into privileges of monopoly—stocks of a chartered corporation, land, slaves, if there are any, etc.; then, since both the existence of these privileges, and the parsimony itself checks trade and therefore production, we may well doubt whether relaxation of the parsimony would not on the whole make the world richer -- this, at least, is a most powerful argument secundum magis et minus, that those countries where the standard of proletarian comfort is highest, as the United States and England, grow rich faster than those where it is lower, as France, Spain, Italy, Holland; but those of the far east, like China, where the standard touches bottom, are the poorest among civilized nations — the solitary exception, Japan, dating her increase in wealth chiefly from recent Europeanizing of her practises. I suspect those who especially praise parsimony of a further confusion in thought. The luxury of non-producers impoverishes a country, because their existence does; but that of producers makes the difference between barbarism and civilization. If, again, we take Capital to mean not W. P. W., but the magnet of Surplus Value, it is clearly much older than money, and can by no possibility owe its being to the practise of saving money. Homer knows nothing about money;18 but in his time there were slaves and masters, landlords and hired agricultural laborers (thetes) , merchants of Egypt and Tyre and savages whom they skinned in Greece and Italy, even as there have been since. It is idle to look for another origin of Surplus Value when such obvious sources as war, plunder, conquest, government, and law, confront us since the beginning of history.
16. The Distribution of Wealth is therefore into the following shares-to put first those which are supplied first — Waste, Plunder, and Wages. Between these last afterwards intervene Rent and Profits, which began indeed as Plunder — the first Rent being simply all a barbarous king could take from cultivators without making his dominion a desert; the first Profit being realized in the slave-trade,-but which have become 'differentiated' from other Plunder, in a manner now to be described. We have seen that Demand exceeds Supply wherever there is an exchange, that trade is kept alive by fluctuations of this excess from certain products whose value falls, to others, whose value rises; that in steady conservative trades these fluctuations are small, short, frequent; but in those of a less settled character they are comparatively rare, great, and sudden. To anticipate such fluctuations, buying into the rising market, selling off betimes upon the falling, is therefore the essence of the merchant's art. It is a branch of Intention, making wealth not only for him, but the community, as orthodox economists have saved me the trouble to prove when they were fighting the old laws against 'forestalling and regrating.' So far as it does that, it is not a source of Surplus Value or of Profit. But it is a chief source of Profit, and therefore of Surplus Value I The entire process of its evolution may be illustrated thus. The gains of the man who keeps a little store in the backwoods receiving, as all such men do, produce of various kinds for his goods and also to sell on commission, are well known to be almost wholly wages-i. e., he could not hire a man to do his work for much less than he himself gets out of the business. Neglecting, as capable of exclusion from the case without affecting the principle, whatever small percentage over his waves he makes on his original investment, such a man is just as simply a productive laborer as the hunters and 'crackers' who bring him pelts and corn for the hats and boots they buy. If he makes something by reducing the rate of purchase on corn because he sees the crop will be redundant, and raises his bids for furs because the paper shows him that they will go up during the winter, still this is but his wages 'of superintendence,' as manager of an exchange. But if the prospect of a great advance in furs induces him to pay more for them than he could recover in case of disappointment, this is Speculation. He no longer expects to gain with, but from, his customers. Taking his case at random, he will probably lose-more than ninety per cent. of these even in business not highly speculative fail-but he may, with reason, too, feel so confident of success that he can judiciously borrow money to increase his purchases of furs. The practise of borrowing and lending at interest no doubt began in other ways than this. It began in the needs of distressed proletaires, who being wholly at the mercy of a privileged class, like the banyans of India, the eupatridre of Athens, the plebs in early Rome, were fleeced by them, till they either rebelled, as at Athens and Rome, or began themselves to decay, as in India. But though this is the historic origin of interest, interest might arise in the demands of speculators as just supposed i and this, which may be called its theoretical origin, modifies the effect of the historic, thus. The robber-interest imposed by monopolists who, like the banyans, eupatridre, and patricians. have the game for a time in their own hands, is, we have seen, suicidal; -- it either provokes resistance, which, being for life, is successful, as it did in Athens and Rome, or it kills the goose which lays the golden eggs, as it is doing in India. It strikes an increasing number of the lenders, accordingly, as less inviting than that lower rate at which speculators are willing to borrow on more or less good security. And thus there comes to be established a customary rate, determined by, and of course less than, the average profit in all successful trades. This average share in profit is already known as Economic Interest-much lower than exceptional profits, but always somewhat higher than what is called Commercial Interest, and which is recognized, in any country, as obtainable entirely without work, by invention or otherwise, on absolutely reliable19 security.
(To be continued.)
18 The talents paid in the Iliad to settle a feud were not coined nor currency.
19 This theory of the origin of interest is my own. All other theories I have ever met with, as Bastiat's, Senior's, and George's, appear to me wildly fanciful or even rhetorical and destitute of any definite meaning.MiscellaneousAnarchism .... P. Elzbacher $1.50
The Life of Albert Parsons ....... 1.50
What is Property? ...... P.J. Proudhon
Cloth, the original $3.50 edition, reduced to..... 2.00
Postage, 15c. Paper, two volumes... .75
The Bomb ...... Frank Harris
A novel vividly portraying the ChicagoHaymarket Events of 1887...... .60
The Master Builder ...... Henrik Ibsen .50
Hedda Gabler ..... ' '.50
A Doll's House ...... ' ' .25
The Pillars of Societ ...... ' ' .25
Ghosts ...... ' ' .25
Rosmersholm ...... ' ' .25
The Lady From the Sea ...... ' ' .25
An Enemy of Society. ...... ' ' .25
The Wild Duck ...... ' ' .25
The Young Men's League ...... ' ' .25
God and the State. Michael Bakunin .25
Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists .25
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience H. D. Thoreau .15
AUTOBIOGRAPHYofALEXANDER BERKMAN
A Unique Contribution to Socio — Psychological Literature
The Autobiography Represents ThreePhases:
I) The Revolutionary Awakening and its Toll— The Attentat
II) The Allegheny Penitentiary: Fourteen Years in Purgatory
III) The Resurrection and After
Price, $1.50
By mail 10 cents extra
Advance Subscriptions, $1.25
Mother Earth Publishing Company
55 West Twenty-Eighth Street
New York
THE BOOK IS NEARING COMPLETION AND WILLBE ISSUED IN THE EARLY FALL
Contents
Observations and Comments.......................129
Wall Street and Mexico
Magon Again Arrested
Traitors to Revolutionary Traditions
Punch and Judy Show
A Lesson from the Seamen's Strike
Anti- War Sentiment
Socialist Calumny...........................................135
A Money Performance Max Baginsky..........139
C.L. James Voltairine de Cleyre....................142
A Reminiscence of Charlie James
Honoré J. Jaxon...................................144
A Letter from the International Bureau.......147
Voices From Japan
Toshihiko Sakai...................................149
Tokijiro Kato.......................................150
On the Trail Emma Goldman.........................151
First Anniversary of the Ferrer Association
H. Kelly.................................................157
Emma Goldman....................................Publisher
Alexander Berkman...................................Editor
Office: 55 West 28th Street, New York City
Price, 10 Cents per Copy One Dollar per Year
76
Anarchism and Other Essays
Emma Goldman's Book
A Series of essays comprising a thorough critique of existing social institutions and conditions, and giving and comprehensive view of the author's opinions on matters educations, sexual, economic, political and social.
Contents
Anarchism: What it Really Stands For
Minorities versus Majorities
The Psychology of Political Violence
Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure
5. Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty
Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School
The Hypocrisy of Puritanism
The Traffic in Women
Woman Suffrage
10. The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation
11. Marriage and Love
12. The Modern Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought
A biographic Sketch of Emma Goldman's interesting career, with splendid portrait is included in the book.
Orders are to be sent, with cash, to
Mother Earth 55 West 28th Street, New York, N. Y.
Price, $1.00. By Mail, $1.10
77
Mother Earth
Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Published every 15th of the Month
EMMA GOLDMAN. Proprietor. 55 West 28th Street. New York, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906 at the Post Office at New York. N. Y..
Under the Act Of Congress of March 3, 1879
Vol. VI August, 1911 No. 6
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
We are glad to bring the appeal of the Mexican Liberal Junta, urging our friends to a generous response. The Mexican revolution is of international importance, and no one with a true spirit of liberty would refuse to aid a brave and heroic people fighting for economic emancipation.
Offices of Regeneracion, 519 ½ . E. 4th St.,
Los Angeles, Cal., July 21, 1911.
Dear Friend:
To you, as a radical, we make appeal on behalf of this paper and of the Mexican Liberal Party, which is in a life-and-death fight not only with Madero and the world-wide forces of capital, but also with certain Socialist Party leaders.
The Mexican Revolution is in itself an event of incalculable importance, and the action taken by these Socialist Party leaders has made it infinitely more so. They have started an international quarrel that MUST be fought out. The labor movement of the world, and the Socialists themselves, MUST learn exactly where they stand; MUST ascertain, once and for all, whether they are to be the plaything of personal ambitions or are to be given the opportunity of working unitedly for economic freedom.
In that fight you are interested most profoundly, and will wish to do your loyal share. The fight is vital and international, and we of Los Angeles should not be required to carry the whole burden.
Six of our most capable writers and speakers are now if! Jail in Los Angeles, and five are imprisoned in San Diego. They are charged with violating the neutrality laws; for apparently it is a crime not to remain neutral when 14,000,000 of the down-trodden are striking for liberty. Their imprisonment cripples us badly, for the moment.
Twenty-one thousand copies of Regeneration are issued weekly from this office, and go to all parts of the world, including —
78
despite Madero's rigorous boycott-Mexico. We issue much other educational matter, and our work, especially at this crisis, is vital to the international movement of revolt. But this entails enormous expense, and financial assistance we MUST have.
We ask you to fill out the enclosed slip, writing in the largest sum you possibly can spare, mailing it in the accompanying envelope and doing so AT ONCE.
RICARDO FLORES MAGON,
ANSELMO FIGUEROA,
ENRIQUE FLORES MAGON,
WM. C. OWEN,
LIBRADO RIVERA,
L. CAMINITA,
VICTOR CRAVELLO.
MANUEL G. GARZA,
Treasurer, Mexican Liberal Party Junta,
519 ½ E. 4th St., Los Angeles, Cal., U. S. A.
* * *
FOR the moment, and the United obtaining concerned, and financial aid in the United States is the Mexican revolution has been playing in exception-
ally hard luck. Two factors of great weight have been thrown into the opposite scale; the first being the Los Angeles Times' case, which is absorbing the attention of the labor movement, and the second, the industriously circulated delusion that the Mexican Revolution ended with the fall of Diaz.
For this delusion, so welcome to the moneyed interests, we have to thank the Socialist press. The Appeal to Reason led off with an infamous article beginning: 'the Mexican Revolution is at an end'; Berger backed it up with the widely-heralded declaration that, even if it were not at an end, Socialists should not support it; Debs supplied the finishing touch by writing in the International Socialist Review that, for the sake of humanity and the prevention of bloodshed, it ought to be brought to an end.
These are the three main factors whom our Mexican comrades have to thank for what is by far their greatest difficulty-the delusion that the revolution is a thing of the past.
* * *
THE intellectual eunuchs of the capitalist press represent the most wretched human species in society. They are the bravos of our time who, in return for a few
paltry dollars, sell their very souls. Servile to the insati-
79
able Moloch of capitalism, these mental hirelings stoop to the lowest depths to seize upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.
The McNamara case furnishes a striking example to what length our journalistic banditti can go. It was a certain Palmer, of Hampton's Magazine, who first helped to prepare the conspiracy against labor and the McNamara brothers. Now it is a worthy colleague of his, a certain Harvey O'Higgins, who gives the finishing touch. In the August issue of McClure's this man constitutes himself the mouthpiece and eulogist of William J. Burns. The very title of his article shows the
'impartiality' of this Burns' champion: 'The Dynamiters. a great case of Detective Burns.' Even the law considers the McNamaras innocent, till proven other-
wise. Yet Harvey O'Higgins makes himself a party to the cruel, vicious, and deliberate method of manufacturing prejudice against the imprisoned labor leaders in Los Angeles. We are given to understand that Judas Burns is one of the greatest American geniuses.
And, indeed, as an unscrupulous hireling of the murderous capitalist system, Burns is a genius. There are few crimes on the calendar he would hesitate to commit, nor anything he would leave undone, to prove his importance to a society that thrives on crime.
The article in question is one of the worst outrages perpetrated by the press in a long while. It's evident purpose is to prejudice the public mind-and thus the
jury-against the McNamaras.
* * *
THE capitalist press perpetuates ignorance not merely through the misrepresentation and mutilation of facts, but even more by the complete ignoring of important events. Thus neither the Associated Press nor Laffan's Bureau has had a word to say about the great peace demonstration of the French Syndicalists and the German trade unionists in Berlin, July 30. Yet it was this concerted solidaric action of the revolutionary proletariat, and not the politicians Kiderlen-Wachter, As-
quith, and Caillaux, that prevented the planned massacre on account of Morocco.
This gigantic demonstration of solidarity on the part of labor (which began in Paris, spread to Berlin
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTSWE are glad to bring the appeal of the Mexican Liberal Junta, urging our friends to a generous response.
The Mexican revolution is of international importance, and no one with a true spirit of liberty would refuse to aid a brave and heroic people fighting for economic emancipation.
Offices of Regeneracion, 5191/2 E. 4th St.,Los Angeles, Cal., July 21, 1911
Dear Friend:
To you, as a radical, we make appeal on behalf of this paper and of the Mexican Liberal Party, which is in a life-and-death fight not only with Madero and the world-wide forces of capital, but also with certain Socialist Party leaders.
The Mexican Revolution is in itself an event of incalculable importance and the action taken by these Socialist Party leaders has made it infinitely more so. They have started an international quarrel that MUST be fought out. The labor movement of the world, and the Socialists themselves, MUST learn exactly where they stand; MUST ascertain, once and for all, whether they are to be the plaything of personal ambitions or are to be given the opportunity of working unitedly for economic freedom.
In that fight are you interested most profoundly, and will wish to do your loyal share. The fight is vital and international, and we of Los Angeles should not be required to carry the whole burden.
Six of our most capable writers and speakers are now in jail in Los Angeles, and five are imprisoned n San Diego. They are charged with violating the neutrality laws; for apparently it is a crime not to remain neutral when 14,000,000 of the downtrodden are striking for liberty. Their imprisonment cripples us badly, for the moment.
Twenty-one thousand copies of Regeneracion are issued weekly from this office, and go to all parts of the world, including—despite Madero's rigorous boycott—Mexico. We issue much other educational matter, and our work, especially at this crisis, is vital to the international movement of revolt. But this entails enormous expense, and financial assistance we MUST have.
We ask you to fill out the enclosed slip, writing in the largest sum you possibly can spare, mailing it in the accompanying envelope and doing so AT ONCE.
Ricardo Flores Magon, Anselmo Figueroa,Enrique Flores Magon, Wm. C. Owen,Librado Rivera, L. Caminita,Vicot Cravello,MANUEL G. CARZA,Treasurer, Mexican Liberal Party Junta,5191/2 E. 4th St., Los Angeles, Cal., U.S.A.
* * *
FOR the moment, and so far as obtaining sympathy and financial aid in the United States is concerned, the Mexican revolution has been playing in exceptionally hard luck. Two factors of great weight have been thrown into the opposite scale; first being the Los Angeles Times' case, which is absorbing the attention of the labor movement, and the second, the industrially circulated delusion that eh Mexican Revolution ended with the fall of Diaz.
For this delusion, so welcome to the moneyed interests, we have to thank the Socialist press. The Appeal to Reason led off with an infamous article beginning: 'the Mexican Revolution is at an end'; Berger backed it up with the widely-heralded declaration that, even if it were not at an end, Socialists should not support it; Debs supplied the finishing touch by writing in the International Socialist Review that, for the sake of humanity and the prevention of bloodshed, it ought to be brought to an end.
These are the three main factors who our Mexican comrades have to thank for what is by far their greatest difficulty—the delusion that the revolution is a thing of the past.
* * *
THE intellectual eunuchs of the capitalist press represent the most wretched human species in society. They are the bravos of our time who, in return for a few paltry dollars, sell their very souls. Servile to the insatiable Moloch of capitalism, these mental hirelings stoop to the lowest depths to seize upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.
The McNamara case furnishes a striking example to what length our journalistic banditti can go. It was a certain Palmer, of Hampton's Magazine, who first helped to prepare the conspiracy against labor and the McNamara brothers. How it is a worthy colleague of his, a certain Harvey O'Higgins, who gives the finishing touch. In the August issue of McClure's this man constitutes himself the mouthpiece and eulogist of William J. Burns. The very title of his article shows the 'impartiality' of this Burns' champion: 'The Dynamiters, a great case of Detective Burns.' Even the law considers the McNamaras innocent, till proven otherwise. Yet Harvey O'Higgins makes himself a party to the cruel, vicious, and deliberate method of manufacturing prejudice against the imprisoned labor leaders in Los Angeles. We are given to understand that Judas Burns is one of the greatest American geniuses.
And, indeed, as an unscrupulous hireling of the murderous capitalist system, Burns is a genius. There are few crimes on the calendar he would hesitate to commit, not anything he would leave undone, to prove his importance to a society that thrives on crime.
The article in question is one of the worst outrages perpetrated by the press in a long while. It's evident purpose is to prejudice the public mind—and thus the jury—against the McNamaras.
* * *
THE capitalist press perpetuates ignorance not merely through the misrepresentation and mutilation of facts, but even more by the complete ignoring of important events. Thus neither the Associated Press nor Laffan's Bureau has had a word to sat about the great peace demonstration of the French Syndicalists and the German trade unionists in Berlin, July 30. Yet it was this concerted solidaric action of the revolutionary proletariat, and not the politicians Kinderlen-Wächter, Asquith, and Caillaux, that prevented the planned massacre on account of Morocco.
This gigantic demonstration of solidarity on the part of labor (which began in Paris, spread to Berlin and London, and terminated in Barcelona) has quite paralyzed the Prussian government. In its helpless imbecility it knew nothing better to do than to expel one of the delegates of the Confederation du Travail, Comrade Georges Yvetät. That, however, did not dampen the spirit of our comrade. In a fiery farewell address he urged the solidarity of the soldiers of Germany and France, calling upon them to direct their efforts against their respective governments instead of against each other.
* * *
IN the face of this revolutionary and uncompromising spirit, how weak and puny us the attitude of the Socialist politicians.
Years ago the veteran leader Bebel went into fatherland spasms, declaring he would don the Kaiser's coal to defend 'his' country against invasion of Russian barbarians. And now comes the leader of the English Labor Party, Mr. Ramsey McDonald, proclaiming the solidarity of his part with those of Asquith and Balfour against the invasion of the German barbarians. Nor must we forget Messrs. Blatchford and Hyndman who for years have been rabid German-baiters.
Mr. Hyndman, 'Father of the Social Democracy of Great Britain,' and one of the editors of the calumnious Justice, may be prompted by economic determinism in his continuous attacks upon Germany. Together with the Earl of Westmoreland, Lt. Gen. Sir Seymour John Blace, Bt. C. B., Admiral Leicester Keppel (friend of the late Kind Edward) and other 'proletarians,' he was a director of the Colt Gun and Carriage Company, Lt. The company was formed in November, 1899, on the top of the Boer War, by the Lancashire Financial Association, with a capital of 500,000 £I shares—350,000 of which were subscribed and called up—to acquire the patent for Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Austria, of the Colt Machine Gun, and the right, for fourteen years, of manufacturing this patent firearm, as also to acquire the Earl of Dundonald's fifty-two patents for guns and carriage for £500,000, of which £30,000, at least, was to be cash. The Socialist Hyndman joined the Bard of Directors on June 6thm 1904, the minimum qualification being 500 £I shares. At one time he held, and was interested in, a total of not less than 14,850 ordinary and 400 preferential shares. He resigned his position on the Board, but returned and remained (1906-7). Evidently, Hyndman's German menace was regarded as a wild cat, for the company went into voluntary liquidation on Nov. 11th, 1907.
The names of the directors give one to reflect. They are persons interested in war-promotion. Their confederate, H. M. Hyndman, shared their interests. And so he shouts out loudly for an increase in armaments, knowing that he will gain substantially from their increase; his attitude is one of latent and actual crime, unless legal human murder be regarded as deserving of admiration rather than of censure. The phrases that he employs to conceal this hideous truth are pregnant with the social crime he would seem to trade in. Thus, in the Morning Post for Sept. 8, 1910, he wrote:
'The criticism at Copenhagen (International Socialist Congress) and elsewhere will not prevent me continuing to advocate the maintenance of a powerful ocean-going navy, and air-going fleet, as well as the establishment of a genuine citizen army for the protection of the safety and independence of this country.'
Quite correctly our London exchange, the Herald of Revolt, comments that ''the safety and independence of this country' is the political clap-trap of the governing class politician in every land where workers starve and idlers thrive. It knows no country, and is restricted to no one language. It is international—as international as the crime that promotes it. Hyndman is but one among its many exponents.'
* * *
OUR contention regarding the brutalizing effects of militarism—its inherent tendencies toward degeneracy and disease—is now borne out by the report of the Surgeon-General of the Federal Army. Good patriots and bigoted Puritans will be delighted to learn that the hospital admissions for alcoholism and sexual diseases reach the astonishing proportions of nearly one quarter of the entire Army. The hospital admissions for alcoholism have averaged about 25 in 1,000 for a considerable time, but the admissions for the diseases of vice have lately risen to something like 200 in 1,000, far ahead of the figures for any army in Europe.
'The latter peril, especially, has come to outweigh in importance any other sanitary question which now confronts the Army,' declares the Surgeon-General, 'and neither our national optimism nor our Anglo-Saxon disposition to ignore everything distasteful can longer excuse a frank and honest confrontation of the problem.'
Unfortunately, the Surgeon-General himself is still a victim of 'our national optimism and our Anglo-Saxon disposition.' He dare not call a spade a spade. He sermonizes about the diseases of dissipation and of 'vice'. Sex is non-existent to him.
* * *
HOW very different is the attitude of cultured Europeans toward sex. In connection with the International Hygiene Exhibition at Dresden, the Neo-Malthusianism Society will gather for an international conference in September. Men and women foremost in the scientific world and social workers in every movement will participate in the congress, as well as representatives of the government of Saxony. Among the subjects to be discussed are sex hygiene and preventative methods.
With St. Anthony as the guardian of American morals, the delegates to an American Neo-Malthusian congress would run the risk of spending the rest of their lives in the penitentiary. What a provincial and hypocritical nation we are, after all.
* * *
THE deteriorating influence of bad examples on good habits has been most forcibly demonstrated in Arden, Del., the dreamland of American single taxers.
Always, the followers of Henry George have been champions of free speech, even going to prison for it. Yet when a member of the single-tax colony attempts to exercise the right of free speech, and if the offender happens to be an anarchist at that, the law is invoked and the man sent to the workhouse. How inconsistent and foolish of liberty-loving people, but still more foolish that the anarchist, our otherwise staunch comrade, George Brown, should have followed such an inconsistent course.
But most ridiculous of all are the faddistic and sensational Socialist highbrows of the colony, who had nothing to say, when the anarchist was sent to prison and who now make a howl when they had to swallow their own medicine.
The Mexican Revolt
By Voltarine De Cleyre
At last we see a genuine awakening of people, not to political demands alone, but to economic ones, -- fundamentally economic ones. And in the brief period of a few months, some millions of human beings have sprung to a full consciousness of a system of wrong, beginning where all slaveries begin, in the sources of life. They have struck for LAND and LIBERTY. And even if their revolt shall be crushed by the mailed hand of the United States Government (for I do not believe the present nondescript thing calling itself a government, in Mexico, has craft or power to pacify or crush all the seething elements of rebellion), yet it has set a foremost mark upon the record of human demand, from which hereafter there will be no retreat. From now on, when an oppressed people revolt, they will not demand less.
'Events are the true Schoolmasters,' I hear the justified voice of my dead comrade Lum calling triumphantly from his grave. For years and years the brothers Magon and their coworkers in and out of Mexico have been voices crying in the wilderness which some few thousands at best have heard. But in the storm-wind of popular revolt, rising, no prophet could have foretold when, nor gazer at the aftermath just why it was the chosen hour, in that strong clean-sweeping of the psychic atmosphere, millions of unlettered and otherwise ignorant people saw, as with lightning sharpness cutting a black night, the foundation of all their wrong, and heard the slogan 'Land of Liberty' to which their ears were so long deaf, -- heard it, raised it, acted on it, are acting on it. With that clear and direct perception of the needful thing to do which lettered men, men of complex lives, nearly always lack, being befogged by too many lights, they move straight upon their purpose, hew down the landmarks, burn the records of the title-deeds.
So do the plain people. Temporizing men, sophisticated men, men of books and theories, men made timid with much mind, Hamlets all, -- they devise solemn in-directions; they figure on compensation schemes, on taxation fooleries, on how-to-to and how-not-to-do at the same time. The simple man says, 'No: you have told us, an truly, that this land was filched away from us by a paper-title scheme. Its power lay in our admitting its right. Well, we no longer admit it; we destroy it. The land is ours; we take it.' And they have driven off the paper-title men, and are working the ground on hundreds of ranches.
It is true there are other millions asleep in the storm; true that many of the awakened have been quieted with political hocus-pocus; true that a hundred and one reactionary forces are battling on the same ground. It is true that the world at large, outside of Mexico, is but little informed as to the real struggle. But that does not alter or diminish the truth that the Slaves of Our Times, in a nation-wide revolt, have smitten the Beast of Property in Land. And once a great human demand is so made, it is never let go again. Future revolts will go on from there; they will never fall behind it.
At present the great press is saying little of the chaos in the Mexican situation, though for the last few days, since as news purveyors they cannot keep entirely silent, small hinting editorials are creeping in, pointing interventionwards, 'in case disturbances are not pacified.' No doubt the United States Government would prefer to preserve its hypocritical pretense of abstinent impartiality. It hopes its catspaw will safely pull the chestnuts out of the fire. It is comfortable to pose as the disinterested friend of peace in our sister republic, so long as American landlord powers in Mexico are undisturbed, or so long as the Mexican branch of the Capitalistic Defense Association is able to tend to its division. But one this has been pretty plain since the provisional government assumed its functions: 'Barkis is willin',' — but not effulgently able. People who have once taken up arms and felt the satisfaction of ridding themselves of one tyrant, of doing rude justice in opening prison doors, or seeing a whole confraternity of office-holders and office-seekers in anxiety to placate them, are not so unready to take up arms again; especially when the whole mass of discontent is leavened with conscious revolutionists who are crying the means of social regeneration in their ears.
It is very plain now that the provisional governors are treading on thin crust, and the elections instead of steadying the human subsoil down to mortuary rigidity, may prove the prelude to more violent eruptions. In that case, the reluctant (?) hand at Washington may be forced to play — clubs! on its own responsibility.
Meanwhile, what have the revolutionary elements of the United States to say about it? I almost sneered as I wrote 'revolutionary elements,' for candor compels us to inquire where they are. Time was when some people thought the Single Tax was based on a fundamentally revolutionary idea, the final expropriation of the landlord by the people. The Single Tax papers, however, have said as little as possible about the great Land cry of the Mexican revolutionists, have laid all stress upon the political mirage-chasing by which Madero and his coadjutors side-tracked the uprising of May, and have refused to print the Manifestoes and Appeals of the Mexican Liberal Party, to afford the Publicity of their columns to the read demands of the revolutionists, that their readers might give their sympathy and support and the influence of their understanding. They were waiting, they said, for Madero to pronounce himself upon the land in question! I opine they have still quite some wait coming.
From all which, it seriously appears that the expropriation of the landlords by the people, the restoration of the land to the people, is not the object of the single tax movement; on the contrary, the object is the establishment of the single tax itself, -- not as a working means to a great end, the establishment of the equal right of all to the use of natural resources, but at neat sleight-of-hand method for collecting revenue; at best, a way of getting rid of landlords by fooling them into getting rid of themselves, not because they are robbers to be got rid of, but because it's such a clever trick to play! Men are to demand the land, not that they may get the land, but that the demand may serve as an excuse for instituting Single Tax!
If this is not the interpretation we are to put upon it, then how else are we to read the conspicuous silence of the Single Tax press concerning this great agrarian revolt? Millions of people have been demonstrating their appreciation that The Land for All the People is the primary foundation for a better economic structure. They have taken a more direct route than the singe tax. And the land agitators are silent!
Time was when Socialism was a revolutionary word. And there are still some Socialists who are international revolutionists. But the official political Socialist Party, -- bah! If ever the vitiating influence of the marriage of Socialism with Politics (that old Bluebeard husband of so many fine young wives) was demonstrated beyond disputation, it has been in the official attitude of Socialists towards this spontaneous manifestation of the Mexican people.
The utterances of Victor Berger, 'the Socialist Congressman' (we receive this information as to his status with painful reiteration at least once a column in every issue of the Chicago Daily Socialist), concerning 'the bandits of Mexico' were enough to make the authors of the Communist Manifesto repudiate their name. Those strong souls who asserted that 'the communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things,' and appealed to 'Workingmen of All Countries to unite,' — what would they have in common with a smug occupier of a congressional seat, who in a strongly marked German accent makes anti-immigration speeches against Slavs and Italians in the name of protection to American Labor (?) and who directs his secretary to say, 'concerning the Mexican revolt, that 'the Socialist Party can afford to have no connection with this movement' (?). In the light of this and similar utterances in the Socialist Press (I have even learned on good authority that one Socialist editor really desires United States annexation of Mexico, but dares not advocate it yet, 'because it would be unpopular' with Socialist readers) it would appear that the distribution of the Communist Manifesto by the Socialist Party is about of a piece with the distribution of the Christian Gospels by the Christian Church; in both cases, it is traditional literature, which nobody is supposed to take seriously.
Instead of giving even the news of international revolutionary movements (often one looks in vain for any), or the economic ground-plan of Socialism, we have columns of vice-crusading, sporting pages, and veritable hot-air balloons of self-inflation for having assisted in some relatively trivial petition. Only in their correspondence columns is there some occasional evidence of the indignant spirit of a true Socialist, outraged by all this trimming to suit the wind, this flunkeying to the respectable element, this suffocation of revolutionary principle and sentiment under a time-serving mantle of political prudence and cheap catering. Yes; Politics is nicely bluebearding Socialism. How far away is all this from the serious, intent spirit which watches and welcomes the manifestations of the people themselves — no matter what their degree of development or enlightenment — as the real indications of how the race will come into its own! Not according to any men's preconcerted program, not by any carefully selected route, not by anybody's plan of campaign to make an 'educated, class-conscious,' etc. ad nauseam vote-casting machine; but in their own unforeseen and unforeseeable, unpredetermined, by-the-hour-and-circumstance-decided way, as the peoples always move, -- as Life, which is greater than the peoples, always moves.
And the business of the revolutionist, the seeker for the Changes of Old Forms, the dreamer of Liberty and Plenty, is to be with them in their struggle, in their victory, in their defeat, whenever, wherever, the people rise.
Hail to the Mexican strikers, who likely are too ignorant to pursue a course in the 'Evolution of Class-consciousness,' but who are apparently very alive to the fact that Now is the hour to strike for better conditions —the hour of governmental weakness and popular strength. Hail to the Mexican Revolution, victorious or defeated. And hail to the next that rises!
C. L. James
By James F. Morton, Jr.
The death of C. L. James, at the age of 65 years, removes from the ranks of Anarchism and from radical propaganda in general one of the most striking figures known to the American movement. His ripe scholarship and immense range of his studies rendered him a powerful protagonist in public discussion; and few who met him in the field of debate have come away unscarred. He was, with good cause, held to be the most profound scholar among American Anarchists; and his name often did yeoman service in confuting the incautious slanderer of the Anarchist movement, who upbraided it as appealing not only to the fanatical an ignorant.
Not many biographical details are at hand, as the life of Comrade James was, at least during the years in which he was best known to American radicals, somewhat that of a recluse. For many years he resided at Eau Claire, Wis., where he seems to have led the quiet life of a scholar, dividing his time between active propaganda with the pen and laborious research and literary activity of a constructive nature. Rarely did he leave his home, to mingle personally with the outside world; and therefore few radicals have known him otherwise than through correspondence. He was born, according to information which has been supplied, In Baden-Baden, Germany, October 23, 1846 and died in Eau Claire, Wis., June 3, 1911. His father, I believe, was G. P. R. James, the famous English novelist of an earlier day. When he came first to this country, or when and how he became interested in radical opinions and a convert to the Anarchist school of philosophy, I am not informed. I trust that the facts regarding his early years may be brought out by application to his surviving relatives. From a rough list of his principal writings, it appears that his earliest published works were a volume of poems and a book on Transcendental Philosophy, both which appeared in 1871. In 1886, he appears as a defender of the Anarchistic proposition, in a pamphlet entitled 'Anarchy.' From that time on, he is seen in the radical ranks, almost invariably occupying a post in the extreme advance. Among the books and pamphlets issued by him are noted 'Law of Marriage,' 'Degeneracy,' 'Origin of Religious Systems,' 'An Appeal to Women,' and 'History of the French Revolution.' Works yet to appear in book form are 'Vindication of Anarchism,' published serially in Free Society a few years since, and 'Economy as Viewed by an Anarchist,' now appearing in Mother Earth. With regard to the entire body of his work, he made the following statement, shortly before his death: 'All may be considered extracts from the (MS.) 'History of the World,' which is the work of my life.' It may be hoped that much valuable manuscripts in relation to his great life-purpose may be secured, and may prove available for posthumous publication.
The bare list of published books and pamphlets tells, in fact, very little of the tremendous output of his ever-active mind. By far the larger portion of his writings may be found in the form of articles and letters, in the files of the more radical periodicals of the past thirty years. Propaganda along general lines could not suffice for his versatile genius. His instinct was to probe every phase of the subject; and nothing escaped his notice. Having a born impulse toward debate, he never refused or overlooked a challenge, direct or implied. No opponent was too insignificant to receive recognition; nor did he fear to confront the most imposing antagonist, even in the field of his foe's strongest specialty. To him, all things, great and small, were closely interrelated; and loose thinking or inaccurate apprehension of fact, even in distinctly minor matters, were held by him to demand emphatic reprobation, as leading to greater and more far-reaching errors. Few will be found to accept all his conclusions; but still fewer will refuse their admiration to his powerful and many-sided mind. Even where his views may have proved in a measure unsound, he contributed immeasurably to the clarification and development of radical thought and of sound methods of thinking among radicals. His insistence on the intellectual side of Anarchism was borne good fruit. In opinions, he was, as practically every reader of Mother Earth is already aware, an uncompromising Anarchist. He never minced words or phrases; nor did he ever seek to disguise his most extreme convictions for respectability's sweet sake. The only department in which his views approximated those current in conservative circles was that of medical science. He held all forms of what he termed 'quackery' in utter contempt, and had as a consequence many a sharp tilt with other radical writers, from which even those who differ from him will not claim that he always came out second best. A strict disciple of science, he was sternly impatient of the encroachment of emotionalism or sentiment of the domain of thought and experience. As against a large proportion of radicals, he strenuously defended both vaccination and vivisection, and upheld orthodox Malthusianism (scorning to take refuge behind the bulwark of 'Neo-Malthusianism') against all corners. If at times his manner appeared somewhat overbearing, and if he seemed harshly intolerant in little things, these weaknesses may readily be pardoned in one whose whole life was a tireless struggle against the monster of ignorance, and in behalf of the principles of liberty and enlightenment. On the larger issues, he never waivered; and when defenders where needed, he was never found wanting. His death leaves a gap which will not soon be filled; and his memory will not fade.
THE ANARCHIST MOVEMENT IN HOLLAND
By F. DOMELA NIEUWENHUIS.
I THINK it of utmost importance that the Anarchists throughout the world should be in close touch with each other and keep informed regarding our movement in every country. I am therefore much pleased at the opportunity to write to you concerning the Anarchist movement in Holland, to give our English-reading comrades a proper conception of the situation in my country.
The Anarchist movement here is making very good progress. I consider it the best in the world, compared with the movement in other countries of Europe with which I am familiar.
My assertion is borne out by the condition of our press. In this country, with a population of less than six millions, the movement supports six weekly papers, all of them doing well financially. (One of these papers is published twice a week.) They are: Vrye Socialist (Free Socialist), Toekomst (The Future), Recht voor Allen (Justice for All), Vryheidsvaan (Banner of Liberty), Arbeider (The Worker), Naar de Vryheid (To Freedom). We also have an anti-militarist monthly magazine, De wapens neder (Down with Weapons). Besides, the independent trade-unions, similar in character to the Industrial Workers of America, publish twelve papers for the different unions.
When we compare our efforts with those of our English comrades who have only Freedom (monthly) and the Yiddish paper Voice of Labour; or with our German comrades who have only Freie Arbeiter (weekly), Der Anarchist (twice a month) and Socialist (twice a month), or with our French comrades who have Les Temps Nouveaux (weekly) and Libertaire (weekly), we have all reason to be content. And every week our propagandists go into the country to preach to the disinherited our evangel of discontent, and to awaken the indifferent masses made stupid by hard and monotonous toil.
And how great is the number aRd might of our adversaries of all sorts I You find the clerical reaction very strong, holding in its hands the government and the majority of Parliament (60 against 40), the liberal reaction, the radicals, and-last not least-the Social Democrats, who hate us more than the others, because we have prevented their calling themselves the labor party of the country. Their name is Sociaal Demokratische Arbeiders Party, commonly called S. D. A. P. Because you find among them many students, clergymen, and advocates, it is said that those letters have this significance: Students-Dominees-Avocates Party. These parties form a great block when it concerns Anarchism, because they are all authoritarians: they want to maintain authority and for them it is only a struggle as to which of them shall have the political power in their hands. I have therefore often said that all these parties, from the Pope of Rome to the Social Democrat, form one great reactionary party, in principle the enemies of the Anarchists. Let us not cherish any false illusions in this matter: when Social Democrats are in power they will persecute us worse than any other party. It is not true, as some Anarchists claim, that you come to Anarchy through Social Democracy. I hold, on the contrary, that those principles are not two lines which will meet each other at some common point, but two lines which, going parallel, can never meet.
We have in this country a great advantage in the fact that there is the quality of Anarchy in the character of the people. Their traditions are with us, and if we cultivate this character we shall bring the population into the fold of Anarchism.
Protestantism is in its essence Anarchistic, and that is the great difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. It cannot be denied that Protestantism is individualistic, because the authority which it accepts is not external, but internal. The Protestant recognizes only the authority of his own conscience, and the internal voice of the conscience of one man is just as good as that of another. Each heretic 'has his letter,' and therefore Protestantism is the religion of individualism. When a people is Protestant, it has the germ of Anarchism in itself and we, as Anarchists, must say to the people: What you want in religion is freedom of conscience, the liberty to regulate your own affairs; we want the same, in everything; if you can regulate your own affairs with God, why should you not regulate your own affairs in the State? Direct action is a Protestant as well as an Anarchist principle.
In this regard, I think, there is much similarity between the two peoples: the American and the Dutch. Perhaps heredity plays a part, because the Pilgrim fathers were Dutch and English. It is in the blood. America, like Holland, has a certain disposition to be Anarchistic. But there is an antagonistic element; that is the German. True, Germany is also Protestant, but there is a great difference between the Lutheranism of Germany and the Calvinism of Holland and England. Lutheranism is properly a disguised, an inconsequent Protestantism, because Luther made himself the Pope instead of the Pope at Rome, and he was as intolerant as the Catholic Church. That is proven by the war he waged against Carlstadt, Thomas Miinster, and the peasants- and when he was intolerant, he was quite-in his role. On the other hand, when Calvin was intolerant towards Michael Servet and the libertarians of Geneva, he played traitor to his own principles.
That makes a great difference.
I cannot elaborate this theme, but can only briefly indicate the cause why one people has a disposition toward, and another against, Anarchism.
In Holland you will find an exaggerated sense of freedom. An example will illustrate this. When the police issue some order, even though it may be good in itself, the people are inclined to disobey, only because it is ordered by the police. When smoking is not allowed in a railroad car, you will often find persons who purposely go into the no-smoking car to smoke there. This I call an exaggeration of the sense of freedom, mere opposition to authority. I disapprove of this, but I believe that if you direct this disposition into the proper channels, it will be far easier to make Anarchists of such people than if the1 lacked the spirit of rebellion.
At a Social Democratic meeting in Germany, the putting on of his helmet by the police officer-who is ever present-is a sign that the meeting is dissolved. And the people leave without protest. When this happens in Holland (and I must say that it is an exception) it creates a great stir and it requires great efforts to clear the hall.
Such examples are very instructive, because they supply a key to the character of various peoples.
The same discipline which you find in the German army, you also find in the German Socialist party, for it is in the blood of the people. And the same lack of discipline which you find in the Dutch army you will find in all the political parties of the country. The consequence is that you will find almost a hundred different religious sects. The same with Socialism. In Holland we have several parties: I. the Social Democratic Party of Workers; 2. the Social Democratic Party, which has seceded, forming a new party; 3. the Socialist Party (Socialistenbond). We have had here a Communist Party, a Federation of Communist-Anarchists. Certainly, it is very difficult for the toilers to know all these parties and the points of difference between them. These are the phenomena which you can observe in Holland.
Surely we have much to do and the movement isnot as strong as could be wished, but when we consider the comparatively short time that Anarchism has been propagated here, as well as the constant and bitter opposition of the Social Democrats towards us, we can well be satisfied with the results we have achieved and the influence we exert over the masses.
We have a strong anti-militarist movement, and there have been numerous cases in which young men have refused military service. We also have a rationalist school movement, in the spirit of our brave comrade Francisco Ferrer. There is also an abstinence movement, for we believe that no man can be free as long as he is a slave to drink. The Anarchist movement must have an ethical character and therefore the vanguard of human emancipation must set a good example.*
We have very good Anarchist literature in Holland, which finds much circulation, as the workingmen are very eager to read and study. We dispose of great quantities of propaganda leaflets and the works of such leaders of modern thought as Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus are as well known to our people as in any other country. We stand abreast of the international movement, and the voice of the struggling proletariat in any land ever finds an echo here. Thus it was in the case of Ferrer, as well as with Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone; with the Japanese martyrs, as well as in the case of Edward Joris of Constantinople. We cultivate the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity, and if we wish for greater results that very circumstance should prove our inspiration to greater and more energetic efforts.
As to the trade-union movement, it comprises several organizations: I. the Christians, which are divided in Catholic and Protestant; 2. the so-called Werkhevenverbond (Federation of Labor) which sympathizes with the radicals; 3. the so-called Nederlandsch Yak Verbond (N. V. V. or Federation of Dutch Trades:Unions), which is Social Democratic; 4. the Independent Trades Unions under the Nationaal Arbeiders Sekretariaat, N. A. S. (National Secretary of Labor). Diversity enough. The last is more or less Anarchistic, but opportunism is beginning to show its influence. When the Federation of Dutch Trades-Unions makes propaganda for a working-day of 10 hours, the Independent Trades Unions begin a movement for a working-day of 8 hours. But the abolition of the wage system is not propagated either by the one or the other. It is a struggle for practical reforms, and one party vies with the other in making promises. Strikes are the order of the day, but neither party seeks the triumph of labor. With their mouths they shout, 'Proletarians of all countries, unite I' But secretly they think: we shall not help you and we hope you will lose the fight. It is a pity it is thus; but the truth must be told.
I do not mean to deny that it is a grand motto; but it is incomplete. Marx has not said in what the workers should unite. We can unite for a good as well as for a bad purpose. Therefore I believe we must be far broader if we have the welfare of humanity at heart; and if we really mean well with the people we should say to them: learn to stand on your own feet, learn to see with your own eyes, learn to hear with your own ears, learn, to think with your own brain. Then only, when the workers do so, will they be saved. Not by a savior who will bring you to happiness and prosperity, but by being your own savior, for that is the sole way to triumph.
If you in America and we in Holland and our comrades in other countries faithfully propagate these ideas of independence, self-reliance, and solidarity, and reach each other our hands to facilitate our common task, we shall make speedy progress, there is no doubt.
Many greetings and best wishes to you from your Dutch comrades.
*The abstinence movement does not arouse our enthusiasm, for we in America know too well its narrow, arbitrary and invasive tendencies. One need not necessarily be an abstainer in order not to become a slave to drink. As anarchists we demand the right to regulate our own diet. --M.E.
KOTOKU'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH ALBERT JOHNSON
By HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.
ONE of the pleasant memories of our martyred Japanese comrades must have been their friendship with European and American radicals, among whom were Leopold Fleischmann and Albert Johnson, the veteran Anarchist of California. Thanks to Leopold Fleischmann, Denjiro Kotoku [real name of Shūsui Kōtoku ed], T. Sakai, Sen Katayama, Dr. Kato, and others came in closer touch with the social struggle in America. It was also through Mr. Fleischmann that Denjiro Kotoku met our old friend Albert Johnson, the acquaintance soon ripening into a friendship which continued even after Kotoku returned to Japan. The result of their intimacy now comes to us in the form of an extensive correspondence. I am indebted for these valuable letters to Leonard D. Abbott, of the Current literature; and am very happy indeed to be able to submit them to the readers of MOTHER EARTH.
The letters are reproduced as written, since any attempt to edit them would but detract from their charm and simple grandeur. One can readily see that Denjiro Kotoku had joined the army of the social revolution and that as thinker, fighter and organizer he gave himself unreservedly to the cause of human emancipation.
Of great value is the letter wherein Kotoku speaks of his development to Anarchism and the reasons there for. Evidently the economic and social conditions which act as a leaven in Europe and America operate with the same force in Japan. Even as we, the Japanese are confronted with identical pressing problems demanding solution.
Denjiro Kotoku was a scholar engaged with deep philosophic questions. Like Renan, Strauss, and Bruno Bauer, our Comrade was devoting himself during his last imprisonment to a work containing a severe arraignment of Christianity. What a strange coincidence that at the very moment when Professor Drews' work on Jesus Christ was causing such a furore in Germany, the Japanese Anarchist thinker, in a Japanese prison, with death staring him in the face, was elaborating the same theme.
Tokio, Japan, Nov. 25th, 1904.
DEAR COMRADE.
I feel very happy to inform you that this picture* was reproduced from that which you sent me, and is published from Heimin Shimbun office, a Socialist weekly. I have been prosecuted on the charge of publishing a treasonable article and sentenced to five months' imprisonment. When this card is in your hand I will be in Sugano Prison of Tokio.
Yours fraternally,Tokio, Dec. 30th, 1904.MR. A. JOHNSON.
*Picture of Kropotkin
Dear Comrade :-In replying I thank you very much, for I have received Mr. Kropotkin's address and many valuable literatures which you sent to me.
Both as a source of argument and reference, Mr. Ladd's work, 'Commentaries on Hebrew,' should be of great value for me, because I am an atheist or agnostic, and always fighting against the dogma of Christian and all other religions.
I regret that I did not have a chance of reading late Mr. Hearn's work, but I think it should be a good authority,as he lived himself a complete Japanese life during many years till his death.
As already informed, 1 was prosecuted by barbarous government on the charge of inciting to the alteration of the Dynastic Institution and sentenced to five months' imprisonment, but I soon appealed and second trial was postponed until January 6th.
Beside this I was sentenced on 20th inst. to a fine of 80 yen on the charge of translating and publishing Marx's 'Communist Manifesto.' What beautiful Japanese Government is! Is it not quite same to Russian despotism? I ever remain,
Yours fraternally,D. KOTOKU.
Odawara, Japan, Aug. 10th, 1905.
MR. A. JOHNSON
Dear Comrade :-1 have just received your letter of July 16th, and translated it orally with great pleasure for my wife, who listened very attentively with most gratitude for your friendship and kindness.
We could not help shedding tears of sympathy with your youngest daughter having lost her husband recently, and of thankfulness in knowing that you would have had. the dinner in your house to celebrate my release.
August 6th we came to the sea-shore of Odawara, a town about fifty miles south-westernward from Tokio, to restore my health. The building in which we are now staying is a villa owned by Dr. Kato, who is devoted Socialist and is kindly attending my sickness.
Five months' imprisonment not a little injured my health, but it gave me many lessons of the social questions. I have seen and studied great many of so-called 'criminals' and became convinced that the governmental institutions----court, law, prison-are only responsible for them-poverty and crime.
Among the many books which I have read in the prison were Draper's 'Conflict Between Religion and Science,' Haeckel's 'The Riddle of the Universe,' Renan's 'Life of Jesus,' and so forth. Besides I repeated again two interesting books which you sent me-Mr. Ladd's 'Hebrew and Christian Mythology' and Mr. Kropotkin's 'Fields, Factories and Workshops.'(By the way, Mr. Ladd often mentions Buddha as a Chinese philosopher. It is true that the greater part of Chinese population is now Buddhist, but Buddha or Gautama is not Chinese. He was born in India. He is Hindu. Several centuries after the death of Buddha his religion was introduced into China.)
Indeed, I had gone.** as a Marxian Socialist and returned as a radical Anarchist. To propagate Anarchism in this country, however, it means the death or lifelong, at least several years', imprisonment. Therefore its movement must be entirely secret, and its progress and success will need long, long time and endurance.
I am now intending to live in America and Europe during several years for the following purpose:
(I) To study foreign conversation and writing which are most important instruments for the. International Movement of Communists or Anarchists. I can only read English literature, but cannot speak. And writing in English, as you see, is very hard for me.
(2) To visit the leaders of many foreign revolutionists and learn something from their movements.
(3) To criticize freely the position of the 'His Majesty' and the political, economic and institutions from foreign land where the pernicious hand of 'His Majesty' cannot reach.
If my health allows and money, that is to be borrowed from my relations and friends, could be raised I will start in the coming winter or next spring. Although we are now at Odawara, we will return to Tokio at next month.
Yours fraternally,DENJIRO KOTOKU
P. S.-My wife was pleased very much with many pictures enveloped in your letter.**To Sugano prison in Tokio.Tokio, Sept. 5th, 1905.
DEAR COMRADE.
I thank you very much for the present of Kelso's 'Government Analyzed,' which I received last night. I soon read the preface of the author. I think it is a very valuable book and I will learn many things of the evil of government and the good of Anarchy from it.
My health is recovering day by day, and I am intending to start, for America in the next November. In haste.
Yours fraternally, D. KOTOKU
I have read Mr. Ladd's article, 'Japan Leads the World,' in Searchlight of July.
Tokio, Sept. 8th, 1905.
DEAR COMRADE.
Japanese Government is now receiving natural, but dreadful result of the patriotism and jingoism which were stirred up by the hands of themselves. During the last four days the city of Tokio has been drowned by the sea of fire and blood.* The state of siege has been proclaimed, many publications suspended, and to the Postmaster given the right of confiscating any letter.
D. KOTOKU.
*Jingo demonstrations following the signing of the peace treaty at Portsmouth.
Tokio, Oct. 1Ith, 1905.
MR. A. JOHNSON.
Dear Comrade :-Our weekly is still suspended and our office has been compelled to dissolve ourselves owing to the barbarous persecution and financial difficulties.
I'm now intending to organize the Japanese laborers in America. There is no other means to get freedom of speech and press than to quit the soil of the state of siege and go to a more civilized country.
Yours fraternally,D. KOTOKU.
October 11th, 1905.
DEAR COMRADE.
Many thanks for books and literature. We were pleased very much with the pictures of the foreign ladies and children. I have decided to start on the N. Y. K.'s ship November 14th, for Seattle and San Francisco, with my nephew.
How pleasantly and happy it would be to shake hands with you and comrades early in next December!
Yours fraternally,D. KOTOKU.
NOTICE
Though we are very reluctant to drop anyone from our lists, MOTHER EARTH cannot carry unpaid subscribers, since, even at best, it is published at a loss. Therefore we strongly urge our readers to send their subscriptions in AT ONCE.
SPECIAL OFFER
Thanks to the generous offer of Companion M. H. Woolman, we succeeded in enlarging our subscription list. But the magazine is still far from the self-sustaining point. In the hope of reaching that goal, we have decided to make this offer:
Anyone sending us three new yearly subscriptions before the expiration of the current M. E. year (closing with the February issue, 1912) will be entitled to a free copy of one of the following books, sent postpaid: (a) 'Conquest of Bread,' by Peter Kropotkin; (b) an autograph copy of 'Anarchism and Other Essays,' by Emma Goldman; (c) any dollar book carried by us.
We hope our friends will lose no time in availing themselves of this opportunity.
EMMA GOLDMAN
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
THE period of prosperity by the grace of Morgan is on the wane. Hundreds of unemployed crowd the parks, and many jobless men are vainly seeking work. The capitalist press sounds a warning against strikes and dilates upon the insecurity of the money market. Wall Street plans to send its champion commis voyageur Taft on an exhibition tour, that he may lull the growing discontent of the people by soft political phrases.
Do the Mammonists really believe they can abolish the social misery by the display of Presidential quantity?
* * *
TO counteract the yearly protest of labor against wage slavery, as manifested on the First of May, the representatives of the American plutocracy at Washington decided upon a legal holiday. Instead of repudiating with deserved contempt the holiday in honor of slavery, the conservative and law-abiding leaders of organized labor have submitted to the will of the politicians. Yearly we now witness on Labor Day the sad spectacle of the toilers celebrating, at the behest of their exploiters, and peacefully parading the streets.
Yet even this legalized holiday could be made the occasion of a mighty protest, if the so-called leaders did not suppress with smooth words the rebellious spirit of the workers.
If ever a protest of tremendous weight was needed, now is the time. Not only are the unions forced to wage a continuous struggle for their economic self-preservation: they are being robbed by capitalist judges of the last vestiges of their rights; the officials of one of the most important labor organizations are in peril of being railroaded to the gallows; the chief representatives of trade unionism are facing the probability of going to jail for contempt of court. A demonstration of strength would have surely been in place.
What, however, transpired? The usual parade, without energy or significance, lacking power and initiative, devoid of all revolutionary spirit. A pathetic spectacle it was, applauded and ridiculed by a curious mob. Fifty thousand workers march through the streets of the metropolis under the 'protection' of the police department. National banners are carried, together with some meaningless transparencies. The band is playing rag-time, and the organizers and leaders of the toilers ride in carriages at the tail end of the demonstration, instead of marching, like real leaders, in the front. Not a solitary rebellious battle cry, not a single inspiring song. The most pathetic feature of all, the proletarians of Slavic and Latin origin are infected by the spirit of weakness and dulness. The men and women who in St. Petersburg and Barcelona, in Mailand, Lodz, and Liverpool, so enthusiastically participated in demonstrations and battles, here march at the order of their leaders like so many dumb sheep.
Such an attitude will never inspire respect in aggressive capitalism. The diplomatic leaders will probably realize it when it is too late,—when the imprisoned workers in Los Angeles have fallen a prey to the hangman, it will be too late, unless the workers lose their patience betimes, and sweep their cringing leaders out of their ranks.
* * *
PHILANDER C. KNOX, who had won his spurs in the role of Carnegie's lackey, and is now the representative of the foreign business interests of the commercial barons, is by no means a friend of revolutionists. Diaz, Madero, and Nicholas of Russia, are men to his liking. No wonder, then, that he longs to abolish the right of asylum for political refugees.
In reply to an inquiry by the New York Mexican Revolutionary Conference, Mr. Knox sent the following telegram:
Charles W. Lawson, New York.
The President has referred to this department the telegram dated August 7th, signed by Harry Kelly, Leonard D. Abbott, Milo Harvey Woolman and yourself regarding the alleged surrender to Mexican Government officials by authorities at El Paso, Texas, of Jose Maria Rangel, Priscilian and Ruben Silva and others. This information had already been conveyed to the Department and immediately upon its receipt the department instructed the American Consul at Juarez to investigate and report, and laid the facts before the Department of Justice for such action, if any, as the circumstances might warrant. It does not appear that any of the above-named persons is an American citizen or that the Mexican Government committed any wrong in obtaining possession of these persons; neither does it appear that the United States Federal authorities have had anyth1ng whatever to do with the alleged transaction. If these men are under detention by Mexican authorities, this department has no reason to believe that they will receive any such fate as suggested, and in view of the circumstances it is not perceived upon what international grounds the department could base intervention requested on their behalf nor support a demand for their return to the United States. Any official at El Paso guilty of kidnapping may obviously be prosecuted therefor. There is no evidence before the department whatever beyond the bare allegation of the fact to show that even if these men have been turned over to the Mexican authorities, such delivery was for punishment for political offences, and even if such proved to be the fact, it seems to be quite obvious that those who, whatever their motive, engage in rebellion against an established Government must be prepared to abide such legitimate consequences of their acts as the law of nations and an enlightened humanity do not forbid.
Knox,Secretary of State.
We fear the protest sent to Knox and reprinted below will hardly change the attitude of the thick-skulled Secretary.
Hon. Philander C. Knox,Secretary of State,
Washington, D. C.
We have received your message of August 10th relative to the imprisonment of Jose Maria Rangel, Priscilian, and Ruben Silva, and others in Juarez, Mexico, and note therein an admission which seems to us to contradict the very principles on which this government is based.
The Declaration of Independence especially declares that whenever any form of government tends to oppress the people under its sway, 'it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.' Yet you say: 'Even if these men have been turned over to the Mexican authorities . . . for punishment for political offences ... it seems to be quite obvious that those who, whatever their motive, engage in rebellion against an established government must be prepared to abide such legitimate consequences of their acts as the law of nations and an enlightened humanity do not forbid.'
It would seem from your statement that the United States government now stands for the principles that political offenders can be turned to the government from which they escaped. Since when has our government adopted a policy repudiated even by monarchical governments of Europe? To be sure, it is quite obvious that rebels against established governments must be prepared to abide by the consequences of their acts. It is not so obvious that our government, itself founded upon rebellion, must needs assist the Government of Mexico or any other country to crush revolutionists merely because such government is established.
Whatever be the merits of the struggle in Mexico, the United States cannot without violating every American tradition aid the Mexican government to suppress those who struggle against the present order. We protest most emphatically against this interpretation of yours of our extradition laws, for if such interpretation be correct, our government is pledged to aid and abet every move of the forces of tyranny and despotism.
The Mexican revolution conferencePer Charles W. Lawson, Chairman.
* * *
THE claim of the Mexican rebels that the revolution in their country is not merely a political movement, but a great social upheaval, finds corroboration in the reactionary camp. The situation is considerably illumined by a bourgeois writer, Don Carlos Basave, in a contribution to the Catholic publication, El Pais. Among other things, the author says:
No mere political aspiration caused the masses to interest themselves in the revolution. Looking beyond that, the rural population saw that its final result would be the realization of an ambition always dear to its heart—that of becoming owners of the soil; recovering that of which it had been despoiled by powerful neighbors, able to cover up, more or less, their spoliation with legal formalities.
One may observe most clearly the aspiration to which I have referred, and cite concrete examples; for on numerous estates the country folk have settled down, not merely as armed bands but as cultivators, appropriating to their own use the growing crops. It has been found impossible to disperse them, and bargains of expediency are now being resorted to for the sake of keeping titles intact. The peasants are being recognized as renters, and, in some cases, as part owners. Similarly other hacienda owners have resolved on a policy of selling portions of their estates in lots, being convinced that there will be no return of the days when their influence was decisive, even when contrary to equity and justice.
'Land and Liberty' is the motto of the Mexican peons, guiltless of 'scientific' Socialism. Together with the factory slaves they are working on the reconstruction of economic conditions by means of direct action. The politicians face the movement in utter helplessness.
* * *
EUGENE V. DEBS changes his colors like a veritable chameleon. The criticism of his stand against the economic revolution in Mexico has forced him to change his attitude. His assertion that the peon is not yet ripe for Socialism having been reduced ad absurdum by the brilliant arguments of our Comrade Wm. C. Owen, Debs is now moved to acknowledge his position as untenable. But he seeks to cover his retreat by laying the blame at the door of the Anarchists as if the latter were responsible for his fluctuations. It does him little credit that he attempts to justify his lack of intellectual stability by accusing the Anarchists of being boodlers and corruptionists.
* * *
AN interesting sidelight regarding the attitude of Socialists toward the negro problem is shed by the reports of Theresa Malkiel on a lecture tour in the South. She recites numerous cases, showing that the black men receive far worse treatment at the hands of Socialists than from conservatives. 'To the everlasting shame of our Southern comrades,' writes Theresa Malkiel, 'they treat the negroes like dogs.'
That is the result of a Socialist propaganda limited to vote baiting. No wonder that the party consists chiefly of national and racial philistines, moral eunuchs, and religious soul savers.
* * *
THE Revolution was conquered; the bravest of the fighters had perished on the barricades or were doomed to Siberia. The era of brutality toward political prisoners was re-established. When the protests remained unheeded, the heroic Sasonof, the executor of the popular will against Plehve, decided, with five other comrades, to commit suicide in the prison of Zarantui, in order to rouse the attention of the world to the persecution of the political prisoners.
This last act of brave self-sacrifice remained without effect. But now arrives the news that the Governor of the Zarantui prison has been shot. Lo! the avenging angel is not at rest.
MEXICO AND SOCIALISM
By Wm. C. Owen
IN Mexico, our immediate neighbor, to whom we are bound by a thousand ties, a revolutionary situation of extraordinary vehemence blazes into life. Within a few short months an absolute monarch, backed by a large army, is driven from the throne. In whole States, such as Morelos, the peasants take possession of the land and cultivate it for their own use. Churches, courthouses, and jails are burned, all prisoners being released and hailed by the masses as brothers and fellowworkers. In a word, a large proportion of the people shows a grim determination to have done with the entire existing regime—economic and political. Surely a remarkable situation!
Mexico's neighbor, the United States, has been for more than a generation past the home of bitter discontent. No country equals it in the savagery of its labor wars; nowhere has there been fiercer denunciation of predatory wealth and privilege. From no country, therefore, would one have expected so ready a response to the Mexican Revolution as from the United States. But when one looked round for the expected sympathy, where was it? When one waited anxiously for the revolutionists to gather round the standard, where were they? As a matter of fact, outside of the Spanish and the Italians, they were practically non-existent. To this day only the merest handful has been galvanized into life, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few.
For this there must be reasons, and it seems to me that the reasons can be brought to light, in part at least, by considering the case of Los Angeles, from which I write. Los Angeles, therefore, I propose to consider, but most unwillingly; for it brings me into conflict with men I have known for years and would far rather conciliate than oppose. For example, all my natural inclination is to boost Job Harriman, now running for mayor on the Socialist-Labor Union ticket, inasmuch as he is counsel for the imprisoned members of the Mexican Junta.
Whenever a radical lecturer comes to Los Angeles nowadays he or she immediately reports that there the opposed forces of labor and capital are drawn up in bitter conflict; that the McNamara-Times case, and the fact that the Mexican Revolutionists have their headquarters in Los Angeles, have made it, for the moment, the real revolutionary center of the country. The articles written to that effect would fill a library, and they are largely true, for here in Los Angeles there is a revolutionary situation, and labor throughout the country does recognize the conflict as likely to be determinative. Labor is showing that by pouring money into Los Angeles, and I read statements to the effect that the defense of the McNamara brothers will cost $800,000.
We have then, in Los Angeles, a revolutionary situation, generally recognized as such. We have labor throughout the country doing the best it knows to meet that situation. We have every Socialist in the land whooping it up for Los Angeles. 'Action!' is the cry of the hour, and an examination of the action, taken and proposed, becomes a duty of the first importance.
What are Labor's ideas as to the way in which its present all-important fight should be conducted? First, it spends money like water on lawyers, an enormous array of whom is now at work endeavoring to earn fees that range from $10,000 to $50,000. Secondly, large sums unquestionably are being spent on 'tuning' the much-execrated capitalist press through the medium of a press bureau which plays up from day to day the doings of the lawyers, that the public interest may not flag. Thirdly, a gigantic effort is being made to carry Los Angeles at the approaching municipal election, by combining the Socialist and Trades-Union forces. To head the ticket Job Harriman, a noted Socialist and one of the McNamara counsel, has been selected. Another Socialist, formerly a well-known editor, is in charge of the news bureau; everywhere the Socialists are phenomenally active, and the first big gun has now been fired, in the shape of a front-page, large-typed, display article in the Los Angeles Record—a capitalist paper, and unquestionably subsidized—with a heading that reaches all across the page and runs: 'Who for Mayor? Job Harriman, of course.'.
The Record has done its work skilfully; it has endeavored loyally to earn its money by urging everyone to vote 'for Job Harriman, the Socialist candidate for Mayor, and for every other municipal candidate who stands for the same things he stands for.' I am satisfied that it has inserted every argument Job Harriman and his Socialist-Labor Union combination want to have inserted. What do they amount to?
Nearly a column and a half are devoted to the demonstration that previous administrations, while promising the workingman everything before election, have forgotten him after election. The action of 'big business' —much emphasized throughout the manifesto—in passing an anti-picketing ordinance and refusing to increase the pay of the aqueduct workers is given in illustration. Naturally we are assured that the Harriman administration will not play the workers false. Then follows this declaration; the one and only part of the manifesto which moves from vague generalities to positive assertion:
'We believe that the election of Harriman and such associates will bring the municipal ownership of ALL the public utilities nearer than anything else that could possibly be done, and that under their administration it would be impossible for any public service corporation to unload its plant on the city at an exorbitant price, or to make the city pay for water in its stock in order to get the plant. During the next few years many matters of great importance are going to come up in Los Angeles, and if 'big business' continues to control municipal affairs as it has in the past, the lot not only of the workingman, but of the small manufacturer and all others whose prosperity is dependent on the prosperity of the workingmen is going to become a mighty unhappy one.'
That is all. I am not saying that the position taken is deliberately dishonest. I am quite willing to admit that it may be considered the best way of getting out the working vote. But I do say that it is preposterous to talk of such a movement as 'revolutionary,' and I point out that if this is the Socialist idea of the revolutionary action needed to meet an admittedly revolutionary situation, some of us need to revise our conceptions as to the Socialist party. For Harriman is supported enthusiastically by Socialists throughout the country, the entire party being buoyed up with hope that another Milwaukee may be created here in California. Moreover, Harriman is a most representative Socialist, has always been considered revolutionary, and ran on the same national ticket with Debs, being candidate for vice-president of the United States.
Meanwhile, looking at the Socialist party as it is showing itself under fire, and considering the influence it apparently exercises in labor counsels, I do not won-' der that a real revolution, such as that in Mexico, commands so little sympathy. To me, profoundly interested in the success of that revolution, the Socialist party is not a friend, but an enemy. I regret it deeply, but facts are facts.
* * *
THE SOLDIER'S CREED
By Ernest Crosby.
'Captain, what do you think,' I asked,'Of the part your soldiers play?'But the captain answered, 'I do not think;I do not think, I obey!'
'Do you think you should shoot a patriot down,Or help a tyrant slay?'But the captain answered, 'I do not think;I do not think, I obey!'
'Do you think your conscience was made to die,And your brain to rot away?'But the captain answered, 'I do not think;I do not think, I obey!'
'Then if this is your soldier's creed,' I cried,'You're a mean unmanly crew;And for all your feathers and gilt and braidI am more of a man than you!'
'For whatever my place in life may be,And whether I swim or sink,I can say with pride, 'I do not obey;I do not obey, I think!''SURPRISED POLITICIANSBy Hippolyte Havel
THE revolt of the British workingmen is one of the most encouraging and important signs in the struggle of the international proletariat for emancipation. Significant lessons may be drawn from this struggle. We beheld the triumph of the general strike idea and witnessed the downfall of political leadership. The upstarts of the labor movement, corrupted in the swamp of parliamentarism, were as much surprised by the revolt and the splendid solidarity of the wage slaves as their colleagues and masters of the capitalist camp.
Never before was there an opportunity to see so clearly and convincingly how little sympathy the socalled leaders and the political parties have with the man of toil, or how poor their understanding concerning the condition of the people and the latter's soul. They are blind to the revolutionary activity of the Anarchists, Syndicalists, and industrialists. What gross ignorance, for instance, is displayed in the editorial observations of the N. Y. Call:
'That the strike should approach the magnitude of an almost universal cessation of work, is hardly to be accounted for by any widespread and long sustained propaganda advocating the general strike. Certainly neither of the two bodies professedly representing the Socialism of England, have laid any particular stress upon it as a weapon in the labor struggle, nor has there been any special organization of importance advocating it outside these two bodies. Rather does it seem a spontaneous and largely unexpected revolt on the part of the workers, in which direct agitation and organization do not appear to have played a distinct part in bringing about.'
The editor of the Call evidently knows nothing of any organizations outside the political Socialist parties of England. Is it sheer stupidity or the willful ignoring of facts? Perhaps the editor agrees with the London Times which seeks to explain the General Strike with this wisdom:
'Anarchy reigns and the so-called labor members of Parliament know nothing about the whole mad business. Indeed, the movement is said to be largely directed against them by agitators who have been less successful in public life than themselves.'
Tom Mann, who together with Ben Tillett conducted the strike, turned his back upon the Socialist party about a month ago. In his resignation he gives the following reasons:
'My experiences have driven me more and more into the non-parliamentary position; and this I find is most unwelcome to most members of the party. After the most careful reflection, I am driven to the belief that the real reason why the trades-unionist movement of this country is in such a deplorable state of inefficiency is to be found in the fictitious importance which the workers have been encouraged to attach to parliamentary action.
'I find nearly all the serious-minded young men of the Labor and Socialist movement have their minds centered upon obtaining some position in public life, such as local, municipal or county councillorship, or filling some governmental office, or aspiring to become members of Parliament.
'I am driven to the belief that this is entirely wrong, and that economic liberty will never be realized by such means. So I declare in favor of Direct Industrial Organization, not as a means, but as the means whereby the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system and become the actual controllers of their own industrial and social destiny.
'I am of the opinion that the workers' fight must be carried out on the industrial plane, free from entanglements with the plutocratic enemy.'
No one enjoys greater respect among the workers of England than Tom Mann. Deservedly so: has he not been an active participant within the last twentyfive years in every struggle of the proletariat in England, Australia, and South Africa? Like so many other Socialists, he has become convinced through experience of the uselessness of parliamentary activity and he has learned the importance of direct action and the General Strike.
The methods which the Anarchists have been propagating for a score of years have finally triumphed in England. Thus an important bond has been formed between the toilers of Great Britain and the revolutionary movement on the Continent.
By means of direct action and the General Strike the English workers have accomplished more in a few days than their leaders have succeeded in doing in the yearlong 'activity' in Parliament. They have not only carried their demands, but also caused tremendous injury to their masters, the capitalists. This strike, in which various organizations participated, involved not merely conciliation boards, but mainly practical demands: increase of pay, reduction of working hours, and the recognition of the right to organize—all of which have been won. Quite correctly the San Francisco Revolt remarks:
'Five days of the general strike in the British Isles has served to win the respectful and favorable attention of the British Parliament to the demands and needs of the workingmen involved in the mighty demonstration of class solidarity. A commission has been called which, ostensibly, is to 'arbitrate,' but actually is to come into existence with instructions all ready for it under which it will have but one thing to do, and that to adjust the hours and the pay of the militant workers in accordance with their demands.'
Even such bitter enemies of the Syndicalists and Anarchists as the members of the Socialist Labor party must recognize the success of the direct Anarchist action of the English workers. Thus its London correspondent writes to the N. Y. People: 'The moral value of the strike will prove lasting. More important than the commission inquiry is the discovery of the tremendous weapon possessed in simultaneous sympathetic strikes. It is likely to appeal to the workmen and procure thousands of recruits for the unions. A detached strike, financed by a single organization, will be abandoned as a rusty implement no longer serviceable, and the federated strike will be taken up as the method of redressing the grievances of the British workmen. They have learned from their first trial of strength that they have in their possession a better method of compelling the masters to make concessions and to reinstate strikers than they had heretofore. The general effect of the labor crisis has been the creation of a feeling of insecurity among capitalists and employers.'
The confession loses none of its significance by the change of the General Strike into a 'federated' strike.
A VOICE FROM ARDENAugust 17, 1911.
To Harry Kelly And Emma Goldman. -*
Dear Comrades:—I desire to make you acquainted with the following facts: George Brown persisted in discussing sex questions at a meeting of the Arden Club, a private organization. He was requested to desist and refused. The club then voted to deny him the privilege of its floor. He then persisted in speaking and broke up two meetings. He declared it his intention to break up all future meetings, whereupon the officers of the club had him arrested. I am a member of this club, but I had nothing to do with the action, and knew nothing about it until Brown was in jail. I was not present at any of the meetings in which these things took place. George Brown stated to me personally that his reason for having me arrested was simply in order to contribute notoriety to the affair. I might mention also that Frank Stephens was away from Arden when the affair took place, that he is not an officer of the club, and knew nothing about the matter.
I request the publication of this letter in Mother Earth. I should be perfectly willing for you to submit this letter to George Brown. I have no doubt that he will endorse my statements of fact.
Sincerely,
Upton Sinclalr.
KOTOKU'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH ALBERT JOHNSON
(Continuation.)
San Francisco, May 29th, 5 P. M.
Mr. Johnson.
Dear Comrade:—I came here to-day (afternoon). I regret that I could not call on you, because I did not know where you are.
I have composed a poem of farewell* in Chinese language. It is in style of ancient classic. I will write it on Chinese paper and send you. I think I can post it to-morrow. It will be addressed to the Alameda.
I will stay in Oakland till June 1st. On that day we are going to hold a meeting for the organization of Japanese Social Revolutionary Party at the Oakland Socialist headquarters.
Yours for the revolution,
D. Kotoku.
* Kotoku's sojourn in America lasted only a few months. He organized the Japanese workingmen on the coast and returned to his native land to continue his propagandistic work. H. H.
Japan, Dec. 18th, 1906.
Dear Old Friend And Comrade.
The winter has come, the leaves have fallen. It is, however, very fine weather. The sky is blue, the sunlight is warm. So I am very happy at my village home.
My wife went to the law-court to attend as a hearer to the trial of Comrade Osugi this morning. Comrade Osugi is a young Anarchist student and a best friend of mine. When I was in San Francisco he wrote to you in French language and Mrs. Ladd translated it for you. Do you remember it? Well, Mr. Osugi is now under the trial on the charge of 'violence of the press law.' He translated an article titled 'to the conscripts' from a French Anarchist paper and published it in Hikari, Japanese Socialist paper. This anti-militaristic deed was prosecuted by the public officials. I am now anxious to hear the result of that trial. I think it will be probable the sentence of several months' imprisonment and the confiscation of printing machine. How good law and government are!
The most comical fact of the results of the late war is the conciliation (or rather embrace) of Christianity with Buddhism and Shintoism. The history of Christianity in Japan was until now a history of horrible persecutions. The Japanese diplomatists, however, earnestly desiring to silence the rumors caused and spread in Europe during the war that 'Japan is a yellow peril' or 'Japan is a pagan country,' suddenly began to put on the mask of Western civilization, and eagerly welcome and protect, and use it as a means of introducing Japan to European and American powers as a civilized Christendom. On the other hand, Christian priests, taking advantage of the weakness of the government, got a great monetary aid from the State, and under its protection they are propagating in full vigor the Gospel of Patriotism. Thus Japanese Christianity, which was before the war the religion of poor, literally now changed within only two years to a great bourgeois religion and a machine of the State and militarism!
The preparation for the Socialist daily is almost completed. I hope the daily will have a success. The Japanese Socialist Party consists, as you know, of many different elements. Social-Democrats, Social Revolutionists, and even Christian Socialists. So the daily would be a very strange paper.
Most of our comrades are inclined to take the tactics of Parliamentalism rather than Syndicalism or Anarchism. But it is not because they are assuredly convinced which is true, but because of their ignorance of Anarchist Communism. Therefore our most important work at present is the translation and publication of Anarchist and Free-thought literature. I will do my best, and use our paper as an organ for the libertarian propaganda.
In China the rebellions and insurrections are spreading. The social and political conditions of China are just same to that of Russia in last century. I think China will be within the coming ten years a land of great rebellion and terrorism. A group of Chinese students in Tokio is becoming the center of Chinese Revolutionary movement.
Yours very truly,
D. Kotoku.
Yugawara, Sagami, May 3rd, 1907.
Dear Comrade And Friend.
Please forgive me for not writing to you for a long time. During last few months I was very busy, owing to the persecutions of the Government. Now that our daily has been suppressed and our many comrades have gone to the prison, I have no work, no business, so I got leisure to write. I am now alone, at an inn in Yugawara, a famous watering place, one day's ride from Tokio. I came here to improve my health and am now translating a pamphlet, Arnold Roller's 'Social General Strike.'
My book, in which are collected my essays on AntiMilitarism, Communism, and other Radicalism, has been prohibited and many copies seized by the Government, but the cunning publisher secretly sold 1,500 copies before the policemen came.
Mrs. Yamanouchi is living with her mother and grandmother in a country villa near Tokio. Her family is rich, but she is preparing to live an independent life. She says she does not like to live a parasite's life. I am now looking for her work. My wife and Magara Sakai were very pleased with the fine cards from you. Magara is now with her father. She is four years old and a very amiable child.
Have you seen the Japanese students in Berkeley who are publishing a magazine which caused a sensation last January? They are all clever and devoted libertarians.
hope the future revolution in Japan will be caused by their hands. Please teach them, educate them, instruct them.
Mr. Sakai is working on an 'Encyclopedia of Social Problems' with a few young comrades. Its accomplishment will take five or six months after this. It will have great effect for the education of our people. I am going to translate Kropotkin's works.
I am very anxious to hear of your eyes. Eyes are very important organs for all men. Take care of yourself. Remember me to your daughter and granddaughter. I ever remain,
Yours fraternally,
D. Kotoku.
(To be Continued.)
ECONOMY AS VIEWED BY AN ANARCHIST
By C. L. James.
(Continuation.)
Anarchism is no patent scheme for introducing 'the reign of the Prince of Peace.' It does not ignore the bitter fruits of sin. It does not deny that personal ignorance and stupidity are the prime causes of all our sufferings. It does not imagine that man can be free and woman be a slave. It makes no Omnipotent Goodness out of a popularly elected legislature. But it does perceive that when men combined to enslave other men they first laid upon their own necks a yoke called Government, which it is pitiful to hear them beg their drivers will by some never clearly designated hocus-pocus convert into a defense; that it is the worse and not the better part of human nature which is organized for perpetuity by such combinations as States; that the spontaneous tendency of desire working in individuals is towards improvement; that the weight which forever drags us back into our old afflictions is Law, the petrified tradition of a barbarous past! Before proceeding to illustrate this through a brief review of economic history, observe that interest is the fruit of artificial monopoly just as much as rent. We may inquire whether anything can be done for its complete extinction when we have cleared away its factitious bulwarks—the chartered monopolies whose constantly accumulating Surplus Value makes them the fountain heads of usury; whose high profits on such illicit speculation as the Credit Mobilier renders possible the ravaging rate of loans;22 and whose traditional methods express themselves in conspiracies as much disapproved by the very government to which they owe their own existence as are those of the Standard Oil Company
22'The world's wealth hardly increases three per cent, a year. Three per cent, is reckoned a very low interest. Why does not Interest eat up the world? Because it is not paid! What becomes of it? Ask the ruined speculators after a financial 'crisis.'
21. It is remarkable how small a part of economic history can be rationalized from the premises of orthodox Economy; and how much light is cast upon true methods of generalization as soon as we begin seeking them among the facts! I suppose it is no longer imagined that man's primitive condition was anything else than the lowest state of savagery; but what that means is not quite easily made intelligible. Cannibalism is far from being the lowest state. It requires an amount of courage, energy, and aspiration, not possessed by the most degraded races of men, and accordingly does not seem to exist, certainly not on a large scale, among the negrittoes of Melanesia or Central Africa. They are mere grazers upon Land. But there is evidence that cannibalism did once prevail among the Negroes, Polynesians, Indians, Turanians, the Semitic and Aryan races. Occasionally, as among the Aztecs, it persists into somewhat advanced social states but, as a rule, it gives way to hunting, in countries where large animals (there were none in early Mexico) can be killed with the rude weapons of the savages. Progress from the grazing to the hunting state illustrates at every step the rujes that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion, and that their desires are enlarged by the increase of their powers, brought about, as yet, mainly through natural and sexual selection, but already in some degree effected by Invention, a sure mark of knowledge increased through experience. A great change takes place when men have discovered that some large animals, as the horse, the dog, the sheep, and the bovine kinds, can be domesticated. This is easier than the chase. Cannibalism, an occasional resort of hunting nomads, wholly ceases. There is now, for the first time, a considerable accumulation of wealth, in the form of W. P. W.— breeding cattle—which is also Capital, enabling the patriarch to obtain a Surplus Value from the labor of his sons, wives, slaves, naturalized aliens, and unlucky members of the horde. The subjection of women, the earliest among wrongs and the parent of all others, becomes a little mitigated. Even before that the young savage was required to prove himself fit for his father's trade of war before he could marry; but now something else becomes necessary, not through arbitrary regulation, but natural law. For the cattle-raising nomad to have a family is simply impossible until he has acquired stock enough for the support of one; while from the marriage contracts or settlements spring certain customary rights of dower and separation which are favorable to the weaker sex. Up to the cattle-raising stage, increase of population is slow. Except for requiring young men to show their proficiency in arms and endure the cruel rites of barbarian confirmation, there is, indeed, no Preventive or Prudential Check, but barbarians below the stage of cattle keeping are desperately poor, and their multiplication is continually checked by famine, pestilence, which they are too ignorant to combat; war, infanticide, cannibalism, and accidents of the chase. After they begin to keep cattle, these animals, propagating much faster than the men, enable men also to increase rapidly; nor have they learned any reason why they should not. The migratory patriarch of a horde whose members are all actual or adopted members of one family, measures his power by his posterity; he is a polygamist who buys or captures women whenever he can; his descendants quickly multiply, and, like all subjects, they imitate their king as much as they can, so that the rapidity with which a pair becomes a nation is often quite startling. But there is a limit to the possibility of such life. The cattle must be fed, as well as the people; so, when their numbers become too great for land, uncultivated and mostly poor, it becomes necessary that the tribe should divide or else decamp bodily. The emigrating portion either gets a better country or perishes in a great defeat, and the native pasture land of nomads remains as little improved as formerly. Agriculture, however, originates in regions especially favorable to the simpler kinds. Rice in India, dates through northern Africa, corn in the tropical belt of America, poi in the Sandwich Islands, etc., are so easily raised that a few nations, as the Aztecs and Polynesians, have attained some degree of agricultural proficiency without becoming masters of large laboring animals; but this is rare. In most cases, people have discontinued nomadism only after acquiring considerable knowledge of how to gather and thresh grain, weed fields, hoe, plow, harrow, etc., in aid of which operations they had cattle. Leisure and experience have diversified their desires, and it becomes easier to gratify them by the agricultural life than that of shepherds, which, accordingly, is left to the backward inhabitants of the poorest sections. The settled habits of agriculturists are very favorable to individualism, and in the same proportion opposed to the communism of savages. It is easy for grazers, cannibals and hunters to have almost all their scanty possessions in common. The maker of weapons cannot, indeed, live on his product, and therefore, since all want it, he must be paid for it. But he is a salaried functionary, paid, not by individuals, but the tribe; and the same is true of the weaver, potter, basket-maker, and what other workmen, excepting fighters and hunters, there are. In the stage of shepherd nomadism there is, indeed, as we saw, a great accumulation of what is at once W. P. W. and Capital. But almost all belongs to one person, who, moreover, holds it in a sort of trust, as the head and representative of the tribe. So conservative are barbarians that they do not give up the most inconvenient practises without shame and fear of offending the gods. Such institutions as the prytanaeum—the public hotel where officials during their term, foreign ambassadors, pensioners, and other guests of the community live free of cost to themselves—as the temple of Vesta, a reminiscence of the old village campfire, kept by revered and sacred characters, show how the forms of community life persist after the substance has passed away. A really serious matter, however, is that in many countries— India, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, etc.—land, though occupied and cultivated by individuals, continues to be the property of the people's Great Father, the king, to whom the heavy ground rent is paid. That this system would be a good one under a democratic government with socialistic maxims, as its advocates propose, may be possible, and may not be true. But there can be no question that where it actually exists it is a bad one. More defensible from the quasi-moral point is the reservation of common lands. But everywhere we can see that the tendency of agriculture towards individuality is too much for this ancient practise. Commons continue to be divided and enclosed, despite the Corn Law rhymer's well-known complaint; and this not because monopolizing landlords buy venal legislators, though this doubtless assists a deeper process; but because W. P. W. can get more out of the commons than the unsystematic work of those few poor people to whom the enclosure is a hardship.
(To be Continued.)
SOME BOOKS
By M. B.
THOSE who are entertained by tales of shipwreck, cannibalism, and combat may enjoy Jack London's story 'Adventure.'* The work is an attempt to portray adventure on the background of reality. In the old standard stories of similar nature we see the characters move about, attack, rob, and murder each other for no discoverable reason save that of serving as lay figures for the narrator. It is somewhat different with Jack London's story. His adventurers know what they are about: they want to live, gain wealth, win success. Even the heroine, Joan Lackland, who is introduced to us as an adventuress for adventure's sake, finally grows to dislike her holster and 38 calibre revolver. She marries and will apparently become a good business woman, unless her time be entirely occupied by a good-sized flock of children.
The story of 'Adventure' is located in the South Sea Islands, the beche-de-mer region, the sometime sphere of the heroes of Edgar Allan Poe. There live savages, cannibals, bushmen. Compared with the latter, the savages and cannibals may be considered as gentle folk. Moreover, the bushmen are quite useless to the white man, since they refuse to be domesticated and cannot be persuaded to slave on the plantations under fake contracts. That, truly, is provoking, for the lords of the plantations are eager to play the role of civilizers. The savages on the coast, on the contrary, have already so far become amenable to civilization as to submit to slavery. Sometimes indeed they rebel; but the civilizers are quick to apply the whip or simply shoot them.
The happenings in 'Adventure' are of a commercial rather than romantic nature. The reviewer, remembering 'Martin Eden,' can't help cursing the time that misleads a true artist into committing the mediocre.
* Macmillan Company, New York. $1.50.
In 'The New Machiavelli'* H. G. Wells treats of illegitimate love and politics. Because of a love affair a man must sacrifice his political career: the Puritan swine grunt too loudly. Thus it happened to Charles Dilke, to Parnell, and many another.
Fortunately, the perusal of 'The New Machiavelli does not make us feel that England or 'humanity' is the loser by the termination of the hero's career. Of a real Machiavelli there is not even a trace in him: he is a thorough Fabian; that is, a hopeless experimentalist and aesthetic amateur.
The political constructive phase of the book is its weakest part. Wells rides his hobby with great perseverance. Thus the idea of the endowment of motherhood is mercilessly done to death. Well, let him! It has honestly earned the peace of the grave.
So far as details are concerned, however, the work is rich in splendid observations. Wells is always at his best when the politician in him is silenced and the artist allowed to speak. Then his humor shines out of bright eyes, looking upon the world understandingly.
The father of the hero suffered the misfortune of inheriting three old houses. They inspire him to the following remarks concerning the effect of property on the human soul:
'These damned houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white elephants! Conferva and soot. . . . Property, they are! . . . Beware of things, Dick; beware of things! Before you know where you are, you are waiting on them and minding them. They'll eat your life up. Eat up your hours and your blood and energy! When those houses came to me, I ought to have sold them—or fled the country. I ought to have cleared out. Sarcophagi—eaters of men! Oh! the hours and days of work, the nights of anxiety those vile houses have cost me! The painting! It worked up my arms; it got all over me. I stank of it. It made me ill. It isn't living—it's minding— . . .
'Property's the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this country, all cut up into silly little parallelograms; look at all those villas we passed just now, and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it, like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten, worried, little beast wants to keep us other rotten, little beasts off HIS patch—God knows why! Look at the weeds in it. Look at the mended fence! . . . Human souls buried under a cartload of blithering rubbish.'
* Duffield & Co., New York.
Such paragraphs enable the reader patiently to glance over many pages, which, though enlarging the bulk of the book, do not enrich its contents.
'The Chasm,'* by George Cram Cook, is a story with a Social Democratic label and abortive class-consciousness. But for the missing recital of the great deeds which Victor Berger will not perform in Congress, the book is a good specimen of a second-rate Socialist editorial or pamphlet.
The Civic Federation should not ignore the valuable suggestion of Love as the soothsayer of the class conflict.
Mr. Theodore Schroeder has published a unique book,—unique both in point of contents and because it is not for sale. It is dedicated to the friends of liberty; its purpose, to serve their mission. But not only friends of liberty,—the psychologist, the ethnographer, the lawyer, and the judge will study the book with profit, unless they be blinded by prejudice.
The work of Mr. Schroeder, 'Obscene Literature and Constitutional Law,'** contains a mine of valuable material. The moralist, eager to punish, can find neither place nor occasion where his contentions are not open
* Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. $1.25.
** The book is unique, because it can not be bought by the laity. It is published by the Free Speech League, New York City. We hope to print a lengthy treatise on the book shortly. to challenge. The greatest confusion prevails among judges and officials of the Postal Department as to what is right or wrong: what one considers proper is condemned by another as highly immoral. But unfortunately the nosing about for obscenity is not merely ludicrous; it has seriously injured art and literature, and is frequently the cord to strangle free speech and press.
Were there in Congress a single man of courage and understanding, unafraid of the howling of the Pharisee mob, he would rise at the very first occasion to stamp the postal censorship with its right name and to unmask it as a disgusting mixture of stupidity and despotism.
This, too, is clarified by the book of Mr. Schroeder: the common law takes no cognizance of 'obscene literature'; it is the judges and censorship which have dragged the thing into being, by the manufacture of precedents. Quite illuminating, therefore, is the saying of Sergeant Hill, quoted by Schroeder: 'When judges are about to do an unjust act, they seek for a precedent in order to justify their conduct by the faults of others.'
Now the censorship has become an institution. The question is how to abolish it. Mr. Schroeder's book is a most courageous attack upon the monster.
'The Man-Made World, or Our Androcentric Culture,'* by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, mirrors to Man the world as 'he made it.' Throughout history he has brutally domineered, fussed, waged war and exalted it. He has turned the home into the market-place of his violent instincts and lorded over it. He has degraded woman to a domestic animal and an object of lust. When he speaks of the human he always means the male; he impresses upon everything the alleged superiority of his near-sighted viewpoint.
Thus looks the picture reflected by the mirror of Mrs. Gilman, showing the rascality of our man-made world. I think, however, that the author does Man too much credit. The fellow has brought as little consciousness to the shaping of the world as did woman.
* Charlton Co., New York.
He is not its creator; in the majority of cases he is its mere creature. He lags behind with undecisive step, and generally the poor dunce wots not whither he goeth. His boastfulness, petty tyranny, and lack of consideration are acquired weapons in the wretched competition which is nowadays proudly termed the struggle for existence,—the struggle for bread and butter, more appropriately.
It must be noted, however, that woman, generally speaking, rather encourages than opposes these disagreeable traits of man,—which surely does not speak favorably of her taste.
In reality, were man the conscious creator of this world, he should be condemned without benefit of clergy. But until now the history of mankind appears as a brew of stupidity and narrow self-interest, for which both sexes have supplied the ingredients. Therefore they should work in common toward bringing into the world more beauty, sense, and justice. That women should equally participate in this better future is, for us, selfevident.
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
FOR some years part of my work was to select Sunday-school libraries, and quite often complaints would reach me from customers, to whom these selected libraries were sent, that such and such a book had been thrown out by their reading committee because dancing was mentioned and not condemned; or some story contained a child-christening scene which was not denominationally orthodox.
Some of the books condemned had everything to commend them from the standpoint of the prospective buyer, but unfortunately one of the characters used 'Oh, Pshaw!' or 'Darn It,' or some other such profane, obscene or unchristian expression, and back came the book.
I can not help but think that some concerted action on the part of liberals in the way of selecting and suggesting readings for the very young would be a most commendable work, and to this end I should like to open correspondence with men and women who are interested in securing for radical homes a few books that are not forever harping on what God did, and how and why and when; how bad this or that awful man or woman was in the story because, forsooth, they went fishing on Sunday or said something disrespectful of some skypilot.
I do not think there are fifty books for young children (if nature stories be excepted) that are not dangerous to liberal ideas or whose insidious moralistic implications are not a refutation of the liberal teachings of well-read parents.
Let us produce a sane, unbiased, healthy literature for the little folks; stories in which unconsciously are woven Shakespeare's grand thoughts, such as 'For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,' and Swinburne's 'All glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things'; and that greatest of rebels, Jesus: 'If a man work not neither shall he eat.' Thoughts like these unobtrusively permeating children's stories—how much better than the sentimental slush found in 'Little Eva' in Uncle Tom's Cabin; 'The Story of Patsy'; 'Bird's Xmas Carol,' where so jesuitically the tender mind of the child is imbued with the glory of charity; the kindness of the good-rich; a feeling, if poor, of the need of ingratiating oneself with the rich; or, if rich, of caddishly patronizing the poor; the feeling of submission—of putting one's trust in the good lord who knows what is best for us. That is what the child of the radical reads! No wonder that real soul-liberalism is so very scarce; no wonder there are still so many moral bugaboos—so much of the spirit of dependence—so much respect for property— such grasping for riches. It is ground into us from babyhood. Our mental food is tainted. Let us read critically, from the standpoint of the radical, and compile a list of books that are at least not mentally poisonous.
Those who will help me do this most necessary work kindly address:
S. T. Hammersmark,610 Third Avenue, Seattle, Wash.
INTERNATIONAL NOTES
THE present reaction in Japan plays havoc not merely with Socialists and Anarchists, but also with modern writers. Mr. Yone Noguchi, an author well known in America and England, writes in the London Academy regarding the terrible persecution of literary men in Japan:
'If there is a most unkind country for writers and literature, that is Japan—at least present Japan. Since the war, particularly in the last three years, the Japanese government has had two objects—namely, to stamp out Socialism and 'naturalism,' which, both of them, insist on perfect individualism. It seems to me that she used every possible power of the police and Press law toward her end; many writers were supposed, in fact, to be as dangerous morally and socially as Anarchists. The government set the police on them.'
Mr. Noguchi also dispels the myth regarding Japanese patriotism:
'It is the work of superficial observers to see only the uniform of Japan's patriotism in the Russia-Japan War; it is quite right to say that it only overshadowed, with its astonishing glitter of ancient sword, the elements of Western individualism which at the time of that war had begun to make their existence clear. The new Japanese attempted to qualify the meaning of patriotism from another standpoint. Kotoku, who was hanged recently as the leader of the now famous treason case, and many others raised the anti-war cry; we have many an unpublished story of deserters who were at once courtmartialed. Some critics even deny the Japanese bravery which the Western mind associates with the war. It would surprise the Western readers if we told our own story, to be sure.'
The writer concludes his interesting article with the following words of protest and admonition: 'The time is changing, but I am not ready to prophesy what the result will be for the government who does not realize the Time's change, and even flatly denies its existence.'
* * *
THE ignorance of the Crown Prosecutors of Prussia is a commonplace. A recent instance was given in the case of Der Freie Arbeiter, an Anarchist publication of Berlin. An issue of the paper containing an article entitled Die Neue Revolution, from the pen of Richard Wagner (originally published in 1849 m tne Sachsischen Volksblatter), was confiscated. The Crown Prosecutor, ignorant of the literature of his country and not dreaming that the author of the article was no other than the great Richard Wagner, caused the arrest and indictment of the editor of Der Freie Arbeiter, who, of course, was acquitted by the judge, to the great discomfiture of the prosecutor.
A similar incident proving the universality of authoritarian ignorance occurred in this country, but the jury of American peers proved as stupid as the German prosecutor. In 1901 John Most was indicted for an article published in the Freiheit. The author was Karl Heinzen and the article had originally appeared in The Pioneer about fifty years previously. Unlike the German judge, the American jury doomed Most to the penitentiary.
THE Prussian authorities continue to make themselves ridiculous. The editor of Der Freie Arbeiter, Comrade Becker, was found guilty of blasphemy because of the following quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Antichrist': 'I condemn Christianity. I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible indictment ever hurled against it by any accuser. The Church represents to me the worst of all conceivable corruptions. It ever willed to commit the very utmost of imaginable corruptions. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its ravages. Page upon page in its history bears witness to its bloodthirst, to the lowest passions of brutish stupidity and ferocity.'
Thus the philosopher Nietzsche stands condemned, while the composer Wagner has been exonerated by the courts of Prussia.
* * *
The revolutionary movement in France has within a short period lost three of its most illustrious artists.
Shortly after the death of the writer Louis-Philippe, the illustrator Delannay passed away. And now the great singer of liberty, Gaston Coute, died. All three were ardent devotees to the cause of human emancipation with the inevitable result of constant persecution.
It was Delannay's imprisonment that was responsible for the fatal disease, while Coute was placed under indictment for one of his stories in La Guerre Sociale when on his deathbed.
Want was the life companion of these sons of the revolutionary muse; the hospital their last abode.
* * *
Two of the foremost veterans of the Anarchist movement are at present seriously ill: Peter Kropotkin in Switzerland, and Enrico Malatesta in London.
The persecution which Comrade Malatesta suffered in conection with the Houndsditch affair considerably aided in aggravating his conditon.
In connection with the illness of Comrade Kropotkin, the Swiss government came near committing a very serious crime against the sick thinker and writer. The Swiss press announces that the Federal Council has ruled that the expulsion order issued thirty years ago against Peter Kropotkin still holds good, and that it is only the fact that he is really ill that prevents his being deported and saves the Swiss government from committing an act of barbarity. As it is, the Federal Council has asked the Tessin government to report at once if Kropotkin should leave Minusio, where he is now, or Switzerland. Only the worst criminals are expelled from Switzerland for life; political expulsions are never for more than a limited time.
We hope that both of these our most beloved comrades will speedily recover, to devote many years to the service of the movement.
* * *
On the 19th of September the Italian Anarchists will open their Congress in Rome. It will be held in memory of Carlo Pisacane, one of the pioneers of the Anarchist movement. On the 20th a great memorial demonstration will take place.
The subjects to be discussed at the Congress are as follows: organization, propaganda, initiative, the press, the anti-religious and the anti-military movements, and the modern school.
* * *
Anatole France, ever the active opponent of injustice and oppression, has refused the cross of the Legion of Honor offered to him by the government of France. This refusal voices his protest against the persecution of radical artists and revolutionists.
Anatole France has by this action honored himself far more than could all the crosses of the Legion of Honor with which are decorated the bosoms of corruptionists and politicians.
* * *
Regardless of the numerous protests from various sources, three Russian revolutionists have been extradited to the autocracy by the Austrian police: Kravetz, Veronetzky, and Mikhalsky.
The authorities of Austria work hand in glove with those of Russia, and Russian revolutionists are to-day no safer in one country than in the other.
The Social Democracy of Austria has entirely sunk in the swamp of parliamentarism and totally ignores the fate of political refugees from other countries.
* * *
Comrade J. F. Fleming writes to us from Melbourne, Australia:
Dear Comrade:—I received the Manifesto to the Workers of the World, also Regeneration. I have sent a copy to the Trades Hall Council, and the Socialist Party. The Council is a semi-capitalist party, the delegates principal endeavor is to obtain a parliamentary job; as a matter of principle they always denounce revolutionary propaganda; therefore little will be gained from them. With regard to the Socialists, they are the same the world over; I need say nothing further. Should, by accident, any favorable development take place, I will inform you.
The military conscription has just commenced; in Yarrivelle, a suburb of Melbourne, the boys stoned their officers and compelled them to seek shelter in the rich men's houses. Militarism is very unpopular in Australia.
NOTICEThough we are very reluctant to drop anyone from our lists, MOTHER EARTH cannot carry unpaid subscribers, since, even at best, it is published at a loss. Therefore we strongly urge our readers to send their subscriptions in AT ONCE.
Every renewal received during September and October will earn for the sender a free copy of 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism,' by Oscar Wilde.
If we do not hear from our unpaid subscribers during this month, we will have to take them off our list.WHO ARE THE QUACKS?
A controversy between two doctors—Dr. W. J. Robinson, editor 'Critic and Guide,' and Dr. It. Liber, editor 'Unscr Gesund.'
The truth about the 'regular' medical profession. Illustrated.
Very interesting for laymen and physicians of all medical schools.
An Important suggestion at the end of the book.
Price, 15 cents; to be sent to the publisher. B. Liber, M.D., 230 East 10th Street, New York City.
Issue of Mother Earth from January 1912. Articles by 'MB' are written by Max Baginski.
Blame the Fester
“Evil’s but the crumpled good of a Divine Intent.”
Seething are the elements of outraged righteousness,Understanding shrivels ’neath the onslaughts of duress.When their self-created pustules focus the alarm,Where’s the Man among the lot who dare discourse on Harm?Hear the railing of the mob which cries it’s been deceived.Mercy flits into byways for fear she’ll be believed.Shrieks and yells of blasting fury,—echoes of a fear,Scream until all throats are parched for want of one, lone tear.Cowards! Curse the fester of your making; shift the blame;Hurl your blasphemy with might on Labor’s blinding pain;Cry aloud, “We’ve been deceived,” and mitigate your dread;Beg of Law to hear your plea, and save your puny head;Wrap your griefs in bandages of Re-Submission oil;Cicatrize your gaping wounds by tightening the coil;Say the boils are not your fault; decline to claim the blood;Plaster all the crevices with indignation’s flood;Say you’re not responsible for cankers of the time;Steep your palzied judgment in a counterfeit Divine;Do these things; then harken to reverberation’s moan;Mark the fear that, cringingly, denied the human groan;Peer beneath the pigment of a vitiated crust;Delve into the depth of Truth, the foe of Gangrene, Rust;There, in silent reason, let the Light guide your belief,And Justice will make known to you your thought has been a Thief!
By Rebekah E Raney
The New Year
The business Christians have just celebrated Christmas. To increase their profits and heighten the glory of God, they have exploited the Savior to good purpose. Splendid success of redemption! Christ gave his blood to enable the churches and department stores to do better business. If, on the right hand of the Heavenly Father, he does not swear and curse over this success to shock the very angels, his heart is a lamb’s indeed.
Fortunately, we are atheists, not Christians, and in no wise responsible for the bitter disappointment of the Savior.
However, the hopes of Mother Earth for the new year depend neither on religious nor political calculations. They rest on the awakened consciousness of the people, upon whom depends the great and glorious future,—a new social structure built on freedom and well-being for all.
For five years Mother Earth has continued on its path to arouse the sleepy, strengthen the weak, and to enthuse the courageous, that they may form the advance guard for the coming great struggle. Its task was by no means easy; the hardships were much greater than the success. We had hoped for the assistance of all comrades, since it is well-nigh impossible to maintain a fearless and non-compromising publication in an atmosphere of mental cupidity and speculation. But they have not rallied to the support of Mother Earth,—at least not to the extent one might have expected. Possibly our magazine does not meet with their entire approval; or, still more likely, the comrades fail to understand the difficult position of a paper like Mother Earth, with neither a party machine nor an advertising department to back it. At any rate, the main sustenance of the magazine has come from my lectures. But for that, Mother Earth would have long ago ceased to be. Needless to say, Anarchism would not die should the magazine discontinue. Yet Anarchism never needed an exponent so much as it does now. The Anarchist propaganda has passed the stage of ridicule and willful misunderstanding. People are beginning to realize its deep significance and wide import. Mother Earth, as the only Anarchist magazine in America, should utilize to the utmost the social change of attitude, in order to disseminate wider knowledge and information of Anarchist principles. That is its purpose; therein consists its mission.
With this in view, we again appeal to all comrades and friends to rally round the little fighter that has so bravely withstood the stress and storm of five years. We ask, first of all, that our friends renew their subscriptions. Surely that is the least they can do. A copy of The Soul of Man Under Socialism will be given with every renewal. Those who are willing to do more should aid us in getting new subscribers. Any friend securing for the magazine three new subscriptions will be presented with a free copy of Anarchism and Other Essays or Conquest of Bread. Comrades desirous to spread our ideas on a larger scale should send for our 5c. propaganda pamphlets, to be had at $3.00 per 100.
Comrades and friends, let us join hands for the new year in the great work before us. The time has never been more ripe. The present is fast nearing its doom. Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty.
Emma Goldman.
P. S.—At the end of this month we begin our yearly tramp through the enemy’s camp. We expect to open up with a new series of lectures in Pittsburgh, Pa. Comrades and groups wishing dates will please communicate with me at once. Address: 55 W. 28th street, New York.
Anarchy— Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of, invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government.
Observations and Comments
Our inveterate optimism is responsible for the delay in the publication of Comrade Alexander Berkman’s book. We could not readily part with the hope that in this wide land there will be found one publisher bold enough to give to an intelligent minority a human document,—one which is undoubtedly the most signifcant and unique of its kind.
Alas, the search of Diogenes was vain among the great publishing houses. Fortunately, and thanks to some of you, we are enabled to constitute ourselves the publishers of our comrade’s life-work. But we ask our friends to forbear with us a little longer. The MS. is about to go to the printer, and the book will be mailed to the subscribers as soon as bound copies are available.
The advance price of $1.25 holds good only till February 1. Friends wishing to take advantage of the opportunity will kindly send in their orders at once.
Mother Earth Publishing Association.
Legal justice is a Janus head with two faces, the one smiling fawningly upon the rich and influential, the other turned with a cruel sneer toward the poor and friendless. This is the true character of justice, and the verdict rendered in the case of Harris & Blank, of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The two men were charged with having caused the death of 147 persons, among them 131 young girls and women, who helpelessly perished in the fire-trap of the Triangle factory. It was demonstrated during the trial that all safety requirements were entirely ignored by the bosses. The owners of the factory were concerned solely with the question of profits. They had no time to consider the safety of their employees. And the city authorities and factory inspectors drew their comfortable salaries and let the fire-traps remain undisturbed.
Had the laws and regulations of the safety department been taken seriously, the factory inspectors and heads of the city government would have been placed in the prisoners’ dock together with Harris and Blank, all equally responsible for the terrible holocaust that cost 147 human lives. But regulations for the safety of workers are not meant seriously. Worse yet, they are a positive menace for the trustful toilers, who believe that their lives are protected, while in reality industrial murder knows no limits, the alleged protection a miserable sham on paper.
The acquittal of Harris and Blank signifies the legalization, the justification of industrial murder as an established economic fact. Notwithstanding the locked factory exits and the strong suspicion that they had bribed the witnesses, the bosses were freed from all responsibility for the wholesale slaughter, because the judge and jury evidently believed in their own hearts that such happenings, such bloody catastrophes are inevitable, and are conditioned in the very system. Thus they thought. Yet they dared not utter the thought, for it would have disclosed the criminal character of the system,—aye, more, it would have torn the mask off the miserable comedy of their “justice.”
It has further developed during the trial that in the industrial field the workers are commonly considered as thieves, and treated accordingly. Like convicts, they are searched and locked in, that they may not steal a little piece of cloth or a spool of cotton. The only difference between these workers and the convict is that the latter is imprisoned for a crime already committed, while the “free” worker is kept under lock and key on suspicion that he might commit a crime. Suspicion alone suffices.
If the toilers are not content to continue to risk life and limb every day and every hour of their existence, they must themselves seek security in thorough organization and in solidaric activity. They will have to discard their naive faith in and reliance upon city or State providence, and seek to protect their lives by direct action on the spot, in shop and factory, introducing regulations and measures necessary to protect themselves against the consequences of capitalist greed.
The municipal government of New York prefers to swamp the city with filth and disease rather than concede the timid and just demands of the striking street-cleaners.
The attitude of the Mayor, his spirit mutilated by the letter of the law, indicates that this well-paid official considers it his chief business to set the iron heel upon the neck of the street workers. These hard-toiling men, incomparably more useful and indispensable to the community than the Mayor with all the stupid and corrupt officialdom at City Hall, have been treated like veritable slaves and convicts. The authorities strove the utmost to insult and humiliate the street employees and rejoiced in making them feel that they were considered no better than the filth in the streets. They had no right to cooperate for mutual benefit, no right to demand better conditions of existence.
In view of such official impudence one wondered at the apathy of the “organized labor” of New York, that supinely witnessed the violation of all the rights of labor. In truth, the “leaders” now and then still show faint signs of life, but their intelligence and courage have long since taken wing.
New York almost witnessed a strike of the gas men. Already we saw visions of its grand effects. How timely and fitting it would have been, for instance, if the lights had suddenly gone out in the midst of the fake peace banquet held by the contractors for war supplies, bomb manufacturers, diplomats, and other pillars of universal peace. Many other interesting developments would have been the result of a gas strike,—but we leave them to the imagination of the reader.
Yet it happened otherwise. The churches had made great preparations for brisk Christmas business, and thus it came to pass that a number of reverends decided to confer with the “leaders” of the dissatisfied workers to “postpone” the strike. A gentleman’s agreement, and—the business agents of the heavenly Father and other cadets succeeded in nipping the strike in the bud. The philanthropy of the Civic Federation gave the workers the final death blow.
The most prominent among the leaders of the gas-workers was a representative of the A. F. of L., a certain Wyatt. He is probably the same law-abiding citizen who recently expressed his cheerful willingness to play the hangman of the McNamaras. In recognition of his valuable services the reverends who helped to “settle” the strike should not fail to present the gentleman with a Bible (cheap edition) or at least a nice little catechism.
Since the American historians have proclaimed to the world the glad news that during the Cuban war Roosevelt had bravely shot a blind Spanish jackass from behind, our great national hero has come to look upon himself as an expert in all matters of violence and murder. Recently he felt called upon to voice the sentiment that Emma Goldman and her friends are imbued with the sole purpose of inciting to murder.
The utterance does full justice to a man who, as a second-rate politician, attracts much attention only becuase his political antagonists are third-raters. No one will expect Roosevelt to waste his time to inform himself of such insignificant matters as the philosophy of a world-liberating idea.
Four more labor men were arrested in California, charged with alleged complicity in an alleged dynamite conspiracy. What bitter irony upon those well-meaning, but superficious meddlers who had assured the country that the confession of the McNamaras would bring industrial peace and “harmonize” capital and labor.
Since the McNamara plea of guilty, the prosecutors and spies feel themselves masters of the situation. And that especially because the gentlemen of the national labor bodies have been behaving like little schoolboys, fearful of receiving a bad mark at school. Cravenly they ignore the insolent challenges that the enemies of labor continually cast into their face, though indeed they do not lack the means to repel the attacks with vigor and strength. “Murder is murder,” they are taunted. Aye,—the acts of the McNamaras are the merest child-play in comparison with the systematic murder of capitalism and government.
According to the reports of the boy scout movement, its membership has now grown to 300,000. A rich harvest of young blood. The patriots for profit may well calculate with a smile of satisfaction: If the army is declining as a drawing-card, or even if the soldiers should refuse to shoot and kill to order, we have these 300,000 boys that can be let loose upon the discontented “mob.” If it should happen now and then that some youth kill his father or brother, it will in no way detract from the glory of the country. Does not patriotism cover, indeed glorify, a multitude of crimes which under other conditions are regarded dishonorable and are punished with prison and the gallows?
It required seven month’s steady work by fifty seamstresses to prepare the train of the dress worn by the royal goose of England at the Durbar, where she was crowned Empress of India.
A dear goose, indeed! Proudly she trailed her robes across the soil of India, dripping with the blood of unnumbered Hindoo subjects slowly starved to death.
The lawyers, sky-pilots, and politicians of the Socialist Party are still after the scalp of William D. Haywood. Serves him right. What business has he, true revolutionary Socialist that he is, among men who use Socialism as a trap to catch votes, political offices, and sinecures.
Impelled by the pious love for the tramp and beggar of Nazareth, the good Mayor of New York issued orders, a few days before Christmas, to arrest every beggar the police could lay their hands on.
It is this same Mayor who never tires of proclaiming that the Bible is the greatest book of all times. He is a good Christian who evidently wished to gladden the hearts of his less fortunate brothers in Christ with a happy Christmas gift. He glorified his divine Redeemer by sending the friendless and the homeless to the workhouse and prison.
The investigation of the Capitol at Albany has brought to light the information that there is intimate connection between politics and prostitution. Apparently prostitution, however, had the worst of the partnership. The politicians and bureaucrats exploited it to the limit, and then blackmailed it to boot.
Moral indignation came to the rescue. A campaign of extermination began against the dives and gambling houses, and presently it wasannounced that Albany had been cleaned out and restored to its pristine purity. But the Capitol was not disturbed. This the hotbed of political prostitution and graft remains intact. The roots of the evil are untouched; soon it will bud its poisonous foliage and bear destructive fruit.
The campaign of “pacification” continues in Mexico. We quote from a recent communication:
A Mexican by the name of Tirso Toba, prominent in the late Liberal party insurrection of Lower California, was kidnapped about twenty miles north of the international boundary by the subprefect of Mexicali, aided by U.S. immigration officials. The prisoner was taken to Mexicali and cast into cuartel incommunicado. Later Calexico officers and Mexican secret service men searched the home of Jesus and Norberto Amador and looted the house, stealing valuable papers and a sum of money.
But all governmental brutality and repression is powerless to stifle the yearning for liberty of the Mexican people.
Paul Orleneff
The contribution of autocratic Russia to civilization has consisted mostly of pogroms, extermination of revolutionists, and, lately, the murderous invasion of Persia.
But there is another Russia, the Russia of Gogol, Nekrassov, Turgeniev, Dostoyevski. Tolstoy,—the Russia of the heroic men and women, the Russia of the steppes and of the muzhiks, dreaming of brotherhoood and freedom.
It is this Russia which sends to us her greetings through the dramatic genius, Paul Orleneff, who, with a small company of players, is giving performances at the Garibaldi Theatre, 35 Fourth Street. Though, indeed, “performances” is but an inadequate expression for the rare artistic experience which awaits the audience.
Orleneff opened his repertory with Ibsen’s Brand. Notwithstanding the disagreeable external conditions surrounding his exceptional artistic efforts, one grows oblivious of the environment the moment this great artist steps upon the scene.
Brand represents the deepest and most mysterious phases of Henrik Ibsen’s nature. It has been said that only in the reading can its subtleness and beauty be fully grasped. But no one who has seen Orleneff in the character of Brand will doubt that his interpretation most strikingly visualizes the Brand of the dramatic poem. No longer does Brand appear a dim impossible figure, a mere visionary. He is real, he lives, and every word he utters must find an echo in all who, with Ibsen, have realized the sham that lisps love and thrives on hate and destruction.
Great as Ibsen’s art is, it grows greater through the genius of Paul Orleneff. The blending of the two is an aeshtetic treat no one who cares the least about art should miss.
We take pleasure in giving the repetory for the coming week for the information of our readers:
Wednesday, January 10, and Tuesday, January 16: Ibsen’s Ghosts,, with Orleneff as Oswald. Thursday, January 11, and Saturday, January 13: Crime and Punishment, by Feodor Dostoyevski, with Orleneff in his masterful interpretation of Raskolnikov. Friday, January 12: Petty Persecution (also known as The Trials of Misfortune). Sunday, Janaury 14, the Second Part of Brand.
The Death of Paul I., the powerful drama by Mereshkovsky (prohibited in Russia); Lorenzacio, by Du Musset, and Hamlet are to be given in the near future.
Tickets and a complete synopsis (in English) of every Russian play to be had at the box office, 11 A. M. to 9 P. M.
Later on we intend to bring a more detailed appreciation of Orleneff, his artistic aims and ideals, and of the able company supporting him.
Free Communism— Voluntary economic co-operation of all towards the needs of each. A social arrangement based on the principle: To each according to his needs; from each according to his ability.
A Review of the Year
The revolution in China, so fraught with significance, overshadows all other events of the year. This is an era of revolutions, a time of ferment, but with the tottering of thrones and the crushing of idols, the revolution in China was the most unexpected of all. If any of our “far-sighted” statesmen had been asked three months ago regarding the possibility of a republic in China, a dissertation on the processes of evolution with a disquisition on the superiority of the Occidental over the Oriental, would have been handed out in a manner most patronizing. Even the “advanced” politicians, the Socialists, would have scoffed at the idea and would have advanced economic determinism to prove its utter impossibility. China is not an industrial nation; therefore, it is unreasonable to expect anything from her. To do so is to challenge the theory of Marx. Jumping from Feudalism to Republicanism seems rather startling to those of us suffering from the weight of a dead past and should bring home to us: first, that perhaps the Oriental is after all not inferior to the Occidental in intelligence and, second, that mankind does not always advance along beaten paths or by prescribed methods. We fear, however, this lesson will not be accepted by a great many. The trouble with the Occidental seems to be most of them are frightened out of their wits when they think there is an immediate possibility of their theories being realized. When an important event happens, a revolt in Italy in 1898, in Spain in 1909, a general strike in England, or even a McNamara case in America, men tumble over each other in their anxiety to declare that such methods are unsuited to their time and place, or that the time is not ripe for revolution. The real reason is, they fear the thing they advocate. In many cases it is a genuine fear of the conservative mind, in others it is the philistine spirit that has crept into the revolutionary movement and seeks to make capital out of it. The Chinese are going through the first now; the second will come later when the revolution is a success. After suffering from Manchu rule for two hundred and sixty-four years and admitting they number four hundred million to five million Manchus, there are Chinamen who are afraid the time is not ripe for a Republic!
The war between Italy and Turkey brings home once more the fact that the era of peace has not set in. It reminds us again that of all the hypocrisies of the present time none is quite so gross and vulgar as the cant about national honor. As we wrote at the time of the seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria, we hold no brief for Turkey. If, however, such things as national honor or international law actually did prevail, despoilment of one nation by another would be impossible. International brigandage is a strong word and an overworked one; none other seems to fit the acts of Italy in Tripoli at the present time. Poor Garibaldi, is this what you and your gallant one thousand suffered and struggled for? To see that same people debauched and degraded as they are, is pitiable. The war is being fought on African soil; so the pinch must come to the inhabitants there instead of in Italy. We sincerely hope the Italians will soon suffer the reverses they so justly deserve, and the uprising that took place after the Abyssinia war will break out and cause a cessation of hostilities and the people wreak their vengeance upon those really responsible for their poverty.
Spain is still fermenting and the Ferrer agitation will not down. The unity of interests of exploiters has again been shown by the articles in L’Humanité on the conspiracy between the King of Spain and ex-King of Portugal to bombard Lisbon. How hollow all this talk of kings and rulers loving their native land appears to the student of politics! Bombard Lisbon, smash the capital city of my country to keep me and my Gaby on the throne! Verily the last resort of a king and a scoundrel is patriotism. Fortunately, it did not take place, and the Republic still stands and with it the hope that Alphonse will soon keep Manuel company at the court of St. James.
Syndicalism and sabotage, the two terrors of the French exploiters, have grown so fast the government has made an investigation. The Senate report has been commented on in our papers and, of course, with the hope that the Syndicates will be exterminated. Fortunately the government isn’t strong enough to crush them and it does not seem to be as successful in bribing their backers as in some other countries. When sabotage is resorted to by the Standard Oil Co., as Henry D. Lloyd pointed out some years ago, it is a different matter.
The year was ushered in by the tragedy at Tokyo, where the gallant Kotoku and his comrades were done to death by the powers that be. It is another illustration of the growth of radical ideas in the Far East. The spirit of liberty still lives in Japan and will continue in spite of his divinity, the Emperor. Lafcadio Hearn, the brillient Oriental scholar, wrote ten years ago to Prof. Chamberlain that none of the educated classes in Japan believed in the divinity of the Emperor. The latest news from that country is that the Elder Statesmen have just informed the Mikado that the majority of the Chinese people favor a republic. It must have given his divinity quite a jolt to realize that his time may also be quite near. An exiled Mikado to some European court would be quite a novelty.
The great strike in England has been so much written about, there is little for us to say. That it has had far-reaching results can be seen by the strikes it has caused and inspired. At this very moment there is a strike of cotton operatives threatened that will engage between one hundred and sixty thousand to three hundred thousand people. The whole trouble, if the press is to be believed, has been caused by the discharge of two men. When an entire district, or even several districts, can be affected by the discharge of two men, solidarity of the workers seems to be growing.
The struggle in Mexico is being dealt with in another part of the magazine, therefore we pass it over with the briefest kind of comment. It was, and according to those best informed, is a great struggle. Overshadowed for the time being by other events, it will not down; and we sincerely hope the near future may show the world that, far from being dead, it is very much alive.
The McNamara case, from the revolutionary standpoint easily the most important event that has happened in America during 1911, has been so much written about and is so recent it need not be discussed at length. The one thing of paramount importance to us is the fact that a class war is now openly admitted on all sides. A few years ago these men would have been unanimously denounced as common murderers. Times have changed since 1886, and while there have been cowardly “labor leaders” to denounce them and pass resolutions in favor of hanging them, there have also been many in all walks of life to defend the brothers against these attacks. In 1887 men were hanged who were innocent of the charges made against them, and a howl of exultation went up all over the country. In 1911 men are sentenced to imprisonment who are, according to their own statement, guilty—and they find many defenders. This shows progress. THe one fact that stands out big and clear is that they were soldiers in a class war and fought the fight as best they knew. The pendulum will soon swing to the other extreme, and then these selfsame “labor leaders” will fall over themselves in their anxiety to laud the men they now decry. It was ever thus, and we hope the McNamaras have sufficient faith in themselves to be strong and true. They have played their part and that part has once and for all stripped the mask from the liars and hypocrites. There is a class war in America, and the whole world knows it. This the McNamaras have accomplished; the air has been cleared, and while the labor movement may have a temporary setback, it will sift the wheat from the chaff and—small though the number may be—we feel sure some conscious revolutionists will be made by this sacrifice.
Verily the world is in a ferment, and the next twelve months may bring changes as great or even greater than the ones now going on in the world. One thing is certain, the year 1911 will be remembered long by historians as one of storm and strife, a necessary preliminary to a better and more just society.
Harry Kelly
The Mexican Revolution
(Continued)
By Voltairine de Cleyre
“This law of unappropriated lands,” says Wm. Archer, “has covered the country with Naboth’s Vineyards.” I think it would require a Biblical prophet to describe the “abomination of desolation” it has made.
It was to become lords of this desolution that the men who play the game,—landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates, enterprising capitalists seeking investments—connived at the iniquities of the Diaz régime; I will go further and say devised them.
The Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles of territory; more than the entire state of New Jersey. The Terrazas family, in the state of Chihuahua, owns 25,000 square miles; rather more than the entire state of West Virginia, nearly one-half the size of Illinois. What was the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days compared with this? And the peon’s share for his toil upon these great estates is hardly more than was the chattel slave’s—wretched housing, wretched food, and wretched clothing.
It is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be “frugal.”
It is of men who have thus been disinherited that our complacent fellow citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin say: “Mexicans! What do you know about Mexicans? their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence and smoke cigarettes.” And pray what idea of life should a people have whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them? Should they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for some other man to loll in?
It reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him good-humoredly on his easy idleness when the foreman’s back was turned: “Ah ain’t goin’ to do no white man’s work, fo’ Ah don’ get no white man’s pay.”
But for the Yaquis, there was worse than this. Not only were their lands seized, but they were ordered, a few years since, to be deported to Yucatan. Now Sonora, as I said, is a northern state, and Yucatan one of the southernmost. Yucatan hemp is famous, and so is Yucatan fever, and Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations. It was to that fever and that slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time, men, women and children—droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should. Sonora became desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became “pacific” in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They had not left people enough to reap the harvests.
Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his people be deported. This statement is made in Madero’s own book.
Now what in all conscience would any one with decent human feeling expect a Yaqui to do? Fight? As long as there was powder and bullet to be begged, borrowed, or stolen; as long as there is a garden to plunder, or a hole in the hills to hide in!
When the revolution burst out, the Yaquis and other Indian people said to the revolutionists: “Promise us our lands back, and we will fight with you.” And they are keeping their word magnificently. All during the summer they have kept up the warfare. Early in September, the Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 Yaquis in Sonora about to attack El Anil; a week later 500 Yaquis had seized the former quarters of the federal troops at Pitahaya. This week it is reported that federal troops are dispatched to Ponoitlan, a town in Jalisco, to quell the Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the Maderist government was to restore their land has been dispelled. Like reports from Sinaloa. In the terrible state of Yucatan, the Mayas are in active rebellion; the reports say that “The authorities and leading citizens of various towns” have been seized by the malcontents and put in prison. What is more interesting is, that the peons have seized not only “the leading citizens,” but still more to the purpose have seized the plantations parceled them, and are already gathering the crops for themselves.
Of course, it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of Mexico. Rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds; that is, about 8,000,000, leaving less than 3,000,000 of pure white stock. The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from the Latin side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority.
The mestiza, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in book knowledge, only about sixteen per cent. of the whole population of Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of the “civilizing” regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning in the people’s hands. But to conclude that people are necessarily unintelligent because they are illiterate, is in itself a rather unintelligent proceeding.
Moreover, a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil is the source of wealth, and they must “get back to the land”!—even if their intelligence is limited.
Accordingly, they have got back to the land. In the state of Morelos, which is a small, south-central state, but a very important one,—being next to the Federal District, and by consequence to the City of Mexico,—there has been a remarkable land revolution. General Zapata, whose name has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made peace with Madero, then as breaking faith, next wounded and killed, and again resurrected and in hiding, then anew on the war path and proclaimed by the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender unconditionally and be tried by court martial; who has seized the strategic points on both the railroads running through Morelos, and who just a few days ago broke into the federal district, sacked a town, fought successfully at two or three points with the federals, blew out two railroad briadges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that they are all clamoring for all kinds of action; this Zapata, the fires of whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Pueblo as well, is an Indian with a long score to pay, and all an Indian’s satisfaction in paying it. He appears to be a fighter of the style of our revolutionary Marion and Sumter; the country in which he is operating is mountainous and guerrilla bands are exceedingly difficult of capture; even when they are defeated, they have usually succeeded in inflicting more damage than they have received, and they always get away.
Zapata has divided up the great estates of Morelos from end to end, telling the peasants to take possession. They have done so. They are in possession, and have already harvested their crops. (Morelos has a population of some 212,000.)
In Pueblo reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the land by the peasantry. The troops were deserting, taking horses and arms with them.
It is they, no doubt, who are now fighting with Zapata. In Chihuahua, one of the largest states, prisons have been thrown open and the prisoners recruited as rebels; a great hacienda was attacked and the horses run off, whereupon the peons rose and joined the attacking party.
In Sinaloa, a rich northern state,—famous in the southwestern United States some years ago as the field of a great co-operative experiment in which Mr. C.B. Hoffman, one of the former editors of the Chicago Daily Socialist, was a leading spirit,—this week’s paper reports that the former revolutionary general Juan Banderas is heading an insurrection second in importance only to that lead by Zapata.
In the southern border state of Chiapas, the taxes in many places could not be collected. Last week news items said that the present government had sent General Paz there, with federal troops, to remedy that state of affairs. In Tabasco, the peons refused to harvest the crops for their masters; let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and gathered them for themselves.
The Maderists have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be inaugurated at once; if we are to believe the papers, we are to believe Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying, “Five days after my inauguration the rebellion will be crushed.” Just why the crushing has to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear. I conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary deputies, if such an announcement was really made; and some astonished query among his followers.
What are we to conclude from all these reports? That the Mexican people are satisfied? That it’s all good and settled? What should we think if we read that the people, not of Lower but of Upper, California had turned out the ranch owners, had started to gather in the field products for themselves, and that the Secretary of War had sent U.S. troops to attack some thousands of armed men (Zapata has had 3,000 under arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased) who were defending that expropriation? If we read that in the state of Illinois that farmers had driven off the tax-collector? that the coast states were talking of secession and forming an independent combination? that in Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerrilla work from the mountains? that the prison doors of Maryland, within hailing distance of Washington City, were being thrown open by armed revolutionaries?
Should we call it a condition of peace? regard it as proof that the people were appeased? We should not: we would say the revolution was in full swing. And the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico, from last May till now, is that the Chicago press, like the eastern, northern, and central press in general, has said nothing about this steady march of revolt. Even The Socialist has been silent. Now that the flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment, they call it “a new revolution.”
That the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting causes that produce our northern indifference, which I shall presently try to explain, and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present henchmen, the Maderists, a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. They invested some $10,000,000 in this bunch, in the hope that they may be able to accomplish the double feat of keeping capitalist possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with specious promises. They want to lend them all the countenance they can, till the experiment is well tried; so they deliberately suppress revolutionary news.
Among the later items of interest reported by the Los Angeles Times are those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many-millioned landlords of Mexico, who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles. What is the meaning of it? Simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe and comfortable proposition as it was, and that for the present they prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves running the risk of actual residence.
Of course, it is understood that some of this notable efflux (the supporters of Reyes, for example, who have their own little rebellions in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week), are political reactionists, scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own hands. But most are simply those who know that their property right is safe enough to be respected by the Maderist government, but that the said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally to themselves if they remain there.
Nor is all this fighting revolutionary; not by any means. Some is reactionary, some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge, much no doubt the expression of general turbulency of a very unconscious nature. But granting all that may be thrown in the balance, the main thing, the mighty thing, the regenerative revolution is the reappropriation of the land by the peasants. Thousands upon thousands of them are doing it.
Ignorant peasants: peasants who know nothing about the jargon of land reformers or of Socialists. Yes: that’s just the glory of it! Just the fact that it is done by ignorant people; that is, people ignorant of book theories; but not ignorant, not so ignorant by half, of life on the land, as the theory-spinners of the cities. Their minds are simple and direct; they act accordingly. For them, there is one way to “get back to the land”; i.e., to ignore the machinery of paper land-holding (in many instances they have burned the records of the title-deeds) and proceed to plough the ground, to sow and plant and gather, and keep the product themselves.
Economists, of course, will say that these ignorant people, with their primitive institutions and methods, will not develop the agricultural resources of Mexico, and that they must give way before those who will so develop its resources; that such is the law of human development.
(To be Concluded)
Voltairine de Cleyre (1912)
The Right to Life
By M.B.
Modern man is plentifully equipped with political rights. He has the right of citizenship, provided he be virtuous and not an Anarchist; he may elect his own rulers and jailers; he even enjoys, as one of the majority, the privilege of witnessing the government act “in the name of the people.”
This privilege is a particularly bad hoax, because the activities of the government and courts have usually the sole purpose of intensifying the robbery and subjection of the people; in other words, the people—in their own sacred name—doom themselves to dependence and slavery.
The hollowness and sham of political rights becomes fully apparent when we consider that all of them combined do not include the right to live.
The right to live,—that is, the securing of the means of existence, the organization of society in a manner to insure to each the material basis of life and make it as self-evident as breathing,—this right present society cannot give to man.
The barbaric character of the dominant forms of existence is never so offensively demonstrated as when we subject the right to live to a critical test. This right is attacked and nullified daily in a thousand various ways by coercion, poverty, and dependence. It is cruel irony to justify the existence of the murderous machinery of government, with its brutal imbecile laws, on the ground that it is necessary for “the protection of life and property.”
Among the thousands of laws and statutes there is not a single paragraph that guarantees to each member of society the right to live. The tender care for property is of little avail; for it is the chief characteristic of a society based on the sanctity of property that the great majority do not possess sufficient property to justify the expensive machinery of police, courts, jailers and hangmen.
The right to live is primarily dependent upon possession and consequent power. But as only a small minority is in possession and control, the right to live remains a chimera so far as the majority is concerned.
Anarchism regards the right to live as the pivot of its philosophy. It considers it the indispensable foundation of a society that claims to be humane.
To-day the needy, the hungry and the homeless man finds no providence, no court where he may appeal the right to live. Were he to claim it, to test this right, he would soon find himself in the workhouse or prison. In the midst of fabulous wealth, he often lacks even the bare necessaries of existence. He stands isolated, forsaken. In a glance, at every turn, he beholds a plenitude of food, clothing and comforts, a thousandth part of which would save him from despair and destruction. But not even the minutest right to live gives him the power over the things, the lack of which turns him into a social pariah.
What avail the rights of citizenship, political “liberties,” or his one-day sovereignty as a voter, when he is deprived of the right to live and robbed of the use of the things he needs?
When everything, every essential of life is the monopoly of a certain class—secured by laws, armies, courts, and scaffolds—it is evidence that the possessing class will completely dominate life, with the consequent subjection of the rest of the people.The Autobiography of Richard Wagner
By M.B.
The recent publication of Richard Wagner’s Autobiography[1] once more proves the old commonplace that one can be a great artist and yet small as a man.
Through the almost 900 pages of the two volumes the “revolutionary in music” dwells upon a thousand trivialities which would fit well into the family chronicles of a German middle-class man desirous to leave the impression after his death that the constant endeavor of his life had been to follow faithfully the path of virtue. There is a goodly dose of profound self-righteousness in the book.
The opponents of Wagner’s music have eagerly seized the opportunity offered by the Autobiography to renew sharpened accusations against the character of Wagner. Especially have the references to his marriage and the alleged bad treatment of his wife Minna been multiplied by the critics of My Life.
This washing of family linen is of little importance. Much sadder it is that Wagner often looks upon the great and significant things of life from the perspective of the frog pond.
In the last analysis his first marriage was a typical average marriage. They quarrelled to the verge of vituperation, unpacked the shortcomings and faithlessness of each other, and “made up” again. Repeatedly it reaches the point of separation, but the philistine hope of “sweet home” draws them again together. To make the typical (childless) bourgeois marriage complete, the Wagners were not even without the parrot Papo and the pet dog Fips, which—according to Wagner’s own remark—considerably helped now and then to bring their relations into concord. God bless the two little beasts for serving so ethically and bravely to preserve the marriage relation.
Quite different it was with Cosima, the daughter of Liszt and former wife of the splendid musician and original character, Hans von Bülow. She, the amanuensis to whom Wagner dictated his recollections, finely understood how to dispense respect and incense,—and Wagner—Wotan, the god supreme, loved such signs of admiration only too well.
Cosima, faithfully following the once-for-all firmly established rites of the Wagner cult, has managed to exploit Beyruth in a rational, business-like manner, using the shingle on which Wagner has to figure as the saint and deceased business partner.
The wretched dependence of art upon money and power is disclosed in the Autobiography with brutal clarity. Little understanding and inner sympathy as Wagner had for the people who crossed the path of his life, he was heart and soul in his music and operas. Thus we constantly see him circling around influential high personages in whose hands it lies to dispense money and power. There is hardly a European princeling at whose doors he fails to knock, seeking entrance for his music-revolutionizing ideas. He approaches even Napoleon III., notwithstanding he hates him as the butcher of the Republic, the criminal of December 2d, the perpetrator of the coup d’êtat.
But all in vain. These kings, dukes, archdukes, and princesses are hedged about with tradition and convention, and surrounded by hosts of toadies and flatterers, who see in every innovation a danger to throne and altar. The utmost with which these “most high circles” favor Wagner are a few crumbs, often permeated with the disgusting odor of charity. To be sure, they do not wish to let the so persistently knocking artist starve, but they show not the least appreciation of the extraordinary character and the significance of his art. Moreover, Wagner had sided with the people in the revolution of 1848, though in a rather uncertain and timid manner, but sufficient to injure his reputation at the royal and princely courts. Only the proved devotion of the canaille is appreciated there.
Wagner, indeed, does not stoop so low; yet he often speaks with evident respect of the great dukes and archdukes. It seems almost as if he had greater admiration for these than for men like Heine, Herweg, Gottfried Keller, or Turgeniev, with whom he was acquainted and whom he considers worthy only of the most casual and inadequate mention.
With the exception of a few theatres of secondary importance, the stage had for decades refused to open its gates to Wagner. His genius proved of no avail there. Money and patronage on a large scale were lacking, and thus the doors remained closed to the musical creations which later were to produce such a tremendous universal impression. He had first to be “discovered” by the neurotic and hereditarily insane King of Bavaria, before he could attain the material opportunity to demonstrate what he could and what he wanted. How miserable and tragic that all this had to depend upon the whim of a demented king!
The suffocating dependence of artistic production upon wealth and patronage should cause the true artist—who is not content to produce mere market ware—to turn relentless rebel against the existing standards, to become a communist. But because the enjoyment of true art is to-day the monopoly of the rich—the common people getting but the shabbiest and shoddiest—therefore the artists bend the knee and serve the vulgar but solvent taste.
This rebellious idea for some time stirred in the mind of Wagner. The revolution of ’48 filled him with the hope of a radical change even if—as he himself admits,—he judged it from the standpoint of his art interests. But the Prometheus fire of social revolution as it blazed in the soul of Michael Bakunin dwelt not in the breast of Richard Wagner. To him Bakunin, whom he met in Dresden, is a phenomenon. He admires him; he speaks in glowing terms (a rare occasion) of this remarkable Russian who seeks to destroy everything; he feels toward him “unvoluntary horror” and irresistible attraction.
As manager at the Dresden court theatre, Wagner conducts the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. After the performance the following incident takes place: “Michael Bakunin, unknown to the police, had been present at the rehearsal. At its close he walked unhesitatingly up to me in the orchestra, and said in a loud voice, that if all the music that had ever been written were lost in the expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge ourselves to rescue this symphony even at the peril of our lives.”
In the ideas set forth in his “Art and Revolution,” Wagner shows the very probable influence of Bakunin and August Reckel. The latter was one of the participants in the revolution of ’48 who realized the inadequacy of a merely political revolution and saw the snare hidden in constitutional changes, and who therefore concentrated his thoughts and efforts upon the reconstruction of society. Together with Bakunin he was sentenced to death for the part he played in the revolution, then “pardoned” to life-long incarceration, and finally liberated, after many years passed in prison.
The part that Wagner played in the insurrection was limited mainly to sympathetic observation. However, he had to flee the country and to suffer for many years persistent and petty persecution by the authorities of Saxony.
One of the significant events of his life—relates Wagner—was his acquaintance with the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Georg Herweg had presented to him The World as Will and Representation. From this time on, Wagner tells us, dates a great change in his conceptions of life. In place of revolution, renunciation begins to develop. Parsival is in the making,—the work of which Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:
Is this our mode?Think well! Ye still stay for ingression….For what ye hear is Rome—Rome’s faith without expression.
Nietzsche, in his psychological dissection of Wagner, says, maliciously, that after Wagner became acquainted with Schopenhauer, he translated his Niebelingen Ring from the optimism that had faith in the future into Schopenhauerism. Now “everything was wrong, everything goes to ruin, the new world is as bad as the old—Nothingness, the Indian Circe, makes a sign… Brunnhilde, who, according to the earlier design, had to take leave with a song in honor of free love, solacing the world in anticipation of a Socialistic Utopia in which ‘all will be well,’ has now something else to do. She has first to study Schopenhauer; she has to put into verse the fourth book of the World as Will and Representation. Wagner was saved…. The service for which Wagner is indebted to Schopenhauer is immense. It was only the philosopher of décadence who enabled the artist of décadence to discover himself.”
My Life contains references which justify this malice of Nietzsche. On page 731 Wagner relates that he met in Paris Malvida von Meysenburg, with whom he had previously had an unpleasant encounter in London.[2]
“The occasion on which we had met in London had been at an evening party at the house of a family called Althaus, where I found her full of the desires and projects for the future perfection of the human race to which I had given expression in my book (Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft), but from which under the influence of Schopenhauer and a profound realization of the intense tragedy of life and the emptiness of its phenomena, I had turned away with almost a feeling of irritation. I found it very painful in discussing the question not to be understood by this enthusiastic friend and to have to appear to her in the light of a renegade from a noble cause.”
Alongside of Schopenhauer the King of Bavaria became Wagner’s patron saint. From the heights of the royal favor he never again descended to the people. But what does it matter? The people are not a mushroom growth. The dream that Wagner once dreamed in Art and Revolution will some day be realized by the people,—nor will they need the aid of philosopher or king.
Economy as Viewed by an Anarchist
(Continuation)CL JamesThe classic example of serfdom and its petrifying effect is Europe during the Middle Ages. Other countries, equally backward, either had worse and more primitive institutions—the ryot system of India, the bureaucratic tyranny of China, the military systems of the Mussulmans,—or else they were not so fortunately situated as to have outgrown the nomadic condition. Serfdom was the weight which stayed the advance of Europe during many centuries. The new masters were the most practically inventive race that ever existed. The compass, the clock, the clepsydra, gunpowder, paper, the pump, spectacles, glass windows, are but a few of the improvements between the downward turn of Rome and the general discontinuance of serfdom. Notwithstanding the success of a gloomy superstition well adapted to the melancholy time, men had good teachers. They could still read the Latin and, in Eastern countries, the Greek classics. There were still libraries which contained these standard works. The Jews and Saracens had already rejuvenated the science of the buried world with a very vigorous Asiatic graft. But not much could be expected while serfdom remained intact; and the successive waves of invasion from beyond the Volga, which continued until the fifteenth century, tended to strengthen in by strengthening the local (feudal) form of government, with which its affinities are strongest. The dreadfully disguised liberator was the Black Death (1348). In the year of this great pestilence wages were low, industry suspended, the whole framework of society broken down. In almost deserted cities the poor feasted on the spoils of the rich who had fled. In the country, landlords, who doubted if the world would see another season, allowed the serfs, for whose reduced number provisions were exuberant, to do about as they would. A very rare thing happened—the world really was living on its “accumulated wealth.” But next year, when hope and tranquility had returned, the immense demand for labor and its sudden scarcity sent wages quite out of serf possibilities. In a year or two more landlords, frightened at the independence of the tenants, attempted to reinforce their own obsolete prerogatives by the usual method of legislation. They were for a time more successful in England, the chief seat of contention, than I should have expected; seeing that the proletariate resisted attempts to put them on the old footing with a stubbornness they always show in stickling for permanency of an advantage gained. This was also the chief historic period of the Swiss revolution, the period of those the Jacquerie and of “Wat Tyler’s” rebellion, the beginning of those societies which, under the like names of Joss Fritz and Bundschuh, maintained the prospects of liberty along the Rhine. The result was that everywhere, excepting Switzerland, the nobles were victorious in battle; but everywhere they found that something more than battles would be required to reverse the effects of the Black Death. Relics of serfdom remained, perhaps even to our own time, as weapons to the extortioner, hardships to the producer, and annoyance to pestered legislators. But considered as a system of production and distribution, serfdom died by the great plague of 1348. The next hundred and seventy years witnessed progress as rapid as might have been expected. Gunpowder turned the balance of war from the mailed knights to the citizens who had knowledge to make and money to pay for this tremendous chance. The local tyrants were overthrown. The modern kingdoms were firmly established. There was a great advance in secular feeling and wisdom; a great decline in superstition. Printing gave its aid to the good work. Knowledge became popular, ignorance ridiculous. The power and influence of the Church, long since a strictly conservative institution, was greatly lessened. A Portuguese fleet doubled the Cape of Good Hope. A Spanish vessel returned in safety and triumph after crossing the Atlantic. A flood of current-metal, which since the decline of the Roman Empire had been inconveniently scarce, was poured in from America. Prices rose, exchange was facilitated, business of every sort revived. Science, already a young Titan, but hitherto entangled in the nets of the alchemist and astrologer, began to find practical uses for his powers. New inventions—the pendulum, the telescope, the tourniquet—show the new direction of intellectual power. Then the Reformation came. Throughout half Europe the yoke of a greedy, idle, and mischievously charitable theocracy was shattered. The new proprietors were connected by no ancestral sentiment with the cultivators. There was nothing to check their natural penchant for getting all they could out of their tenants except the tenants’ equally natural indisposition to let them have any more than could be helped. Thus began the bourgeois system of our time; which indicates itself in the inanity of making out that things present differ widely from what they are everywhere else, by reasoning that our’s alone is a free system, under which every one does as he pleases, save only that a few things which no one ever did without resistance and danger, but on which tyrants often ventured, are now equally punished, whoever does them, by impartial law. If, therefore, under this system people suffer, it must be by their own fault. Now, it is certain that, if the premises be correct, the conclusion is made out. He who can be a Socialist, praying the Blessed Government to make men happy and equal, just after proving out of his Ricardo that they are unequal and the majority unhappy by a natural law whose operation is contingent upon characteristic misconduct of this majority, must, at any rate, have much greater faith in the divine attributes of the B. G. than I have. But the premises evidently are not correct. The bourgeois system may be freer than the primitive communal,[24] the despotic, the slave system, the feudal and serf systems, or, in short, any which preceded it. That would be quite harmonious with its being, as we all admit it is, the system under which the world has become the richest, the distribution of wealth the most equitable, the standard of comfort highest, the diffusion of knowledge most general, the march of improvement most rapid. And yet that is not really saying much, as will appear if we reflect how slow improvement is; what ridicule and persecution those who effect it still commonly have to go through; what depths of ignorance and superstition lie close to the very highest stratum over which knowledge has spread a filthy net; how destitute of aspiration are still the bulk of the common people; what scenes of misery may still be witnessed within pistol shot of palatial hotels and colleges; how poor we all still feel ourselves; how generally we are struggling to keep our heads above water so hard that if by chance we get fairly upon terra firma we find it impossible to discard old habits, and continue struggling with wave and tempest, wind and rock, for money which is no longer of any service to us! This unsatisfactory state of things we are in now way justified in laying upon the faults of individuals if it have, perchance, a sufficient explanation in the faults of institutions inherited from the barbarous past; and, in particular, it is odious mockery to hold up for specimens of these faults in individuals the leaving undone of what institutions have made impossible. Now, it is very certain (1) that we still have institutions (2) which are the relics of the barbarous past, (3) that some of these are inconsistent with personal liberty, (4) and with advance in knowledge, wealth, or social evolution beyond a certain point, (5) but that they are powerfully buttressed by vested interests, so that (6) they alone are sufficient to explain any existing backwardness in the world’s condition.
22. The bedrock which supports the entire fabric is the subjection of women. The orthodox economists themselves being witnesses, increase of population beyond the means of living, by the older methods, at the old standard, is the force which has constantly impelled nations to fight, conquerors to enslave, discoverers to invent. It is this which has divided, and still does divide, mankind into the classes of rich and poor. A salient point in the same doctrine, moreover, is that prudence about adding to population—care not to do so without making it sure previously that the new mouths will receive the old amount of meat—has been increased by experience, and is a chief cause of improvement. This prudence, however, is much more to be expected from the female sex than the male. The female sex is much the less amorous, as Darwin has shown by a comparison extending throughout the entire animal kingdom. It is on the female sex that fall by far the larger part of the pains, anxieties, difficulties, and responsibilities of propagation; while the pleasures belong chiefly to the male. This difference also increases with civilization. Man in quite advanced states puts little more restraint upon his passions than an animal; but woman, whose foremothers, even back to the ascidian, made the male submit in some measure to their selection, shows far more foresight here and now than exists even among barbarians representing pretty well her human ancestors. That slang about women’s desire to catch husbands, which not long since was common, in no way contradicts this. It was rich husbands only that they wanted, even according to their libelers.
(To be Concluded)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.
DECLARATION
By Bayard Boyesen.
I will arise and answerAnd swear to any sinSave that of the market dancerThat wears the painted grin.
And I will hold my measureBeside the greatest man,Though I trill the rounds of pleasureWith every harridan.
Though the flesh be weak or taited,The soul is still aglow,For never the lie that's paintedOutshone the truths I know.
So when the years are breakingThe boundries of my denAnd a tyrant hope's forsakingThe candied darks of men.
I will arise and answerAnd thank what gods there be,Who paid the market dancerBut left the truth to me.OUR SEVENTH BIRTH DAYANOTHER year has rolled on in the young life of, MOTHER EARTH,-and what a life it has, been! Surely it is not claiming too much for this fearless fighter of an unpopular cause, when we say that few revolutionary publications have had such a struggle, or such difficulties and hardships to over-come, as MOTHER EARTH has had in the short span of its existence.
Noone, unless he has himself been on the firing line, can appreciate what it means to face a world of prejudice, of relentless opposition, and mental inertia, not only in the enemy's camp, but even on the part of those who are more or less akin to the mission of our magazine. The transition stage is no easy period for any of us; but hardest it is for those who have only half broken with the Old, and are not yet ready to accept the New, or to understand their own comrades who will persist in pursuing a new course.
Therefore the reason is not far to seek why some of the very people, whose ideas MOTHER EARTH represents; have remained rather indifferent to the fierce battle it had to wage to assert itself against all odds.
But our magazine has asserted itself, unflinchingly, for six years, without compromise or weakening, till now; its seventh birthday. The last year has been a particularly trying one for many reasons, chief among them the effort of realizing the dream baby, Alexander Berkman's book. A dream baby, indeed. Its realization has taken almost as long a time, and by far greater travail and difficulty, as it took Darwin to gather his material for the revolutionizing of science, -just 20 years. True, the book will not revolutionize anything except the lives of those who have conceived and nurtured the child in pain. But for MOTHER EARTH the dream would still be far away from reality, and if the perseverant little fighter had accomplished nothing else, it may well be content that it has lived long enough to see its most fervent hope realized.
Verily, the seventh birthday is the most significant in the career of MOTHER EARTH. The Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, by the editor and coworker, is not only born, but it is getting ready to send forth its greetings to every part of the world, a living witness of what love and zeal for a great purpose can accomplish.
But there is another vital event this day of birth, the return to our shores of the brilliant foster-father of our magazine' Paul Orleneff. It was his genius that earned the means for the first baby outfit of M. E. Possibly that may account for the struggle it has had to make: anything that would be worthy of the friendship of such an uncompromising spirit as Orleneff must itself never swerve from its lofty goal.
Paul Orleneff is still the freelance and rebel of freedom in art, the only atmosphere in which real art can truly express itself. He is greater, deeper, and more sublime than on his first visit. Hence his struggle must be more difficult than ever. But whatever his disappointments, he knows at least that his foster baby, MOTHER EARTH, has stood the test of fire and has emerged greater in fortitude, more passionately than ever the spokesman of freedom and beauty against all the ugliness and pettiness that has turned the world into a vale of tears.
The age of miracles is no more. Instead, this age requires almost superhuman perseverance to accomplish its difficult tasks,-and if MOTHER EARTH had done nothing else, but prove what perseverance and a strong will to do and dare can accomplish, it has surely not lived in vain. After all, the world judges by results, not by the price or effort entailed, and our magazine itself is the supreme result.
Mothers are proverbially partial, hence unable to give a fair estimate of the worth of their child. Yet it is not altogether partiality, when I say that a publication which is always on the firing line, ever the enemy of all social and moral values, always attacking the cherished institutions of the average self-satisfied philistine, ever pointing to the new light that is slowly but inevitably rising out of the clouds upon the social firmament, one that caters to none, not even its own comrades, one whose path has been quite solitary, with but few kind friends to minister to the needs of the lone wanderer, must have filled some vital need in this wilderness of ideas, this slaughterhouse of ideals, America. Else it would have gone under long before its seventh birthday.
No doubt, MOTHER EARTH could have done more if only its friends were more numerous, or at least more interested in the growth and development of the magazine. An encouraging sign of both was demonstrated by our good comrade, M. H. Woolman, who through the generous contribution of a 100 new subscribers increased the number of M. E. readers by 500. If more of our faithful few would emulate the example of Comrade Woolman, the magazine would not merely be safe from troubled waters, but the energies thus conserved could be turned to good intellectual account. We must therefore on this birthday occasion, as on previous ones, turn to those devoted friends who have stood by MOTHER EARTH through all the stress and strain of the last six years, and appeal to them further to extend their solidaric aid and to help us at least with as many new adherents as we have gained during last year. If there is anyone prosperous or ardent enough to follow the example of our good Comrade Woolman, to open up a new offer to subscribers, we feel confident that we can get others to follow suit. Or if our friends will undertake to get us 5 new subscribers, we will meet their efforts with a copy of Brieux's plays. This is not to be taken in the sense of bribery. We make this offer because Brieux's plays ought to be read by every radical, yet the price of the book-$1.50-makes it prohibitive for the very people who would most enjoy and benefit by it. On the other hand, no expense except a little interest in our magazine is entailed in getting 5 subscriptions. Hence our offer.
Friends, MOTHER EARTH is more determined than ever to live and fight. But to live longer and fight stronger it needs your support and assistance as the inspiring force that urges it onward to ever greater tasks, to bigger and more daring efforts in the battle for our ideal of human brotherhood and freedom.
-EMMA GOLDMAN.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
ADVOCATES of the Zodiac theory no doubt have an explanation for the 'Ides of March.' We have not. We do know, however, that March is the Red Month, and the present one bids fair to rival that of I87I. True, we see no Commune on the horizon; but the month starts off very well.
The Coal Strike in England, and the one threatened here, are inspiring spectacles. For the second time within a year 'effete' old England has made the world marvel at her virility. Germany with her 'four million Socialist votes' becomes pathetic in her backwardness in the face of this marvelous exhibition of solidarity on the part of the British workers.
The lesson of these two strikes cannot fail to impress the workers everywhere with their power. Perhaps it is premature to say that these events prophesy the breakdown of the capitalist system, with its age-long superstitions. It is, however, the greatest strike in history, and the, end of the lane seems nearer than it did. We do not, of course, expect the impossible. Still, some of the Tax Reformers-they have them in plenty in England-and the 'Perfect-Gentleman Revolutionists' may get a headache thinking how much more effect Direct Action is than political action. Revolutionary action is not according to Hoyle, and the capitalist always likes to play the game according to rules, provided he makes the rules. Perhaps in time even the 'intellectuals' of the Socialist party may see the light. We decline to speculate on the improbable, however.
All hail to the British miners who are blazing the trail so that their more near-sighted brothers may see it. In this connection we have pleasure in submitting the following appeal from Union No. I06, Western
Federation of Miners, and would ask all exchanges to reprint the same.
Bisbee, Arizona, Feb. 25, I912.
We, the members of Bisbee Miners Union No. 106 W. F. M., in regular meeting assembled, unanimously resolve that:
Whereas the coal miners of Great Britain are about to be engaged in a gigantic struggle with the master class, and realizing the, necessity of concerted action along industrial lines;Therefore we ask the General Officers of the Western Federation of Miners to communicate with the United Mine Workers of America to the end that no coal be mined for, or shipped to, Great Britain during the impending strike.Be it further resolved that a copy of the above resolution be forwarded to the labor press throughout the country for publication.
E. J. MACCOSHAM,B. F. COUGHLAN,GEORGE POWELL,J. CARROLL,Resolution Committee. Secretary Bisbee Miners' Union, No. 106.
* * *
THE industrial revolution at Lawrence, Mass., still continues, with the prospect of victory in the air. Already the employers have offered a 5 percent increase, but the mill workers refuse to accept it. The average wage is $6.00 a week for 60 hours, or ten cents an hour. The two hours the legislature very kindly legislated off, without providing for the twenty cents to be left on, reduces the net gain for the workers, if they accept this offer, to just ten cents a week. Fortunately the workers have some real bona-fide revolutionists in 'Bill' Haywood, James Thompson, Gurley Flynn, and others, to point this out. As a result, the offer has been rejected.
Although the workers out on strike number but 22,000, the whole country is aware of the struggle. The investigation now going on at Washington, with 'Mrs. Taft as an interested witness, has disclosed things that would shock a' Red Indian. Two of the strike leaders have been arrested on a charge so absurd that it must make the law-abiding citizen-not peculiarly interested-blush for shame. It is probably the first
time in a strike that men have been arrested for killing one of their own people. Held on the only charge that is unbailable,' murder, a writ of habeas corpus is denied them; yet the son of an ex-mayor of Lawrence is released on $2,000 bail on a charge of 'planting enough dynamite to blow Lawrence off the map.'
As if this were not enough, the authorities commit acts that make even the plutocratic New York Sun protest. The brutalities perpetrated upon women and children have never been surpassed even in this glorious country. It has come to this, that parents are not allowed to send their children out of the city. Babies are torn from their parents' arms, and the parents arrested, for what? Cruelty. The reason for all this is obvious. The mill owners want the children to remain in the beleaguered city, hoping that when the parents see the little ones cry from hunger, they will submit to the tyranny of their masters.
A few weeks ago the press of the country stormed and raved at the brutality of the McNamarras, and even some good friends of ours wanted to know if there 'was no other way.' 'Try love,' some say. Take the first train to Lawrence, and try love on those 'monsters with the bloody lips,' as Galsworthy calls them, and see how effective love will be. Strange that love never seems to improve the workers' condition: it requires blood and tears. We would it were otherwise; but, then, we are not running this universe. That's Jehovah's job, and blood and tears are a specialty of his.
Win or lose, the workers of Lawrence have shown a spirit magnificent, and we hold out our hand to them in the brave struggle they are making, not only for themselves, but for future generations. In connection with the Lawrence strike, we wish to call the attention of all sympathizers to the Fair and Ball to be held Monday, March 18, at Murray Hill Lyceum. The affair, held under the auspices of the Lawrence Strike Committee of New York, is for the benefit of the strikers, and it is hoped that every friend of labor will contribute to the success of the undertaking.
* * *
THE Republic of China has been officially pro- claimed, but the usual violence that goes with a transition period is now on. Conflicting stories are told in the daily dispatches, and therefore it is difficult to know the exact situation. Yuan, who held on to the Manchus to the last desperate moment, was literally kicked into the Presidency in the hope of staving off disorder. Order usually means that the masses should submit to be exploited by some party, for fear the other party may get in power. Whatever the outcome, we sincerely hope that the Chinese people realize that resistance to tyranny is the only means of getting rid of the tyrant, and that some measure of alleviation may result from their struggle.
* * *
THE Brandt case is another instance of what wealth can do. The unsavory details have been told on page after page of the daily press. And yet we fancy not all of them have been told even at that. We venture they never will. The strangest burglar of modern times is this Brandt, if the stories told are true. He walks through five doors, all conveniently open. Goes to Mr. Schiff's room, stays there two hours, until the latter comes home. He hits him with a rolling-pin, after which Schiff has a diplomatic conversation with him, gives him $50.00, and sees him to the door, first making an appointment to meet him at his office. Brandt comes there two days later, is examined by two distinguished alienists, who decide he is sane. He is then arrested, and cross-examined by a judge, who proceeds to sentence him on a plea of guilty -which ordinarily is supposed to bring with it some leniency- to thirty years in prison. He is railroaded to Sing Sing, but as that prison is rather near New York, he is transferred' to Dannemora, which is supposed to be for consumptive prisoners, although Brandt is not consumptive. He is kept there five years, and when an application for pardon is made, the Governor of the State refuses it, and attempts to seal the papers. In short, everything possible is done to keep the man in prison, and all because he was supposed to have stolen two stick pins valued at $200.00. Three of the leading law firms of the State have been retained at enormous expense, to send this poor wretch back to serve what one of Schiff's lawyers called 'only eighteen years.'
Why is all this? We are not prophets, but we venture a guess: the truth will not come out. Brandt will be released, and the thing will die. It is a brilliant commentary on our judicial system. This case has proven to the hilt everything we Anarchists have ever said about the power of money to corrupt the police, courts, governors. It is one more nail in the coffin of legal superstition, and for that it was worthwhile.
* * *
THE days of the Amazon seems to have returned, according to the reports from England of the doings of the Suffragettes. Their behavior is most 'un lady-like.' Thank God -and the Constitution- we have none of that in this country! But, then, these British ladies are made of sterner stuff. It must be trying to the nerves these days to be a Cabinet Minister in dear old England. We wonder they don't give John Burns the job of looking after these revolutionists: he's been one, and he ought to know how to deal with them.
As to ourselves, we await with equanimity the advent of women into Parliament and Congress. We are not enthusiastic over the outlook, but we are consoled by the fact that it can't be worse than it is. What a pity the women have such a small vision! In this case it seems to us to be about the size of a ten-cent piece. If they would only strike for freedom instead of power-but, then, power is an attractive jade, and that's where the trouble lies.
* * *
ROOSEVELT reminds us of Chantecler before the Hen Pheasant made love to him. He still insists that it's his crow that causes the sun to rise. He has come forth with the declaration that he is willing to save us for the third time. It's a car ticket to a lead nickel he will win. The unthinking mass takes him at his own valuation-which is ridiculously high. Thank God -as Thoreau said- we never read a President's message; and, we would add, nor a Roosevelt speech.
How long, Oh, Lord, how long will men allow themselves to be humbugged by this charlatan with the lungs of a stentor and the brains of an infant?
* * *
IT IS NOT amiss to remind our friends of the Commune Festival and Seventh MOTHER EARTH Birthday Celebration on March 15th, at Terrace Lyceum, 206 East Broadway. The MOTHER EARTH family will hold its annual reunion upon the occasion.
* * *
THE COMMUNE IS RlSEN
By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.
'They say 'She is dead'; the Commune is dead';That 'If she were living her earthquake tread.Would scatter the honeyless hornets' hive.'
I am not dead, nor yet asleep;Nor tardy, though my steps seem slow;Nor feeble from the centuries' sweep;Nor cold, though chill the north winds blow.My legions muster in all lands.From field, from factory, from mine,The workers of the world join handsAcross the centuries and brine.'
NEVER since those lines were sung by the great unknown poet, whose heart shone red through his words, has the pulse of the world beat so true a response as it is beating now. We do not stand to-day as mourners at the bier of a Dead Cause, but with the joy of those who behold it living in the Resurrection.
What was it the Commune proclaimed? With what hope did it greet the world? And why did it fall? The Commune proclaimed the autonomy of Paris. It broke the chain that fettered her to the heels of her step-mother, the State,-that State which had left her at the mercy of the Prussian besiegers, refusing to relieve her or allow her to relieve herself; that State which with a debt saddled upon the unborn bought off the Prussians, that it might revenge itself upon Paris, the beautiful rebel, and keep the means of her exploitation in its own hands.
The Commune was a splendid effort to break the tyranny of the centralized domination with which modern societies are cursed; a revolt at artificial ties, which express no genuine social union, the outgrowth of constructive social work, but only the union of oppression, -the union of those who seek to perfect an engine of tyranny to guarantee their possessions. 'Paris is a social unit,' said the communards; 'Paris is, within itself, an organic whole. Paris needs no out-side shell of coercion to hold it together. But Paris owes no subservient allegiance to that traitorous tool at Versailles, which calls itself the government of France; nothing to those who have left us unaided to be mowed by the Prussian guns. And Paris repudiates Versailles. 'We shall fight, we shall work, we shall live for ourselves.'
This was the word of the Commune, spoken to the world in the wild morning of the year 1871. And the hope it built upon was this: When France beholds Paris fighting, the dream of '48 will rise again; and all her communes will proclaim their freedom, even as we. And then we are bound to win, for the Versailles government cannot conquer a revolt which breaks out everywhere. And France once kindled, the peoples of other nations will likewise rise; and this monster, 'the State,' which is everywhere devouring liberty, will be annihilated.
This was the hope that lit the eyes of the Commune with dreaming fire, that March day, forty-one years ago. The hope was doomed to disappointment; within three months the glorious rebel fell. She had called, but the response did not come. Why? Because she had not asked enough. Because making war upon the State, she had not made war upon that which creates the State, that to preserve which the State exists.
With the scrupulous, pitiful Conscience with Authority has cunningly bred in men, the Commune had respected property; had kept its enemy's books, and duly handed over the balances; had starved itself to feed its foes; had left common resources in private hands. And when McMahon's troops rode sobering through the streets of Paris, when Gallifet the butcher was dashing out children's brains with his own devil's hands upon her conquered pavements, the very horses they rode, the very sabers that cut, had been paid for by the murdered.
Every day, throughout the life of the Commune, the Bank of France had been allowed to transmit the sinews of war to Versailles, the social blood been drained to supply the social foe.
What appeal could so suicidal a course make to downright human nature, which, even in its utmost ignorance and simplicity, would say at once: 'Feed the enemy! And starve myself! For what then shall I fight?'
In short, though there were other reasons why the Commune fell, the chief one was that in the hour of necessity, the Communards were not Communists. They attempted to break political chains without breaking Economic ones; and it cannot be done.
Moreover the Paris Commune was faced by a problem which will forever face revolting cities with a terrible question mark,-the problem of food supply. Only the revoltee in control of the food-sources themselves can maintain his revolt indefinitely. Never till the rebels of industrial fields have joined their forces with agrarian labor,-or seized the land and themselves made it yield -can industrial or political revolt be anything more than futile struggling for a temporary gain which will alter nothing.
And this is the splendid thing which we have lived to see,-the rebellion of the landworker against the feudalism of Lord Syndicate; the revoltee maintaining himself upon that which he has wrested from the enemy; the red banner of the Commune floating no longer on the wall of a besieged city, but in the open field of expropriated plantations, or over the rock-ribbed, volcano-built forts, whereto the free-riding guerilla fighter retreats after his dash against the lords of the soil.
I cannot speak for others. I cannot say how my comrades have felt during the long stagnant years, when spring after spring we have come together to repeat dead men's names and deeds, and weep over those whose bones lie scattered from Cayenne to New Caledonia. I know that for myself I often felt I was doing a weary and a useless thing, wearing out a habit, so to speak, trying to warm my cold hands at a painted fire. For all these years since we of this generation have lived in America, there has been no stirring movement of the people of this continent to do a deed worth doing. We have listened with curious fascination to our elders' stories of the abolition movement; we have welcomed the Russian revolutionists, and enviously listened to their accounts of deeds done or, undone. We have watched the sharp crossing of weapons here and there in the ominous massing of Capital and Labor against each other all around us; but we have known perfectly well that there was little place for us in that combat, till it shall assume other lines than those which dominate it now, till it shall proclaim other purposes and other means.
All in' vain it was for us to' try to waken any profound enthusiasm in ourselves over the struggle of some limited body of workers, asking for a petty percent of wage. We understand too well that such a fight determines nothing, is like the continuous slipping backward of the feet in an attempt to climb a hill of gliding sand.
But now has come this glorious year of 1911-12, this year of world-wide revolt. Out of the enigmatic East a great storm sweeps; and though but little of its real breadth and height is visible or comprehensible to us, we understand so much: the immemorial silence has been broken, the crouching figure has up-straightened. The sources of our information are such that we cannot tell whether the economic regeneration of enslaved China has actually begun, or the revolt is political merely as our reports make it appear. Whichever it may be, one thing is certain: China is no longer motionless; she is touched with the breath of life; she struggles.
Across the sea, in the island of our stolid forbears, a portentous sound has risen from the depths; in the roots of human life, in coal-caverns, Revolt speaks. And England faces Famine; faces the Property-system, faces a mighty army of voluntarily idle men; beholds the upper and the nether stone of economic folly, and feels the crunching of those merciless wheels, and underground the earthquake rumbles wide,-France, Germany, Austria-the mines growl.
And yet this mighty massing, inspiring and threatening as it is, is for a petty demand-a minimum wage! Such situations produce enlightenment; at any moment the demand may change to 'The Mines for the Miners'; but as yet it has not come.
Only here in our America, on this continent cursed with land-grabbing syndicates, into whose unspoiled fatness every devouring shark has set his triple row of teeth,-this land whose mercenary spirit is the butt of Europe--only here, under the burning Mexican sun, 'we know men are revolting for something; for the great, common, fundamental economic right, before which all others fade,-the right of man to the earth. Not in concentrated camps and solid phalanxes; not at the breath of some leader's word; but over all the land, from the border to Yucatan, animated by spontaneous desire and resolution, in mutually gathered bands, as freemen fight, not uniformed slaves. And leaders come, and leaders go; they use the revolution and the revolution uses them; but whether they come or go, the land battle goes on.
In that quickening soil, the sower's response is ready; and the peasant uproots his master's sugar cane and tobacco, replanting corn and beans instead, that himself and the fighting bands may have sustenance. He does not make the mistake that Paris made; he sends no munitions to the enemy; he is an unlettered man, but he knows the use of the soil. And no man can make peace with him, unless that use is guaranteed to him. He has suffered so long and so terribly under the hell of land ownership, that he has determined on death in revolt rather than resubmission to its slavery.
Stronger and stronger blows the hurricane, and those who listen to the singing in the wind know that Senator Lodge was right when he said: 'I am against intervention, but it's like having a fire next door.'
That fire is burning away the paper of artificial land holding. That fire is destroying the delusion that any human creature on the face of the earth has the right to keep any other from going straight to the sources of life, and using them. That fire is shooting a white illumination upon the labor struggle, which will make the futile wage war conducted in the United States look like baby's play.
Yes, honorable Senators and Congressmen, the house next door is on fire-the house of Tyranny, the house of Shame, the house that is built by Robbery and Extortion, out of the sold bodies of .a hapless race-its murdered men, its outraged women, its orphaned babies.
Yes, it is on fire. And let it burn,-burn to the ground-utterly. And do not seek to quench it by pouring out the blood of the people of the United States, in a vile defense of those financial adventurers who wear the name American. They undertook to play the game; let them play it to a finish; let them stand man to man against the people they have robbed, tortured, exiled.
Let it crumble to the ground, that House of Infamy; and if the burning gleeds fly hitherward, and the rotten structure of our own life starts to blaze, welcome, thrice welcome, purifying fire, that shall set us, too, upon the earth once more,-free men upon free land,-no tenant dwellers on a landlord's domain.' In the roar of that fire we hear the Commune's 'earthquake tread,' and know that out of the graves at Pere-la-chaise, out of the trenches of Satory, out of the fever-plains of Guiana; out of the barren burial sands of Caledonia, the Great Ghost has risen, crying across the world, Vive la Commune!
MANIFESTO OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
Manifesto issued by the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party, September 23, 1911, scattered at that time broadcast and republished in its official organ, Regeneracion, January 20, 1912
MEXICANS:
The Organizing Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party views with sympathy your efforts to put in practice the lofty ideals of political, economic and social emancipation, the triumph of which on earth will bring to an end the already sufficiently extensive quarrel between man and man, which has its origin in that inequality of fortune which springs from the principle of private property.
To abolish that principle means to annihilate all the political, economic, social, religious and moral institutions that form the environment within which are asphxiated the free initiative and the free association of human being who, that they may not perish, find themselves obliged to carry on among themselves a frenzied competition from which there issue triumphant not the best, not the most self-sacrificing, not those most richly endowed, physically, morally or intellectually, but the most crafty, the most egotistic, the least scrupulous, the hardest-hearted, those who place their own well-being above all considerations of human solidarity and human justice.
But for the principle of private property there would be no reason for government, which is needed solely to keep the disinherited from going to extremes in their complaints or rebellions against those who have got into their possession the social wealth. Nor would be there any reason for the church, whose exclusive object is to strangle in the human being the innate spirit of revolt against oppression and exploitation, by the preaching of patience, of resignation and of humility; silencing the cries of the most powerful and fruitful instincts by the practice of immoral penances, cruel and injurious to personal health, and-that the poor may not aspire to the enjoyment of this earth and become a danger to the privileges of the rich-by promising the humblest, the most resigned, the most patient, a heaven located in the infinite, beyond the farthest stars the eye can reach.
Capital, Authority, the Church-there you have the sombre trinity that makes of this beauteous earth a paradise for those who, by cunning, violence, and crime, have been successful in gathering into their clutches the product of the toiler's sweat, of the blood, of the tears and sacrifices of thousands of generations of workers; but a hell for those who, with muscle and intelligence, till the soil, set the machinery in motion, build the houses and transport the products. Thus humanity remains divided into two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed-the capitalist class and the working class; the class that has possession of the land, the machinery of production and the means of transporting wealth, and the class that must rely on its muscle and intelligence to support itself.
Between these two social classes there cannot exist any bond of friendship or fraternity, for the possessing class always seeks to perpetuate the existing economic, political and social system which guarantees it tranquil enjoyment of the fruits of its robberies, while the working class exerts itself to destroy the iniquitous system and institute one in which the land, the houses, the machinery of production and the means of transportation shall be for the common use.
Mexicans! The Mexican Liberal Party recognizes that every human being, by the very fact of his having come into life, has a right to enjoy each and everyone of the advantages modern civilization offers, because those advantages are the product of the efforts and sacrifices of the working class from all time.
The Mexican Liberal Party recognizes labor as necessary for the subsistance of the individual and society, and accordingly all, save the aged, the crippled, the incapacitated and children, ought to dedicate themselves to the production of something useful for the satisfaction of their necessary wants.
The Mexican Liberal Party recognizes that the so called right of individual property is an iniquitous right, because it subjects the greater number of human beings to toil and suffering for the satisfaction and ease of a small number of capitalists.
The Mexican Liberal Party recognizes that Authority and the Church are the supports of the iniquity of Capital, and, therefore, The Organizing Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party has solemnly declared war against Authority, war against Capital, and war against the Church.
Against Capital, Authority and the Church the Mexican Liberal Party has hoisted the Red Flag on Mexico's fields of action, where our brothers are battling like lions, disputing victory with the hosts of bourgeoisdom, be those hosts Maderists, Reyists, Vazquists, Cientificos or what not, since all such propose merely to put in office some one as first magistrate of the nation, in order that under his shelter they may do business without any consideration for the mass of Mexico's population, inasmuch as, one and all, they recognize as sacred the right of individual property.
In these moments of confusion so propitious for the attack on oppression and exploitation; in these moments in which Authority, weakened, unbalanced, vacillating, attacked on every side by unchained passions, by tempests of appetites that have sprung into life, and hope immediately to glut themselves; in these moment of anxiety, agony and terror on the part of the privileged, compact masses of the disinherited are invading the lands, burning the title deeds, laying their creative hands on the soil and threatening with their fists all that was respectable yesterday-Authority, Capital, the Clergy. They are turning the furrow, scattering the seed and await, with emotion, the first fruit of free labor.
These, Mexicans, are the first practical results of the propaganda and of the action of soldiers of the proletariat, of the generous upholders of our equalitarian principles, of our brothers who are bidding defiance to all imposition and all exploitation with the cry-a cry of death for all those above, but of life and hope for all those below-'Long Live Land and Liberty.'
Expropriation must be pursued to the end, at all costs, while this grand movement lasts. This is what has been done and is being done by our brothers of Morelos, of Southern Puebla, of Michoacan, of Guerrero, Veracruz, of the Northern portion of the State of Tamaulipas, of Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and parts of other States, as even the Mexican bourgeois press itself has had to confess. There the proletariat has taken possession of the land without waiting for a paternal government to deign to make it happy, for it knows that nothing good is to be expected of governments and that the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves.
These first acts of expropriation have been crowned with most pleasing success; but they must not be limited to taking possession of the land and the implements of agriculture alone. There must be a resolute taking possession of all the industries by those working in them, who should bring it about similarly that the lands, the mines, the factories, the workshops, the foundries, the railroads, the shipping, the stores of all kinds and the houses shall be in the power of each and everyone of the inhabitants, without disinction of sex.
The inhabitants of each region in which such an act of supreme justice has been effected will only have to agree that all that is found in the stores, warehouses, granaries, etc., shall be brought to a place easy of access by all, where men and women of reliability can make an exact inventory of what has been collected and can calculate the time it will last.-the necessities and the number of inhabitants that will have to use it being taken into account-from the moment of expropriation until the first crops shall have been raised and the other industries shall have turned out their first products.
When such an inventory has been made the workers in the different industries will understand, fraternally and among themselves, how to so regulate production that none shall want while this movement is going on, and that only those who are not willing to work shall die of hunger-the aged, the incapacitated, and the children, who have a right to enjoy all, being excepted.
Everything produced will be sent to the community's general store, from which all will have the right to take what their necessities require, on the exhibition of proof that they are working at such and such an industry.
The human being aspires to satisfy wants with the least possible expenditure of effort, and the best way to obtain that result is to work the land and other industries in common. If the land is divided up and each family takes a piece there will be grave danger of falling anew into the capitalist system, since there will not be wanting men of cunning or grasping habits who may get more than others and in the long run exploit their fellows. Apart from that danger is the fact that if each family works its little patch of land it will have to toil as much or more than it does to-day under the system of individual property to obtain the miserable result now achieved; but, if there is joint ownership of the land and the peasants work it in common, they. will toil less and produce more. Of course there will be enough for each to have his own house and a ground-plot for his own pleasure. What has been said as to working the land in common applies to working the factories, workshops, etc., in common. Let each, according to his temperament, tastes, and inclinations choose the kind of work that suits him best, provided he produces sufficient to cover his necessary wants' and does not become a charge on the community.
Operating in the manner pointed out, that is to say, expropriation being followed immediately by the organization of production, free of masters and based on the necessities of the inhabitants of each region, nobody will suffer want, in spite of the armed movement going on, until the time when, that movement having terminated with the disappearance of the last bourgeois and the last agent of authority, and the law which upholds privilege having been shattered, everything having been placed in the hands of the toilers, we shall meet in fraternal embrace and celebrate with cries of joy the inauguration of a system that will guarantee to every human being Bread and Liberty.
Mexicans! It is for this the Mexican Liberal Party is struggling. For this a Pleiades of heroes is spilling its generous blood, fighting under the Red Flag to the famous cry of 'Land and Liberty.'
The Liberals have not laid down their arms despite the treaty of peace made by the traitor Madero with the tyrant Diaz, or despite the offers of the bourgeoisie which proposed to fill its pockets with gold. It has acted thus because we Liberals are men who are convinced that political liberty does not benefit the poor but only the place hunters, and our object is not to obtain offices or distinctions, but to take everything out of the hands of the bourgeoisie that it may be put in the power of the workers.
Whichever one of them may triumph the activity of the different political bands who are now disputing among themselves for supremacy will result in exactly what happened under the tyrant Porfirio Diaz, since no man, however well-intentioned he may be, can do anything in favor of the poor class when he finds himself in power. That activity has produced the present chaos, and we, the disinherited, ought to take advantage of the special circumstances in which the country finds itself, in order to put in practice, without loss of time on the spot, the ideals of the Mexican Liberal Party. We should not wait to carry expropriation into effect until peace has been made, for by that time the supplies in the stores, granaries, warehouses, and other places of deposit will have been exhausted. Moreover, owing to the state of war prevailing throughout the country, production will have been suspended and the sequel of the struggle will be famine. But if we carry expropriation and the organization of labor into effect during the struggle no one will be in lack of the necessaries of life then or afterwards.
Mexicans! If you wish to be free once more, struggle only for the Mexican Liberal Party. All others are offering you political liberty when they have triumphed. We Liberals invite you to take immediate possession of the land, the machinery, the means of transportation and the buildings, without expecting anyone to give them to you and without waiting for any law to decree it, since the laws are not made by the poor but by the gentry, who take good care not to make any against the interests of their caste.
It is the duty of us poor people to work and struggle to break the chains that make us slaves. To leave the solution of our problems to the educated and rich is to put ourselves voluntarily in their clutches. We, the plebeians; we, the tatterdemalions; we, the starvelings; we who have no place wherein to lay our heads and live tortured by uncertainty as to whence will come to-morrow's bread for our women and little ones; we, who when we have reached old age, are ignominiously discharged because we can no longer work; it is for us to make powerful efforts and a thousand sacrifices to destroy to its lowest foundations the edifice of the old society which has been a fond mother to the rich and vicious and a hard-hearted stepmother to the workers and the virtuous.
All the ills that aflict humanity spring from the existing system which compels the majority to toil and sacrifice itself that a privileged minority may satisfy its wants and even its caprices while living in ease and vice.
The evil would be less if all the poor were guranteed work, but production is not regulated. for the satisfaction of the needs of the workers but for what the bourgeoisie want, and they so manage things that it shall not exceed their capacity of expenditure. Hence the periodic stoppage of industry, or restriction of the number of workers, which proves' also how perfect is the machinery operated for the advantage of the rich by the proletariat.
To make an end of all this it is necessary that the workers take into their own hands the land and the machinery of production, so that they themselves may regulate the production of wealth in accordance with their own needs.
Robbery, prostitution, assassination, incendiarism, swindling-these are the products of the system that places men and women in conditions in which, that they may not die of hunger, they find themselves obliged to take where they can or prostitute themselves; for, in the majority of cases, even though they have the greatest desire to work, no work is to be had or it is so badly paid that there is no getting the sum necessary to satisfy the most imperious necessities of the individual and his family. Moreover, the long hours of work under the present capitalist system, and the conditions under which it is carried on, in a short time make an end of the worker's health and even of his life. These industrial catastrophes have their origin solely in the contempt with which the capitalist class looks on those who sacrifice themselves for it.
Irritated as is the poor man by the injustice of which he is the victim; angered by the luxury flaunted in his face by those who do nothing; beaten on the street by the policeman for the crime of being poor; compelled to hire out his labor on tasks distasteful to him; badly remunerated; despised by all who know more than he does or who, having money, think themselves the superiors of those who have none; having in prospect an old age of bitter sorrow and the death of an animal turned out of the stable as unserviceable; disquieted from day to day by the possibility of being without work; obliged to regard as enemies even the members of his own class, since he knows not who among them will offer his services for less than he himself is earning-it is natural that in such circumstances there should be developed in the human being antisocial instincts and that crime, prostitution, and disloyalty should be the inevitable fruits of the old and hateful system we are trying to destroy, to its very lowest roots, that we may create in its stead a new one of love, of equality, of justice, of fraternity, of liberty.
Rise, all of you, as one man! In the hands of all are tranquillity, well-being, liberty, the satisfaction of all healthy appetities. But we must not leave ourselves to the guidance of directors. Let each be master of himself. Let all be arranged by the mutual consent of free individualities. Death to slavery! Death to hunger!, Long life to 'Land and Liberty!'
Mexicans I With hand on heart and with a tranquil conscience we formally and solemnly appeal to you all, men and women alike, to embrace the lofty ideals of the Mexican Liberal Party. As long as there are rich and poor, governors and governed, there will be no peace, nor is it to be desired that there should be; for such a peace would be founded on the political, economic. and social inequality of millions of human beings who suffer hunger, outrages, the prison and death, while a small minority enjoys pleasures and liberties of all kinds for doing nothing.
On with the struggle! On with expropriation, for the benefit of all and not of the few! This is no war of bandits, but of men and women who desire that all may be brothers and enjoy, as such, the good things to which nature invites us and which the brawn and intelligence of man have created, the one condition being that each should devote himself to truly useful work.
Liberty and well-being are within our grasp. The same effort and the same sacrifices that are required to raise to power a governor-that is to say, a tyrant-will achieve the expropriation of the fortunes the rich keep from you. It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor-that is to say, a new yoke-or life-redeeming expropriation and the abolition of all imposition, be that imposition religious, political or of any other kind.
LAND AND, LIBERTY!
Signed in the city of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of America, September 23, 1911.
RICARDO FLORES MAGON,ANSELMO L. FIGUEROSLIBRADO RIVERA,ENRIQUE FLORES, MAGON,ANTONIO DE P. ARAUJO.
THE POWER OF THE IDEAL
The man I touch, there awakens in his blood a burning fever, that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that I will give him shall be cured when his life is cured.-Olive Schreiner, in 'A Dream of Wild Bees.'
TWENTY years ago the Power of the Ideal touched my soul, and there awakened a burning fever. I thought then that the cure is the most desirable thing in all the world, the thing one must strive for, the thing so close at hand.
Since then I have learned that the inexorable, implacable. Power of the Ideal concerns itself not with the cure; that it is itself the cure, that shall lick your blood like fire. This, too, I have come to know, that he who will be cured must forswear the Ideal. N ever again shall the fierce, inspiring light lure him to its lofty heights; never again shall he know the longing for the thing that awakened him to life. Such is the fate of him who has forsworn the Ideal.
Twenty years play but a small part in the 'eternity of time; yet in the face of disheartening, discouraging, and paralyzing events, twenty years themselves are an eternity. But once the fever is awakened, time and space become obliterated, blood and tears are wiped out, all pain and sorrow put to naught, by the compelling Power of the Ideal.
For a brief period it seemed almost as if American labor had been touched by the magic hand, as if its soul had been born to life with the burning fever to lick its blood as fire. But it was a false alarm, a mere symptom mistaken for the real thing. The danger is now safely locked away behind the iron bars of St. Quentin prison, and American labor has fallen back into its usual state of mental inertia and spiritual apathy. They saw in the McNamaras merely the cure; but to the force that consumed the two brothers as with the burning fever, the American workers remained blind and indifferent.
Thus the truism has again proven itself that they who aim but for the cure are doomed to die. It matters not of what nature the cure: it is never aught but a drug, never aught but an apology for the dying fires of the ideal, too weak to kindle into life the burning fever that shall lick one's blood as fire.
Nowhere is this truism borne out with greater force than among those who pass as Socialists to-day. Time was when they' were awake with a burning fever, 'when the illuminating light on the mountain top drew them on with impelling force. But that time is no more. Instead, the Socialists are now content with the cure,-the most dangerous of all cures, the politic cure, which has drugged their ideal to sleep, and completely extinguished the fever within them.
In Cleveland and Lorain, in Elyria and Columbus, in Dayton and Indianapolis, in St. Louis and Chicago, the political quacks are busy concocting the pills that are to bring the cure. Woe be to him or her who refuses the proscribed dose. They are anathema, and must be stoned to death. Like the Catholic Church, the Socialist machine has become the relentless, blind foe of the Ideal.
In Cleveland the machine dictates who of its members may be permitted to face the heathen Anarchist in public debate. In Lorain and Elyria, in Columbus, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, the same machine proclaims the ban on those who will not be cured by the political quacks. But the place that has' proved most conclusively that the Socialists in their mad clamor for the cure have lost their ideal, is Dayton, Ohio.
Perhaps our readers had better judge for themselves, that they may fully realize what the political zealots are doing in the name of the burning fever that once licked the soul of Socialism as a fire. In Dayton, 0., the following resolution and statement were adopted antagonizing the scheduled debate for Sunday between Emma Goldman, the Anarchist, and Frank Midney:
Resolved, That Local Dayton disapproves of any of its members debating with Miss Emma Goldman at this time, and hereby forbids such action on the part of any member.
Resolved, That we authorize and instruct our recording secretary to secure a competent person or persons to attend the Goldman debate, if it should be held, in order to accurately report the same to the local; but that outside the person or persons so chosen by the recording secretary. Local Dayton requests the Socialists to remain away from the proposed debate
Following is in part the statement prepared for the press:
The Socialist Party has reached the stage of its constructive work. Our ultimate object is to take over the collectively used means of life and conduct them democratically for all the workers, and so for all the human race. And our method is just as fully determined as our ultimate object. We propose to accomplish our work by patiently and persistently building a political organization of and by the workers, which organization shall at last secure the entire power of government. We work entirely in the open. We are opposed to intrigue and individual action. We seek the intelligent and collective action of all the workers.
We are therefore opposed to Anarchy in all of its forms. But we are especially opposed to the Anarchists who are in power, the Anarchists of corrupt government and corrupt business. These are the opposition to our cause, and we seek to meet them in the open and defeat them.
We would have taken no notice of Miss Goldman's visit to this city if the public had not been imposed upon. The Socialists of Dayton are not debating with Miss Goldman at this time. We ask all Socialists of this city (organized and unorganized) to remain away from the proposed debate if it is held. The Socialists will not be represented should the debate occur.
All members of Local Dayton are expressly forbidden to take any public part in the proposed event.
We warn the public in advance that if any 'Socialist' demonstration or opposition is reported to have occurred at the debate, if held, it will be a demonstration of Anarchists masquerading as Socialists. The answer of the Socialists will be to remain away from the proposed occasion. If the general public is interested in knowing the authorized word of the Socialists of Dayton with reference to the alleged dynamiters, they are cordially invited to attend a free meeting at the Auditorium Theatre, Sunday night, where that subject will be discussed.
The sinner has since been excommunicated from the Socialist party, for a period of two years. Luckily this new church lacks the power to erect its scaffolds, or Mr. Midney would meet with the fate of the heretics of the past. It is to be hoped, for his sake, that he may see the terrible danger of this growing inquisition which would, if it could, become the modern Torquemada, yet more cruel, because lacking even the vision of the Spanish predecessor. Such is the penalty for those who mistake the cure for the ideal. A cure indeed, from its own life-dream, its own inspiring purpose, its own idealism, even. A cringing, creeping, nauseating thing, is this cure.
It seems dark just now on the horizon of American life; yet there is a glimmering light in the distance, calling and comforting to him who can but see it. Lawrence, Mass., is that light,-and the burning fever its newly awakened, impelling force. Thus the Ideal is never to be eradicated.
My meetings, though small, have made up the lack of numbers by interest and enthusiasm for the light that streams from Lawrence. Everywhere this light is giving birth to new hopes, to a new chord in the great human struggle. Never once have I appealed in vain in behalf of Lawrence, the battle ground where the great fight is being waged so heroically. If, then, my work had accomplished nothing else, the help for Lawrence would surely justify the pain the tour entails.
'And the burning fever I shall give him shall not be cured until life is cured.' But life creates life; it therefore recreates the fever that shall lick the blood as fire. Such is the inexorable, implacable Power of the Ideal.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
P. S. So far the following sums were collected for the benefit of the Lawrence strike.
Fieldman-E. G. debate, Carnegie Hall, N. Y .............$532.00Fieldman-E. G. debate, Republic Theatre.............. 143.00Open-air meeting, Union Square, N. Y ................... 100.00Cleveland, 0., Ruthenberg-E. G. debate................. 32.00Cleveland, 0., E. G. Jewish meeting.................... 35.00Lorain, 0., E. G. meeting (Socialist Administration).... 3.00Columbus, 0., E. G. meeting........................... 5.48Dayton, 0., Midney-E. G. debate...................... 21.00Indianapolis, Ind., E. G. meeting................,...... 19.72St. Louis, Mo., E. G. meeting.. ; ........................ 62.62
The New York amount turned over to Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
All other moneys sent to Joseph Bedard, Lawrence, Mass. The Chicago amount will be accounted for in next issue. E. G.
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
Mother Earth, Vol. 7, October, 1912, no. 8
THE BALLOT
By Dyer D. Lum.
THE sacred ballot --- idol woman craves --- We laugh to scorn. Whene'er we crowd the mart
Where labor sells its strength, unto what heart Doth suffrage bring relief? When hunger raves Hath he who votes more food than he who slaves? Or they who with their household's treasurer part To purchase bread, doth suffrage give a chart To better times, or sod their pauper graves? Ye fools! who dream that statecraft can do aught But limit freedom to the beaten track, Where economic slaves their daily task Perform, and when ye rise relief to ask Do find your ballots have for others wrought And clothed with power to drive you trembling back.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
ON the 29th of October it will be eleven years since Leon Czolgosz died in the electric chair at Auburn Prison. He shot President McKinley, the most servile and willing agent the plutocracy of America ever had in the White House. During the McKinley regime the government began to play quite openly the role of the retainer of the rich, with the result that to-day it represents only the dictates of a few money princes. At the same time there began under Mark Hanna, McKinley's real boss, that labor policy, which on the one hand advised the workers legally to incorporate their organizations, and on the other held bayonets ready, to murder them as soon as they evidenced signs of independent action. It did not require much effort, under the McKinley rule, for the masters to procure the mobilization of troops against their striking workers.
The act of Czolgosz was one of the results of this situation. His shots proved that now and then pressure from above finds an echo below that does not sound very pleasantly in the ears of the masters. This has ever been the case, since the first oppressor found his Brutus.
The best cure against Attentate is liberty, equality, and well-being for all. But as our perverted public opinion --- fabricated by the mouthpieces of the ruling interests --- could not stomach this simple truth, Czolgosz had to be represented as a very monster, devoid of all humanity.
Let them continue to assert it --- his attitude in court, his manly demeanor all through his terrible ordeal, proved that his act resulted from the very disposition and motives which mankind generally considers as the noblest.
We have not the least doubt that the future historians, who will not be content with picturing the glories of great generals and their armies, but who will deal with the struggles of humanity for greater freedom, will assign to Leon Czolgosz a more honorable niche in the temple of humanity, than to William McKinley.
* * *
WE also commemorate in these days the anniversary of Francisco Ferrer's death. Three years ago, on October 13th, 1909, Ferrer was shot to death by the bullets of Spanish soldiers. But behind them stood not only the government: the Church directed their aim. She decreed that it was a capital crime to build free schools in the classic land of the Inquisition. Besides worldly possessions, the Catholic Church covets nothing more than a monopoly of benighting the people. She claims that this monopoly has been directly entrusted to her by the Lord Himself; and indeed, no one has understood better than the Catholic Church to use the mailed fist of the government to destroy those who offered her the least opposition.
Francisco Ferrer was neither a leader nor a participant in the Barcelona uprising, in the summer of 1909. But he had devoted his great ability, his efforts and labor to further the cause of libertarian education and to the founding of free schools in Spain, whose teaching was anti-authorian and anti-religious. That was enough to throw him into prison, and to decree his murder, under a flimsy pretext.
The old custom of the Church to pull wires behind the stage, while putting on a pious face of angelic innocence before the footlights, stood her in good stead also on this occasion. Indeed, she had good reason to act thus, because no murder more foul and cowardly has ever been committed. Even the 'divine consent' cannot alter this fact.
To judge from reliable reports, the Ferrer meetings in Spain this year will come under the sign of the General Strike, and we may feel confident that resistance to governmental and Church tyranny is gaining in strength, in spite of all clerical and lay inquisition.
In New York the third anniversary of Francisco Ferrer's death will be commemorated Sunday, October 13th,
8 P.M., at Clinton Hall, 157 Clinton Street.
* * *
BEFORE election the voter is a most comical and pathetic figure. In the midst of the furious battle that is raging on paper between the various presidential and other candidates, he stands like a forlorn step-child, dimly suspecting that whichever way he turn, he will be on a wrong track. He may vote blue, white, or red, but however he casts his ballot, he always votes to continue his slavery. The 'sovereign' voter exercises his suffrage to announce that he will have rulers; he declares himself so stupid and impotent that he must have some one to manage his life for him, and that he, together with his fellow voters, is so incapable of arranging his individual and public affairs that he needs for the purpose the corrupt government system, from the village sheriff to the president.
The only miserable concession made to him is the permission to pick out his choice of the evils --- political candidates --- submitted to him. And even in this he is generally duped. That he emerges from the swamp with a bitter feeling of having been played for a fool is self-evident.
* * *
IT seems that the character quality of the people's 'leaders' and statesmen has considerably declined since the days of Moses.
According to the Scriptures, Moses had one day surprised his people in the act of paying homage to the golden calf. Wroth over the unholy spectacle, he forthwith destroyed the image of the false god.
Compare with that the attitude of our presidential candidates. They know that the golden calf is the supreme ruler, and that they will pay it homage and be obedient to its will when they are placed in the White House. But they are too cowardly to admit it. They yearn with their whole soul for the blessing of the golden calf; to be in favor with its high priests is their chief ambition. Yet they solemnly protest their abhorrence of the idol; they will have nothing to do with it, they assure the people; they will even try their utmost to destroy it, like unto Moses, they assert --- if they will only get enough votes to have a safe majority.
Miserable liars! One and all they are dangling on the strings held in hand by the high priests of the golden calf, and no one knows it better than themselves.
* * *
LABOR discontent is becoming so wide-spread, the masters find it necessary to resort to wholesale arrests and trials. Besides Lawrence and Indianapolis, there is going on at present another labor trial in Lake Charles, La.
Fifty-eight men, ranging in age from sixteen to nearly seventy, are charged with murder, in connection with the affray which occurred between union and non-union mill workers at the saw mill of the Galloway Lumber Company on Sunday, July 7. Sixty-five men were originally indicted by the Grand Jury, but it was found afterward that four of the men had been indicted twice under different names, while one man has since died of injuries received in the conflict, one was killed while resisting arrest, and one has evaded capture so far. The remaining fifty-eight were placed in custody and have been in jail now for more than two months.
The defendants are all men of limited means, or no means at all. The only prominent figure among them is Al Emerson, President of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, who started that organization three years ago, and in May effected its affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World.
Capital and government have virtually declared a war of extermination against organized labor, especially against the more radical wing of the proletariat. Let labor accept the challenge, and act accordingly.
ONE of the most encouraging events in connection with the trial of Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso is the great number of international demonstrations in favor of the accused labor leaders. In Rome, London, Paris, and many other places mass meetings have taken place, in which the judicial farce at Salem was energetically condemned.
An encouraging sign of the trial at Salem --- the place, by the way, where the good Christian custom of witchburning was kept up the longest --- is that the prosecution finds great difficulty in securing a jury to try the case. The attitude of many of the talesmen indicates that a deep, wide-spread disgust with the workings of 'justice' permeates the people. From the replies of the men examined for the jury it is apparent that they resent being used as tools to do the dirty work of the masters, in sending the accused labor men to the electric chair.
The majesty of the law has suffered considerably from the circumstance that it is being regarded as a guillotine for the poor, in the hands of the rich.
* * *
DEETECTIVE BURNS and Stool-pigeon McManigal are again about to save society, in the role of witnesses for the State in the trial of the fifty-one labor officials in Indianapolis, on the charge of 'conspiracy to transport dynamite.' The trial will probably continue for several months.
What would governments do without professional traitors and paid man-hunters? How would they enforce the principle of organized violence, the foundation of their existence.
* * *
THE American nation may now rejoice in the Congressional permission to spend 15 million dollars for a new slaughter machine. The jingoes had demanded two new battleships, but finally compromised on one, no doubt in the hope that God will preserve the patriotic leprosy long enough to accomplish their designs later on.
In the discussion over increasing the military strength of the country, it was asserted that a powerful army and navy serves to preserve the peace of the nations. This argument was long ago aptly answered by Montesquieu, when he said: 'A new disease has spread itself throughout Europe; it has taken hold of our princes and led them to maintain an inordinate number of troops. It has its paroxysms and becomes necessarily contagious, for, as soon as one State augments its troops, the others forthwith augment theirs, so that they gain nothing by it but a common ruin. Each monarch keeps on foot as many armed men as he would have if his people were in danger of being attacked without provocation and exterminated, and they call this rivalry of all against all, Peace.'
Of course, the opponents of war can't comprehend the emotions of the great American financier who has secured for a song valuable concessions in Mexico or Nicaragua, for instance, which will bring him a great fortune, and then suddenly finds obstacles placed in his path. He immediately recollects the duty of his government to protect the 'honor of his country' at the point of the cannon, and it is purely accidental that his concessions, secured at so much expenditure of diplomacy and intrigue, are identical with the honor of his country. That is the reason that about three thousand American soldiers have been sent to Nicaragua, and for the same cause certain financial circles are seeking to incite war with Mexico.
RECENTLY Collier's Weekly has been discussing the question whether Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, who is under suspicion of being hand in glove with the corruptionists of the Republican party, is fit to be continued as president of the college.
It is a vain question. The head of a Berlin university once permitted himself the confession that the university serves as the intellectual bodyguard of the Hohenzollern. There is not the least doubt that in this country also there is no lack of professors and teachers, whose pedagogic efforts are directed toward supplying our Rockefellers and Morgans with intellectual bodyguards.
* * *
TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS
It is no pleasant thing for us constantly to remind our friends of their indebtedness to MOTHER EARTH. Therefore we are compelled to call to the attention of our delinquent subscribers the fact that we shall be forced to take all the unpaid subscriptions off our mailing list, if they do not renew at once.
WORKINGMEN, DON'T VOTE!
THE augurs of the political parties are again after your vote. When they come to you now, they put on a happy grin; but look out! After the elections they will turn to you their posterior --- to their own real delight.
Give them the answer they deserve. Tell them you are tired of paper promises and platforms, tired of squabbling over political tatters, because you have learned that they are only a noose with which your liberty and your own will are strangled.
The workingman who casts his vote into the ballot box only throws his initiative and his own power into the gutter. He authorizes political scoundrels, corruptionists and grafters to lord it over him, and to rob him in partnership with the land speculators and other exploiters.
Stop and consider what this deceiving profession of politicians --- of all and every party --- really is. As soon as they land their coveted offices, they turn the legal pimps of the big and little exploiters. Their business is to lull your discontent and wrath with lying promises and empty reforms; and, if that fails, to put you down with their soldiers, militia and police.
Are you going to continue to play the dupe, and elect your own subjection as 'the best ticket'? Will you be so stupid as to hand to your masters the whip with which to lash you into greater misery and degradation?
Your rights as men have been trampled under foot; are being thus trampled continually. Throughout the country the workers are treated like so much cattle. They are suppressed and enslaved; their assemblies are invaded and broken up; they are clubbed and maltreated, and thrown into the jails. Every day strikers are beaten up by the police, shot down like dogs, and sent to prison. The least resistance on their part is stamped as crime, and is strangled with the iron hand of capitalist law.
The only thing that is ironically left to you from the glories of the Republic is the right of Suffrage --- the 'right' to sign away your manhood and seal your own humiliation and servitude on election day.
Fellow-workers! Don't expect to get your right from the despicable gang of vote peddlers. They will never come to your rescue. You must help yourself, and act for yourself. Exercise your own energy and initiative. Realize your own needs, assert your own will, and learn to take instead of begging for the crumbs that might fall from the table of your masters.
Organize with your fellow-workers on the lines of your common economic interests. Stand shoulder to shoulder in international solidarity, and you will be strong enough to liberate the world from the robber capitalism and from the murderous rule of government.
Prepare your heart and your mind for the liberating thought that you yourselves are your own saviors.
Don't vote! Down with the political procurers and their graft schemes!
FRANCISCO FERRER THREE YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH
By Leonard Abbott.
THE shot that killed Francisco Ferrer at Montjuich Fortress on October 13, 1909, is still reverberating through the world. In practically every country his name is known. The Belgians have been the first to erect a statue in his memory. An Englishman, William Archer, has written the best biography of him. A Dane, the greatest living literary critic, George Brandes, has paid him the most noteworthy tribute. A Spaniard, Ferrer's successor in Barcelona, Lorenzo Portet, has just printed a posthumous work by Ferrer, describing his labors for the Modern School. In America, such men as Lester F. Ward, Robert Henri, Bayard Boyesen and George Bellows have felt that they honored themselves in honoring Ferrer. During the past year the Ferrer School in New York has heard from correspondents in Norway, Australia and the Dutch West Indies. If anything is certain, it is the immortality of Francisco Ferrer in the hearts and minds of men.
Ferrer's reputation is bound to become even more firmly established as the years go on, because the ideas for which he stood are growing. He knew that education must be liberated from the dogmas that stifle it 246 Francisco Ferrer Three Years After His Death
to-day, and he recognized in this not merely a Spanish problem, but a world-problem. He was not the originator of libertarian education, but he became its bestknown exponent. He was in the direct line of an educational movement that can be traced back, through Tolstoy, Pestalozzi and Froebel, to Rousseau, and that is influencing at the present moment school methods everywhere. Since his death, the Italian doctor, Madame Montessori, has begun to make an impression. She is a gifted woman and has made a real contribution toward freer educational methods. But she is a Roman Catholic, and she does not see as deep or as far as Francisco. Ferrer. Ferrer is the ultimate figure in this movement.
To those who are watching here in America, a great change in educational theory is apparent. 'Educational insurgery' is the order of the day. Many experiments in school methods are being initiated. Bruce Calvert has published a booklet on 'Rational Education' in which he reminds us that the teacher can learn from the pupil as much as the pupil can learn from the teacher. Prof. Boris Sidis, of Harvard University, is the author of a book, 'Philistine and Genius,' which is all that the most ardent radical could desire. In it he makes a memorable and eloquent plea for what might be called the Greek attitude toward education --- the encouragement and expression of genius and of a perfect balance between mind and body. 'We school and drill our children and youth,' he says, 'in schoolma'am mannerism, schoolmaster mindankylosis, school superintendent stiff-joint ceremonialism, factory regulations and office discipline. We give our students and pupils artisan inspiration and business spirituality. Originality is suppressed. Individuality is crushed. Mediocrity is at a premium. That is why our country has such clever business men, such cunning artisans, such adroit leaders of new cults, but no scientists, no artists, no philosophers, no statesmen, no genuine talent, and no true genius.' Superintendents of Schools in several cities are in open revolt against the present system. 'If the American schools of the past,' observes Superintendent S. L. Heeter, of the Saint Paul, Minn., Schools, 'have developed on the democratic theory that children are equal, they will develop in the future in the knowledge that all children are different. If the schools in the past made a desperate effort to make all children alike, they will make as great an effort in the future to make all children different.' An American magazine with a million circulation is at the present moment carrying on a crusade against the public schools on the ground that they attempt 'the impossible feat of making one course for all children, absolutely irrespective of physical strength, mentality, inheritance, home environment, or whether the children are to become lawyers or blacksmiths, artists or car conductors.'
So the spirit of Francisco Ferrer lives on in a world that killed him for his faith. So the seed he tended is growing into a mighty tree whose branches shall cover the earth.
A LETTER FROM ABROAD
London, September 16. My Dear Friends:
I have been asked to contribute an article to the Ferrer number of Mother Earth, but I have preferred to write not an article, but a personal letter to the members and friends of the Ferrer Association. An 'article' seems to me a cold-blooded thing to address to friends (and who but our friends will read this Mother Earth?). I want to talk to you and with you, not write at you. And a letter allows one so lavish a use of the egotistic pronoun!
When you get to this you will already have learned the history of our association and our school from the articles of friends who were radicals before I was born. I came upon the scene many months after the toil and turmoil of inception, and found the great work already well under way. I came from an institution where the mere mention of Ferrer would have been rebuked with holy horror; and I have no doubt that our little school suffered a good deal from my lack of training in the science of libertarian teaching. What little experience I now have I have achieved at the expense of the children, by making mistakes from which they suffered; it has been said of me, very truly, that I learned more from them than they learned from me.
I think this lack of an experienced teacher was the greatest difficulty besetting us; but it was only one of a thousand difficulties. Millionaires do not innovate, and we were innovators; --- to say that is to give the clue to our difficulties. Show me a great idea that began rich, and I will show you how to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. We needed a hundred and one things that other schools had come to look upon as absolute essentials; we needed a hundred and one things that even now we can only hope and strive for, but not yet enjoy. Indeed, there were times when the things that we needed loomed up so large beside the things that we had that I might have played the coward and given up the ship (perchance a good thing for the ship) had it not been for the example and inspiration of men and women whose ardor had learned to survive disappointment. To have met these men and women, to have learned from them and been influenced by them, --- I cannot begin to tell how much this has meant to me.
I was asked to write about Ferrer, and here I am, inevitably, talking about myself. I want to tell you, before I let you go, about the Ferrer monument in Brussels. I doubt if there is a finer conception, more beautifully executed, among all the public monuments of Europe. A bronze figure, life-size, absolutely nude, holding aloft a blazing torch, and standing on tip-toe --- every muscle tense --- that the light may shine the farther; could there be any fitter form for a monument to Ferrer? Oh, to be a bearer of the torch, even if only for a little while! --- could one ask any more of whatever gods there be?
Did you know that on the day when the news of Ferrer's death reached Milan a group of radicals ran a black flag from one of the lofty spires of the great cathedral there? --- or that the citizens of Florence gave the name of Ferrer to a street that had before borne the name of an archbishop? (These things Kropotkin told me; --- a gentle, fatherly old man whom I learned to love even while he was scolding me for lecturing so much about sex.) And I met in Paris a man who had taught under Ferrer, and who informed me that the Ferrer schools were being reopened throughout Spain. E pur si muove, as Galileo said; the world does move after all, and truth goes marching on. Most people respect truth only after it has become a platitude; those who dare respect and recognize it sooner are called revolutionaries, and are crucified in some one or other gentle way, --- burnt at the stake like Bruno, stabbed at like Spinoza, or shot like Ferrer. But as the world moves on one perceives that it is the crucified who live, and the persecutors who are dead.
I write this from London, perforce many days before you can read it; before you read it I shall be back with you, ashamed of having had so long and splendid a vacation, and anxious to get to work. What stories I shall be able to tell the boys and girls who come to me, what pictures I shall be able to show them! I understand that you have all been working hard while I have been playing with Baedeker and Kodak; but I hope to do a little work myself when I get back.
Yours,
MOTHER EARTH
Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Published every 15th of the Month
EMMA GOLDMAN. Proprietor, 55 West 28th street, New York, N. Y.Entered as second class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N. Y. under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879
VOL VII DECEMBER, 1912 No. 10
TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
BREAK—break it open; let the knocker rust;Consider no 'shalt not,' nor no man's 'must';And, being entered, promptly take the lead,Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;Nor watch the balance of the huckster'sbeam;Declare your hardest thought, your proudest dream;Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;High hearts and you are destiny enough.The mystery and the power enshrined in youAre old as time and as the moment new;And none but you can tell what part you play,Nor can you tell until you make assay,For this alone, this always, will succeed,The miracle and magic of the deed.
—John Davidson.
APPRECIATIONS AND TRIBUTES
OUR BELOVED COMRADE AND TEACHER
ALL over the world our Anarchist comrades have decided to celebrate the seventieth birthday of their beloved comrade and teacher Peter Kropotkin. If among the living authors and Socialists somebody deserves such a general demonstration of veneration and love, it is certainly Kropotkin, one of the greatest characters of our generation and the real glory of his native land, Russia.
In my long life as Socialist and revolutionist, I have had the chance to meet many gifted and exceptional people, excelling in knowledge or talent, and distinguished by greatness of character. I knew even heroic men and women, as well as people with the stamp of genius. . . . But Kropotkin stands as a most conspicuous, strongly defined character even in that gallery of noble fighters for humanitarian ideals and intellectual liberation.
Kropotkin possesses in delightful harmony the qualities of a true inductive scientist and evolutionary philosopher with the greatness of a Socialist thinker and fighter, inspired by the highest ideals of social justice. At the same time by his temperament he is undoubtedly one of the most ardent and fearless propagandists of the social revolution and of the complete emancipation of working humanity through its own initiative and efforts. And all these qualities are united in Kropotkin so closely and intimately that one cannot separate Kropotkin, the scientist, from Kropotkin, the Socialist and revolutionist..
As scientist—geographer and geologist—Kropotkin is famed for his theory of the formation of mountain chains and high plateaux, a theory now proved and accepted by science, and, in recognition of which the mountains in East Siberia explored by him have been named Kropotkin mountains.
As naturalist and inductive thinker on evolution, Kropotkin has earned undying glory and admiration by his 'Mutual Aid,' a work showing his vast knowledge as a naturalist and sociologist.
One of the most striking works of Kropotkin, I may say even classical by its form, deep knowledge, brilliant argumentation and noble purpose, is his 'Fields, Factories and Workshops.' Here he shows to toiling humanity with facts and figur.es the abundance of produce obtainable, the comforts and pleasures of life possible if physical and intellectual work are combined, if agriculture and industry are going hand in hand. I think that for the last quarter of a century no book has appeared so invigorating, so encouraging and convincing to those who work for a happier society. No wonder that a London democratic weekly advised its readers to buy his book by all means, even if they had to pawn their last shirt to raise the shilling.
Kropotkin as a Socialist, as a Communist-Anarchist and revolutionist, . . . but who of our readers does not know his numerous and inimitable writings on Socialism, on Anarchism-Communism, etc.? Who has not read and enjoyed his 'Memoirs of a Revolutionist'? His 'Paroles d'un Revolté,' his 'Conquest of Bread,' 'Modern Science and Anarchism,' 'Russian Literature,' 'The Terror in Russia,' 'The State and Its Historic R&ocap;le,' etc., etc. Here I will not dwell on those books; I have another aim in this article.
I will attempt to give an idea of the personal character, the charming individuality of. the author of all those splendid books. First of all let me try to sketch Kropotkin at work.
I often ask myself if there exists another man equal to Kropotkin in quickness, intensity, punctuality and variety of work? It is simply amazing what he is capable of doing in a single day. He reads incredibly much, in English, French, German and Russian; with minute interest he follows political and social events, science and literature, and especially the Anarchist movement in the whole world. His study, with its booklined walls, has piles of papers, new books, etc., on the floor, tables and chairs. And all this material, if not read, is at least looked through, annotated, often parts are cut out, classi fied and put away in boxes and portfolios made by himself. Kropotkin used to occupy himself for recreation with carpentry and bookbinding, but now confines himself to the latter and to the making of cardboard boxes for his notes. Whatever he does, he does quickly, with great exactitude; his notes and extracts are made with the speed of a stenographer, and all his work is done with beautiful neatness and correctness.
To give an idea of the variety of his work, I shall describe my last visit to Kropotkin. I came with a French scientist, also a great worker and a sincere admirer of Kropotkin. We found him in his study, hard at work, giving the last touches to a new edition of his 'Fields, Factories and Workshops.' One side of his table was covered with the French proofs of 'La Science moderne et L'Anarchie.' There were also the appendix and glossary in English for the coming Freedom edition of the same book. On a small table a half-finished article on Syndicalism was lying, and a pile of letters, some of them twelve pages long, exchanged with an old friend and comrade of the Federation Jurassienne, and dealing with the origin of Syndicalism, awaited an answer. Newspapers, books everywhere, volumes and separate articles on Bakunin were about, as Kropotkin is at present editing a complete Russian edition of Bakunin's works. In the midst of all these things, vigorous, alive, active as a young man, smiling heartily, Kropotkin himself. And people try to convince us that he is old and must rest I 'Nonsense,' said my French friend, 'this is not an old and tired man; he is more alive now than many a young man of our present generation!' And really with his overflowing activity and spirits, he animates the whole household.
It is of course only natural that a man of his learning and all-sided development is much sought after. Specialists and scientists, political and literary people, painters and musicians, and especially Socialist and Anarchist comrades and Russian revolutionists, are visitors to his house, and charmed by his straightforward simplicity and wholehearted interest. Even children are at once captivated not only by his fatherly goodness, but by his capacity to share their enjoyment, by playing for and with them, arousing their delighted amazement by his juggling tricks and performances.
At the end of the day, when the household has gone to rest, Kropotkin, with his usual consideration for those who have worked, moves about the house like a mouse, tiptoeing so, as not to disturb the sleep even if only the servant has gone to bed. Often he has whispered to me to be careful so as not to awaken her. Lighting his candle, he retires to his own room, sometimes till midnight reading new publications for which he could not find time during the day.
It is not astonishing that all who conic in contact with him love and adore him.
But there is another side to his character. Kropotkin, the political and social thinker, the revolutionist, the Anarchist-Communist, with his fiery temperament of a fighter, with his inflexible principles, his insight in political and social problems, is yet more admirable; he sees further, he understands better, he formulates clearer than any of our contemporaries. Few people feel so deeply and acutely the suffering and injustice of others, and he cannot rest until he has done all in his power to protect and help. From 1881, when he was expelled from Switzerland for having organized a meeting protesting against the execution of Sophia Perovskaya and her comrades, up till recently when he feverishly wrote his 'Terror in Russia,' that crushing act of accusation against the Czar's wholesale murder and torture, he has always been the indefatigable defender of all the victims of social and political injustice.
Such is, in a few lines, Kropotkin, the Anarchist, the scientist, and above all the man, beloved by his comrades and friends, respected and admired by honest people the world over.
W. TCHERKESOFF.
* * *
IT IS with the greatest pleasure that I send a few lines to help in the commemoration of our friend Kropotkin's seventieth birthday. His work will be remembered for all time; for by it he has brought so much nearer the day when the true human society will be realized on earth—that spontaneous, voluntary, non-governmental society whose germ was first planted ages ago among nearly all primitive peoples, but whose glorious flower and fulfillment awaits us—and perhaps not so very far distant in the future—as the goal of our free, rational and conscious endeavor.
May he long live—and you also—to assist in the great work!
Fraternally and heartily yours,
EDW. CARPENTER.
KROPOTKIN THE REVOLUTIONIST
By HIPPOLYTE HAVEL
Of the thousands of congratulations and good wishes conveyed to-day to Peter Kropotkin by his admirers, friends and sympathizers, none will, I am sure, find in his heart such a responsive echo as those expressed—most of them in silence—by the simple workers in the Anarchist movement, the men who are neither writers nor speakers, whose names are unknown to the great public, the quiet, self-sacrificing comrades with out whom there would be no movement. Those of US who have shared their bed and their last bit of bread know their feeling for the beloved teacher, their love for the man who gave up his position among the favored ones and stepped down to the lowly to share their daily struggle, their sorrows, their aspirations; the man who became their guide in the sacred cause of the Social Revolution.
Many wil1 speak of Kropotkin as the great natural scientist, the historian, the philologue, the littérateur; he is all this, but he is at the same time far more—he is an active revolutionist! He is not satisfied, like so many scientists, merely to investigate natural phenomena and make deductions which ought to be of value to mankind; he knows that such discoveries cannot be applied as long as the system of exploitation exists, and he therefore works with all his power for the Social Revolution which shall abolish exploitation.
Were it not for men like Kropotkin, the pseudo-scientific Socialists would long since have succeeded in extinguishing the revolutionary flame in the hearts of the workers. It is to his lasting credit that he has used all his great knowledge to fight the demoralizing activities of these reformers, who use the name of Revolutionist to hide their mental corruption. It is this—the uncompromising attitude, his direct participation in social revolt, his firm belief in the proletariat—which distinguishes Peter Kropotkin from many other leaders of modern thought. He is the most widely read revolutionary author; the Bible and the 'Communist Manifesto' are the only works which have been translated into 50 many tongues as 'The Words of a Rebel,' 'The Appeal to the Young,' and other writings of Kropotkin. It would be impossible to state in how many editions and translations each of his pamphlets has appeared. Some times I wonder whether he would recognize his own children: the pamphlets go through so many transformations in their journeyings from one language to another!
Peter Kropotkin is the most beloved comrade in the Anarchist movement; his name is a household word in the revolutionary family in all parts of the world. Our ill-fated Japanese comrades were proud of being called Kropotkinists. This was no idolatry on their part, but simply the expression of deep appreciation of his work. Those who have had the opportunity of meeting Kropotkin in his home or in public know that simplicity and modesty are his chief characteristics. As he never fails to emphasize that our place is among the workers in the factories and in the fields, not among the so-called intellectuals, so is he never happier than when he sits with his comrades and fellow-workers. I remember his indignation several years ago in Chicago when he accepted an invitation to a social gathering, expecting to meet his comrades, and found himself instead among vulgar bourgeois women who pestered him for his autograph. The irony of it! The man who gave up gladly his position at the Russian court to go to the people being entertained by the porkocracy of Chicago!
One of the bitterest disappointments of his life, as he himself told me, was that he could not participate actively in the great Russian Revolution. His friends and comrades decided that he could render the revolution far greater aid if he remained in London as one of the organizers of the gigantic struggle. But what arguments they had to use to convince him!
Peter Kropotkin's life and activities demolish the shallow arguments of our utilitarians, who judge all spiritual and intellectual life from their own narrow point of view. His work disproves the belief that ours is an age of specialists only. Like every great thinker, Kropotkin is many-sided in his intellectual activity; life and science as well as art find in him a great interpreter.
Looking back over the seventy years of his life, he must needs feel gratified with his work. The Anarchist brotherhood, to which he belongs, rejoices with him today.
* * *
PETER KROPOTKIN
HE IS the man of whose friendship I am proud. I know no man whose disinterestedness is so great, no one who possesses such a store of varied knowledge, and no one whose love of mankind is up to the standard of his.
He has the genius of the heart, and where his originality is greatest, as in 'Mutual Aid,' it is his heart which has guided his intellect.
The passion for liberty which is quenched in other men, when they have attained the liberty they wanted for themselves, is inextinguishable in his breast.
His confidence in men gives evidence of the nobility of his soul, even if he had perhaps given the work of his life a firmer foundation, having received a deeper impression of the slowness of evolution.
But it is impossible not to admire him when1 we see him preserving his enthusiasm in spite of bitter experience and numerous deceptions.
A character like his is an inspiration and an example.
GEORGE BRANDES.
* * *
A MAN
IT IS a great joy for those who love Kropotkin to participate in the homage—merited, indeed—which is being rendered to him to-day.
Whether on the occasion of his seventieth birthday or on any other occasion we have the right, without fear of being accused of hero-worship, to proclaim that we are proud and happy to have for a companion in thought and in the active struggle, for an elder brother and a respected leader the man who wrote 'The Words of a Rebel,'
All movements either of ideas or of deeds which stir society to its very foundations naturally throw to the surface elements utterly opposed one to the other—the arriviste and the apostle; the man without conscience, who discredits in the eyes of the people whom he uses for his private ends those theories which he preaches, and the disinterested and impartial thinker who consecrates his life to the Ideal.
Peter Kropotkin is one of those who has commanded the admiration and esteem of his enemies themselves. The man, the revolutionist, and the scientist formed in him a complete unity, a living antithesis to those individuals with great intellect and feeble heart who might well take for their motto: Do as I say, not as I do. With him the same pure flame illumines the mind, warms the heart, and guides the conscience.
Born in the country which has remained the most absolutistic in Europe, Kropotkin became disgusted with all inequalities and barbarisms, and voluntarily renounced the very things for which other men strive with all their strength—wealth and the vain baubles of worldly position. But the mystic communism and Christian resignation of a Tolstoi did not appeal to him. Inspired by the influence of the Great Revolution, which scattered afar the germs of new ideas, and not by the old evangelists prattling of a puerile humanitarianism, Kropotkin became one of those who conspired against the odious régime of the Czar.
Scarcely had he escaped from Russian prisons before he was imprisoned anew. In France, whither he had come to continue the great social struggle which has for its battlefield the entire world—in the land of the Rights of Man new trials awaited him. The bourgeois republic, in reality the slightly veiled despotism of politicians and capitalists, apprehended him: Kropotkin was imprisoned at Clairvaux, and came forth with his great book, 'The Words of a Rebel,' in which his whole soul palpitates.
Monarchical England proved more hospitable to him than republican France. Remote from the tumultuous continental groups, but in touch with the world-wide movement of ideas, Kropotkin in an uninterrupted succession of articles and of books, rounded out by his lectures, has crystalized the great human tendency toward Anarchy and affirmed the necessity for a new morality opposed to the pharasaical morality of bourgeois society. In 'The Conquest of Bread,' followed by 'Mutual Aid' and 'The Great French Revolution,' he sets forth with luminous clarity the goal of the struggle: liberty and well-being for all; the ideal which, more or less imperfectly visioned, has been the aspiration of revolutionists of all ages.
One might well believe that his broad sympathies help to deceive him as to the innate force of the people by ascribing to them the energy and clearsightedness which he himself possesses, but the lines which he has written regarding the r&ocap;le of the revolutionary minorities demonstrate that his intellectual vision is not subservient to his humanitarian sensibilities. And the lecture, printed in pamphlet form, which he delivered on 'The Place of Anarchy in Socialistic Evolution' testifies perhaps more forcefully than a large volume his wide knowledge of the laws governing social phenomena.
In our time, when the capitalist world is sinking into decadence and the proletarian is not yet entirely released from the swaddling clothes of ignorance and superstition; when parasitical renegades, ambitious and unscrupulous, seek under the cover of Anarchy to satisfy their bourgeois desires, it is encouraging to meet—and to salute—such a man as Kropotkin.
CHARLES MALATO.
* * *
WITH my whole heart I join with you in paying honor to our Comrade Peter Kropotkin. The libertarians of Italy owe him a great debt, and we all love him as our intellectual father. His life of labor and sacrifice for humanity is a potent example and a great inspiration to all in whom burns the fire of liberty and emancipation.
Fraternally,
LUIGI MOLINARI
PETER KROPOTKIN
By Emma Goldman
THOSE who constantly prate of conditions as the omnipotent factor in determining character and shaping ideas, will find it very difficult to explain the personality and spirit of our Comrade Peter Kropotkin.
Born of a serf-owning family and reared in the atmosphere of serfdom all about him, the life of Peter Kropotkin and his revolutionary activity for almost fifty years stand a living proof against the shallow contention of the superior potency of conditions over the latent force in man to map out his own course in life. And that force in our comrade is his revolutionary spirit, so elemental, so impelling that it permeated his whole being and gave new meaning and color to his entire life.
It was this all-absorbing revolutionary fire that burned away the barriers that separated Kropotkin, the aristocrat, from the common people, and flamed a clear vision all through his life. It filled him, the child of luxury, of refinement, the heir of a brilliant career, with but one ideal, one purpose in life- the liberation of the human race from serfdom, from all physical as well as spiritual serfdom. How faithfully he has pursued that course, on? Those can appreciate who know the life and work of Peter Kropotkin.
How faithfully he has pursued that course, only those can appreciate who know the life and work of Peter Kropotkin. Another very striking feature characteristic of this man is that he, of all revolutionists, should have the deepest faith in the people, in their innate possibilities to reconstruct society in harmony with their needs.
Indeed, the workers and the peasants are, to Kropotkin, the ones to hand down the spirit of resistance, of insurrection, to posterity. They, unsophisticated and untampered by artificiality, have always instinctively resented oppression and tyranny.
With Nietzsche, our comrade has continually emphasized that wherever the people have retained their integrity and simplicity, they have always hated organized authority as the most ruthless and barbaric institution among men.
Possibly Kropotkin's faith in the people springs from his own simplicity of soul-a simplicity which is the dominant factor of his whole make-up. It is because of this, even more than because of his powerful mentality, that Revolution, to Peter Kropotkin, signifies the inevitable sociologic impetus to all life, all change, all growth. Even as Anarchism, to him, means not a mere theory, a school, or a tendency, but the eternal yearning, the reaching out of man for liberty, fellowship, and expansion.
Possibly this may also explain the truly human attitude of Peter Kropotkin toward the Attentäter. Never once in all his revolutionary career has our comrade passed judgment on those whom most so-called revolutionists ha only too willingly shaken off-partly because of ignorance, and partly because of cowardice-those who had committed political acts of violence.
Peter Kropotkin knew that it is generally the most sensitive and sympathetic personality that smarts most under our social injustice and tyranny, personalities who find in the act the only liberating outlet for their harassed soul, who must cry out, even at the expense of their own lives, against the apathy and indifference in the face of our social crimes and wrongs. More than most revolutionists, Peter Kropotkin feels deeply with the spiritual hunger of the Attentäter, which culminates in the individual act and which is but the forerunner of collective insurrection-the spark that heralds a new Dawn.
But Peter Kropotkin does more. He also feels with the social pariah, with him who through hunger, drudgery, and lack of joy strikes down one of the class responsible for the horror and despair of the pariah's life. This was particularly demonstrated in the case of Luccheni, who was denounced and denied by nearly all other radicals. Yet no one can possibly have s an abhorence of violence and destruction of life, as our Comrade Peter Kropotkin; nor yet be so tender and sympathetic to all pain and suffering. Only that he is too universal, too big a nature to indulge in shallow moral censorship of violence at the bottom, knowing- as he does- that it is but a reflex of organized, systematic, legal violence on top.
Thus stands Peter Kropotkin before the world at the age of seventy: the most uncompromising enemy of all social injustice; the deepest and tenderest friend of oppressed and outraged mankind; old in years, yet aglow with the eternal spirit of youth and the undying faith in the final triumph of liberty and equality.
* * *
OUR DEBT TO KROPOTKIN
We Anarchists, whatever our particular interpretation of radical doctrines, we are the heirs of Peter Kropotkin, and we are all inspired by a strong sense of gratitude, or affection and admiration. It is because of his labors that Anarchism won the 'right of citizenship' among modern sciences and philosophies- we owe it chiefly to him, and we say this without the least wish to disparage the great services to the cause_ of liberty given by our other comrades the world over.
Especially do we love and admire our Comrade Peter, because he has most unselfishly devoted his whole life to the cause of human emancipation. He has given his great talents and all his wonderful energy to the service of the proletariat: his poverty is his greatest crown. He could have been one of the powerful of the earth, one of the privileged of the bourgeoisie. He preferred to cast in his lot with the oppressed and disinherited, preferred to be persecuted and imprisoned, rather than to be 'the darling of the great.' His vast learning and all the power of his intellect he has consecrated to the common people, and he has proved the greatest thinker and propagandist of Anarchism.
Pardon these words if they seem like adulation. They are the spontaneous expression of our deep love for our great teacher and comrade, to whom; the Anarchists of the world to-day send their heartfelt greetings, in the hope that he may be preserved to us for many long years, to continue the great struggle for progress and liberty.
When we speak with our political opponents, it requires but a few words to convince oneself that even an bitterest among them speak in admiration of our good Comrade. It is with a sense of justified pride that we say to them and to ourselves, 'He is one of us!'
Luigi Fabbri.
Crespellano, Italy, November, 1912.AN INTELLECTUAL GIANT
By Leonard Abbott
Every great cause has its heroic exponents and leader. Anarchism is fortunate in being able to put forward as its standard-bearer so great a man as Peter Kropotkin. I have before me as I write, some of the books and pamphlets of which he is the author. They make a formidable showing and range all the way from the pure science of 'Mutual Aid' and the pure literature of 'Russian Literature' to the revolutionary doctrine of 'Expropriation' and 'An Appeal to the Young.' As a kind of introduction to the shelf-full of books, I recommend Victor Robinson's glowing and eloquent tribute, 'Comrade Kropotkin.'* In it the reader will find perspective and background.
Kropotkin's intellectual output for many years has been of a quality that compelled respect even from his bitterest opponents. His unction, it would seem, has been in part to cover ground that otherwise might have been neglected. His erudition is enormous; is style warm and sincere.
Nothing in radical autobiography excels the 'Memoirs of a Revolutionist.' Who that has -read Kropotkin's account of his first imprisonment and escape can ever forget it? Here are the very throb and passion and romance of the revolutionary struggle as it has gone forward in Russia during the past half century. 'The Great French Revolution,' which Francisco Ferrer was planning to publish in Spanish just before he was arrested and executed, is an almost equally notable achievement in the historical field. Conceived in something the same spirit as the 'History of the French Revolution,' By C. L. James, the American Anarchist, it aims to emphasize the great part played in the Revolution by the people of the lower stratum. Kropotkin points out that the historians of the period have very largely overlooked or neglected this phase of the struggle.
'Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution' has already become a classic in its field. It appeared as a kind of
_______________________
* Published by The Altrurians, I2 Mount Morris Park West, New York City.
sequel to Charles Darwin's 'Descent of Man,' and shows how cooperation, no less than individual struggle, plays its part in the biological process known as 'the survival of the fittest.' Huxley is said to have changed his views as the result of evidence presented in this work. Kropotkin's arguments have been discussed in all countries. They apply to human society no less than to the animals. They appeal to Socialists as well as to Anarchists.
'The Conquest of Bread' and 'Fields, Factories and Workshops' are Kropotkin's two most important books in the domain of economic theory. They offer a clear definition of the Anarchist-Communist program. Especially timely and noteworthy at the present moment are his chapters on the decentralization of industries. In America, at least, the industrial tide runs overwhelmingly in the direction of trusts and unwieldy aggregations. This tendency has apparently not even yet reached its zenith. Socialism and governmentalism will gain from it. But a reaction' is sure to set in.
Kropotkin carries his learning lightly, and one feels behind his work a great heart as well as a great mind. When I met and talked with him in England fifteen years ago, I was struck by his sheer humanity and his beautiful courtesy. I came to him as a stranger, but he gave me several hours of his time. He talked of English trade-unions and the cooperative movement, of Belgian work ers, of French peasant-proprietors, and of Russian serfs. He spoke of the history and first beginnings of English Socialism; of Robert Owen arid Saint-Simon; of Karl Marx and Michael Bakunine and 'The International.' He gave his idea of the Paris Commune of 1871.
When I asked him if he thought we should go through Social Democracy to Anarchism, he grew vehement. 'I hope not,' he said; 'I believe not. I should consider Social Democracy retrogression, not progress.'
'The atmosphere of politics,' he continued, 'is enervating and corrupting. Look at the men who have gone Into our English Parliament, firmly resolved to fight for the workers against class tyranny; remember how many have been captured by the enemy. Our agitatorsÑthe Keir Hardies, Tom Manns and Ben TillettsÑare doing ten times as much good out of Parliament as they could do inside it. We must work out our salvation without the help of Parliament.'
He paid a high tribute to William Morris, and I asked his opinion of 'News from Nowhere.' He replied: 'It is an exquisite prose idyll, and is pure Anarchism in conception, but I can hardly conceive of society developing in just that way. There is a poetry of industrial mechanism, of machinery, that Morris never realized.'
Brandes has written: 'There are at this moment only two great Russians who think for the Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankindÑLeo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin.' I asked Kropotkin how he viewed Tolstoy. He answered in effect: 'I admire his literary genius and his great spirit. But I am not in sympathy with his asceticism, nor with his doctrine of non-resist ance to cvii, nor with his New Testament literalism.'
As I think of Kropotkin now, this conversation of fifteen years ago, in the little room at Bromley, comes vividly back to me. Since 1897 he has been twice in New York and has addressed audiences here. He seems to me to-day greater than ever before.
Hail to KropotkinÑAnarchist Prince, distinguished scientist, literary criticÑon his seventieth birthday! The whole world is in debt to him, and his name and fame will spread over land and sea as the ideas he has pio neered are gradually understood and realized.
* * *THREE CONTACTS WITH PETER KROPOTKIN
TOGETHER with all Socialists of my generation there was never a time when I did not know Kropotkin and was not inspired by his person ality, his revolutionary activity and the magnitude of his work as a scientist, thinker and propagandist. On three occasions of my life, however, I came in close, memorable contact with him. The first time was years ago at an ordinary Socialist meeting in San Francisco, when a youth mounted a platform and read the 'Appeal to the Young.' Is it a far cry from Russia to America, from the period of i&5o to that of a decade ago, from the Bastile of Saint Peter and Saint Paul to free California? Timeless and ageless is a revolutionist, and that evening Kropotkin was with us as actually as though we were one of his conspirative workingmen's audiences way back in his wonderful youth.
Stirring, invincible, absolute were his words as they reached us through the youthful reader on the platform. Thousands and hundreds of thousands had read that pamphlet and had responded to it as to nothing else in the literature of revolutionary Socialism, but more eloquent than the pamphlet was our thought of its author. Kropotkin wrote it, that Titan of the Russian and In ternational Revolution, that transitional character, bred of the misery of the Past, and carrying in himself all the glories of love and strength and beauty and freedom of the Future!
In that meeting years ago, as doubtless in countless others the world over, the thought of Peter Kropotkin dwelt like a Presence, and as ever and always, despite his greatness, he was simply our comrade, showing us, rather than telling us, how to conduct ourselves as revolutionists on the battlefield which is our life.
The second time I came in contact with him was when his 'Memoirs' were published, that story of his years which is at once the story of the movement, wholly intertwined and inseparable one from the other. This book was an event to all who stood in the shadow of the Cause, and inspiration, a message, a personal gift. There was a new light in the atmosphere. It was as if a wind swept through the arid land. We became lighthearted, smiled, congratulated one another. Again it was the writer behind the written word that held us, it was the great heart, the transcendant mind, resolute, determined upon liberty, the large character nourished by the air and the soil of the Future, but warring passionately, indomitably with the Present.
Then came my third contact with him, actual this time. I remember the English fog, the one light ahead, which led to his house, then the warmth of his hand, and the embrace of his look, as he met me at the door on which I knocked. There stood a Ulysses of the Social Revolution, so vital, so inspired, so aglow with thought and feeling, that all my heart loved him, and I saw him through tears.
ANNA STRUNSKY.
OUR PETER
WHEN we speak among Anarchists of 'Our Peter' (notre Pierre), everyone knows to whom we refer.
It proves the great popularity of our Kropotkin, whose seventieth birthday we are now celebrating.
It is not lip-service, but from the very depths of our hearts, when we say that we owe a great debt to Kropotkin, the man who has devoted his whole life to the propaganda of his principles. He who could be a rich man, he chose a life of struggle and hardship; lie who could wield power and have high rank, he preferred to lead the life of study and be an author for the people. His name reaches far, but his influence reaches still further. He will go down in the history of civilization as one of the pioneers of progress; he will occupy a permanent place in the book of human martyrdom for the emancipation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism.
We are not worshipers of saints, but we pay homage to him whose life is worthy to be honored. He belongs to us, and we are proud of such a man, a man whose profound knowledge, unexcelled integrity and high ideal ism have found appreciation even among his opponents.
Future generations will appreciate our comrade Peter Kropotkin at his full worth. But for us it is to give him what little token we may of our love, understanding, and esteem. And it is not for him that we do it: he needs not our praises; rather do we do it for ourselves. We feel happy that we can say to him, to the whole world, that we are proud of him.
Does that signify that we agree with everything he has written? By no means. Nor would he himself wish us merely to subscribe to his opinions. Such disciples would find small favor with him. He, most of all, wants thinking, self-conscious men and women. And it is as independently thinking men and women that we offer him our love and our gratitude.
With his life and his works he has wrought not for a day, but for all times His name will live as one of the best of his kind.
F. DOMELA NIEUWENHUIS.
Holland, November, 1912.
IN APPRECIATION
IN THE name of the Syndicalists in Britain I wish to join in loving greetings, most hearty congratulations and genuine thanks to Comrade Peter Kropotkin on his seventieth birthday. We heartily congratulate him on his full and intensely useful life; we thank him most sincerely for the battles he has fought, the struggles he has endured, and the example he has set.
It is more than twenty years since I first had the pleasure of meeting the great teacher; it is near thirty years since, as a propagandist, I joyfully began selling Kropotkin's 'Appeal to the Young,' one of the finest appeals ever issued in propagandist literature to young or old.
I have always felt it to be a great privilege to shake hands with and to have a few words with the grand old man, truly a delightful character. I have ever felt towards Comrade Kropotkin that there is an atmosphere of knowledge, of love, and of human kindness of heart surrounding him beyond that of any other man I have known.
So real a master of the knowledge of the time, so diligent a student of that yet to be known, and bearing himself withal so quietly, so unassertive, so superbly balanced, that I gaze on his modest, smiling, fatherly face in his photograph with wondering admiration.
That fate should have decided that our comrade should have lived in this country so long is a matter for us to be thankful for, but the mass of the working class have hitherto failed to learn one of the principal lessons the old teacher has been striving to inpart, i. e., the absurdity, the wrongfulness and economic unsoundness of relying upon State Action to bring about the economic changes essential for well-being: but the workers are learning that great lesson now and very rapidly.
In their struggle for the 'Conquest of Bread' they will in future rely upon their own powers of Direct Action to achieve the same; and we are hopeful we shall yet be able to equal the barbarians of centuries ago in showing mutual regard for the general welfare.
I never read a more encouraging book than 'Mutual Aid,' and I thank our comrade for it; so full of delightful incident bearing so pointedly upon the all-important principle he is teaching, and so optimistic of humanity again being at least as sensible as the savages, coupled with scientific advance.
Many thousands have had their minds opened to the reception of knowledge by 'Fields, Factories, Workshops,' and many of us are strenuously engaged in endeavoring to apply the lessons therein taught.
We thank the Russian people for so glorious a man, and we thank the man and brother for such stupendous work so magnificently achieved. With our comrades of Europe, of America, aye, and of the world at large, we join wholeheartedly and offer our loving appreciation to Peter and Madame. May they have many happy years to observe the realization of their ideals.
TOM MANN.
Southflelds, London, Eng.
* * *
LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD
AT THE thought of Kropotkin my mind reverts to the time when I was a little boy, the son of a middle-class family. The terms Socialist and Anarchist were quite unknown to me then, but 'Nihilist' held a mysterious charm, swaying me with awe and admiration. It was a forbidden word and it conjured up visions of dreaded gendarmes, iron chains, and the frozen steppes of Siberia. Vaguely I felt that these forbidden people, the Nihilists, somehow suffered for the sake of othersÑI did not know why or howÑbut my young heart glowed with admiration of them.
A little later I saw the college brother of my school-chum arrested on the street and spirited away in a droshka. 'A politically unreliable,' it was whispered about, and the classroom buzzed with the mystic name of Tchaikovsky, and someone asked me whether I would join a literary gatheringÑa secret Tcha”kovsky circle, he whispered confidentially.
Little by little 'Nihilism' became clarified to me. Still were the Bazarovs and Rachmetovs clad in mystery, but Tchernishevsky and Turgenev lit up vague yearnings with a ray of consciousness. It was years later that Socialism and Anarchism crystallized to me as a definite social protest, an inspiring ideal, whose very personification first, appeared to me in the figure of Peter Kropotkin. Again it was Peter Kropotkin who proved my teacher and inspiration all through the years of my later life. It is impossible to estimate the influence of Kropotkin, and of the ideas he has promulgated throughout his whole life, for social ideals flower in manifold paths and carry their seeds into the farthest corners of the world. But this I know, that all through the years of my life as ail Anarchist and all through my prison existence, the personality of KropotkinÑhis uncompromising revolution ary spirit and his ideal-kissed vision, have illumined many a day of darkness and warmed despair into cheer and life.
Out of my inmost heart, with love and gratitude I greet you, Peter Kropotkin, my teacher and comrade. As teacher and comrade you are dear, very dear to me; as teacher and comrade you will grow to be appreciated by mankind. And when the soulless scientists of your day have been forgotten and the well-fed philosophers of poverty are lost in tile obscurity of time, the name of Kropotkin, the thinker of revolutionary thought, the scientist of the social regeneration, the true brother of the common man in field, factory and mine, will be the cornerstone of a new humanity and a new civilization.
ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
THE APOSTLE OF ANARCHISM
By J. Morrison Davidson.
A SPECIAL KROPOTKIN number of Mother Earth, apropos of our illustrious comrade's seventieth birthday, is an excellent suggestion, which could not emanate from a more fitting source than Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York, U. S. A. Why, it would be very difficult to sum up the entire Anarchist Gospel according to Prince Kropotkin with more terse exactitude than is done in Mother Earth's standing definition: '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.'' Such is the Anarchism of which Kropotkin is the greatest living Apostle, nay, Saint; for some one has, with singular felicity, designated him 'the St. Francis d'Assisi of Science.' Nor is the element of Martyrdom lacking. It is hardly necessary to recall his shameful incarcerations by Imperial Russia and Republican France, or the heroism with which they were endured. I have never met this blithe-enthused soul—yes, God-inspired, though he believes himself a 'Materialist'—but I recall Hamlet's fine, unhackneyable apostrophe to his friend Horatio:—
For thou hast beenAs one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;A man that fortune's buffets and rewardsHast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are thoseWhose bloott and judgment are so well commingledThat they are not a pipe for Fortune's fingerTo sound what stop she please; give me that manThat is not passion's slave, and I will wear himIn my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,As I do thee.
But for its Idealists, nay, its Idealist-Materialists, what would this weary, heavy-laden human race come to? A world bereft of Kropotkins, Bakunins and Tolstoys, were indeed a Planet Sorrowful—a realm of unbroken gloom, stagnation, and death. It is their lofty mission to show us how we may confidently
From the future borrow—Cloathe the waste with dreams of grain,And on midnight's sky of rain,Paint the golden morrow.
Personally, like the late Count Tolstoy, I take my Anarchism from the Man of Nazareth; but between the Count's teaching and Kropotkin's I find practically little or no difference. The coin is of pure gold, with reverse as necessary as obverse. The hypostasis of Materialist as of Spiritualist Anarchism is sufficiently familiar: Do you as you would have it done to you in like case. This Golden Rule, once fully realized among men, and the State, Private Property, and Enacted Law must inevitably give place to the Anarchist Commune, already adumbrated in the Russian Mir, of which Madame Kropotkin (may she and gifted Miss Kropotkin be long spared to cheer the sunset glory of our Grand Old Anarchist's days) has written so instructively.
We habitually forget that both the State and Private Property are purely historic formations, 'developed parasitically amidst the free institutions of our earliest ancestors'; and unchallenged in their turpitude, except for Kropotkin and a handful of other intrepid thinkers to whom the world owes the deepest debt of gratitude. The Prince's analysis of the 'State' is the excalibur of militant Anarchism:
What is this monstrous engine that we call the 'State'? It is relatively of modern origin. The State is a historic formation which, in the life of all nations, has, at a certain time, gradually taken the place of free associations. Church, Law, Military Power, Wealth acquired by Plunder, have for centuries made common cause; have, in slow labor, piled stone on stone, encroachment on encroachment; and thus created the monstrous institution which has finally fixed itself in every corner of social life—nay, in the brains and hearts of men—and which we call the State. But rapid decomposition has set in, and, in the next stage of evolution, the Involuntary State will everywhere be replaced by the Voluntary Commune, as if by magic!
Yea, verily the 'Conquest of Bread' Commune, when we shall all have to cry out:
Enough! enough coal, enough bread, enough clothes! Let us rest, take recreation; put our strength to better use; spend our time in a better way! From each according to his powers; to each according to his wants!
'And so mote it be!'
Years ago, in dedicating a small historical treatise to our venerable friend, I designated him, natu Princeps Slavonicus, ubique gentium naturaliter Princeps,' and, on his seventieth natal day, he is stillFirst—First among Scientists and Humanitarians, the world over.
* * *HUMANITARIAN AND REVOLUTIONIST
By Max Baginski.
THOSE who believe that a charming personality, a gentle spirit, or a poetic susceptibility are not compatible with aggressive revolutionary activity ought to read Peter Kropotkin's works, especially the 'Memoirs of a Revolutionist.' There is in his life and work a perfect synthesis of highest devotion to humanity and of revolutionary passion.
Through the realms of nature, the field of science, Kropotkin searches, with the keen and mild eye of the sage, for those facts and experiences which show that mutual aid, comradeship, solidarity are man's finest qualities and at the same time the sources and motives for his material and mental development. He does not discover in this vast realm anything that looks like a supernatural ethic which has the power to command us to do the good, but he finds already in the life of the animals unmistakable traces of sympathetic cooperation pointing toward the cooperative human commonwealth, that leaves the individual free and yet unfolds his social instincts and actions towards a life of equality and justice. Kropotkin's sociology and philosophy make for reconciliation of the individual with society, expleting the icy social abyss which separates man from man like mortal enemies.
This ideal and aim of humanism, Anarchy—nobody has brought its beautiful realization so sympathetically near to the mind and heart as the revolutionist Kropotkin, and nobody has, like him, furnished it with so splendid an intellectual armor.
The Russian government has still every reason to deplore the fact that on June 30, i876, the political prisoner Peter Kropotkin made his miraculous escape from the prison hospital in St. Petersburg. This escape gave to the modern international revolutionary movement its most beloved comrade, its boldest, most inspiring pioneer.
PETER KROPOTKIN
A PERSONAL EXPERIENCEBy Bayard Boyesen.
IN THE college life of the average American youth there is little, if any, intellectual companionship; and the young man whose mind expatiates beyond the spheres of college rules and interests finds himself forced to huddle in a lonely dream. Of course, there are political clubs and literary societies; but the former are not places of thought, and the latter gaze at literature from a viewpoint that denies the 'springs of life.' Indeed, the students, as well as the authorities, consider it properly 'American' to deride all enthusiasms that hitch themselves to anything nobler than a college yell. Once, a Freshman came to me and showed me an essay he had written with a sincerity that was almost terrible in its beauty; and he said to me in a voice that verged on tears: 'Look: they told me to write as I felt, and I did so, and this is all the criticism I get: 'Immature.'' I could scarcely believe what he said until I had read the essay again and again, and found nothing for guidance to this youth of sixteen save the professor's illuminating information that the lad was immature!
So the young man of thought and aspiration must find his companionship in books. Lucky he will be if this necessity leads him to a meeting with the works of Kropotkin.
I remember hearing, while I was still an undergraduate, a professor speak blithely about the 'margin of labor'; and I remember my astonishment when he said, in the tone of a man making so obvious a remark that it required no substantiation, that it was necessary that there should be, at all times, some men who were unemployed. I, being an impertinent youth —impertinent, because I had a habit of asking pertinent questions—requested to know the reason why; whereupon he, being a learned man, replied: 'It is necessary because the conditions of business demand it, because business can't be run without this margin.' I then asked him what provision had been made in order to insure to these men 'on the margin' and to their families a means of subsistence. But this question he dismissed, since it had, he asserted, nothing to do with economics. I began to think.
Some time afterwards, I was talking with an elderly gentleman, and in the course of a general discussion, I ventured to tell him of the opinions and conclusions I had formed concerning what I still termed economics. To my utter amazement, he said: 'So you're an Anarchist.' Indignantly I replied that he was simply calling me an odious name, as age is wont to do when it cannot answer the arguments of youth. He smiled benignly. 'Read Kropotkin, my boy, and then come and tell me if it is not an honor to be called an Anarchist.' He handed me some pamphlets and the 'Memoirs of a Revolutionist.'
That night I read. I had realized, before, the miseries and perfidies of men; but that night I realized for the first time the hopes and opportunities of Man. The ideal of what I should be—I, too!—spoke to the puny reality of what I was. From the reclusive park of my former imaginings, I looked; looked and saw the rough country around, the unplotted earth, the stubble paths; and I knew that my literary altars must be cast down, and that I, too, must go forth over the unplotted earth, into the stubble paths, and beyond. In my eyes was the vision of an unboundaried nation, unshackled, complete.
But the 'Memoirs' were not merely the cause of a temporary exaltation and a vision; they were the basis and beginning of a life-long companionship with the men and women whose thoughts and actions project into previously undiscovered territories, who use the facts and traditions of life not as jackets of restraint, but as springboards into space, who take unabashed, cheerfully, the challenge of existence, and realize that it is only the terrors and perfidies of men that make the opportunity of greatness. Just as my imagination had first seen its possibilities when, as a boy, I came upon the works of Shelley, so here, first, in the work of Kropotkin my heart and mind awoke.
It would not be practical to attempt to set forth in this necessarily short paper even a tithe of what the books of Kropotkin have meant to me and to the young men to whom I have given them. I will, however, present one example of the enduring quality of their influence.
It is difficult for me to speak of Professor Klasovsky without displaying what must seem an exaggerated emotion to those who have never experienced the loneliness of undergraduate aspiration in America; and I cannot, to-day, recall that wonderful little man as he appears in the pages of Kropotkin without a misting of the eyes and something very close to despair of our university education. I wonder whether he did more for Kropotkin than for me. I, of course, never saw him; but often, when I had been listening, perforce, to some professor spreading weak and weary platitudes over the beauties of English poetry, patronizing Shelley as one might patronize a naughty boy, attempting to make the flame-bled slogans of Swinburne seem but a concatenation of gorgeous sounds, or mouthing the steepled prose of Milton without any realization of the fervid spirit behind,—how often then, seeking seclusion, I would run to my imaginary Klasovsky and listen at his feet! What absurdities I must have put into his mouth, what puerile generalizations! Yet what a comfort it was to me to fancy that there was one man of knowledge to whom I could speak out my mind without fear of the worst of rebuffs, the smile of condescending age!
Later, I spent four years in an attempt to teach and educate in the university in which I had been lectured and quizzed. Then, too, I had need of Klasovsky and Kropotkin; for, though I cared not at all for the criticisms my colleagues would bestow upon my unacademic methods, I had need of courage when I saw—how often!—some youth who had entered with enthusiasm and high hopes go down before the drudggeries of the system, flatten out, and disappear.
I might go on to relate a thousand incidents in which the works of Kropotkin have proved of benefit to me and to my fellows; and it would be interesting to me to proceed to an exposition and friendly criticism of his theories. But that was not the purpose of this little essay. I have written it with the intention merely of recording an experience common to many men of my acquaintance and to innumerable others whom neither he nor I can know. If, to-day, it is not given to me to sail so buoyantly upon an optimism so large as his, I still accept his purpose and belief, I still pick up the thumb-worn pages of the 'Revolutionist,' and there still see the fair crops of the future, though the miseries of the present rot the harvests of to-day. Salve, Kropotkin!
* * *
AN IMMORTAL
THE seventieth anniversary of Peter Kropotkin's birth ought to remind every lover of freedom and beneficiary of science of the debt we owe this courageous and kindly Russian.
There is no reason why those of us who cannot subscribe to his faith in Anarchism should not subscribe to our faith in him. A man who abjures the princely title and who dedicates his life to science, interpreting that in the distinctively twentieth century method of synthesis, although he was the contemporary and colleague of the nineteenth century analytical scientist; a man whose writings are alive with democratic sympathy and who in himself is the incarnation of democracy; a man who has not only repudiated high position, but who has been driven from pillar to post, from country to country, from prison to prison;—such a man commands the respect and homage of every scientific thinker and lover of freedom.
It would be a distinct sacrifice for any humanitarian to deny himself the privilege of paying tribute to this devoted lover of his kind, whose pioneer services and bodily risks have not prevented his attaining his threescore years and ten. Whatever may be the social system of the future, Peter Kropotkin's niche is safe in the universal Hall of Fame.
Charles Zueblin.
A TRIBUTE
IT IS a very happy occasion that has suggested the idea of celebrating the seventieth birthday of our dear Comrade Peter Kropotkin by publishing a special number of Mother Earth. For I am sure there is none who has the slightest regard for the welfare of humanity, who will not rejoice at the thought that he is still alive and well, and still working hard in the great cause, after three-score years and ten of a life that few men could ever hope to have lived.
It would indeed be fairer to call that life a strenuous battle against privilege in all its forms. For it is not only against capitalist exploitation that he has raised his voice, but with equal force and power he has denounced those even more insidious phases of the same evil which authority uses to enslave the mind of man. None wish more than he that all should have well-being; but few unhappily care as he does that the individual should be really free in thought and word and deed.
It may be of interest to your readers to have a few brief details of his work in England so far as it has centered round Freedom, although it must be earnestly hoped that whoso has not yet read his 'Memoirs' will take this opportunity of acquainting themselves with the narrative of his life by getting that deeply interesting work.
When in 1886 Kropotkin returned here from France after his imprisonment, there was practically no Anarchist movement in England. The Socialist League, however, had been formed, with William Morris at its head, and had already sounded the note of anti-parliamentarism, clearing the air to some extent for Anarchist ideas. So that when Freedom was started (October, i886) Kropotkin found many interested in the excellent articles he contributed to that paper on the aims and ideals of Anarchist Communism. So much so that a few months later it was found necessary to start a series of meetings at the Socialist League Hall, Farringdon Road, which Morris, with that fairmindedness so characteristic of him, had willingly let to us.
Looking back over a quarter of a century, Kropotkin and those who were with him will recall these meetings, at several of which he explained, in his addresses, Anarchism in its various aspects, necessarily arousing much heated discussion; in which it may be mentioned that amongst others Sidney Webb, Annie Besant, John Burns and Herbert Burrows took part. In spite of developments that have taken place since those early times, there is none of them, I am sure, who will not have good wishes for him on his seventieth birthday.
For those of us who have worked more closely with him, who know how deeply the Anarchist spirit has been manifested by him towards all, irrespective of social or educational disadvantages, looking only for sincerity and conviction—we wish to join with you, comrades of these great United States of America, and add our voice to yours in wishing still for our dear friend Peter Kropotkin years of health, happiness and that activity which is his life. And if there is one hope we hold more fervently than another .it is that he may yet live to see some grand fulfillment of those ideals to which he has devoted the whole of his energies and for which his heart beats as ardently as ever in the seventieth year of his life.
A. Marsh,Editor of Freedom, London.
* * *
A RARE MAN
WE ARE at a loss to describe or clarify such a character as Kropotkin; accepted standards are usually false, and the terminology at our disposal lacks comprehensiveness. When the orator or eulogist fails, in his opinion, to adequately characterize his subject, he usually falls back on some such phrase as 'we like him best of all because he is human.' This is considered the greatest of compliments, and oftimes kings are exalted by their subjects and flatterers because they are 'human.' Certain it is, Kropotkin is human in the sense that he has a commonality of interest with his fellow-men and is not without human weaknesses, but the phrase is faulty, incomplete, as it fails to imply that we love him because he is a rare human being. Bernard Shaw makes Blanco Posnet say, 'there is no good and no bad, but there's a great game and a rotten game.' Good and bad are relative terms, but we love those who play the great game and despise those who play the rotten one.
Happy indeed is the man who has found his work, and thrice happy should he be if the work has a social value. To live is ordinary, to live well and with a purpose, extraordinary—it makes for that immortality all should strive for, to be a force and live in the hearts of our fellow-men after we have crossed the Styx. With a combination of gifts rare in man, Kropotkin has lived to a purpose, and his work will live after him. Scientist, explorer, man of letters and social revolutionist, this remarkable man has combined these and ma,ny other qualities with a humanity as deep as the springs of life, and. as broad as the vision of our greatest age. Humanity, with its endless roll of great thinkers, poets and humanitarians, has produced many men and women as great in one or more particulars; it is the combination of great talents, the harmony of scientist, social prophet, man of action and great humanitarian that makes him rare among the rarest of mortals.
His 'Mutual Aid' humanized and put the sweetness of life into the Darwinian theory and bids humanity have hope for better days. 'Fields, Factories and Workshops' attacks the God of Efficiency that would degrade and destroy the soul of man for a greater productivity of things, and points out the necessity for well-rounded and fully developed men if we are to have a free society. His 'Conquest of Bread' and 'Memoirs,' analytic and constructive, show the seer and prophet as well as the worker and man of action. What niche in the pantheon of fame future historians will assign him we know not; that it will be a high one we can not doubt. An inspiration and guiding star for men and women of all lands, his influence will grow and expand. To those of us who have known him personally our lives have been better and our wisdom larger for having met, known and learned to love this wonderful personality, a personality symbolized by a name—Peter Kropotkin.
Harry Kelly.
KROPOTKIN AS A SCIENTIST
BY WHATEVER path the social revolution comes, all of us who have our faces towards that supreme event, do gladly join in our tribute to the worth and work of Peter Kropotkin. The Socialist tendency of to-day is to generously recognize all persons and forces that are making for the great change. It is as a revolutionary Socialist that I hail Peter Kropotkin, on his celebration of his seventieth birthday, and wish that he yet may have many years wherein to continue his devoted and heroic labors. It was as a Socialist, and with the approval of my comrades in New York City, that I presided over the great mass meeting that welcomed him to New York City eleven years ago. I shall always gratefully remember—though probably he has forgotten—the afternoon conversations I had with him when I was attending lectures at the London School of Economics, fifteen years ago. He did not at all approve of my way of looking at things at that time, either sociologically or religiously; but he was always so kindly and so reasonable in his admonitions and arguments, that I found him a vastly better teacher than the Fabian professors of political economy who constituted the faculty of the School of Economics. And though I still look for the great change to come by a very different highway from that by which he thinks it will come, I yet wish to say that no man since Marx or Darwin has made a more ultimate or permanent a contribution to the social future than Kropotkin has made. I also wish to join my word to the words of those who will speak of Kropotkin's sterling personal worth, as well as of his career as a Russian revolutionist, as one of the greatest men of science, and as a great man of letters.
There is one special phase of Kropotkin's work that I do not think is yet sufficiently valued or understood. I refer to his emphasis on the cooperative tendency in nature, as against the competitive tendency so insistently emphasized by the older evolutionists. The Darwinians have outdone their master in calling attention to the struggle for existence—in sharpening the tooth and claw. It is only Kropotkin, so far as I know, who has, as a scientist, called attention to the struggle for fellowship that is as truly manifest in nature as the competitive struggle. He alone among scientists has called attention to the fact that the strongest in the competitive struggle do no survive; they extinguish one another. A merely competitive nature would be nature's self-destruction. Ultimate survival has been concurrent with cooperation. The types that really survive, in- the long course of things, are the types that cooperate, the types that attain to fellowship. Biologically, or physiologically, these types are often, if not generally, the weakest. If we were to change this from scientific into more familiar phraseology, we would say that it seems to be a law of nature that the meek inherit the earth, in the end; that it is not the fighter, but the lover who will ultimately prevail. Even to the materialist, there seems to be some reason in or behind nature that lends the last results of power to love, and snatches them from hate. It is war, it is the struggle for existence, it is the competition between man and man or tribe and tribe or nation and nation, that has wrought the waste places of the earth. Even the jungles of Africa are now found to have been the seats of mighty civilizations, of immense and splendid cities and temples, destroyed by the competitions of races. It is possible that the great deserts of the world are the result of man's destruction of man. The scientists tell us that the Black Plague originated upon a battlefield where a hundred thousand dead were left unburied. Forests are denuded, great rivers are dried up, rain-falls are ended, through the fierce competition of industrial man, while cooperation and social control are able to restore the forests, the rain-falls and the rivers. It is literally true that nature so favors cooperation that the cooperative man could make the solitary places of the earth glad, and the wilderness blossom as a rose, and the world like unto a kingdom of heaven.
I have called attention to this special emphasis which runs through Kropotkin's writing, and which makes his 'Mutual Aid Among Animals' one of the greatest and most instructive books ever written. There is no book more useful to the Socialist, the Single-taxer, or the Philosophical Anarchist. Peter Kropotkin has made an immense and yet unappropriated contribution both to the knowledge of nature and to sociology. I am sure that the greatest honor we could pay him in his seventieth birthday, and the one that would give him the greatest gratitude, would be to appropriate his immeasurable contribution.
George D. Herron.
Florence, Italy, Oct. 8, 1912.
* * *
A GREETINGDear Comrade:
You ask me to tell you what I think of Kropotkin for the number which you intend to publish on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.
What can I say except what everyone says who is acquainted with him?
I know of no man more loyal than he, more enthusiastic, more youthful in spite of his seventy years, and at the same time there is no one so simple, so modest.
To appreciate his disinterestedness, it is only necessary to be aware of his origin, and his sacrifice of wealth and honors to consecrate himself to the propagation of ideas which could bring him nothing but imprisonment and persecutions on all sides, even to the extent of a death sentence in his native land.
Everybody knows the position which he has won for himself in the scientific world.
Therefore the example of his life seems to me to refute perfectly the imbecilities of those 'worshippers of the horny hand'—ex-workingmen—who hold that the 'intellectuals' never come to the working class for any purpose except to dominate it.
Without taking into account that the term 'intellectual' has absolutely no significance and means simply a man who has not sprung from the working class; for where is the manual labor which does not require brain work, and how many so-called 'intellectuals' are less intellectual than those whom some people call 'common workingmen'? Now then? . . .
Cordial greetings,
Jean Grave.
* * *
A KROPOTKIN INTRODUCTION
THE non-Anarchist stranger walked in shyly behind the old-friend-of-prison-days. A great event was to take place in her life. She was to see Kropotkin—to meet him—to speak to him! The old-friendof-prison-days had said to her simply just like this: 'I am going to Kropotkin's. If you want, you can come along.'
She looked at him strangely. If she wanted! Is it possible that in his close intimacy with the man, he had forgotten what that name meant to the youth? It had been part of her being. She had grown up conscious of its meaning, not remembering when or how it first came to her. It belonged to the breath she drew, to the glowing life within her. Once she had heard the 'Appeal to the Youth' read at a Socialist meeting. Somehow she knew beforehand those inspired words. His name alone had made the appeal to humanism and solidarity even before she read him. It was by his life that he taught. And the youth—it held communion with him through his living personality, through his memoirs, through those little black covered volumes with the large white letters, the books of Kropotkin and Anarchism, which the ardent souls in Russia carry along with them in their hazardous work of propaganda and agitation.
And now she was to see him—to slip in quietly behind the old-friend-of-prison-days and meet him.
They sat on the top of a 'bus and talked Kropotkin, he telling her how they met for the first time in the warden's office of a prison in St. Petersburg. It had a splendid name—that prison. The House of Detention Before Trial. She, too, knew those crumbling walls with the splendid name. She had been whisked through it for a day. Only a day? Never mind. It gave her the chance to sit with the old-friend on this 'bus to go to Kropotkin's.
'That was about forty years ago when we two met,' he said. 'How old we are getting. No, not Kropotkin. You will see, he has green youth.'
Yes. So young he was! He walked briskly across the room, and so straight—almost like an official at the court. But his greeting was hearty and his face warm with love, and just like his portraits seen everywhere. There lay his big beard spread out upon his chest, and his head thrown back military fashion, looking quite hairless in contrast with his beard. There he was, his portrait came down from the wall. It was as he should look, and she felt she had always known him in person.
He had not been feeling well, he said. The old-friendof-prison-days whose hearing had been almost ruined and whose whole constitution undermined in Siberia, looked solicitous. 'You, too, my dear?' he said.
Kropotkin smiled. It will soon pass away, he answered. 'And you,' he said, turning to the newcomer, 'tell me what are they going to do in America.'
She did not know. She had left America as a student and had been away many years, but she had just read. It was not as blatant a country as when she left. There was the Moyer, Pettibone and Haywood trial just finished, and besides this awakening of the workers, there seems to be a breaking up of the old bourgeois traditions. She reads on all sides a concerted attack on the constitution.
Why did she say that! It was shyness that made her talk so stupidly. 'Constitution'! As if she, too, believed in its potency. Could she not have told him of something more fundamental, something which pertains really to the life of the people! But it was too late. Already Kropotkin was striding up and down the room, blazing forth in wrath. What hope was there of a new social era, if the youth still tinkered with the enemy's tools! One must find new forms entirely, create one's vision anew and hold it ever before one clear and distinct that even its edge might be reached. We cannot go forward dragging the old with us, and we must speak of words written in blood, not paper!
True—but if he were not so angry she would explain, she would acknowledge herself wrong; but how angry he was and how quickly he became angry! Besides, it was a sign of the times. She said so.
Again great wrath. It was no sign at all—it meant nothing, it was no matter for the youth to soil their hands with. She seemed to have pricked a whole hornet's nest of wrath.
Did he really think she was not one of his? How sad that was.
Suddenly she felt a hand laid tenderly on her head. 'How are your dear people?' he asked. She smiled up into his face, which now looked down kindly at her. 'And tell me what you did in Russia?' He never for a moment mistook her, but such a careless talker, and a careless thinker, too—almost.
There was a frown and a swift shrug of the shoulders. Would it break out again? No—there was laughter. The erstwhile stranger was to have dinner and then spend the rest of the day. There was talk of parties in Russia, of the growing consciousness of the people and of mutual friends.
It had all become so simple again, just as when the old-friend had said, 'If you want, you can come along with me to Kropotkin's.' There they sat and talked, familiarly, not as old friends, but as if one who had been gone many years had just returned and there was talk of new things concerning old friends.
The friend-of-prison-days and the non-Anarchist stranger sat again on the top of a bus.
'He frightened you?' the old-friend asked, laughing. 'But he always does it.'
'Why?' she asked.
'To test his love perhaps. He knows he can love. I fancy he wonders if he still has the iron in it.'
ROSE STRUNSKY.
KROPOTKIN AS PHILOSOPHER AND WRITER
WHAT is especially characteristic of the works of Peter Kropotkin, what appeals to us most is his high idealism, his wide outlook over the whole field of sociologic thought, an outlook that constantly opens up to us new vistas of man's possibilities.
His work, 'Conquest of Bread,' is a revolutionary idyl, a beautiful Kulturbild, that sketches in broad outline future society as it may be formed, after the storm period of the Social Revolution, by the spontaneous efforts of the working masses.
Indeed, we do not blind ourselves to tile difficulties of the great struggle, nor that these, in their practical realization, may even prove greater than indicated by the author. But what appeals to us most forcibly is the grand conception of the problems to be solved and the wealth of new ideas suggested by the author along various lines of thought. The manner in which Kropotkin presents in this book, as well as in all of his scientific works, the broad lines followed by the progress of human civilization, carries us along with almost irresistible force and inspires us to greater effort and struggle, without our closer examining whether the milestones, marked out by the author, are to be reached so soon—indeed, whether they may ever be reached at all.
In this regard the philosophic and scientific works of Kropotkin exert upon the revolutionary reader an effect similar to the preachments and revelations of the gospel upon the early Christian societies.
On the other hand, Kropotkin's ideas concerning the cooperation of industry and agriculture, of the combination of intellectual work with manual labor, of mutual aid in the animal and human world, have exerted an influence that is reaching far beyond the revolutionary labor movement.
The same broad conception that characterizes the scientific labors of Kropotkin permeates also his autobiography. Generally speaking, autobiographies are thankless tasks, because personal life stories are of but little value as reliable historic sources. Most autobiographies are nothing more than advertisements of the author, who usually incorporates in his book letters and documents favorable to himself, while suppressing everything that might have an opposite effect.
How different in this regard' is the autobiography of Peter Kropotkin! How little space he devotes to speaking of himself and how thoroughly he deals with the conditions and environment of his time, how objective his descriptions of the persons he came in contact with.
Perhaps the readers of his 'Memoirs' could have formed their estimate of Kropotkin if he had limited himself only to facts and data. But how we should have missed his objective characterization of persons, environment, and events! The very brevity with which Kropotkin speaks of himself, the warmth and deep understanding with which he treats everything outside his personal 'I,' are the features which in his 'Memoirs' produce the same charm upon his readers as the most beautiful passages of his scientific works. The theoretical exposition of his views on economic and social questions and his personal reminiscenses complement each other in the happiest manner.
Paris. CHRISTIAN CORNELISSEN.
* * *
KROPOTKIN makes us ready to compare our time with any period of history. We must go back generations, if not centuries indeed, before we can find anyone of his ability equally at home in science, literature, history and social philosophy. The quality of Kropotkin's revolutionism can only be gauged by his quality as a thinker and a man; no aspect of life and no aspect of the movement towards a new society has failed to interest him. But we cannot measure Kropotkin's value either by the breadth of his revolutionism or by his contributions to the life and thought of the time. He is great because his revolutionism inspires every word he writes and because at the same time his universal culture is the basis of all his revolutionism. This is why we have in Kropotkin beyond question the greatest living fore— runner of the civilization of the future.
WM. ENGLISH WALLING.
THE STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT
Lecture delivered by Peter Kropotkin before the Eugenics Congress held in London in August last.
PERMIT me to make a few remarks: one concerning the papers read by Professor Loria and Professor Kellogg, and another of a more general character concerning the purposes and the limitations of Eugenics.
First of all I must express my gratitude to Professor Loria and to Professor Kellogg for having widened the discussion about the great question which we all have at heart—the prevention of the deterioration and the improvement of the human race by maintaining in purity the common stock of inheritance of mankind.
Granting the possibility of artificial selection in the human race, Professor Loria asks: 'Upon which criterion are we going to make the selection ?' Here we touch upon the most substantial point of Eugenics and of this Congress. I came this morning with the intention of expressing my deep regret to see the narrow point of view from which Eugenics has been treated up till now, excluding from our discussions all this vast domain where Eugenics comes in contact with social hygiene. This exclusion has already produced an unfavorable impression upon a number of thinking men in this country, and I fear that this impression may be reflected upon science altogether. Happily enough the two papers I just mentioned came to widen the field of our discussions.
Before science is enabled to give us any advice as to the measures to be taken for the improvement of the human race, it has to cover first with its researches a very wide field. Instead of that we have been asked to discuss not the foundations of a science which has still to be worked out, but a number of practical measures, some of which are of a legislative character. Conclusions were already drawn from a science before its very elements had been established.
Thus we have been asked to sanction, after a very rapid examination, marriage certificates, Malthusianism, the notification of certain contagious diseases, and especially the sterilization of the individuals who may be considered as undesirables.
I do not lose sight of the words of our president, social hygiene; hut I maintain that by systematically avoiding considerations about the influence of surroundings upon the soundness of what is transmitted by heredity, the Congress conveys an entirely false idea of both Genetics and Eugenics. To use the word à la mode, it risks the 'sterilization' of its own discussions. In fact, such a separation between surroundings and inheritance is impossible, as we just saw from Professor Kellogg's paper, which has shown us how futile it is to proceed with Eugenic measures when such immensely powerful agencies, like war and poverty, are at work to counteract them.
Another point of importance is this. Science, that is, the sum total of scientific opinion, does not consider that all we have to do is to pay a compliment to that part of human nature which induces man to take the part of the weak ones, and then to act in the opposite direction. Charles Darwin knew that the birds which used to bring fish from a great distance to feed one of their blind fellows were also a part of Nature, and, as he told us in 'Descent of Man,' such facts of mutual support were the chief element for the preservation of the race; because, such facts of benevolence nurture the sociable instinct, and without that instinct not one single race could survive in the struggle for life against the hostile forces of Nature.
My time is short, so I take only one question out of those which we have discussed: Have we had any serious discussion of the Report of the American Breeders' Association, which advocated sterilization? Have we had any serious analysis of the vague statements of that Report about the physiological and mental effects of the sterilization of the feeble-minded and prisoners? Were any objections raised when this sterilization was represented as a powerful deterring means against certain sexual crimes?
In my opinion, Professor McDonnell was quite right when he made the remark that it was untimely to talk of such measures at the time when the criminologists themselves are coming to the conclusion that the criminal is 'a manufactured product,' a product of society itself. He stood on the firm ground of modern science. I have given in my book on Prisons some striking facts, taken from my own close observation of prison life from the inside, and I might produce still more striking facts to show how sexual aberrations, described by Krafft Ebing, are often the results of prison nurture, and how the germs of that sort of criminality, if they were present in the prisoner, were always aggravated by imprisonment.
But to create or aggravate this sort of perversion in our prisons, and then to punish it by the measures advocated at this Congress, is surely one of the greatest crimes. It kills all faith in justice, it destroys all sense of mutual obligation between society and the individual. It attacks the race solidarity—the best arm of the human race in its struggle for life.
Before granting to society the right of sterilization of persons affected by disease, the feeble-minded, the unsuccessful in life, the epileptics (by the way, the Russian writer you so much admire at this moment, Dostoyevsky, was an epileptic), is it not our holy duty carefully to study the social roots and causes of these diseases?
When children sleep to the age of twelve and fifteen in the same room as their parents, they will show the effects of early sexual awakenings with all its consequences. You cannot combat such widely spread effects by sterilization. Just now 100,000 children have been in need of food in consequence of a social conflict. Is it not the duty of Eugenics to study the effects of a prolonged privation of food upon the generation that was submitted to such a calamity?
Destroy the slums, build healthy dwellings, abolish that promiscuity between children and full-grown people, and be not afraid, as you often are now, of 'making Socialism'; remember that to pave the streets, to bring a supply of water to a city, is already what they call to 'make Socialism'; and you will have improved the germ plasm of the next generation much more than you might have done by any amount of sterilization.
And then, once these questions have been raised, don't you think that the question as to who are the unfit must necessarily come to the front? Who, indeed? The workers or the idlers? The women of the people, who suckle their children themselves, or the ladies who are unfit for maternity because they cannot perform all the duties of a mother? Those who produce degenerates in the slums, or those who produce degenerates in palaces?
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.
FREE COMMUNISM—Voluntary economic co-operation of all towards the needs of each. A social arrangement based on the principle: To each according to his needs; from each according to his ability.
DIRECT ACTION—Conscious Individual or collective effort to protest against, or remedy, social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers.To OUR COMRADES AND FRIENDS
COMRADES AND FRIENDS:
Next February MOTHER EARTH will close its seventh year of existence. I shall not burden you with a recital of what those years have meant to us—the struggle, anxiety and travail to keep the magazine above water. But I want you to know that if we did not fail or grow weary, it was largely due to your devotion and to our consciousness that MOTHER EARTH has endeared itself to you as much as to us. It ii with this certainty that we turn to you again, as we often have on previous occasions.
To begin the eighth year of our magazine, we must in crease our subscription by at least five hundred. To make this possible, we have decided to offer a premium with every new subscription or renewal. My book, 'Anarchism and Other Essays,' which, as you know, sells at $1.00, cloth, has been gotten out now in paper cover, and will be given as a premium with a year's subscription for the magazine.
Also, a copy of 'Prison Memoirs of An Anarchist,' by Alexander Berkman, will be sent to any one of you who will secure five NEW subscribers for the magazine.
This offer barely covers the cost of our publication; but we feel that an increase in subscribers means an increase in friends who represent in the struggle we are making, the only sustaining force.
Let us hear from you soon, dear friends. We need your cooperation.
DEAR COMRADES AND FRIENDS:First of all, let me express to you my warmest, heartiest thanks for all the kind words and thoughts you have addressed to me, and then to express through your pages the same heartiest thanks to all the comrades and friends who have sent me such warm and friendly letters and telegrams on the occasion of my seventieth birthday.
I need not tell you, nor could I word it on paper, how deeply I was touched by all these expressions of sympathy, and how I felt that 'something brotherly' which keeps us, Anarchists, united by a feeling far deeper than the mere sense of solidarity in a party; and I am sure that that feeling of brotherhood will have some day its effect, when history will call upon us to show what we are worth, and how far we can act in harmony for the reconstruction of Society upon a new basis of equality and freedom.
And then let me add that if all of us have contributed to some extent to the work of liberation of exploited mankind, it is because our ideas have been more or less the expression of the ideas that are germinating in the very depths of the masses of the people. The more I live, the more am I convinced that no truthful and useful social science, and no useful and truthful social action is possible, but the science which bases its conclusions, and the action which bases its acts, upon the thoughts and the aspirations of the masses. All sociological science and all social action which would not do that would remain sterile.
With full heart with you,
PETER KROPOTKIN.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
THE aftermath of the McNamara tragedy—the trial of the forty labor leaders, most of them members of the Bridge and Iron Workers' Union—closed its first act at Indianapolis. The defendants were charged by the Federal government with conspiracy to transport explosives from State to State, and thirty-three men were convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from one to seven years' imprisonment.
The second act is to follow. Meanwhile the cases have been appealed to the Supreme Court, and bail has been granted.
This is the juridical state of affairs. Much more important, however, than the legal farce is the social significance of the situation and the attitude of the workers and their organizations toward it.
There is no doubt that the masters, the Steel Trust and its branches of the Erectors and Manufacturers' Association, left no stone unturned to send the indicted labor leaders to prison. The accusations against them and the trial were designed to impress the workers with their servitude and to teach them subjection and humility on the pain of persecution and punishment. Plutocracy, manipulating the wires behind the throne of justice, pretended to be morally shocked at the terrible dynamite practices. But the real purpose of the trial was to give organized labor a knockout blow, to weaken and destroy the militant spirit of the toilers, by all the forces at the command of the masters.
On their part, the workers seem yet sadly lacking in conscious solidaric purpose. The men on trial in Indianapolis seemed to be isolated, to stand alone. It is true, the last convention of the A. F. L. passed a half-hearted resolution to the effect that the local bodies should give their support to the Indianapolis defendants. But in his yearly report Gompers declared that. the McNamaras were 'either criminally insane or insanely criminal— either condition due to imperfect education, incomplete education, or defective mentality.'
It may be that Gompers and his co-bureaucrats are much better educated: in their intercourse with the politicians of the Civic Federation they have been well trained—so well that they believe to have done their duty to labor by hiding behind respectability and masking themselves with legal virtue.
A great opportunity was lost to labor in the McNamara trial. A far greater one still at Indianapolis. If we had a mature labor movement in this country and strong characters within it—men with enthusiasm to stand up for their convictions, the trial at Indianapolis would have served to tear the mask off our rotten plutocratic society. Then the accused would have become the accusers. No matter whether guilty or innocent, in the legal sense: had the labor leaders grasped the opportunity to throw their thundering j'accuse in the face of the exploiters, they would have consciously made history and impressed their footsteps upon social progress, to the inspiration of the multitudes of oppressed. Had the men in Indianapolis dared defy the dragnet of capital, dared assert their manhood, they would have done a really great service to the cause of labor. Unfortuntely, when that cause is left to the mercy of 'legal talent' and legal trickery, its fate is pitiful.
However, our whole sympathy is with the convicted men, who are but the victims of our social rottenness and their own resultant lack of social consciousness. But we hope that the lesson of Indianapolis will not be lost. The struggle of labor against capital is daily assuming the scope of a larger consciousness and determined purpose. Capital, intrenched behind respectability and legality, is constantly forcing the workers into more open warfare. The masses are beginning to realize that in this war every weapon is justified that will prove effective in improving the miserable condition of the disinherited and ultimately emancipate the wage slave. Every strike is an incident in this warfare, involving violence. Labor is forced to protect its interests by fighting the masters with labor's strongest weapons.
In this spirit the trial at Indianapolis should have been conducted—a defy of the slave to his oppressor. And this spirit will gradually manifest itself in the daily more intensive struggle of labor, in the growing social consciousness of the wage slave determined to break his chains.
SINCE the Tsar issued, some years ago, his boastful peace-manifesto—to the great joy of superficial and noisy philanthropists—we have had almost continual war. This Christmas and the New Year found the various governments of Europe in such a murderous attitude, that a carnage of international proportions, carried on with the most modern machinery of wholesale bloodshed, seems to be imminent. Such a general war would involve from 12 to i5 millions of trained murderers in a great slaughter, compared with which the atrocities and bloodshed of the Balkan war would appear the merest child play.
So far general hostilities have been avoided. The experts and technicians of the great powers are absorbed in 'studying' the effect of modern weapons in the war against Turkey, Especial interest is manifested in the airships from which good Christians are speeding explosives upon the heathen Turks, and when this method of destroying whole armies will prove successful, what a great step forward will have been taken along the road of truly Christian civilization!
However, we need not despair of the ultimate triumph of humanity. The anti-militant spirit is growing throughout the civilized world, and the governments everywhere are forced to take it into account. The great generals and diplomats do not feel quite safe in their calculations; they are beginning to doubt the efficacy of their orders: some soldiers might happen to turn their guns the wrong way. Anti-militarist demonstrations are taking place in various countries. In France, for instance, the government has grown so fearful of this propaganda that it has resolved to suppress the organization of the public school teachers, because the latter are permeated with the anti-militarist spirit. The French Parliament stands aghast at the statistics showing that during the year i911 80,000 young men evaded military service, through desertion and other means. In many regiments there have been discovered anti-military conspiracies, and the Confédération Générale du Travail is preparing to declare a General Strike in case of war, which shall especially involve the industries most vital for the transportation and provisioning of troops.
It is quite safe to say that if a general European war is averted, it will not be due to the peace fakirs a la Carnegie, who deal in canon and armor plate, but to a great extent to the determined anti-military attitude of the international proletariat.
* * *
WITH considerable satisfaction the press reported recently that Judge Goff, of New York, broke all previous records by sentencing four men, at the same time, to die in the electric chair.
The murderers are done with; but murder remains: for murder is as closely interwoven with our social conditions as prostitution is with the morality of 'high society,' or as the innumerable fatal accidents on our railroads are connected with the greed for big profits.
* * *
AN army of 100,000 garment workers has risen in rebellion against starvation wages, Triangle fire traps, and limitless exploitation.
Such a strike, fought energetically and determinedly, without weak compromise or petitioning, can accomplish more within a few weeks than a generation of political juggling with alleged labor-protection laws.
* * *
IF our Comrade Peter Kropotkin ever doubted the value of his revolutionary activities, the wonderful spirit manifested at the various celebrations of his seventieth birthday would serve completely to dispel that doubt.
All over Europe and America the thoughtful workers, whether Anarchists or Socialists, gathered en masse to express their love and devotion to the man who, among all revolutionists, stands out as the most firm and uncompromising figure—Peter Kropotkin.
The most inspiring event was the meeting in New York, at Carnegie Hall, but there were numerous others, in Chicago, Boston, Brownsville, Toronto, London, Brussels, Paris, and other cities, all over the world. Everywhere the same enthusiasm, the same spontaneous outburst of love and appreciation for our Comrade. And that not only because Peter Kropotkin ranks high as a scientist, historian and man of letters, but because, above and beyond all that, Kropotkin is an Anarchist, a revolutionist. As such he will live in the minds and hearts of his comrades always.
A GROUP of young Jewish Anarchists, known as the Kropotkin Jubilee Committee, is fittingly commemorating the 70th birthday of Comrade Peter Kropotkin by the publication of a new edition of his complete works in the Jewish language. The first volume, 'The Memoirs of a Revolutionist,' has now appeared. The translation is very carefully done, and is faithful to the original. The price of the volume is 75c.
The Committee will also issue in the near future a de luxe edition of the same work, in 2 volumes, at $1.00. The profits will be used to publish the other works of Peter Kropotkin.
* * *
AMONG the speakers who addressed the Kropotkin celebration in London—in honor of our Comrade's 70th birthday—was also George Bernard Shaw. He was 'beginning to wonder,' he said, 'whether Kropotkin had not been right all these years,' and he and his friends all wrong.
Better late than never, George. Even a Fabian Socialist may be saved from the confusion of hopeless experimental politics and become a true revolutionist, provided he is sincere in his self-criticism. He need but make a bold attempt.
* * *
A CORRESPONDENT of the Social Democratic publications in America relates an interview with August Bebel, in which the latter expressed himself to the effect that the German workingmen are not ripe for a social change along Socialist lines.
Bebel was much more hopeful when his party did not yet count 4 million votes and when the Socialists in Germany had less than two dozen representatives in the Reichstag, instead of the 40 they have now. At that time he prophesied that the social revolution would take place in the year 1898.
Great success at the ballot box has evidently proved very disheartening. Bebel is now the leader of the strongest party in the Reichstag, and if he now declares that notwithstanding the four million Socialist votes the German workers are not ready for Socialism, such a statement is tantamount to a declaration of bankruptcy on the part of political Socialism.
This bankruptcy was inevitable. If for generations the workers are taught to believe that their emancipation can be brought about in Parliaments by casting a bit of paper on election day, by compromises and legislation, the result can be but one: the masses become more and more passive, lose initiative and the power of independent action, and are soon totally paralyzed.
* * *
WITH a single master stroke 'Comrade' Spargo annihilated sabotage. Sabotage must be severely repudiated-—said he—because it is an enemy to morality.
A profound thought! A little more serious investigation will yet enable Spargo to prove that sabotage is opposed to the commandments of Moses, handed to him directly by Jehovah, and that it is further also not in keeping with the dogmas of the only true apostolic Church, or of the Koran. Indeed, sabotage can not be even harmonized with the pious Sunday-school advice of young Rockefeller to the open-mouthed youngsters of the Y. M. C. A.
* * *
THE Suffragettes of England continue to practice direct action and sabotage. They are not to be so easily cajoled as our own Suffragists whose 'radicalism' finds complete expression in five o'clock teas, banquets, and meaningless parades.
Of course, there is no lack of moral indignation over the methods of the militant suffragettes. The editors of 'respectable' journalism literally froth at their bovine mouths. Nevertheless it is a fact that the British direct actionists have filled the government with wholesome respect, so that it does not dare to keep them long in prison. The governmental machinery of organized violence works nice and smooth only so long as the people remain patient in their subjection; but the moment they awaken to the realization of their own will and energy, the machinery goes wrong and begins to break down.
* * *
OUR request for gifts for the Mother Earth Bazaar met with a most generous response.
Friends from every part of the country made contributions and thereby proved that whatever our magazine may lack in numbers, it makes up for in the quality of its friends. With such splendid incentive Mother Earth will continue the struggle against all odds.
THE CASE OF EDWARD F. MYLIUS
THE United States began by declaring high treason against the King of England to be a patriotic virtue. His Majesty was voted a dangerous nuisance, and it often happened that loyalists who dared to hurrah for the King were beaten, tarred and feathered.
The young Republic, christened in the blood of the revolution, proclaimed to the whole world that it welcomed the persecuted, and that in America was 'planted the banner of universal tolerance and justice. A fairy tale, indeed beautiful.
But entrance into this fairy land is now barred by iron gates and inquisitions; nay, more; hundreds of officials nose about to determine the size of the immigrant's pocketbook and to weigh his opinions and morality in the scale of bureaucracy.
Into the hands of this inquisition has now fallen the Englishman, Edward F. Mylius. He is imprisoned at Ellis Island, and the immigration authorities have already twice decided to deport him. A protest against this idiotic decision has been forwarded to Washington.
The immigration authorities charge Mylius with being a common criminal, he having been punished in England by a year's imprisonment for an article he had supposedly written in the Liberator—the sheet published in Paris by the American, Edward Holden James, advocating an universal republic. The article in question described the present hen-pecked occupant of the British throne as a bigamist who had married a Miss Culme-Seymour in the Island of Malta, in 1890, afterwards deserting his legal wife in order to attach himself in wedlock to a woman contaminated with royal blood—the present Queen.
Our immigration authorities contend that a man who had so boldly cast aside respect for his' Majesty could find no asylum in the country that began its career by wiping monarchy off its map.
His Majesty and his government will be much moved to know that the United States government so willingly and ardently plays the role of bouncer for Great Britain, refusing to recognize a criticism of the King as a political offence and considering such acts crimes involving 'moral turpitude.'
Even the British court, before which Mylius was tried, did not prove such a monarchical lickspittle as our American immigration authorities. Meanwhile, however, the publisher of the Liberator has issued a statement to the effect that Mylius was not the author of the article in question, but that he was merely the English representative of the publication. Whence it follows, of course, that the charges of the American government against Mylius fall flat even if considered in a merely technical light.
The freedom of press in England, as in America, is evidently a very doubtful matter. In both countries it is quickly punctured, as soon as it is put to the test.
However, the story of the King's bigamy would not have had such evil consequences for Mylius and would have probably never become known at Ellis Island, had not a skunk from Scotland Yard rushed in to take a hand in the council of the nations. That worthy, whose odiferous name we are about to reveal, sent the following cable to the New York Police Department:
20 Aberdeen Place, Molde Wall, London.
December 9th, 1912.
There is a notorious Anarchist named E. F. Mylius coming over to the United States. He was formerly a Republican, and was sentenced for libelling His Majesty the King of England. Lately he is becoming an Anarchist, and I am especially engaged in watching his movements. He is always in company of the direct-actionists. One of his friends tells me he is going over to consult Emma Goldman. Probably he will sail from Havre on a French boat, and am assured before Christmas. I send you this warning at once, in order to prevent his landing. He always carries a loaded revolver, so I am told. I am sending this at once. When he is rejected a small remuneration will oblige.
Yours truly,A. E. EMMANUEL, Secret Police Agent.
This Judas letter is on file at the immigration offices of Ellis Island. No doubt, it is considered one of the valuable documents on the strength of which Mylius has been refused admission to the shores of this free country. For Mylius is indeed a man of evil intentions. Does not the detective himself say that a 'friend' told him that he believed that Mylius might visit Emma Goldman? This is enough to prove what a dangerous man Mylius is to this in-money-we-trust government.
But seriously, it indicates nameless stupidity and degradation of the lowest form that such a 'document' should at all be considered by the government; that it should even cause the detention and possible deportation of a man who comes to our shores in the hope of earn-ing a modest living. No government could stoop lower than to permit such a denunciatory letter to influence -- perhaps even to determine -- its actions and policy. The reference, at the close of the letter, to the 'small remuneration that will oblige' the Scotland Yard man, gives rise to the justified suspicion that the United States encourages and even rewards such dirty work. It would be highly interesting to learn more details of this side of the immigration situation; it might throw some light on the terrible misery of our immigrants.
Familiar with the character of government, we are not very much surprised at any atrocity it might commit. But the case of Edward Mylius typifies to systematic suppression of free speech and free press, and the tyrannical persecution of all radical thought, and we are therefore determined to exert every possible effort to fight the deportation of Edward F. Mylius
* * *
Upon learning of the detention of Mylius, the comrades of the Mother Earth group immediately took steps to call the case to the attention of the public, with a view of defeating the express purpose of the immigration authorities to deport Mylius. The matter involves considerable expense, and we urge every radical and liberty-loving man to contribute toward making our fight a suc-cess. Send contributions care of MOTHER EARTH.
To begin the eight year of our magazine, we must in-crease our subscription by at least fie hundred. To make this possible, we have decided to offer a premium with every new subscription or renewal. My book, 'Anarchism and Other Essays, ' which, as you know, sells at <&#36>1.00, cloth, hs been gotten out now in paper cover, and will be given as a premium with a year's subscription for the magazine.
E.G.
SYNDICALISM: ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE
By Emma Goldman.
IN view of the fact that the ideas embodied in Syndicalism have been practised by the workers for the last half century, even if without the background of social consciousness; that in this country five men had to pay with their lives because they advocated Syndicalist methods as the most effective in the struggle of labor against capital; and that, furthermore, Syndicalism has been consciously practised by the workers of France, Italy and Spain since 1895, it is rather amusing to witness some people in America and England now swooping down upon Syndicalism as a perfectly new and never before heard-of proposition.
It is astonishing how very naïve Americans are, how crude and immature in matters of international importance. For all his boasted practical aptitude, the average American is the very last to learn of the modern means and tactics employed in the great struggles of his day. Always he lags behind in ideas and methods that the European workers have for years past been applying with great success.
It may be contended, of course, that this is merely a sign of youth on the part of the American. And it is indeed beautiful to possess a young mind, fresh to receive and perceive. But unfortunately the American mind seems never to grow, to mature and crystallize its views.
Perhaps that is why an American revolutionist can at the same time be a politician. That is also the reason why leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World continue in the Socialist party, which is antagonistic to the principles as well as to the activities of the I. W. W. Also why a rigid Marxian may propose that the Anarchists work together with the faction that began its career by a most bitter and malicious persecution of one of the pioneers of Anarchism, Michael Bakunin. In short, to the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Just at present Syndicalism is the pastime of a great many Americans, so-called intellectuals. Not that they know anything about it, except that some great authorities — Sorel, Bergson and others — stand for it: because the American needs the seal of authority, or he would not accept an idea, no matter how true and valuable it might be.
Our bourgeois magazines are full of dissertations on Syndicalism. One of our most conservative colleges has even gone to the extent of publishing a work of one of its students on the subject, which has the approval of a professor. And all this, not because Syndicalism is a force and is being successfully practised by the workers of Europe, but because — as I said before — it has official authoritative sanction.
As if Syndicalism had been discovered by the philosophy of Bergson or the theoretic discourses of Sorel and Berth, and had not existed and lived among the workers long before these men wrote about it. The feature which distinguishes Syndicalism from most philosophies is that it represents the revolutionary philosophy of labor conceived and born in the actual struggle and experience of the workers themselves — not in universities, colleges, libraries, or in the brain of some scientists. The revolutionary philosophy of labor, that is the true and vital meaning of Syndicalism.
Already as far back as 1848 a large section of the workers realized the utter futility of political activity as a means of helping them in their economic struggle. At that time already the demand went forth for direct economic measures, as against the useless waste of energy along political lines. This was the case not only in France, but even prior to that in England, where Robert Owen, the true revolutionary Socialist, propagated similar ideas.
After years of agitation and experiment the idea was incorporated by the first convention of the Internationale in 1867, in the resolution that the economic emancipation of the workers must be the principal aim of all revolutionists, to which everything else is to be subordinated.
In fact, it was this determined radical stand which eventually brought about the split in the revolutionary movement'of that day, and its division into two factions: the one, under Marx and Engels, aiming at political conquest; the other, under Bakunin and the Latin workers, forging ahead along industrial and Syndicalist lines. The further development of those two wings is familiar to every thinking man and woman: the one has gradually centralized into a huge machine, with the sole purpose of conquering political power within the existing capitalist State; the other is becoming an ever more vital revolutionary factor, dreaded by the enemy as the greatest menace to its rule.
It was in the year i900, while a delegate to the Anarchist Congress in Paris, that I first came in contact with Syndicalism in operation. The Anarchist press had been discussing the subject for years prior to that; therefore we Anarchists knew something about Syndicalism. But those of us who lived in America had to content themselves with the theoretic side of it.
In 1900, however, I saw its effect upon labor in France: the strength, the enthusiasm and hope with which Syndicalism inspired the workers. It was also my good fortune to learn of the man who more than anyone else had directed Syndicalism into definite working channels, Fernand Pelloutier. Unfortunately, I could not meet this remarkable young man, as he was at that time already very ill with cancer. But wherever I went, with whomever I spoke, the love and devotion for Pelloutier was wonderful, all agreeing that it was he who had gathered the discontented forces in the French labor movement and imbued them with new life and a new purpose, that of Syndicalism.
On my return to America I immediately hegan to propagate Syndicalist ideas, especially Direct Action and the General Strike. But it was like talking to the Rocky Mountains — no understanding, even among the more radical elements, and complete indifference in labor ranks.
In 1907 I went as a delegate to the Anarchist Congress at Amsterdam and, while in Paris, met the most active Syndicalists in the Confédération Générate du Travail: Pouget, Delesalle, Monate, and many others. More than that, I had the opportunity to see Syndicalism in daily operation, in its most constructive and inspiring forms.
I allude to this, to indicate that my knowledge of Syndicalism does not come from Sorel, Bergson or Berth, but from actual contact with and observation of the tremendous work carried on by the workers of Paris within the ranks of the Confédération. It would require a volume to explain in detail what Syndicalism is doing for the French workers. In the American press you read only of its resistive methods, of strikes and sabotage, of the conflicts of labor with capital. These are no doubt very important matters, and yet the chief value of Syndicalism lies much deeper. It lies in the constructive and educational effect upon the life and thought of the masses.
The fundamental difference between Syndicalism and the old trade union methods is this: while the old trade unions, without exception, move within the wage system and capitalism, recognizing the latter as inevitable, Syndicalism repudiates and condemns present industrial arrangements as unjust and criminal, and holds out no hope to the worker for lasting results from this system.
Of course Syndicalism, like the old trade unions, fights for immediate gains, but it is not stupid enough to pretend that labor can expect humane conditions from inhuman economic arrangements in society. Thus it merely wrests from the enemy what it can force him to yield; on the whole, however, Syndicalism aims at, and concentrates its energies upon, the complete overthrow of the wage system. Indeed, Syndicalism goes further: it aims to liberate labor from every institution that has not for its object the free development of production for the benefit of all humanity. In short, the ultimate purpose of Syndicalism is to reconstruct society from its present centralized, authoritative and brutal state to one based upon the free, federated grouping of the workers along lines of economic and social liberty.
With this object in view, Syndicalism works in two directions: first, by undermining the existing institutions; secondly, by developing and educating the workers and cultivating their spirit of solidarity, to prepare them for a full, free life, when capitalism shall have been abolished.
Syndicalism is, in essence, the economic expression of Anarchism. That circumstance accounts for the presence of so many Anarchists in the Syndicalist movement. Like Anarchism, Syndicalism prepares the workers along direct economic lines, as conscious factors in the great struggles of to-day, as well as conscious factors in the task of reconstructing society along autonomous industrial lines, as against the paralyzing spirit of centralization with its bureaucratic machinery of corruption, inherent in all political parties.
Realizing that the diametrically opposed interests of capital and labor can never be reconciled, Syndicalism must needs repudiate the old rusticated, worn-out methods of trade unionism, and declare for an open war against the capitalist regime, as well as against every institution which to-day supports and protects capitalism,
As a logical sequence Syndicalism, in its daily warfare against capitalism, rejects the contract system, because it does not consider labor and capital equals, hence cannot consent to an agreement which the one has the power to break, while the other must submit to without redress.
For similar reasons Syndicalism rejects negotiations in labor disputes, because such a procedure serves only to give the enemy time to prepare his end of the fight, thus defeating the very object the workers set out to accomplish. Also, Syndicalism stands for spontaneity, both as a preserver of the fighting strength of labor and also because it takes the enemy unawares, hence compels him to a speedy settlement or causes him great loss.
Syndicalism objects to a large union treasury, because money is as corrupting an element in the ranks of labor as it is in those of capitalism. We in America know this to be only too true. If the labor movement in this country were not backed by such large funds, it would not be as conservative as it is, nor would the leaders be so readily corrupted. However, the main reason for the opposition of Syndicalism to large treasuries consists in the fact that they create class distinctions and jealousies within the ranks of labor, so detrimental to the spirit of solidarity. The worker whose organization has a large purse considers himself superior to his poorer brother, just as he regards himself better than the man who earns fifty cents less per day.
The chief ethical value of Syndicalism consists in the stress it lays upon the necessity of labor getting rid of the element of dissension, parasitism and corruption in its ranks, It seeks to cultivate devotion, solidarity and enthusiasm, which are far more essential and vital in the economic struggle than money.
As I have already stated, Syndicalism has grown out of the disappointment of the workers with politics and parliamentary methods. In the course of its development Syndicalism has learned to see in the State — with its mouthpiece, the representative system — one of the strongest supports of capitalism; just as it has learned that the army and the church are the chief pillars of the State. It is therefore that Syndicalism has turned its back upon parliamentarism and political machines, and has set its face toward the economic arena wherein alone gladiator Labor can meet his foe successfully. ,
Historic experience sustains the Syndicalists in their uncompromising opposition to parliamentarism. Many had entered political life and, unwilling to be corrupted by the atmosphere, withdrew from office, to devote themselves to the economic struggle — Proudhon, the Dutch revolutionist Nieuwenhuis, John Most and numerous others. While those who remained in the parliamentary quagmire ended by betraying their trust, without having gained anything for labor. But it is unnecessary to discuss here political history. Suffice to say that Syndicalists are anti-parlamentarians as a result of bitter experience.
Equally so has experience determined their anti-military attitude. Time and again has the army been used to shoot down strikers and to inculcate the sickening idea of patriotism, for the purpose of dividing the workers against themselves and helping the masters to the spoils. The inroads that Syndicalist agitation has made into the superstition of patriotism are evident from the dread of the ruling class for the loyalty of the army, and the rigid persecution of the anti-militarists. Naturally, for the ruling class realizes much better than the workers that when the soldiers will refuse to obey their superiors, the whole system of capitalism will be doomed.
Indeed, why should the workers sacrifice their children that the latter may be used to shoot their own parents? Therefore Syndicalism is not merely logical in its anti-military agitation; it is most practical and farreaching, inasmuch as it robs the enemy of his strongest weapon against labor.
(To be continued in the next issue.)
MANUEL PARDINAS
By Pedro Esteve.HE died without being able to explain the motives that induced him to suppress Canalejas. Those of us who have known him can, nevertheless, understand them.
Pardinas was an intelligent workingman, industrious, simple and kind. His life was full of suffering. He left his native town to seek mental expansion and comfort for the body, and wherever he went he found misery, ignorance and persecution. He was in Catalonia, in France, in Cuba, in North America, and, notwithstanding the fact that he was an expert painter and decorator, sober in the extreme — he drank absolutely no liquor and nourished himself solely with fruits and vegetables in small quantities — he was out of work for long periods and, consequently, suffered much hardship.
'Why live,' he said to me one day, 'if life is to be one long-continued suffering?' To toil and eat (when you are able), sleep restlessly, always thinking of the morrow and having to contemplate innumerable injustices without being able to prevent or remedy them. No pleasures, not even that of finding among your comrades in distress collaborators in the work of redemption!
'Life is attractive even when you suffer, knowing that your own labor will benefit our fellow creatures,' I replied.
'Sacrifice yourself for others! It isn't even an emulation, not even a consolation. Death is our only consolation.'
And notwithsanding, he dreamed only of finding work, in order to save sufficiently to go to fight in Mexico, and, while waiting for this anxiously desired moment to arrive, wherever there was a comrade, or a child of a comrade, sick, there he went to assist, to apply the curative methods called natural, and of which he was a fervent advocate.
Even now it seems to me I can see him giving baths to my children and constructing a sun parlor in the yard of the house in which he lived, in order to give them a sun-bath!
Pie discussed, reasoned, and above all, he had feeling.
I never saw him in a provocative mood, or loquacious, nor brutal. In preference to disputing, he preferred being silent. He was very studious. He spoke French, studied English, and read with fondness every book or periodical which fell into his hands and which he knew could illuminate him. He had a great predilection for astronomy.
He looked for the desired consolation in spiritualism, and- served as medium in spiritualistic seances; but the illusion could not satisfy him and he returned to ask of science that which science could not give him, because a few privileged ones had usurped the means of obtaining it: the full unfolding of his being. Study made him more wretched, because it made him glimpse a world of beauty, — which he knew was not within his reach ever to enjoy.
There appeared before him one day one who could have given him encouragement, who could have made life agreeable, even in the midst of great sufferings — a woman who liked him, who loved him, who knew how to instill in him an intense passion. But is was forbidden fruit, the enjoyment of which would have caused suffering to another man and to innocent, tender creatures, and, through fear of seeing these children suffer (he believed in the economic ideas of Malthus), he fled from the amorous incarnation.
What should he do? Life in Tampa was to him loathsome. He had little work and under very poor conditions. At last he obtained steady employment, and as he spent almost nothing for food and clothes — he went so far as to buy second-hand clothing in order not to reduce his modest stock-r-when he finished his job he had a hundred dollars in his pocket and thought of returning to old Europe, where, if the lack of necessities is felt the same as in America, or worse, there are at least more intellectual joys. There there are people who propagate, who agitate, who struggle for their redemption.
Perhaps he expected that by becoming absorbed in the whirlwind of life, he would return to life.
But it seems that there he not only encountered the dreaded spectre of unemployment, but also the persecution of the police, who would not let him rest day or night: who denounced him as a dangerous Anarchist to anyone who employed him and to the people with whom he resided, and followed him constantly and — drove him to be, in truth, really dangerous.
He was by nature sensitive and they assuredly overexcited his sensitiveness. They made life more loathsome to him, and death more desirable. Being in this state or condition, the deceit practised by Canalejas upon the railway employees may have created an intense impression upon him and he may have decided to tiie killing, and he did kill and then he committed suicide. Perhaps it was the only happy moment of his life! .
* * *
May these have been the motives that induced him to suppress Canalejas? He did not say so. Probably no one will ever know them: but those among us who have known him, who have been on intimate terms with him as a comrade, and who know how he thought, knew his feelings and how he acted, can permit themselves deductions of this nature.
Once again, he who would least have been suspected of a disposition to commit such an act, was the one to realize it. Another repetition of the case of Caserio, of Bresci, of nearly all the heroic paladins of the social vindication. His acquaintances, his friends perhaps, have been those most surprised at his act.
Of what use are the special laws promulgated to prevent such acts, the photographic galleries and the anthropometric departments? Of what use will it be to arrest hundreds of men who neither knew him, nor have ever heard the name of this destroyer of a tyrant previous to this attempt? At the utmost, to over-excite some other sensitive person.
Accomplices, inducers! Yes, there is one, an accomplice and an inducer at the same time, whom we want to decapitate — the present social régime.
A VOICE FROM SIBERIANew York, Dec. 23rd, 1912.
Mother Earth, 55 West 28th Street, City.
Dear Comrades: — The following pathetic letter was received by the Relief Society for the Political Exiles in Siberia, from an exile in Siberia whom they have helped considerably. The letter speaks for itself, and if you find it important, kindly print it in MOTHER EARTH.
'Tell Them. . . .'
Consumption is doing its work. The doctors assure me that I have only five or six months more to live, and it is possible that with great care and under the best conditions, I should survive a year, but it is ridiculous to speak of good conditions here.
There is a good deal to say about the life of the exiles, but not knowing in whose hands the letter may fall, I restrain from saying anything.
I do not know to what conclusions you have come, comrades, but I am a decided Anarchist. This word, I know, calls out a good deal of contempt, hatred and fear. I know it. But I do not intend to discuss this matter with you. I only ask you, comrades, to tell those who have come to the same conclusions with me, that I send them my greetings. Tell them. . . . Tell them that with the last piece of lung that I will be compelled to eject with blood, the last words that I will utter will be, 'Ave Socialis Revolution, salutant te morituri! (Long live the social revolution, on my way to meet death I salute you.)
Alexander Monsenko.
* * *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. DIRECT ACTION — Conscious individual or collective effort to protest against, or remedy, social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers.FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE*
By B. M.
IT is quite impossible to write of Nietzsche in a way that the reader should at once understand him and 'place' him. Very little is to be gleaned from the numerous volumes written about him. One must read him at first hand, get close to him, in order to gain admission into his castle — the castle of a thousand lights, with its noble domes and spires that rear their heads to the highest mountain peaks. He belongs to the thinkerpoets who are clarified by divination and intuition rather than by argumentation and explanation. His style is music; in the highest degree he combines the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit.
The systematic ones, the dry rationalists, consider him a wild-eyed philosopher run amuck, satanically bent upon the destruction of all institutionalized discipline and authority. He is the annihilator of all 'accepted verities' and traditions, especially to those who pride themselves on their respectability, piety, and ripeness of years. Nor can the representatives of various isms 'classify' him. To label his philosophy materialistic or idealistic does not help to understand Nietzsche. He had shot sharp arrows into, the camp of both the Socialists and the Anarchists. The former, especially, he abominated, considering them, like everything democratic, the last exponents of the Christian morality of charity and pity — a morality he heartily despised as the source of all the pettiness, cowardice and wretchedness of the man of today. In the last chapter of the 'Antichrist' (the XVI. volume of the complete edition) he sums up his judgment of Christianity as follows:
With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind it is the greatest of all conceivable corruptions; it has had the will to the last imaginable corruption. The Christian Church allowed nothing to escape from corruption; it converted every value into its opposite, every truth into a lie, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of soul. Let anyone dare speak to me of its humanitarian blessings! To abolish any sort of distress was opposed to its profoundest interest; its very existence depended on states of distress; it created states of distress in order to make itself, immortal. The cancer germ of sin for instance! The Church was the first to enrich mankind with this misery.
* The Macmillan Company, New York.
This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all walls — I have letters with which I can make even the blind see — I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too Petty. I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
The civilization of our day, permeated as it is by Christian morality, Nietzsche considered an instrument for the subjection and taming of man. It suppresses his nature-given instincts, and turns him — like the stable-life of domesticated animals — into a weak, tame and humble creature that trembles before its own shadow and is aghast at every boldness and adventure. Nietzsche wants man to reach the courageous hour when he shall ask himself:
What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self — complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!
The hour when ye say: 'What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!'
The hour when ye say: 'What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched complacency!'
The hour when ye say: What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervor and fuel. The just however are fervor and fuel!'
The hour when ye say: 'What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.'
It is not your sin — it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
Even the highest in this tame civilization are yet low. 'I serve, thou servest, we serve,' they say to each other, and over all rules the gold of the tradesman.
* * *
With pride Nietzsche called himself the 'first Immoralist.' But how beautifully he speaks of chastity!
Would that ye were perfect — at least as animals! But to animals belongeth innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice.
And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who incant to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell — to filth and lust of soul.
Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.
They laugh also at chastity and ask: 'What is chastity?'
Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and' not we unto it.
We offered that guest harbor and heart: now it dwelleth with us — let it stay as long as it will.
The relation of Christianity to erotic love Nietzsche appropriately characterized in the following aphorism: 'Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; certainly he did not die of it, but degenerated to vice.'
* * *
Nietzsche first attracted attention by his annihilating attack on David Strauss — the author of the 'Life of Jesus,' the 'Old and New Faith' — who was then considered a great apostle of enlightment. Nietzsche singled out Strauss as the typical representative of philistine culture, coining the characteristic term, Bildungsphilister, — descriptive of the intellectual plebeians in the realm of knowledge and taste, who are perfectly content in the sterile delusion that the Truth has already been found and all that is necessary is to introduce it, properly frocked and trained. This type of intellectual philistine Nietzsche confronts with the unfettered intelligence, the unconventional, solitary thinker, who is not to be met with on the beaten path, and who knows that the 'great men' were always in search of truth, but that it is not a thing to be captured and caged for all time.
Nietzsche's next labors dealt with a criticism of the study of history. The latter, he finds, is over-estimated. The present suffers from an over-consumption of historic education; it is a sort of mental luxury, an intellectual patchwork of variegated colors. It has blinded and stultified modern man, robbed him of character and personality, and turned him into a mere onlooker, without the power of initiative or strength — a sombre eunuch, a walking encyclopedia ornamented with the gilt index of objectivity. Such a one is a concrete abstraction, that boasts to understand everything, to consider everything objectively, to know the cause and origin of all things. He can be roused neither by hatred nor love, for is not everything as it is, because of Necessity? Indeed, the boasted education and culture of our day is not a thing of life, not a matter of real understanding: it merely treats of it. It can make philistines and scholars; but it cannot produce men, individuals that themselves make history, that defy history and so-called reality: men that care nought for 'thus it is', but strive with all the energy and strength of their will for 'Thus it shall be'.
At this period Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner are Nietzsche's masters. In the art of Wagner he finds the elements of the culture of the future; in the school of Schopenhauer men may mature to make that culture a reality. With these two masters we can learn to be unzeitgemäss, rise beyond the tendencies of our day, arm ourselves against our time. They possess the honesty that does not blink in the face of considerations: they have boldly exposed their breasts to the shafts of their time; they have gone into the wilderness and were unafraid to be alone; they have saved themselves from becoming-moral and intellectual, fossils, they refused to be molded into the form which the cultured people of today consider the only proper one. And thus they have set an example for the coming generations.
From Schopenhauer and Wagner Nietzsche draws a metaphysical philosophy that found expression in 'The Birth of Tragedy.'
* * *
A second period begins. The faith in Wagner is dying: the hero of his youth is looked upon with suspicion, as a Rattenfänger von Hameln, who with mystically sensual melodies tries again to decoy men to the Golgotha of the bleeding Saviour, to prostrate themselves with contrition. Nietzsche is filled with a great disgust. He feels as if he had cast the enthusiasm of his youth into the mire; like a man broken down with Severe illness he feels himself. But by degrees he recovers his health and is rejuvenated. Like a care-free wanderer he wends his way through all the regions of the mind, biding but a short while in any one place. And when he again appears in public, it is with a new book that mirrors his being from a new angle. He now speaks as one emerged from beneath a heavy weight, one who has risen from the darkness and entered into the light. 'Human all too Human' is in point of style and contents the forerunner of Zarathustra, the 'Geneology of Morals,' the philosophy of 'Beyond Good and Evil.' He choses the form of aphorism to express his bold thoughts, which now proclaim war against the philosophic systems and especially against metaphysics. All philosophic systems are fata morgana that mislead and dupe man; but the worst deceiver is metaphysics: it falsifies the text of nature and relegates the true meaning of life to the Hinterwelt — the world beyond.
This new Nietzsche is already the one that later speaks in Zarathustra:
I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they themselves, decayed and poisoned, of whom the earth is weary; so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfullest sin; and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.
To make peace between man and the earth, it is necessary to eradicate from the world the 'evil conscience.' For at all times there have been many who lived in evil without conscience, while many good men lack the feeling of a good conscience. An evil conscience is like a dog biting into a stone — it is stupidity. There is no radical difference between good and evil. Nature knows only relative differences, and Kant who wanted to establish the good by means of the categoric imperative, therefore became,' in philosophy, the great Chinaman of Koenigsberg. In opposition to the dogmas of morality, philosophy, and religion it must always be emphasized that everything is subject to question, and nothing is finite. 'A thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man's world.'
How often we believe that we have firm hold of a truth, and yet hold words merely! Beware of words, for every word is a prejudice.
Between 'Human All Too Human' and 'Thus spake Zarathustra' appeared 'The Dawn of Day'' and 'Joyful Wisdom.' The magic and beauty of early dew is in these works, so rich in thought about moral prejudices. To read them is to behold a man liberated from darkness, walking erect toward beautiful vistas of light. The sunshine of joy envelops him and glows serenely through life and death. He seeks the solitude that so few can bear today. Yet he does not run away from life like a nun that knows nought of it; rather does he, as a thinker, retire from the world, because he understands men. The solitude is the best abode for the wholesome, the free man, for the world is full of the petty and the revengeful who darken the sun and poison life.
To live like a bird that goes and comes at will and carries no label in its bill! This is the sesame that opens up all splendors of life: Live boldly and dare danger! Build your castle on the Vesuvius, sail your ship on the unexplored seas; love the habits of the moment, and regard everything with suspicion that tends to estrange you from yourself, that becomes rigid and rooted. The noble character is unreasonable, daring, reckless; it is the sign of a low nature always to keep in mind his advantage, never losing sight of the practical. The proud man purposely ignores the judgment of the world about him, be it good or bad. Indeed, he absolves men in advance for their gossip, past and future.
It is not noble to hide the wretchedness of soul beneath moral concepts, as miserable bodies are hidden by clothes. To clad the world with ethical significance is as senseless as to ascribe to the sun particular sex. Subjection to morality is not in itself moral: it may be caused by slavishness, hypocrisy, vanity, self-seeking, resignation. It is always the strong and evil spirits that lead the human mind forward. The development of moral concepts takes place through attacks upon the dominant, the established. The supreme instinct in man is the will to power; it is the demon in us that urges us forward. It is even the hidden spring of charity.
A clear exposition of his criticism of morality Nietzsche gives in 'Beyond Good and Evil,' and the 'Geneology of Morals.' He contrasts slave morality with that of the master. Slave morality and slave insurrection began with Judaism and Christianity, continued in the Reformation and the French Revolution, and threatens to culminate in Democracy, Socialism, and labor barracks. To slave morality Nietzsche opposes the man who is not content with the life of the herd in the valley. Long live the Superman, for the gods are dead — thus speaks Zarathustra, the godless. The Superman is not the goal; rather is he the bridge toward it. He is the one who overcomes the herd, the commonplace men held fast in the web of superstition, of petrified 'eternal truths,' like dead flies hanging on a spider thread. 'There, — look thither, my brethren! Do ye not see it, where the State ceaseth, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?'
In 'Zarathustra' the philosophy of Nietzsche reaches its clearest expression; it becomes flesh and blood in this great destroyer, pathfinder, and breaker of old images. It is a book that affects one like a fiery wine, like a revelation — an experience that abides thoughout one's life.
The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have recently for the first time been published in this country in a complete English edition. And though the editorial and translatorial interpretation is often awkward and incorrect, yet no one should fail to become acquainted with this inspiring philosopher. To know him will, in every case, redound to the enrichment of one's heart, mind, and taste. The edifice he reared towers to the heights.
* * *
IN APPRECIATION
The splendid Concert and Literary Evening given on October 25th by our indefatigable comrades of the Group 'Friends of Art and Education,' of Brownsville, N. Y., in honor of Comrade Berkman's Book, proved a great success in every respect. After deducting all the expenses of the big undertaking, the Group donated $35.00 towards the costs of the publication of 'Prison Memoirs.'
No less inspiring an event was the Banquet given by the 'Friends of Art and Education,' on November i6th, on which occasion revolutionists of various camps joined In expressing appreciation of the past life and recent literary achievement of Comrade Alexander Berkman.
FUNDS
OWING to other important matters, we have neglected to acknowledge receipts of money for various funds. We publish the donations now, at the same time thanking our friends for their ever ready and and solidaric support in behalf of the various needs of the movement.
GUSSIE WINN FUND.
N. Feingold, Boston. $1.00; L. Warner, Boston, $1.00; Italian Socialists, Waterbury, Conn., $3.65; Cronaca Sowersiva, $3.00; Nancy D. Pearmain, $5.00; Comrades of Springfield, Mass., per Cronaca Sowersiva, $14.50; Comrades of Frankfort, Ill., $2.50; G. Galeotti, Columbus, Kas., $10.00; R. N. Douglas, Postville, la., $1.00; Peter Perruchou, Smuggler, Colo., 50c.; Chas. Cavis, Detroit, $1.00; P. Secco, Cuba, Ill., $1.00; C. A. Miller, Moreno, Cal., $1.25; Mother Earth Readers, Vancouver, B. C, $2.00; per Freie Arbeiter Stimme, $6.00; F. Trandorfer, N. Y., $1.00; B. Kerr, Brooklyn, $5.00; Cronaca Sowersiva, $5.38; C. Gleeser, $2.00; Ben Capes, St. Louis, $2.00; Collection' E. G. Jewish Meeting, N. Y., $7.50; Collection E. G. English Meeting, N. Y., $28.00; H. E. Sonden, St Elmo, Ten., $1.00.
ALEXANDER ALDAMAS DEFENSE FUND.
11th Nov. Commemor. Meeting, N. Y., $24.07; Kropotkin Jubilee, Carnegie, Hall, N. Y., $50.00; E. G. Jewish Meeting, N. Y., $15.00; E. G. English Meeting, N. Y., $37.77; E. G. Chicago English Meetng, $8.33; E. G. Jewish Meeting, Chicago, $14.00; Pittsburgh E. G. Meetings, $20.30; New Castle E. G. Meeting, $7.i5; Aldamas Mass Meeting, N. Y., per A. B., $38.30; Friends of Art and Education, Brownsville, per A. B., $5.05; A. Schneaber, $5.00; turned over $17.00 ($12.00 sent by 'Three Friends' and $5.00 by a comrade — name illegible) sent to us for EttorGiovannitti fund, when the latter had been closed.
ALSO COLLECTED AND FORWARDED:
To Little Falls Strike Fund: Kropotkin Jubilee, Carnegie Hall, N. Y., $75.00; nth Nov. Anniversary, N. Y., $24.07. — To Prince Rupert, B. C, Strike Fund: 11th Nov. Annivers., N. Y., $24.07. — To Jay Fox Defence, Caminita Defence, Lumber Strike, La., $25.00 each from collection Kropotkin Jubilee, Carnegie Hall, New York.
To Jack Whyte, San Diego Prison, Cal.: Collected by A. B. at Textile Hall, Providence, R. I.: J. P. Reid, T. J. Powers, A. Casey, J. Lynch, J. J. Paterson, Ed Ayers, J. Cummings, R. Casey, P. Lecomte, A. Gaston, P. King, J. Martn, Alex. Berkman, C. Cross, B. Gannon, J. Midgley, N. Schwartz, $1.00 each; F. Miller, J. Shannon, each 50c. Mother Earth, N. Y., $2.00.
VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE PUBLICATION FUND.
(Received per H. Kelly)
S. Rosenblatt, Atlantic City, $4.00; Kopcinell, St. Louis, $5.00; Polsky, Coffeyville, Kas., $5.00; Otto Weik, Coiville, Wash., $2.00; L. Cowdy, Middland, Ark., 25c.
Statement of ownership, management, circulation, etc., of Mother Earth, published monthly at New York. Publisher, Emma Goldman, post-office address, 55 West 28th St.; Editor, Alexander Berkman, 55 West 28th St.; Business Manager, Dr. Ben L. Reitman, 55 West 28th St. Bondholders and securityholders — there are none.
(Signed) BEN L. REITMAN, M.D., Business Manager.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this i4th day of October, 1912.
(Signed) S. SONNENSCHEIM,
[seal.] Commissioner of Deeds, New York City.
(My commission expires January i7, 1913)
The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil $1.25
The Birth of Tragedy i.00
Case of Wagner; We Philologists, etc.; Nietzsche
contra Wagner i.25
The Dawn of Day i.75
Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays .... i.25
Ecce Homo (Nietzsche's Autobiography) .... 2.00
Genealogy of Morals. Poems i.25
The Joyful Wisdom i.60
Human, All Too Human. Part I i.60
Human, All-too-Human. Part II '. . i.75
On the Future of Our Educational Institutions;
and Homer and Classical Philology i.00
Thoughts Out of Season. Part I i.00
Same. Part II i.00
The Twilight of the Idols: The Antichrist .... i.75
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book of All and None 2.00
The Will to Power. Books I and II i.60
Same. Vol. II i.60
Various Essays and Fragments. Biography and
Criticism 2.00
The Gospel of Superman i.60
Postage, 15c. per volume.
Mother Earth Vol. VII. No. 12 (February, 1913). 395–396.
TO Our Friends
Whatever one’s individual estimate of Mother Earth, our readers will agree that it is a cry in the wilderness—a cry defiant or sad, triumphant or agonized, weak or lusty, but ever a cry, persistent, enduring.
There is something awesome about a cry in the wilderness, something compelling respect and admiration even from those who stand by, indifferent, and rousing love and helpfulness on the part of those whose souls echo the solitary cry.
The Mother Earth cry, at first quite solitary and uttered out of the fulness of one’s need, has touched a responsive chort in hundreds of hearts, and thus become stronger and more resonant, and hopefully of continuous growth.
With this confidence in our hearts we know that you will not only help us continue the work as in the past, but you will also aid us in broadening and widening its scope. We plan for the coming issues a number of articles of more than usual interest, among them the publication of Emma Goldman’s very instructive lectures on “The Victims of Morality,” “The Failure of Christianity,”, etc., as well as a series of reviews of the works of Dostoyevski, Hauptmann, Synge and other modern writers and dramatists. Furthermore, we have in view various essays dealing with the important questions of the labor movement—Syndicalism, Direct Action, Sabotage.
Our friends and readers who want to help us materialize these plans will considerably aid us by increasing the number of Mother Earth readers. Can we count on you, friends, to interest wider circles in our work and procure for the magazine new subscribers? Our offer of a premium of Emma Goldman’s work, Anarchism and Other Essays, paper cover, with every new subscription or renewal, holds good till April 1. Besides, our friends can help us directly by renewing their subscriptions in advance. With every 2-year renewal we offer, free, a copy of Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin; with a subscription for 3 years, a copy of Brieux’s Three Plays; while for every 5-year subscription the premium will be a copy of Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, by Alexander Berkman, together with a copy of Brieux’s Three Plays.
Let all our friends and readers who appreciate our efforts and value the work of the magazine be up and doing to aid our labors.
Observations and Comments
In March a new administration will take possession of the White House. The wearisome and annoying old tragi-comedy of disappointed expectations and hopes of the sovereign people—so familiar to the initiated in the political game—is to be repeated again. One may smile or cry over it, according to the mood, but we Anarchists have at least the consolation that we are not to be caught by any political snares.
Whatever the particular composition of a government, it may correctly be characterized as a gang of banditti that always scheme for their own aggrandizement. Whatever the régime, it represents the power and rule of the moneybags, and as such it is a full partner in the business, enjoying its share of the spoils. The service of Mammon is the chief business of politicians. To be a politician by profession means to be a professional deceiver of the people. As a rule such men are well-paid, conscious traitors to every cause of humanity, men who have thrown overboard every consideration of justice and fair play. Such things would prove a handicap in the career of a politician.
To afford the poor subjects some sort of cheap consolation, we are still investigating the trusts. Generally the proceeding only tends to increase their dividends.
The latest in this line is the Vice Trust. But why not tackle the Religion Trust? Surely it is the greatest corruptionist and grafter even among trusts. Its securities are held in heaven; its shares are founded on popular stupidity. Its products are superstition and hypocrisy. The payment of dividends in this Trust is arranged to fall due in the hereafter, so that it craftily relieves itself from all responsibility on earth.
Belief in legality is a part of the conventional lie. In New York there are at present quite a number of representatives of the law charged with corruption, graft and bribery. The lid of legality has been lifted just a wee bit, and already it is evident, even to the least intelligent, that everything underneath is rotten.
New York, as well as every other large city, is ruled by an army of grafters and corruptionists, whose power resides in the very fact that they are shielded by the protecting wing of legality, and who therefore may mask every outrage and depravity with the sign of the law.
This situation is not at all exceptional. It is the normal thing that is not to be altered by a few scapegoats being thrown behind the bars.
Notwithstanding all this the conventional lie of legality is by no means to be given up. They will continue to pretend to belief in it, because a society based on mutual deceit cannot afford to look the truth in the face; the grafters will continue to investigate the grafters with due solemnity.
We read in a certain Social Democratic paper that direct economic action may serve its purpose in the immediate, every-day struggle of the worker against his master, but that the final emancipation must inevitably be brought about through political action.
Peculiar logic! Direct economic action is the very reverse of political indirection. The latter begins big, with highflown phrases and promises, and ends with empty soap bubbles and compromises. Direct action, on the contrary, began with small, insignificant local strikes and is developing into a tremendous world movement of the cooperation of all workers for the final General Social Strike.
The field of the General Strike is so far-reaching that it embraces every function of social life. Its effects are of such vital importance that even the biggest and most important political activities cannot for a moment be compared with it. In its results the General Strike signifies the eradication of exploitation and injustice, and the triumph of a new society based on economic independence and social equality—voluntary communism.
The two birthdays of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_WilsonLincoln and Washington in the month of February recall to memory that Washington fought against the King of England, and that Lincoln was instrumental, even if half-heartedly, in the legal emancipation of the negro.
That should be sufficient to remove the names of both from the list of desirable citizens. Indeed, he who is against negro slavery may easily cause “disordered minds” to be inflamed against all other forms of bondage. And so far as a rebel against the English King is concerned, the case of Mylius clearly proves his undesirability, for have not the immigration authorities decided upon his deportation from this free Republic? There is no place in this land for those who do not believe in the sanctity of royal mummery.
During the Congressional debate regarding Filipino independence one of the representatives of the people in that august body thus voiced his principles of liberty:
“I am willing to grant the Filipino independence when they show themselves capable of sustaining a stable government.”
What “stable government” means the Filipinos have since learned through bitter experience. Governor-General Forbes has at his disposal from 12 to 14 million dollars annually for the expenditures of the Federal administration in the Philippines. Part of this sum is supposed to be devoted to alleviate the starvation of the natives. But from the Congressional debate it is manifest that nothing whatever is done in that direction. The money is being spent by the government of the islands in fabulous salaries for the officials, whose number constantly increases. The bureau chiefs are supplied with free automobiles, and the hundred and one official retainers reap a rich harvest from moneys appropriated for the supposed benefit of our dependency.
The treatment of the natives is in keeping with the character of the American bureaucracy. The Moros and other non-Christians are forbidden to be in possession of weapons. This ruling has naturally aroused much discontent, but the American constabulary and army are very drastic and “effective” in their measures, and according to the official report, there were 131 outlaws captured last year, of which number 76 were killed while “resisting arrest.”
Evidently the Federal government is doing its very best to establish “peace” in the islands and teach the natives the merits of “stable government.”
The strike arbitration laws of New Zealand—so enthusiastically hailed by American reformers as an effective solution of labor troubles—is beginning to show results that fill its champions with anxiety and fear.
The miners’ union of Waihi, New Zealand, having declared a strike, gave notice to the Arbitration Board that it withdrew from its jurisdiction because the decisions of that body were always partial to the interests of the masters. But the New Zealand Arbitration Law provides that if a union whose membership is not below fifteen applies for arbitration of a labor dispute, the whole industry must be subject to the decision of the Board. Taking advantage of this legal trick, the mine owners organized a fake labor union, consisting of scabs and ruffians, and attempted to force the workers of the mine industry to accept the conditions dictated by the masters through the official Board of Arbitration.
The strikers organized large mass meetings to protest against this outrage. The authorities ordered the police to invade the audiences, for the purpose of terrorizing the miners. Numerous arrests were the result, and finally the hirelings of the masters resorted to even more brutal methods. They broke into the union headquarters and tried to drive the strikers from the city by force. A worker, named Frederick Evans, resisted the invasion of the ruffians and was at once set upon and killed. The Mayor and other high officials of the town took occasion to congratulate the murderers upon their bravery and efficiency in suppressing the strikers.
For a whole week the myrmidons of capital and government carried on the orgy of violence, and during that time 1,800 men and women were driven forcibly from the place, till Waihi now resembles a deserted village. The masters, aided by the authorities, have finally succeeded in establishing the peace of Warsaw in Waihi. The policeman who was directly responsible for the death of Evans—it having been proved that he struck the worker with an iron baton—was exonerated at the coroner’s inquest and lauded for having done his duty.
In discussion of these outrages the Sydney Worker says, very appropriately, that the struggle has been carried on by the masters in true American fashion:
This kind of thing is happening continually in America. Armies of strikebreakers are organized there. Weapons are put into their hands. They are primed for murder and outrage, and when they run amuck the Law obligingly turns its head another way, or with a brazen disregard of every principle of order aids and abets them in their criminal excesses.
America may surely be proud of the fact that other nations look upon it as the land where the “solution of the labor question” has progressed further than in any other country, by the use of violence and murder.
The trial of Alexander Aldamas has taken place. The calm, manly behavior of the defendant impressed even the Judge that here was a man who scorned to justify by legal trickery the act he was forced to commit in self-defence. He shot the men that attacked him with murderous purpose. The intention of the prosecution was to doom Aldamas—the “ignorant foreigner” on the strike picket line—to a long term of imprisonment, and with that sinister purpose seven separate indictments were brought against him. Some of our faint-hearted revolutionists even were willing to compromise with the enemy and offer a plea of guilty for Aldamas on condition that he be given a sentence of no more than five and no less than two and one-half years. But Aldamas himself is evidently made of sterner material. Perhaps he lacks the profundity of “philosophic Anarchists” and is innocent of the practical wisdom of “scientific Socialists.” He is only a common worker, who knows no better than to defend his life against the attack of an armed scab. But as we have said, the straightforward, manly attitude of this natural rebel—who scorned to deny his act of self-defence and would not be untrue to himself by pleading guilty to something he had a right to do—so impressed the Judge that all the charges against him were dismissed except one, upon which he received a sentence of one and one-half years to prison.
Pity the “practical” revolutionists who seem never to learn that the “impractical” attitude of the idealist is the only manly and courageous stand to take, and is in the long run also the most practical.
Our respects to Aldamas, the rebel. May he be as strong in body as he is in mind to withstand the nightmare of his imprisonment, and may he return to us the brave comrade we shall ever cherish in our hearts.
One would have to go far to find something more despicable than the police courts of New York. In these brothels of prostituted justice is now daily to be witnessed the sight of young men and women—garment workers—being railroaded to the workhouse for the terrible crime of picketing struck shops.
In a mail-order business to secure convictions in the interest of the masters the work could not be carried on with greater system and ease. If it be true that all guilt is avenged, then these legal representatives of injustice will surely receive their due in brimstone and fire.
The announcement of the official incorporation of the Rockefeller fund of a hundred million dollars for various charities gives food for thought concerning the origin of charity.
We may share the secret with our readers. The pest of charity is caused by a bacillus that is produced by compounding a hundred pounds of commercial greed with one ounce of religion or morality. Mix well and set aside to ferment till the stench is overpowering. Wait till the ounce of religion or morality has rotted through the hundred pounds of greed, and serve at a palatable moment.
This conception of charity was already well known as far back as the time of the apostle Peter, for did he not say, “Charity covers a multitude of sins”?
For almost a year the beautiful city of Denver, in the fragrant State of Colorado, boasted of having for its police commissioner a man whose heart flamed with reform. His name was Creel. But now we hear that he has suddenly been dismissed, and reform in the city of Denver has been adjourned sine die.
The reason for the dismissal seems to be that Creel attempted to revolutionize the city by his ultra-radical methods. He even went so far as to relieve the police of their nightsticks. What terrible things might not result from such drastic measures! Why, in the name of Heaven, in case of a strike what would the strikers be clubbed with? A policeman without a club is like unto a dog minus his tail—alas, how bereft of all dignity!
But the radicalism of Creel laid even more sacrilegious hands upon the very foundations of civilization. He introduced the resolution that the chiefs of the police bureaus should stop their practice of rolling around drunk in the gutters of the beautiful city of Denver.
That was really too much. The Mayor immediately ordered the dismissal of the Police Commissioner, and charges were filed against him as one unworthy to occupy the honorable office of chief policeman in a respectable burg.
With good reason. There is no room for an honest man in a police department. A reformer with brains should have higher ambitions than to try to purify the cesspool of graft and corruption.
It is reported that Shippy, former Chief of Police of Chicago, recently went insane, dying a pauper in a hospital, forsaken by everyone.
For the sake of our belief that there may be some good even in a chief of police, we would like to think that Shippy went insane because his conscience troubled him on account of his brutal murder of the boy Averbuch, whom he had killed in cold blood in 1907.
The Black Hundreds of Plutocracy and Government
By James Montgomery
What is the matter with the professors of law, the theoreticians of justice, the Blackstones of this country? It is high time they should invent a new theory to vindicate the existence of government, for the accumulating every-day events give the lie to their old theories of the necessity of government.
According to the official theory, government is considered almost infallible; governmental violence is justified, because necessary to preserve social peace, through the government impartially regulating the relations of the various social groups of antagonistic tendency and interest. The function of the government, it is argued, is to make life and property secure. Nations and individuals, we are told, place themselves under the protection of government that they may not be swirled into the chaos of disorder.
The critic of governmental invasion, brutality and oppression is always met with the same argument: human society is impossible without government; man’s evil passions would turn life into a pandemonium, barbarism would triumph and our glorious civilization would be doomed.
According to this theory government is the sole safe haven, the social Providence that we must rejoice in if we are not to perish in the wild struggle of all against all.
Only these reasons can justify the existence of government, say the most liberal theoreticians of the law. From this view-point the government is a sort of animal tamer whose mission it is to subdue the natural ferocity of human nature.
Through the centuries man has been persuaded into this belief, and where persuasion failed, intimidation came to the rescue, with the astonishing result that to-day even the democratic mind quite voluntarily—aye, proudly—gives his assent to the rule of government.
But here and there the veil is being torn. The truth—the Anarchist truth—is penetrating, to the effect that government, whatever its peculiar form, is not and cannot be impartial, but that it is always a straitjacket, the guillotine of the poor, in the hands of the rich.
Far from being the preserver of social peace, government is the very agency that creates disorder and strife in society. In every civilized society to-day it is the expression of the worst possible disorder. The State legalizes and organizes injustice, oppression and bribery, and labels it order. It passes laws for the benefit and aggrandizement of the rich, to facilitate the exploitation and subjection of the poor, and calls it legality.
It is the irony of political evolution that this true nature of government finds in the democratic State its frankest and most disgusting expression.
To illustrate the truth of the above it will suffice to pillory the hypocrisy and criminal attitude of the American Federal and State governments toward the private armies of thugs, provocateurs and plug-uglies of the plutocracy employed to stifle popular discontent and to massacre men, women and children crying for more bread.
These capitalist hirelings, the Swiss Guards and Black Hundreds of the masters, have within recent years become an established institution throughout the country. Striking workingmen are absolutely at their mercy, and their reign of terror appears to be perfectly legal. It is the most cynical form of lawlessness under the protection of the law and its guardians.
There is a Federal government in Washington; in Harrisburg, Springfield, Albany, etc., there are the State governments. But with them rule the Black Hundreds; indeed, they evidently stand above the Federal and State authorities, for there is not a single instance on record in the country where these murderous hordes—the Burns and Pinkerton agencies—are called to account for murder and treason, which would be the case if the workers were to resort to similar methods.
The State authorities, county and city officials entrusted with the preservation of peace and the administration of the law, close their eyes to the situation. They either pretend not to see the reign of terror on the part of the Black Hundreds, or they think the murders and brutal assaults of the capitalist janizaries perfectly justified.
The ordering of the militia to strike districts—customary under Presidents Cleveland and McKinley—has apparently become unpopular. Such a proceeding tends to create the odious impression that the government is the willing tool of capital, following the master’s call like a hound follows the hunter. It is apt to excite ill feeling against the authorities, which is not desirable during presidential elections.
This may be one of the reasons why the Black Hundreds are now given free reign, as a convenient substitute for the militia and the regulars, and therefore the question arises whether the pillars of the law have not come to regard these private thug armies as a most welcome addition to the strong arm of the State.
It would be of interest to have the opinion of our Blackstones in this matter. Should they deny the imputation it would be incomprehensible why the recruiting bureaus of the Black Hundreds are not surpressed as dens of organized murder and their wealthy patrons brought to account for treason and murder.
The McNamara’s are locked up in the San Quentin penitentiary; thirty-eight labor leaders have been doomed to heavy sentences for conspiring against capitalistic interests. The representatives of the law indulged on these occasions in solemn sermons on the majesty and supremacy of the law. But these sound like brutal mockery when they apply only to the under dog, while the masters may with impunity triumph in their lawlessness and brutality.
On the other hand, if the legal theoreticians argue that the Black Hundreds and their methods of drowning strikes in the blood of the workers are in perfect accord with law and its purposes, then what of the justification of the State as a necessary institution to preserve peace and keep society from sinking into murderous chaos? Is this role of government admitted in theory, as it already is in practice, then what good are laws, courts of justice and all the other paraphernalia of government?
If the greed of the money-changers and captains of industry may turn the land into a despotism of murder and bloodshed, and lord it over the people without let or hindrance—who may expect the workers to continue to respect the law and believe in its majesty and justice?
Whatever the theory of the doctors of law, actions speak louder than words. They stand on the side of capital, their sole interest to preserve the sanctity of property. Property is more valuable than life—and as the workers have no property they can expect no protection from the government.
That this logic prevails in the camp of the government, every-day events prove without the shadow of a doubt: Lawrence, Little Falls, and hundreds of similar instances, where the expense of supporting the Black Hundreds has been shifted by the masters to the shoulders of the community. It proves that the legal authorities not only approve of the crimes of the plutocratic Hessians, but that they are even determined to make the taxpayers foot the bill for the protection of the property of the masters. And the hundreds of strikers—men and women—who to-day are prisoners before the “bar of justice,” as victims of this warfare, are no less significant witnesses of the role of government as the tool of capital and of its attitude toward the masses as to “the canaille.”
Let us mention a few of these victims.
On December eleventh the Erie Railroad sent two barges of scabs to take the places of its striking coal workers at Edgewater, N. J. The scab boats were accompanied by armed deputies, hired by the company to terrorize the strikers to return to work under the old conditions.
Standing on the palisades, a number of strike pickets caught sight of the approaching barges. Quite naturally, they descended to the river bank to attempt, if possible, to persuade the scabs from taking the places of the strikers. The meeting of the pickets and scabs might have passed off peaceably, had not the hired myrmidons stood between them. These precipitated a clash, during which two deputies were killed and a number of others wounded.
Up to that moment the legally constituted authorities remained indifferent. They cared naught that the company deliberately dispatched armed assassins to shoot down the workers. And when such a horde of thugs descends upon a strike region, is it not to be expected, quite inevitably, that those assaulted will be roused to defend their lives and their families?
The representatives of the law evidently gave no thought to this very vital matter. But after two deputies lay shot on the ground—as a result of the circumstances which the authorities could have guarded against and prevented, they suddenly recollected that it is their duty to maintain law and order. And they did—in the usual approved manner. They instituted a reign of police terror in the strike district, swooped down upon the quarters of the strikers and raided two hundred of the workers’ homes, under the pretext of seeking the “leaders,” although every circumstance of the situation indicated that there had been no leaders, and that the clash had been spontaneous and unpremeditated on the part of the workers. Right and left the strikers were put under arrest, the police using the most arbitrary and despotic means to break the backbone of the strike. Twelve men were thrown into prison, and are now held without bail on the charge of murder in the first degree, while a number of others are indicted on minor charges. A monster trial is in preparation, that is once more to prove to the country that “the ignorant foreigners” are the worst menace to America, and that the most difficult problem of the government is to keep those criminal foreigners in subjection.
Criminals? Indeed, there are criminals in this case. The company that hires assassins for the express purpose of “beating the strikers into submission,” and the authorities that stand by, ignoring or even directly furthering this capitalist massacre—these are the criminals.
Government and capital constitute a conspiracy of such magnitude and menace against the general welfare, that compared with it all other conspiracies sink into insignificance.
There is no end to the victims of capitalist greed and oppression. The bandits of plutocracy do their work East as well as West. From Pittsburgh sounds again the cry of the martyred workers:
One man was shot dead, one was mortally wounded and twelve persons were injured in rioting which broke out late this afternoon at Rankin, Pa., six miles from Pittsburg, where 1,500 employees of the wire mill of the American Steel and Wire Company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation, are on strike. George Kenasco, the man killed, was not a striker, but a bystander who was watching the fighting. Two women and one child were severely clubbed. Among the more seriously injured were: Fritz Beck, shot in head, dying; Mrs. John Seblan, shot in left arm; Richard Parish, shot in left leg; Annie Leba, shot in abdomen; Michael Miles, aged six months, shot in left ear, and Charles Benson, shot in abdomen.
From further accounts it is to be seen that it was the private police of the company that precipitated the massacre. It is even claimed that the local sheriff, as the “legal representative of order,” sought to prevent the bloodshed, but without success. The privilege of the plutocracy to murder workers on its own hook proved more potent than the “lawful authority.”
The situation is clear, ominously clear. The workers become outlawed the moment they dare to defend their natural human rights. They are the prey of the capitalist hunter, at his absolute mercy—worse even than the beasts of the forest, who are at least permitted a short season of protection.
As Anarchists we welcome this tearing off of the governmental mask, and the manifest bankruptcy of the smug official theory of legal justice and right. At the same time, being of the people, we feel and suffer with them and long for the hour when the workers shall cease to be the hunted prey—when they shall turn upon their pursuers and rend them to pieces, and do away with pursuers and pursued.
The New Idol
By Friedrich Nietzsche
omewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my Brethren; here there are States.
A State? What is that? Well, open now your ears unto me, for now I will say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.
A State, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the State, am the people.”
It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them; thus they served life.
Destroyers are they who lay snares for many and call it a State; they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, there the State is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.
This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good and evil; this its neighbor understandeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs.
But the State lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.
False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one. False are even its bowels.
Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as the sign of the State. Verily, the will to death indicateth this sign. Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death!
Many too many are born; for the superfluous ones was the State devised.
See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I; it is I who am the regulating finger of God,” thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and the short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves.
Yea, it findeth you out, too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!
Heroes and honorable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences—the cold monster.
Everything will it give you if ye worship it, the new idol; thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eye.
It seeketh to allure by means of you the many-too-many. Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death horse jingling with the trappings of divine honors!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorified itself as life; verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!
The State, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad; the State, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad; the State, where the slow suicide of all is called “life.”
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becomes sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper.
They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money—these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive; it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne—and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster; badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites? Better break the windows and jump into the open air.
Do go out of the way of the bad odor! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous!
Do go out of the way of the bad odor. Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices!
Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odor of tranquil seas.
Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth little is so much the less possessed; blessed be moderate poverty.
There, where the State ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous; there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the State ceaseth—pray look thither, my brethren! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?
Thus spake Zarathustra!
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.
Help Save These Comrades!
By Theodor Johnson
o Friends of Freedom Everywhere:
This is the old, old story repeated once more. The workers, without any other means at their disposal than their own organization and solidarity, on one side, and the employers, armed with all the powers of government and money, on the other.
In 1908 the dock workers of Sweden either struck against intolerable working conditions or were locked out by the ship owners, I do not now remember which. As both the workers and the bosses were well organized and prepared for war, a terrible struggle soon followed. The solidarity of the Swedish workers being developed as perhaps nowhere else, it became practically impossible to obtain strike breakers to take the jobs of the men on strike. The result was that shipping and foreign commerce were almost paralyzed. The workers were jubilant.
But this could not continue. When the ship owners could not get strike breakers from within the country or from any of hte Scandinavian countries, they began to look for them elsewhere. They advertised and searched everywhere. Finally they succeeded in recruiting several hundred jobless and miserable creatures at some of the English seaports. These were shipped in a vessel called the Amalthea to the city of Malmo, one of the southernmost ports of Sweden.
This action aroused the community to such a degree that these strike breakers could not be put ashore for fear that violence would be used against them. Besides, no one in the city would have served them a meal or rented them a bunk over night. Consequently this gentry had to be kept on board a vessel in the harbor. During the day they worked at the docks under protection, and at night they were brought back to their floating quarters.
In the meantime the organized Swedish dock workers walked the streets, they and their families starving. It was under these circumstances that three young men, Nelson, Roseberg and Stern, not even members of the dock workers’ union, decided that something must be done to get these strike breakers away from the shores of Sweden.
And this is what they decided to do:
In the loneliness of the night, under cover darkness, these men, the oldest of whom was not yet twenty-four, equipped themselves with a dynamite bomb and in a small boat approached the Amalthea, which lay anchored in the harbor with its cargo of strike breakers, and placed the bomb on its deck, lit the fuse and departed. An explosion followed, killing one strike breaker, slightly injuring a few and badly frightening all.
The entire machinery of the law was now put into motion. Nelson and Roseberg were sentenced to die, and Stern to life imprisonment. Later Nelson and Roseberg were “pardoned,” and given life terms also.
According to their own statements the men did not intend to blow up the ship or to kill any of the strike breakers, but simply to frighten them so that they no longer would remain at work. Be that as it may, these men cannot by any fair-minded person as dangerous criminals who should be kept in the dungeons for life. The enlightened workers of Sweden at this time feel that these men have suffered enough and are demanding that they be released. Not only the workers, however, but also other humanitarian people have made this cause their own. Professor Knut Wicksell, a prominent scientist, has written a very interesting pamphlet on the subject in which he shows the injustice and brutality of any longer torturing them in the prison.
It will, however, require great pressure to get them released. The labor movement in Sweden is at this time in a state of stagnation, and a few enthusiastic and hopeful ones have to carry the whole burden. Help from all over the world is therefore needed to fight this case to a successful conclusion. Friends of liberty everywhere should, therefore, do their part to get these victims pardoned. For they cannot possibly be considered as anything else than victims of capitalistic law and oppression—and their own courage and manhood. Yet it will be necessary to ask that they be pardoned. But such petitioning does not, of course, imply an admission that they are criminals. It is, moreover, necessary for judicial reasons.
The prison conditions in Sweden are worse than perhaps anywhere else, with the exception of Russia. The Swedish Socialist August Palm, who has studied prison conditions in America, says that American prisons are veritable paradises compared with those of Sweden. Those who have been incarcerated in American prisons or studied the conditions there will then understand what it means to a young person to be doomed to spend the rest of his life in a Swedish penitentiary.
All help coming from America or elsewhere will be appreciated by the comrades in Sweden. Petitions are now being sent by a committee composed of members of the I. W. W. in Chicago to progressive unions and radical organizations all over America. These petitions should be signed and returned to the committee. Also those who wish to cooperate may send petitions and resolutions protesting against the continued incarceration of these men directly to Sweden, addressed to “Statsminister Karl Staff, Stockholm, Sweden.”
Making a Strike a Crime
The trial of the twenty defendants in the now famous Little Falls strike cases has been continued till March 1. Fourteen of the defendants have already been in jail since Oct. 31, and now must remain there several weeks more, the amount of bail required being prohibitive. Notwithstanding the fact that they are charged with comparatively minor offences, bonds for all would amount to a total of $10,000. Such a sum is altogether beyond the means of their fellow mill workers.
It will be remembered that forty-six persons were imprisoned following the attempt of Socialist speakers to address a throng of strikers in a public park here, and immediately after an effort on the part of the police to break up a parade of pickets which resulted in the wounding of two policemen and injuries to many strikers. Speakers were pulled down from their platforms while quoting from the Bible, from a speech by Abraham Lincoln, from the Declaration of Independence and from the Constitution of the United States.
Among those arrested and locked up in the Little Falls jail, since described as a “hell hole,” was Dr. George R. Lunn, the Socialist Mayor of Schenectady, N. Y., who, according to the information written on the police blotter at the time, was taken into custody “for speaking.” He will be tried of Feb. 17 for “inciting to riot.”
A few days afterward came the clash with the police, and in a raid on their headquarters strikers were arrested by wholesale and several of them were terribly beaten after being locked into their cells. They have since been confined in Herkimer jail.
Former strikers have since organized a defence committee and are making an appeal for funds with which to fight the cases. The issues, they point out, are the rights of free speech and peaceful assemblage and the right to strike. Contributions may be sent to Miss Matilda Rabinowitz, Secretary, Little Falls Defence Committee, Box 458, Little Falls, N. Y.
Intolerance in the Union
There are things which one cannot afford to have done for him by proxy. One of these is thinking.
To do away with the mental indolence, to develop the individual’s ability to think and act independently, should be the chief purpose of labor unions. An organization is composed of individuals, and where these are mere noughts, lacking independence of judgment and action, the organization will remain without the least significance to the welfare of the masses.
Unfortunately, of the great majority of the unions, it cannot be said that they appreciate the true purpose of their existence. In most of them concentration of official power, personal ambition and private interest, work toward the very opposite end, paralyzing individual initiative and independence, and turning the membership into a herd of submissive subjects.
Under such conditions it is inevitable that a spirit of petty tyranny and despotism should develop in the official world of the union, exposing the individuals of the rank and file—especially the more rebellious element—to the mercy of the all-powerful walking delegate or similar official.
Of late we have had occasion to hear a good deal of these goings on in the unions: of the growing tyranny of officialdom and the corresponding suppression of the members.
The communication below is one instance out of many similar letters we receive, and whatever the merits of this particular case, it is worth considering as characterizing the anti-social menace of such a spirit in the labor unions.
To the Editor of Mother Earth:
Dear Comrade: I beg you to permit me space in your worthy monthly to voice my protest against the intolerance and shameful tactics of my union. The reason why I am applying to you is because I was refused space in all the so-called radical New York daily and weekly papers. Hence I am compelled to apply to you, and I sincerely hope that I shall meet better fate here.
I am a member of the Capmakers’ Union, Local No. 1, and have been such for the past five years. Am now deprived of my membership for no other reason but that I dared to exercise my right of free speech.
On October 1st went into operation an agreement between the Capmakers’ Union and the bosses, providing that the machines be furnished by the manufacturers. Hitherto the workers had furnished their own machines.
As soon as the new agreement became operative the union officials ordered that all workers owning machines should give them in at the union headquarters, while all those working on borrowed machines should pay an assessment of five dollars. There was considerable anger among the workers when the rule was made known and much murmuring against it. Most of them, however, complied with it, knowing full well that they would lose their jobs and membership if they refused to comply.
My friend Diamond and I refused to give in to what we considered an unjust demand. But the union ordered every manufacturer to withhold five dollars from the wages of each slave he employs.
Such an insult we could no longer bear. We protested and tried to bring our case to the notice of the press, but without success. For this “crime” charges were brought against me in the union and I was kept out of work for six weeks. No chance was given me to defend myself at the Executive Board. I was absolutely denied the right to express my opinion about the case for fear I would influence the minds of the members.
The charges against me were so confused that during the six weeks that they kept me out of work they had to change them several times. After dragging out the case for six weeks and finding nothing against me, I was allowed to return to work.
Then I demanded a reason for my persecution, and pay for the time that elapsed whereupon I was excluded from the union on January 24 and again deprived of work, so that I am now absolutely unable to earn a living, not only in New York State, but all over the country. The only alternative given me is to scab against my brothers, which is a very unpleasant thing for a man with the least intelligence.
N.B. I wish to remark that I have nothing personally against any of the union officials. The same thing was done to a member whose wife was sick in the hospital, and he unable to pay his dues. He was turned out from the shop.
Yours truly,Syndicalism Its Theory and Practice(Conclusion)By Emma Goldman
Now, as to the methods employed by Syndicalism—Direct Action, Sabotage, and the General Strike.Direct Action.— Conscious individual or collective effort to protest against, or remedy, social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers. Sabotage has been decried as criminal, even by so-called revolutionary Socialists. Of course, if you believe that property, which excludes the producer from its use, is justifiable, then sabotage is indeed a crime. But unless a Socialist continues to be under the influence of our bourgeois morality—a morality which enables the few to monopolize the earth at the expense of the many—he cannot consistently maintain that capitalist property is inviolate. Sabotage undermines this form of private possession. Can it therefore be considered criminal? On the contrary, it is ethical in the best sense, since it helps society to get rid of its worst foe, the most detrimental factor of social life.
Sabotage is mainly concerned with obstructing, by every possible method, the regular process of production, thereby demonstrating the determination of the workers to give according to what they receive, and no more. For instance, at the time of the French railroad strike of 1910, perishable goods were sent in slow trains, or in an opposite direction from the one intended. Who but the most ordinary philistine will call that a crime? If the railway men themselves go hungry, and the “innocent” public has not enough feeling of solidarity to insist that these men should get enough to live on, the public has forfeited the sympathy of the strikers and must take the consequences.
Another form of sabotage consisted, during this strike, in placing heavy boxes on goods marked “Handle with care,” cut glass and china and precious wines. From the standpoint of the law this may have been a crime, but from the standpoint of common humanity it was a very sensible thing. The same is true of disarranging a loom in a weaving mill, or living up to the letter of the law with all its red tape, as the Italian railway men did, thereby causing confusion in the railway service. In other words, sabotage is merely a weapon of defense in the industrial warfare, which is the more effective, because it touches capitalism in its most vital spot, the pocket.
By the General Strike, Syndicalism means a stoppage of work, the cessation of labor. Nor need such a strike be postponed until all the workers of a particular place or country are ready for it. As has been pointed out by Pelloutier, Pouget, as well as others, and particularly by recent events in England, the General Strike may be started by one industry and exert a tremendous force. It is as if one man suddenly raised the cry “Stop the thief!” Immediately others will take up the cry, till the air rings with it. The General Strike, initiated by one determined organization, by one industry or by a small, conscious minority among the workers, is the industrial cry of “Stop the thief,” which is soon taken up by many other industries, spreading like wildfire in a very short time.
One of the objections of politicians to the General Strike is that the workers also would suffer for the necessaries of life. In the first place, the workers are past masters in going hungry; secondly, it is certain that a General Strike is surer of prompt settlement than an ordinary strike. Witness the transport and miner strikes in England: how quickly the lords of State and capital were forced to make peace. Besides, Syndicalism recognizes the right of the producers to the things which they have created; namely, the right of the workers to help themselves if the strike does not meet with speedy settlement.
Sorel maintains that the General Strike is an inspiration necessary for the people to give their life meaning, he is expressing a thought which the Anarchists have never tired of emphasizing. Yet I do not hold with Sorel that the General Strike is a “social myth,” that may never be realized. I think that the General Strike will become a fact the moment labor understands its full value—its destructive as well as constructive value, as indeed many workers all over the world are beginning to realize.
These ideas and methods of Syndicalism some may consider entirely negative, though they are far from it in their effect upon society to-day. But Syndicalism has also a directly positive aspect. In fact, much more time and effort is being devoted to that phase than to the others. Various forms of Syndicalist activity are designed to prepare the workers, even within present social and industrial conditions, for the life of a new and better society. To that end the masses are trained in the spirit of mutual aid and brotherhood, their initiative and self-reliance developed, and an esprit de corps maintained whose very soul is solidarity of purpose and the community of interests of the international proletariat.
Chief among these activities are the mutualitées, or mutual aid societies, established by the French socialists. Their object is, foremost, to secure work for unemployed members, and to further that spirit of mutual assistance which rests upon the consciousness of labor’s identity of interests throughout the world.
In his “The Labor Movement in France,” Mr. L. Levine states that during the year 1902 over 74,000 workers, out of a total of 99,000 applicants, were provided with work by these societies, without being compelled to submit to the extortion of the employment bureau sharks.
These latter are a source of the deepest degradation, as well as of most shameless exploitation, of the worker. Especially does it hold true of America, where the employment agencies are in many cases also masked detective agencies, supplying workers in need of employment to strike regions, under false promises of steady, remunerative employment.
The French Confédération had long realized the vicious rôle of employment agencies as leeches upon the jobless worker and nurseries of scabbery. By the threat of a General Strike the French syndicalists forced the government to abolish the employment bureau sharks, and the workers’ own mutualitées have almost entirely superseded them, to the great economic and moral advantage of labor.
Besides the mutualitées, the French Syndicalists have established other activities tending to weld labor in closer bonds of solidarity and mutual aid. Among these are the efforts to assist workingmen journeying from place to place. The practical as well as ethical value of such assistance is inestimable. It serves to instill the spirit of fellowship and gives a sense of security in the feeling of oneness with the large family of labor. This is one of the vital effects of the Syndicalist spirit in France and other Latin countries. What a tremendous need there is for just such efforts in this country! Can anyone doubt the significance of the consciousness of workingmen coming from Chicago, for instance, to New York, sure to find there among their comrades welcome lodging and food until they have secured employment? This form of activity is entirely foreign to the labor bodies of this country, and as a result the traveling workman in search of a job—the “blanket stiff”—is constantly at the mercy of the constable and policeman, a victim of the vagrancy laws, and the unfortunate material whence is recruited, through stress of necessity, the army of scabdom.
I have repeatedly witnessed, while at the headquarters of the Confédération, the cases of workingmen who came with their union cards from various parts of France, and even from other countries of Europe, and were supplied with meals and lodging, and encouraged by every evidence of brotherly spirit, and made to feel at home by their fellow workers of the Confédération. It is due, to a great extent, to these activities of the Syndicalists that the French government is forced to employ the army for strikebreaking, because few workers are willing to lend themselves for such service, thanks to the efforts and tactics of Syndicalism.
No less in importance than the mutual aid activities of the Syndicalists is the cooperation established by them between the city and the country, the factory worker and the peasant or farmer, the latter providing the workers with food supplies during strikes, or taking care of the strikers’ children. This form of practical solidarity has for the first time been tried in this country during the Lawrence strike, with inspiring results.
And all these Syndicalist activities are permeated with the spirit of educational work, carried on systematically by evening classes on all vital subjects treated from an unbiased, libertarian standpoint—not the adulterated “knowledge” with which the minds are stuffed in our public schools. The scope of the education is truly phenomenal, including sex hygiene, the care of women during pregnancy and confinement, the care of home and children, sanitation and general hygiene; in fact, every branch of human knowledge—science, history, art—receives thorough attention, together with the practical application in the established workingmen’s libraries, dispensaries, concerts and festivals, in which the greatest artists and literateurs of Paris consider it an honor to participate.
One of the most vital efforts of Syndicalism is to prepare the workers, now, for their rôle in a free society. Thus the Syndicalist organizations supply its members with textbooks on every trade and industry, of a characterthat is calculated to make the worker an adept in his chosen line, a master of his craft, for the purpose of familiarizing him with all the branches of his industry, so that when labor finally takes over production and distribution, the people will be fully prepared to manage successfully their own affairs.
A demonstration of the effectiveness of this educational campaign of Syndicalism is given by the railroad men of Italy, whose mastery of all the details of transportation is so great that they could offer to the Italian government to take over the railroads of the country and guarantee their operation with greater economy and fewer accidents than is at present time done by the government.
Their ability to carry on production has been strikingly proved by the Syndicalists, in connection with the glass blowers’ strike in Italy. There the strikers, instead of remaining idle during the progress of the strike, decided themselves to carry on the production of glass. The wonderful spirit of solidarity resulting from the Syndicalist propaganda enabled them to build a glass factory within an incredibly short time. An old building, rented for the purpose and which would have ordinarily required months to be put into proper condition, was turned into a glass factory within a few weeks, by the solidaric efforts of the strikers aided by their comrades who toiled with them after working hours. Then the strikers began operating the glass-blowing factory, and their cooperative plan of work and distribution during the strike has proved so satisfactory in every way that the experimental factory has been made permanent and a part of the glass-blowing industry in Italy is now in the hands of the cooperative organization of the workers.
This method of applied education not only trains the worker in his daily struggle, but serves also to equip him for the battle royal and the future, when he is to assume his place in society as an intelligent, conscious being and useful producer, once capitalism is abolished.
Nearly all leading Syndicalists agree with the Anarchists that a free society can exist only through voluntary association, and that its ultimate success will depend upon the intellectual and moral development of the workers who will supplant the wage system with a new social arrangement, based on solidarity and economic well-being for all. That is Syndicalism, in theory and practice.Prison Memoirs
n his Introduction to the Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, by Alexander Berkman, Mr. Hapgood says that he wishes “that everybody in the world would read this book,” and adds, with characteristic optimism, that “the general and careful reading of it would definitely add to true civilization.” Unquestionably many people will read it; but they will do so, I fear, because human beings relish the sufferings of their fellows and find fascination in watching the turns of pain. Of the broad nobility that breathes from it, of the lessons it should teach, how much will they see who spend their days in rehearsing ceremonies designed to blind themselves and in erecting institutions designed to blind their brothers?
If it serves to overcome in even a few people the prejudices they cherish it will do so not because of a careful reading or an open mind on their part, but because of the extraordinary literary power with which Mr. Berkman has presented his story. At the very beginning of the book one feels a movement, a rustle of spiritual and physical events that portends catastrophe. But in the great tragedies of literature and of life the essence of catastrophe lies in the fact that the spirit of the hero, in the final isolation of his material defeat, rises the nobler, unconquered still. So here, after the climactic deed has been accomplished, the protagonist maintains his attitude through all the years of suffering, accepts the catastrophe as a challenge and overcomes it. If the author had been free to use his imagination only he could not have ordered the events to bring out more skilfully the spiritual significance of his deed.
These larger movements to which I have just referred, the movements of mind and emotion and spirit, are patterned with details of pathos and horror. Indeed, I know of few passages in literature more pathetic than that in which Mr. Berkman relates his meeting in jail with the Homestead striker. No one around has understood his motives; they have thought that he was concealing them or was crazy. But here at last is the man who can understand, one of the very men for whom the young Anarchist offered his life. So he explains to him. The striker says: “Some business misunderstanding, eh?”
Equally pathetic, though in a different way, are the incidents connected with the story of young Russell, whose character is the basis of some of the most beautiful passages in the book. Indeed, the characterization throughout is, if we judge from a literary view-point, the most remarkable thing about these remarkable Memoirs. No one who has met Russell, Wingie, Felipe, or the rest of the people portrayed will be likely to forget them. Something has been done to them that makes them more living than living beings; an imagination has touched them and bared them to our sight. I do not mean that they have been falsified by the author, or even added to; rather, that having been understood by that sort of an imagination that can put itself to the full in the places of other people, they are presented to us with such details as will convey the significance of their traits, the reality of their characters.
But the most interesting of all the characters is that of the author himself. In portraying it the author has used a method very different from that employed for the other characters. Instead of presenting outward detail, the details of the action, he emphasizes the motives, emotional and mental states, analyzes them, and lets what I have called outward detail fall in by way of illustration. Thus the other characters serve as a background to the deepest interest of the book, the reasons and motives of a human soul.
To follow out at length these reasons and motives is not the purpose of this review. I have merely sought to point out that here, from an Anarchist, is a book of rare power and beauty, majestic in its structure, filled with the truth of imagination and the truth of actuality, emphatic in its declarations and noble in its reach.
Emma Goldman's Tour
“The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft aglee,” but so far as it is possible to figure out at present, the lecture tour of Comrade Emma Goldman will take place as follows:
Cleveland, at Memorial Hall, 521 Superior Ave., N. W.
Subjects:•Saturday, February 22nd, 3 P. M. (Washington’s Birthday). Sex Sterilization of Criminals.•Sunday, February 23rd, 3 P. M. The Psychology of Anarchism. Sunday, February 23rd, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhumanity to Man.
Tickets and circulars to be obtained at the office of H. & N. Carr, Caxton Bldg.
Toledo, at Meredith Hall, corner Jefferson and Michigan.
Subjects:•Tuesday, February 25th, 8 P.M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.•Wednesday, February 26th, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhumanity to Man.
Advance tickets and circulars to be had at the hall.
Detroit, at Prismatic Hall, 140 First St. (between Howard and Lafayette Boulevard).
Subjects:•Thursday, February 27th, 8 P. M. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (A powerful portrayal of prison life, by Alexander Berkman).•Friday, February 28th, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhmanity to Man.
At Duffy Hall, 64 Grand River Avenue.•Sunday, March 2nd, 8 P. M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.
Tickets and circulars to be had from Mr. J. C. Beutler, Randolph Hotel.
Ann Arbor, at Woodmen’s Hall, Main and Washington Sts.
Subjects:•Saturday, March 1st, 3 P. M. Damaged Goods. (A powerful social play by Brieux, dealing with the peril of venereal disease.)•Saturday, March 1st, 8 P. M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.
Indianapolis, at Germania Hall, 37 S. Delaware St.
Subjects:•Tuesday, March 4th, 8 P. M. The Failure of Democracy.•Wednesday, March 5th, 8 P. M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.•Thursday, March 6th, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhumanity to Man.
Tickets and circulars, at Thos. F. Snyder’s, 77 N. New Jersey St.
St. Louis, at Majestic Hall, Beaumont and Morgan Sts., 2700 West.
Subjects:•Sunday, March 9th, 3 P. M. The Failure of Democracy.•Monday, March 10th, 8 P. M. Sex Sterilization of Criminals.•Tuesday, March 11th, 8 P. M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.>•Wednesday, March 12th, 8 P. M. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (A powerful portrayal of the horrors of prison life, by Alexander Berkman.)•Thursday, March 13th, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhumanity to Man.
Tickets and circulars at the hall.
Chicago, at Oakland Music Hall, 40th St. and Cottage Grove Ave.
Subjects:•Sunday, March 16th, 3 P. M. The Failure of Democracy.•Sunday, March 16th, 8 P. M. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (A powerful portrayal of the horrors of prison life, by Alexander Berkman.)•Monday, March 17th, 8 P. M. Sex Sterilization of Criminals.•Tuesday, March 18th, 8 P. M. Syndicalism—The Modern Menace to Capitalism.•Thursday, March 20th, 8 P. M. The Psychology of Anarchism•Friday, March 21st, 8 P. M. Woman’s Inhumanity to Man.
Tickets and circulars, at the office of Dr. J. H. Greer, 162 N. Dearborn St.
Admission, each lecture, 25 cents.
In St. Louis and Chicago, 15 and 25 cents.
Announcement of Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City and Denver lectures will appear in the March issue.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emma Goldman
will also give six afternoon talks, showing the educational and social value of
The Modern Drama
at Lexington Hotel
22nd Street and Michigan Boulevard.
This course will begin Monday, March 17th, 3 P. M., and continue daily until Saturday, March 22nd.
Price for the course, including one year’s subscription to Mother Earth (monthly Anarchist publication) $3.00.
A Bulletin which accompanied the magazine.
Vol. VIII. March, 1913 No. 1
ContentsTo Our Eighth Birthday 1Observations and Comments 3In Memoriam of John Most, Stephen Daniels 10As It Was In the Beginning, Hallett Abend 14The Troubles of Socialist Politicians, M. B. 15Victims of Morality, Emma Goldman 19Dialogue in Heaven, Harry Kemp 25Anarchist Activity 26Emma Goldman's Tour 29
Emma Goldman PublisherAlexander Berkman Editor
Office: 55 West 28th Street, New York CityTelephone, Madison Square 788Price, 10 cents per copy One Dollar per year
THE42nd ANNIVERSARYOF THEPARIS COMMUNEWILL BE CELEBRATED BYCONCERT AND SPEECHESFriday, March 21st, 1913, 8 P.M. ATTERRACE LYCEUM, 206 East Broadway, N. Y.ADMISSION, 15 CENTS
JUST OUT!SYNDICALISMThe Modern Menace to CapitalismByEMMA GOLDMAN
An instructive pamphlet dealing with the philosophy and tactics of the most vital and revolutionary tendency in the international labor movement.PRICE FIVE CENTS
Mother EarthMonthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and LiteraturePublished Every 15th of the MonthEMMA GOLDMAN. Proprietor. 55 West 28th Street, New York. N. Y.Entered as second class mater April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N.Y.under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879
Vol. VIII. March, 1913 No. 1
TO OUR EIGHTH BIRTHDAY
IT is often more difficult to destroy than to build. Socially, especially, does this hold true. Building the New upon the Old is ephemeral, confusing and often corrupting. The only true process of new building is through the destruction of the old. A most difficult task. It is comparatively easy to graft new ideas and opinions upon the surface of the existing—easy and as futile. But the true revaluation of dominant values necessitates the complete destruction of the latter: the total eradication of hoary tradition, prejudice and indolent acceptance that hold the average mind in the bondage of philistine satisfaction and apathy.
To destroy, to root up must be the main work of every pathfinder. To blaze the way into untrodden paths is his mission. Such destruction is in the truest sense the most constructive effort—and this is the work that has ever inspired MOTHER EARTH and those connected with it
And now that the magazine enters upon its eighth year, we are determined to continue unabated this constructive destruction. What the coming year may bring none can tell At best, the labor of the pathfinder is a thankless mission, full of struggle and hardship. We are not deceived in our possibilities. We know that a publication that has neither a political party to boost it, nor is in any other way subsidized, must needs find the road difficult to travel.
Nor are we conceited enough to believe that our magazine has always been at its best, always as insistent and determined in its march forward, as it could have been but for the lack of interest and cooperation of those who might have helped.
However, we begin the eighth year with renewed vigor and courage, with faith in the understanding and active interest of our growing numbers of comrades and friends, who seek new paths and burn behind them the bridges of an outlived past.
With their aid we shall strive to broaden the reach of the magazine for the coming year, and to increase its revolutionary and educational value. We are planning a series of articles of more than usual worth and interest, among themthe publication of the lectures delivered by Comrade Emma Goldman during the last tour: 'The Victims of Morality,' 'The Failure of Christianity,' 'The Danger of the Growing Power of the Church,' 'Art and Revolution,' 'Sex—the Great Element of Creative Work,' etc.
We also have in preparation a number of comprehensive reviews of the work of great writers and dramatists like Dostoyevsky, Hauptmann, Strindberg, Synge, and other moderns, as well as a series of essays dealing with the vital questions of the labor movement—Syndicalism, Direct Action, Sabotage.
Our friends and readers who want to help us materializethese plans will considerably aid us by increasing the number of MOTHER EARTH readers. Can we count on you, friends, to interest wider circles in our work and procure for the magazine new subscribers? Our offer of a premium of Emma Goldman's work, ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS, paper cover, with every new subscription or renewal, holds good till April 1. Besides, our friends can help us directly by renewing their subscriptions in advance. With every 2-year renewal we offer, free, a copy of CONQUEST OF BREAD, by Peter Kropotkin; with a subscription for 3 years, a copy of Brieux's THREE PLAYS; while for every5-year subscription the premium will be a copy of PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST, by Alexander Berkman, together with a copy of Brieux's THREE PLAYS.
We are confident that you who appreciate our efforts and value the work of MOTHER EARTH will not delay in aiding our labors.
Observations and Comments:
WHEN our heart is heavy and the mind skeptically whispers to us that tyranny is constantly finding new ways and more effective methods to further its purpose; that men are growing more slavish and weaker in their resistance to oppression, then aglance at the history of revolutions—those oases in the desert of man's humiliation—never fails to cheer and gladden our spirit.
We find there the assurance and certainty that theadvance toward social justice and liberty can never bechecked for long, and that the means and aims of realizing it are gaining in clarity and strength with every new uprising and revolt.
In old Rome the slaves, led by Spartacus, rose in rebellion seventy years before the Christian era. Badly armed and provisioned, a chaotic conglomerate from the whole realm, they yet triumphed over the trained legions of the Roman State, and the safety of Rome itself was threatened by their determined onslaughts. Unfortunately friction arose among the various tribes and nationalities, the difficult situation still further aggravated by the spies of Rome, who industriously sowed discord in the army of rebellion, finally to hand it over to the power of Rome, that employed the most barbaric methods to wipe out the uprising.
The Middle Ages witnessed the revolution flamethrough the various countries of Europe, under the guise of religious movements. But whatever their particular form, the common purpose of them all was the conquest of bread and liberty.
Similarly was this the aim of the French peasants in the jacquerie movement of the 14th century. They rebelled against the theft of their lands by the robberknights of the court and of the nobility, and took up arms against the chains of serfdom. They made common cause with the poorer classes of the city population, whom greedy taxation and usury stole the last crust from their very mouths. Thousands were sacrificed in this struggle, and it was only by means of the greatFrench Revolution that the peasant of France finally freed himself from the yoke of feudalism.
Bread and Freedom! Again it was the cry of the 100,000 British peasants who rose on Black heath Common, near London, under the leadership of Wat Tyler,setting the whole country round aflame with the fire of the insurrection, the rebels successfully attacking the capital of England and holding it in their possession forthree weeks. But the treachery of the king and his parliament in holding out empty promises to the rebels, and the murder of Wat Tyler by a courtier, broke down the rebellion.
Tremendous were the peasant uprisings a century laterin Germany, Austria, Holland, and Switzerland. The castles and estates of the nobles, without number, were sacked and burned, the red flag waving at the head of many a rebel army.
This time treachery came from the religious reformer, Martin Luther, who at first sided with the peasants, but later craftily made peace with the rulers and vehemently advocated the most cruel treatment of the rebels.
The power of the nobility was finally broken by the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, to which the Revolution of the American Colonies against England was the prelude. But the poor people of the large cities were already beginning to realize that it was not enough to abolish feudalism; that though the bourgeoisie fought to secure for itself political liberty, it was at the same time determined to continue the social and economic oppression of the masses by wage slavery and usury, even with greater intensity and more effectually than was the case under feudalism. Men like Marat, Hebert, and particularly Babeuf understood to some extent the situation. Babeuf headed a conspiracy, whose aim was to proclaim Communism. But the movement was not successful, and Babeuf, with a number of his comrades, was guillotined.
The tendencies of social revolution from then on manifested themselves with greater clarity and consciousness, in contrast with the mere political changes which in spite of all representation and franchise brought no radical improvement in the lot of the masses of labor. Social revolutionary tendencies came into strong relief in the June revolution of i848, but still more definitely in the Paris Commune, proclaimed by the people of the French capital on March 18th, 1871,—in memory of which event these lines are written.
The Commune was defeated two and a half months later by the united international reaction, that slaughtered 30,000 men and women, and imprisoned and banished 10,000 more.
The Commune was an heroic attempt toward a successful Social Revolution. But the social ideas of that time were not sufficiently strong to wipe away the oldpolitical traditions. Thus, for example, instead of taking effective revolutionary measures—providing for the needs of the people by throwing open the warehouseswhere food and other necessaries were stored; by expropriating and getting possession of the national treasury; by organizing production and distribution in co-operative leagues of the people—instead of all these absolutely vital measures, an election was ordered, which carried into power a number of politicians and weak compromisers, who would have remained quite insignificant if the revolution had been energetically carried to its logical conclusion. Such social measures would have inspired the people with confidence and courage; the rebellious proletariat would have realized that this time they were not to sacrifice their lives and shed theirblood in vain; that it was not to be a mere change of political constellations, but that it was in all truth a real Social Revolution.
These mistakes of the Paris Commune were fatal. But from them the revolution of the future, which is so fast gathering strength in Europe and America, will learn a valuable lesson. This brief review of the revolutions of the past justifies the hope that the coming Social Revolution will not content itself with superficialities: its first aim will be to secure bread for the people, and to deprive the State, Capital, and Private Property of the material means of existence.
THE leaders of the Garment Workers' Strike in New York seem to have taken the great military generals for their model. After the workers had heroically fought their long fight with the bosses, scabs, police, and the courts—a fight involving much privation for the strikers, numerous arrests, brutalities, and prison sentences—their leaders arose in their might and formed a 'peace' treaty with the manufacturers—over the heads of the strikers. They covered themselves with the laurels of victory, loudly mouthed about 'great triumph,' while their treacherous settlement secured nothing for the workers but sham concessions. The 'victory' consisted chiefly in the proviso that the main demands of the strikers should be turned over to an arbitration committee, composed of outsiders, priests, rabbis, and similar ilk. Full well the workers know the role of the arbitration fakes, the industrial cemetery where the demands and grievances of labor are quickly buried.
This disgraceful retreat was especially manipulated by Abe Cahan, editor of the Jewish Socialist daily, the Forward, aided by the official leaders of the strike, al-most all prominent Socialists. 'Garment Workers,' they vociferated, 'you are brave and heroic. Your brother workers throughout the land look with admiration upon your determination and courage. But heroism alone is not enough. Under the circumstances it is best for you to accept the terms as the most favorable that you can secure now. Therefore, return to work.'
Thus ran the hypocritical cant. Impotence was represented and glorified as strength. But the diplomats strove in vain. The workers rebelled and demonstratedagainst their treacherous leaders; they justly felt themselves betrayed, and were even on the point of lynching some of them. It would, perhaps, have gone hard with the Forward and its representatives, had they not sent in a hurried call for police protection.
A new strike movement has begun, which—it is earnestly to be hoped—will not end as disgracefully as the former. The workers will have to learn that they themselves must lead their struggles, and that the diplomats, politicals, and rabbis are not only superfluous in the labor movement, but that they are a most detrimental factor.
OF the twelve Italian coal handlers tried at Hackensack, N. J., for the alleged killing of a railroad detective, five were condemned to brutal prison terms, two being doomed to 15-30 years, two others to i0-30, and the fifth to 8-30 years in the penitentiary. The trial was brief, for the defendants had neither money nor influence. For this reason it was obvious from the very beginning that the accused workers had no chance whatever to present their case in a more or less favorable to them light. Only money and influence makes a good impression upon the justice of to-day.
In the Italian Chamber of Deputies a member severely attacked the railroading of the five coal workers to prison. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs declined to discuss the subject, on the ground that 'Italy is on friendly terms with the United States'!
Surely, plutocracy and governmental tyranny always make common cause internationally, when it is a question of terrorizing rebellious workers and keeping labor in subjection. But the time is coming when the solidarity of reaction will have to face the determined conscious solidarity of international labor.
IT would require long pages even merely to mention the numerous places and cities in the United States where there are taking place at present various struggles between labor and the hirelings of organized capital. In the coal district of West Virginia the plutocracy has even proclaimed martial law to drown the strike in blood, for the civil authorities are evidently not sufficiently drastic and murderously effective to suit the will of the mine owners. The prisons are filled with workers, among them the brave old fighter Mother Jones, all of whom are facing numerous charges of murder.
Murderers charge the workers with murder, and use the law for the purpose. Since many months the lords of capital have been slaughtering the miners of West Virginia, attacking their women, driving families from their homes, and hunting whole settlements into the mountain wilderness. The situation is daily approaching nearer to the point where the workers will have to rebel, whether they want it or not.
THE wise solons of Pennsylvania have taken much trouble legally to suppress the red flag, as a symbol of Anarchy.
They missed the mark. If misery and desperation will continue to grow as fast as they have in recent years, the coming storm, that may wipe the Pennsylvania and other legislatures off the earth, will flutter to the breeze the black flag.
PATERSON, the silk weaving centre of New Jersey, has again become the arena of police terror and stupidity that repeats itself there every time when theworkers declare a strike. Then Police Chief Bimson feels that the good name of his city is endangered, and that the masters look at him askance because he hasfailed, in spite of all his slavish obedience, to ukase strikes out of existence from this country, or at least from Paterson.
The fellow has now run amuck with his gang of uniformed thugs. He is trying his best to convince the manufacturers that he really deserves the honor of serving as their watchdog. He causes peaceful meetings to be broken up, the audiences brutally assaulted, the speakers and organizers thrown into jail, the pickets maliciously attacked and persecuted, and then proclaims, 'Look at all my best efforts to restore the good name of Paterson, whom the outside agitators seek to bring into disgrace!'
Paterson is indeed in disgrace—the shame that it is possible for such a brutal and ignorant man as Bimson to be in a position of importance instead of being driven from his post and city. But the stupid persecution of the strikers has not failed to do good in so far as it has served to unite all the employees of the silk weaving industry in Paterson, and to solidify their ranks in the determined struggle against the common enemy.
WHAT has so far transpired in connection with the new upheaval in Mexico bears all the earmarks of a treacherous military uprising rather than of a popular revolution. Generals, grafters, pretenders—adventurers eager for spoils, men without the least vestige of social purpose—have made an attempt to grasp the Presidency. They are straining every fiber to evict each other with the aid of their respective armies, to the very limit of the hereafter, to whose bourne they have already dispatched Madero in advance. Between them stand the Mexican people, serving as the target for all the warring camps, the duped target drunk with patriotic phrases which are even cheaper than powder.
The United States government is apparently inclined to favor that despot as the fittest ruler of Mexico who will most drastically establish peace with an iron hand in that country. Washington holds that General Huerta must be given time and opportunity to bring order out of the Mexican chaos. Verily a most fitting man—did he not initiate his career as President with treachery and murder? The Federal government echoes the opinion of Ambassador Wilson, the sponsor of Huerta. What if the latter has conspired for the overthrow of 'an established government, with which this country is in friendly relations?' Huerta is enthusiastically supported by the American 'interests,' eager for greater concessions than they were able to secure from the Madero regime. This financial species, whose loyal representative in Mexico is Ambassador Wilson, will favor for the Presidency of that country the most successful wholesale murderer who will offer them the greatest opportunity for unlimited exploitation.
But the real revolutionists of Mexico will not be deluded by any political chicanery and change. They will continue their brave and determined struggle for the social and economic emancipation of the oppressed people of Mexico, whatever the hue of the chameleon of State.
ONE of the first official acts of President Wilson was to congratulate the Tsar upon the tercentenary of the Romanov family as the beneficent rulers of all the Russians. Quite appropriately. The Chief of the plutocratic Cossacks extends the hand of brotherhood across the sea to the Chief of the royal Cossacks.
In connection with the tercentenary some radical and revolutionary papers expressed the hope that an amnesty for political prisoners would be issued, and that, among others, the beloved old Babushka ('little grandmother') would be returned from exile. Exhausted and ill, she drags out her last days in the misery of a Siberian exile's existence.
The reports of the amnesty so far do not justify the expectations. The Tsar seems to have ordered the liberation only of those prisoners who were convicted foroffences committed as officials in the government service. There is no indication that the amnesty is to include important revolutionists—prisoners.
It would be too optimistic to expect a real act of justice and humanity from the royal monster whose hands are red with the blood of the innocents slaughtered wholesale on Bloody Sunday.
Freedom of Criticism and Opinion
Emma Goldman
Under the 'Trading With the Enemy Act,' the Postmaster General has become the absolute dictator over the press. Not only is it impossible now for any publication with character to be circulated through the mails, but every other channel, such as express, freight, newstands, and even distribution has been stopped. As MOTHER EARTH will not comply with these regulations and will not appear in an emasculated form, it prefers to take a long needed rest until the world has regained its sanity.
The MOTHER EARTH BULLETIN has been decided upon largely as a means of keeping in touch with our friends and subscribers, and for the purpose of keeping them posted about our movements and activities.
DEDICATION
This is the wee Babe of Mother Earth. It was conceived during the greatest human crisis -born into a tragic, disintegrating world. To give it life, Mother Earth had to choose death, yet out of Death must come Life again. The Babe is frail of body, but it comes with a heritage of strength, determination and idealism to be worthy of her who gave it birth.
To bring a child into the world these days is almost an unpardonable luxury. But the child of Mother Earth comes to you for a share of the beautiful love and devotion you gave its mother. Assured of that, it will make a brave effort to Live and to Do. -E.G.
Apropos
Alexander Berkman
'Mother Earth' has been suppressed, but how strikingly its position and ideas have been vindicated!
In two particulars, especially, has our propaganda been justified by the events.
First, our insistence on free expression is the foundation of all progress. 'Mother Earth' was a voice in the wilderness when it first raised the cry for the imperative need of a determined and for free speech and free press. From the very beginning of our publication -now over ten years ago -and ever since we have persistently emphasized, over and over again, how imperative it was for all radicals to resist every encroachment upon the liberty of assembly and press, whoever the victim.
But as long as only Anarchist meetings were stopped, or Anarchist publications suppressed, no one cared much except the Anarchists. Yet repeatedly we warned the liberal elements at large that the most fundamental principle was at stake, and that the suppression of Anarchists was but the entering wedge.
Now the whole block is split, or almost so. Only the blind can fail to see that it is but a matter of weeks or days before the last critical word will be stilled by the hand that has gained practice as well as arrogant assurance through our lack of vigilance and co-operation in the past.
Nor is the evil temporary only. Some rules and laws may disappear with the war, but the tendencies no dominant, and the habits acquired, will persist long after their immediate stimuli have ceased to operate.
Similarly has the Anarchist opposition to forcible authority and centralization of power been vindicated by recent history.
The essence of authority is invasion, the impostion of a superior will -generally superior only in point of physical force. The menace of man-made authority is not in its potential abuse. That may be guarded against. The fundamental evil of authority is its use. The more paternal its character or the more humanistic its symbols and mottoes, the greater its danger. No slavery so deep-rooted and stable than the subtle hypnotism of Democracy's phraseology. It is mesmerizing to watch the girations of a balloon labelled 'Liberty.' The required optical intensity only too often lulls to forgetfulness even those vaguely conscious that the proudly soaring balloon holds nothing but gas -a child's toy with no substance.
The democratic authority of majority rule is the last pillar of tyranny. The last, but the strongest. It is at the base of this pillar that the Anarchist ax has been hewing. The autocracy of the minority is too patent an imposition to promise long life in modern days. The temple of Romanoff falls like a house of cards at the touch of a will-full Samson. But the despotism that is invisible because not personified, shears Samson of his passion and leaves him will-less.
Woe to the people where the citizen is a sovereign whose power is in the hands of his masters! It is a nation of willing slaves.
San Francisco's Sixth Victim
Emma Goldman
When Governor Stephens, of California, signed the requisition papers for Alexander Berkman (although he had solemnly promised a delegation of labor men and a body of women from the Civic League of San Francisco to give them a hearing before signing the papers), District Attorney Fickert rushed into print with the following statement: 'Weinberg's case will now be postponed and we will try Berkman at once; he is more important.'
Fickert reminds one of the milkmaid who, with the pail of milk balanced on her head, became so enthused over the prospective profits from it, that she began dancing with glee, and spilled the milk. Mr. Fickert, too, jumped with glee at the prospect of getting Berkman into his clutches. Had he not tried hard for a whole year to involve Alexander Berkman in the San Francisco frame-up? First, during the Billings trial; then again, during the farce of Tom Mooney's trial; finally, when Rena Mooney battled for her life. Each time District Attorney Fickert impressed it upon the jurors that Alexander Berkman was the principal villain in the play; each time this faithful servant of the Chamber of Commerce came nearer to the point where he felt sure of roping Berkman into his noose. And when the indictment was finally handed down, Fickert felt near his goal.
In his imagination he already saw Berkman tried, convicted, sentenced and executed. But lo and behold, down came the pail of milk with all of Fickert's calculations.
Having played fast and loose with his victims in San Francisco, Fickert could not imagine the difficulties that would confront him when he called for the indictment of Alexander Berkman. How was a man of Fickert's mentality to know Berkman's position among the workers of the East, and especially in New York City? How was he to know the love, esteem and devotion Berkman has gained during the twenty-seven years of his activity in behalf of the masses? Much less could Fickert realize Berkman's importance as an international figure in the revolutionary movement, and the protest and indignation his indictment would arouse!
Well, Mr. Fickert did not have to wait long. First of all came the enthusiastic response of the United Hebrew Trades and other radical organizations. The delegation that went to Albany to argue before Governor Whitman against the extradition of A.B., was a significant tribute to the man who had for twenty-seven years unreservedly given his ability and devotion to the cause of humanity. It certainly must have impressed the Governor or he would not have held up his signature to the extradition.
Then came President Wilson's order for a Federal investigation into the San Francisco frame-up, and right on its heels the glorious demonstration in Petrograd for Alexander Berkman. All this because of the indictment against a mere Anarchist! Who ever heard of such a thing? Fickert was frantic, but to save his face he wired Governor Whitman that Berkman's extradition 'would not be pressed for the present.' How magnanimous of the man who has all along used the vilest means to dispose of his victims!
Needless to say, we are not foolish enough to believe that Governor Whitman will not in the end sign Berkman's extradition. Nor do we bank too much on the outcome of the Federal Investigation. There is no doubt but that the Commission will have to brand as criminals the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco and its District Attorney. But what of this? Washington is not likely to declare war upon California because of the American lives endangered there and the frightfulness committed by District Attorney Fickert and his Huns. There are only two forces which will effectually put Fickert out of his criminal business: first, the continued protest in Russia; secondly, the solid front labor in this country must make. Already hundreds of organizations have come to the fore, morally and financially. But more is needed; we must awaken all of labor. Nothing must be left undone to stay the murderous hand ready to slay six innocent victims.
Thursday, October 11, Alexander Berkman could have walked out a free man; the legal extradition limit of thirty days had expired. The warden of the Tombs prison was not only ready but anxious to let Berkman go; he knew he had no legal power to hold him. But it takes a revolutionist to live up to his promise, even if made by his attorneys. So Alexander Berkman signed himself back into the Tombs prison for another thirty days. However, an attempt is now being made to get A.B. out on bail. He is entitled to it, especially in view of the fact that he is already under $25,000 bail on the Federal conviction.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of it all, District Attorney Fickert is likely to spend many sleepless nights and restless moons before he can get Alexander Berkman, and even if he does get him in the end, Fickert's troubles will only then begin. To set the background for that momentous event, we need the help of all our friends and all those who have been aroused to the scandal, the shame and the outrage of the San Francisco frame-up. For that purpose defense councils must be organized in every city, mass meetings arranged, and the whole case given the widest possible publicity for which, of course, a substantial campaign capital is indispensible. Radical labor and the friends of Alexander Berkman have already come to the rescue most generously, but we must ask for further aid, which we know the friends of Mother Earth will not withhold.
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws -it is in the soul; it can not be varied by status any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity can. -Walt Whitman.
To the Postmaster
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER
September 22, 1917
Third Assistant Postmaster General,Washington D.C.
Dear Sir:
Outside of the technical ground which you may have for removing the second class mail privileges of 'Mother Earth,' I suppose we are justified in assuming that the only real reason you have for denying us the use of these privileges is that 'Mother Earth' is an Anarchist magazine, Emma Goldman its publisher, and that 'Mother Earth' has always maintained a vigorous anti-war attitude. I don't suppose it is within the jurisdiction of your department, nor have you the time or the inclination, to argue on the merits of the war, or the meaning of free press. But I do hope that you have the time and the interest to get our point of view.
A certain section of the American people, whose numbers are growing daily (whether for good or for evil), are anxious, desirous and determined to read radical literature, such as is contained in our magazine. It is too late to change their taste for such reading matter. 'Mother Earth,' 'The Masses,' 'The Jeffersonian,' 'The Rebel,' 'The Free Press,' 'The International Socialist Review,' and other papers that the Government is attempting to suppress, have become the Bible for millions of people living in America. These magazines are not only the favorite literature of these citizens, but their gospel as well. They are determined to have them and, if I know anything about history, it looks to me as though they would get them one way or another.
You are aware, of course, that censorship of the press is not new -is more than one hundred years old. I think it is as old as the printing press. Rigid Germany, autocratic Russia, temperamental France and our favorite ally England, have suppressed thousands of publications, but they still exist in large numbers. The law of suppression may be formulated as follows: The more a government suppresses a paper that the people really want, the more it is read with reverance, and the more powerful the paper becomes in its influence in the community. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that suppressed publications were one of the largest factors in the recent Russian Social Revolution.
I trust you will realize the importance of this issue to our mighty Government. I know full well the Government's power and its ability to jail or hang anyone who attempts to thwart its desire. I simply wish to call your attention to an undisputed historical and psychological fact, and remind you that in Belgium, where the Iron Hand of Germany rules, the determined Belgians are getting out their own papers in spite of the Kaiser's censors. In Russia, prior to the revolution, there was a despotism and a censorship of publication such as the world never before witnessed, yet millions of copies of papers and leaflets found their way into the hands and hearts of the workers and soldiers. It is not news to you, I am sure, that even in the trenches of Europe suppressed papers are being published. Please don't think that we are attempting to intimidate or bluff you when we say that if you do not permit 'Mother Earth' and other publications to continue their mission in the open, someone will find a way of continuing the work and getting out the message of liberty to the American people. I suppose you are aware, through the newspapers or from the Secret Service Department, that dozens of underground presses have already been established, and with widespread education and the printing facilities which can be found in any city, hamlet and village in these great United States, there is every reason to believe that for each publication you suppress, underground presses will be established, and as fast as they are discovered and stopped, still others will take their place. For another great law of history reads: Thinking men and women who have a greievance or a message for the world will find a way to get their ideas to the people, and suppressing, jailing and hanging won't stop it. Five thousand years of history back this statement.
Does this mean that we want the right to be treasonable? No! We ask for our constitutionally guaranteed right to voice our grievances and to help build a world without tyranny, injustice and exploitation. Some of the radicals want to change the laws; others believe that governments are wrong, harmful and unnecessary, and that we can live and carry on production and distribution and do the right thing by our fellowmen and have a very beautiful world, without any laws or governments. Now we want to do propaganda in the open. We are willing to abide by the Constitution, provided that the authorities will obey the law and respect human rights, and that no judge or post office official will take it upon himself to decide what is or is not free press. In other words, if the Post Office really takes President Wilson seriously and wants to make the world safe for democracy, we are willing to cooperate, and I feel we will bring much intelligence and genuine interest for a democracy, such as Paine, Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution hoped for.
I understand that these are trying times, and the Government is in no mood to temporize with radicals and theorists. But unless America and the Post Office department, especially, respect the rights and needs of millions of her inhabitants who are feeling, thinking, struggling and desirous of maintaining constitutional democracy in a way which may be a little different from that desired by a small group of senators, legislators or officials -then America may have to pass through the experiences that we are now witnessing in Russia.
Yours very sincerely,BEN L. REITMAN.
LAW
The highest form of despotism, falsehood and violence is the establishment by some people of a law which must not be discussed by the other people and which must be accepted by them. -Tolstoy.
Russia and Elsewhere
A.B.
The Russian Revolution is now affording every journalistic ignoramus the fertile opportunity of displaying -at so much per line -the depth of his socio-political wisdom and the fullness of his historical erudition.
Not a newspaper or a magazine in America but that has compared the Russian upheaval with the French Revolution and learnedly pointed to the 'striking analogies' and drew the 'inevitable' conclusions of débacle with that Karma finality that but illy hid the smirk of bourgeois satisfaction.
Vain fools! As if their penny minds could even conceive of the primal cosmic forces that have broken the bondage of centuries and are about to change the very course of the whole gamut of human experience.
For Russia is not going through a mere revolution. Comparisons with historical analogies, the tracing of superficial evolutionary 'laws' are the veriest lilliputian efforts in the face of the titanic elements commanding untrammeled expression.
Never since the dawn of time has the world been pregnant with the mighty spirit that is now rocking Russia in the throes of a new birth -a new life, a new humanity, a new earth. It is the Messiah come, the Social Revolution.
The most tragic part of Russia's rebirth is the pity dished out to her by American editors. No doubt in many instances their ill-humored attitude merely cloaks the haunting fear that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' might indeed become a fact -and such things are terribly catching! What if the will of the proletariat should march across the borders of Russia and sweep the rest of the world in its compelling desire! Woe to all that's well established, parasites and all.
Hence the mad ravings against the Bolsheviki, the real pioneers of the Social Revolution. If journalistic assassination at long distance were effective, the Bolsheviki would all be dead by now. They are persistently misrepresented in the American press as the scum of the earth, criminals, Anarchists, a mere handful of malcontents who should be given the shortest shrift. It never enters the solid pate of the good American 'news'-eater to inquire how it is possible for a handful of malcontents to keep such a vast country like Russia 'in an uproar,' and to influence a nation of almost two hundred million population.
Informed people know that the Bolsheviki are the majority elements in both the Social Revolutionary and the Social Democratic parties. 'Bolshe,' in Russian, means 'more.' Hence, Bolsheviki -the majority. And though the Bolsheviki of the Social Revolutionists in various matters disagree with the Social Democratic Bolsheviki, yet the plain truth of the Russian situation is that the overwhelming majority of the Russian people, the industrial and agrarian population, stand solidly behind the Bolsheviki, the true revolutionists who will not permit the Revolution to be exploited into a victory of the bourgeoisie. That is the fundamental difference between the Social Revolution in Russia and the French Revolution. The past martyrdom of Russia shall not be used as a stepping stone to capitalist domination. Russia must be free -from industrial despotism no less than from the tyranny of Tsardom.
On December 10th, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide the fate of three men and one woman, who took an active stand against the war -Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer, Morris Becker and Emma Goldman.
By the first of the new year, unless a miracle happens and the judges of the Supreme Court can conquer the war hysteria with reason and justice, Emma Goldman will find herself back in the confines of the Jefferson City prison; Berkman will be behind the iron bars of the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, and Kramer and Becker will remain in that institution where they are at the present time. The sentence is two years and a fine of $10,000 and deportation to Russia in the cases of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Louis Kramer. The latter is also to serve one year in the Mercer County, N.J., Prison. The sentence of Morris Becker is twenty months in Atlanta.
Ordinarily a case taken to the highest judicial tribunal in the United States must wait at least a year before it is argued before that body. But now the newspaper clamor for immediate condemnation of everyone opposed to war is responsible for the anti-draft cases being among the first to be presented at the first session of the Federal Supreme Court.
Miracles happened frequently in earlier days, so the Bible tells us. But they occur very rarely in these times, and so we cannot imagine that the Supreme Court will declare the draft-law unconstitutional. Indeed, if that should happen the whole war policy would be shattered. We can only have a faint hope -and it is a very faint one -that the decision of the lower court in the anti-draft cases will be reversed on the grounds of error. And although there were enough errors in the trials, men are blind and afraid to see justice when they are stricken with the war mania.
But unfortunately for the human race, no matter how many publications the censors may suppress, or how many agitators and propagandists may be lynched, hanged or jailed, the struggle for Liberty will go on. And 'Mother Earth' activities will continue as far as possible. We need your assistance more than ever. So far the arrest and trial of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and the anti-draft cases, have already cost over $5,000. The printing of the briefs and minutes alone cost more than half of this amount. Our attorney, Harry Weinberger, has been working night and day, and has accomplished almost the impossible. If we are to make a favorable showing when the case comes up, December 10, we will have to have more funds for publicity and other expenses involved in the fight.
So great is the number of radicals in jail to-day that one almost has to offer an apology when he is at liberty. And although most of the cases of revolutionists in jail or undergoing trial for anti-war propaganda offer scant hope for victory on the side of justice and light, it is encouraging to know that in the case of Louis C. Fraina and Ralph Cheney one point of victory has at least been scored.
The two men were charged with conspiracy and with interfereing with the draft. Louis D. Boudin, attorney for the defendants was successful, however, in emphasizing to Judge Robert T. Ervin in the United States District Court that the indictment was false. Motion of the dismissal was made by Boudin on the ground that the section of the act refers to incitement, to insurrection or insubordination among those already in the armed forces of the government, and not one of those who attended the meeting on September 27, at the labor Temple, was in the Government's military service.
Long prison terms await these two comrades, nevertheless. They are still to be tried on the charge of conspiracy.
Shall 1887 Be Repeated?
It is nearly forty years since the Knights of Labor began their agitation for a national eight-hour day. Ridiculed at first, they next caused alarm among the employers, and this alarm soon developed into an active campaign of oppression and suppression.
The strike against the McCormick Harvester Co. was projected into the situation in the spring of 1886. Members of the Knights of Labor took an active part in the organization of the strikers and gave active support and counsel in their fight against what was then one of the greatest industrial concerns of the West.
Then came the Haymarket tragedy, the exact responsibility for which has not yet been placed. A bomb was thrown among a platoon of policemen which killed and wounded some of them. At once the cry was raised that the Knights of Labor was directly responsible for the affair, and a hunt was begun for the leaders. The charge was so flimsy and so absolutely without foundation that those in Chicago, who had been active in the councils of the strikers, thought there would be no difficulty in proving their innocence, and they walked boldly into the courts. But they reckoned without the power of blood money, as was proven on November 11, 1887.
At the time the veneration of the American people for judicial pronouncements was so great that, after the hanging of the so-called Anarchists on that fatal November day, the Knights of Labor rapidly declined in number and influence, and it has taken a generation for the workers of America to overcome the effects of that crime against them.
For twelve years the Industrial Workers of the World has carried a message of improved conditions on the jobs for all workers, of which the eight-hour day is but one of the demands. Ignored at first, then ridiculed, they soon caused alarm among the employing class, and this alarm has resulted in a campaign of oppression and suppression that is almost unbelievable in extent. It has been reliably reported that a campaign fund of several million dollars was subscribed by the employers to crush the I.W.W., and that amount of money can purchase oppression almost beyond belief.
The arrest of hundreds of members of the I.W.W., in all parts of the United States, and the cruel treatment that has been meted out to them can hardly be looked upon as disconnected events. They must be viewed, in the light of their similarity, and widely separated points, as parts of one comprehensive campaign that is directed with a definite purpose in view. Also the recent indictments against 166 members of the I.W.W. must be viewed in the same light.
At present there are nearly one hundred of those indicted who are under arrest, and the charges against them are so absolutely silly that many people are making light of the arrests. It is just this flimsy nature of the charges, and the perfect confidence of the accused in their innocence, that constitute the great danger in the present cases. We must take into consideration the power of the prosecution and the ferocity of those behind the prosecution. These cases must be tried by an aroused and enlightened public opinion.
If we are to prevent a repetition of the tragic crime of 1887, we must act vigorously and at once. It is not the charges that are placed against those who are indicted that constitute their menace, it is the gigantic slush fund that has been raised by the various employers' association throughout the country for the purpose of crushing all effective labor organization, that we must combat. And the way in which it must be met is by an aroused public sentiment. Organized labor dare not let the crime of 1887 be repeated. -Solidarity.
Send funds for the General Defense to I.W.W. Headquarters, 1001 West Madison Street, Chicago, Ill. And funds for The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Arturo Giovannitti, Carlo Tresca Defense, who are fighting extradition, to Helen Marot, 206 West 13th Street, New York City
In Milwaukee
Chicago, Ill., Oct. 14, 1917.
Dear Comrade:I am in receipt of your letter and am very glad to hear from you. Friend, talking about reaction these days is absolutely unnecessary, for we all know what's going on nearly every day in every city of this free America and land of democracy.
I think you are well acquainted with the happening in Milwaukee on the ninth of September. While our Italian comrades were coming out of their clubroom, walking toward their homes, on the corner of Bishop and Patters Avenues, they met a preacher by the name of A. Juliani, holding a revival meeting. He had organized a scheme, together with the policemen, to provoke trouble and land our comrades in jail. And he did. As soon as they were discovered the snake told those criminals, under policemen's uniform, that the Anarchists were coming. Nothing else -our comrades were attacked.
Of course they tried to defend themselves. You can imagine the result. Tony Fornasieri lived only a few minutes. August Maimelli died after five days' of agony, and Bortholo Testolini received a wound on one of his shoulders from the back. The others were all arrested -about twelve of them. While this was going on, one of the fanatic followers of the preacher tore the American flag and that made it harder for our comrades. I think you can conceive the struggle we are going through.
There is another big job on hand. The lawyer wants $3,000 to take up their defense, $1,500 before the trial and the remainder afterwards. To tell the truth I have lost faith even in the lawyer, for I have found out it is just as bad to trust him as it is to trust bankers, in fact the lawyers are nothing by blood-suckers.
Yours faithfully,SAM CASTAGNA
Remember
The war not only means that, among many others, the 'Mother Earth' Magazine has been silenced, but also that Emma Goldman has been gagged. That cut off one of the most important avenues of resources. Although it is almost a certainty that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman will have to return Jefferson and to Atlanta respectively, not for one minute must the fight lag. We must not for one instant lay down our arms and allow free speech to be utterly wiped out in the United States. Free press is practically in its grave, but the voice of Liberty must not be strangled. You, comrades, are the only ones who can win our rights to express our opinions and to blaze the trail toward a free society where men and women and children can live and love and be happy together, a world without war, without exploitation, without tyranny and hatred.
Although 'Mother Earth' has been suppressed, our activities will be continued and our new publication, 'Mother Earth' Bulletin, will appear every month and will contain important news vital to the movement, as well as a report of proceedings of the various trials in the draft propaganda. 'Mother Earth' Bulletin ought to have a large circulation. If your former subscription to 'Mother Earth' has run out, won't renew at once? If possible order some extra copies to give away. For $1.00 we will send you twenty copies.
If you want to be of genuine aid to us and to the struggle we are making, help us circulate our literature. We have just issued a new edition of Emma Goldman's 'Anarchism and Other Essays,' containing a biographical sketch of the author together with twelve propaganda lectures on Anarchism, labor, sex and other vital problems. The book sells for $1.00. We will send you six copies for $5.00.
In order to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the now famous Emma Goldman-Alexander Berkman draft case, we urge you to read their remarkable speeches made in court. We have issued 'Trial and Speeches' in a paper edition at 40 cents; three copies for $1.00. We also have a handsome leather bound edition for $1.00. These speeches will live long after their authors. You cannot afford to be without them.
Miracles Do Happen
Alexander Berkman has been released from the Tombs Prison without bail. On November 10th, the second thirty-day extradition period had expired. Again our friend had to go through the farce of signing himself back into the Tombs. It was even a more painful procedure than last month, in view of the fact that the motion for bail had been denied.
The group of faithful friends who had gathered in the court room on the morning of the 10th and who were given a chance to visit Alexander Berkman, with heavy hearts saw him go back to jail. Our gloom increased when we were told two days later that there was no legal ground for bail and that we had better make up our minds that Berkman must remain in the Tombs until he is sent back to Atlanta Prison.
Then on Tuesday, November 13th, came the marvelous news which was conveyed to our Attorney, Harry Weinberger, by the District Attorney of Albany representing California; District Attorney Fickert temporarily withdrew the request for the extradition of Alexander Berkman until the appeal in the anti-draft case is decided. Harry Weinberger immediately got on the job to get A.B. released. But the red tape of the law robbed our friend of another day. Finally, Wednesday, November 14th, at noon, Alexander Berkman walked out a free man.
What caused the miracle? Did District Attorney Fickert have a change of heart? Did he wake up to the realization that for the last eighteen months he had been engaged in a black crime against innocent human beings? Did he wish to make good by letting Berkman go free, to be followed by the release of the others? That would have indeed been a miracle of the kind that never happens.
No, Fickert is still on the job holding on to his victims who had the misfortune to fall into his clutches. But there is the Federal Commission looking into his crooked cards. There, too, is his recall staring him in the face. There is the big movement which sprung up into being to save Alexander Berkman from the fate of Mooney and the others.
Last, but not least, there is the fact that as a Federal prisoner, A.B. would not have been turned over to San Francisco so easily. Anyway, District Attorney Fickert after a heart-breaking struggle decided not to insist for the present on the extradition of his sixth victim.
Well, our Comrade is free -free to go about, free to visit his friends, free to enjoy the glorious weather we are having in New York now. But let no one be deceived as to the safety of Alexander Berkman. So long as Billings is languishing in Folsom prison with his last chance of a new trial denied, so long as the gallows is awaiting Mooney, and Rena is still in jail, so long as Weinberg is being put through the same hideous farce of a trial, and Nolan is to come next, A.B. is not safe. Our work, then, must not stop for one single moment. There is too much danger ahead.
How Wars Are Made
The loud little handful -as usual -will shout for the war. The pulpit will -wearily and cautiously -object -at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing, the speakers stoned from the platforms, and the free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -as earlier -but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation -pulpit and all -will take up the war-cry and shout itself hoarse and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.' -Mark Twain, in 'The Mysterious Stranger.'
The Boylsheviki Spirit and History
Some day the finger of history will point out the truth concerning the Boylsheviki of Russia and the tremendous significance of that movement. Nor need the time be long postponed, for the essential features of the Maximalist Revolution stand out in bold relief on the darkened horizon of Russia, all wilful and malicious press disfigurement notwithstanding.
A brief synopsis of recent Russian events may clear the view.
The dethronement of the Tsar and his clique came over night, and almost bloodlessly. The most powerful and feared autocrat of the world passed like a shadow, leaving hardly a trace of his existence. The régime of brutality and slavery had thoroughly undermined its own foundation, and the intensive revolutionary propaganda finally swept away the tottering pillars. A puff, and the whole structure was gone.
But the Constitutional Democrats, risen to power, had absolutely nothing to offer to the people. Representing the upper end middle business classes -the Russian bourgeoisie -the only raison d'être the cadets had, politically, was the protection of the interests of the landowners and commercial elements. Aside of paper constitutions and hollow 'reforms' they could afford no relief to long-suffering Russia. But the people, the great proletariat of field and factory, was clamoring for the fruit of the Tsar's fall. It demanded Land and Well-being. The Cadets could not serve two masters, as no one can. The political representatives of Russian capitalism, they could not satisfy the need of the masses. The Cadets had to go.
The Kerensky government realized the situation. It knew that the people must have something more concrete than 'Liberty' blazoned from the Winter Palace. Kerensky, the social revolutionist, began with a drastic measure -the famous Military Order No. 1, proclaiming the equality of soldiers and officers as common tovarishchi (comrades) of the Revolution. Differences in rank were virtually abolished, the soldier was not required to salute his officers, and the rank and file organized their own committees which chose officers for command. This endeared Kerensky to the army. It was the outward symbol of real Liberty to come, the first significant gesture of the Social Revolution. And Kerensky felt safe in the saddle.
But 'gestures' alone, however revolutionary and unique, could not long still the passionate hunger for Land and Well-being. Nor could the most eloquent speeches of Kerensky and Co. The soldier-peasant took him at his word, literally, with the peasant's splendid naivity. He had real liberty this time, he was told. Liberty meant to him Land, and by the hundred thousand soldiers dropped their guns, and went back, peaceful and happy peasants, to the land, their land at last.
'Why, indeed, continue to fight,' the soldier-peasant argued. 'It's the Tsar's war, and now we're rid of him and his brood. Let's go home, then.'
He did, almost two millions of them.
Kerensky faced a profound dilemma. The people -the city workers and the peasants -demanded the immediate solution of most vital problems: the redistribution of the land, the confiscation of royal, ducal, church, etc., property, and the arrangement of economic and industrial life according to the program of the Social Revolutionary Party, the program propagated by Kerensky for many years.
Gigantic as the task was, it was neither impossible nor impracticable. The bulk of the country expected it; nay, demanded it. The people were ready for it. It was a job for a strong man. But Kerensky, the Hamlet nature, vaccillated between the Social Revolution and the middle classes. He sought to compromise with the latter by inviting Cadets into his Cabinet, and ended by compromising the Revolution.
The Boylsheviki alone have the faith and the strength of actually putting the program of the Social Revolution into operation. All the revolutionary parties of Russia have preached it -the Social Democrats and the Social Revolutionists, the Bundists, Anarchists, Syndicalists and Internationalists. The Boylsheviki are of all these parties, though mainly of the Social Revolutionists and Social Democrats. Their practical program has been repeatedly stated in the writings and speeches of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and other Maximalists. They are clearly formulated in a pamphlet by Lenin, published some time ago, under the title 'Political Parties and the Problem of the Proletariat.'
Were the American correspondents in Russia not so densely ignorant of Russian conditions, not so superficial and bourgeois minded, the American press would not teem with the infamous lies and downright forgeries masquerading as 'Petrograd news.' There could be no more insidious poisoning of the public mind, and conscious falsification of history, than the persistent insinuation and even direct charge that Lenin is an agent of Prussia and the Boylsheviki movement the result of German propaganda. The 'special correspondents,' male and female, that set afloat and propagate these poison gases will be branded by true history as the usual type of mental prostitutes so prevalent in capitalist journalism.
In the work of Lenin referred to, the demands of the Maximalists -properly the Social Democratic Labor Party, were clearly set forth. They comprised:
(a) A democratic Republic managed by the Sovieti (Councils) of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies.
(b) Convocation of the Constitutional assembly at the earliest possible time.
(c) Opposition to all wars waged in the interests of international commerce and exploitation.
(d) Speedy general peace. No indemnities and no annexation. Abolition of all secret treaties. The peoples themselves, through chosen representatives, to hold conferences and make inter-nation agreements.
(e) Return of the land to the peasant population, according to need and actual working ability.
(f) Control of industries by the proletariat.
(g) The formation of an International in all countries for the complete abolition of all monarchies and capitallism, and the establishment of international brotherhood.
The Boylsheviki are now in power in Russia. It is to be expected, of course, that all the conservative and reactionary elements will combine against them. For the program and the will to do of the Boylsheviki threaten every vested interest, every established and prosperous wrong.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the Boylsheviki revolution, the raising of the Maximalist banner is itself the greatest and grandest event of these eventful days. The unbiased and clear-sighted future historian will hail it as the most significant phase of the Russian Revolution, the most inspiring moment of our whole civilization. It is rich with the promise of a true Social Revolution, the first joyous glimpse of which shall nevermore permit the people of Russia to bow to autocracy and capitalism.
Truly has Trotsky said that the Russian Revolution is continuous, permanent, till Liberty, Land and Well-being are in fact the heritage of the people.
ReflectionsThe New York Public recently published a very thoughtful essay by David Starr Jordan, on 'The Scheme of Pan-Germany.' The Pan-German League, made up of the Junker land-holding nobility, iron manufacturers, military leaders, some intellectuals, etc., Professor Jordan correctly characterizes as the chief promoter of the World War and the chief obstacle to World Peace. In the course of the article we meet this significant passage: 'The current of feeling against these 'murderers of the state' (to use the words of a German editor) rises higher and higher in Germany as throughout the civilized world. But only the Germans themselves can suppress Pan-Germanism.' (Italics are ours).
Ever since the war started, we -the Anarchist internationalists -have been arguing that democracy cannot be shot into people with bullets. We are glad that Professor Jordan, and many others with him, no doubt, have at last realized this. But only if the Germans themselves can suppress Pan-Germanism, Junkerism and autocracy, where, then, is the sense of continuing the war?
They say that war means misery and pauperization, heartaches and death. But certain statistics do not seem to substantiate this notion.
For instance, in the year preceding the beginning of the war, the Steel Trust had a clear profit of the comfortable sum of about $85,000,000. But that is a mere bagatelle compared with present 'earnings.' The first nine months of 1917 have netted the Steel Trust, over and above all expenditures, just $380,000,000.
The Steel Trust is only e pluribus unum. And surely no one but a maniac would expect the profiteers to kill the goose that lays such golden eggs. No, indeed; they are too good patriots to stand for such treasonable talk.
As we go to press, the news comes of the indictment against the Masses group. It was to be expected that the growing reaction would not stop with the mere suppression of radical publications, but that it will also reach out for the men and women who speak through the published medium. Were it not for this fact, we should feel deeply sorry to have been a contributory cause to the trouble of the Masses.
To speak a sympathetic work for Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman is now considered a crime. But, then, almost anything that shows independent thinking and kindly feeling is criminal in our days.
Frank Little, a crippled strike leader, taken out of bed in the dead of night and lynched by corporation gunmen in Utah, U.S.A.
President Wilson a few days later proclaims that America must crush barbarism in Prussia.
Dr. Bigelow kidnapped and whipped by vigilantes in Kentucky, U.S.A., for a speech he was about to deliver.
The President issues his Thanksgiving Proclamation, calling upon the people of America to be thankful for the privileges and liberties they enjoy.
Seventeen men -some of them members of the I.W.W. -beaten, tarred and feathered in Tulsa, Okla., and driven half-naked and bleeding into the brush.
Will Washington now issue another proclamation to carry the blessings of American civilization into Germany?
Two prisoners in the cell adjoining mine were having a heated argument.
'Bloody well you know,' the Britisher was shouting, 'there are things about England much superior to your country.'
'T' hell you say!' the Bowery boy retorted.
'You see,' the Britisher persisted, 'Britain is a monarchy, and you can shame the king into decency, but a democracy has no king and no one to shame.'
'Whatcher mean, you pudd'nhead?'
'You see, there is that hunger striker, Alice Paul, in jail in Washington. We in the monarchy didn't let them die. We turned them loose, and, guilty of arson, too, they were. But you people will let her croak, for nothing, too; just carried a banner. Get the point, m'boy?'
There was no reply. We could hear distinctly the muffled steps of the approaching guard.
Why does the superstition persist that we are ruled by majority will, in spite of all the facts to the contrary? To take an illustration of recent events:
Judge Hylan has been elected Mayor of New York City by about 250,000 voters. The population of the city is over five millions, but they will be ruled by a man who is the choice of only one-twentieth part of the inhabitants of New York. Is that majority rule?
Even if we consider only the voting population, then we will also find that the next mayor is not the choice of the majority. The total of ballots cast for Hillquit, Mitchel and Bennett was far greater than the vote in favor of Hylan.
Where, then, does 'majority rule' come in? It is a myth.
Samuel Gompers knows that a concerted attack is to be made upon his 'policies' at the Buffalo Convention of the American Federation of Labor. He knows and evidently fears it. His betrayal of the workers will be exposed, and his throne might be rudely shaken. But Sammy has learned something by his association with the military men on the War Board. Camouflage is a useful thing on the field of battle -why not also in the A.F. of L. Convention?
Saving thought! Let's get the President of the United States to address the delegates and furnish a fresh luster on the tarnished Labor Czar.
Free Speech
Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.
Let him duly realize the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself -that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency -is a trait of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes, and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may.
It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of the time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future, and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelesxsly let die. Not as adventitiousness, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter.
Knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world, knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at -well; if not -well also; though not so well. -Herbert Spencer.Chicago, 1887 -San Francisco, 1917
Read this short chapter on two tragic events in the American labor movement, and then consider whether there is any reason to maintain that real justice has made any headway in this country. Do this in memory of August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolf Fischer, George Engel, who died like heroes on the gallows on the 11th of November, 1887; and of Louis Lingg, who committed suicide in his cell shortly before he was to be led to his death. Also do not forget Tom Mooney, now in prison, under sentence of death, and Warren K. Billings, condemned to life imprisonment. The same sinister forces that demanded the blood of Parsons and his comrades are now at work also in San Francisco, demanding the blood of Tom and Rena Mooney, Weinberg, Billings, Nolan, and Berkman.
On May 4th, 1886, a meeting took place at the Haymarket in Chicago for the purpose of protesting against brutal police assaults upon striking workingmen and their meetings. The assembly was peaceful, and Mayor Harrison, after listening to several speakers, told Police Captain Bonfield to order his reserves to go home. Towards the close of the meeting, when Fielden was speaking, a force of about 180 policemen appeared on the scene in quick step and fighting formation. They made ready for attack, when suddenly a fiery something flew through the air, alighted amongst the police, and exploded. One policeman, E.J. Degan, was killed outright, seven died later, and about fifty received injuries. The few hundred people remaining on the square fled in all directions, pursued by the firing police.
The speakers of the meeting were arrested, except Albert Parsons, who had left Chicago. He presented himself to the court later, when the trial started and danger was near. A reign of white terror began. Labor papers were suppressed, printing plants demolished, spokesmen of the toilers imprisoned for no other reason than that they helped the workingmen to better their conditions. The big daily papers convicted the prisoners on the charge of murder before the trial had even begun.
Who threw the bomb no one knows to this day. The authorities of Chicago did not bother much about that. What they were after was the seizure, conviction and hanging of those labor agitators whom Big Business considered dangerous to its exploitation privileges. The Grand Jury on May 17th indicted August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, Adolph Fischer, Geo. Engel, Neebe, Schnaubelt, and Seliger for murder. Schnaubelt could not be found and Seliger turned informer against his former comrades. About 1,000 persons were examined for the jury, of which number not half a dozen belonged to the working class. Most of the prospective jurors declared they had a prejudice against anarchists, communists, and socialists; but according to Judge Gary, who presided, that was no cause to exclude them from the jury.
Later, in an affidavit included in a motion for a new trial, it was sworn that the official bailiff, Henry Rice, had said to well-known men in Chicago that 'he was managing the case and that he knew what he was about; that those fellows should hang as sure as hell, and that he was only summoning such men as jurors as would not be acceptable to the defendants.'
The most important witnesses for the State were Waller, Schrader and Seliger, all former comrades of the prisoners, now turned informers from fear of the gallows or hope of gain promised them by the police. The testimony of this trio was highly suspicious and very flimsy. The police had in some cases to admit payments of moneys to the witnesses. They contradicted each other in a compromising way, and disappointed even the prosecution by their hesitation and confusion. It was clear the State could not prove that the accused had instigated or advised or even known of the bomb throwing. But they had committed a crime that was in the eyes of the rich and influential people worse than bomb throwing. They had written and spoken against the tyranny of capital and State against exploitation and suppression. That was the real issue.
On the 20th of August the eight accused men were condemned, seven of them to die on the gallows, and Oscar Neebe to be sent to the penitentiary for fifteen years. The sentence against Schwab and Fielden was commuted to life imprisonment.
In the name of the law, murder had been committed. A few years after the crime had been consummated, the Chicago Herald, after investigation, published some interesting data. About three hundred leading American capitalists had met secretly to plan the destruction of Anarchy. They formed themselves into The Citizens' Association, and subscribed $100,000 in a short time. A like sum, it was stated, was guaranteed to the police and their agents every year, but some years later, about 1892, the payments stopped.
The wrongs and legal lynchings committed in this infamous trial against the Chicago Anarchists, the Governor of Illinois, John P. Altgelt, summed up and set forth when he made public his reasons for setting free Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe in the year 1893. In this document the mask was torn off the face of capitalistic justice, showing how pliable it is in the hands of those classes of society that accumulate power and wealth out of the labor and the misery of the masses.
If one changed the names, dates, and location one might just as well use the foregoing short account of the corrupt methods used in the Haymarket trial for the characterization of the shameful proceedings that have been carried on in the Preparedness Parade bomb case. But now the rich and influential people are better organized. Their organization in San Francisco is called the Chamber of Commerce. They did not start out with a measly $100,000 to lure on graft, bribery, and perjury. They were ready to sacrifice a whole $1,000,000 for that noble purpose. Also it may be said that the prosecution in the San Francisco cases excels the Grinnels and Bonfields of Chicago in the fine art of lying and conspiring to murder innocent workers. But these are only external dissimilarities. In principle both cases are alike. A bomb explosion, the perpetrator of which is not known, is made the excuse for murder charges against labor agitators obnoxious to Big Business, by using every form of deception and dastardly scheme to have them hanged.
But in Chicago these murderous schemes became known too late. The victims of a prostituted justice lay buried in their graves for years. It is different in San Francisco. There deception and corruption stare in the face of everyone who cares to look. The whole construction of the frame-up crumbles piece by piece, and Labor is aroused to the terrible conspiracy. The hope may be expressed that Tom and Rena Mooney, Billings and Weinberg, Nolan and Berkman may yet be torn out of the cluches of the legal murderers, to live and work with us for many years to come.
VOL.I. DECEMBER,1917 NEW YORK NO.3.
Eternal ValuesThe lights had gone out, and I lay on my iron cot. But I could not sleep. The words of the Indian lifer, my cellmate, kept ringing in my ears. 'Are those fool people worth it,' he had said, 'that you should waste your life in prison? Ah, you don't know how sweet liberty is! Just let me get out once. You won't catch ME going to prison‑hell for anyone else.'
How often I had heard that! The refrain has rung its sharp scorn throughout the ascent of life. As a youth, I remember, my bourgeois uncle gloated over my helpless discomfiture as he thrust the eternal sword at me, 'Why do you always butt in? Let those darn kids light their own battles. You'll get nothing but blows for helping them.'
At school, in the factory, in prison --- everywhere sounded the old refrain. It followed me from Atlanta to the Tombs, as it followed the social protestant since Socrates emptied the cup of Hemlock for his beloved Greece. With the prisoner's eagerness I tore open my first letter in jail, and I read: 'Are those stupid workers, really worth all your sacrifice?'
Dear friends, near and far --- you, my comrades, known and unknown, you whose glorious devotion filled my dark cell with the brightest of sunshine; you, men and women, aye, and the children that worked so restlessly in my behalf; you who gave so heartily of the meager earnings of constant toil; to you all, and to the world at large and to all the disheartened ones I would fain about in the ecstacy of the wonderful, glorious comradeship you have given me,
It is worth it! Worth it a thousand times, worth all the pain and the sacrifice of a dozen lives!
ALEXANDER BERKMAN
The Russian Revolution
Emma GoldmanShortly after the European cataclysm swept over the world, American correspondents and magazine writers told glowing stories about the marvelous unity which existed in Russia between the people and the Tsar. They would have the world believe that the struggle of well‑nigh one hundred years against Tsarism had ceased over night, to give way to perfect harmony between the Russian autocracy and the people. They told marvelous tales about the kindness and humanity of the Russian officers to soldiers who had hitherto known nothing but the knout from their superiors. They described in glowing colors how the persecuted, exploited workers, and the flogged, famished peasants, were as one with their government, imbued with one passion in the great war.
Barely three years after these shameful lies of the war unity in Russia, the Revolution swept Tsarism into the gutter, and dispelled the myth that the Russian people wanted the war, that they were eager to die in the trenches for their Babushka. In one mighty voice the people thundered from every nook and corner of Russia for peace, for fraternization with the people of Germany and with all their oppressed and disinherited brothers. That was their reply to the willful misrepresentations which had been sent broadcast to Western Europe and America about the unity of the people with their governing class.
To understand the Revolution one must trace its beginnings to the heroic movement which had for nearly a hundred years carried on an incessant battle against the dark forces of Russian autocracy. During that period the blood of the Russian martyrs had nurtured the seed of idealism and rebellion in the womb of the Russian soil. The hosts that had been done to death in the Peter and Paul Fortress, in Schluesselburg, in Siberia, by the knout and the scaffold, have come to life in the Russian Revolution. The message of the men and woman with the white hands‑the intellectuals‑the Petroshevskis and Tchernishevskis, the Sofia Perovskayas and Helfmans, the Alexander Herzens, Vera Fignera, Spiridonovas, Babushkas, and thousands of others, had borne fruit. Their message was: Death to tyranny, and Life to the people. Human brotherhood and social well‑being was their slogan.
Through a slow and painful process, and at the expense of the best and finest of the Russian generations, this message was carried to the hearts and minds of the people, the peasants, the workers. It became their hope, their dream, their pean song. In the face of the great sacrifice the people often despaired of realizing their dream. Then new forces were sent into the villages to reassure the people, to strengthen their faith, to inspire them with new hope, for no message conceived in pain and nourished by blood and tears can ever be lost.
On the very eve of Russia's entry into the war, she was seething with revolution. The General Strike spread like wildfire in the industrial centers. Discontent and rebellion imbued the slow peasant and rejuvenated him to action. It is not at ill unlikely that war was welcomed by autocracy as a check on the rising revolutionary tide.
Blind to the tendencies of the time, autocracy, even as all other governments, coerced the people into the war, but it was stupid to assume that they would submit very long: that they would so easily betray their martyrs who had died for universal peace and social brotherhood, that they would forget the tortures inflicted upon them, the sufferings and horrors endured at home, and rush off, bayonet in hand, to make Germany safe for democracy.
The Russian Revolution was the culminating expression of all the accumulated longings of the Russian people. It was the breaking point of the hatred for the old regime, and the realization of the great dream, cherished by the people for so long. Coming from the very depths of the Russian soul and spirit, how could anything so deep‑rooted, so overpowering content itself with the overthrow of the Tsar, and his replacement by some cheep liberal regime, embodied in a Milliukof, a Lvof, or even a Kerenski.
Kerenski's regime was a compromise between political Socialism and economic liberalism, both contrary to the revolution and its promise. It seems to have been Kerenski's dream to see 'law and order' triumph, while leaving intact the social conditions which the revolution purported to change. Kerenski's regime played the same role as all the provisional governments temporarily washed in by a revolutionary tide. From the very first day of their appearance, they proclaim the end of the revolution. They take possession of power; but power, like all gods, can tolerate no other god beside it. Starting from this autocratic premise, the provisional government in Russia inevitably became reactionary, a new despotism, ready to strangle the revolution before it had made a decisive step.
The powerful revolutionary consciousness of the Russian people could not be stayed by the command of a renegade. The revolution would not stop because the provisional government attempted to check its march. It only struck deeper and went an in its persistent demand. The revolution which managed to overcome the age‑long despotic regime of the Tsar, was not likely to collapse because of the obstacles placed in its way by politicians a la Kerenski. The Russian Revolution has triumphed over prisons, Siberia, and scaffolds. Pogroms have failed to slay it. The knout, cutting deep into its flesh, has been unable to stifle its spirit. How, then, was it to be dominated by a few upstarts of the moment?
To the Russian people the Revolution means a fundamental change in the political and economic arrangements of life. Primarily it means the confiscation of the land and the sources of production how those who had grown rich upon them while keeping the people in poverty. The Russians have begun to realize that mere political liberties are not lasting; that nothing is gained unless a fundamental change has been brought about to sustain the newly achieved political advantages.
All preceding revolutions were in this respect warning and instructive example for the Russian Revolution. They never went much beyond the change of government. The people shed their blood, but received as reward nothing save the old despotism hidden under a new mask of hypocritical liberalism. How easily such a mask can be worn, the Russian people had ample opportunity to learn from the modern bourgeois republics of Europe and America. Yes, even easier than under a monarchy has it proven in republics to enslave the people, mentally and physically.
The new phase, the Boylsheviki Revolution, lifts Russia out of the paralyzing position of a merely political machine into a virile, active economic force. Verily, this new phase shows how inexhaustible the Russian Revolution is. How many times she has already been buried, and yet how many times she has arisen! Nor is it the end, but rather the beginning of the real social Revolution.
The very, fact that such an extreme Marxiam as Lenin, and revolutionists like Trotsky and Kollontay can work together with the vast number of Russians who will not continue to shed their blood and waste their lives for the perpetuation of the world war, proves that they are actuated, not by German money, but by the inner psychic necessity of the Russian Revolution to proclaim the ultimatum of 'Universal Peace and the Land to the People' to the rest of the world. Great as the Lenins, the Trotskys and the others may be, they are but the pulse‑beat of the people who, as Lincoln Steffens justly said, are the only heroes in Russia. They are worn and weary with everlasting strife and bloodshed. They want peace as a means of getting back to themselves, of getting back to their land, of reconstructing their beloved Matushka Rossiya.
In the midst of the confusion and horrors of war, the Russian Revolution raises, in its mighty arm the torch to illumine the horizon for all the peoples of the world. What irony that the light of real liberty and justice should emanate from a people who until very recently were considered the most primitive, uneducated and uncultured, a half‑Asiatic race. Yet it is well for the Russian Revolution that her people have remained primitive. That is why they can face life and life's problems in a simple, unspoiled and uncorrupted state of mind, with true feeling and sound judgment After all, true intelligence is primitive because it originates within man. It is not brought about through external, mechanical methods of education. It is well for the Revolution that her people are uncultured, uneducated. That means not yet drilled into blind obedience, into automata, into cringing slaves. It were desirable that the peoples of other countries had remained as primitive and uneducated. They would have the courage for independent thinking, and the seal of independent revolutionary action.
The demand of the people for universal peace, as the only basis for the working out of the fulfillment of the revolution, in the greatest victory of the modern times, a victory which will satisfy the yearning not only of the Russian people, but of the rest of the world. Out of it we must drink new hope and strength for the overthrow of the tyranny and oppression which have ruled humanity so long. Out of it must come the new hope of a brotherhood which shall put an end to war and militarism, and give to the world freedom of mind and body, freedom of life, and the joys which come from social harmony and a mutual understanding of the peoples of the earth.At Home and Abroad
Beneath the helpless rage against the Boylsheviki, shared by the dark forces everywhere, there is noticeable a hidden sense of respect. To think that the Lenins and Trotskys demand no less than --- well, everything! And all for the people, nothing for themselves. Even that most unblushing reactionary and frank champion of capitalism, the New York Times, does not always succeed in masking its secret admiration for the daring genius of the Russian Revolution.
But the Boylsheviki must be destroyed, in spite of everything. They are a menace to privilege and exploitation, such as the world has never seen before. If the landlords are to be dispossessed and the common peasant permitted to till the soil for his own benefit, what will become of profits? And --- worse yet --- if capitalist paper titles should be declared mere scraps of waste, and the industrial producers given the use of their product, the very bulwarks of civilization would be destroyed.
Such things cannot be tolerated. No, not even in Russia, for the example set by those ignorant folk will inevitably have a powerful effect upon the workers of other countries.
Therefore, and quite suddenly, the editorial scribe of The Times resurrects the Internationale. He graciously admits that 'that once renowned association was started from the meetings of French workingmen visiting the London exhibition in 1862.' But 'Internationalism is now dead, save in the United States. It was killed by the French Communists playing directly into the hands of Germany in 1871.'
As apiece of subtle assassination, this editorial prostitution of history has no rival. The Paris Communards, slaughtered by the perfidity of the French government, were the only true internationalists of their day. The government of France consented even to open the gates of Paris to the Prussian enemy without, in order to crush the demand for bread and liberty within. The Communards were the unsuccessful predecessors of the triumphant Boylsheviki. No wonder that the scribes of The Times, and the class they speak for, are foaming at the mouth at the very mention of the popular demand for liberty and peace, and of the victory of the INTERNATIONALE in Russia!
* * *
The decision just handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court, ‑ in connection with the litigation of the United Mine Workers and the Virginia coal companies will affect the American Federation of Labor in a most fundamental way.
In essence the decision says that, while unions are perfectly legal, the attempt to organize workers with the intent of a subsequent strike is 'malicious and illegal,' because calculated to interfere with the accustomed pursuit of business by the employer. In other words, unions are all right as long as they don't unionize.
The decision practically wipes out all organizing effort and paralyzes even defensive labor activities. For no union is of the least benefit to its members unless it can unionize the unorganized in its particular trade, and thus protect itself, so far as possible, against the despotism of the employer, the reduction of wages, etc.
This is apparently the reward Mr. Gompers is receiving as the unofficial member of the President's official family. Gompers suspended the labor struggle during the war. But capital knows no armistice with labor. It rather takes full advantage of the opportunity, offered by the time‑serving attitude of Gompers, to check and disorganize the labor forces to the point of complete ineffectiveness as a labor movement.
It is apparent that Gompers promises more than he can make good. He has pledged the whole labor movement, but he represents only a small part of it, and does not control even that. Strikes have multiplied since Gompers announced that the workers would not strike during the war. The explanation of it is that discontent is wide‑spread among the workers with the conditions in general: besides, the whip of hunger is more compelling than the pleading or even the threats of Gompers & Co. Even drastic decisions of the highest courts are powerless to stay the rising tide.
* * *
The U. S. Supreme Court, we are informed, will not reach the appeal cases of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer and Morris Fecker before the middle of December. A number of similar cases, involving the constitutionality of the draft law and kindred matters are on the calendar, to be heard in the same week. Our attorney, Mr. Harry Weinberger, is in Washington, D C., ready to present his argument. We have read the brief prepared by him for the Court, and we think it a masterly presentation of the questions at issue. It contains a thorough analysis of the various legal phases, but what appeals most to us is the broad human view taken by Mr. Weinberger in his analysis of the social values, and the fine vision that is the keynote of his argument. Of course, we are only laymen, with minds untrained in legal finesse. Therefore we may be misled into giving undue importance to matters of partly human interest, such as justice and liberty, while perhaps underestimating the more essential need of strict compliance with legal forms and precedents venerable with age.
* * *
Every day almost our friends inquire about the outcome of the appeal in the Cleveland case of Ben Reitman. It was surely not lack of interest which has prevented our writing more often about the matter. It is only that anything connected with Birth Control now seems too insignificant compared with the world conflagration that is devouring human life and spreading disaster everywhere.
We bad been assured by Ben's attorney that his appeal would not be heard before Spring. Two weeks ago the case was suddenly called in the Appellate Court of the State of Ohio. To quote from Ben's letter, written after the hearing:
'The hearing lasted forty‑five minutes. My attorneys, Mr. Ewing and Mr. Eisler, had just started to go into the testimony when one of the Judges announced that 'time is up.' Hostility was apparent from the start.'
In other words, our friend having looked into the faces of the judges, seems less hopeful than when he consented to the appeal. It is very likely that a new trial before a judge less antiquated than Judge Cull may result in an acquittal. But even if he were convicted, the sentence would not be so excessive as the present one of six months and one thousand dollars' fine. The attorneys are working hard for a new trial, but nothing definite will be known until the middle of January.
Whatever the outcome, Ben Reitman will meet it bravely. With his usual Christian faith he writes: 'Fate will not permit her chosen ones to reform. Those of us who had any inclination to leave the revolutionary movement know now that the Gods will not permit them.'
Not being a Christian, I am not so sure of the intentions of Fate. But this I know: The Courts seem determined to hide from sight every disturbing element, especially is these truly democratic times.
* * *
Things is this country are really coming to a terrible pass. Not enough that the anti-Militarists, anarchists, I. W. W. and other disloyalists are worrying the government with their inconsiderate and ill‑timed talk of such petty matters as high profits, low wages, forced service, soap‑boxing and similar stuff, not to speak of the stubborn strikers who hold up government work because, forsooth! their wives won't Hooverize on coil and eats‑‑as if all that were not enough to try the patience of an angel‑now come the cops of Philadelphia, and declare a strike!
Unheard of! The very men whose business it is to break up assemblies and club strikers into submission, themselves on a strike! When the very guardians of Law and Order begin to act like I. W. W., things may become very serious. Have they caught the spirit of the rabble and are they going to desert the masters? It is ominous. Perhaps, even, they may fraternize with strikers and pickets! Who knows? They may have been reading of those cursed Workers' and Soldiers' Counsels in mad Russia. Perhaps the papers had better not write more about those terrible things. They are catching.
* * *
An illuminating sidelight on the alleged even‑handedness of justice is thrown by two incidents of recent occurrence.
A workman and strike leader, Frank Little, member of the I. W. W., is forcibly dragged from his bed a night and lynched by a patriotic mob. The press of the country comments cynically on the infamous deed, practically condones the outrage, and openly gloats over the salutary effect the murder will have on the the friends and sympathisers of the strike leader.
No one is punished; indeed, no attempt is made by the authorities to discover the masked, but virtually known, vigilantes. Vice‑President Marshall, returning from his Western trip, indulges in the cheap and atrocious pun that 'a Little hanging goes a long way' in stabilizing industrial conditions.
Than a bomb, discovered by some passerby near a church in Milwaukee, and carelessly handled in the police station, suddenly explodes, claiming a number of police victims. Immediately every person non grata to the police is arrested in the city, and a veritable man hunt for 'Italian dynamiters and Anarchists' started throughout the country. Men by the score are thrown into jail, without rime or reason, and persons are arrested in other cities who by no stretch of the imagination could have any possible connection with the explosion. But the net is spread, the innocent and guilty look alike in police eyes, vengeance is a‑thirst, and victims must be found, so the country will feel properly saved.
Indeed. Justice is blind. It neither sees nor seems to care, so long as the weak are the victims.
* * *
Thirteen Negro soldiers have been hanged by the military authorities is Texas. Not a word had been said about the trial, the evidence --- not a line, until thirteen human bodies were stiff in death, dangling at the end of a rope, and forty‑one others immured in prison for life.
This is the first time in this country, since the Mexican war of 1848, that such a thing has been possible --- under cover of journalistic silence. Not even the terrible Civil War produced such horrors. One wonders what this universal birth of democracy is yet to produce.
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.
* * *
ANARCHIST COMMUNISM‑ Voluntary economic co‑operation of all towards the needs of each. A social arrangement based on the principle: To each according to his needs; from each according to his ability.
* * *
DIRECT ACTION‑ Conscious individual or collective effort to protest against, or remedy social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers.
More of the Frame-Up
ALEXANDER BERKMANThe frightfulness and corruption involved in the San Francisco labor cases pass all belief. Every day, almost, brings new disclosures of the devilish plot to hang the militant labor men now on trial in California. The latest development is the sworn confession of Mrs. Allie Kidwell, now in the hands of the Federal Investigation Commission, that District Attorney Fickert forced her to perjure herself, with the threat of exposing her past life and that of her daughter, Estelle Smith, the chief witness of the prosecution. Mrs. Kidwell now reveals that her testimony before the Grand jury was false in every particular; that she had never seen Mooney. Billings or Weinberg till they were pointed out to her in the jail; that her identification of them was staged by the police, and that she and her daughter were promised payment for their part in the conspiracy.
The 'honest cattleman,' Oxman, 'Dopey' McDonald, the ex‑crook Crowley, the two Edeau women, and Estelle Smith --- all important witnesses in the frame‑up --- have long ago been exposed as bribed perjurers. The Kidwell confession merely completes the rotten circle, and stamps the whole case as the most stupendous conspiracy against labor men ever hatched in this country. Indeed, there are only two other instances, of international renown, besides the foul murder of the Chicago Anarchists that are comparable to the San Francisco cabal: the case of Dreifus in France, and that of Beiliss in Russia. Both of these men, victims of race prejudice and persecution, were ultimately exonerated by the power of awakened public sentiment. Is there a sufficient sense of justice in America, in these days of universal war, to liberate the victims of the industrial strife?
The acquittal of Israel Weinberg was a rude jolt to Prosecutor Fickert. The blow was the more painful because the jury, with the passionate demand of the prosecutor for the blood of Weinberg still ringing in their ears, unanimously agreed on the acquittal of Weinberg WITHIN THREE MINUTES. They congratulated each other, smoked a cigar, and announced their verdict to the Court in less than 25 minutes after they had retired to consider the 'evidence.'
As a matter of fact, the perjured witnesses of the Billings and Mooney trials having been discredited, no evidence was forthcoming against Weinberg. The whole case fell to pieces at the first touch of the critical hand. No wonder the prosecution spent all of its time in bitter invective and denunciation of the 'enemies of the country,' pleading with the jury to wreak their patriotism on Weinberg. But the citizens of San Francisco seem to be sick of this kind of camouflage: they refused to save the country of Fickert and of his Chamber of Commerce masters by sending an innocent man to the gallows.
The Fickert beast, however, shows no signs of letting up. Whoever the gods want to destroy, they first make mad. The labor crushers of San Francisco are going right ahead with their program, they have announced that Ed Nolan is to be put on trial shortly. And Weinberg and Rena Mooney are still in jail, Judge Dunn refusing to permit them bail, in spite of their acquittal.
The backbone of the Frame‑up is broken. But the claws of the vampire are tenacious, and it will require a stiff and long fight before the beast is foreced to give up its prey. As the case stands now, Billings is in the penitentiary at Repress, Cal., serving a life sentence; Tom Mooney is sentenced to hang; Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg have been acquitted, but the prosecution threatens to try them again, and again, if necessary, on nine charges of murder; the demand for extradition of Alexander Berkman has been withdrawn, but ONLY TEMPORARILY and subject to renewal; Ed Nolan is to be placed on trial in the near future.
This means that the fight is by so means won or ended. Eternal vigilance, continued agitation and efforts are necessary to save our friends from the Chamber of Commerce hangmen.
The fate of our San Francisco prisoners also depends, to a large degree, on the result of the recall movement instituted against Fickert.
The special election, which is to take place on the 18th inst., will decide whether the voters of San Francisco approve of his methods and want him to remain in office. If Fickert is recalled, the citizens will have voiced their protest against perjury, bribery and the framing of labor men. Some means will then have to be devised of liberating Mooney and Billings. The report of the Federal investigators, if it will expose the frame‑up, will considerably help is this matter. But if the dark forces of San Francisco succeed in reelecting Fickert as District Attorney, the people will have to do more than pass resolutions if the lives of Mooney et al. are to be saved. The decent citizenship of tin Francisco is opposed to Fickert and his infamous procedure, But the denizens of the underworld, including the Chamber of Commerce and Roosevelt, are very active. At Fickert's request, Roosevelt wired him 'full support in his patriotic fight against disloyalists.' As usual, patriotism is the last resort of the Fickerts. Roosevelt, when his own friends informed him of the true situation in San Francisco, and asked him to withdraw his misinformed statement and pledge to support Fickert, refused to do so.
The reactionary forces have pooled their strength in San Francisco as the allies of Fickert, filth and frame-ups. They are determined to crush labor on the Pacific Coast. But Labor will have the last word, ultimately.
A Woman Martyr
German frightfulness and a sincere desire to make the world safe for democracy have forced us into the European brawl. Washington says so, the press says so, the pulpit says so, and the man in the street is beginning to say so. Whether it is really true, no one can or dare discuss. No matter what people think, they are obeying the law and keeping their mouths shut.
The most astounding thing is how those who point to German frightfulness, and who sincerely feel called upon by Providence to make the world safe for democracy, can reconcile their high motives in the war with the frightfulness at home. To be sure: President Wilson in his Buffalo speech before his faithful brother workers did protest against frightfulness of lynching, whipping, etc., but he had in mind lawless frightfulness. What about the perfectly lawful frightfulness occurring in every court and committed by numerous judges? What about them?
In Iowa a man who dared to exercise his democratic right to disagree, D. Wallace, was given twenty years in prison. And now comes a judge in Seattle who goes his Iowa colleague one better in loyalty. He has sentenced a woman to forty‑five years for opposing conscription. The name of this judge is Neterer; that of his victim, Louise Olivereau. We quote from a letter from our friend, Minnie Rimer, of Seattle:
'I have just come from the courtroom, where I heard the judge pass the 'merciful' sentence upon Louise Olivereau, sending her to the state prison at Canyon City. Colo. She was convicted on six counts. The judge gave her ten years on each of three counts, and five years each on the other three. Then he said he was being lenient and was passing sentence in the name of liberty and justice. He told her that she declared herself an Anarchist and that the Anarchist was against organized society, and therefore dangerous to the country and the flag, which stood for liberty and justice. He added, however, that Anarchism was not the issue.
'Louise conducted her own case and did it magnificently. She took her sentence bravely and quietly. I am trying to get enough money together to get the Court transcript of Louise's ease. It is mighty good stuff.'
What have the haters of German frightfulness and the lovers of democracy for the world to say to this barbarous frightfulness at home? And what have the radicals to say? Will they content themselves with lobbying in Washington while Louise Olivereau wastes her young life in Canyon City prison? Or will they rally to her support, help with the appeal, arouse public interest to make a reversal of the 'lenient' sentence possible? Write to Minne Rimer, 516 Third Avenue, West Seattle, Wash., at once. Send money for the appeal.
The I.W.W.
The lack of understanding for fundamentals on the part of most American writers is quite amazing. It does not matter whether it in drama, fiction, or the ordinary newspaper article wherein social aspects are portrayed: always one is impressed with the superficiality of the approach, and with the inability to bring the matter to a logical conclusion. It must be that these writers feel in relation to the great problems of our social complains, like the tired business man on a visit to Greenwich Village. The bring to it the spirit of slumming, the desire for some ticklish sensation. They go from cafe to cafe but get no further than the stuffy air, the pretense, the gaudy display. The struggling, starving, aspiring artist and that which makes life tragic to him, the slummer never sees.
Our writers are in the same position. They touch the social problems only on the surface. Occasionally they may mean to dig deep into the very foundation of it all, but before very long they grow bewildered by the wealth of material --- or is it that they dare not face it?
The New York Evening Post sent its representative, Mr. Robert W. Bruere to Arizona to investigate the so‑called I.W.W. troubles, which resulted in the brutal deportation of hundreds of workers. Mr. Bruere, by the way, is a very able investigator and has written a series of brilliant reports which ought to be read by everyone. To those of us who have gone through the horrors of San Diego, in 1910, there is nothing very startling in the methods employed by the hirelings of the copper magnates in Arizona. Beating and deporting the I.W.W., or those suspected of being such, has been done so often, it has become almost a daily sport for the respectable mob all through the country.
Mr. Bruere may be forgiven for indulging in the commonplace error of calling the criminal practices of the propertied class 'anarchy,' but when he winds up big able report with the following superficial conclusion, he shows either lack of understanding or lack of courage to face fundamental social facts:
Thus are 'Wobblies' made, and thus are their evangelists scattered, like the seed of the thistle, broadcast throughout the country. Victims of lawlessness, they disparage the law of collective agreements; their strikes broken by violence, the preach sabotage --- the furtive strike on the job
No, Mr. Bruere, it in not lawlessness which brought the I. W. W. into being, it is the conservatism, the snobocracy the ineffectiveness of the Americas Federation of Labor and the corrupt methods of its leaders, which made the I. W. W. --- the conservatism which persists that there is something in common between the lamb and the wolf; the snobocracy, which looks down upon unskilled labor as something less that the poor dependent dub who makes $2.50 a day; the inadequacy which automatically excludes large groups workers because of its exorbitant initiation fees and dues; and finally, the corruption of the leaders who betray the workers for money, power, or became of cowardice, as the occasion may require.
That and certain economic factors, foremost among them, the realisation that craft unionism has outlived its time and purpose, have created the I.W.W. And what is more, they have come to stay, deportation, whipping, lynching, and imprisonment not withstanding.
We are not in agreement with the theoretic reasoning of the I.W.W., but we realize that these hounded, persecuted, outraged and misunderstood people represent the worth-while revolutionary spirit in the desert of organized labor in America. That is why the I.W.W. are so hated and feared.
Crimes of Charity 310 721 0619A Book Review By Leonard D. Abbot
Even in time of war, stress, struggle and persecution, a careful perusal of Konrad Bercovici's 'Crimes of Charity'* is worth while. The book indicts organized charity in New York. John Reed, in an introduction, calls it 'a sort of epic of our City of Dreadful Day.' It is warm, throbbing, and carries on every page evidences of the author's fierce indignation against oppressors of the poor and helpless. The stench of slums, the sorbid life of tenements, the pitiful struggle of weak men and women to keep their heads above the waters of the industrial whirlpool, have all gone into the making of this remarkable book. Bercovici speaks with admiration of Marguerite Audoax's 'Marie‑Claire,' and he quotes Charles Lamb's classic description of the blind beggars of London. His own writing has something of their sincerity and simplicity.
A 'nutty scribbler' the children of the streets called Bercovici when they saw him making notes of his experiences. An 'anarchist' is the accurate designation that some of his associates gave him. It seems that Bercovici was employed for a time as an investigator for a charitable institution in New York. He hoped, at the beginning, that he could really do some good. He was soon disillusioned. He saw the system from the inside. And he vowed that he would tell the world what he saw. The report that he makes is an appalling indictment of organizations that set out, ostensibly, to help the poor and that have ended by battening on them.
Bercovici's arraignment is two‑fold. He attacks, first of all, the administration of Organized Charity and declares that it is rotten through and through. He attacks, in the second place, the contributors to Organized Charity, and points out that capitalists affiliate themselves with charitable institutions because they recognize that Organized Charity gives them indispensable help as slave‑drivers.
The charity organizations, as at present carried on, depend upon an elaborate system of 'investigations.' The 'investigators' are all women, and their work consists in probing into the private lives of applicants for relief. Bercovici thinks it almost impossible for investigators to remain human beings. The milk of human kindness is squeezed out of them by their daily experiences. They have to make a living, like the poor wretches that come to them for assistance. The one unforgivable sin is to be 'too tender‑hearted.'
Investigation, as it works out in practice, means a denial of all privacy. The sanctity of the home is destroyed. 'It is,' says Bercovici, 'as though the family were living in some one else's --- in the charities' --- home. The investigator comes into the house unannounced any time of the day or night, questions anybody she finds in the house, criticizes the meals, the curtains; goes around to the grocery, to the neighbors, looking for a 'clue' that will give to the institution the right to cease helping the particular 'case,' to 'cut her' as they say.' No wonder that this system has created a class of professional paupers who meet inhumanity from above by deception and wiles from below.
The motives of those who contribute to the support of Organized Charity tend to become equally inhuman and machinelike. Bercovici tells of manufacturers who affix to the outside of their office doors signs carrying the words, 'Members of the Organized Charities,' simply because it saves them trouble and serves to drive away the hungry and needy. In many cases, Bercovici charges, the employment bureau of a charity institution is little better than a strike‑breaking agency. When he protested against the sending of men to a factory in time of strike, he was told, quite frankly, that charitable institutions were supported by the rich and not by the poor.
Bercovici finally became almost frantic at the injustices and inhumanities that he saw about him. He says that they drove him to drink. Where the finest discrimination and delicacy, the warmest sympathy, were called for, he found the dullest stupidity and cruelty. He saw the office boy in the charity office spit in the face of applicants for relief and he determined to get even with him. 'I got hold of him, boxed his ears soundly, and before any one had time to interfere I had turned up his head and spat upon him full in the face. It was a disgusting act, but a sweet revenge. I did it, then called out, 'Feel how it tastes‑you do it to everyone.'' Needless to say, Bercovici himself was soon expelled from the office.
The note of indignation is what gives the book its tone. Bercovici feels as a humane, warm‑hearted man ought to feel in presence of frailty and suffering. He sets before us picture after picture. We recognize the quality of different nationalities. We see what Poverty actually means to helpless women and to little children.
In the eyes of Organized Charity, Poverty is a crime, to be punished; but after reading this book it is easy to understand that the real crime is not Poverty, but Organized Charity.
A Letter
Maurice FrechtThis letter was refused publication by the Ann Arbor Times News. It was written after the school board adopted the following resolution:
'RESOLVED, That in view of the fact that certain of the Ann Arbor high school students an now in jail for refusal to obey the registration laws of the United States, that the board of education direct that all credits and recommendations be withheld in their respective classes, until all disability is removed and the laws of the land are complied with by said students,'
which was aimed against Mr. Elwood B. Moore, a student of the Ann Arbor High School, who refused to register on June 5th for the selective draft because he felt that this was the most vigorous method of voicing his objections to conscription.
Editor the Ann Arbor Times News
DEAR SIR:
The action of the school board, at its last meeting, in adopting the resolution 'to withhold all credits and recommendations' of Mr. Moore 'until all disability is removed,' reminded me of an incident that occurred to me when I was but a boy. Of course, it did not happen in America. It happened while I was still in 'darkest Russia.'
I was brought up in a little town near the border of Russia and Germany, where no person, according to law, was allowed to leave his house without carrying with him his 'border passport.' Otherwise he was subject to arrest.
So it happened that one Sunday afternoon, as I was strolling along the border, and not having my passport with me for identification, I was arrested and brought to the Shtab (i.e., the Captain). The Captain, on discovering my nationality, decided to inflict upon me the most horrible punishment be could inflict upon a Jew, i.e., to force a piece of pork into my mouth. I was but nine years old then. Of course I resisted, but he nevertheless succeeded in his idiotic aim. I cried. I thought the world would tome to an end because I had committed such an outrageous crime as eating pork. My tears, I imagine, irritated the Captain, and suddenly he burst out: 'If you don't eat pork, get out of this land!' I was quite dumbfounded for a minute or so. For indirectly he revealed to me a new idea, that perhaps there was some place in the world where people were not forced to eat pork against their will. Of course I obeyed him and got out of the land. But if I shall ever return to Russia I shall certainly look up that Captain and treat him with a good pork dinner, so as to show him my gratitude for sending me out into the wide, wide world. That Captain, I must confess, though unintentionally, did me a great deal of good. He opened my eyes to life.
As time went on, America became the object of my dreams. I pictured it to myself as the embodiment, the symbol of justice and equality. Very well do I remember the keen feeling that pervaded my being before I left Europe, and the expression I gave to it in a letter to one of my friends before departure, in which I said '. . .there I go to build my future, to work and to learn. There, on the American soil, on the soil where mobs do not butcher women and infants because of religious differences, where they do not degrade human beings to the level of animals, where they do not oppress and persecute, where the gates of knowledge and truth are open to everyone, where a person may think for himself and follow his own conscience. . .there I want to build my future, there I want to spend my years and energies, there I want to live and help the world move on.'
To be concluded.
VOL. I JANUARY, 1918, NEW YORK NO. 4
Farewell, Friends and Comrades!The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken. Rest in peace, dear Fatherland! Firm stands the guard at Washington.
The draft law has been declared constitutional. The good citizen need worry no more about the justice of forced military service: it is constitutional. Involuntary servitude should give the free sovereign no more anxiety: it is constitutional and democratic. The humanity of forcing men to bear arms in violation of their conscience may not be questioned any more: it is constitutional, it is democratic, it is final.
The highest judicial tribunal of the United States has sustained the verdicts of the lower courts of the various states, EN MASSE. Without wasting its time on facts or arguments, the United States Supreme Court has decided, virtually, that the government has the right to do anything it pleases, and that there in no more to be said about it.
The decision also upholds the so-called conspiracy cases appealed from New York, Ohio, and other States, and affirms the sentences of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Morris Becker and Louis Kramer, convicted in New York for anti-draft agitation.
The action of the Court does not surprise us. We expected it. But we cannot refrain from expressing the pain we have felt at the limited social vision of the well-meaning friends who were so naively hopeful of legal justice, in spite of the all-too-numerous lessons to the contrary.
Be of good cheer, good friends and comrades. We are going to prison with light hearts. To us it is more satisfactory to stay behind prison bars than to remain MUZZLED in freedom. Our spirit will not be daunted, nor our will broken. We will return to our work in due time.
This is our farewell to you. The light of Liberty burns low just now. But do not despair, friends. Keep the spark alive. The night cannot last forever. Soon there will come a rift in the darkness, and the New Day break even here. May each of us feel that we have contributed our mite toward the great Awakening.
The BULLETIN will continue, with your help, even in our absence. It will have a thorny path, but we know we may depend on your interest and co-operation as generously and faithfully as you have helped in the past. By means of the BULLETIN we shall keep in touch with you, while we are in retirement, and you shall hear the voices that cannot be stifled by stone walls. Au revoir, some day,
EMMA GOLDMANALEXANDER BERXMAN
P. S. Direct word from friends is a great joy to the prisoner. Mail will reach Emma Goldman at State Prison, Jefferson City, Mo. Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer and Morris Becker are to be addressed at U. S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, Ga. The prison rules require correspondents to sign full name and address.The Trotsky IdeaAlexander Berkman
Only a few weeks ago the American press and jingo intellectuals were unanimous in denouncing Lenin and Trotsky as the agents and spies of the Kaiser. The Boylsheviki were branded as the tools of Prussian militarism, and anyone who dared to protest in this country against that infamous misrepresentation, was himself considered guilty of sedition.
All of a sudden the tune has changed. Quite unblushingly the New York Times, heretofore foaming at the mouth at the very mention of the Boylsheviki now writes: 'The reactionary press (in England) has misrepresented Trotsky as an agent of Germany.' It would be rather interesting to know what peculiar kind of journalism the ultra chauvinist Times regards as reactionary.
Wilson himself, in his latest peace message, was moved to acknowledge that the 'Russian people,' whose spokesmen now are the Boylsheviki, 'will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind.'
This tribute to Trotsky, though somewhat belated, is at least indicative of some understanding of the soul of Russia. No doubt it is a bitter pill for certain quarters, but it may lead the American people to revise their newspaper-made opinions of the Lenins and Trotskys, and help them to appreciate the true character of the Russian revolution.
Trotsky -- for the time being personifying the spirit of revolutionary -- Russia has in two short months done more for peace and humanity than all the diplomats and politicians of the combined governments of the world. He has torn the mask off diplomacy, and shown to the world that diplomacy itself is one of the chief causes of the war. He proved that revolutionary consciousness and frankness of purpose is a veritable David to the diplomatic Goliath. The undiplomatic honesty of Trotsky has wiped diplomacy off the map. There is a grave menace to ALL government in such smashing of the sacrosanct.
By far the greatest significance of Trotsky is the effect of his peace negotiations on the German people themselves. He has done more to discredit Prussian junkerism in Germany than all the military activities of the allies. Moreover, it is only too evident that the German government is more afraid of the Trotsky propaganda among German forces than of Allied artillery. Prussian militarists know that revolutionary IDEAS are more fatal to autocracy than the armed legions of the Entente. That is the true reason why Germany is loath to continue the peace parleys with Russia.
The world diplomats have entirely missed the mark. They fear a separate peace between Russia and Germany. Yet a separate peace may prove the undoing of Kaisertum. A general peace, on the contrary, will enable Prussian militarism, with the aid of its armies, to hold its own against an uprising at home. But with the necessity of keeping up the war against the Allies, a separate peace with Russia would prove a terrible menace to German militarism at home.
The original idea of Trotsky was a GENERAL peace with the initiative taken by Russia. But the Allies failing to join in his efforts, he may work for a separate peace -- a proletarian peace -- fully aware of the moral debacle it involves for Prussian autocracy and militarism.
The Great Hope
Emma Goldman
The attitude of dense ignorance and stupidity toward the most gigantic event since the French Revolution, the Boylsheviki movement in Russia, is not typically American. All great movements have met with the same fate in every land, since stupidity and ignorance have never been the monopoly of any particular country.
The Boylsheviki like all revolutionary movements, have faced three characteristic stages. First, calumny, misrepresentation, hatred, opposition, and persecution. After that came ridicule, scoffing, and cheap deriding of the movement. Finally, in the third stage, recognition though stinted and grudging.
It took the greet movements of the past more than a century to pass these varying stages, and that at the expense of untold suffering and sacrifice. The Boylsheviki have swept on and all but reached the third stage in just a few months. That itself is the most striking proof of how thoroughly the Russian soil was fertilized by the blood of her great martyrs since 1825. The Boylsheviki merely voice the inarticulate Russian people who, oppressed and suppressed for centuries, have not yet acquired the power of speech.
Yes, the Boylsheviki are beginning to be recognized. In fact they have struck like lightning into the hearts and minds of the masses everywhere; yes, even the hitherto so contented and self-satisfied American workers. To be sure, there is still a vast mass which regards as gospel truth the adulterated mental food it finds in the Press. It has not yet learned that American journalism is the worst poison mixer and scurrilous falsifier of great ideals. But thinking people have learned from bitter experience not to believe the papers. These days almost the sole medium of information is the spoken word. But as most lecturers in America are either woefully ignorant on all matters Russian, or too poor of vision to grasp the vast and world-wide significance of the Russian Revolution, the people everywhere are at a loss to account for the miracle which is now holding the world in awe.
That explains, no doubt, the tremendous interest and response aroused by my lecture: on the Boylsheviki and other phases of the Russian Revolution. In fact, never in my thirty years' experience have American audiences turned out in such numbers nor evinced such spontaneous interest as they have during my visit in Chicago and Detroit. Never did they respond with such warmth and enthusiasm to the message of the Boylsheviki. Aye, 'illiterate, backward' Russia is yet going to become the spiritual awakener of the American masses, the bugle call to battle against the powers which have kept the peoples of the world in bondage.
The meetings in Chicago were arranged by the Nonpartisan Radical League, a body consisting of militant radicals. Among the most active in the League are our comrades William Nathanson, Billov, the Goodmans, and Slater, who were assisted by scores of other Comrades: Sadie Bernstein, C.V. Cook, Sara and Harry Gruber, Ben Reitman. Sveda, and several of the younger rebels, the Baers, Sachs, etc. All worked like beavers against great obstacles, zero weather, and the difficulty of securing halls, but all enjoyed the fruits of their labors in tremendously enthusiastic meetings. There were nine in all, and a farewell banquet attended by 175 friends united by the spirit of solidarity and devotion that made me realize how very worth while it is to be ready to pay the price for one's ideal. It was a glorious farewell and an inspiring memory to take with me to Jefferson prison.
Detroit was the next city of joy. Four meetings arranged by Comrades Jake and Minnie Fishman and J. Yanovitch, with the co-operation of a Serbian Comrade, Mrs. Marcowitz, a most interesting and rare type of woman. There were also some others who helped, as they always do when there is important work on hand.
An overzealous Chief of Police came near depriving the Detroit people of an opportunity to hear the truth about the Boylsheviki, but our old friend Lee Smits, of the Detroit News, helped to change the official mind, and all went well to the end.
As in Chicago, the halls proved entirely too small for the mass of eager humanity that came to learn about the Boylsheviki, their aims and aspirations. At one meeting fully a thousand people were turned away. But most inspiring of all was the spirit of the people present. It was beautiful to see the light of understanding on the eager faces of my hearers as I portrayed the historic background which prepared Russia for the social and economic demands of the Boylsheviki. It was all very wonderful. Never again will I doubt the revolutionary possibilities of the American workers. If only one could reach them with the social truth now proclaimed to the whole world by the heroic Boylsheviki.
My last meeting in Detroit on the Spiritual Awakening of Russia would have capped the climax of interest; but it had to be given up. A hurry call from New York, informing me that the government demands our immediate surrender to the Federal authorities, compelled me to cut short what would have proven the most inspiring tour I ever made and my most worth-while contribution to the American understanding of the Boylsheviki.
With it all, America itself was not forgotten. A campaign for the amnesty of all political prisoners as soon as peace is concluded was suggested at the farewell banquet in Chicago and placed before a huge audience in Detroit. The response was unanimous and overwhelming. Plans will be formed and the movement launched before we are taken back to prison.
To be sure, the American government is loath to recognize political prisoners. Like the ostrich hiding his head in the sand to deceive the hunter, our Democracy refuses to face the fact that every city has its quota of war casualties, men and women in prison for their political beliefs and activities. All other countries, whether monarchical or republican, recognize the right of amnesty. Will America, now engaged in war to make the would safe for democracy, refuse to do less than imperialistic Germany, autocratic Russia under the Tsar, monarchical England, or republican France?
It must be put to the test. New is the time to awaken public interest in cases like those of Louise Olivereau, doomed to 45 years in the Colorado penitentiary (concurrent sentence of ten years on condition of good behavior); Daniel H. Wallace, serving 20 years in the Federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas; eleven Italians condemned in Milwaukee to 25 years each, among them a woman with her little child taken away from her, and scores of others in every prison throughout the land, all convicted of 'crimes' of a political nature, the result of the war and conscription, and whose sentences must end with the war.
Two lectures were scheduled for Ann Arbor, the Michigan seat of learning. They could not be held because the antiquated Daughters of the antiquated American Revolution scared the poor German Mayor of Ann Arbor into suppressing the meetings. Little did these poor revolutionary mummies realize that they were instrumental in starting Russian revolutionary underground agitation among the students of Ann Arbor, a large number of whom gathered in a private house and there listened breathlessly to the dangerous story of the dangerous Boylsheviki of Russia and their effect upon Boylshevism in America.
The flames lighted by the Russian people will illumine the horizon and point the path of the peoples everywhere back to the Internationale, back to a deeper and better understanding of economic ad social freedom.
The Milwaukee Frame-Up
E.G.
We are constantly assured in America that a man charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. But that does not prevent the daily occurrence of men and women from the people being found guilty even though they prove their innocence by the most authentic evidence. The practice of frame-ups is common in the police departments of every city. But the public still adheres to the credulous belief that if an unfortunate victim is in the hands of the authorities he must be guilty, for surely the police wouldn't deliberately take away a man's liberty and life.
Well, the Frame-up in San Francisco which was given no publicity by the press of this country until the demonstration for Mooney in Petrograd, exploded the faith in the methods of the Police. True, Billings continues to languish in prison. The noose is still awaiting Mooney. Fickert is back in the saddle to resume his criminal activities. Yet the San Francisco Frame-up is written in letters of fire upon the minds of the people, and unless Mooney and the others go free, San Francisco will go down to infamy for one of the blackest crimes upon Labor since 1887.
Now comes the news a another frame-up in Milwaukee so cruel, deliberate and revolting as to arouse even the sluggish minds and hearts of those who never care what happens to others just so they are allowed to exist.
In the M. E. BULLETIN of September the beginning of this latest frame-up was reported. But for the benefit of those who have net read the issue, I will give excerpts from the statement prepared by the attorney of the eleven Italian victims who were framed up by an ex-priest and members of the police department of Milwaukee.
A group of Italian Anarchists, Socialists, I.W.W.'s and others of general liberal leanings organized a little social club where they gathered for entertainment, amateur theatricals, dances and occasional lectures on social topics. Their activities and success aroused the ire and envy of an unfrocked Catholic priest, who found it more profitable to use the methods of the Evangelic church to save souls. Especially was he enraged over the audacity of the young Italian who would attend the Reverend's soul saving open air meetings and heckle him as to the greater importance of saving the bodies of the people. At any rate, the heckling continued at every meeting until finally the ex-priest went to the police with the story that a dangerous lot of Anarchists, pro-Germans, I.W.W.'s had desecrated the American flag, denounced the President, etc., etc. Of course the reverend gentleman was given 'protection.'
On the ninth of September, just a the Italians were filing out of their club room after a lecture on Socialism by La Duca, Secretary of the Italian Socialist branch, Reverend Guiliani shouted to police: 'Here go the Anarchist, pro-German, I.W.W.'s!'
Immediately the police and detectives charged the crowd with drawn clubs and guns. Antonio Fornasier an Anarchist, was killed instantly; nevertheless, 10 shots were fired into the body of the dead man. Augusto Marinelli, another Anarchist, was mortally wounded. He died in the hospital five days later. Tostalia was slightly wounded in the shoulder.
In the general shooting several policemen were slightly injured. The usual hysterical arrests and round-up of Italians began. Anyone who could not prove good standing or respectable connections were dragged off to jail, among them the young wife of one of the men, Mary Nardini, the mother of a five-year-old child. The club rooms were raided and the 'dangerous' evidence, consisting of pictures of Karl Marx and Peter Kropotkin, as well as Anarchist and Socialist literature, was confiscated. Then, after a process of elimination, eleven Italians, ten men and one woman, were held as the originators of the police riot. Though charged with the shooting, the defendants were really tried and convicted for the bomb explosion that happened long after they were attested and while they were in jail. Witnesses for the defense were arrested and terrorized, so that of fifty witnesses only six dared appear at the trial. We quote from the statement of the attorney of the prisoners:
Quote:'On November 24th Miss Richter, the Evangelist's chief aide was supposed to find a bomb beneath the Evangelical Church. She got some member of the choir of that church to deliver the bomb to the police station. The bomb was supposed to have been under the church for several days. At the time this bomb was delivered to the police station, the Evangelical minister was out of the city. The bomb exploded in the police station. Killing eleven persons and injuring others. At once the bomb explosion was associated with these defendants, the most preposterous thing in the world, because the defendants and their friends would be the last ones to place a bomb or to do anything of that kind out the eve of their trial, for nothing would prejudice more their chance of acquittal than anything of that kind.
'I never spoke to these defendants except through an interpreter and never without a stenographer being present. The first time I spoke to them was in jail and after that I never saw them nor spoke to them except through an interpreter in the courtroom. The whole matter was investigated and the story above was fully corroborated. The defendants were forced to go to trial on the very morrow of the burial of those eleven people, with prejudice and feeling running high. Although we believe that we were entitled to nine challenges, we were only allowed four, and out of 37 men examined over half were excused because of prejudice, and some of the men were made to qualify on the jury who had little education and fitness to sit in judgment upon a case that involved understanding and reading and scanning and perusing matters of historical and economic significance and importance.
'Captain Sullivan, a very efficient and honorable officer, told me that he would be willing to let the whole bunch go free if the perpetrator of that bomb could be found; he believing honestly that the defendants were associated with that bomb throwing; I believing honestly that neither these defendants nor their associates had anything to do with the bomb whatever. There are many who believe that the bomb was placed by a friend of the Evangelist, some believe it was placed by an alien enemy, and others attribute it to a German. I make no personal comment on these statements.
'The tragedy which otherwise might hive been the joke of the whole trial, was that W.C. Zabel, the Socialist prosecutor, permitted himself and his assistants to misinterpret philosophic and economic excerpts from some of the master works of the world into criminal, anarchistic doctrines and make Karl Marx and the red flag the objects of his vituperous attacks.'
After the farce of a trial, the jury was out seventeen minutes, returning a verdict of guilty. Then the Socialist Prosecuting Attorney, W. C. Zabel, delivered himself of a wild patriotic harangue that Milwaukee must be rid of the murderous Anarchists and undesirables, and suggested a vote of thanks to the instigator of the whole terrible business, Rev. Guiliani.
The ten men and Mary Baldini were given 25 years each, and the State appropriated Mary's five-year-old child, although her people are anxious and well able to take care of the child.
It goes without saying that such a terrible trim, cannot go unchallenged. Already an International Defense League has been organized in Chicago to begin a campaign of publicity so that the people may learn of this latest outrage in Milwaukee. For that and the appeal money is most urgently needed.
Send all communications and funds to William Judin, 1006 S. Ashland Blvd., care of Workers' Institute, Chicago. Ill. Arrange meetings! Bring the matter to the attention of the people! The eleven unfortunate victims of Milwaukee must be saved!
In the Trenches
In the Federal Court of Kansas City. Mo. nine people have been convicted, on December 6, for alleged conspiracy against the Draft Act. Judge Van Valkenburg gave all but one of them the maximum penitentiary sentence of two years and also fined each of the nine $1,000. The one woman in the case, Lenora Warneson, mother of a babe of four months, he did not send to the 'pen,' solely because 'this court does not want to set the precedent of sending babies to jail.' The defendants are going to appeal and have retained Redmond S. Brennan of the firm of Frank P. Walsh; he states that there is sufficient reversible error in the record to make the case worth contesting.
The nine people are: Lenora Warneson, known throughout the country as a staunch anti-militarist school teacher; Raymond I. Moore, Secretary International Radical Club and former Socialist candidate; Earl R. Browder; William E. Browder; Edward W. Eagan; Harry I. Doile, and Elea Luboshey. All but the last two are militant trade unionists, the first five being members of the Office Workers' Union, Eagan of the Iron and Tin Workers Union, and Doile, of the Typographical Union.
After war was declared, in the absence of a war-time program of the A.U.A.M., this group (except Doile and Luboshey, who were NOT members) formed the Federation for Democratic Control to work for the maintenance of civil liberties and to prevent the passage of conscription. When the latter became a fact, an injunction suit was filed against the state and city officials charged with the execution of registration. In the midst of this case, while the attorney was filing the appeal, some of the defendants were arrested in the courtroom and charged with conspiracy against the draft. This was on May 31; on June 6 a special grand jury returned an indictment against the nine people named above, and also a tenth, H.D. Kleinschmidt, who had helped rain funds to test the legality of the draft law.
The government based its case upon insinuation and innuendo. Thus it was shown that Doile (whose only connection with the others, by the way, was that of printer of its literature) had printed the Federation's declaration of principles; Kleinschmidt swore that Luboshey (who was not a member of the Federation) had given him some of the cards bearing the legend ('Kill Conscription-Don't Register') which were alleged in the indictment as one of the overt acts of the conspiracy), and that he (Kleinschmidt) had distributed them; therefore, by implication, Doile had printed these cards. The government's charges were supported by secret service agents, government officials, and reporters and editors of the capitalist press. Most of it was pure fabrication. Kleinschmidt told a perjured story full of contradictions when he turned states evidence. Samples of the government's testimony: Fred Tate, chief of the secret service agency, swore that he took an I.W.W. card from Eagan and that the color of the card was BLUE! Kleinschmidt testified that he was out of town on the date when the alleged cards were distributed. The judge's instructions to the jury were unfair and highly prejudicial against the defendants. The jury was made to understand that if it did not bring in a verdict of guilty, its members would be disloyal.
* * *
As previously reported in the Bulletin, Daniel H. Wallace, president and organizer of the League of Humanity, with headquarters in Chicago, Ill., has been condemned under the Espionage Act to twenty years prison for a lecture delivered by him in Davenport, Iowa on July 25th, 1917.
Wallace is the author of 'Shanghaied into the European War,' a unique book representing his experience of eleven months in the trenches ofFrance,Belgiumand the Dardanelles . He is now in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kas., and no doubt he must be envying Karl Liebknecht, convicted in undemocratic Prussia of high treason and punished only with four years and one month prison.
* * *
It is not in the interest of those engaged in war to make known the number of conscientious objectors in the various camps and prisons. With the newspaper conspiracy of silence on this subject, the public at large is now under the impression that the great protest against conscription has fallen flat, and that conscientious objectors have at the last moment proven false to their convictions. Only occasionally, hidden in some corner of the papers, one is permitted to learn that there are still men who will not be daunted, no matter what the cost.
In a special to the New York Times the following case is reported from Camp Dix, Wrightstown, N.J.:
Quote:Not even the remission of the death sentence, that probably would have been carried out to-day had it not been revoked by. Brig. Gen. J. S. Mallory before relinquishing his command of Camp Dix, has failed to alter the defiance of military authority maintained by Rudolph J. Vrena, a drafted man from North Jersey. Verna, a Bohemian, although he has spent all but six months of his 27 years in the United States, bases his objection to becoming a soldier on his claim of being an International Socialist.
Vrena is the first man drafted into the national army to be sentenced by court-martial to the penalty of 'death by musketry,' for refusing to obey the order of Major J.E. Wilson to sign the declaration of a soldier and his assignment card and prepare for his physical examination. He pleaded not guilty, but was convicted on the first charge, and the court agreed on the death sentence. Brig. Gen. Mallory vetoed his sentence. Vrena, resting on his cot, displayed little interest in the outcome of his case this afternoon.
'I'll not pose as martyr. I am a Socialist of the most radical branch. We believe in universal brotherhood, and I am obliged, no matter what the consequences, to refuse to become part of the army, at least until assured that labor is to have a part in settling the questions at stake.' Vrena has refund to don a uniform.
Evidently the Boylsheviki are not confined to Russia. Significant, is it not?
Another very interesting case is that of H. Austin Simons, a young American and brilliant writer, now at Camp Grant, Rockford, Ill. The case is reported in the Chicago American as follows:H. Austin Simons, 'conscientious objector,' received a sentence of eight years before Judge Advocate Lieutenant Charles F. Dyer of the Three Hundred and Forty-second Regiment. When told of his sentence by the Chicago Evening American correspondent he merely smiled.
He took up his pen and 'poemed' a bit to show his feelings have not been disturbed. His verse, written extemporaneously, follows:
Quote:'No moment more for weeping;Now courage comes-free, uplifting,With her I go to the long agony,And I will be sweet and glad in my great beauty,And with my love cheat the bitter seasonsOf their bitterness.'
'What are then principles on which you object to wear the uniform of Uncle Sam?' His answer was:
'A humanitarian principle, which makes it impossible for me to do any thing that will contribute to the death of another person. In the second place, a conviction that it as my duty to live for the future; and the belief that I cannot serve the future properly by going into military service.'
His last principle was that his life was dedicated to a creative impulse art particularly the art of literature; as art is creative and war is absolutely and entirely destructive.
'I am following the dictates of my conscience.' were his final words.
During the trial another question asked of the objector was, do you believe in God? His answer was, 'Yes, a God.' 'You have a God of your own, then?' Simons' face lit up for a moment end he answered, 'A God that is believed in by the philosophical world.'
Are They Going to Hang Tom Mooney
Ben Martin
Of the labor struggle on the Pacific Coast, in which the trump play of the employers was the most picturesque perjury conspiracy in history, the question is being asked, 'What is the outcome: are they going to hang and imprison men after the world has gasped at the brazen fraud of their trials?'
We very much fear that the answer is, 'Yes.'
If this were not true, why are the two defendants who were acquitted after the perjury exposures held in jail to this day exactly as though they had been found guilty? Indeed, it is astonishing to bear half-awake persons ask whether the sentences corruptly obtained against Billings and Mooney are going to be enforced, while the sentence against Billings has already been enforced; for Billings in now actually in Folsom Penitentiary serving a life sentence, and it is intended to keep him there until he dies; while Estelle Smith, the chief witness who caused his conviction, has retracted her testimony and brands the whole case as a foul frame up, naming District Attorney Fickert and the detective Martin Swanson as instigators of the conspiracy.
Are they going to enforce the fraud-born decrees? They don't even bother to answer Estelle Smiths accusations- except that they are 'unworthy of reply!' Estelle Smith is good enough to send Billings to a life of torture but is 'unworthy of reply,' when she recants!
Anyone who has cut his eye teeth in public affairs is aware that every process of law is a mere cover for something else. Behind every national, International or local set of Society's machinery is a powerful class interest. When Leon Trotsky, the New York Jew, published the secret treaties that laid bare the sordid agreements and purposes of the world war, he exposed nothing new nothing but the condition that exists in exact duplicate in the rotten politics of New York, and perhaps worse in self-righteous politics. It is the system. It is the same thing in Patagonia, Berlin, Bucharest and California wherever private capital reigns.
When Frank C. Oxman falsely swore that he saw labor unionists commit the parade murders, he did not do it for fun, nor did he do it solely to win a few thousand dollars of reward. His was the voice of a great class demand, in committing that perjury; he would not have had the courage to do it without the moral backing of a powerful, self-justifying social force.
The Oxman crime was exposed by a bit of honesty in an unexpected quarter responding to another great social demand the interests of the awakening masses.
Estelle Smith has recently told one of the most remarkable stories ever suppressed by the newspapers, the bold details of how she, with a peculiar native ability for playacting (which we had occasion to appreciate when she made her dramatic appearance against Billings), was used as instructress for a group of perjurers gathered in a dental office to rehearse.
Estelle Smith's mother, Mrs. Alice Kidwell, has gone even further then the daughter into detail, and the story of how the employers' clique of California was able to command the death of its enemies through the gutter of police-trained perjury, is known as far a it an be known without the consent of newspaper capital.
But it is only the naive who will imagine that mere words of exposure will thwart the iron will that has decreed this attack upon Labor. The interest is still there; the will is unbroken, the motive has not been changed one whit by exposures. Capital was merely temporarily embarrassed. As soon as it can overcome the embarrassment, and the move to do so is now in progress, its will will be enforced. Oxman's acquittal was demanded and obtained by agreement between judge, defendant and the district attorney who hired the lawyer for the defendant. With Labor asleep, Capital is all-powerful and controls all the machinery of 'justice;' It can do as it pleases, and it pleases that Billings rot and Mooney die.
Labor came very near waking up in this wonderful case. The newspapers are keeping quiet now until Labor can sink back into deeper slumber. Then Mooney will hang as if to show its power and its contempt for the rights of its subject class, Capital, through its contemptible servant, Judge Dunn, is keeping Weinberg and Mrs. Mooney in jail, after their acquittal, for the coming slaughter. And Nolan, who everyone thought had at least escaped from the murderous mesh, they now announce they will hang, too. They don't even let him know what the specific charge against him is, since the 'high explosive' that a detective swore was found in his home, has proven to be Epsom salts.
These victims will live or die, the victory will be won or lost, according as Labor allows it or not. No other power can do it; there is no other power than the two, Labor and Capital.
The report of the Federal Commission for the investigation of the cases has not been published at the time of going to press.
Indictment As A Social Institution
Joe Dunn
In Russia of the old regime, everybody was born indicted. A blanket indictment for sedition was considered as covering the entire population, suspended only during the forbearance of the Tsar.
But in democracies it is different. The status of being under indictment is not born in one, but is voted upon individuals singly or in groups. This gives a power of discrimination in class making. The merit system can be applied. In America we have a newly-created class of the Indicted. It includes all persons who write on advanced social questions. All persons who think, if they can be caught thinking. Those who engage in discussion of the problem of freeing labor are rounded up with especial care and put into the class of the Indicted. Then all are placed under bail or under lock and key and the social order with the Unindicted in ascendancy is rendered safe.
The Indicted can be put in jail, fleeced or hanged at the pleasure of the Unindicted. It is a surprisingly facile luxury. A committee of the Unindicted can say, 'Twenty thousand dollars,' and, presto! one of the Indicted will have to pay up in a jiffy. Or 'Ten years in prison!' and, just like magic, off goes an Indicted for whatever length of time the committee of the Unindicted may please to say. It is awfully easy. Try it yourself: 'Ten thousand dollars! Twenty thousand dollars! Two years in prison! Fifteen years! Forty years! Life! Hanging! One is just as easy to say as another.
The Indicted are expected to go about with a weak-kneed, hang-dog look, end to be very much restricted in their actions.
It is a perfect riot of luxury for the Unindicted.
Why Has Academic FreedomBeen Abolished?
Prince Hopkins
Recently we have witnessed a spectacle that puzzled many people. When our Republic entered upon a course of action the war that vitally concerned every citizen, citizens were deprived of the right to say that this policy was unwise and should be reversed. Had this deprivation been accompanied by a tearing off of the mask, a frank avowal that from a capitalist viewpoint the Prussian form of government had proved its efficiency, all would have understood the measure as a simple coup d' tat. But what makes the situation vastly more interesting to a psychologist is the fact that the very party which has shown itself so cynically contemptuous of trusting democratic principles in a supreme test, has justified each autocratic step in the name of 'democracy' or of 'liberty.' In the scientific analysis of motives, it is a fundamental principle that we should base our judgment upon the evidence of men's actions, rather than upon what they declare with their lips.
In taking our side in any controversy, we ought to judge the aims of the two opposing parties, not so much by what they profess, as by the weapons and tactics that the parties choose to employ. Especially is it true that we should avoid depending too much upon the avowed ideals that the parties put forth for the consumption of outsiders in the present age, because the present is essentially an age of camouflage. To-day we have the spectacle a some twenty nations engaged in a terrific war in which it is manifestly impossible that all the nations can be fighting either unselfishly or on the defensive, and yet every nation engaged in the conflict excuses itself on the ground of absolute necessity, and even puts forward certain idealistic aims as additional justification for its barbarities. What is true of nations is no whit less true of individuals. Hypnotists will tell you that when you have told a hypnotized subject that on awakening from his sleep he will perform some action, as, for example, that he will rush to the window and look out, when he awakes, he will perform this action in due course, but on your questioning him as to why he did so he will not reply simply that he acted in response to an unreasoning impulse to rush to the window. Instead, he will evolve a rational justification for his act such as that he saw a fire engine dash along the street; and he will persuade even himself that this was the true reason. We always try to make our actions seem to be rational, when as a matter of fact, they are usually simply impulsive or instinctive. Bearing this in mind, we must not be surprised at the actions of financiers who profess, and in many ways put into practice, very high motives in the small details of their daily conduct, but whose entire public policy is guided by sordid interests of their social class, if not of their individual selves. We are not to consider that these men are consciously selfish in all cases, though they sometimes are so, but we must regard them as not fully understanding themselves and their own motives, and as projecting these personal motives into their social theories. When you hear of a governor who sends his militia to break up a peaceful assembly, or of a college president who must have his faculty intellectually docile, or of a mayor who makes belief in a military policy a requirement for membership on the school board in short, wherever some one declines to play fair, it is profitable to enquire 'What class, or what greed, owns this human tool?'
Test out this theory by the showing of the war. Don't the men whose welfare is linked with the success of big banking houses and manufacturing establishments line up squarely for a foreign policy that will down their Teutonic rivals in the world-market? And why did these men purchase, almost openly, the control of the 'public press' save that they realized that the masses' realization of where lay their own interests would cause those masses to decline the sufferings and sacrifices of a war which would bring them no good unless their judgment could be warped by misrepresentation of the facts.
To deny your opponent the right to state his case, is always a dangerous policy, since it at once excites hatred and mistrust. We therefore look to see such action only on the part of men who feel their case to be very hopeless, or know they lack the brains to defend it, or who are prompted by unworthy motives which they cannot confess to.
Certainly there is no lack of brains to defend the party of wealth. There are always able, honest brains to be hired by him who can pay for them. Therefore one or both of the other motives must be at the bottom of the present intolerance.
The anti-war patty has only asked for a 'fair field and no favor.' In answer to the militarists' hypnotic iteration and reiteration of old disproven arguments, these pacifists have brought out continuously new and more clinching evidence for their contentions; they have been far from despair of ultimate triumph along this line. The I.W.W. against whom the newspaper reports of setting fire to wheat-fields, spiking logs in the saw-mills, importing firearms, and accepting German gold, have never even been formally lodged by the government, and yet are charged against them by the papers these man have not retaliated with lynch-law for lynch-law, but have gone to prison like the early Christian martyrs with songs of a transcendent hope upon their lips.
How has it been now with the party that represents 'law and order' and how with what has been called our 'better controlled class' Surely we shall find their utterances to be free from all vulgar soap-box extravagance? Surely they will conduct their side of the quarrel with well-bread tolerance, even if with a disdainful hauteur in their reserve? Surely the best people, with aristocratic confidence in their case and their own ability, need never wallow in the muck of foul play?
Or has this party, on the contrary, mysteriously avoided free discussion, and drawn sophistical distinctions between free speech and 'license,' putting into the category of 'license' every statement that seriously endangered its interests? Has it supported its mayoralty candidate with a million-and-a-half-dollar campaign contribution, and in the same campaign has it shown to every eye its control over the press, by swinging six of the seven available dailies into line? Has it mistrusted the people even while it preached a mission of democracy? Has it implied that college students were not mature enough to discuss public questions impartially, and secured the discharge eminent professors because was distrustful of their political position? Has it stooped so low as to catch even little children in its net, importuning them and sending them upon the streets to importune others for money to buy its bonds? Has it set them to work at drudging task to aid the military? Finally, has it peremptorily discharged all teachers who would not lend themselves to converting our public schools into mental straitjackets, to the end of indoctrinating childish minds with the official dogma, and warping innocence can not defend itself?
Gentlemen of the jury, the facts are known to you. The law also is known to you the psychological law that a man's conscience is disclosed by the way be fights his cause.
How meekly shall we stand for these things?
The Surgeon's Duty
Alexander Berkman
'How can you Anarchists approve of Trotsky and support the Russian Boylsheviki?' a pacifist friend recently asked me. 'Most of the Boylsheviki are Social Democrats,' he added; 'believers in government. Moreover, Trotsky has resorted to methods of suppression as in the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Can you explain why you support him?'
I shall try. As Anarchists we believe neither in government nor in violence, both of which are indeed synonymous in our philosophy. And no doubt we, the Anarchists would be the first to oppose the Socialist Boylsheviki should they attempt to establish themselves as a PERMANENT government with the power to 'impose its authority upon the people. We believe, however, that the Russian Boylsheviki consisting as they do of Social Democrats, Social Revolutionists, Syndicalists and Anarchists do not represent the narrow-minded socialist type whose ideal is a strongly centralized Socialist government. On the contrary, we have reason to believe that the Boylsheviki in Russia are the expression of the most fundamental longing of the human soul that demands fullest individual liberty within the greatest social well being. That is why they have become, and are permitted to remain the public voice of revolutionaryRussia.
As to the Boylshevik activities at the present moment, and the immediate program of Lenin and Trotsky I can only say that an extraordinary situation may demand extraordinary measures.
It is most unfair to judge Trotsky and his co-workers on the basis of actions forced upon them by the stress of a most momentous crisis. Take, for instance, the suppression of the Constituent Assembly. We know Trotsky and his views. We know that Trotsky does NOT believe in the limitation of the freedom of the press and assembly, or indeed in suppression of any kind. But Russia is in the midst of a revolution, the greatest socio-economic upheaval of all times. A revolution is not a pacifist pink tea affair. A revolution is the reaction against the oppression of ages, and a violent reaction at that. As such it involves, necessarily, force and violence. It will be the great marvel of the future that this most momentous of all revolutions has been accomplished with comparatively so little violence, but has, on the contrary, been characterized by the greatest forbearance toward the hereditary tyrants, the most wonderful tolerance and kindest humanity.
It is the capitalist atrocities and governmental tyranny that produce crime and violence in time of peace, wholesale slaughter in war, and culminate in violent revolutions. Revolution is inherent in every social system based on slavery, and only the abolition of the system itself will usher in an era where force and violence will be things of the past.
Those that pretend to loathe violence and yet permit present conditions to continue, are in reality directly responsible for the perpetuation of the evil.
Russia is now by no means in a normal condition where our heart's desire of universal peace and brotherhood can actually be practiced. The great passion to make the world fit for such conditions, to clear the way for them, in the supreme justification of the Lenins and Trotskys, and is at the same time the explanation of our support.
The proletariat of Russia has suffered and bled for centuries. At last they have overthrown Tsarism and got rid of their tyrants. Shall they now meekly submit to a new set of bloodsuckers fastening themselves on their vitals? The Constituent Assemby was the saddle of the bourgeois exploiters eager to climb upon the back of the Russian proletariat. Away with the saddle!
Oh, my good man, when the patient's life is in grave danger, the surgeon is justified nay, it is his sacred duty to perform an operation.
A Greeting
Dear Comrade:
Your letter has found me way up here among the hills, and it has burst open the door of a chamber in my heart from which long pent-up thoughts rush out tumultuous, irresistible. For months I have been out of touch with the world, the world of struggle, of striving of achievement. My beloved teacher has been ill.
We have been reading everything we could lay our hands on, and trying to catch up with the world. It is somewhat of a race; for as you know, things are moving very rapidly just now. Among other things we read of your arrest and 'farcical trial.' My heart was troubled, and I wanted to do something and I was trying to make up my mind what to do when your letter came. Believe me, my very heart-pulse is in the revolution that is to inaugurate a freer, happier society. Can you imagine what it is to sit idle in these days of fierce action, of revolutions and daring possibilities? I am so full of longing to serve, to love and be loved, to help things along and to give happiness, it seems as if the very intensity of my desire must bring fulfillment. But alas, nothing happens. I sit out here among the quiet hills under the pines and READ about the things I long to do with my whole heart. I cannot keep the pang of bitterness out of my reflections these days. Why have I this passionate desire to be part of a noble struggle when fate has sentenced me to days of ineffectual waiting? There is no answer. It is tantalizing almost to the point of frenzy.
But one thing is sure. You can always count upon my love and support. Those who are blinder than I because they refuse to see tell us that in dangerous times like these wise men hold their tongues. But you are not holding your tongue, nor are the I.W.W. comrades holding their tongues --- blessings upon you and them --- 'Keep out of their vulgar brawls,' beg those who are near to me in blood, but not in spirit. 'Vulgar brawls' that is what they call your efforts to raise up those whom the cruel system under which we live has beat down and crushed. No, comrade, you must not hold your tongue. Your work must go on, even though all earthly powers combine against it. Never were courage and fortitude so terribly needed as now. Society on the war-path is an unmitigated ruffian. It knocks down every decent sentiment and noble ideal in the human heart, and regards those who retain the capacity to think as 'slackers,' traitors, cowards.
You have been arrested and condemned to the penitentiary for 'obstructing the operation of the military laws of the United States .' What did you really do? You spoke and wrote openly against conscription against forcing men to fight, whether they wish to or not. Your magazine was confiscated without any reason being given you for holding it up. Other radical and Socialist papers have been suppressed, and in some instances the editors arrested without warrants Meetings have been broken up, literature burnt in the streets, citizens beaten and shot because they dared speak against militarism. When we consider the lynching of Frank Little in Butte, the lawless deportation of the miners from Bisbee, the expulsion of Fred Moon, the attorney for their wives and children, and the shameful 'frame-up' in the Mooney case, we cannot but realize the need of brave men and women to protest against such despotism. How can there be a democracy unless people think and speak their minds freely --- unless the minority is treated with tolerance and justice? All the outrages I have enumerated are the negation of every principle of democracy, and we are told that we must enter the Great War in order to make the world safe for democracy.
We frequently hear it asserted that this country does not want you or your kind --- meaning those who oppose the ruling classes, those who fight against governments and authorities and the police for liberty and the elimination of poverty. You are told that this is a country of law and order where free men live. Are men free in a land where ten million Negroes are exposed to disenfranchisement eviction and lynching? Are men free when whatever the workers have got has been wrested from employers by strike after strike? Was it law and order to deny you bail? It is law and order to break up meetings of protest, opinions of the people? All the atrocities of this impious war are committed in obedience to law and order. It would be considered treason if any man in the armies of the countries at war refused to perpetrate these crimes at the command of his superiors. Behold the ruin of European civilization. It was accomplished in the name of law and order. The light of the spirit is more important to a people than a hundred victories. He who destroyeth that light kills more than the body politic he slays the nation's soul. Yes comrade, America has need of you and your kind. Long may you abide among us until your mission is fulfilled.
My heart aches for the people of all the nations. They do not hate one another. They do not want war. They want peace and liberty to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I have traveled the length and breadth of the land, and I know that the people want peace. I am told on good authority that the people of Great Britain, Germany and Russia want peace. They could rejoice in a peace without victory. What military victory could compensate them for this terrible waste of human life and treasure? We know that words once spoken will make their way. Although they fall upon the stony ground watered with tears and blood, yet they will spring up, and great shall be the harvest. They may imprison you, they may kill you; but the ideas for which you and my other comrades do battle are indestructible. In the years to come you will be honored and loved for a devotion to humanity that life could not tire, or death quench, or calumny shake. When the veil of prejudice and ignorance is torn away from the eyes of men, and they see with the sight God has given them, they will wonder at the blindness and stupidity of the generation that put such a woman in jail. For they will then see as I see now what you stand for.
I send you greetings from the everlasting hills glorious symbols of the Eternal God that shall Prevail. With a love that grows as I know more of you, I am,
Faithfully your comrade,
Helen Keller
Books on War and Militarism
UNDER FIRE, by Henri Barbusse. E.P Dutton & Co., New York ($1.50)
The author, a soldier in the French army, relates what he saw and experienced in the trenches. He writes as a keen observer of conditions and men who is not blinded by national hatreds and prejudices. The soldier he knows from intimate personal acquaintance is not the soldier of the bragging patriotic newspaper brand, who is described as most willing to split the head of the enemy, because he is imbecile enough to believe what he read in the paper, namely, that this enemy is the 'outcast of the universe.' Barbusse's soldiers are men, 'good fellows of all kinds, rudely torn away from the joy of life. Like any other men whom you take in the mass, they are ignorant and of narrow outlook disposed to be led and to do as they are bid.' They act under the instinct of self-preservation and cling desperately to the hope of pulling through. One of them, Volpatte, has both his ears neatly shot off. It makes him happy. He says to a comrade: 'Old man, it's a good wound after all. I shall be sent back, no mistake about it.' Faradet, of the same squad, remarks on this occasion: 'At the beginning it sounded comic when I heard them wish for a good wound. But all the same, and whatever can be said about it. I understand now that it's the only thing a poor soldier can hope for if he isn't daft.'
Life in the trenches consists chiefly of dirt, stink and lice, and when the squad is sent to a village to rest up and the soldiers are just dying to find a little comfort for themselves, the answer is: 'No you see, I've got officers under officers, that is, you see, it's the mess for the band and the secretaries, and the gentlemen of the ambulance.'
The nation demands your life, but the spoils belong to your superiors.
* * * * * ** * * * * *
A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE. B.W. Huebech, New York ($1.00).
Fourteen months the writer endured it on the western front, compelled to fight and to march with his regiment through burning cities and villages, the fleeing inhabitants of which scatter in all directions. Then he succeeded in making his escape into Holland, and from there arrived in a coal-bunker on these shores. As a civilian he is a miner, a working man opposed to the war from the very beginning. What he learns of its beastly practice teaches him that be was right thousand times right in his opposition. When the mobilization orders came the soldiers did not know who was to be the enemy. Even after the human cattle had already been entrained for the shambles, nobody took the trouble to give any information. They care very close to the Belgian frontier before they were told by their captain that the Belgian was their enemy. 'If we had been told,' says the author, 'the Hollander is your enemy, we would have been compelled to believe it, and would have shot him by order, for they give us our enemy and our friend according to the requirements of their own interests.'
Sometimes it happens that this state of affairs does not create enough enthusiasm among the soldiers for the killing and burning business. Then the singing of patriotic songs may enliven them. But the company, tired and footsore, is not in a mood to sing. Up steps one of the officers and shouts at the men, 'I tell you sing, you swine!' And the 'swine' obey and sing, miserably though it sounds. There you have the wonderful discipline, the virtue, and the manhood of military life!
The revolutionary philosophy of the Boylsheviki may find a large field for action if Germanyhas many more young workingmen who hold opinions and convictions similar to those of the German soldier who wrote this book.
MILITARISM -- By Karl Liebknecht -- B.W. Huebach, New York ($1.00).
This book, translated from the German, is anti-militaristic from every point of view. It is not a pacifist treatise. Its arguments are those of the social revolutionist who knows that wars are the logical results of international capitalistic competition, and who is absolutely opposed to militarism because it has ever been the tool of the ruling classes to keep the proletariat in submission. By giving many examples of bloody military interference in strikes, etc., taken from the modern history of monarchies as well as of republics, the writer furnishes irrefutable evidence on this point. The American reader's attention may be especially called in this connection to pages 140-147. Considering that the German original of the book was published about eleven years ago, when talk of world peace and disarmament was much abroad, Liebknecht proved himself a prophet when he scornfully dismissed the twaddle of bourgeois pacifists a la Carnegie: 'All the alleged plans for disarmament are thus seen to be for the present nothing but foolery, phrase-making and attempts at deception. The fact that the Tsar was the chief originator of the comedy at The Hague puts the true stamp on all of them.'
The strongest features of the book are those parts which deal with the professional war promoters, the Krupps, Stumms, the Metal Trust, Powder Trust, etc. Karl Liebknecht's undaunted courage has earned him the special hatred of the German government. He was arrested after having spoken at an antimilitarist demonstration, and in the summer of 1916 he was sent to the penitentiary for four years and one month. High treason it was, the Court said the usual reward in these days for those who love humanity and champion the cause of labor.
The three books make very good reading.A Letter(Conclusion)
Years have passed since. The object of my dreams has become a naked reality. I am in America, among Americans, and in American schools. I am learning the American ideals, customs, and traditions.
But alas! The same phrase I heard fifteen years ago from the Russian Captain, telling me to get out of the land if I don't eat pork, I hear now repeating itself in just a slightly modified form: 'If you don't like this land, you should get out of it!' To be sure, it comes no longer from a Russian Captain but from a member of an American board of education, who wishes to deprive Mr. Moore of his diploma because he dares to stand firm for what his conscience tells him to be right. Think of it! Freedom of conscience, which was practically the watchword for the founders of this Republic!
Granting that Mr. Moore has committed a political offense, and disobeyed the law, the law provides the punishment, and Mr. Moore was perfectly aware of it, and submitted quietly and unresistingly.
There is no disgrace in being a political offender. We do not condemn O'Connel, Skeffington, Casement, of Ireland, who were executed in the most cruel and brutal manner, even though they were political offenders. Nor do we condemn Warren Hastings, John Brown, Garibaldi, Joan of Arc, Mme. Breshkovsaya, and hundreds of others, too numerous to mention. Not even Germany's '48ers. The greatest men in the world's history were for some reason or other political offenders. Even George Washington broke the laws of King George. But, as one of the members of the school board said: 'He got away with it.'
Mr. Moore has not stolen anything, nor has he robbed anyone, nor has he murdered anyone. He simply chose the alternative which the law provided for everyone who wanted to choose it, i.e., registration or go to jail.
Yet, along comes a member of the honorable school board and states, 'It would be improper to confer a diploma on a criminal under his present circumstances,' and 'Let us wait until all disability is removed.'
To my question whether 'forced registration' would be considered as removing the disability, it was emphatically answered 'No! All he (Mr. Moore) will have to do is register.' Very well, then; where is the difference between the 'forced registration,' which our government will ultimately being to bear upon Mr. Moore and the 'voluntary registration' which the honorable board demands of him in order that he should get his diploma? I confess that I do not see the difference, and I am inclined to think that neither do the gentlemen. It is simply the alternative of 'eating the pork or of getting out of the land.'
MAURICE FRUCHT.
History To Be
Current events are chronicled, primarily, by newspaper reporters persons, generally, of no superior intelligence, and selected chiefly for their 'instinct for news' and the knack of securing a 'scoop.' Superficially in observation, inadequacy of understanding, exaggeration, and even downright misrepresentation are the main characteristics of such description. Thus the press at the very outset often turns a false light upon events of importance, and the reading public becomes the unconscious victim of misinformation. The reader is still further deluded by the editorial bias which interprets important events from the narrow viewpoint of the particular group interests the editor happens to serve and often share.
Special contributors, magazine writers, etc., though of superior understanding than the average reporter, unfortunately but inevitably approach their task of investigation already influenced in some degree by the initial newspaper misinformation and the public atmosphere of prejudice already formed.
Subsequently a history of the event in written, based on contemporary chronicles and 'data,' and that is the reason why most of so-called history is so positively and mischievously false.
Vide the terrible judicial assassination of the pioneer idealists of America, in Chicago, in 1887, written down in American 'history' as a 'riot on the Haymarket that caused the death of a number of police officers, the murderous perpetrators expiating their crime on the gallows.'
True history will be written only when the struggle of the classes will have been abolished and no social group will be vitally interested in distorting the truth and misleading the people.
FUNDS
Money collected at E.G. lectures in Chicago and Detroit for the following purposes:
For the use of the I.W.W. prisoners in Cook County jail: Chicago, $216.50; Detroit, $76.00. Amount turned over to the Non-Partisan Radical League, Chicago.
For the Italian Victims of the Milwaukee Frame-Up: Chicago, $175.50; Detroit, $76.00. Amount turned over to Secretary Checki and Judin.
For the Appeal of Louise Olivereau: Chicago, $21.50; Detroit, $139.00
Appeal for Comrade Levine: Chicago, $25.00.
MOTHER EARTH BULLETIN Sustaining Fund: Chicago meeting, $75.00; Banquet, $59.00. Promised pledges for Sustaining Fund, $40.00.
Campaign for Amnesty for the Political Prisoners in America on conclusion of Peace: Detroit, $167.60.
$170.00 collected in New York City for the I.W.W. was given as follows: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, for trip to Chicago in re New York cases, $150.00; for care of boys in Cook County jail, $20.00.
VOL 1. FEBRUARY, 1918, NEW YORK NO. 5.
On The Way to Golgatha
February 6, 1918.
Dear Faithful Friends:How many have gone the way to Golgatha, and how many will yet have to go? Only Time, the Great Redeemer of all who are made to suffer for their ideals, can tell. Time hangs heavily an those who cherish great hope, but it moves with surprising swiftness and far beyond our fondest dreams.Russia stands a glowing proof of that. In 1905 the Tsar's troops drenched the streets of Petrograd and other cities with the blood of the Revolutionists. In 1917 the revolutionary troops, more humane than those who did the butchery, drove the Tsar out of Russia.This thought came to my mind when I was being dashed up Fifth Avenue in a police patrol automobile to the Pennsylvania Station on Monday, February 5th.The Avenue and streets were lined with a curious mob, awaiting the parade of the soldiers from Camp Upton. Like the soldiers of the Tsar before 1905 who saw in every revolutionist an enemy to their country, the American soldiers would have greeted me with scorn and jeers and at the command of their Tsar would have taken my life in the ignorant belief that they were saving their country from a dangerous enemy.Will Time do for America what it has done for Russia? Will her soldiers some day make common cause with her people? Who can say what the future will bring?The idealist may not be a prophet, but he nevertheless knows that the future will bring change, and knowing he lives for the future he is given infinite strength to support the present.So I, too, Dear Friend, will be strengthened while in prison by the passionate belief in the future, by the hope that the two years taken out of my life may help to quicken the great events Time has in store for the human race. With that as my guiding star, confinement, convict's clothes and the other indignities the guilty conscience of society heaps upon those it dares not face, mean no hardship.You will want to help me while I am in prison, I know. You can do so in various ways. First, take care of my love child, Mother Earth Bulletin. I leave her to your sympathetic care. I know that you will look after her tenderly, so that I may find her bigger, stronger and more worth while when I return from Jefferson. Secondly, spread my Boylsheviki pamphlet in tribute to their great courage and marvelous vision and for the enlightenment of the American people. Thirdly, join the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners which is working for the release of all Political Prisoners. And finally, write to Berkman and myself. Always address us as Political Prisoners. Always sign your full name.Good-bye, dear friends, but not for long -- if the spirit of the Boylsheviki prevails.Long live the Boylsheviki! May their flames spread over the world and redeem humanity from its bondage!
Affectionately,EMMA GOLDMAN,U. S. Political Prisoner,Jefferson Prison,Jefferson City, Mo.
EMMA GOLDMAN Publisher and EditorOffice: 4 Jones Street, Now York City. Telephone, Spring 871110c a copy $1 a year
Gone to JailHarry Weinberger
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have gone to jail. The struggle in the courts for eight months not only for Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman but for all conscientious objectors, for all who demand the right of liberty, of free speech and press, even in time of war, all of which was involved in the case, is ended as far as the courts are concerned, for the United States Supreme Court has spoken.Men and women in America are going to jail for having ideals and consciences and for expressing their opinions for terms longer than they gave in Russia for the same offenses under the Tsar. And always the plea is 'necessity of War'. History shows that the plea is always some 'necessity' to prevent human thought and progress.Governments never seem to know what to do with idealists except put them in jail or kill them. Compulsion, always compulsion, or else conformity to the opinion of the masses or the opinion of those having governing power. Will civilization ever learn to do without jails, as we have learned to do without the ducking-school for heresy?They took Emma Goldman from the Tombs to the Pennsylvania station in a patrol wagon. The offer of a taxicab for Miss Goldman and the officers was refused by the U. S. Marshal McCarthy. Justice, I presume, is symbolized by a patrol wagon. Being gentlemen, with the belief that insult need not be added to punishment, is perhaps too much for the public officials charged with carrying out the letter of the law. The mills of justice grind slowly, but, it is said, they grind exceedingly small. That is no reason why the mills should be small and the miners smaller.Every generation thinks that what it does is absolutely right. But the study of history should give us pause in the belief that we are infallible. The fate of men like John Brown should make us hesitate to absolutely condemn. Idealists can only understand idealists. Have we in America ceased to be a people of ideals? Can we not be patient with those we do not agree? Can we not understand even that some people believe in the principles preached about 1900 years ago?With true ideals the human race can reach real heights, without them it creeps along with wars and prisons, death and disease, and without hope. Idealism has blasted more institutions and done more for the betterment of humanity than any or all inventions of mankind. But we learn so slowly. Well does Don Marquis write in his poem 'The Wages'
Earth loves to gibber o'er her drossHer golden souls, to waste;The cup she fills for her god-menIs a bitter cup to taste.
Who sets he gyves that bind mankindAnd strives to strike them off.Shall gain the hissing hate of fools,Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.
Who storms the moss-grown walls of oldAnd beats some falsehood downShall pass the pallid gates of deathSans laurel, love or crown;
For him who fain would teach the worldThe world holds hate in fee--For Socrates, the hemlock cup;For Christ Gethsemane.
Reflections
The New York Times, apparently with great moral satisfaction, reprints an article from the Sacramento Bee about the Mooney case, the writer of which must nearly have burst with poisonous gas when he composed it. His wrath is especially aroused by the fact that the Mooney case has become an international issue, and that the commission appointed by the President to investigate the crooked methods of Fickert & Co., instead of helping to deliver Tom Mooney and the others to the gallows, published a report, based upon facts, in favor of a new trial.The author of the article who must have studied the psychology and morals of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce diligently writes on this score:'In fact, the one 'gigantic frame up' in this whole matter has been the international 'frame up' for this professional dynamiter.'Not the tiniest shred of evidence is offered to prove that Mooney and the other defendants planted the preparedness parade bomb. The reader has to be satisfied with the again and again repeated epithet 'professional dynamiter.' And not one word is said about the activities of the notorious Oxman or about the fact that the chief witnesses who testified against Mooney and his friends have since signed sworn affidavits that they lied and perjured themselves under the pressure of threats, bribery offers and promises emanating in great abundance from the district attorney's office.All these ugly features of the case which furnish only too convincing root that the frame-up exists and that it is one of the most reckless and infamous attacks upon justice ever made by corrupt officials, the writer of the Bee shoves away in the manner of Dickens' Mr. Podsnap.But the workers of America and Europe understand the terrible situation Mooney and the others have been placed in. And they will continue to raise their voices and to demand that justice must interfere before it is too late.
* * *
The Boylsheviki consolidate their power in the wisest way possible. They don't care so much for nice dipomatic talk and agreements, but emphasize again and again the necessity of revolutionising society from the bottom up, not only in Russia but in all countries. To establish conditions that make the further existence of slave and master, of exploited and exploiters impossible is their grand aim.The spirit in which they conduct the fight for international brotherhood and well-being expresses itself in a recent speech of Lenine, from which a few significant sentences, read:'We have taken the land to give it to the poor peasants. External war is finished or is being finished now, internal war begins, but not a war with arms. This is an economic war. The masses must take back what has been stolen from them. Do not let the rich peasants or exploiters get the agricultural implements. Pit ten poor peasants against every rich one. The police are dead and buried, and the masses must take affairs in their own hands.'Very likely the big American dailies express on the sly their profound abhorrence of such doctrine, when they write that It is so awfully hard to understand the philosophy of Boylshevikism.
* * *
While the government insists that the President declared war upon Germany in order to save liberty and democracy more and more voices even from the camps of law and order are heard to the effect that liberty and democracy are the very principles which are most endangered by the warring government.Quotations from recent newspaper articles criticizing the Overman bill which, if passed, would clothe the President with unexcelled autocratic power, indicate that the 'reds' are not the only ones who discover more than one hair in the soup.In the Boston Transcript we read:'The enactment by the Congress of the President's bill, as it was introduced by Senator Overman and referred to the Committee on judiciary, of which he is Chairman, would overthrow 'Government of the people. by the people, for the people,' and set up in its place government of the President, by the President, for the President.'The Detroit News says:'In the plain language of unvarnished truth the President asks to be made dictator for the period of the war and a year thereafter. The bill he has sent to Congress will bear no other interpretation. It makes him absolute.'The Evening Telegram, Portland, Ore., remarks:'It would create an autocracy never contemplated by the American people as a war measure.'And the Pittsburg Gazette has this to say:'President Wilson, already wielding more authority than any ruler on earth, would have Congress by deliberate act strip itself of supervisory authority and make the Executive supreme dictator, virtually responsible to no one.'From the Indianapolis Star:'The bill invites such executive despotism as we have not seen even in Prussia.'None of the newspapers quoted have been suppressed or the writers imprisoned for seditious utterances.Pro-government papers In Germany denounce the general strike of the workers in the big munition factories of the empire an the outcome of a propaganda by wicked foreigners. That's an old out-worn trick not only in autocratic Germany but in bourgeois republics as well.The revolution of 1848 in Germany was the real genuine German article, the garrulous, educated German philistine being in the lead. Still the custodian of Wilhelm's castle in Berlin, probably to this very day, shows a stone to the visitor, explaining that it was thrown through a window of the castle during that uprising 'which was brought about by Poles, Jews and Frenchmen.'This time, however, there is some truth in the matter. In all countries the invigorating influence of the Russian Revolution is strongly felt. The foreigners who are partly responsible for the general strikes in Austria and Germany are the Boylsheviki.
* * *
A wholesale indictment against 55 followers of the I. W. W. was returned on February 8th by the federal grand jury of Sacramento, Cal. This will probably increase the number of persons to over 200 who are indicted all through the country in connection with the raid on the I. W. W. headquarters and the arrest of Wm. D. Haywood and other spokesmen of the organization. The labor organization with an independent and militant spirit must be crushed, but coddled and praised to the spies must be the Gompers gang who sells the workers like serfs to the ruling classes to work for their further enrichment.
* * *
Under the bloody sceptre of Mars those famous guarantees for the free expression of thought and opinions have become so sickly and enfeebled everywhere that they cannot stand the mildest test any move. A cast in evidence is that of the English anti-war philosopher Bertrand Bussell. He has been sentenced by a magistrate in London to serve six months in prison for a statement made by him in 'The Tribunal.' What he wrote was in the opinion of the court 'likely to prejudice Great Britain's relations with the United States.' The paragraph in question reads as follows:'The American Garrison, which by that time will be occupying England and France, whether or not they prove efficient against the Germans will no doubt be capable of intimidating strikers, an occupation to which the American army is accustomed at home!'In writing this Bertrand Russell may have had in mind a report published soon after the time when the first American troops had landed in France. In effect this report said that American soldiers had proved helpful and efficient in quelling a strike of the French railroad workers.
The League for the Amnesty of Political PrisonersIts Purpose and Programme By Emma Goldman
In 1901 Peter Kropotkin, on his visit to America, addressed a letter to Alexander Berkman, then in Western Penitentiary, 'Political Prisoner'. The warden erased the title and wrote across the envelope: 'No political prisoners in a Democracy.'That a prison warden should not know that Democracy, like autocracy, creates political opposition need not surprise us. Besides there were few political offenders in America in 1901. To be sure, John Brown and Mrs. Surrat were political offenders, so were the Chicago Anarchists, but they had been put out of the way. Those who were sent to prison were isolated and then forgotten.Since 1901, and especially since the war, every city has contributed its share of men and women who have been sent to prison for periods of thirty days to forty-five years for their political opinions. But even to this day America refuses to recognize the existence of political Prisoners.When the women pickets were forcibly fed in Washington jail, they were told by a gentleman from Congress that if they would stop hunger striking, they would be given all the privileges of political Prisoners but would not be recognized as such, for that would automatically establish a political status which a Democracy could not tolerate. So for Democracy's sake men and women, guilty of the great crime of holding non-conformist views on social and political questions, are given outrageous sentences and are treated as common felons.Nothing like this condition exists anywhere in the civilized world. Even under the auto cratic rule of the Tsar distinction was made between the political and common offender. Imperialistic Germany distinguishes between the political prisoner and the so-called criminal. France and all the Latin countries were the first to recognize the distinction.From time to time political prisoners are released in these countries by the declaration of General Amnesty. In fact in Italy and Spain Political prisoners who are elected to office, even while serving their sentences, are immediately released. Even England grants political Amnesty. The Sinn Feiners who had been sentenced to death and later had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment are now free through the declaration of a political amnesty.Only Democracy has so far refused to face the fact that those opposed to war, or conscription, those who under no circumstance would raise a gun against their brothers, those who for social and economic reasons cannot subscribe to militarism -- that these men and women are not common felons but people of deep conviction. They have learned from history that institutions which have outgrown human need are subject to change and that the change can only be worth while if it is fundamental and from the bottom up.Now, this may not be pleasant to the powers that be, but they must nevertheless learn to draw the distinction between men and women of ideals, the forerunners of the future, and the unfortunate victims who are forced by an iniquitous social system into crime.The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners has been organized to perform a much needed function. The League declares its purpose as:1. To educate the public to the fundamental distinction between Political offenses and common crime.2. To work for the recognition in the United State of the status of political offenders.3. To crystallize public sentiment in this matter to that it can be made a subject for representation at the General Peace Conference.4. To obtain the release of all political off offenders through a general amnesty as soon as peace is declared.No doubt a few well-known people may be released when peace is declared. What is to become of those who are unknown and have neither friends not money? Are they to rot in prison to the end of their terms for something which is the direct consequence of the war? That is exactly what will happen unless a campaign is begun and a powerful opinion created which will insist upon amnesty as one of the urgent demands at the peace parleys.The League, then, can become not only of national importance, but of international scope in view of the fact that most political prisoners in America are from Russia and Italy. Certainly Russia will demand an amnesty for her citizens in America. She is already demanding that. The other countries will follow.As a very interesting sidelight, it is well to call attention to the fact that one of the demands made by the strikers in Germany was: IMMEDIATE GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. Thus do the German workers under imperialism demand even more than we do. We only ask for amnesty as soon as peace is declared. Little enough!The method the League will pursue is as follows:1. Headquarters will be established in New York. The work to be sustained by dues, contributions, subscriptions. through meetings and social affairs.2. The League will organize branches in every city. These branches will contribute to the general work and provide for its local needs.3. The League will receive from each local group and compile the number, names and terms of sentence of politicals in prisons in each city with a view of establishing an exact census of those who will benefit by the amnesty.4. The League will correspond with prisoners and assist them in every way possible while they are in prison.5. The League will carry on an educational campaign through literature and meetings with the assistance of labor, and other organizations, with the purpose of bringing public sentiment to bear upon Washington for the amnesty.To sum up: The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners, the first of its kind in America, comes to do a great and urgent work. It aims to become the hope and sustenance of all those who for the sake of their ideas are now confined in every state and federal prison and who must be freed. For further information write to Miss M. E. Fitzgerald, Secretary. Send your contributions to Leonard D. Abbott of the Financial Committee of the League.Address all communications to
MISS M. E. FITZGERALD32 Union Square, New York.Room 708.
Book ReviewThe Boylsheviki and World Peace By Leon TrotskyBoni and Liveright, New York ($1.50)
The book for which Mr. Lincoln Steffens wrote an introducion, who, since his return from Russia, has done much to spread light upon the subject, should prove full of valuable instruction and data for those who 'cannot understand the Boylsheviki mind.' A title which would read somewhat like this: The Downfall of the International and how to rebuild it, would be more appropriate to the contents of the book, the chapters of which were written when Trotsky was still the propagandist of the Social Revolution, expelled by the governments and traveling from country to country spreading his principles.International understanding and solidarity in action of the workers of all countries is to Trotsky and also to us the only possible solid foundation for world peace. Capitalism and government on the other hand are related to war like cause and effect. To talk about the possibility of world peace under capitalist rule is like talking about cholera as the best foundation for human health. Trotsky. it is true, has in his capacity as a representative of the Russian Revolution (only outside of Russia he is spoken of as 'minister') negotiated on the war with delegates of capitalist governments, but to be sure he did that chiefly for the purpose of gaining greater momentum for the International Social Revolution. The German and Austrian governments may soon find out, now that according to reports peace has been established between Russia and Germany, that a 'peaceful' revolutionary Russia is a much more formidable enemy to imperialism and capitalism than belligerent Tsarism could ever have been.Strongly Marxian as the author of this book is, he could not altogether avoid noticing that it was just the old fatalistic doctrine of Marxism that could be used so readily by the Social Democratic parties of all countries to hide their ever increasing degeneration from revolutionary socialism to an opportunistic policy. He himself describes this process of degeneration and disintegration very vividly in the case of German Social Democracy, the chief leaders of which were always particularly keen to maintain that they were not willing to give up one iota of the Marxian theory. To-day when we look at Trotsky and his revolutionary activity, he impresses us as being spiritually more related to Michael Bakunin than to Karl Marx.
Rochester Visit
I have but one regret about having to go to prison now. It is that my work in presenting the truth about the Boylsheviki before American audiences has been cut short. The large attendance in each of the few cities I visited was sufficient indication of the awakened interest in the marvelous people of Russia who are compelling attention the world over. Even my 'home town,' Rochester, turned out in full force.The first evening it seemed that the meeting would not take place. A miserable detective, who had not yet forgotten his defeat after arresting Dr. Reitman on the charge of having in his possession a birth control pamphlet, evidently wanted to get revenge. So he reported that a meeting was scheduled to the Fuel Administrator. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was to open, and with nearly a thousand people present, I was notified of the detective's action.A long argument with the Fuel Administrator over the telephone finally induced the man to permit the meeting to go on, in view of the fact that the hall had been heated and that the war for Democracy had already sustained the loss.As in Chicago and Detroit, my Rochester audience responded most enthusiastically to 'The Truth About the Boylsheviki.' The following evening brought a large gathering to the lecture on 'Women Martyrs in Russia.'The two meetings have special significance because they were arranged by a few girls who work in shops all day and devoted their evenings to their labor of love.Rose and Sara Cominsky, Fanny Rosenthal, the Mink sisters, Anna Drexler, Yetta Brenner -- ardent, devoted and zealous, they are the material from which the American Boylsheviki will come. A few of our Italian Comrades helped with the literature, and our good friend Mr. Howser showed his courage by presiding at the meetings.A tour through the country would have been a veritable triumph. Perhaps that explains the great hurry on the part of Washington to send us away even before the customary thirty days' 'grace.'I take solace now in the fact that the work has been started. Elsewhere in this issue you will see an outline of our plans. The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners promises to become one of the most important organizations in America. Lend it your support. Do what you can to spread my newly published pamphlet, 'The Truth About the Boylsheviki.' Single copies or large quantities can be obtained from us.You can also help to maintain our work by ordering books from our new bookshop. We have opened, in connection with our new office, a shop where we will sell radical or any other books or pamphlets you may require. Communicate by mail with us and your order will be filled without delay.
To the Organized Workers of San Francisco
On Saturday list the Western newspapers were full of the story of the findings of the Presidential Commission sent to investigate the trials of Thomas J. Mooney and others, in whose cases there took place one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice that ever cursed this American Continent.That report conclusively found that the officials entrusted with the administration of justice in San Francisco, had prostituted it in the service of the labor-hating corporations and the Chamber of Commerce. And it has established beyond all doubt, that District Attorney Fickert, in spite of his re-election on December 18th, had been guilty of criminal malfeasance in office.But the same gang that was interested in the conviction of Thomas J. Mooney by every possible method, including perjury, was most vitally interested in his re-election in December last. And it is a matter of common knowledge, both in San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as a fact perfectly well-known to Governor Stephens and to the Federal officials in California, that the explosion at the Governor's mansion was the work of Fickert's friends, and was done with the sole purpose of securing his re-election.To cover up their flagrant misdeeds, it was absolutely necessary that the gang should find a new goat. And as in San Francisco, they were already on the point of being shown up in their frame-up on Mooney, it was imperative that they should look elsewhere. That elsewhere was not hard to find, for in Sacramento there was a kindred gang that was desperately anxious to break up the local branch of that greatest modern national scapegoat, the I. W. W.Both gangs jumped with joy. 'The I. W. W. The very thing!' And at once they started a press campaign to blame the explosion on the I. W. W. in spite of the fact that the evidence pointed and still points in the direction of Fickert's friends, and was done with the purpose of influencing his re-election. They succeeded however, in holding sixty-five members of the I. W. W. by forcing the hand of the California Federals, who after investigating had found them absolutely clear of all share in the explosion.But the official in direct charge of these prosecutions is so much at his wit's end to find any foundation for a case, that he has to resort to tricks of the most despicable meanness to prejudice the minds of the Grand jury and the public. And by his circulation of unfounded and utterly false press statements, he tends to reduce the Federal Government to the level of the same ghastly indecency that the findings of the Commission so bitingly scores in the Fickertian conduct of the Bomb cases in San Francisco.We call your attention to the two sets of facts and the close connection between them; and if we are fortunate enough to secure your personal interest, we will keep you supplied with the latest developments.CALIFORNIA DISTRICT DEFENSECOMMITTEE I. W. W.,95 Third Street,San Francisco, Cal.
* * *
As this issue goes to press, announcement comes from San Francisco that the life of Israel Weinberg will be placed in jeopardy for the second time on charges growing out of the Preparedness Day Parade bomb explosion. At the first trial it required but one ballot for the jury to declare his innocence. But the Chamber of Commerce is persistent, and, regardless of the decisions of court and jury, will bend every effort to carry out its lynch program against labor.
* * *Alexander Berkman -- Emma Goldman,Tombs Prison, New York.
Your Chicago comrades gather at the Workers' Institute Ball and unite in sending love and greetings. The Revolutionary and Boylsheviki movement will go on during your stay in Atlanta and Jefferson City, The workers are spurred on to greater activity.
NATHANSON, KRUPNIC, GRUBER JUDIN, COHN, REITMAN.
Report of the Russian Convention
The First United Russian Convention in America was held in New York on February 1-4. The convention was called for the purpose of uniting the Russian colony and, mainly, its toiling elements. It may be said that this purpose was accomplished.The convention was attended by over 160 delegates who represented different Russian organizations existing in America. There were delegates from Eastern States, from the Middle West, from the West and also from Canada. In some cities mass-meetings were held, which elected delegates to the convention. The convention thus represented not only organizations, but also the unorganized masses.The convention was non-partisan. The different currents of Russian socialist and revolutionary thought were represented there, but there were also a quite considerable number of non-partisan delegates.The convention was dominated by a revolutionary spirit. By a vast majority the policies of the Russian Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies and of the Government of People's Commissaries were endorsed.The following questions attracted the general attention of the convention: the form of the organization of the Russian colony, the attitude toward the present official 'representatives' of Russia in the United States, and the attitude toward the draft. It was decided to organize Councils, which will take up the task of serving the interests and needs of the Russian Labor Colony. The activity of the Russian embassy, of the consuls and of the heads of the Russian Supply Commission was condemned as directed against the interests of new Russia. It was decided to request the Russian Councils and People's Commissaries to remove the present official 'representatives' of Russia in the United States, because they really represent nobody but themselves. It was also decided to ask the People's Commissaries to replace the embassy and the consulates by organs which would express the real will and aspirations of the revolutionary people of Russia.Among the resolutions passed were the following:1. A demand that Russian citizens among whom are Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Louis Kramer and Morris Becker, convicted for political offenses in America to imprisonment and deportation should be released immediately and sent to Russia.2. A demand that all ports be opened to political exiles from Russia, and that passports should be supplied to all Russian citizens who desire to return, and that the Russian consulates in America provide transportation for such exiles.At the close of the convention it was decided to send telegrams of greeting and assurance of solidarity to Alexander Bertman and Emma Goldman to their respective prisons, voicing the determination of the delegates that no effort would be lost in gaining for them their liberty.
Will you help maintain the BULLETIN while we are in prison, and at the same time aid the propaganda?
* HELP CIRCULATE THESE WORKS *
UNDER FIRE by Henri BarbusseThe greatest book written on the world catastrophe by an actual participant.$1.50PriceA GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCELife in the trenches, with all its horrors and filth. Most vivid and realistic.$1.00PriceMILITARISM by Karl LiebknechtA most lucid and powerful arraignment of militarism by a Socialist who remained true to Internationalism.$1.50PriceANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS by Emma GoldmanMost timely especially at this moment when the government is breaking down and current history is vindicating Anarchist ideas.
$1.00PricePRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST by Alexander BerkmanThe greatest work on prisons in the English language. Masterly analysis of prison psychology resultant from social and economic forces. Autograph copies.
$1.50Price
POSTAGE EXTRA ON ALL BOOKSMother Earth Book Shop 4 Jones St., New York City
The Boylsheviki Have Come to Challenge the World
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BOYLSHEVIKIBy Emma Goldman
A compelling analysis of the historic background, the aims and aspirations of the Boylsheviki--Miss Goldman's last contribution before her departure for Jefferson Prison for two years.
Price 10 Cents
MOTHER EARTH BOOK SHOP4 Jones Street, New YorkA Rendezvous for Radicals
Mother Earth Book Shop
4 JONES STREET6th Ave, at 4th St.Now York
Books and pamphlets on all Radical subjects The BolshevikiandWorld PeacebyLeon Trotzky
The Master mind of Europe onquestions most vital to Humanity.Introduction by Lincoln Steffens.
$1.50
On Sale atMother Earth Book Shop
VOL.I. MARCH, 1918, NEW YORK NO.6.
Messages from Emma Goldman andAlexander Berkman
Missouri State Prison,Jefferson City, March 3, 1918
To my Dear Ones:
To all those who have written me such loving, cheering, devoted letters. I greet you all. I wish I could reply to each one individually, but I am permitted to write only once a week and may only use two sheets of paper. So many of you dear friends have written me seventeen letters from one little gathering in my home town, Rochester, N. Y., were sent to me and innumerable others from all parts of the country since my imprisonment. I only hope you will return 'good for evil,' that you will keep on writing even though I can reply only collectively.
It is nearly a month since I was imprisoned, yet it has not seemed so long. You, my Dear Ones, have helped me each day to forget my surroundings and to take me back into my world of activity, my associations, my camaraderie with you and the great host of Mother Earth friends. Yes, your letters, full of warmth and eagerness have put color and interest into the place which Oscar Wilde described as 'built of bricks of shame,' a place which otherwise would have proven so dreary. Only those who themselves have been in prison will appreciate the importance of daily contact with the outside world, with one's friends and comrades by means of letters.
You will want to know how my life has been arranged for me. One ceases to be a free agent, once in prison. One becomes an automaton, moving with clock‑like regularity and never‑changing sameness each hour, day and year that the prison holds one.
We rise at 5:30, although we are awakened at five o'clock. Those are indeed fortunate who can sleep through the night with the bell clanging each half hour and the guards in the towers signaling that 'all is well,' meaning, of course, God is in his heaven, and his accursed children are safely locked away in H . We go down to breakfast about 6:15 and are in the shop at 6:30 a. m. Some day I will describe that shop; it is a 'credit' to civilization. We work until 11:30, then march to dinner. We are in our cells from 12:00 to 12:30, then go back into the shop until 4:30. After that we are supposed to have an hour and a half in the open, but during this month, we were out only four times, not counting Sundays, when I, the atheist, could not partake of recreation because I did not attend chapel. How else are sinners to be brought to the throne of the Lord, if not by means of punishment. I always knew all sorts of methods are being employed to make the sinner feel the wrath of God, but that he should be deprived of much needed air unless he attends Church is new to me. Of course, one misses air in prison even more than outside of it. Somehow prisons are all engaged in a conspiracy against fresh air, which they no doubt consider an alien enemy.
That may explain why our recreation has to be spent indoors, walking round and round the corridor amidst the deafening noise of human voices, venting emotions pent up all day by enforced silence. Thus, for a few moments I saw only a 'patch of blue which prisoners call the sky.'
Yesterday was our first great treat. We were in the yard for more than two hours. It was a glorious day. The blessed sun, the vast blue sky looking down upon creature man contemptuously for his inhumanity to his brother. The sun heals all germs. Will it ever heal the germ of cruelty, injustice and ignorance? Will it ever melt the ice in the human heart?
I am leading a sort of double life, dear friends. One, the prison life is entirely mechanical. The other is far removed from here; it is too free, too unbounded, too colorful and serene for man made laws or rules or discipline to touch it. Nothing can touch that life even remotely. You are in that life with me, my dear ones, and all those who are imbued with a great Ideal, who work for a new world where beauty, comradeship and freedom shall take the place of this hideous world of ours.
My thoughts are with you always and with our fighter, Mother Earth Bulletin. I can do nothing for it now, but I depend upon all of you. Keep the child, Mother Earth, alive and growing. I know you love me, and for my sake will minister to the needs of the Bulletin while I remain in prison. When I return I shall resume our work with a new hope and deeper zeal. All that I see and experience during the two years will help me in the great battle to come. Good‑bye, my dear ones. Write again. I am deeply interested in all of your activities, particularly those for the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners.
Affectionately,
EMMA GOLDMAN.
* * *
I went to Atlanta and saw Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer and Morris Becker at the United States Penitentiary on February 18th and 19th. They did not seem to believe that 'stone walls and prison bars, a prison make.' They were all cheerful, healthy, interested in the things of the outside world and interested in every current of thought and every ideal being struggled for in every part of the world.
They greeted me not with doleful faces, but with good cheer and smiling countenances. They wanted to know the news, the personal news, the big news, aye, even the gossip among their friends. They can only write one letter a week, but their friends and all who are interested in them should write them as often as possible, signing their full names. Receiving letters is a prisoner's great recreation, and one of the things that breaks the monotony.
Berkman felt that absolutely no relaxation in the efforts in Mooney's behalf and of the other defendants of the California frame-up should be allowed to take place, as the entire battle in their behalf may be lost if there is the least cessation of fighting and the arousing of public opinion.
Jails are civilization's confession of failure; and prisoners are prisoners only if they believe they are prisoners.
I am, Sincerely yours,
HARRY WEINBERGER
The Invasion of Revolutionary Russia
On the l8th of March 1871 the Commune was proclaimed in Paris. Two months later the fighters of the Commune, the vast majority of which were workingmen, were butchered by the regiments of General Gallifet, sent against Paris by order of the Provisional French Government operating from Versailles.
The victorious Prussian army was laying siege to Paris, but Berlin and Versailles, Bismarck and Thiers understood each other perfectly in one respect. From their point of view the crushing of the Commune was of first importance.
In order to accomplish this bloody end the French and Prussian leaders of reaction joined forces to a certain extent. Bismarck ordered the release of French prisoners of war in big batches to make the butchery of the Commune, prepared for by the French government, more efficient. And it really turned out to be efficient. Nearly 30,000 People were killed during the May days by Gallifet's hordes.
It was the end of the Commune. But the international proletariat has not forgotten the heroes and martyrs who fought and died for it, forerunners of the international social revolution as they were.
On a larger scale Russia became the scene of events similar in some of their significant phases to those here shortly related.
The armies of Germany, greeted by the adherents of the former regime in Russia, applauded openly by the German aristocracy and the wealthier parts of the bourgeoisie, and secretly by privileged classes of all countries, invaded revolutionary Russia.
Fake and sham were the German peace negotiations at Brest‑Litovsk. Adding to them clumsy lies and the slyness of a fox, the German government included in one of the reports about these negotiations the statement that the German representatives in Brest‑Litovsk did not have the impression that the Russian delegates were really in earnest in their expressed desire for peace.
This lie was exploded a few days later by the declaration of the Soviet that Russia would not continue the war, that the Russian workers and peasants did not wish to murder their fellow‑workers of Germany and Austria.
The real motive for the treacherous invasion of Russia, besides that of making booty and stealing provinces, was the desire to strangle the Revolution. On their march into Russia the German commanders took good care that in the cities and villages the members of the local Soviets were taken into custody first.
Prince Leopold of Bavaria, German commander‑in‑chief, has defined the purpose of his campaign himself:
'Russia is sick and is trying to contaminate all the countries in the world with a moral infection. We must fight against the disorder inoculated by Trotsky and defend outraged liberty. Germany is fortunate in being the incarnation of the sentiments of other order loving peoples.'
That's it. The Germany of the Hohenzollern, of the Hindenburgs, and Krupps has now become the bloody representative of international reaction and capitalism. Petrograd was formerly considered the centre of all counter‑revolutionary forces the world over. Now Berlin has become this centre.
No mistake about that. Since the ascent of the Boylsheviki to power the capitalist mouthpieces in all countries have fairly foamed in their anger and wrath. They denounced them every day as filthy mob, as criminals, traitors, or at best as lunatics, and what else was there to be expected, seeing that the Russian revolutionists attacked in real earnest the sacred foundations of despotism and exploitation, seizing the land of the big proprietors, of the crown and church for the poor peasants, and expropriating the manufacturers, the rich and the banks.
What the ruling classes in all countries have wished for in the last months was a Russian Gallifet, who would lead an army against Petrograd. It was to their infinite regret that Korniloff and Kaledine did not succeed in accomplishing the defeat of the Boylsheviki.
And now that Hindenburg became the scourge of Russia, these same classes hope again that 'order' will be restored an Russia.
We faced the scandalous situation that the only people standing up for peace absolutely sincere finds itself abandoned and delivered up to the shambles of the enemy.
But let us not cry about it. The lines should be drawn clear. The workingmen of all countries, the multitudes, or at least the thinking minorities in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London, Rome must now understand clearer than ever before that the war has become the universal contest between the old social forces of oppression and the new revolutionary forces whose aim is the radical social and economic reconstruction of society.
Petrograd is now the capital of the International Social Revolution towards which all our thoughts and feelings concentrate.
There are signs even in Germany that the slavish obedience to the murderous commands of the military caste has weakened considerably. In the German Reichstag the Independent Socialist, Dr. Cohn, caused an uproar by saying:
'I see the day coming when the Revolution will reach Germany, and the people will take the fate of their rulers into their own hands.'
An emergency peace treaty with Germany has now been signed by the Russian delegates at Brest‑Litovsk. Russian territories have been ceded to Germany and Turkey. To those who think this situation hopeless we refer to a remark of Nicholas Lenin, that seems to us full of revolutionary wisdom. He thinks it possible that the Revolution will make headway and he asks what difference it makes where the boundary lines are drawn, considering that it is the aim of the revolutionary proletariat to fight oppression everywhere and to establish international solidarity which would have no use for the cannon guarded frontiers of to‑day anyway.Frightful Stubborness of LaborProminent personages have lately been disagreeably surprised in discovering that Labor is not always entirely satisfied with playing the role of Cinderella. Workmen, usually considered as mere 'hands,' have given here and there some evidence that they also possess brains. That was particularly perplexing to the daily press, and when the carpenters in the shipyards went on strike for shorter hours and better conditions, they were attacked right and left
William I. Hutcheson, President of the Carpenters' organization, was considered at least a Boylsheviki, if not worse, for the reason that he did not treat the carpenters as recruits, declining to order them back to work in command of print‑paper‑made public opinion. The writers who denounced him so fiercely probably did not know that. Mr. Hutcheson has always been a typical conservative labor leader, adhering, in general, faithfully to the deadening tradition and methods of the American Federation of Labor. In the present case he certainly did not want to do any more 'mischief' than to obtain better working conditions for the members of his organization. Was that not his and the carpenters' inalienable right? Is it a sin against democracy on the part of the workingman to ask for a decent standard of life in exchange for his lifelong toil? Can that be a crime, especially now that foodstuffs, the chief provisions and necessaries of existence, have increased in price from 50 to 100 per cent?
President Wilson wrote a letter to Hutchenson closing with the alternative whether the President of the carpenters' organization would choose co‑operation or obstruction for his tactics. And still Hutchenson held out. He did not grow panicy, going even so far as to refuse having the whole matter transferred to the Adjustment Board. He probably knew from long experience that these boards and commissions become in many cases the burial ground for labor demands.
The editors stood aghast for a while and then sailed into Hutcheson again. They are often enough themselves victims of indirectly enforced obedience; so why should they allow other people to enjoy the possession of something like a backbone of their own!
Meanwhile Mr. Gompers, the old standby of the profiteering classes of society, and other leaders of like calibre, stepped in and did their utmost to bring about an abrupt ending of the strike.
Mr. Gompers denounces the Hebrew Trades Union Movement for tolerating radicalism in its ranks and is busy with arranging loyalty conventions and meetings for labor, giving the impression that loyalty is somehow synonymous with labor's submission to the wishes of Big Business, which, according to its own financial reports, bags enormous profits at this time. A writer in the 'New Republic' phrases the agreeable situation in which Big Business finds itself at present in this way:
'In peace, when time is not a pressing matter, it is doubtless possible for the government to make contracts that leave no opportunity for excessive profits. In war this is not possible.'
That is perhaps the reason why Mr. Gompers' endeavors do not show much of the desired great result. The logic of the workers is evidently often at variance with the logic of Gompers. Hardly a day passes that one does not read about impending strikes.
Reflections
Now that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are in prison it is to be expected that all friends and comrades, every one of them, gets on board the good ship Liberty which is bound to reach the shores of a new future. Spreading our principles, making people aquainted with our literature, paying subscriptions, and securing new subscribers for 'Mother Earth Bulletin', should now be considered more urgent than ever before. We have removed our offices from 226 Lafayette Street to 4 Jones Street.
* * *
Whatever crowned and uncrowned leaders of the nations may do or say to convince the world that the only means for stipulating relations between nations and races are competition in armament, bayonet and cannon ball, it will not avail in the end. A strong social under‑current gives assurance that development points in an opposite direction.
Out of the very turmoil of stimulated hate, of slaughter and suffering rises stronger and more powerful every day the conviction that man and countries must combine for mutual help and international solidarity if they want to gain a future worth while.
Russia gives the clue. The Proletarian Red Guard, fighting for the cause of internationalism against autocracy, exploitation and bourgeois rule, is the nucleus around which the social‑revolutionary forces of all countries will rally in ever‑increasing numbers, insight and strength.
* * *
Better than we could do it ourselves, Cardinal Farley has taken the trouble to define the spirit of modern Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. In the Catholic weekly 'America' he published an article from which the following paragraph was taken:
'The figures are eloquent. According to the Secretary of War, Mr. Baker, 34 or 35 per cent of the army are Catholics. The better Catholics they are, the better soldiers they are going to be? If there is one principle that must be the guiding star of the soldier, it is the principle of authority. Obedience is the soldier's duty. The necessity of that duty has been deeply impressed upon Catholics. By inculcating that principle upon her Children, the Catholic Church has conferred a lasting benefit upon the state, a benefit the results of which are now beginning to be apparent. Submission to authority is the backbone of an army. The Catholic soldier is already predisposed by his training to respect that fundamental law.'
Thus writes the representative of Jesus, who in the night when he was betrayed by the kiss of Judas to the authorities, said to the disciple who wanted to defend the master:
'Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword.'
* * *
French papers report the sending to jail of Sebastian Faure and Helen Brion for antimilitarist activity. Faure is one of France's greatest orators. He is the founder and conductor of the Bee Hive, the Modern School at Rambouillet near Paris. The school had to close soon after the beginning of the war, but Faure did not give up his propaganda, revolutionary not only from the religious point of a view but from the social as well.
* * *
Through a New York reporter the public was informed that tears glistened in the eyes of more than one detective when Capt. Wm. J. Deevy of the First Branch Detective Bureau told his men that he would give up his position and retire. The 'famous arrests' made by the captain during his career were also reported. Matt Schmidt, accused together with the McNamaras and David Kaplan of having participated in dynamiting the Los Angeles Times Building and finally hunted down by the harpies of Burns' Detective Agency, was arrested by Capt. Deevy.
It is well known that crocodiles are supposed to be capable of shedding tears, but it may be interesting news to students of natural science that ferrets and scorpions are able to do the same stunt.
* * *
A New York comrade, writing a letter to Alexander Berkman, enclosed a newspaper clipping about the case of Bertrand Russell, who recently was sentenced in London to six months' imprisonment for having written a disrespectful comment on the American army. This letter was sent back to our comrade by the authorities of Atlanta Prison with the remark it could not be delivered to the addressee, because it contains 'information concerning criminal matter which under the rules prevents its delivery to Mr. Berkman.'
In other words, the prison rules do not allow that one 'criminal' gets Information about another 'criminal'.
Sasha Berkman can stand it. We, his friends, also. But what about Earl Russell's family, very distinguished in English society. Verily, if even prison officials have lost all respect for the upper crust of society, what then can you expect from the Boylsheviki.
* * *
Dr. William J. Robinson, well known to the radical element of the country, has been arrested and placed under $5,000 bail. It happened because he published his opinions on the war in his magazine 'A Voice in the Wilderness' and in other publications.
Having the misfortune not to be able to appreciate the assertion that crippling and annihilating millions of human lives are absolutely necessary in order to establish well-being and happiness for all nations, he recommended that the war should end and peace be restored to the world. That is the reason why he will have to stand in the dock.
* * *
Our well known comrade E. de Armand, director of 'Par dela la Melee'' has been condemned by the military tribunal at Grenoble, France, to five years' penal servitude for so-called complicity in 'assisting desertion'. The fact was not established by the prosecution, who, when demanding a severe sentence for Armand, claimed it because 'accused is a militant Anarchist.' Which looks to us as if it works quite as well in democratic France, as it does in other countries. An appeal has been taken against this excessive sentence.
* * *
The Appellate Court in Cleveland sustained the verdict against Dr. Ben Reitman, who, charged with having propagated birth control, was sentenced in January of last year to six months' imprisonment and $1,000 fine.
If we had no courts what would become of decaying morality systems, of tumble‑down institutions, and superstitions! Be they ever so obnoxious in the way of improvement and progress, they must not be removed. The courts will see to it sternly that they are upheld. Imbued with a special instinct for preserving things that deserve to be discarded, the mills of justice grind down principles and ideas, which, put in practice, might ease the lot of suffering humanity.
The case will be appealed.
* * *
Labor bodies, radical organizations and groups sent encouraging cablegrams to Petrograd, urging to fight to the utmost the German invaders. A still better help for the fighters is the spreading of light and knowledge upon the fundamental principles of the Russian Revolution. We make this remark because we notice that some of the cablegram senders had only a few days before declared that the Boylsheviki must be done away with.
* * *
Alexandra Kollontay, who was in America for a propaganda tour before the Russian revolution started, and after her return held the position as Commissioner of Public Welfare under the Boylsheviki regime, has been arrested by government troops in Finland. She came with other Boylsheviki delegates to Finland for the purpose of arranging an International Socialist Conference.
With the German invaders in sight, the pillars of the old rotten system became more daring.
Not in one of the different commission reports about the labor troubles in the western mining and lumber districts are the I. W. W. held responsible for the deep‑rooted unrest.
The authors of these social documents seem rather to consider the brutal methods used by the employers for the purpose of frustrating the just demands of the workers as the real cause for the disturbances. ‑
One wonders whether these reports will have any bearing on the pending trial against about 300 members of the I.W.W. organization. That they have no influence on the stand taken by the Federal Department of Labor is indicated by the proposal of the department to round up all alien labor agitators who foment strikes, etc. in the Northwest for internment. The eternal curse: causes are left untouched, the effects denounced and punished.
* * *
Keep an eye on Milwaukee. Ten men and one woman were sentenced in that city to twenty‑five years penitentiary each. The circumstances under which the arrest and conviction took place were related in recent issue of the 'Bulletin.' They are of such a nature that even the worst pessimist would refuse to believe that the higher courts will sustain the sentence.
Letters and money for the defense are to be directed to William Judin, 1006 Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, Ill.
* * *
Developments in the San Francisco Bomb Case indicate that Fickert and his gang begin to lose confidence in their own ingeniousness for constructing a 'good' frame‑up. The days of smooth sailing are over for them. Their most important witnesses, with the help of which they had Billings and Mooney convicted, are discredited. They are now known to the world as perjurers and bribed liars while some others of them have come out publicly, telling the story how they were threatened and coached for their mission to help ambitious rascals to hang legally innocent people. In one word the old frame‑up has been smashed into splinters.
The difficulty is now to fix up a new one. But into what dirty corner of the world could the perpetrators look for evidence and new 'reliable' witnesses?
Facing this dilemma the honorable Fickert plays for time. No hurry for him. He is not in prison, yearning for liberty and justice as Billings, Tom Mooney, Rena Mooney, and Weinberg are.
It took a long time till Weinberg succeeded in having his case taken up again. When it finally came before judge Cabanis on February 13th, Ferrari, Fickert's assistant, did everything he could to throw obstacles in the way of the proceedings. He had, he said, important witnesses, one in Chicago, another one in Honolulu, whom it wit impossible to bring to San Francisco in so short a time. Judge Cabanis became angry, and it developed, from what he said, that obstruction had been systematically carried on from the district attorney's office for the purpose of bringing all the bomb cases for trial before Judge Dunne, whose bias against the defendants has shown itself frequently in the most bitter form.
The trial for Weinberg was set by judge Cabanis for the 25th of February, and then it seems that Fickert had played some technical trick in order to have the case removed from Judge Cabanis's court and to transfer it later to the judge of his heart's desire.
Protests against the now world‑infamous outrage keep on pouring into the office of the Governor of California. A telegram from the Philadelphia Central Labor Council read thus:
'Govenor Wm. Stephens, Scaramento, California:
'The Philadelphia Central Labor Council, representing thirty thousand workers, entered an unanimous protest against any further delay in handing out even justice to the defendants Mooney, Billings, Weinberg, Nolan and Mrs. Mooney. We are convinced that they are the victims of a dastardly frame‑up at the hands of labor's enemies. Our contention is sustained by the report of the Federal Commission which recently investigated the situation. May we look to your honor to see to it as Governor of California that the innocent go free and the guilty persecutors be made to answer.'Activities of the Political Amnesty LeagueFor the purpose of awakening interest organizing local groups of the League, for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners, Prince Hopkins, Chairman of the League, has just completed a coast to coast tour. He visited Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco. In each of these cities the message he bore was greeted with enthusiastic response. Pledges were made to further the work of organization, committees were selected and each group expressed its determination to carry on local and national agitation until recognition and amnesty are won for all political prisoners in America.
The meetings in these cities were arranged primarily to bring together the active workers from as many and as diverse organizations as existed in the locality, to acquaint them with the aims and programme of the League and to collect whatever available authentic data was to be had regarding prisoners who would be considered politicals. Local organizations were perfected, secretaries elected and arrangements were made for large mass meetings to follow the preliminary informal meetings begun by the Chairman of the League.
The first gathering was held in Rochester at the Labor Auditorium, where it was decided not to appoint any local executive committee but to have the group work as a committee of the whole. Our friends volunteered to visit the men and women in the jails and to give to their families whatever sustenance they can provide. Three cases were brought to the attention of Mr. Hopkins. Mr. Fisher was arrested for taking his daughter from school after she was asked to write essays to which she could not subscribe. He was sentenced to jail. Mr. Ensuc is serving a term after having been convicted of distributing a Jewish handbill, and a member of the Methodist Church also was given a prison sentence for the expression of an opinion in a hardware store.
Minnie Fishman was chosen Secretary of our Detroit group at a meeting held in that city. Mr. Walter M. Nelson informed us that there were 206 men in the Detroit House of Correction, detained for political offenses. Efforts will be made in behalf of these men by the local group so that they will receive friendly communication from the outside and assurances that the League is working for the status of Political Prisoners for them, and when peace is declared their liberty through an amnesty.
The cases of Elwood Moore and Max Frocht were brought to the attention of Mr. Hopkins when he spoke in Ann Arbor. These young men were sent to jail for their non‑conformist opinions about the war. In Ann Arbor Miss Martha E. Kern was elected Secretary of the organization, with Miss Burt as her assistant. A plan to send out a series of chain letters acquainting people in sympathy with the League of the conditions of their locality was evolved.
A successful meeting was held in Cleveland, where Carl Helser was elected local Chairman. The work was begun by procuring aid for Alvah Buchman, a political prisoner.
At a luncheon in Chicago, the establishment of a local group in that city was discussed. After some debate, it was decided to elect an organizing committee of five instead of a secretary and presiding officer. Accordingly Comrade, Lloyd, Nathanson, Engdhal, Cooper and Stedman constitute the committee for Chicago. It was also thought best to use the name 'The League for the Amnesty of Political and Industrial Prisoners.' This is the title by which the Chicago organization will be known. The inclusion of Industrial prisoners was considered necessary by the committee. Addresses on the subject of Amnesty were delivered by Mr. Hopkins at the Labor School, the Chicago Theatre, Chicago University and at I.W.W. Hall.
The report of meetings held in St. Louis and San Francisco has not arrived. They will be printed in the next issue of the Bulletin.
It is essential that our comrades all over the country come to the support of this urgent work. The issue of recognition and amnesty for political prisoners in America must be fought now. With peace declared and no recognition for political prisoners, thousands of men will remain in prison: 'And by all forgot they will rot and rot.'
Mooney's Death Sentence Affirmed by Supreme Court
According to the decision of the Supreme Court of the state of California, Torn Mooney is not entitled to a new trial. This verdict will be a bitter disappointment to Labor in America and Europe. Not only that but the manner in which it was rendered is bound to stir up sharp criticism and disapproval.
The main thing was, one would think, that the evidence on which Mooney was convicted, should have been submitted to a thorough review by the court. The evidently crooked methods used in procuring this evidence, prompted the appeal. The appalling revelations made in sworn affidavits as to the more than suspicious participation of members of the police and the district attorney's office in this game, and the exposure of Oxman were the things that stirred up indignation here and abroad. The whole labor movement and large parts of the other population felt keenly that Mooney and his friends were persecuted, not prosecuted.
This feeling spread over to Russia and other countries. A commission was appointed by the President to investigate and in the report of this commission a new trial was recommended.
All this the Supreme Court has passed by, has ignored and evaded it altogether. It passed opinion only in regard to the technical points of law. In reading some of its parts one may imagine a building inspector who is asked to inspect a house whether it is safe to live in and who would give the opinion that the color of paint on the walls made quite a good show.
Except perhaps the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and those ferocious people who would hang radicals and sincere labor leaders anyway, evidence or no evidence, nobody will feel reassured by the decision of the Supreme Court.
The one necessary thing to do is that Labor must raise its voice still louder in protesting against the intended victimizing of Tom Mooney and the others. In the East and West big mass meetings have been held for this purpose. In New York the Ball and Bazaar given our San Francisco comrades was a huge success.
A Historic ReminiscenceNot for the first time has it happened in history that a great revolution clashed with a foreign autocracy as it does now in the occupied territories of Russia. They have never agreed together in the past, and they will never agree in the future, whether it be a feudal or a modern autocracy ruled by princes of finance and monopolists.
European autocracy felt it its sacred duty to mobilize its armies against the great French Revolution. England furnished a good deal of money for that noble purpose, regularly paying a large sum to Prussia in order to strengthen the military power of that country. Emperors, kings, and aristocrats of all countries combined to destroy the rebellious 'canaille' and their aristocratic fellow parasites in France hailed them as their saviors. Their despotic rule and shameless exploitation of the people were in danger, and as to the foreign invaders they feared that the evolution would spread all over Europe and do away with their crowns, estates, and privileges.
The King and Queen of France sent treasonable messages to their dear brothers and cousins on the thrones of Europe, imploring them to make haste with the invasion of France. They were quite ready to help the foreign invaders to steal a march on Paris and to slaughter Frenchmen by the hundred thousands for the sole purpose of patching up and restoring again the old rotten regime, which had become absolutely intolerable to the people.
In July, 1792, Prussia was prepared to attack the 'criminals and outlaws' in France who dared to be disobedient to the king whom the Lord himself had placed on the throne. Some moral justification seemed necessary. In a solemn proclamation the king of Prussia announced his coming to France in order to save that God forsaken country and all Europe from the terrible evils of insubordination, to which end he would establish the monarchial power on a more stable basis. One passage of the proclamation was quite amusing. It read as follows:
'The supreme authority, in France being never ceasing and indivisible, the King could neither be deprived nor voluntarily divert himself of any of the prerogatives of royalty, because he is obliged to transmit them entire with his own crown to his successors.'
Chief commander of the allied armies of reaction was the Duke of Brunswick. He also published a manifesto, demanding categorically that their majesties, the King and Queen of France should be set at liberty immediately. Should they have to endure the least violence, or should a lawless rabble try to force the Tuilleries, the royal palace then the Emperor of Germany and the King of Prussia would inflict 'on those who shall deserve it the most exemplary and ever avenging punishment.'
But things turned out differently. The National Guard on whom the royalists had counted went over to the people. A revolutionary committee seized the city hall and their majesties became now in reality prisoners of the Temple. A few weeks later the army of the Revolution made up of 'vagabonds, cobblers, and tailors' defeated the Prussians at Valmy. The Duke of Brunswick had come as an overbearing braggart. He was glad enough to get home again ignominiously and a good deal more silent.
There is not a great consolation for the Russian Revolution in this parallel, but true it is that any army of revolutionists, fired by enthusiasm for their cause, may be more formidable to deal with than with the soldiers of a czar, driven stupidly and slavishly towards the enemy by sheer fright and force.
Our Prisoners
By Stella Comyn
Six weeks have passed since prison doors shut from us our beloved comrades, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman; and the February Bulletin went to press before we were able to give our readers any news of them. Their absence has left a void that is difficult to bridge, but we are struggling to maintain their standards in the Bulletin, using every means in our power to keep it alive and our subscribers together for the two years that we are deprived of their inspiring activity. We hope their heroic sacrifices for the cause of freedom and justice will bring us all closer, and make our own contributions more vital and valuable.
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are repeating their own past history. They are both engaged in the garment industry both are sewing ten hours a day at overalls, as they used to nearly thirty years ago when they first entered the movement. But that is where the similarity of their punishment ends.
Emma Goldman is permitted to get her own food and have certain personal things in her cell, but because she refuses to attend chapel, she is punished by not being allowed out of doors on Sundays during the recreation hour to get the necessary air and exercise. She is permitted to write one letter a week to a relative and one to her attorney, and she is allowed writing paper for all the literary work she can do after she has spent ten hours a day at the machine.
She writes:
'If they send a delegate to the Labor Conference in England, I hope they send a man with a big vision. Oh, for an American Trotsky! It is heartbreaking how little understanding there is in this country for Russia. It is no doubt the same in England and France. Yet all these countries swear by the man who proclaimed 'Peace on earth, good will to men' I hear them singing in the chapel as I write this, asking Jesus to wash them clean. Yet when the Boylsheviki come washed clean of all desire for loot and human sweat and blood, they are described traitors.'
Alexander Berkman, with his usual calm, has adapted himself to the inconveniences of prison life, though he is not allowed any privileges. Lack of writing materials is the greatest hardship he has to bear. Recognition of political prisoners as such is all the more imperative when literary abilities like Comrade Berkman's are not permitted expression in the only time and place an agitator finds necessary quiet and leisure he needs a prison cell!
* * *
The 'Friends of Freedom' group will give a Flower Ball and Package Party at Parkview Palace, 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, Saturday evening, April 13th, for the benefit of the new semi‑monthly Anarchist paper, 'The Blast,' which is now appearing in Jewish. Tickets are 25 cents each.
* * *
A LETTER OF LOUISE OLIVEREAU
This letter dated Canon City Jail, Col., January 31st, was written to Comrade Emma Goldman before she had to go to prison. At the time she was contemplating a lecture tour to the far West in order to spread the understanding of the ideas and aims of the Boylsheviki. On that tour she intended to stop off at Canyon City and to visit Louise Olivereau in jail there. However, time was too short. Our comrade had to return East from Chicago, meetings having been arranged for her in Detroit, Rochester and other places. The letter follows:
Dear Comrade‑
I received a letter from Minnie Rimer yesterday, stating that you were to return to New York without coming further West than Detroit. I am sorry I shall not see you until both of us have served our terms. I'm very, very sorry you must 'rest' at Jefferson City, but after all, you will not be in long, especially if you are paroled.
I like your idea of starting a campaign for the release of all political prisoners at the end of the war. I have thought for a long time that it would be better for all of us to accept our prison terms with that in view. I'm sorry to be where I can't help carry on the campaign.
Only a week or so ago I learned that when you wired Minnie to appeal my case, you thought the sentence was 45 years. I am very sorry the error occurred; for of course had you known it was only ten, you would not have urged an appeal. I thank you for your efforts in my behalf, and hope that even if the appeal has to be abandoned, enough propaganda value has resulted to justify all the work done. Poor Minnie will be bitterly disappointed: she has worked so devotedly, and against heavy opposition from those who should have helped her.
I continue well and in good spirits. Except for those discomforts which are inseparable from prison life, I fare very well. You, who know prisons, will not need to be told that the inspiration to any happiness I may enjoy comes from outside the walls. As nearly as I can judge, the outlook is very hopeful for the cause. In spite of many exceptions, the workers appear to be steadily growing conscious of where their real strength lies, and are taking action accordingly. A friend in Spokane reports a gain of 1311 new woodsmen enrolled in L.W.I.U. No. 500 during December. Such news is hope‑inspiring and patience‑sustaining.
'Zarathustra' is meat and drink to the soul. I've never read much Nietzsche before, for some reason. The other books, also, are very good to have.
Again I thank you, and Berkman, and others who have worked with you for me; and send you both my most Comradely good wishes for a prison term as little irksome or injurious as may be. 'After the War' we can have a reunion‑till then I remain,
Cheerfully yours, for Freedom,
Louise Olivereau.
VOL. I. APRIL, 1918, NEW YORK NO.7.
To All My Dear Ones
Jefferson State Prison,
Sunday, March 24th, 1918.
I am so glad my message of March 3rd has reached you. I wish I were certain this letter too would reach you. But I am not. Since March 7th all my incoming mail and my outgoing weekly letters have been held up, 'by orders of the Federal authorities,' I was told. It seems the rigid censorship which the prison officials here exercise over the prisoner, every move they make, line they write or thought they have, does not satisfy Washington in my case. So if you ever doubted my importance you will be convinced now. You see I have the proud distinction of being considered dangerous, therefore a U. S. Deputy now reads my mail, after it has been thoroughly read by the prison officials. Well, there is no objection to that, if only the U. S. Deputy would deliver my mail after he reads it. But no, he keeps it in to the bargain. Still I mean to keep the Federal authorities busy. I will continue to write and I ask you to do the same. If they are so anxious to ascertain who my correspondent are, what they feel for me and what I feel for them, we must not disappoint Washington. It would be really comic, if it were not so pathetic, that a mighty Government of a hundred million people, now engaged in a mighty war for Democracy should pursue those whom it has placed behind prison bars with unnecessary and cruel persecution. But I will survive that too, never doubt that, my dear ones.
Since I wrote you last I have advanced in my speed. I now make 36 jackets a day. It is going some.' It means incessant grind for nine hours without let up. It is Katorga alright. It is what the Tzar used to impose upon the political prisoners, but strange to say never did the women politicals have to do it. I see that even Babushka Breshkovsky, who spent so many years in Siberian prisons and exile was exempt from 'Katorga.' Apropos you must read 'the Reminiscences and Letters of Babushka edited by Alice Stone Blackwell. What a wonderful woman! What a wonderful life! Her letters are most fascinating even though they show childish naiveté about American Institutions; so amusing to one who has lived under them for thirty years. Babushka's description of her daily life while in Siberia is most inspiring. There is one factor which sustained her through all the years --- her association with kindred spirits; men and women political offenders like herself. She writes that the hardest conditions were as nothing compared with the mental sufferings she endured, when she was deprived of seeing loved comrades. How well I can understand that! Since April, American prisons are being crowded with political prisoners, strange to say all men. Is it that American women have not yet learned to love liberty well enough to pay the price for it? There are a few exceptions; Louise Olivereau, who fortunately has been sent to the Colorado penitentiary. How I should enjoy her companionship, but I am glad she is not here, I know the air is better in Colorado than Missouri. Then there is Kate Richards O'Hare, who got five years, but she is still at large. I hope she will remain so. My companions in misery while most kind to me, indeed more generous and human than the average lot outside, are yet separated by worlds from me. They are victims of a cruel social arrangement, but they have no social vision. They consider their trouble a misfortune imposed upon them by fate, or God, or some cruel judge, or their own wickedness. They do not know that they are each and all cogs in the machine of social injustice. My heart goes out to all of them. My deep regret is that I can do nothing to alleviate their hard lot. They are like children so eager for every little act of kindness and affection, hungry all the time for the things prison can not give. I listen to their small talk which always centers around the same topic: the dreaded work and how to meet it, day after day. But deeply as I feel with them and for them, there is no intellectual or spiritual kinship save the strong tie which always brings human beings together when they are souls in pain. How stupid of those who prate of criminal tendencies. Not one of my fellow prisoners is inherently criminal. The circumstances and a cruel lack of understanding for the human, all too human, bring them here; nor are they likely to return to society with a more kindly spirit when their time is up. But I am fortunate in having the Babushkas, the Louise Michels and the other great ones to draw from. I am rich after all. Then there is your friendship, my dear ones and my faith in your comradeship. Nothing can shake that. May I hope that you feel the same about me? This hope is giving me strength and will keep my spirit alive until I may again see you all and clasp you by the hand. This is the month of the Commune. They said it was dead when they slaughtered thirty thousand, but it lives forever.
Affectionately,
EMMA GOLDMAN.
ADDENDA
To the letter on the first page we add information that in the meantime comrade Emma Goldman's mail, held back for a time, has been released. The friends she has all over the country may write to her frequently and help in that way to lighten the burden of prison life.
* * *
Parcels with things to eat addressed to Alexander Berkman, sojourning at present in Atlanta Federal Prison, will not reach their destination. It is against the rule of that educational institution that a student should receive such tokens of love. Instead write letters to him often. In his own letters he recently said that he suffered from headache and pain in the neck. The sewing machine, on which he has to work, probably is the cause of these troubles. Otherwise his philosophy is up to date and has a good effect upon his letters, which bear witness that his mind is calm and serene.
However, no mail from comrade Berkman has been received for more than two weeks. We hope that he is not ill nor that the writing privilege has been taken away from him.
* * *
The 'Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,' Berkman's book, is at present in good progress of being translated into the Jewish language. A. Frumkin is the translator, the name being guarantee enough that it will be a first‑class translation. It will take a considerable amount of money to pay for the translation, and to have the book printed. For this reason we ask the comrades to subscribe for the book in advance. The price will be only $1.00. Later it will be more.
Send advance subscriptions to M. E. Fitzgerald, 32 Union Square, Room 1015, New York City.
* * *
Dr. Ben Reitman,having begun to serve his term of six months several weeks ago at Warrensville, Ohio, is comparatively 'well off.' We were glad to hear that he works there in his capacity as a physician. He is practically in charge of a hospital with twenty‑five beds and also works in the clinic. He is not bolted up in a cell and can always go out in the yard for fresh air. The food is good, also the bed, and the opportunity to learn much about medicine and men is great, as he writes himself.
Our civilization has weak spots; no doubt, it is in delicate health and must be protected; but decent treatment of the prisoners will do the trick just as well and better as inhuman treatment.
* * *
From Louise Olivereau the authorities of the State Prison of Canon City, Col., withheld for a month all papers, magazines, and any other literature, including the 'Public' and the 'Union Record,' an American Federation of Labor publication. But pardon, we exaggerate, Louise Olivereau enjoys the privilege of being permitted to read the 'Christian Science Monitor!'
In a short time a pamphlet about Louise Olivereau's trial will be published, including her speech to the jury. It will no doubt find a hearty welcome and wide distribution.
Thomas Jefferson
'Is it not curious,' somebody wrote in a communication to one of the New York dailies, 'that in these days of exalted praise for democracy, Thomas Jefferson should not be considered a more popular interpreter of the nation's ideal than Washington or Lincoln?'
To our mind it seems not curious at all. The nation's ideal is an elusive quality. How is one going to find out what it really consists of, when the masses of the subjects are inert, silent, and only 'represented' by officials and politicians? As long as they remain in this state it means, we suppose, that order and law prevail. But if they should begin to take things into their own hands, as in Russia, for instance, it would, in official language, signify 'that disorder and terrorism reign supreme.'
This brand of democracy Jefferson hated as a pretense and a deception. It was for this reason that he fought Hamilton, Chief Justice Marshal, and the Supreme Court. Of the latter he wrote to Spencer Roane:
'The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they may please.'
The hypothesis mentioned was upheld by the Federalists who, in reality, wanted an ironcast centralization with power invested in the big land owners.
The tendency of many democrats of to‑day is the more government the better. Jefferson felt quite contrary. His idea on the subject is expressed in the words:
Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and the general government, may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.'
Jefferson's distrust of government and centralized power is further elaborated in the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, of which he was the author. These resolutions were directed against the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress. Jefferson advised the people of the individual states 'to stop the progress of the evil' by refusing to have the provisions of the bill carried out in their territory. The people of that time must have been different from the people of to‑day. They must have thought such conduct and vigorous opposition very becoming to a good citizen. They didn't cross themselves on account of it, neither did they call for the police, but instead elected Jefferson President of the United States two years after he had written the following passage:
'Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy, not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.'
More than that, in regard to 'Shay's Rebellion,' Jefferson said that the tree of liberty would never grow properly unless refreshed now and then with the blood of patriots and tyrants, patriots meaning at that time fighters for liberty.
'What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance.'
And worst of all, Jefferson divined the future when he wrote during the war against England:
'The spirit of the times may alter --- will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money and will never think of uniting to affect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.'
No, Jefferson would not fit well into the present scheme of things. Not one single word of his, one must be afraid, could be used properly for the purpose of intensifying the glory of the present system and its protagonists. His day has not yet arrived.
The British Labor Movement
By Leonard D. Abbott
The most important outcome of the war, thus far, has been the Russian Revolution. A second result, of immense significance, is the awakening of British labor. Four million British trade‑unionists, allied with Socialists and Co‑operators, have lately drafted a notable manifesto. These same trade‑unionists have met in several conferences with representatives of the labor movements in the allied countries and are now striving to bring about an international working‑class conference of all belligerent countries. They are discussing peace terms, and they propose to influence the official peace conference, whenever held.
The leader of this movement, Arthur Henderson, is a Member of Parliament who was ousted by Premier Lloyd George from the British Cabinet because of his radical sympathies. He had been sent to revolutionary Russia by the British Government to argue against the proposed international Socialist conference at Stockholm. He returned from Russia an advocate of the Stockholm conference. When compelled to choose between his new conviction and his position in the Cabinet, be resigned from the Cabinet.
A little later, Lloyd George himself was called before the British Trade Union Congress. He was asked to tell the British workers what they were fighting for. At the close of his address he was mercilessly heckled. When he told the workingmen that revolutionary Russia must be left to her late, they replied that they stood with Russia.
The statement of principles put forward by the British Labor Party is notable not only because of its largeness of view, but also because it represents a distinctively working‑class attitude. It declares for the Russian ideals of peace and for self‑government of peoples in the empire. 'We seek,' it says, 'no increase of territory. We disclaim all ideas of 'economic war.' We believe that nations are in no way damaged by each other's economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, on the contrary, that they are actually themselves mutually enriched thereby.'
The view of the Labor Party in relation to internal affairs is that what has to be reconstructed after the war is 'not this or that government department, or this or that piece of social machinery; but, so far as Britain is concerned, society itself.' What is needed is 'a new social order, based not on fighting but on fraternity --- not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned co‑operation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or brain.'
As steps toward this end the Party proposes:
(a) The Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum;
(b) The Democratic Control of Industry;
(c) The Revolution in National Finance; and
(d) The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good.
When we come to look into the details of this program we find that the minimum wage that the Party wants enforced --- of course by the Government --- is 30s, ($7.50) per week. When we look for an explanation of the phrase, 'democratic control of industry,' we find that it means 'the immediate nationalization of railways, mines and the production of electrical power' and the establishment of the 'common ownership of the means of production' by parliamentary methods. The 'revolution in national finance' pertains chiefly to taxation, which is to be 'steeply graduated so as to take only a small contribution from the little people and a very much larger percentage from the millionaires.' Surplus wealth, now absorbed by individuals, is, under the new program, to be devoted to the sick and infirm, to the aged and those prematurely incapacitated, to education, to public improvement of all kinds, to scientific investigation, and to the promotion of music, literature and fine art.
The manifesto, which is well written, declares for the complete abolition of the House of Lords, and asserts the right of freedom of speech, freedom of publication, freedom of travel and freedom of choice of place of residence and kind of employment, after the war. The obligation resting upon the Government to find employment for returning soldiers; social insurance against unemployment at all times; workmen's compensation; reduction of working hours to forty‑eight a week, are some of the other themes discussed. In practically every case it is to 'the Government' that British Labor looks for relief. A Social‑Democratic spirit informs the entire document.
We do not wish to depreciate unduly the importance of a statement of principles that may turn out to be, quite literally, epoch-making. The fact that such men as Theodore P. Shonts and William R. Hearst regard this platform as 'too radical' shows that there must be virtue in it. The platform is radical; it is not revolutionary, except in a Social‑Democratic sense. From a libertarian point of view its demands are too moderate; it leans too much on government. When will the workers of Great Britain, like the workers of Russia, come to realize that they must depend not upon government, but upon themselves, to attain the 'new social order' of which they dream?
Reflections
When reaction closed in on all sides, Heinrich Heine, the poet, living in exile, called himself a 'forlorn sentry in liberty's war.'
The 'Bulletin' is something like it. But in the dark, with voices hushed, aims and goals obliterated and confused, it is perhaps a pleasant feeling to come across such a sentry.
We are eager to send the 'Bulletin' to new subscribers, to have new customers for the book shop.
Pass the torch on to others.
* * *
The German monster gun with a range of seventy‑five miles, and able to kill off women and children in Paris from a great distance, was undoubtedly invented with the help of the same God whom the Kaiser appointed for his war specialist.
Yet this is not a godforsaken country either. Fierce competition between gods has been witnessed before, they may now be tempted again to enter the arena, urged on by the prayers from the pulpits of all countries to help to destroy the enemy. This would account for the invention of an American gun, which, according to reports, has a range of 105 miles, Pray on priest, pray! Whether in these days the priests have more cruel fun with the gods or the gods with the priests, that is a question not easy to answer.
* * *
Thomas Paine wrote to a friend shortly before his death:
A thousand years hence, perhaps in less, America may be what England is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favour, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty, which thousands bled to obtain, may just furnish materials for a village tale, or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility; while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.'
Only one of those pesky American Boylsheviki, who are so bitterly attacked by Roosevelt with all the extraordinary power of his jaw, would be daring enough to maintain that Paine showed some ability for prophesy.
* * *
In Chicago the trial against 112 members of the I.W.W. is in progress before Judge Landis. Some of the defendants will have a separate trial. A number of cases were dismissed, also the charge against Arturo Giovanitti. The fact that he translated years ago a syndicalist pamphlet from the French will not go on record as coming under the Espionage Act. Great is wisdom!
George Andreychine and J.A. McDonald were released from custody on account of sickness. Andreychine has contracted tuberculosis in Cook County jail, the food and general conditions of which are an abomination. Another defendant has become insane in the jail. Stanley Jansharick died, one is nearly blind, others got pneumonia and tuberculosis. But the boys on trial are undismayed. When assembled for lunch during recess in a room in the court house they nag the Internationale.
To pick out the required number of jurors will probably take at least two weeks' time.
The correspondent of the New York Tribune wrote that much excitement was going on in the corridors of the court house, deputies moving about, watching for bombs.
That was necessary, indeed, the Chicago police having been famous since the Haymarket affair and after that they are great in discovering bombs planted by some of their own smart acquaintances.
* * *
New developments in the San Francisco bomb case seem to indicate, that the big cracks in the frame‑up have become so wide and yawning, that the final crash is only a question of time. A dismissal of three charges against Israel Weinberg took place in the court of Judge Griffin. After this the State Supreme Court admitted bail for Weinberg, who is still charged on two counts. Also Rena Mooney was admitted to bail. Both are now free and warmly they are welcomed by hundreds of thousands of men and women who helped to get justice for them and will continue to do so. Judge Dunne had to comply with the decision of the Supreme Court but could not refrain from showing his animosity against the accused. He said, when fixing bail for Rena Mooney: 'It is my personal conviction that they all should be held in prison.'
In regard to Mooney and Billings, the clamor for their liberation gains impetus every day. The protests become more urgent and greater in number. In behalf of Mooney, President Wilson and Gompers have written to Gov. Stephens, asking him to take action in the matter. Mooney will appear before judge Griffin on April 13. The judge is supposed to repeat the death sentence. The entangled mess of technicalities, it is maintained, leaves him no other choice; but according to a report he said that he was dead tired and disgusted with the whole game. It is unbelievable that Mooney will hang after all what has happened in the course of the infamous proceedings against him and the others, but a 'pardon' with commuted sentence for life would certainly be nothing less than a bitter ironical climax of this miscarriage of justice. Mooney and Billings must get a new trial or be liberated altogether.
* * *
What charming things have been said about the workingmen in the last couple of months! By highly distinguished men, mark you, not by some I.W.W. sabotteur with a prison record. The Bethlehem multi‑millionaire Schwab predicted a future with labor on the top. In a recently published letter President Wilson gave a strong hint in the same direction and now the Rockefeller family starts out to establish sweet harmony between its own interests and those of labor.
The millennium seems close at hand. The next report will be that the Rockefellers will pick out half a million of the neediest families in the country and divide their fortune of $l,200,000,000 with them. The share of each of these families would be $2,400. Don't say that capitalism is not s good thing for the poor people!
* * *
Philanthropists, prison reformers, etc., should not miss reading the I. W. W. papers. About 2,000 members of the I.W.W. organisation are at present in jail. They are as a rule trustworthy, intelligent observers. Their accounts of the conditions they find in the prisons from West to East, from North to South are veritable mountains of valuable information that beats all official investigations and commission reports to splinters.
Only such reformers whose nerves cannot stand much may be warned before reading these accounts. They may however get away with a half dozen nightmares as a result of their studies, while those who are compelled to live in these vermin‑infested pest‑holes, called prison cells, experience a foretaste of real hell.
* * *
After Carl Muck of the Boston Symphony Orchestra has been driven out, the scalp of another music director --- Stransky of the Philharmonic Society --- is demanded. It makes even the music critic of the 'Evening Sun wild.
He writes:
'So Mr. Stransky is the next on the blacklist of our musical nationality! The society lady and the society magazine have willed it so, and their will be done! Against such as these how can art prevail?
But if Mr. Stransky does depart from the Philharmonic (which we hope in the particular instance he will not) it should be for other and better founded reasons. The chief of them lies in his baton, not in his nation; in his past programmes rather than in any of the present propaganda, one direction or the other. The lisping triviality of this new campaign is the saddest commentary of all upon a patiently musical New York!'
The critic must have slipped in his copy while the rabid chief editor had a consultation with a specialist on blood poisoning.
* * *
Arrests and charges under the Espionage Act come thick and fast. Victor Berger, Adolph Germer, Louis Engdahl, William F. Kruse, and Irwin St. John Tucker of the Socialist Party have been indicted by the Federal Grand Jury. They are accused of sixteen overt acts committed against the law mentioned.
A preacher Clarence H. Waldron, was convicted by the Federal Supreme Court of Burlington, Vt., and sentenced to a fifteen years' term in the Atlanta federal prison. He was charged with having spoken against the draft and the liberty loan.
Scott Nearing and Rose Pastor Stokes are also in the net. Nearing is charged with having violated the law in his writings and Rose Pastor Stokes with having done the same in statements made during her tour through the West.
People who believed that war and liberty of opinion could come to an agreement, at least in a republic if not in a monarchy, have indulged in too much optimism.
* * *
It is announced that a truce between capital and labor has been concluded for the period of the war by a body of men called the Labor Planning Board.
Attempts in the same direction have been made in all the belligerent countries of Europe, and as a rule they have missed the mark. Representatives of organized labor, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, may sign the agreement, but it will chiefly pertain only to the 'aristocracy of labor.' It has always been the medieval policy of the Federation to exclude the 'unskilled' laborer masses of modern industry from the benefits of this organization, which, besides, are of very doubtful quality anyway.
* * *
On March 21 Ricardo Florence Magon was arrested again in Los Angeles and placed under $25,000 bail, which it was probably impossible to obtain. Accusation is based on an editorial in 'Regeneracion,' of which the Los Angeles correspondent of the New York 'Times' has to say that it advocated the destruction of existing governments all over the world.' Simply dreadful! The Magon family has lately been overwhelmed with misfortune. They have been hounded terribly by the police for years.
And now comes the arrest of Ricardo Florence Magon. We have received no direct information about the cases, but will certainly do what we can to give at least publicity to the facts as widely as possible under the circumstances.
An Impression
By David Leigh
Courtrooms always make me think of the story of the woman who tried to match her thread. She hung on to her garment so long that it wore out during the search. Meantime, the styles changed; but she was not aware of it.
At the Hindu trial, now going on in San Francisco, I expected to see red. I saw black. Even the light, as reflected from where I sat, gave the judge a dusky hue; and the soldier bailiff (also in the shadow) could easily have been mistaken for a Filipino. We are fooled often --- all of us --- by appearances.
The doorkeeper said I could not go in, at first; but, somehow, after a little, he made room for me (in his heart), and so I stepped in.
The place was face‑packed, full of eyes, but black to me, very black. There were so many Hindus. One glance made me almost believe India, en masse, had come to pay us a visit. But that, of course, was a mirage. There are blond defendants also.
Twelve or more astute attorneys flank the defendants, as accepted counsel. These men are patriots, with possibly one exception. They look well fed and unworried. Nobody excepts to their remunerated interest. Nobody questions the fact of their association with those who are, at present, in bad odor officially. Nobody even hints that it is not in line with patriotism to defend individuals so charged. Theirs, evidently, is a course in conformity with the code de facto. The code de facto abounds with irreconcilable angles. Pay and way, while not synonyms, have a certain correlative significance, in this, our warring day.
At the prosecutor's table sits one man --- and a woman. One would not mention the woman did she not have light hair. There is something about light hair which attracts. The prosecutor looks small, sitting. He is tall, standing; and he has a stentorian voice. It savors of 'that deep and dreadful organ‑pipe.' To sit behind him is to hear the sea roll. To sit opposite him is to see contentious waves spurt foam. Personally, he lacks impress. He arrests one's attention through sound only.
Behind the prosecutor sat half a dozen ladies, knitting, friends of his, I am told, society ladies. They appeared to knit very well. They seemed so interested --- in their knitting. One of these ladies, I learn, once attended a lecture given by one of the Hindu defendants, on Prostitution. She was present the other day when the District Attorney grilled this same defendant for his ideas, in re this subject. She said not a word in the courtroom --- not even that she had attended the lecture.
Knitting appears to be an absorbing occupation. They say it takes one's mind off other things. If that is so, would it not be a capital idea to have the men who frequent houses of prostitution learn to knit? Just an idea, of course.
The judge is a little man. Chair‑framed, he appears diminutive. He drinks water constantly. The water reposes in a beautiful silver pitcher. Filled as the room is with human beings, nothing in it stands out like that pitcher. It wafts serenity from its inert sides. In fact, it has a distinct judicial air.
Two electric fans whir over the judge's head. Introducing perpetual motion, they seem to clash with ensconced precedent. Nobody pays the least attention to them; but they keep on whirring. Electricity has given us action, if not ideas.
The defendants sit bunched together. I say defendants, meaning Hindus. The seeing eye can only be conscious of darkness in that room: and the Hindus, of course, being black, overshadow the blond presence. They are a splendid‑looking lot of men, thoughtful, perceiving, purposeful. As the session continued, their poses were various. One, with a face supernal, tilted his chair slightly backwards and gazed at the ceiling. I read in his look conceptions of a beyond that would shock the earthly‑centered, could they see it. Another, bespectacled, with classical nose and ebullient intelligence, gave his attention exclusively to the perusal of a court transcript. He smiled esoterically at parts of it.
The jurors are youngish‑looking men, business men, evidently. They do not look like a theatre party. I noticed, though, during the recess, they smiled (at each other) with the grace of free men. The recess seems to be wisdom's contribution to court proceedings. Its effect is magical on everybody. It puts stress to flight, it transforms artifice into feeling, it releases sympathy. Let Providence be thanked for the idea of recess. So powerful is it that it lingers (if only for a moment) after the session reconvenes. The judge brought back a smile with him that would have dispelled a London fog.
So many old men, among the spectators. (I counted fifteen.) And young men there, too, in plenty, equally old. Only one did I see who was ageless. He sat beside me. Came in during the recess, with a paper and opinions, which he rattled and aired. He knew the man next to him. He talked to him and at me, --- beyond. 'They're a bloody lot, the bunch of 'em. They ought to hang the whole crowd. (Pause; glances.)
I tell you I'm a good American. My people was born in Germany; so was I; but that don't matter. No better 'Mericans ever lived than me and my people. (More observation.)
'We've got to kill this Kaiser business --- and the niggers that are in with 'em. They're a dirty bunch. They ought to hang 'em all first --- and try 'em afterwards. That's what they'd do to 'em in Germany.' . . .
After attending the court session I accompanied one of the Hindu defendants to the studio of a friend, a young Russian pianist. The sudden change nearly unbalanced me. For a moment I felt light‑headed. It was like being hoisted to Mt. Ararat after a sojourn in a coal pit.
In the room were a grand piano, several chairs, stacks of music and --- that comforter divine --- the unspoken welcome. Judge, jury, bailiff, counsel were noticeably absent.
'Play what you set to music for me,' said the Hindu to his friend, --- that last one. You remember.'
The pianist glanced comprehension. Then he brought forth some typewritten verses and a sheet of stiff paper, on which was penciled an amazing succession of cryptic bars and dots --- his own work. Without preliminary, he began to play. But play is scarcely the word. Rather did he caress the page unto himself (and us) till there was no presence in the room, save Beauty.
'Bravo!' cried the Hindu. That is great, my friend.'
Then they sang the words (written by the Hindu), which gave Beauty the mate of Sympathy and gladness its spiritual raiment: and, looking upon them, I wondered why courts are places where sound alone presides. I wondered why it is that men venture so little in a sphere which is freighted with so much. I wondered what it is non‑observers get out of life.
I wondered then; and I still wonder.
3 A.M. In Jail
By Louise Olivereau
In the stark hours
Before dawn
I awaken.
Like a great bird
The unquiet Spirit of the Jail
Broods close above me
Till I gasp for breath ---
And now it settles,
Beak and claws upon my heart,
Its evil, searching eyes within my soul.
The fiend‑tormented,
Drug‑destroyed girl
In the bed beneath me
Writhes in her sleep, and cries out
'Jesus God! Mother of Christ,
Hear me!'
Obscene oaths and shuddering moans of pain
Follow her prayers; half‑wakened
She beats her pillows, curses,
Groans, and prays again.
Across the room in the half‑light,
Prostrate like the Magdalen at the feet of her
Saviour,
A sweet wild slip of a girl,
--- Just seventeen ---
Whose thirst for beauty and joy
We have answered with --- Jail ---
Through her frightened sobbing whispers,
'Mother, I will be good; take me home!'
The others sleep: a gentle idiot in the lowest bed;
Endless toil through all her girlhood on a lonely farm;
Marriage with one whom toil and drink made brutish;
These have brought her here
To wait the verdict that will pen her up for life
With others of her kind.
And she, that other frail one,
Mother and wife and daughter of joy
And would‑be suicide,
Slave of the drug‑fiend,
Turned thief for those white grains
More precious far than life to her;
Still but a child in years,
But ageless in knowledge of evil,
Loose lips half‑smiling,
Tear‑wet lids veiling her harlot's eyes,
Sleeps peacefully as any little child.
--- Ah, how the tearing beak and claws
Work their harsh will upon my heart,
And the ever‑questioning eyes,
Glittering, evil, not‑to‑be‑denied,
Ask their relentless 'Why? --- Why?
Why are these here?'
In the next room the Matron sleeps;
No bird disturbs her even breath and placid dreams;
The jailer in his office yawns
And stretches in his chair
Until it squeaks and groans again;
He drops his keys; a paper falls
And flutters like a frightened bird;
Then for a space
All's still,
Only the tearing, tearing
Beak and talons at my heart,
And over, over, over,
In a hammered rhythm,
The terrible question,
'Why? --- Why? --- Why?'
Then splitting the unquiet silence
Like jagged lightning a stormy sky,
The yell of a maniac
Far down the corridor.
The caged tiger's rage
And nameless grief of the wolf
Starving alone on snowy wastes
Blend in that dreadful human cry.
The jailer snarls 'Shut up, damn you!'
And hunts his mad charge away from the bars
Back to the far corner of his cage.
The creature whimpers and cries;
A murmured confusion of curses and groans
Swells from the cells where sleepers have wakened,
For sleep is precious in jail ---
Another snarled order for quiet;
The jailer returns to his chair,
Yawns again ---
And again all is quiet:
Only the bird
At my heart
Is tearing;
Only its eyes,
Burning deep
In my soul,
Question:
'Why? --- Why?
Why did you let them come?'
Work for the Political Amnesty League
The need for an organization, spreading the idea that better treatment should be accorded to political prisoners and full amnesty granted to them after the war, becomes more urgent every day. The number of political prisoners grows rapidly.
In the Chicago court room, where over 100 I.W.W. are tried, the presiding judge had to take personal action in order to afford the defendants a prison treatment not altogether beastly.
Under prevailing circumstances the question is not whether a league for the recognition and amnesty of political prisoners is necessary, but how it can be carried on and impress the public mind.
The league has done good work in the short time it exists. As a result of the meetings and conferences, held by Prince Hopkins on his trip to the West, branches have been organized in a number of cities. Ten thousand copies of a little pamphlet have been distributed, in which the principles and aims of the league are set forth. Many have written that they liked the idea. It will be necessary to have ten thousand more of these pamphlets printed. Also a list of all political prisoners, as far as it is possible to obtain the names, place of imprisonment, and other data is in progress.
In order to accomplish this the league appeals to friends and sympathizers for their cooperation and financial help.
Letters and contributions can be addressed to:
M.E. FITZGERALD
32 Union Square, Room 1015, New York.
Cassius V. Cook
In Chicago the secretary‑treasurer of the 'League of Humanity,' Cassius V. Cook, has been arrested and placed under $10,000 bail. The league has for its object a consistent propaganda against the violation of human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, actual freedom of conscience and belief. Meanwhile charges have been brought against Cook for conspiracy to obstruct the draft, etc. Cook has been a good worker in the radical movement for long years. Financial aid for his defense will be needed. Contributions to be sent direct to C.V. Cook Defense Committee, 143 N. Dearborn St., Room 30, Chicago. Ill.
Attention! New York
A performance of Butler Davenport's play: Deferred Payment' will be given at Bramhall Playhouse, 27th Street and Lexington Avenue, on May 3, for the benefit of the Russian syndicalist‑anarchist paper, 'Golos Truda.' A large attendance is expected. Tickets $1.00.
Notice
With this issue of the 'Bulletin' a catalogue of the Mother Earth Book Shop was mailed to our subscribers.Book ReviewTHE CABIN, By V. Blasco Ibanez. English translation by Dr. Francis Haffekine Snow and Beatrice M. Mekota. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50.
Writers of former periods thought it necessary that the authors of novels and tragedies should prefer to select their heroes and heroines from the exalted ranks of society. Because, they argued, ordinary people neither can rise very high nor fall very low. Their fate is commonplace, and therefore lacks the material to build up the great passionate tragedy of life. For this reason kings, dukes, barons, princesses, marquises, countesses crowded the books and stages, being not only a nuisance in life, but in literature also. Many a ferocious young reader wonders to this very day where all these perfectly superfluous people come from. ‑
The Cabin, of whose author the introduction says: 'In theory, he might almost be said to be a disciple of Ferrer,' leads us into an agricultural district of Spain. It is a bitter, hard life which the tenant farmers have to endure. Their wives and children carry manure in baskets on their shoulders from Valencia in order to fertilize the patches of land. They work fiercely away from dawn to sunset, but in the end it is hardly possible to scrape the rent together, payable to rich, usurous land‑owners in the city, who try their best to squeeze out the last penny from them. Sometimes it is not possible at all. Such a case is that of the farmer Barrett. His grandfather and his father owned the piece of land on which he now lives as a tenant. He is blessed with four daughters. Deeper and deeper he gets into debts with Don Salvador, who owns the fields. The day comes when the law sends him notice to leave house and land. Old as he is, hard as he has worked, now he is a beggar. Despair and wrath overwhelm him. He kills Salvador. The farmers rejoice over the death blow, which Barrett dealt to the oppressor. It becomes a silent agreement among them that no other tenant will be tolerated on the Barrett place, tabooed under the people's curse, and the life of any newcomer is made miserable. Finally the heirs of Don Salvador succeed in getting Batiste, a robust, fearless man to settle down on the place. A struggle of life and death begins between this man and the community. Batiste kills his worst enemy, Pimento, but his house is set on fire and burned to the ground. Under wreckage and ruin he waits in the night with his family for daylight, when they will start out again in search for another meagre existence.
'Bread! At what cost is it earned! And how evil it makes man!' There is tragedy and fierce passion enough for you.
It is a genuine book. The author possesses considerable artistic power for description and characterization.
