Anarchism and Other Essays - Wikisource, the free online library (2024)

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CONTENTS

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EMMA GOLDMAN

Among the men and women prominent in the public life of America there are but few whose names are mentioned as often as that of Emma Goldman. Yet the real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. The sensational press has surrounded her name with so much misrepresentation and slander, it would seem almost a miracle that, in spite of this web of calumny, the truth breaks through and a better appreciation of this much maligned idealist begins to manifest itself. There is but little consolation in the fact that almost every representative of a new idea has had to struggle and suffer under similar difficulties. Is it of any avail that a former president of a republic pays homage at Osawatomie to the memory of John Brown? Or that the president of another republic participates in the unveiling of a statue in honor of Pierre Proudhon, and holds up his life to the French nation as a model ​worthy of enthusiastic emulation? Of what avail is all this when, at the same time, the living John Browns and Proudhons are being crucified? The honor and glory of a Mary Wollstonecraft or of a Louise Michel are not enhanced by the City Fathers of London or Paris naming a street after them—the living generation should be concerned with doing justice to the living Mary Wollstonecrafts and Louise Michels. Posterity assigns to men like Wendel Phillips and Lloyd Garrison the proper niche of honor in the temple of human emancipation; but it is the duty of their contemporaries to bring them due recognition and appreciation while they live.

The path of the propagandist of social justice is strewn with thorns. The powers of darkness and injustice exert all their might lest a ray of sunshine enter his cheerless life. Nay, even his comrades in the struggle—indeed, too often his most intimate friends—show but little understanding for the personality of the pioneer. Envy, sometimes growing to hatred, vanity and jealousy, obstruct his way and fill his heart with sadness. It requires an inflexible will and tremendous enthusiasm not to lose, under such conditions, all faith in the Cause. The representative of a revolutionizing idea stands between two fires: on the one hand, the persecution of the existing powers which hold him responsible for all acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the other, the lack of understanding on the part of his own followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude ​surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person prominent in the public eye.

The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so long been enveloped is gradually beginning to dissipate. Her energy in the furtherance of such an unpopular idea as Anarchism, her deep earnestness, her courage and abilities, find growing understanding and admiration.

The debt American intellectual growth owes to the revolutionary exiles has never been fully appreciated. The seed disseminated by them, though so little understood at the time, has brought a rich harvest. They have at all times held aloft the banner of liberty, thus impregnating the social vitality of the Nation. But very few have succeeding in preserving their European education and culture while at the same time assimilating themselves with American life. It is difficult for the average man to form an adequate conception what strength, energy, and perseverance are necessary to absorb the unfamiliar language, habits, and customs of a new country, without the loss of one's own personality.

Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly preserving their individuality, have become an important factor in the social and intellectual atmosphere of America. The life she leads is rich in color, full of change and variety. She has risen to the topmost heights, and she has also tasted the bitter dregs of life.

​Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June, 1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren, a good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their child, and carry it to the heights which separate generations in eternal struggle. They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism between parent and offspring was fated to find its most acute expression, irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle between fathers and sons—and especially between parents and daughters—there was no compromise, no weak yielding, no truce. The spirit of liberty, of progress—an idealism which knew no considerations and recognized no obstacles—drove the young generation out of the parental house and away from the hearth of the home. Just as this same spirit once drove out the revolutionary breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated him from his native traditions.

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

The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed in a small, idyllic place in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her father had charge of the government stage. At the time Kurland was thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic province was recruited mostly from German Junker. German fairy tales and stories, rich in the miraculous deeds of the heroic knights of Kurland, wove their spell over the youthful mind. But the beautiful idyl was of short duration. Soon the soul of the growing child was overcast by the dark shadows of life. Already in her tenderest youth the seeds of rebellion and unrelenting hatred of oppression were to be planted in the heart of Emma Goldman. Early she learned to know the beauty of the State: she saw her father harassed by the Christian chinovniks and doubly persecuted as petty official and hated Jew. The brutality of forced conscription ever stood before her eyes: she beheld the young men, often the sole supporter of a large family, brutally dragged to the barracks to lead the miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping of the poor peasant women, and witnessed the shameful scenes of official venality which relieved the rich from military service at the expense of the poor. She was outraged by the terrible treatment to which the female servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by their barinyas, they fell to the tender mercies of the regimental officers, who ​regarded them as their natural sexual prey. The girls, made pregnant by respectable gentlemen and driven out by their mistresses, often found refuge in the Goldman home. And the little girl, her heart palpitating with sympathy, would abstract coins from the parental drawer to clandestinely press the money into the hands of the unfortunate women. Thus Emma Goldman's most striking characteristic, her sympathy with the underdog, already became manifest in these early years.

At the age of seven little Emma was sent by her parents to her grandmother at Königsberg, the city of Immanuel Kant, in Eastern Prussia. Save for occasional interruptions, she remained there till her 13th birthday. The first years in these surroundings do not exactly belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother, indeed, was very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the household were concerned more with the spirit of practical rather than pure reason, and the categoric imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation was changed when her parents migrated to Königsberg, and little Emma was relieved from her rôle of Cinderella. She now regularly attended public school and also enjoyed the advantages of private instruction, customary in middle class life; French and music lessons played an important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter of Ibsen and Shaw was then a little German Gretchen, quite at home in the German atmosphere. Her special predilections in literature were the sentimental romances of Marlitt; she was a great admirer of the good Queen Louise, whom the bad Napoleon ​Buonaparte treated with so marked a lack of knightly chivalry. What might have been her future development had she remained in this milieu? Fate--or was it economic necessity?—willed it otherwise. Her parents decided to settle in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Almighty Tsar, and there to embark in business. It was here that a great change took place in the life of the young dreamer.

It was an eventful period—the year of 1882—in which Emma Goldman, then in her 13th year, arrived in St. Petersburg. A struggle for life and death between the autocracy and the Russian intellectuals swept the country. Alexander II. had fallen the previous year. Sophia Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch, Michailov, the heroic executors of the death sentence upon the tyrant, had then entered the Walhalla of immortality. Jessie Helfman, the only regicide whose life the government had reluctantly spared because of pregnancy, followed the unnumbered Russian martyrs to the étapes of Siberia. It was the most heroic period in the great battle of emancipation, a battle for freedom such as the world had never witnessed before. The names of the Nihilist martyrs were on all lips, and thousands were enthusiastic to follow their example. The whole intelligenzia of Russia was filled with the illegal spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated into every home, from mansion to hovel, impregnating the military, the chinovniks, factoryworkers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced the very casemates of the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The differenceof sex was ​forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought the men and the women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do justice or adequately portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion? Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, On the Threshold.

It was inevitable that the young dreamer from Königsberg should be drawn into the maelstrom. To remain outside of the circle of free ideas meant a life of vegetation, of death. One need not wonder at the youthful age. Young enthusiasts were not then—and, fortunately, are not now—a rare phenomenon in Russia. The study of the Russian language soon brought young Emma Goldman in touch with revolutionary students and new ideas. The place of Marlitt was taken by Nekrassov and Tchernishevsky. The quondam admirer of the good Queen Louise became a glowing enthusiast of liberty, resolving, like thousands of others, to devote her life to the emancipation of the people.

The struggle of generations now took place in the Goldman family. The parents could not comprehend what interest their daughter could find in the new ideas, which they themselves considered fantastic utopias. They strove to persuade the young girl out of these chimeras, and daily repetition of soul-racking disputes was the result. Only in one member of the family did the young idealist find understanding—in her elder sister, Helene, with whom she later emigrated to America, and whose love and sympathy have never failed her. Even in the darkest hours of later persecution Emma ​Goldman always found a haven of refuge in the home of this loyal sister.

Emma Goldman finally resolved to achieve her independence. She saw hundreds of men and women sacrificing brilliant careers to go v naród, to the people. She followed their example. She became a factory worker; at first employed as a corset maker, and later in the manufacture of gloves. She was now 17 years of age and proud to earn her own living. Had she remained in Russia, she would have probably sooner or later shared the fate of thousands buried in the snows of Siberia. But a new chapter of life was to begin for her. Sister Helene decided to emigrate to America, where another sister had already made her home. Emma prevailed upon Helene to be allowed to join her, and together they departed for America, filled with the joyous hope of a great, free land, the glorious Republic.

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

Thus thought the two girls as they travelled, in the year 1886, from New York to Rochester. Soon, all too soon, disillusionment awaitedthem. The ideal conception of America was punctured already at Castle Garden, and soon burst like a soap bubble. Here Emma Goldman witnessed sights which ​reminded her of the terrible scenes of her childhood in Kurland. The brutality and humiliation the future citizens of the great Republic were subjected to on board ship, were repeated at Castle Garden by the officials of the democracy in a more savage and aggravating manner. And what bitter disappointment followed as the young idealist began to familiarize herself with the conditions in the new land! Instead of one Tsar, she found scores of them; the Cossack was replaced by the policeman with the heavy club, and instead of the Russian chinovnik there was the far more inhuman slave-driver of the factory.

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

The horrible conditions were made still more ​unbearable by the fearful dreariness of life in the small American city. The Puritan spirit suppresses the slightest manifestation of joy; a deadly dullness beclouds the soul; no intellectual inspiration, no thought exchange between congenial spirits is possible. Emma Goldman almost suffocated in this atmosphere. She, above all others, longed for ideal surroundings, for friendship and understanding, for the companionship of kindred minds. Mentally she still lived in Russia. Unfamiliar with the language and life of the country, she dwelt more in the past than in the present. It was at this period that she met a young man who spoke Russian. With great joy the acquaintance was cultivated. At last a person with whom she could converse, one who could help her bridge the dullness of the narrow existence. The friendship gradually ripened and finally culminated in marriage.

Emma Goldman, too, had to walk the sorrowful road of married life; she, too, had to learn from bitter experience that legal statutes signify dependence and self-effacement, especially for the woman. The marriage was no liberation from the Puritan dreariness of American life; indeed, it was rather aggravated by the loss of self-ownership. The characters of the young people differed too widely. A separation soon followed, and Emma Goldman went to New Haven, Conn. There she found employment in a factory, and her husband disappeared from her horizon. Two decades later she was fated to be unexpectedly reminded of him by the Federal authorities.

​The revolutionists who were active in the Russian movement of the 80's were but little familiar with the social ideas then agitating Western Europe and America. Their sole activity consisted in educating the people, their final goal the destruction of the autocracy. Socialism and Anarchism were terms hardly known even by name. Emma Goldman, too, was entirely unfamiliar with the significance of those ideals.

She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia, at a period of great social and political unrest. The working people were in revolt against the terrible labor conditions; the eight-hour movement of the Knights of Labor was at its height, and throughout the country echoed the din of sanguine strife between strikers and police. The struggle culminated in the great strike against the Harvester Company of Chicago, the massacre of the strikers, and the judicial murder of the labor leaders, which followed upon the historic Haymarket bomb explosion. The Anarchists stood the martyr test of blood baptism. The apologists of capitalism vainly seek to justify the killing of Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer, and Engel. Since the publication of Governor Altgeld's reason for his liberation of the three incarcerated Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt is left that a fivefold legal murder had been committed in Chicago, in 1887.

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

The two most prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in America, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman—the one a native American, the other a Russian—have been converted, like numerous others, to the ideas of Anarchism by the judicial murder. Two women who had not known each other before, and who had received a widely different education, were through that murder united in one idea.

Like most working men and women of America, Emma Goldman followed the Chicago trial with great anxiety and excitement. She, too, could not believe that the leaders of the proletariat would be killed. The 11th of November, 1887, taught her differently. She realized that no mercy could be expected from the ruling class, that between the Tsarism of Russia and the plutocracy of America there was no difference save in name. Her whole being rebelled against the crime, and she vowed to herself a solemn vow to join the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat and to devote all her energy and strength to their emancipation from wage slavery. With the glowing enthusiasm so characteristic of her nature, she now began to familiarize herself with the literature of Socialism and Anarchism. She attended public meetings and became acquainted with socialistically and anarchistically inclined workingmen. Johanna Greie, the well-known German lecturer, was the first Socialist speaker heard by Emma ​Goldman. In New Haven, Conn., where she was employed in a corset factory, she met Anarchists actively participating in the movement. Here she read the Freiheit, edited by John Most. The Haymarket tragedy developed her inherent Anarchist tendencies: the reading of the Freiheit made her a conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to learn that the idea of Anarchism found its highest expression through the best intellects of America: theoretically by Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; philosophically by Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.

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

It is the heroic epoch of militant Anarchism. By leaps and bounds the movement had grown in every country. In spite of the most severe governmental persecution new converts swell the ranks. The propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret character. The repressive measures of the government drive the disciples of the new philosophy to conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall into the hands of the authorities and languish in ​prisons. But nothing can stem the rising tide of enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and devotion to the Cause. The efforts of teachers like Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Elisée Reclus, and others, inspire the devotees withever greater energy.

Disruption is imminent with the Socialists, who have sacrificed the idea of liberty and embraced the State and politics. The struggle is bitter, the factions irreconcilable. This struggle is not merely between Anarchists and Socialists; it also finds its echo within the Anarchist groups. Theoretic differences and personal controversies lead to strife and acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist legislation of Germany and Austria had driven thousands of Socialists and Anarchists across the seas to seek refuge in America. John Most, having lost his seat in the Reichstag, finally had to flee his native land, and went to London. There, having advanced toward Anarchism, he entirely withdrew from the Social Democratic Party. Later, coming to America, he continued the publication of the Freiheit in New York, and developed great activity among the German workingmen.

When Emma Goldman arrived in New York in 1889, she experienced little difficulty in associating herself with active Anarchists. Anarchist meetings were an almost daily occurrence. The first lecturer she heard on the Anarchist platform was Dr. A. Solotaroff. Of great importance to her future development was her acquaintance with John Most, who exerted a tremendous influence over the younger elements. His impassioned eloquence, untiring energy, ​and the persecution he had endured for the Cause, all combined to enthuse the comrades. It was also at this period that she met Alexander Berkman, whose friendship played an important part throughout her life. Her talents as a speaker could not long remain in obscurity. The fire of enthusiasm swept her toward the public platform. Encouraged by her friends, she began to participate as a German and Yiddish speaker at Anarchist meetings. Soon followed a brief tour of agitation taking her as far as Cleveland. With the whole strength and earnestness of her soul she now threw herself into the propaganda of Anarchist ideas. The passionate period of her life had begun. Through constantly toiling in sweat shops, the fiery young orator was at the same time very active as an agitator and participated in various labor struggles, notably in the great cloakmakers' strike, in 1889, led by Professor Garsyde and Joseph Barondess.

A year later Emma Goldman was a delegate to an Anarchist conference in New York. She was elected to the Executive Committee, but later withdrew because of differences of opinion regarding tactical matters. The ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that time not yet become clarified. Some still believed in parliamentary methods, the great majority being adherents of strong centralism. These differences of opinion in regard to tactics led in 1891 to a breach with John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and other comrades joined the group Autonomy, in which Joseph Peukert, Otto Rinke, and Claus Timmermann played an active part. ​The bitter controversies which followed this secession terminated only with the death of Most, in 1906.

A great source of inspiration to Emma Goldman proved the Russian revolutionists who were associated in the group Znamya. Goldenberg, Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt, Ivan von Schewitsch, husband of Helene von Racowitza and editor of the Volkszeitung, and numerous other Russian exiles, some of whom are still living, were members of this group. It was also at this time that Emma Goldman met Robert Reitzel, the German-American Heine, who exerted a great influence on her development. Through him she became acquainted with the best writers of modern literature, and the friendship thus begun lasted till Reitzel's death, in 1898.

The labor movement of America had not been drowned in the Chicago massacre; the murder of the Anarchists had failed to bring peace to the profit-greedy capitalist. The struggle for the eight-hour day continued. In 1892 broke out the great strike in Pittsburg. The Homestead fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the militia, the suppression of the strikers, and the complete triumph of the reaction are matters of comparatively recent history. Stirred to the very depths by the terrible events at the seat of war, Alexander Berkman resolved to sacrifice his life to the Cause and thus give an object lesson to the wage slaves of America of active Anarchist solidarity with labor. His attack upon Frick, the Gessler of ​Pittsburg, failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was doomed to a living death of twenty-two years in the penitentiary. The bourgeoisie, which for decades had exalted and eulogized tyrannicide, now was filled with terrible rage. The capitalist press organized a systematic campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against Anarchists. The police exerted every effort to involve Emma Goldman in the act of Alexander Berkman. The feared agitator was to be silenced by all means. It was only due to the circ*mstance of her presence in New York that she escaped the clutches of the law. It was a similar circ*mstance which, nine years later, during the McKinley incident, was instrumental in preserving her liberty. It is almost incredible with what amount of stupidity, baseness, and vileness the journalists of the period sought to overwhelm the Anarchist. One must peruse the newspaper files to realize the enormity of incrimination and slander. It would be difficult to portray the agony of soul Emma Goldman experienced in those days. The persecutions of the capitalist press were to be borne by an Anarchist with comparative equanimity; but the attacks from one's own ranks were far more painful and unbearable. The act of Berkman was severely criticized by Most and some of his followers among the German and Jewish Anarchists. Bitter accusations and recriminations at public meetings and private gatherings followed. Persecuted on all sides, both because she championed Berkman and his act, and on account of her revolutionary activity, Emma Goldman was harassed even to the extent of ​inability to secure shelter. Too proud to seek safety in the denial of her identity, she chose to pass the nights in the public parks rather than expose her friends to danger or vexation by her visits. The already bitter cup was filled to overflowing by the attempted suicide of a young comrade who had shared living quarters with Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and a mutual artist friend.

Many changes have since taken place. Alexander Berkman has survived the Pennsylvania Inferno, and is back again in the ranks of the militant Anarchists, his spirit unbroken, his soul full of enthusiasm for the ideals of his youth. The artist comrade is now among the well-known illustrators of New York. The suicide candidate left America shortly after his unfortunate attempt to die, and was subsequently arrested and condemned to eight years of hard labor for smuggling Anarchist literature into Germany. He, too, has withstood the terrors of prison life, and has returned to the revolutionary movement, since earning the well deserved reputation of a talented writer in Germany.

To avoid indefinite camping in the parks Emma Goldman finally was forced to move into a house on Third Street, occupied exclusively by prostitutes. There, among the outcasts of our good Christian society, she could at least rent a bit of a room, and find rest and work at her sewing machine. The women of the street showed more refinement of feeling and sincere sympathy than the priests of the Church. But human endurance had been exhausted ​by overmuch suffering and privation. There was a complete physical breakdown, and the renowned agitator was removed to the "Bohemian Republic"—a large tenement house which derived its euphonious appellation from the fact that its occupants were mostly Bohemian Anarchists. Here Emma Goldman found friends ready to aid her. Justus Schwab, one of the finest representatives of the German revolutionary period of that time, and Dr. Solotaroff were indefatigable in the care of the patient. Here, too, she met Edward Brady, the new friendship subsequently ripening into close intimacy. Brady had been an active participant in the revolutionary movement of Austria and had, at the time of his acquaintance with Emma Goldman, lately been released from an Austrian prison after an incarceration of ten years.

Physicians diagnosed the illness as consumption, and the patient was advised to leave New York. She went to Rochester, in the hope that the home circle would help restore her to health. Her parents had several years previously emigrated to America, settling in that city. Among the leading traits of the Jewish race is the strong attachment between the members of the family, and, especially, between parents and children. Though her conservative parents could not sympathize with the idealist aspirations of Emma Goldman and did not approve of her mode of life, they now received their sick daughter with open arms. The rest and care enjoyed in the parental home, and the cheering presence of the beloved sister Helene, proved so ​beneficial that within a short time she was sufficiently restored to resume her energetic activity.

There is no rest in the life of Emma Goldman. Ceaseless effort and continuous striving toward the conceived goal are the essentials of her nature. Too much precious time had already been wasted. It was imperative to resume her labors immediately. The country was in the throes of a crisis, and thousands of unemployed crowded the streets of the large industrial centers. Cold and hungry they tramped through the land in the vain search for work and bread. The Anarchists developed a strenuous propaganda among the unemployed and the strikers. A monster demonstration of striking cloakmakers and of the unemployed took place at Union Square, New York. Emma Goldman was one of the invited speakers. She delivered an impassioned speech, picturing in fiery words the misery of the wage slave's life, and quoted the famous maxim of Cardinal Manning: "Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor's bread." She concluded her exhortation with the words: "Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread."

The following day she left for Philadelphia, where she was to address a public meeting. The capitalist press again raised the alarm. If Socialists and Anarchists were to be permitted to continue agitating, there was imminent danger that the workingmen would soon learn to understand the manner in which they are robbed of the joy and happiness of life. ​Such a possibility was to be prevented at all cost. The Chief of Police of New York, Byrnes, procured a court order for the arrest of Emma Goldman. She was detained by the Philadelphia authorities and incarcerated for several days in the Moyamensing prison, awaiting the extradition papers which Byrnes intrusted to Detective Jacobs. This man Jacobs (whom Emma Goldman again met several years later under very unpleasant circ*mstances) proposed to her, while she was returning a prisoner to New York, to betray the cause of labor. In the name of his superior, Chief Byrnes, he offered lucrative reward. How stupid men sometimes are! What poverty of psychologic observation to imagine the possibility of betrayal on the part of a young Russian idealist, who had willingly sacrificed all personal considerations to help in labor's emancipation.

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

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

She left Blackwell's Island in the month of August, 1894, a woman of twenty-five, developed and matured, and intellectually transformed. Back into the arena, richer in experience, purified by suffering. She did not feel herself deserted and alone any more. Many hands were stretched out to welcome her. There were at the time numerous intellectual oases in New York. The saloon of Justus Schwab, at Number Fifty, First Street, was the center where gathered Anarchists, litterateurs, and bohemians. Among others she also met at this time a number of American Anarchists, and formed the friendship of Voltairine de Cleyre, Wm. C. Owen, Miss Van Etton, and Dyer D. Lum, former editor of the Alarm and executor of the last wishes of the Chicago martyrs. In John Swinton, the noble old fighter for liberty, she found one of her staunchest friends. Other intellectual centers there were: Solidarity, published by John Edelman; Liberty, by the Individualist Anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker; the Rebel, by Harry Kelly; Der Sturmvogel, a German Anarchist publication, edited by Claus Timmermann; Der Arme Teufel, whose presiding genius was the inimitable Robert Reitzel. Through Arthur Brisbane, now chief lieutenant of William Randolph ​Hearst, she became acquainted with the writings of Fourier. Brisbane then was not yet submerged in the swamp of political corruption. He sent Emma Goldman an amiable letter to Blackwell's Island, together with the biography of his father, the enthusiastic American disciple of Fourier.

Emma Goldman became, upon her release from the penitentiary, a factor in the public life of New York. She was appreciated in radical ranks for her devotion, her idealism, and earnestness. Various persons sought her friendship, and some tried to persuade her to aid in the furtherance of their special side issues. Thus Rev. Parkhurst, during the Lexow investigation, did his utmost to induce her to join the Vigilance Committee in order to fight Tammany Hall. MariaLouise, the moving spirit of a social center, acted as Parkhurst's go-between. It is hardly necessary to mention what reply the latter received from Emma Goldman. Incidentally, Maria Louise subsequently became a Mahatma. During the free silver campaign, ex-Burgess McLuckie, one of the most genuine personalities in the Homestead strike, visited New York in an endeavor to enthuse the local radicals for free silver. He also attempted to interest Emma Goldman, but with no greater success than Mahatma Maria Louise of Parkhurst-Lexow fame.

In 1894 the struggle of the Anarchists in France reached its highest expression. The white terror on the part of the Republican upstarts was answered by the red terror of our French comrades. ​With feverish anxiety the Anarchists throughout the world followed this social struggle. Propaganda by deed found its reverberating echo in almost all countries. In order to better familiarize herself with conditions in the old world, Emma Goldman left for Europe, in the year 1895. After a lecture tour in England and Scotland, she went to Vienna where she entered the Allgemeine Krankenhaus to prepare herself as midwife and nurse, and where at the same time she studied social conditions. She also found opportunity to acquaint herself with the newest literature of Europe: Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, Thomas Hardy, and other artist rebels were read with great enthusiasm.

In the autumn of 1896 she returned to New York by way of Zurich and Paris. The project of Alexander Berkman's liberation was on hand. The barbaric sentence of twenty-two years had roused tremendous indignation among the radical elements. It was known that the Pardon Board of Pennsylvania would look to Carnegie and Frick for advice in the case of Alexander Berkman. It was therefore suggested that these Sultans of Pennsylvania be approached—not with a view of obtaining their grace, but with the request that they do not attempt to influence the Board. Ernest Crosby offered to see Carnegie, on condition that Alexander Berkman repudiate his act. That, however, was absolutely out of the question. He would never be guilty of such forswearing of his own personality and self-respect. These efforts led to friendly relations between Emma Goldman and the circle of Ernest ​Crosby, Bolton Hall, and Leonard Abbott. In the year 1897 she undertook her first great lecture tour, which extended as far as California. This tour popularized her name as the representative of the oppressed, her eloquence ringing from coast to coast. In California Emma Goldman became friendly with the members of the Isaak family, and learned to appreciate their efforts for the Cause. Under tremendous obstacles the Isaaks first published the Firebrand and, upon its suppression by the Postal Department, the Free Society. It was also during this tour that Emma Goldman met that grand old rebel of sexual freedom, Moses Harman.

During the Spanish-American war the spirit of chauvinism was at its highest tide. To check this dangerous situation, and at the same time collect funds for the revolutionary Cubans, Emma Goldman became affiliated with the Latin comrades, among others with Gori, Esteve, Palaviccini, Merlino, Petruccini, and Ferrara. In the year 1899 followed another protracted tour of agitation, terminating on the Pacific Coast. Repeated arrests and accusations, though without ultimate bad results, marked every propaganda tour.

In November of the same year the untiring agitator went on a second lecture tour to England and Scotland, closing her journey with the first International Anarchist Congress at Paris. It was at the time of the Boer war, and again jingoism was at its height, as two years previously it had celebrated its orgies during the Spanish-American war. Various meetings, both in England and Scot​land, were disturbed and broken up by patriotic mobs. Emma Goldman found on this occasion the opportunity of again meeting various English comrades and interesting personalities like Tom Mann and the sisters Rossetti, the gifted daughters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then publishers of the Anarchist review, the Torch. One of her life-long hopes found here its fulfillment: she came in close and friendly touch with Peter Kropotkin, Enrico Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov, and Louise Michel. Old warriors in the cause of humanity, whose deeds have enthused thousands of followers throughout the world, and whose life and work have inspired other thousands with noble idealism and self-sacrifice. Old warriors they, yet ever young with the courage of earlier days, unbroken in spirit and filled with the firm hope of the final triumph of Anarchy.

The chasm in the revolutionary labor movement, which resulted from the disruption of the Internationale, could not be bridged any more. Two social philosophies were engaged in bitter combat. The International Congress in 1889, at Paris; in 1892, at Zurich, and in 1896, at London, produced irreconcilable differences. The majority of Social Democrats, forswearing their libertarian past and becoming politicians, succeeded in excluding the revolutionary and Anarchist delegates. The latter decided thenceforth to hold separate congresses. Their first congress was to take place in 1900, at Paris. The Socialist renegade, Millerand, who had climbed into the Ministry of the Interior, here played a Judas ​rôle. The congress of the revolutionists was suppressed, and the delegates dispersed two days prior to their scheduled opening. But Millerand had no objections against the Social Democratic Congress, which was afterwards opened with all the trumpets of the advertiser's art.

However, the renegade did not accomplish his object. A number of delegates succeeded in holding a secret conference in the house of a comrade outside of Paris, where various points of theory and tactics were discussed. Emma Goldman took considerable part in these proceedings, and on that occasion came in contact with numerous representatives of the Anarchist movement of Europe.

Owing to the suppression of the congress, the delegates were in danger of being expelled from France. At this time also came the bad news from America regarding another unsuccessful attempt to liberate Alexander Berkman, proving a great shock to Emma Goldman. In November, 1900, she returned to America to devote herself to her profession of nurse, at the same time taking an active part in the American propaganda. Among other activities she organized monster meetings of protest against the terrible outrages of the Spanish government, perpetrated upon the political prisoners tortured in Montjuich.

In her vocation as nurse Emma Goldman enjoyed many opportunities of meeting the most unusual and peculiar characters. Few would have identified the "notorious Anarchist" in the small blonde woman, simply attired in the uniform of a nurse. Soon after her return from Europe she became acquainted with ​a patient by the name of Mrs.Stander, a morphine fiend, suffering excruciating agonies. Sherequired careful attention to enable her to supervise a veryimportant business she conducted,—that of Mrs. Warren. In ThirdStreet, near Third Avenue, was situated her private residence, andnear it, connected by a separate entrance, was her place of business.One evening, the nurse, upon entering the room of her patient,suddenly came face to face with a male visitor, bull-necked and ofbrutal appearance. The man was no other than Mr. Jacobs, thedetective who seven years previously had brought Emma Goldman aprisoner from Philadelphia and who had attempted to persuade her, ontheir way to New York, to betray the cause of the workingmen. Itwould be difficult to describe the expression of bewilderment on thecountenance of the man as he so unexpectedly faced Emma Goldman, thenurse of his mistress. The brute was suddenly transformed into agentleman, exerting himself to excuse his shameful behavior on theprevious occasion. Jacobs was the "protector" of Mrs. Stander, andgo-between for the house and the police. Several years later, as oneof the detective staff of District Attorney Jerome, he committedperjury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year. He is nowprobably employed by some private detective agency, a desirablepillar of respectable society.

In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowell Institute ofMassachusetts to deliver a series of lectures on Russian literature.It was his second American tour, and naturally the comrades wereanxious to use his presence for the benefit of the movement. ​Emma Goldman entered into correspondence with Kropotkin and succeeded insecuring his consent to arrange for him a series of lectures. Shealso devoted her energies to organizing the tours of other well knownAnarchists, principally those of Charles W. Mowbray and John Turner.Similarly she always took part in all the activities of the movement,ever ready to give her time, ability, and energy to the Cause.

On the sixth of September, 1901, President McKinley was shot by LeonCzolgosz at Buffalo. Immediately an unprecedented campaign ofpersecution was set in motion against Emma Goldman as the best knownAnarchist in the country. Although there was absolutely nofoundation for the accusation, she, together with other prominentAnarchists, was arrested in Chicago, kept in confinement for severalweeks, and subjected to severest cross-examination. Never before inthe history of the country had such a terrible man-hunt taken placeagainst a person in public life. But the efforts of police and pressto connect Emma Goldman with Czolgosz proved futile. Yet the episodeleft her wounded to the heart. The physical suffering, thehumiliation and brutality at the hands of the police she could bear.The depression of soul was far worse. She was overwhelmed byrealization of the stupidity, lack of understanding, and vilenesswhich characterized the events of those terrible days. The attitudeof misunderstanding on the part of the majority of her own comradestoward Czolgosz almost drove her to desperation. Stirred to the veryinmost of her soul, ​she published an article on Czolgosz in which shetried to explain the deed in its social and individual aspects. Asonce before, after Berkman's act, she now also was unable to findquarters; like a veritable wild animal she was driven from place toplace. This terrible persecution and, especially, the attitude ofher comrades made it impossible for her to continue propaganda. Thesoreness of body and soul had first to heal. During 1901-1903 shedid not resume the platform. As "Miss Smith" she lived a quiet life,practicing her profession and devoting her leisure to the study ofliterature and, particularly, to the modern drama, which sheconsiders one of the greatest disseminators of radical ideas andenlightened feeling.

Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Goldman accomplished. Her namewas brought before the public with greater frequency and emphasisthan ever before, the malicious harassing of the much malignedagitator arousing strong sympathy in many circles. Persons invarious walks of life began to get interested in her struggle and herideas. A better understanding and appreciation were now beginning tomanifest themselves.

The arrival in America of the English Anarchist, John Turner, inducedEmma Goldman to leave her retirement. Again she threw herself intoher public activities, organizing an energetic movement for thedefense of Turner, whom the Immigration authorities condemned todeportation on account of the Anarchist exclusion law, passed afterthe death of McKinley.

​When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New York to acquaintthe American public with Russian dramatic art, Emma Goldman becamethe manager of the undertaking. By much patience and perseveranceshe succeeded in raising the necessary funds to introduce the Russianartists to the theatergoers of New York and Chicago. Thoughfinancially not a success, the venture proved of great artisticvalue. As manager of the Russian theater Emma Goldman enjoyed someunique experiences. M. Orleneff could converse only in Russian, and"Miss Smith" was forced to act as his interpreter at various politefunctions. Most of the aristocratic ladies of Fifth Avenue had notthe least inkling that the amiable manager who so entertaininglydiscussed philosophy, drama, and literature at their five o'clockteas, was the "notorious" Emma Goldman. If the latter should someday write her autobiography, she will no doubt have many interestinganecdotes to relate in connection with these experiences.

The weekly Anarchist publication, Free Society, issued by the Isaakfamily, was forced to suspend in consequence of the nation-wide furythat swept the country after the death of McKinley. To fill out thegap Emma Goldman, in co-operation with Max Baginski and othercomrades, decided to publish a monthly magazine devoted to thefurtherance of Anarchist ideas in life and literature. The firstissue of Mother Earth appeared in the month of March, 1906, theinitial expenses of the periodical partly covered by the proceeds ofa theater benefit given by Orleneff, Mme. Nazimova, and their com​pany, in favor of the Anarchist magazine. Under tremendousdifficulties and obstacles the tireless propagandist has succeeded incontinuing Mother Earth uninterruptedly since 1906—an achievementrarely equalled in the annals of radical publications.

In May, 1906, Alexander Berkman at last left the hell ofPennsylvania, where he had passed the best fourteen years of hislife. No one had believed in the possibility of his survival. Hisliberation terminated a nightmare of fourteen years for Emma Goldman,and an important chapter of her career was thus concluded.

Nowhere had the birth of the Russian revolution aroused such vitaland active response as among the Russians living in America. Theheroes of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Tchaikovsky, Mme.Breshkovskaia, Gershuni, and others visited these shores to waken thesympathies of the American people toward the struggle for liberty,and to collect aid for its continuance and support. The success ofthese efforts was to a considerable extent due to the exertions,eloquence, and the talent for organization on the part of EmmaGoldman. This opportunity enabled her to give valuable services tothe struggle for liberty in her native land. It is not generallyknown that it is the Anarchists who are mainly instrumental ininsuring the success, moral as well as financial, of most of theradical undertakings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledgedappreciation; the needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, andto these he devotes his energy and abilities. Yet it may bementioned that ​some otherwise decent folks, though at all timesanxious for Anarchist support and co-operation, are ever willing tomonopolize all the credit for the work done. During the last severaldecades it was chiefly the Anarchists who had organized all the greatrevolutionary efforts, and aided in every struggle for liberty. Butfor fear of shocking the respectable mob, who looks upon theAnarchists as the apostles of Satan, and because of their socialposition in bourgeois society, the would-be radicals ignore theactivity of the Anarchists.

In 1907 Emma Goldman participated as delegate to the second AnarchistCongress, at Amsterdam. She was intensely active in all itsproceedings and supported the organization of the AnarchistInternationale. Together with the other American delegate, MaxBaginski, she submitted to the congress an exhaustive report ofAmerican conditions, closing with the following characteristicremarks:

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

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

​Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is fartherfrom the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich againstthe poor.

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

The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of learning,are they not models of organization, offering the people fineopportunities for instruction? Far from it. The school, more thanany other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mindis drilled and manipulated into submission to various social andmoral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitationand oppression.

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

It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of colorand form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogouslywill the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with thespirit of solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony,which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makesnon-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since itabolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes.

Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and socialinterests results in relentless war ​among the social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operativecommonwealth.

There is a mistaken notion that organization does not fosterindividual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay ofindividuality. In reality, however, the true function oforganization is to aid the development and growth of personality.

Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express theirlatent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does theindividual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain hishighest form of development.

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

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

Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization withoutdiscipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty:a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible strugglefor the means of existence,—the savage struggle which undermines thefinest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short,Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establishwell-being for all.

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

The very considerable progress of Anarchist ideas in America can bestbe gauged by the remarkable success of the three extensive lecturetours of Emma Goldman since the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Eachtour extended over new territory, including localities whereAnarchism had never before received a hearing. But the mostgratifying aspect of her untiring efforts is the tremendous sale ofAnarchist literature, whose propagandist effect cannot be estimated.It was during one of these tours that a remarkable incident happened,strikingly demonstrating the inspiring potentialities of theAnarchist idea. In San Francisco, in 1908, Emma Goldman's lectureattracted a soldier of the United States Army, William Buwalda. Fordaring to attend an Anarchist meeting, the free Republiccourt-martialed Buwalda and imprisoned him for one year. Thanks tothe regenerating power of the new philosophy, the government lost asoldier, but the cause of liberty gained a man.

A propagandist of Emma Goldman's importance is necessarily a sharpthorn to the reaction. She is looked upon as a danger to thecontinued existence of authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then,that the enemy resorts to any and all means to make her ​impossible. A systematic attempt to suppress her activities was organized a yearago by the united police force of the country. But like all previoussimilar attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energeticprotests on the part of the intellectual element of America succeededin overthrowing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech.Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by theFederal authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of therights of citizenship, the government revoked the citizenship papersof her husband, whom she had married at the youthful age of eighteen,and whose whereabouts, if he be alive, could not be determined forthe last two decades. The great government of the glorious UnitedStates did not hesitate to stoop to the most despicable methods toaccomplish that achievement. But as her citizenship had never provedof use to Emma Goldman, she can bear the loss with a light heart.

There are personalities who possess such a powerful individualitythat by its very force they exert the most potent influence over thebest representatives of their time. Michael Bakunin was such apersonality. But for him, Richard Wagner had never written Die Kunst und die Revolution. Emma Goldman is a similar personality. She is astrong factor in the socio-political life of America. By virtue ofher eloquence, energy, and brilliant mentality, she moulds the mindsand hearts of thousands of her auditors.

​Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering humanity, and aninexorable honesty toward herself, are the leading traits of EmmaGoldman. No person, whether friend or foe, shall presume to controlher goal or dictate her mode of life. She would perish rather thansacrifice her convictions, or the right of self-ownership of soul andbody. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoreticAnarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the newphilosophy; she also persists in living it,—and that is the onesupreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, toconsider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she tomake concessions to existing society and compromise with oldprejudices,—then even the most radical views could be pardoned inher. But that she takes her radicalism seriously; that it haspermeated her blood and marrow to the extent where she not merelyteaches but also practices her convictions—this shocks even theradical Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life; she associateswith publicans—hence the indignation of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

It is no mere coincidence that such divergent writers as Pietro Goriand William Marion Reedy find similar traits in theircharacterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to La Questione Sociale, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with thevision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for theoppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep earnestness, analyses theills of society, and portrays, with artist touch, the coming ​dawn of humanity, founded on equality, brotherhood, and liberty."

William Reedy sees in Emma Goldman the "daughter of the dream, hergospel a vision which is the vision of every truly great-souled manand woman who has ever lived."

Cowards who fear the consequences of their deeds have coined the wordof philosophic Anarchism. Emma Goldman is too sincere, too defiant,to seek safety behind such paltry pleas. She is an Anarchist, pureand simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed by JosiahWarrn, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Yet she alsounderstands the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, aVaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or a Czolgosz to commit deeds ofviolence. To the soldier in the social struggle it is a point ofhonor to come in conflict with the powers of darkness and tyranny,and Emma Goldman is proud to count among her best friends andcomrades men and women who bear the wounds and scars received in battle.

In the words of Voltairine de Cleyre, characterizing Emma Goldmanafter the latter's imprisonment in 1893: The spirit that animatesEmma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from hisslavery, the tyrant from his tyranny—the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer.

HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.

New York, December, 1910.

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PREFACE

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

My one great longing then was to be able to speak with the tongue of John Most,—that I, too, might thus reach the masses. Oh, for the naivety of Youth's enthusiasm! It is the time when the hardest thing seems but child's play. It is the only period in life worth while. Alas! This period is but of short duration. Like Spring, the Sturm und Drang period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and delicate, to be matured or killed according to its powers of resistance against a thousand vicissitudes.

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

It is altogether different with the written mode of human expression. No one, unless intensely interested in progressive ideas, will botherwith serious books. That leads me to another discovery made aftermany years of public activity. It is this: All claims of educationnotwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mindcraves. Already this truth is recognized by most modern educators inrelation to the immature mind. I think it is equally true regardingthe adult. Anarchists or revolutionists can no more be made thanmusicians. All that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought.Whether something vital will develop depends largely on the fertilityof the human soil, though the quality of the intellectual seed mustnot be overlooked.

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

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

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

As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory remarks do butdetract from the ideas set forth. However, I wish to forestall twoobjections which will undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference tothe essay on Anarchism; the other, on Minorities versus Majorities.

"Why do you not say how things will be operated under Anarchism?" isa question I have had to meet thousands of times. Because I believethat Anarchism can not consistently impose an iron-clad program ormethod on the future. The things every new generation has to fight,and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the past, whichholds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as I understand it,leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems, inharmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination can not foreseethe potentialities of a race set free from external restraints. How, then, can any one assume to map out a line of conduct for thoseto come. We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure, fresh air,must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If ​we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, wewill leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages.

The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear outone sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas orpersonality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Uebermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Uebermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

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

These examples bring me to the objection that will be raised to Minorities versus Majorities. No doubt, I shall be excommunicated as an enemy of the people, because I repudiate the mass as a creative factor. I shall prefer that rather than be guilty of the demagogic platitudes so commonly in vogue as a bait for the people. I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the ​potentialities of the individual. Onlywhen the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a commonpurpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaosand inequality.

For the rest, my book must speak for itself.

Emma Goldman

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ANARCHY.

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

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

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

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that itbrings to light the relation between so-called intelligence andignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider therelativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that itmakes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it alwaysdoes, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child."Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchismdeserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

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

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already inexistence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existingconditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that oneobjects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions iswrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore,is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish;rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave thestagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life.In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical.More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong andfoolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining newlife.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch bythe most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing toooutrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents.Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbialbad man does to the child,—a black monster bent on swallowingeverything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that themost violent element in society ​is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature'sforces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths thatfeed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing thesoil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

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

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze everyproposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be nottaxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and thenelaborate on the latter.

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

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

​A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclosetwo elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that areonly now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other,but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in properenvironment: the individual and social instincts. The individual andsociety have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, eachstriving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value andimportance of the other. The individual and social instincts,—theone a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth,aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor formutual helpfulness and social well-being.

The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, andbetween him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitiveman, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life,felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever readyto mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religiousconcepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powerson high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All theearly sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the Leitmotivof the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to theState, to society. Again and again the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man oncondition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of theearth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State,society, and moral laws all sing the same re​frain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious ofhimself.

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

"The one thing of value in the world," says Emerson, "is the activesoul; this every man contains within him. The soul active seesabsolute truth and utters truth and creates." In other words, theindividual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is thetrue soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is tocome a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.

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

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion ofhuman needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, representthe stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degradeshis soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But outof that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical,so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears andblood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man torebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, saysAnarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself willyou get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress.

Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right tosatisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right,when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion,"Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has liftedman from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his facetoward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring,devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead.

"Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing theaccumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birth​right, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not createenough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knowsthat the productivity of labor within the last few decades farexceeds normal demand. But what are normal demands toan abnormal institution. The only demand that property recognizes isits own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth meanspower; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power toenslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful ofher great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of whatavail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation arewretchedly poor. If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, withhope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any businessventure exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engagedin the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even thissimple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life isgrowing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year);the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are evergetting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitablebankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crimeof the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producerinto a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision thanhis master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of theproducts of his labor, but ​of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things thathelp to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring tolive in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or digcoal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be notalk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideousthings, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,—too weak to live,too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol thisdeadening method of centralized production as the proudestachievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we areto continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more completethan was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know thatcentralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also ofhealth and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible ina clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goalis the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of theindividual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as "one whodevelops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or indanger." A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state ofsociety where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditionsof work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table,the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what thepainting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,—the ​result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in workas a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economicarrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributiveassociations, gradually developing into free communism, as the bestmeans of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism,however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers ofindividuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, inharmony with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only under completeindividual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces againstthe third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State,organized authority, or statutory law,—the dominion of humanconduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or themonopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has theState enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "Allgovernment in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters notwhether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In everyinstance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest AmericanAnarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but atradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itselfunimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; ithas not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law nevermade man a whit more just; and by ​means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice."

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arroganceand self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governmentsordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses,while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, theannihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when shemaintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities inits public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer isfilled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind toclockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicateliberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitablydry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in whichthere is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit,and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, movinghumbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between twowalls."

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, ifit were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods itemploys to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates theState as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of theindividual or small minorities,—the destruction of socialrelationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of lifeitself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar ofpolitical freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained forthe purpose of human sacrifice.

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

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

Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in thefatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintainssocial order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that itprevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall thereforeexamine these contentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely andspontaneously without any external force, in harmony with therequirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, forsex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs notthe club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws,if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and freeopportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves throughsuch harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence,force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. ThusBlackstone is right when he says, "Human laws are invalid, becausethey are contrary to the laws of nature."

​Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands ofpeople, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity fororder or social harmony. Order derived through submission andmaintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is theonly "order" that governments have ever maintained. True socialharmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a societywhere those who always work never have anything, while those whonever work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent;hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authoritymeets this grave situation is by extending still greater privilegesto those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still furtherenslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal ofgovernment—laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures,prisons,—is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the mostantagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve todiminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself thegreatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealingin the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capitalpunishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping withcrime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize thehorrible scourge of its own creation.

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

"Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributedto law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter onhumanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity pouredabroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even,and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext ofaiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls andthere see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, whensubjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to athousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that theentire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination whichought to be brought to an end."

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to meritconsideration. If society were only relieved of the waste andexpense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of theparaphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the socialtables would contain an abundance for all, including even theoccasional lazy ​individual. Besides, it is well to consider thatlaziness results either from special privileges, or physical andmental abnormalities. Our present insane system of productionfosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that peopleshould want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of itsdeadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims tomake work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of realharmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work bothrecreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust,arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best ithas but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard toindividual and social variations and needs. In destroying governmentand statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect andindependence of the individual from all restraint and invasion byauthority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Onlyin freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best inhim. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the socialbonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of anormal social life.

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

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thyname! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded par​son to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speakauthoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan,the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses ofhuman nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with everysoul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

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

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

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mindfrom the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body fromthe dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraintof government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the freegrouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real socialwealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free accessto the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, accordingto individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is theconclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women theworld over; a con​clusion resulting from the close and studiousobservation of the tendencies of modern society: individual libertyand economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fineand true in man.

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory ofthe future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a livingforce in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-cladprogram to be carried out under all circ*mstances. Methods must growout of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of theintellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. Theserene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods forsocial reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of aMichael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparentthat the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate moredrastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does notstand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand forthe spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything thathinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they alsoagree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means ofbringing about the great social change.

"All voting," says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, orbackgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation neverexceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doingnothing for it. A wise man will not leave ​the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.. A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievementswill bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show. Nothing but failureand defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic andsocial stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactmentsmade for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was provenonly last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mineprotection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where childlabor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and thoughwith us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalismhas reached the most brazen zenith.

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

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

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

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. Ifnot for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of theAmerican revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear theKing's coat. If not for the direct action of a John ​Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, willhave to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economicarena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crushthe trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man's rightto organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to asserttheir cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionismwould today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy,in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion ofEnglish labor unions) direct, revolutionary, economic action hasbecome so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as tomake the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power.The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economicconsciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a shorttime ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realizethe importance of the solidaric general protest.

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

​Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real socialchange has ever come about without a revolution. People are eithernot familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned thatrevolution is but thought carried into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating everyphase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, theeffort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and socialopposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by thespiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of thesovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing theworld, and that will usher in the Dawn.

​

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES

If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I wouldsay, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere,destroying quality. Our entire life—production, politics, andeducation—rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once tookpride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replacedby brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormousquantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generallyinjurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of addingto life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.

In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to itsincrease, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness arecompletely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle forsupremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery,deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one whosucceeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That isthe only god,—Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost tocharacter, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proofto verify this sad fact.

​Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of ourgovernment stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were theAmerican people brought face to face with the Judas nature of thatpolitical body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyondreproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector ofthe rights and liberties of the people.

Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even theblind could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions, and itssupremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed,outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of thevictor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray thetraditions of American liberty. Where was its judgment, itsreasoning capacity. That is just it, the majority cannot reason; ithas no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage,the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others.Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaderseven unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most dangerousenemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities,the damned compact majority." Without ambition or initiative, thecompact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has alwaysopposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a newtruth.

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

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

Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while thedietitians of predigested food, a la Professors Eliot and Butler, arethe successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons. In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and ClydeFitches are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciatethe beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, aHauptmann, a Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are likesolitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the multitude.

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the qualityinherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will itsuit the palate of the people. Alas, this palate is like a dumpingground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a re​result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents thechief literary output.

Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts?One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize thehideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, nonebut a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False inconception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infestsAmerican cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to aMichael Angelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The trueartistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions, whoexercises originality, and strives to be true to life, leads anobscure and wretched existence. His work may some day become the fadof the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted; notuntil the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an ideallessand visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master.

It is said that the artist of today cannot create becausePrometheuslike he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo wasdependent on his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painterof today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were faraway from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted toworship at the shrine of the master.

The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, onevalue,—the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of anygreat work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the finan​cier in Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les Affaires pointsto some blurred arrangement in colors, saying "See how great it is;it cost 50,000 francs." Just like our own parvenues. The fabulousfigures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for thepoverty of their taste.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol isdemocracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of themajority.

Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: "In our country of absolutedemocratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it isomnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hidingfrom its reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greeklantern and go about to seek among a hundred, you will not find asingle American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has,something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, orbusiness, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him.And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals,each one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction, as a nationcompared to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than anyother people we are afraid of each other." Evidently we have notadvanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips.

Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, asthen, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accepthim who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the ​unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the veryworst element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that themajority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves isdisplay. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight,the lynching of a "nigg*r," the rounding up of some petty offender,the marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of anex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greaterthe delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgarof soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour.

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

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazarethpreserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it wasthe beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it,that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood andfire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on theomnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of a Huss,Calvin, and Luther, was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the ​night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turnedpoliticians and began catering to the small potentates,the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardizedthe great possibilities of the Reformation. They wonsuccess and the majority, but that majority provedno less cruel and bloodthirsty in the persecution ofthought and reason than was the Catholic monster.Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would notbow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, andsacrifice, the human mind is at last free from thereligious phantom; the minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.

Politically the human race would still be in themost absolute slavery, were it not for the John Balls,the Wat Tylers, the Tells, the innumerable individualgiants who fought inch by inch against the powerof kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneersthe world would have never been shaken to its veryroots by that tremendous wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire ofCamille Desmoulins was like the trumpet beforeJericho, razing to the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille.

Always, at every period, the few were the bannerbearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not sothe mass, the leaden weight of which does not letit move. The truth of this is borne out in Russiawith greater force than elsewhere. Thousands oflives have already been consumed by that bloodyrégime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. ​How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture,literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the ironyoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russianpeasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery,still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with the whitehands"^[1] brings luck.

In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of astumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, ofPatrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by theirposterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courageworshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created thebackground for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints ofthe black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston,Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, andTheodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated inthat somber giant, John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquenceand perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords.Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become apractical issue, recognized as such by all.

About fifty years ago, a meteorlike idea made its appearance on thesocial horizon of the world, an idea so far-reaching, sorevolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts oftyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger ofjoy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers ​knew the difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution,the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid theystarted on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has becomea popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the richman, as well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority,as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well asthe perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, aswell as the shirtwaist girl. Why not. Now that the truth of fiftyyears ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all itsyouthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, itsrevolutionary ideal—why not? Now that it is no longer a beautifulvision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will ofthe majority, why not. With the same political cunning andshrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praiseis being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, theabused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us.

Who has not heard this litany before. Who does not know thisnever-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, thatit is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters.But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itselfis responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to itsmasters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the momenta protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalisticauthority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long wouldauthority and private property exist, if not for the willingness ofthe mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. TheSocialist dema​gogues know that as well as I, but they maintain themyth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme oflife means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter beacquired without numbers. Yes, power, authority, coercion, anddependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the freeunfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.

Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of theearth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignityof the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as acreative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so wellthat as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality.It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chainedthe human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make lifeuniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it willalways be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, oforiginality. I therefore believe with Emerson that "the masses arecrude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need notto be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anythingto them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and drawindividuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I donot wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet,accomplished women only."

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

​

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL
VIOLENCE

To analyse the psychology of political violence isnot only extremely difficult, but also very dangerous.If such acts are treated with understanding, one isimmediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on theother hand, human sympathy is expressed with the Attentäter,^[2] one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.

The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces,dreaded their approach, hiding from the perils theythreatened. As man learned to understand Nature'sphenomena, he realized that though these may destroylife and cause great loss, they also bring relief. Tothe earnest student it must be apparent that theaccumulated forces in our social and economic life,culminating in a political act of violence, are similarto the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning.

To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view,one must feel intensely the indignity of our social ​wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part ofhumanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation thataccumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes the storm inevitable.

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protestagainst our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, acruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathein blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothingis further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who havestudied the character and personality of these men, or who have comein close contact with them, are agreed that it is theirsuper-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them whichcompels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most notedwriters and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders,have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that thesem*n had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainlynot. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man whoknows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause.

Björnstjerne Björnson, in the second part of Beyond Human Power,emphasizes the fact that it is among the Anarchists that we must lookfor the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, andwho welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as truly asChrist did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity.

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

"The reading of the details of Vaillant's executionleft me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined himexpanding his chest under the ropes, marching withfirm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all hisenergy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurlingfinally at society his cry of malediction. And, in spiteof me, another spectacle rose suddenly before mymind. I saw a group of men and women pressingagainst each other in the middle of the oblong arenaof the circus, under the gaze of thousands of eyes,while from all the steps of the immense amphitheatrewent up the terrible cry, Ad leones! and, below, theopening cages of the wild beasts.

"I did not believe the execution would take place.In the first place, no victim had been struck withdeath, and it had long been the custom not to punishan abortive crime with the last degree of severity.Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, wasdisinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man'spast, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship,pleaded also in his favor. In the independent pressgenerous voices were raised in his behalf, veryloud and eloquent. 'A purely literary current ofopinion' some have said, with no little scorn. It is, on the contrary, an honor to the men of art and thought to have expressed once more their disgust at the scaffold."

Again Zola, in Germinal and Paris, describes thetenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with ​human suffering, of these men who close the chapterof their lives with a violent outbreak against oursystem.

Last, but not least, the man who probably betterthan anyone else understands the psychology of theAttentäter is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliantwork Une Psychologie du Militaire Professionnel,who has arrived at these suggestive conclusions:

"The positive method confirmed by the rationalmethod enables us to establish an ideal type ofAnarchist, whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possibleto differentiate him from other men. The typicalAnarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A manperceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or moreof its forms,—opposition, investigation, criticism,innovation,—endowed with a strong love of liberty,egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highlydeveloped moral sensitiveness, a profound sentimentof justice, and imbued with missionary zeal."

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

"There is a truism that the man in the street seems ​always to forget, when he is abusing the Anarchists,or whatever party happens to be his bête noire for themoment, as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from time immemorial, been the reply ofgoaded and desperate classes, and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen, which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are theviolent recoil from violence, whether aggressive orrepressive; they are the last desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any specialconviction, but in the depths of that human natureitself. The whole course of history, political andsocial, is strewn with evidence of this fact. To go nofurther, take the three most notorious examples ofpolitical parties goaded into violence during the lastfifty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians inIreland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were thesepeople Anarchists? No. Did they all three evenhold the same political opinions? No. The Mazzinians were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate circ*mstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turnfrom parties to individuals who have acted in likemanner, we stand appalled by the number of humanbeings goaded and driven by sheer desperation intoconduct obviously violently opposed to their social instincts.

"Now that Anarchism has become a living force insociety, such deeds have been sometimes committed ​by Anarchists, as well as by others.For no new faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane themind of man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has broughtupon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of anything violent oranti-social in the doctrine itself; simply because of the ferment anynew and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept orreject it. And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand,threatens every vested interest, and, on the other, holds out avision of a free and noble life to be won by a struggle againstexisting wrongs, is certain to rouse the fiercest opposition, andbring the whole repressive force of ancient evil into violent contactwith the tumultuous outburst of a new hope.

"Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility ofbetter things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spursthose who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve theirlot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharpermisery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society,for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of whatwork and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine andthe squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he hasthe resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, andwaiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the wayfor better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries tospread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. Howmany thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have lostwork ​and even the chance of work, solely on the ground oftheir opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman, who, if he be a zealous propagandist, can hopeto retain permanent employment. And what happensto a man with his brain working actively with aferment of new ideas, with a vision before his eyesof a new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing men,with the knowledge that his suffering and that of hisfellows in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate,but by the injustice of other human beings,—whathappens to such a man when he sees those dear tohim starving, when he himself is starved? Somenatures in such a plight, and those by no means theleast social or the least sensitive, will become violent,and will even feel that their violence is social andnot anti-social, that in striking when and how theycan, they are striking, not for themselves, but forhuman nature, outraged and despoiled in their personsand in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we,who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, tostand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims ofthe Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreantsthese human beings who act with heroic self-devotion,sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social andless energetic natures would lie down and grovel inabject submission to injustice and wrong? Are weto join the ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocentlypeaceful society? No! We hate murder with ahatred that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous acquiescers ​in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in suchcases of homicide, or attempted homicide, as those of which we aretreating, to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the wholeresponsibility of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guiltof these homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionallyor by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions thatdrive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole lifeinto the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against thewrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to the active andpassive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protestdestroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin insociety cast the first stone at such an one."^[4]

That every act of political violence should nowadays be attributed toAnarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known toalmost everyone familiar with the Anarchist movement that a greatnumber of acts, for which Anarchists had to suffer, either originatedwith the capitalist press or were instigated, if not directlyperpetrated, by the police.

For a number of years acts of violence had been committed in Spain,for which the Anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wildbeasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that theperpetrators of these acts were not Anarchists, but members of thepolice department. The scandal became so widespread that theconservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishmentof the ​gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned todeath and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to lightduring the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exoneratecompletely the Anarchists from any connection with the acts committedduring a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number ofpolice officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge,disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb throwers wereothers of far higher position, who provided them with funds andprotected them.

This is one of the many striking examples of how Anarchist conspiracies are manufactured.

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

No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt thatthe Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of alying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has notJudge Gary himself said: "Not because you have caused the Haymarketbomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial."

The impartial and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of thatblotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness ofJudge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the threeAnarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every libertyloving man and woman in the world.

​When we approach the tragedy of September sixth, 1901, we areconfronted by one of the most striking examples of how little socialtheories are responsible for an act of political violence. "LeonCzolgosz, an Anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman."To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth, andwill she not continue to do so beyond death. Everything is possible with the Anarchists.

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

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

A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it willcontinue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparativelyintelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yetwithin a little over thirty years a small band of parasites havesuccessfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon thefundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country,guaranteeing to ​every man, woman, and child "life, liberty, and thepursuit of happiness." For thirty years they have been increasingtheir wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers,thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless,and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country fromeast to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. Formany years the home has been left to the care of the little ones,while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a merepittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have beensacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the daughtersoutraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary yearsthis process of undermining the nation's health, vigor, and pride,without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has beengoing on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this"free land of ours" became more and more audacious in theirheartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayedEuropean tyrannies for supremacy of power.

In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a foreigner. The boy was a product of our own free American soil, that lulled himto sleep with,

Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in thecelebration of the Fourth of July, or of Decoration Day, when hefaithfully honored the Nation's dead? Who knows but that he, too,was willing to "fight for his country and die for her liberty," untilit dawned upon him that those he ​belonged to have no country, becausethey have been robbed of all that they have produced; until herealized that the liberty and independence of his youthful dreamswere but a farce. Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of toosensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless andbrainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly andthe bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being amongall the infuriated mob at your trial—a newspaper woman—as avisionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your large,dreamy eyes must have beheld a new and glorious dawn.

Now, to a recent instance of police-manufactured Anarchist plots. In that bloodstained city, Chicago, the life of Chief of PoliceShippy was attempted by a young man named Averbuch. Immediately thecry was sent to the four corners of the world that Averbuch was anAnarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the act. Everyone who was at all known to entertain Anarchist ideas wasclosely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of anAnarchist group confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. Itgoes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I mustneeds be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American policecredit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, hadnever before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly"conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the policeare not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target,to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of apolitical act. Was Averbuch ​an Anarchist? There is no positive proof of it. He had been but three months in the country, did not know the language, and, as far as I could ascertain, was quiteunknown to the Anarchists of Chicago.

What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants,undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He receivedhis first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutaldispersem*nt of the unemployed parade. He further experiencedAmerican equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find aneconomic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the gloriousland brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited arein the same position the world over. In his native land he probablylearned that necessity knows no law—there was no difference betweena Russian and an American policeman.

The question to the intelligent social student is not whether theacts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whetherthe thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitablyimpress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that thesight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called freeRepublic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle,furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought,outraged souls of men like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount ofpersecution, of hounding, of repression, can stay this social phenomenon.

But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committedacts of violence? Certainly they have, always however ready to shoulder the ​responsibility. My contention is that they wereimpelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendouspressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitivenatures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, makingman a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.This is not a mere assertion, but a fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the circ*mstances bearing upon this questionwill further clarify my position.

Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within thelast two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the mostsignificant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, inconnection with the Homestead strike of 1892.

During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized aconspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and SteelWorkers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, wasintrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying outthe policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had sosuccessfully practiced during his reign of terror in the co*keregions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposelyprolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, thefortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a highboard fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes forsharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted tosmuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which actprecipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not contentwith the death of ​eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, HenryClay Frick, good Christian and free American,straightway began the hounding down of the helplesswives and orphans, by ordering them out of thewretched Company houses.

The whole country was aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds of voices were raised inprotest, calling on Frick to desist, not to go too far.Yes, hundreds of people protested,—as one objectsto annoying flies. Only one there was who activelyresponded to the outrage at Homestead,—AlexanderBerkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist. He gloried inthat fact, because it was the only force that madethe discord between his spiritual longing and theworld without at all bearable. Yet not Anarchism,as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steelworkers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act,his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick.

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

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

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

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

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

"Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever Ihave gone, I have seen unfortunates bent beneath theyoke of capital. Everywhere I have seen the same ​wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in theremoter parts of the inhabited districts of SouthAmerica, where I had the right to believe that hewho was weary of the pains of civilization mightrest in the shade of the palm trees and there studynature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, Ihave seen capital come, like a vampire, to suck thelast drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs.

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

“I am reproached with the wounds of those whowere hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point outin passing that, if the bourgeois had not massacredor caused massacres during the Revolution, it isprobable that they would still be under the yoke ofthe nobility. On the other hand, figure up the deadand wounded of Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey,adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. Addalso those who die of hunger, and all this with theassent of our Deputies. Beside all this, of how littleweight are the reproaches now brought against me!

"It is true that one does not efface the other; but,after all, are we not acting on the defensive whenwe respond to the blows which we receive fromabove? I know very well that I shall be told that Iought to have confined myself to speech for the ​vindication of the people's claims. But what canyou expect! It takes a loud voice to make the deafhear. Too long have they answered our voices byimprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake; the explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of the rebel Vaillant, but the cry of an entire classwhich vindicates its rights, and which will soon addacts to words. For, be sure of it, in vain will theypass laws. The ideas of the thinkers will not halt;just as, in the last century, all the governmentalforces could not prevent the Diderots and the Voltaires from spreading emancipating ideas among the people, so all the existing governmental forces willnot prevent the Reclus, the Darwins, the Spencers,the Ibsens, the Mirbeaus, from spreading the ideasof justice and liberty which will annihilate the prejudices that hold the mass in ignorance. And these ideas, welcomed by the unfortunate, will flower inacts of revolt as they have done in me, until the daywhen the disappearance of authority shall permit allmen to organize freely according to their choice,when everyone shall be able to enjoy the product ofhis labor, and when those moral maladies calledprejudices shall vanish, permitting human beings tolive in harmony, having no other desire than to studythe sciences and love their fellows.

"I conclude, gentlemen, by saying that a society inwhich one sees such social inequalities as we see allabout us, in which we see every day suicides causedby poverty, prostitution flaring at every street corner,—a society whose principal monuments are barracks and prisons,—such a society must be transformed as ​soon as possible, on pain of being eliminated, andthat speedily, from the human race. Hail to himwho labors, by no matter what means, for this transformation! It is this idea that has guided me in my duel with authority, but as in this duel I haveonly wounded my adversary, it is now its turn to strike me.

"Now, gentlemen, to me it matters little what penalty you may inflict, for, looking at this assembly with the eyes of reason, I can not help smiling tosee you, atoms lost in matter, and reasoning onlybecause you possess a prolongation of the spinalmarrow, assume the right to judge one of your fellows.

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

Will anyone say that Vaillant was an ignorant,vicious man, or a lunatic? Was not his mind singularly clear and analytic? No wonder that the best intellectual forces of France spoke in his behalf, andsigned the petition to President Carnot, asking himto commute Vaillant's death sentence.

Carnot would listen to no entreaty; he insistedon more than a pound of flesh, he wanted Vaillant'slife, and then—the inevitable happened: President ​Carnot was killed. On the handle of the stilettoused by the Attentäter was engraved, significantly,

VAILLANT!

Santa Caserio was an Anarchist. He could have gotten away, saved himself; but he remained, he stood the consequences.

His reasons for the act are set forth in so simple,dignified, and childlike manner that one is remindedof the touching tribute paid Caserio by his teacherof the little village school, Ada Negri, the Italianpoet, who spoke of him as a sweet, tender plant,of too fine and sensitive texture to stand the cruelstrain of the world.

"Gentlemen of the Jury! I do not propose tomake a defense, but only an explanation of my deed.

"Since my early youth I began to learn that presentsociety is badly organized, so badly that every daymany wretched men commit suicide, leaving womenand children in the most terrible distress. Workers,by thousands, seek for work and can not find it.Poor families beg for food and shiver with cold;they suffer the greatest misery; the little ones asktheir miserable mothers for food, and the motherscannot give it to them, because they have nothing.The few things which the home contained havealready been sold or pawned. All they can do isbeg alms; often they are arrested as vagabonds.

"I went away from my native place because I wasfrequently moved to tears at seeing little girls ofeight or ten years obliged to work fifteen hours aday for the paltry pay of twenty centimes. Young ​women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hoursdaily, for a mockery of remuneration. And thathappens not only to my fellow countrymen, but toall the workers, who sweat the whole day long for acrust of bread, while their labor produces wealth inabundance. The workers are obliged to live underthe most wretched conditions, and their food consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice, and water; so by the time they are thirty or forty yearsold, they are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals.Besides, in consequence of bad food and overwork,these unhappy creatures are, by hundreds, devouredby pellagra a disease that, in my country, attacks,as the physicians say, those who are badly fed andlead a life of toil and privation.

"I have observed that there are a great manypeople who are hungry, and many children whosuffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the towns.I saw many and large shops full of clothing andwoolen stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full ofwheat and Indian corn, suitable for those who are inwant. And, on the other hand, I saw thousands ofpeople who do not work, who produce nothing andlive on the labor of others; who spend every daythousands of francs for their amusem*nt; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses,many servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life.

"I believed in God; but when I saw so great aninequality between men, I acknowledged that it wasnot God who created man, but man who created God.And I discovered that those who want their property ​to be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance.

"Not long ago, Vaillant threw a bomb in theChamber of Deputies, to protest against the presentsystem of society. He killed no one, only woundedsome persons; yet bourgeois justice sentenced him todeath. And not satisfied with the condemnation ofthe guilty man, they began to pursue the Anarchists,and arrest not only those who had known Vaillant,but even those who had merely been present at anyAnarchist lecture.

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

"The government went on searching private houses,opening private letters, forbidding lectures and meetings, and practicing the most infamous oppressions against us. Even now, hundreds of Anarchists arearrested for having written an article in a newspaper,or for having expressed an opinion in public.

"Gentlemen of the Jury, you are representatives ofbourgeois society. If you want my head, take it;but do not believe that in so doing you will stopthe Anarchist propaganda. Take care, for men reapwhat they have sown."

During a religious procession in 1896, at Bar​celona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested.Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade-unionistsand Socialists. They were thrown into that terriblebastille Montjuich, and subjected to most horribletortures. After a number had been killed, or hadgone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberalpress of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors.

The man primarily responsible for this revival ofthe Inquisition was Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bonescrushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the artof brutality during his régime in Cuba, Canovasremained absolutely deaf to the appeals and protestsof the awakened civilized conscience.

In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to deathby a young Italian, Angiolillo. The latter was aneditor in his native land, and his bold utterances soonattracted the attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to France and Belgium, finally settling inEngland. While there he found employment as acompositor, and immediately became the friend of allhis colleagues. One of the latter thus describedAngiolillo: "His appearance suggested the journalistrather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicatehands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had notgrown up at the 'case.' With his handsome frankface, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, helooked the very type of the vivacious Southerner. ​Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French, butno English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to acquire the Englishidiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was notlong until he became very popular with his fellowcompositors. His distinguished and yet modest manner, and his consideration towards his colleagues, won him the hearts of all the boys."

Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailedaccounts in the press. He read of the great waveof human sympathy with the helpless victims atMontjuich. On Trafalgar Square he saw with hisown eyes the results of those atrocities, when thefew Spaniards, who escaped Castillo's clutches, cameto seek asylum in England. There, at the great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible scars of burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, andthe effect surpassed a thousand theories; the impetuswas beyond words, beyond arguments, beyond himself even.

Señor Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain, sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in such cases, all strangers were kept away from hisexalted presence. One exception was made, however, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly dressed Italian—the representative, it was understood, of an important journal. The distinguished gentleman was—Angiolillo.

Señor Canovas, about to leave his house, steppedon the veranda. Suddenly Angiolillo confrontedhim. A shot rang out, and Canovas was a corpse.

​The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon thescene. "Murderer! Murderer!" she cried, pointingat Angiolillo. The latter bowed. "Pardon, Madame,"he said, "I respect you as a lady, but I regret thatyou were the wife of that man."

Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its mostterrible form—or the man whose soul was as a child's.

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

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

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

Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. Hewould work hard and faithfully. Work had noterrors for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood, self-respect.

Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled inPaterson, New Jersey, and there found a lucrative jobat six dollars per week in one of the weaving mills ofthe town. Six whole dollars per week was, no doubt,a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on inthe new country. He loved his little home. He wasa good husband and devoted father to his bambinaBianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked ​for a number of years. He actually managed to saveone hundred dollars out of his six dollars per week.

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

Every week, though tired from work, he wouldhelp to set up the paper. Until late hours he wouldassist, and when the little pioneer had exhausted allresources and his comrades were in despair, Brescibrought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, theentire savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.

In his native land people were starving. Thecrops had been poor, and the peasants saw themselvesface to face with famine. They appealed to theirgood King Umberto; he would help. And he did.The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palaceof the King, held up in mute silence their emaciatedinfants. Surely that would move him. And thenthe soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.

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

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

How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci gotthe money, but lost the good will, the confidence ofhis comrades. They would have nothing more to dowith one whose greed was greater than his ideals.

On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umbertowas shot at Monzo. The young Italian weaver ofPaterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good King.

Paterson was placed under police surveillance,everyone known as an Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed tothe King for aid. As if any spoken word, ever soeloquent, could burn into a human soul with suchwhite heat as the lifeblood trickling drop by dropfrom those dying forms. The ordinary man is rarelymoved either by word or deed; and those whosesocial kinship is the greatest living force need noappeal to respond—even as does steel to the magnet—to the wrongs and horrors of society.

If a social theory is a strong factor inducing actsof political violence, how are we to account for therecent violent outbreaks in India, where Anarchismhas hardly been born. More than any other oldphilosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passiveresistance, the drifting of life, the Nirvana, as thehighest spiritual ideal. Yet the social unrest in Indiais daily growing, and has only recently resulted in an ​act of political violence, the killing of Sir CurzonWyllie by the Hindu Madar Sol Dhingra.

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

"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in India eversince we began the commercial boycott of Englishgoods. The tiger qualities of the British are muchin evidence now in India. They think that by thestrength of the sword they will keep down India! Itis 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 toour culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyrannycontinues, for it is not the terrorists that are to beblamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it.It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmedpeople when brought to the verge of despair. It isnever criminal on their part. The crime lies with the tyrant."^[5]

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

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

Anarchism, more than any other social theory,values human life above things. All Anarchists agreewith Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity,but it can not do without that life. That, however,nowise indicates that Anarchism teaches submission.How can it, when it knows that all suffering, allmisery, all ills, result from the evil of submission?

Has not some American ancestor said, many yearsago, that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God?And he was not an Anarchist even. I would say thatresistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So longas tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepestaspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.

Compared with the wholesale violence of capitaland government, political acts of violence are but adrop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongestproof how terrible must be the conflict between theirsouls and unbearable social iniquities.

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

Such is the psychology of political violence.

​

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

"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said tothe priest. 'What made you lie so to those poor,misled people? What tortures of hell did you depict?Don't you know they are already suffering the tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten them.Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'

"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, liftedhim high in the air, and carried him to a factory, toan iron foundry. He saw the workmen there runningand hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the scorchingheat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat aretoo much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, hepleads 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 dragshim off to a farm. There he sees workmen threshingthe grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.

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

"'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seemsas if even he, the devil, pities the people. The piousservant of God can hardly bear it. With upliftedhands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes,yes! This is hell on earth!'

"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise themanother hell. You torment them, torture them todeath mentally when they are already all but deadphysically! Come on! I will show you one morehell—one more, the very worst.'

"He took him to a prison and showed him adungeon, with its foul air and the many humanforms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on thefloor, covered with vermin that were devouring theirpoor, naked, emaciated bodies.

"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil tothe priest, 'put on your ankles heavy chains such asthese unfortunates wear; lie down on the cold andfilthy 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, letme go away from here!'

"'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hellthan this. Did you not know it? Did you not knowthat these men and women whom you are frighteningwith the picture of a hell hereafter—did you notknow that they are in hell right here, before they die?"

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

With all our boasted reforms, our great socialchanges, and our far-reaching discoveries, humanbeings continue to be sent to the worst of hells,wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured,that society may be "protected" from the phantomsof its own making.

Prison, a social protection? What monstrousmind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well saythat health can be promoted by a widespread contagion.

After eighteen months of horror in an Englishprison, Oscar Wilde gave to the world his greatmasterpiece, The Ballad of Reading Goal:

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

We are spending at the present $3,500,000 perday, $1,000,095,000 per year, to maintain prison institutions, and that in a democratic country,—a sum almost as large as the combined output of wheat,valued at $750,000,000, and the output of coal, valuedat $350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington,D. C., estimates the cost of prisons at $6,000,000,000annually, and Dr. G. Frank Lydston, an eminentAmerican writer on crime, gives $5,000,000,000 annually as a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of maintaining vastarmies of human beings caged up like wild beasts!^[6]

Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learnthat in America there are four and a half times asmany crimes to every million population today asthere were twenty years ago.

The most horrible aspect is that our nationalcrime is murder, not robbery, embezzlement, or rape,as in the South. London is five times as large asChicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteenmurders annually in the latter city, while only twentyin London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime,since it is only seventh on the list, which is headedby four Southern cities, and San Francisco and LosAngeles. In view of such a terrible condition ofaffairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protectionsociety derives from its prisons.

​The average mind is slow in grasping a truth,but when the most thoroughly organized, centralizedinstitution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. Thetime is past when we can be content with our socialfabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right,"or by the majesty of the law.

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

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

First, as to the nature of crime:

Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases,the political, the passional, the insane, and the occasional. He says that the political criminal is the victim of an attempt of a more or less despotic government to preserve its own stability. He is not necessarily guilty of an unsocial offense; he simply tries tooverturn a certain political order which may itself beanti-social. This truth is recognized all over theworld, except in America where the foolish notionstill prevails that in a Democracy there is no place forpolitical criminals. Yet John Brown was a politicalcriminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is every ​striker. Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, thepolitical criminal of our time or place may be thehero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso callsthe political criminal the true precursor of the progressive movement of humanity.

"The criminal by passion is usually a man ofwholesome birth and honest life, who under the stressof some great, unmerited wrong has wrought justicefor himself."*

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

A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim inBrand Whitlock's novel, The Turn of the Balance,the greatest American exposé of crime in the making.Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crimeand death by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law. Archie and Flaherty are but thetypes of many thousands, demonstrating how thelegal aspects of crime, and the methods of dealingwith it, help to create the disease which is undermining our entire social life.

"The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally in the same condition as an infant or an animal."^[7]

The law already recognizes that, but only in rarecases of a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit's ​wealth permits the luxury of criminal insanity. Ithas become quite fashionable to be the victim ofparanoia. But on the whole the "sovereignty ofjustice" still continues to punish criminally insanewith the whole severity of its power. Thus Mr. Ellisquotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing that inGermany one hundred and six madmen, out of onehundred and forty-four criminally insane, were condemned to severe punishment.

The occasional criminal "represents by far thelargest class of our prison population, hence is thegreatest menace to social well-being." What is thecause that compels a vast army of the human familyto take to crime, to prefer the hideous life withinprison walls to the life outside? Certainly that causemust be an iron master, who leaves its victims noavenue of escape, for the most depraved human being loves liberty.

This terrific force is conditioned in our cruelsocial and economic arrangement. I do not mean todeny the biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factorsin creating crime; but there is hardly an advancedcriminologist who will not concede that the social andeconomic influences are the most relentless, the mostpoisonous germs of crime. Granted even that thereare innate criminal tendencies, it is none the less truethat these tendencies find rich nutrition in our social environment.

There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against the person and the price of alcohol, between crimes against property and the priceof wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the ​former looking upon society as the preparer of crime,and the criminals as instruments that execute them.The latter finds that "the social environment is thecultivation medium of criminality; that the criminalis the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; every society has the criminals it deserves."^[8]

The most "prosperous" industrial period makes itimpossible for the worker to earn enough to keep uphealth and vigor. And as prosperity is, at best, animaginary condition, thousands of people are constantly added to the host of the unemployed. From East to West, from South to North, this vast armytramps in search of work or food, and all they find isthe workhouse or the slums. Those who have aspark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty.

Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths ofindictable crimes consist in some violation of propertyrights; but that is too low a figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economicand social iniquities, to our system of remorselessexploitation and robbery. There is no criminal sostupid but recognizes this terrible fact, though he maynot be able to account for it.

A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso, and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels only too ​keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. AMilanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, Imerely take from the rich their superfluities; besides,do not advocates and merchants rob?" A murdererwrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the socialvirtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assaulton a rich man would be less ignoble than the cautiouscombination of fraud." Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs. Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" Aneducated convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws ofsociety are framed for the purpose of securing thewealth of the world to power and calculation, therebydepriving the larger portion of mankind of its rightsand chances. Why should they punish me for takingby somewhat similar means from those who havetaken more than they had a right to?" The sameman added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the well-being and the peace of theinhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it,while the laws of the land, in restraining naturaldesires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of thelaw of our beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."^[9]

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

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

​The methods of coping with crime have no doubtundergone several changes, but mainly in a theoreticsense. In practice, society has retained the primitivemotive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.It has also adopted the theologic idea; namely, punishment; while the legal and "civilized" methods consist of deterrence or terror, and reform. We shallpresently see that all four modes have failed utterly,and we are today no nearer a solution than in the dark ages.

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strikeback, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, thecivilized man, stripped of courage and daring, hasdelegated to an organized machinery the duty ofavenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that theState is justified in doing what he no longer has themanhood or consistency to do. The "majesty of thelaw" is a reasoning thing; it would not stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, whichproclaims punishment as a means of purification, orthe vicarious atonement of sin. But legally andsocially the statute exercises punishment, not merelyas an infliction of pain upon the offender, but also forits terrifying effect upon others.

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

Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with the social offender. Why do they not deter? Although in America a man is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the instruments of law, the police, carry on a reign of terror, makingindiscriminate arrests, beating, clubbing, bullyingpeople, using the barbarous method of the "thirddegree," subjecting their unfortunate victims to thefoul air of the station house, and the still fouler language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and society is paying the price. On the otherhand, it is an open secret that when the unfortunatecitizen has been given the full "mercy" of the law,and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst ofhells, his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights asa human being, degraded to a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes through a process ofdehumanization, compared with which savage revengewas mere child's play.

There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the black-jack, theclub, the strait-jacket, the water-cure, the "humming bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the solitary, the bull-ring, and starvation diet. In these institutions his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly mo​notony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois,Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become so flagrant as to reach the outside world, while in most other prisons the same Christianmethods still prevail. But prison walls rarely allowthe agonized shrieks of the victims to escape—prisonwalls are thick, they dull the sound. Society mightwith greater immunity abolish all prisons at once,than to hope for protection from these twentieth-century chambers of horrors.

Year after year the gates of prison hells return tothe world an emaciated, deformed, will-less, shipwrecked crew of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their naturalinclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger andinhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sinkback into crime as the only possibility of existence.It is not at all an unusual thing to find men andwomen who have spent half their lives—nay, almosttheir entire existence—in prison. I know a woman onBlackwell's Island, who had been in and out thirty-eight times; and through a friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and cared forin the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known themeaning of liberty. From the reformatory to thepenitentiary had been the path of this boy's life, until,broken in body, he died a victim of social revenge.These personal experiences are substantiated by extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of prisons as a means of deterrence or reform.

Well-meaning persons are now working for a newdeparture in the prison question,—reclamation, to ​restore once more to the prisoner the possibility ofbecoming a human being. Commendable as this is, Ifear it is impossible to hope for good results frompouring good wine into a musty bottle. Nothingshort of a complete reconstruction of society willdeliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, ifthe dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first step to be taken is therenovation of the social consciousness, which is in arather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need tobe awakened to the fact that crime is a question ofdegree, that we all have the rudiments of crime in us,more or less, according to our mental, physical, andsocial environment; and that the individual criminalis merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.

With the social consciousness wakened, the average individual may learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He may cease topersecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender,and give him a chance to live and breathe among hisfellows. Institutions are, of course, harder to reach.They are cold, impenetrable, and cruel; still, with thesocial consciousness quickened, it might be possible tofree the prison victims from the brutality of prisonofficials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion is apowerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, areafraid of it. They may be taught a little humanity,especially if they realize that their jobs depend upon it.But the most important step is to demand for theprisoner the right to work while in prison, with somemonetary recompense that would enable him to lay ​aside a little for the day of his release, the beginning of a new life.

It is almost ridiculous to hope much from presentsociety when we consider that workingmen, wage-slaves themselves, object to convict labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely consider the impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition so far raised by organized labor has beendirected against windmills. Prisoners have alwaysworked; only the State has been their exploiter, evenas the individual employer has been the robber oforganized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it,as have the leading nations of Europe, since it leadsto hideous overworking and abuse of prisoners, andto endless graft.

"Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich,offers perhaps the worst example. Under a five-yearcontract, dated July 7th, 1906, and renewable for fiveyears more at the option of private contractors, thelabor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiaryand the Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company is really agigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases theconvict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana,Nebraska, and South Dakota penitentiaries, and thereformatories of New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, andWisconsin, eleven establishments in all.

​"The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Islandcontract may be estimated from the fact that this sameCompany pays 62½ cents a day in Nebraska for theconvict's labor, and that Tennessee, for example, gets$1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg. Co.; West Virginia 65 cents aday from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and Maryland 55 centsa day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous graft. For example, the Reliance-SterlingMfg. Co. manufactures shirts, the cost by free laborbeing not less than $1.20 per dozen, while it paysRhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, theState charges this Trust no rent for the use of itshuge factory, charges nothing for power, heat, light,or even drainage, and exacts no taxes. What graft!"^[10]

It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country by prison labor. It is awoman's industry, and the first reflection that arises isthat an immense amount of free female labor is thusdisplaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being self-supporting after theirrelease, are kept at this work at which they can notpossibly make a dollar. This is the more serious whenwe consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful citizens.

​The third, and most important, consideration isthat the enormous profits thus wrung from convictlabor are a constant incentive to the contractors toexact from their unhappy victims tasks altogetherbeyond their strength, and to punish them cruellywhen their work does not come up to the excessive demands made.

Another word on the condemnation of convicts totasks at which they cannot hope to make a living afterrelease. Indiana, for example, is a State that hasmade a great splurge over being in the front rank ofmodern penological improvements. Yet, according tothe report rendered in 1908 by the training school ofits "reformatory," 135 were engaged in the manufacture of chains, 207 in that of shirts, and 255 in the foundry—a total of 597 in three occupations. But atthis so-called reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the inmates, 39 of which were connected with country pursuits. Indiana, like other States,professes to be training the inmates of her reformatory to occupations by which they will be able to make their living when released. She actually sets them towork making chains, shirts, and brooms, the latter forthe benefit of the Louisville Fancy Grocery Co.Broom-making is a trade largely monopolized by theblind, shirt-making is done by women, and there isonly one free chain-factory in the State, and at that areleased convict can not hope to get employment.The whole thing is a cruel farce.

If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbingtheir helpless victims of such tremendous profits, is itnot high time for organized labor to stop its idle howl, ​and to insist on decent remuneration for the convict,even as labor organizations claim for themselves? Inthat way workingmen would kill the germ whichmakes of the prisoner an enemy to the interests oflabor. I have said elsewhere that thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the socialfold. These men and women must live, for even anex-convict has needs. Prison life has made themanti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors thatmeet them on their release are not likely to decreasetheir bitterness. The inevitable result is that theyform a favorable nucleus out of which scabs, black-legs, detectives, and policemen are drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organizedlabor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison,defeats its own ends. It helps to create poisonousfumes that stifle every attempt for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these effects, he should insist on the right of the convict towork, he should meet him as a brother, take him intohis organization, and with his aid turn against the system which grinds them both.

Last, but not least, is the growing realization ofthe barbarity and the inadequacy of the definite sentence. Those who believe in, and earnestly aim at, a change are fast coming to the conclusion that manmust be given an opportunity to make good. Andhow is he to do it with ten, fifteen, or twenty years'imprisonment before him? The hope of liberty andof opportunity is the only incentive to life, especiallythe prisoner's life. Society has sinned so long against ​him—it ought at least to leave him that. I am not very sanguinethat it will, or that any real change in that direction can takeplace until the conditions that breed both the prisoner and thejailer will be forever abolished.

​

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place ofchildhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is itthe place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleetingclouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The placewhere we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-strickenlest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of ourlittle souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music ofthe birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distantlands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enrapturedby wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is itlove for the spot, every inch representing dear and preciousrecollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be calledupon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned intofactory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery havereplaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales ofgreat deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those ofsorrow, tears, and grief.

​What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort ofscoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatestanti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle thatwill justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade thatrequires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than themaking of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; atrade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that ofthe average workingman.

Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism asuperstition—one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane thanreligion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inabilityto explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heardthunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, andtherefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater thanhimself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and inthe various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand,is a superstition artificially created and maintained through anetwork of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of hisself-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

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

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in likemanner, of course, with the result that, from earlyinfancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reachedmanhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the beliefthat he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend hiscountry against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships andammunition. It is for that purpose that America haswithin a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it—four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the people. For surely itis not the rich who contribute to patriotism. Theyare cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land.We in America know well the truth of this. Are notour rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans inGermany, or Englishmen in England? And do theynot squandor with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coinedby American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes,theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible tosend messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of his people, when Sergiuswas punished by the Russian revolutionists.

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

But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth andpower. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of thehistoric wisdom of Frederic the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire,who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses."

That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will doubtafter considering the following statistics. The progressive increaseof the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the worldduring the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as tostartle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may bebriefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 intofive-year periods, and noting the disbursem*nts of several greatnations for army and navy purposes during the first and last of thoseperiods. From the first to the last of the periods noted theexpenditures of Great Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to$4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to$3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to $2,700,375,600,those of the United States from $1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450,those of Russia from $1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italyfrom $1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan from$182,900,500 to $700,925,475.

The military expenditures of each of the nations mentioned increased in each of the five-year periods under review. During the entire interval from 1881 to 1905 Great Britain's outlay for her army increased ​fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia's was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent., that of France about 15 per cent., and that ofJapan nearly 500 per cent. If we compare the expenditures of these nations upon their armies with their total expenditures for all the twenty-five yearsending with 1905, the proportion rose as follows:

In Great Britain from 20 per cent. to 37; in theUnited States from 15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18;in Italy from 12 to 15; in Japan from 12 to 14. Onthe other hand, it is interesting to note that the proportion in Germany decreased from about 58 per cent. to 25, the decrease being due to the enormous increasein the imperial expenditures for other purposes, thefact being that the army expenditures for the periodof 1901-5 were higher than for any five-year periodpreceding. Statistics show that the countries in whicharmy expenditures are greatest, in proportion to thetotal national revenues, are Great Britain, the UnitedStates, Japan, France, and Italy, in the order named.

The showing as to the cost of great navies isequally impressive. During the twenty-five yearsending with 1905 naval expenditures increasedapproximately as follows: Great Britain, 300 percent.; France 60 per cent.; Germany 600 per cent.; theUnited States 525 per cent.; Russia 300 per cent.;Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700 per cent. Withthe exception of Great Britain, the United Statesspends more for naval purposes than any other nation,and this expenditure bears also a larger proportion tothe entire national disbursem*nts than that of anyother power. In the period 1881-5, the expenditure ​for the United States navy was $6.20 out of each $100 appropriatedfor all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the nextfive-year period, to $8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, andto $16.40 for 1901-5. It is morally certain that the outlay for thecurrent period of five years will show a still further increase.

The rising cost of militarism may be still further illustrated bycomputing it as a per capita tax on population. From the first tothe last of the five-year periods taken as the basis for thecomparisons here given, it has risen as follows: In Great Britain,from $18.47 to $52.50; in France, from $19.66 to $23.62; in Germany,from $10.17 to $15.51; in the United States, from $5.62 to $13.64; inRussia, from $6.14 to $8.37; in Italy, from $9.59 to $11.24, and inJapan from 86 cents to $3.11.

It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per capita thatthe economic burden of militarism is most appreciable. Theirresistible conclusion from available data is that the increase ofexpenditure for army and navy purposes is rapidly surpassing thegrowth of population in each of the countries considered in thepresent calculation. In other words, a continuation of the increaseddemands of militarism threatens each of those nations with aprogressive exhaustion both of men and resources.

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

The usual contention is that we need a standingarmy to protect the country from foreign invasion.Every intelligent man and woman knows, however,that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coercethe foolish. The governments of the world, knowingeach other's interests, do not invade each other. Theyhave learned that they can gain much more by inter-national arbitration of disputes than by war and con-quest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrelbetween two thieves too cowardly to fight their ownbattle; therefore they take boys from one village andanother village, stick them into uniforms, equip themwith guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."

It does not require much wisdom to trace everywar back to a similar cause. Let us take our ownSpanish-American war, supposedly a great andpatriotic event in the history of the United States.How our hearts burned with indignation against theatrocious Spaniards! True, our indignation did notflare up spontaneously. It was nurtured by months ofnewspaper agitation, and long after Butcher Weylerhad killed off many noble Cubans and outraged manyCuban women. Still, in justice to the AmericanNation be it said, it did grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of thewar came back to the people in an increase in the ​price of commodities and rent—that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree—itsuddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war wasthe consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit,that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used toprotect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatenedby the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but isbased on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitudeof the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly inthe clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberateCuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the greatcigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war.

Nor do we stand alone in waging war for such causes. The curtain isbeginning to be lifted on the motives of the terrible Russo-Japanesewar, which cost so much blood and tears. And we see again that backof the fierce Moloch of war stands the still fiercer god ofCommercialism. Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War during theRusso-Japanese struggle, has revealed the true secret behind thelatter. The Tsar and his Grand Dukes, having invested money inCorean concessions, the war was forced for the sole purpose ofspeedily accumulating large fortunes.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security ofpeace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizenis he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day lifefully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to tryhis strength. The same is his​torically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

However, the clamor for an increased army andnavy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owingto the dread of the growing discontent of the massesand of the international spirit among the workers. Itis to meet the internal enemy that the Powers ofvarious countries are preparing themselves; an enemy,who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove moredangerous than any foreign invader.

The powers that have for centuries been engagedin enslaving the masses have made a thorough studyof their psychology. They know that the people atlarge are like children whose despair, sorrow, andtears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And themore gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder thecolors, the more it will appeal to the million-headed child.

An army and navy represents the people's toys.To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of theAmerican government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory ofthe United States. The city of San Francisco spentone hundred thousand dollars for the entertainmentof the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle andTacoma, about one hundred thousand. To entertainthe fleet, did I say? To dine and wine a few superiorofficers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to get ​get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollarswere spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and revelries, at a timewhen men, women, and children through the breadth and length of thecountry were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployedwere ready to sell their labor at any price.

Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have beenaccomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread andshelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet,that it may remain, as one of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory for the child."

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

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed;we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over thepossibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines uponhelpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynchanyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in theattempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swellwith pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerfulnation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot onthe necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism.

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

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

Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies ofsexual perversion. It is gradually producing alongthis line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sexpsychology, has made a thorough study of the subject.I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers ofmale prostitution.... The number of soldiers whoprostitute themselves is greater than we are willing tobelieve. It is no exaggeration to say that in certainregiments the presumption is in favor of the venalityof the majority of the men.... On summer even​ings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen andothers plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform orout.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition toTommy Atkins' pocket money."

To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army andnavy can best be judged from the fact that special houses exist forthis form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England;it is universal. "Soldiers are no less sought after in France thanin England or in Germany, and special houses for militaryprostitution exist both in Paris and the garrison towns."

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

Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfitthe soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled ina trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after amilitary experience, find themselves totally unfitted for theirformer occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a tastefor excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it isusually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whomeither the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into theranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of crime, ​more brutalized and degraded than before. It is awell-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodlynumber of ex-soldiers; while, on the other hand, thearmy and navy are to a great extent supplied with ex-convicts.

Of all the evil results I have just describednone seems to me so detrimental to human integrityas the spirit patriotism has produced in the case ofPrivate William Buwalda. Because he foolishlybelieved that one can be a soldier and exercise hisrights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his recordwas unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, whor*duced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the firstduty of an officer or an enlisted man is unquestionedobedience and loyalty to the government, and it makesno difference whether he approves of that governmentor not." Thus Funston stamps the true character ofallegiance. According to him, entrance into the armyabrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

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

In justification of this most outrageous sentence ofBuwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people thatthe soldier's action was "a serious crime equal totreason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" reallyconsist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda wasone of fifteen hundred people who attended a publicmeeting in San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shookhands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible ​crime, indeed, which the General calls "a greatmilitary offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

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

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

A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article,commented on the power of the military man over the civilian inGermany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had noother meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it wouldhave just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer wasnot in Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. Heprobably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name ofpatriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, draggedabout, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds ofindignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the growth of mili​tary power in the United States. There is hardly astrike where troops and militia do not come to therescue of those in power, and where they do not act asarrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing theKaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick military law.Had the writer forgotten that?

A great misfortune with most of our writers isthat they are absolutely ignorant on current events, orthat, lacking honesty, they will not speak of thesematters. And so it has come to pass that the Dickmilitary law was rushed through Congress with littlediscussion and still less publicity,—a law which givesthe President the power to turn a peaceful citizen intoa bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly for the defenseof the country, in reality for the protection of theinterests of that particular party whose mouthpiecethe President happens to be.

Our writer claims that militarism can neverbecome such a power in America as abroad, since it isvoluntary with us, while compulsory in the Old World.Two very important facts, however, the gentlemanforgets to consider. First, that conscription hascreated in Europe a deep-seated hatred of militarismamong all classes of society. Thousands of youngrecruits enlist under protest and, once in the army,they will use every possible means to desert. Second,that it is the compulsory feature of militarism whichhas created a tremendous anti-militarist movement,feared by European Powers far more than anythingelse. After all, the greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no con​scription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlistin the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force—necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendousincrease in the number of enlistments? The trade ofmilitarism may not be either lucrative or honorable,but it is better than tramping the country in search ofwork, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep.Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a factor tobring into the army an element of character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain of the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy.This admission is a very encouraging sign. It provesthat there is still enough of the spirit of independenceand love of liberty left in the average American torisk starvation rather than don the uniform.

Thinking men and women the world over arebeginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow andlimited a conception to meet the necessities of ourtime. The centralization of power has brought intobeing an international feeling of solidarity among theoppressed nations of the world; a solidarity whichrepresents a greater harmony of interests between theworkingman of America and his brothers abroad thanbetween the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the pointwhen they will say to their masters, "Go and do yourown killing. We have done it long enough for you."

This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of ​even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the fleshof the great human family. A solidarity that hasproven infallible more than once during past struggles,and which has been the impetus inducing the Parisiansoldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse toobey when ordered to shoot their brothers. It hasgiven courage to the men who mutinied on Russianwarships during recent years. It will eventually bringabout the uprising of all the oppressed and down-trodden against their international exploiters.

The proletariat of Europe has realized the greatforce of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons ofFrance, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinaviancountries, because they dared to defy the ancientsuperstition. Nor is the movement limited to theworking class; it has embraced representatives in allstations of life, its chief exponents being men andwomen prominent in art, science, and letters.

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

The beginning has already been made in theschools. Evidently the government holds to theJesuitical conception, "Give me the child mind, andI will mould the man." Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful minds ​perverted to suit the government.Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring postersto join the army and navy. "A fine chance to see the world!" criesthe governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaiedinto patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through the Nation.

The American workingman has suffered so much at the hands of thesoldier, State, and Federal, that he is quite justified in hisdisgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite.However, mere denunciation will not solve this great problem. Whatwe need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: anti-patrioticl*terature that will enlighten him as to the real horrors of histrade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation tothe man to whose labor he owes his very existence.

It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical pamphlet. But then, has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into the barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood,—a truly FREE SOCIETY.

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FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN
SCHOOL

Experience has come to be considered the best school of life. Theman or woman who does not learn some vital lesson in that school islooked upon as a dunce indeed. Yet strange to say, that thoughorganized institutions continue perpetrating errors, though theylearn nothing from experience, we acquiesce, as a matter of course.

There lived and worked in Barcelona a man by the name of FranciscoFerrer. A teacher of children he was, known and loved by his people.Outside of Spain only the cultured few knew of Francisco Ferrer'swork. To the world at large this teacher was non-existent.

On the first of September, 1909, the Spanish government—at thebehest of the Catholic Church—arrested Francisco Ferrer. On thethirteenth of October, after a mock trial, he was placed in the ditchat Montjuich prison, against the hideous wall of many sighs, and shotdead. Instantly Ferrer, the obscure teacher, became a universalfigure, blazing forth the indignation and wrath of the wholecivilized world against the wanton murder.

​The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the firstcrime committed by the Spanish government andthe Catholic Church. The history of these institutions is one long stream of fire and blood. Still they have not learned through experience, nor yetcome to realize that every frail being slain by Churchand State grows and grows into a mighty giant, whowill some day free humanity from their perilous hold.

Francisco Ferrer was born in 1859, of humbleparents. They were Catholics, and therefore hopedto raise their son in the same faith. They did notknow that the boy was to become the harbinger ofa great truth, that his mind would refuse to travelin the old path. At an early age Ferrer began toquestion the faith of his fathers. He demanded toknow how it is that the God who spoke to him ofgoodness and love would mar the sleep of the innocent child with dread and awe of tortures, of suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and investigatingmind, it did not take him long to discover the hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church. He would have none of it.

Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, asearcher for truth; he was also a rebel. His spiritwould rise in just indignation against the iron régimeof his country, and when a band of rebels, led bythe brave patriot General Villacampa, under thebanner of the Republican ideal, made an onslaughton that régime, none was more ardent a fighter thanyoung Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,—Ihope no one will confound it with the Republicanismof this country. Whatever objection I, as an An​archist, have to the Republicans of Latin countries,I know they tower high above that corrupt and reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of liberty and justice. One has but to thinkof the Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the scores of others,to realize that their efforts were directed, not merelyagainst the overthrow of despotism, but particularlyagainst the Catholic Church, which from its veryinception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism.

In America it is just the reverse. Republicanismstands for vested rights, for imperialism, for graft,for the annihilation of every semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a Roosevelt.

The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. Ittakes more than one brave effort to split the rockof ages, to cut off the head of that hydra monster,the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest,persecution, and punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for safety to foreignshores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went to France.

How his soul must have expanded in the newland! France, the cradle of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belatedcountry, how she must have inspired him. Whatopportunities, what a glorious chance for a young idealist.

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

The Modern School in France was founded long before Ferrer's time.Its originator, though on a small scale, was that sweet spirit,Louise Michel. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our own greatLouise felt long ago that the future belongs to the young generation;that unless the young be rescued from that mind and soul destroyinginstitution, the bourgeois school, social evils will continue toexist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen, that the atmosphere issaturated with ghosts, that the adult man and woman have so manysuperstitions to overcome. No sooner do they outgrow the deathlikegrip of one spook, lo! they find themselves in the thralldom ofninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the mountain peak ofcomplete regeneration.

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

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

The most important venture of a Modern Schoolwas that of the great young old man Paul Robin.Together with a few friends he established a largeschool at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris. PaulRobin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modernideas in education. He wanted to demonstrate byactual facts that the burgeois conception of heredityis but a mere pretext to exempt society from itsterrible crimes against the young. The contentionthat the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers,that it must continue in poverty and filth, that it mustgrow up a drunkard or criminal, just because itsparents left it no other legacy, was too preposterousto the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believedthat whatever part heredity may play, there are otherfactors equally great, if not greater, that may andwill eradicate or minimize the so-called first cause.Proper economic and social environment, the breathand freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love andsympathy, and, above all, a deep understanding forthe needs of the child—these would destroy the cruel,unjust, and criminal stigma imposed on the innocent young.

Paul Robin did not select his children; he didnot go to the so-called best parents: he took hismaterial wherever he could find it. From the street, ​the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums,the reformatories, from all those gray and hideous places where abenevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guiltyconscience. He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering littlewaifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There,surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed,clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the little human plantsbegan to grow, to blossom, to develop beyond even the expectations oftheir friend and teacher, Paul Robin.

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

Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educationalattempts,—among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a gifted writer and poet,author of L'Amour Libre, and Sebastian Faure, with his La Ruche,^[11] which I visited while in Paris, in 1907.

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

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

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

"I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes,mostly orphans, or those whose parents are too poorto pay. They are clothed, housed, and educated atmy expense. Till their twelfth year they will receivea sound elementary education. Between the age oftwelve and fifteen—their studies still continuing—they are to be taught some trade, in keeping with their individual disposition and abilities. After that theyare at liberty to leave La Ruche to begin life in theoutside world, with the assurance that they may atany time return to La Ruche, where they will bereceived with open arms and welcomed as parents dotheir beloved children. Then, if they wish to work atour place, they may do so under the following conditions: One third of the product to cover his or her expenses of maintenance, another third to go towardsthe general fund set aside for accommodating new ​children, and the last third to be devoted to the personal use of thechild, as he or she may see fit.

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

"It would be unjust to claim that our pupils have accomplishedwonders; yet, considering that they belong to the average, having hadno previous opportunities, the results are very gratifying indeed. The most important thing they have acquired—a rare trait withordinary school children—is the love of study, the desire to know,to be informed. They have learned a new method of work, one thatquickens the memory and stimulates the imagination. We make aparticular effort to awaken the child's interest in his surroundings,to make him realize the importance of observation, investigation, andreflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they would notbe deaf and blind to the things about them. Our children neveraccept anything in blind faith, without inquiry as to why andwherefore; nor do they feel satisfied until their questions arethoroughly answered. Thus their minds are free from doubts and fearresultant from incomplete or untruthful replies; it is the latterwhich warp the growth of the child, and create a lack of confidencein himself and those about him.

"It is surprising how frank and kind and affectionate our little ones are to each other. The harmony ​between themselves and the adults at La Ruche ishighly encouraging. We should feel at fault if thechildren were to fear or honor us merely because weare their elders. We leave nothing undone to gaintheir confidence and love; that accomplished, understanding will replace duty; confidence, fear; and affection, severity.

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of the child. The effort of every true educator shouldbe to unlock that treasure—to stimulate the child'simpulses, and call forth the best and noblest tendencies. What greater reward can there be for one whose life-work is to watch over the growth of thehuman plant, than to see its nature unfold its petals,and to observe it develop into a true individuality.My comrades at La Ruche look for no greaterreward, and it is due to them and their efforts, evenmore than to my own, that our human garden promises to bear beautiful fruit."^[12]

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

"We explain to our children that true history isyet to be written,—the story of those who have died,unknown, in the effort to aid humanity to greater achievement."^[13]

Francisco Ferrer could not escape this great waveof Modern School attempts. He saw its possibilities,not merely in theoretic form, but in their practicalapplication to every-day needs. He must have real​ized that Spain, more than any other country, stands in need ofjust such schools, if it is ever to throw off the double yoke ofpriest and soldier.

When we consider that the entire system of education in Spain is inthe hands of the Catholic Church, and when we further remember theCatholic formula, "To inculcate Catholicism in the mind of the childuntil it is nine years of age is to ruin it forever for any otheridea," we will understand the tremendous task of Ferrer in bringingthe new light to his people. Fate soon assisted him in realizing his great dream.

Mlle. Meunier, a pupil of Francisco Ferrer, and a lady of wealth,became interested in the Modern School project. When she died, sheleft Ferrer some valuable property and twelve thousand francs yearly income for the School.

It is said that mean souls can conceive of naught but mean ideas. If so, the contemptible methods of the Catholic Church to blackguardFerrer's character, in order to justify her own black crime, canreadily be explained. Thus the lie was spread in American Catholicpapers, that Ferrer used his intimacy with Mlle. Meunier to get possession of her money.

Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of whatever nature, between aman and a woman, is their own affair, their sacred own. I wouldtherefore not lose a word in referring to the matter, if it were notone of the many dastardly lies circulated about Ferrer. Of course,those who know the purity of the Catholic clergy will understand theinsinuation. Have the Catholic priests ever looked upon woman ​as anything but a sex commodity? The historicaldata regarding the discoveries in the cloisters andmonasteries will bear me out in that. How, then,are they to understand the co-operation of a man anda woman, except on a sex basis?

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

Equipped with knowledge, with experience, andwith the necessary means; above all, imbued withthe divine fire of his mission, our Comrade came backto Spain, and there began his life's work. On theninth of September, 1901, the first Modern Schoolwas opened. It was enthusiastically received by thepeople of Barcelona, who pledged their support. Ina short address at the opening of the School, Ferrersubmitted his program to his friends. He said: "Iam not a speaker, not a propagandist, not a fighter.I am a teacher; I love children above everything.I think I understand them. I want my contributionto the cause of liberty to be a young generation readyto meet a new era."

He was cautioned by his friends to be careful inhis opposition to the Catholic Church. They knewto what lengths she would go to dispose of an enemy.Ferrer, too, knew. But, like Brand, he believed in ​all or nothing. He would not erect the Modern School on the same old lie. He would be frank and honest and open with the children.

Francisco Ferrer became a marked man. From the very first day of theopening of the School, he was shadowed. The school building waswatched, his little home in Mangat was watched. He was followedevery step, even when he went to France or England to confer with hiscolleagues. He was a marked man, and it was only a question of timewhen the lurking enemy would tighten the noose.

It succeeded, almost, in 1906, when Ferrer was implicated in theattempt on the life of Alfonso. The evidence exonerating him was toostrong even for the black crows;^[14] they had to let him go—not for good, however. They waited. Oh, they can wait, when they have setthemselves to trap a victim.

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

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

Then, and not until then, was their power ofendurance at an end. Then, and not until then, didthe workers of Spain turn against their masters,against those who, like leeches, had drained theirstrength, their very life-blood. Yes, they attackedthe churches and the priests, but if the latter had athousand lives, they could not possibly pay for theterrible outrages and crimes perpetrated upon the Spanish people.

Francisco Ferrer was arrested on the first ofSeptember, 1909. Until October first his friendsand comrades did not even know what had becomeof him. On that day a letter was received byL'Humanité from which can be learned the wholemockery of the trial. And the next day his companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following letter:

"No reason to worry; you know I am absolutely innocent. Today I am particularly hopefuland joyous. It is the first time I can write to you,and the first time since my arrest that I can bathein the rays of the sun, streaming generouslythrough my cell window. You, too, must be joyous."

How pathetic that Ferrer should have believed,as late as October fourth, that he would not becondemned to death. Even more pathetic that hisfriends and comrades should once more have made ​the blunder in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again theyhad placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brotherskilled before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescueFerrer, not even a protest of any extent; nothing. "Why, it isimpossible to condemn Ferrer; he is innocent." But everything ispossible with the Catholic Church. Is she not a practiced henchman,whose trials of her enemies are the worst mockery of justice?

On October fourth Ferrer sent the following letter to L'Humanité:

"The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909.

My dear Friends—Notwithstanding most absolute innocence, theprosecutor demands the death penalty, based on denunciations ofthe police, representing me as the chief of the world'sAnarchists, directing the labor syndicates of France, and guiltyof conspiracies and insurrections everywhere, and declaring thatmy voyages to London and Paris were undertaken with no other object.

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

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

"Ferrer."

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

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

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

Is it psychologically possible that Ferrer shouldhave participated? I do not believe it is, and here aremy reasons. Francisco Ferrer was not only a greatteacher, but he was also undoubtedly a marvelousorganizer. In eight years, between 1901-1909, he hadorganized in Spain one hundred and nine schools,besides inducing the liberal element of his countryto organize three hundred and eight other schools. ​In connection with his own school work, Ferrer had equippeda modern printing plant, organized a staff of translators, and spreadbroadcast one hundred and fifty thousand copies of modern scientificand sociologic works, not to forget the large quantity of rationalisttext books. Surely none but the most methodical and efficientorganizer could have accomplished such a feat.

On the other hand, it was absolutely proven that the anti-militaryuprising was not at all organized; that it came as a surprise to thepeople themselves, like a great many revolutionary waves on previousoccasions. The people of Barcelona, for instance, had the city intheir control for four days, and, according to the statement oftourists, greater order and peace never prevailed. Of course, thepeople were so little prepared that when the time came, they did notknow what to do. In this regard they were like the people of Parisduring the Commune of 1871. They, too, were unprepared. While theywere starving, they protected the warehouses, filled to the brim withprovisions. They placed sentinels to guard the Bank of France, wherethe bourgeoisie kept the stolen money. The workers of Barcelona,too, watched over the spoils of their masters.

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

Can anyone assume for a moment that a manlike Ferrer would affiliate himself with such a spontaneous, unorganized effort? Would he not have known that it would result in a defeat, a disastrousdefeat for the people? And is it not more likelythat if he would have taken part, he, the experiencedentrepreneur, would have thoroughly organized theattempt? If all other proofs were lacking, that onefactor would be sufficient to exonerate FranciscoFerrer. But there are others equally convincing.

For the very date of the outbreak, July twenty-fifth, Ferrer had called a conference of his teachers and members of the League of Rational Education.It was to consider the autumn work, and particu-larly the publication of Elisée Reclus' great book,L'Homme et la Terre, and Peter Kropotkin's Great French Revolution. Is it at all likely, is it at allplausible that Ferrer, knowing of the uprising, beinga party to it, would in cold blood invite his friendsand colleagues to Barcelona for the day on which herealized their lives would be endangered? Surely,only the criminal, vicious mind of a Jesuit couldcredit such deliberate murder.

Francisco Ferrer had his life-work mapped out;he had everything to lose and nothing to gain, exceptruin and disaster, were he to lend assistance to theoutbreak. Not that he doubted the justice of thepeople's wrath; but his work, his hope, his verynature was directed toward another goal.

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

Francisco Ferrer is accused of teaching the children the mostblood-curdling ideas,—to hate God, for instance. Horrors! Francisco Ferrer did not believe in the existence of a God. Whyteach the child to hate something which does not exist? Is it notmore likely that he took the children out into the open, that heshowed them the splendor of the sunset, the brilliancy of the starryheavens, the awe-inspiring wonder of the mountains and seas; that heexplained to them in his simple, direct way the law of growth, ofdevelopment, of the interrelation of all life? In so doing he madeit forever impossible for the poisonous weeds of the Catholic Churchto take root in the child's mind.

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

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

However, we have Ferrer's own word regardinghis ideas of modern education:

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

"We are convinced that the education of the futurewill be of an entirely spontaneous nature; certainlywe can not as yet realize it, but the evolution ofmethods in the direction of a wider comprehensionof the phenomena of life, and the fact that all advances toward perfection mean the overcoming of restraint,—all this indicates that we are in the rightwhen we hope for the deliverance of the child through science.

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

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

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

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

"I know very well we could not thus realize allour hopes, that we should often be forced, for lackof knowledge, to employ undesirable methods; buta certitude would sustain us in our efforts—namely,that even without reaching our aim completely weshould do more and better in our still imperfect workthan the present school accomplishes. I like the freespontaneity of a child who knows nothing, betterthan the world-knowledge and intellectual deformityof a child who has been subjected to our present education."^[15]

Had Ferrer actually organized the riots, had hefought on the barricades, had he hurled a hundredbombs, he could not have been so dangerous to theCatholic Church and to despotism, as with hisopposition to discipline and restraint. Discipline andrestraint are they not back of all the evils in theworld? Slavery, submission, poverty, all misery, allsocial iniquities result from discipline and restraint.Indeed, Ferrer was dangerous. Therefore he had todie, October thirteenth, 1909, in the ditch of Montjuich. Yet who dare say his death was in vain? In view of the tempestuous rise of universal indignation:Italy naming streets in memory of Francisco Ferrer,Belgium inaugurating a movement to erect a memorial; France calling to the front her most illustrious men to resume the heritage of the martyr; Englandbeing the first to issue a biography; all countries ​uniting in perpetuating the great work ofFrancisco Ferrer; America, even, tardy always in progressive ideas,giving birth to a Francisco Ferrer Association, its aim being topublish a complete life of Ferrer and to organize Modern Schools allover the country; in the face of this international revolutionarywave, who is there to say Ferrer died in vain?

That death at Montjuich,—how wonderful, how dramatic it was, how itstirs the human soul. Proud and erect, the inner eye turned towardthe light, Francisco Ferrer needed no lying priests to give himcourage, nor did he upbraid a phantom for forsaking him. Theconsciousness that his executioners represented a dying age, and thathis was the living truth, sustained him in the last heroic moments.

​

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM

Speaking of Puritanism in relation to American art, Mr. GutzonBorglum said: "Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocriticalfor so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in ourimpulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that therecan be neither truth nor individuality in our art."

Mr. Borglum might have added that Puritanism has made life itselfimpossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life representsbeauty in a thousand variations; it is, indeed, a gigantic panoramaof eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixedand immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic ideathat life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In orderto redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate everynatural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing everymanifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which ​robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to thedicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienatedByron from his native land, because that great genius rebelledagainst the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It wasPuritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into theconventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, GeorgeEliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll—the lifeof Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the mostpernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of theartistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only onthe dullness of middle-class respectability.

It is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to America as the country of Puritanic provincialism. It is quite true that our life is stunted by Puritanism, and that the latter is killing what is natural and healthy in our impulses. But it is equally true that it is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on American soil. It was bequeathed to us by the Pilgrim fathers. Fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Pilgrims of Mayflower fame established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods for American purification.

​Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in theannals of Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." Itrivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution ofunauthorized religious opinions. On the now famousCommon a half-naked woman, with a baby in herarms, was publicly whipped for the crime of freespeech; and on the same spot Mary Dyer, anotherQuaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Bostonhas been the scene of more than one wanton crimecommitted by Puritanism. Salem, in the summer of1692, killed eighteen people for witchcraft. Nor wasMassachusetts alone in driving out the devil by fireand brimstone. As Canning justly said: "The Pilgrim fathers infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old." The horrors of that period havefound their most supreme expression in the Americanclassic, The Scarlet Letter.

Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrewand lash; but it still has a most pernicious hold onthe minds and feelings of the American people.Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock.Like the Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, AnthonyComstock is the autocrat of American morals; hedictates the standards of good and evil, of purity andvice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into theprivate lives of the people, into their most intimaterelations. The system of espionage established bythis man Comstock puts to shame the infamous ThirdDivision of the Russian secret police. Why does thepublic tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and ​from whose thraldom even liberals have notsucceeded in fully emancipating themselves. The visionless andleaden elements of the old Young Men's and Women's ChristianTemperance Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and theProhibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint, arethe grave diggers of American art and culture.

Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature which delvedeeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising asevere critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife everyPuritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man'sliberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism asthe constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity ispossible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct,curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy offreedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. Itrepudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; butbeing absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions,Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.

The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true.The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the flesh as somethingevil; it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost. The result ofthis vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized bymodern thinkers and educators. They realize that "nakedness has a hygienic value as well as a spiritual ​significance, far beyond its influences in allaying thenatural inquisitiveness of the young or acting as apreventative of morbid emotion. It is an inspirationto adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the world, with itsvigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of the primetonics of life."^[16] But the spirit of purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide thenatural form under the plea of chastity. Yet chastityitself is but an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern idea of chastity, especially in reference towoman, its greatest victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses. "Chastity varies with the amount of clothing," and hence Christiansand purists forever hasten to cover the "heathen”with tatters, and thus convert him to goodness and chastity.

Puritanism, with its perversion of the significanceand functions of the human body, especially in regardto woman, has condemned her to celibacy, or to theindiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity is apparent when we consider the results. Absolute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered immoral orfallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous ​complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life,sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably alsoexplains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud believesthat the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to theinhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexualrepression. Having thus suppressed the natural sex desires of theunmarried woman, Puritanism, on the other hand, blesses her marriedsister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock. Indeed, not merelyblesses her, but forces the woman, oversexed by previous repression,to bear children, irrespective of weakened physical condition oreconomic inability to rear a large family. Prevention, even byscientifically determined safe methods, is absolutely prohibited;nay, the very mention of the subject is considered criminal.

Thanks to this Puritanic tyranny, the majority of women soon findthemselves at the ebb of their physical resources. Ill and worn,they are utterly unable to give their children even elementary care. That, added to economic pressure, forces many women to risk utmostdanger rather than continue to bring forth life. The custom ofprocuring abortions has reached such vast proportions in America asto be almost beyond belief. According to recent investigations alongthis line, seventeen abortions are committed in every hundredpregnancies. This fearful percentage represents only cases which come to the knowledge of physicians. Considering the secrecy in which this ​practice is necessarily shrouded, and the consequentprofessional inefficiency and neglect, Puritanism continuously exacts thousands of victims to its own stupidity and hypocrisy.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, andchained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism. It is its most cherished child, all hypocritical sanctimoniousness notwithstanding. The prostitute isthe fury of our century, sweeping across the "civilized" countries like a hurricane, and leaving a trail of disease and disaster. The only remedy Puritanismoffers for this ill-begotten child is greater repressionand more merciless persecution. The latest outrageis represented by the Page Law, which imposes uponthe State of New York the terrible failure and crimeof Europe, namely, registration and identification ofthe unfortunate victims of Puritanism. In equallystupid manner purism seeks to check the terriblescourge of its own creation—venereal diseases. Mostdisheartening it is that this spirit of obtuse narrow-mindedness has poisoned even our so-called liberals, and has blinded them into joining the crusade againstthe very things born of the hypocrisy of Puritanism—prostitution and its results. In wilful blindness Puritanism refuses to see that the true method of prevention is the one which makes it clear to all that "venereal diseases are not a mysterious or terrible thing,the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shamefulevil branded by purist malediction, but an ordinarydisease which may be treated and cured." By its methods of obscurity, disguise, and concealment, Puritanism has furnished favorable conditions for the growth ​and spread of these diseases. Its bigotry is again most strikingly demonstrated by the senseless attitude in regard to the great discovery of Prof. Ehrlich, hypocrisyveiling the important cure for syphilis with vague allusions to aremedy for "a certain poison."

The almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due to itsintrenchment behind the State and the law. Pretending to safeguardthe people against "immorality," it has impregnated the machinery ofgovernment and added to its usurpation of moral guardianship thelegal censorship of our views, feelings, and even of our conduct.

Art, literature, the drama, the privacy of the mails, in fact, ourmost intimate tastes, are at the mercy of this inexorable tyrant.Anthony Comstock, or some other equally ignorant policeman, has beengiven power to desecrate genius, to soil and mutilate the sublimestcreation of nature—the human form. Books dealing with the mostvital issues of our lives, and seeking to shed light upon dangerouslyobscured problems, are legally treated as criminal offenses, and theirhelpless authors thrown into prison or driven to destruction and death.

Not even in the domain of the Tsar is personal liberty daily outragedto the extent it is in America, the stronghold of the Puritaniceunuchs. Here the only day of recreation left to the masses, Sunday,has been made hideous and utterly impossible. All writers on primitive customs and ancient civilization agree that the Sabbath wasa day of festivities, free from care and duties, a day of general rejoicing and merry-making. In every European country this tradition ​continues to bring some relief from the humdrum andstupidity of our Christian era. Everywhere concerthalls, theaters, museums, and gardens are filled withmen, women, and children, particularly workers withtheir families, full of life and joy, forgetful of theordinary rules and conventions of their every-day existence. It is on that day that the masses demonstrate what life might really mean in a sane society, withwork stripped of its profit-making, soul-destroying purpose.

Puritanism has robbed the people even of that oneday. Naturally, only the workers are affected: ourmillionaires have their luxurious homes and elaborateclubs. The poor, however, are condemned to themonotony and dullness of the American Sunday.The sociability and fun of European outdoor life ishere exchanged for the gloom of the church, thestuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people lack even the latter, unless theycan invest their meager earnings in quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows what a farce it really is. Like all other achievementsof Puritanism it, too, has but driven the "devil"deeper into the human system. Nowhere else doesone meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibitiontowns. But so long as one can use scented candy toabate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism istriumphant. Ostensibly Prohibition is opposed toliquor for reasons of health and economy, but thevery spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, itsucceeds but in creating an abnormal life.

​Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits, is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body, and deepens our vision of human fellowship. Without stimuli, in one form or another, creative work is impossible, nor indeed the spirit of kindliness and generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not justify Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions. A Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans can ever hope to do. The former have given to life meaning and color; the latter are turning red blood into water, beauty into ugliness, variety into uniformity and decay. Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed. With Hippolyte Taine, every truly free spirit has come to realize that "Puritanism is the death of culture, philosophy, humor, and good fellowship; its characteristics are dullness, monotony, and gloom."

​

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery—the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard-of conditions," and lawmakers arealready planning a new set of laws to check the horror.

It is significant that whenever the public mind isto be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusadeis inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc.And what is the result of such crusades?Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a livelybusiness through back entrances, prostitution is atit* height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated.

How is it that an institution, known almost toevery child, should have been discovered so suddenly?How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists,should now be made such an important issue?

To assume that the recent investigation of thewhite slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficialinvestigation) has discovered anything new, is, to saythe least, very foolish. Prostitution has been, and is,a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business, ​perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the victimsof prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has remained toour industrial system, or to economic prostitution.

Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colorswill baby people become interested—for a while at least. The peopleare a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day. The"righteous" cry against the white slave traffic is such a toy. Itserves to amuse the people for a little while, and it will help tocreate a few more fat political jobs—parasites who stalk about theworld as inspectors, investigators, detectives, and so forth.

What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely whitewomen, 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. WithMrs. Warren these girls feel, "Why waste your life working for a fewshillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?"

Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know itwell enough, but it doesn't pay to say anything about it. It is muchmore profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outragedmorality, than to go to the bottom of things.

However, there is one commendable exception among the young writers: Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work, The House of Bondage, is thefirst earnest attempt to treat the social evil—not from a sentimental Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr. Kauffman proves that our in​dustrial system leaves most women no alternativeexcept prostitution. The women portrayed in The House of Bondage belong to the working class. Had the author portrayed the life of women in otherspheres, he would have been confronted with the same state of affairs.

Nowhere is woman treated according to the meritof her work, but rather as a sex. It is thereforealmost inevitable that she should pay for her rightto exist, to keep a position in whatever line, withsex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degreewhether she sells herself to one man, in or out ofmarriage, or to many men. Whether our reformersadmit it or not, the economic and social inferiorityof woman is responsible for prostitution.

Just at present our good people are shocked bythe disclosures that in New York City alone oneout of every ten women works in a factory, that theaverage wage received by women is six dollars perweek for forty-eight to sixty hours of work, andthat the majority of female wage workers face manymonths of idleness which leaves the average wageabout $280 a year. In view of these economic horrors, is it to be wondered at that prostitution and the white slave trade have become such dominant factors?

Lest the preceding figures be considered an exaggeration, it is well to examine what some authorities on prostitution have to say:

"A prolific cause of female depravity can be foundin the several tables, showing the description of theemployment pursued, and the wages received, by the ​women previous to their fall, and it will be aquestion for the political economist to decide how far mere businessconsideration should be an apology on the part of employers for areduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the savings ofa small percentage on wages is not more than counterbalanced by theenormous 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."^[17]

Our present-day reformers would do well to look into Dr. Sanger's book. There they will find that out of 2,000 cases under his observation, but few came from the middle classes, from well-ordered conditions, or pleasant homes. By far the largest majority were working girls and working women; some driven into prostitution through sheer want, others because of a cruel, wretched life at home, others again because of thwarted and crippled physical natures (of which I shall speak later on). Also it will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to learn that out of two thousand cases, 490 were married women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently there was not much of a guaranty for their "safety and purity" in the sanctity of marriage.^[18]

​Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century, is even more emphatic in characterizing economic conditions as one of the most vitalfactors of prostitution.

"Although prostitution has existed in all ages, itwas left to the nineteenth century to develop it intoa gigantic social institution. The development of industry with vast masses of people in the competitive market, the growth and congestion of large cities,the insecurity and uncertainty of employment, hasgiven prostitution an impetus never dreamed of atany period in human history."

And again Havelock Ellis, while not so absolutein dealing with the economic cause, is neverthelesscompelled to admit that it is indirectly and directlythe main cause. Thus he finds that a large percentageof prostitutes is recruited from the servant class,although the latter have less care and greater security.On the other hand, Mr. Ellis does not deny thatthe daily routine, the drudgery, the monotony of theservant girl's lot, and especially the fact that shemay never partake of the companionship and joy ofa home, is no mean factor in forcing her to seekrecreation and forgetfulness in the gaiety and glimmer of prostitution. In other words, the servant girl, being treated as a drudge, never having the right toherself, and worn out by the caprices of her mistress,can find an outlet, like the factory or shopgirl, only in prostitution.

The most amusing side of the question now before the public is the indignation of our "good,respectable people," especially the various Christian ​gentlemen, who are always to be found in the front ranks ofevery crusade. Is it that they are absolutely ignorant of thehistory of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? Or isit that they hope to blind the present generation to the part playedin the past by the Church in relation to prostitution? Whatevertheir reason, they should be the last to cry out against theunfortunate victims of today, since it is known to every intelligentstudent that prostitution is of religious origin, maintained andfostered for many centuries, not as a shame but as a virtue, hailedas such by the Gods themselves.

"It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be foundprimarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver ofsocial tradition, preserving in a transformed shape a primitivefreedom that was passing out of the general social life. The typicalexample is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century beforeChrist, at the Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where everywoman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the firststranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship the goddess. Verysimilar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in NorthAfrica, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean,and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort atCorinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess.

"The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule,out of the belief that the generative activity of human beingspossessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature, ​is maintained by all authoritative writers on the subject. Gradually, however, and when prostitution became an organized institution under priestly influence,religious prostitution developed utilitarian sides, thushelping to increase public revenue.

"The rise of Christianity to political power produced little change in policy. The leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution. Brothels undermunicipal protection are found in the thirteenth century. They constituted a sort of public service, the directors of them being considered almost as public servants."^[19]

To this must be added the following from Dr. Sanger's work:

"Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostituteswould be tolerated if they pay a certain amount oftheir earnings to the Church.

"Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical; from onesingle brothel, which he himself had built, he receivedan income of 20,000 ducats."

In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that direction. At least she does not openly demand tribute from prostitutes. She finds it muchmore profitable to go in for real estate, like TrinityChurch, for instance, to rent out death traps at anexorbitant price to those who live off and by prostitution.

Much as I should like to, my space will not admitspeaking of prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, andduring the Middle Ages. The conditions in the latterperiod are particularly interesting, inasmuch as pros​titution was organized into guilds, presided over by abrothel queen. These guilds employed strikes as amedium of improving their condition and keeping astandard price. Certainly that is more practical amethod than the one used by the modern wage-slave in society.

It would be one-sided and extremely superficial tomaintain that the economic factor is the only cause ofprostitution. There are others no less important andvital. That, too, our reformers know, but dare discuss even less than the institution that saps the very life out of both men and women. I refer to the sexquestion, the very mention of which causes most people moral spasms.

It is a conceded fact that woman is being rearedas a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absoluteignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.Everything dealing with that subject is suppressed,and persons who attempt to bring light into this terrible darkness are persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is nevertheless true that so long as a girl is notto know how to take care of herself, not to know thefunction of the most important part of her life, weneed not be surprised if she becomes an easy prey toprostitution, or to any other form of a relationshipwhich degrades her to the position of an object formere sex gratification.

It is due to this ignorance that the entire life andnature of the girl is thwarted and crippled. Wehave long ago taken it as a self-evident fact that theboy 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 doesnot consist so much in the fact that the woman sellsher body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.That this is no mere statement is proved by the factthat marriage for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and repudiated.Yet a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothingelse than "any person for whom sexual relationshipsare subordinated to gain."^[20]

"Those women are prostitutes who sell theirbodies for the exercise of the sexual act and make ofthis a profession."^[21]

In fact, Banger goes further; he maintains thatthe act of prostitution is "intrinsically equal to thatof a man or woman who contracts a marriage for economic reasons."

Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, butas thousands of girls cannot marry, our stupid socialcustoms condemn them either to a life of celibacy orprostitution. Human nature asserts itself regardlessof all laws, nor is there any plausible reason whynature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.

Society considers the sex experiences of a manas attributes of his general development, while similarexperiences in the life of a woman are looked uponas a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is ​good and noble in a human being. This double standard ofmorality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuationof prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absoluteignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with anoverwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state ofaffairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.

Not that the gratification of sex must needs lead to prostitution; itis the cruel, heartless, criminal persecution of those who daredivert from the beaten paths, which is responsible for it.

Girls, mere children, work in crowded, over-heated rooms ten to twelve hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a constant over-excited sex state. Many of these girls have no home or comforts of any kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap amusem*nt is the only means of forgetting their daily routine. This naturally brings them into close proximity with the other sex. It is hard to say which of the two factors brings the girl's over-sexed condition to a climax, but it is certainly the most natural thing that a climax should result. That is the first step toward prostitution. Nor is the girl to be held responsible for it. On the contrary, it is altogether the fault of society, the fault of our lack of understanding, of our lack of appreciation of life in the making; especially is it the criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity, because she has gone from the "path of virtue"; that is, because her first sex experience has taken place without the sanction of the Church.

​The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with thedoors of home and society closed in her face. Herentire training and tradition is such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift herup, instead of dragging her down. Thus societycreates the victims that it afterwards vainly attemptsto get rid of. The meanest, most depraved anddecrepit man still considers himself too good to takeas his wife the woman whose grace he was quitewilling to buy, even though he might thereby save herfrom a life of horror. Nor can she turn to her ownsister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own position is in many respects even more deplorablethan her sister's of the street.

"The wife who married for money, compared withthe prostitute," says Havelock Ellis, "is the true scab.She is paid less, gives much more in return in laborand care, and is absolutely bound to her master. Theprostitute never signs away the right over her ownperson, she retains her freedom and personal rights,nor is she always compelled to submit to man's embrace."

Nor does the better-than-thou woman realize theapologist claim of Lecky that "though she may bethe supreme type of vice, she is also the most efficientguardian of virtue. But for her, happy homes wouldbe polluted, unnatural and harmful practice would abound."

Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-halfof the human race for the sake of some miserable ​institution which they can not outgrow. As a matter of fact, prostitution is no more a safeguard for the purity of the home than rigid laws are a safeguard againstprostitution. Fully fifty per cent. of married men are patrons of brothels. It is through this virtuous element that the marriedwomen—nay, even the children—are infected with venereal diseases.Yet society has not a word of condemnation for the man, while no lawis too monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless victim.She is not only preyed upon by those who use her, but she is alsoabsolutely at the mercy of every policeman and miserable detective onthe beat, the officials at the station house, the authorities in every prison.

In a recent book by a woman who was for twelve years the mistress of a "house," are to be found the following figures: "The authorities compelled me to pay every month fines between $14.70 to $29.70, the girls would pay from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police." Considering that the writer did her business in a small city, that the amounts she gives do not include extra bribes and fines, one can readily see the tremendous revenue the police department derives from the blood money of its victims, whom it will not even protect. Woe to those who refuse to pay their toll; they would be rounded up like cattle, "if only to make a favorable impression upon the good citizens of the city, or if the powers needed extra money on the side. For the warped mind who believes that a fallen woman is incapable of human emotion it would be impossible to realize the grief, the disgrace, the tears, the wounded pride that was ours every time we were pulled in."

​Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has kept a"house" should be able to feel that way? Butstranger still that a good Christian world should bleedand fleece such women, and give them nothing inreturn except obloquy and persecution. Oh, for thecharity of a Christian world!

Much stress is laid on white slaves being importedinto America. How would America ever retain hervirtue if Europe did not help her out? I will notdeny that this may be the case in some instances, anymore than I will deny that there are emissaries ofGermany and other countries luring economic slavesinto America; but I absolutely deny that prostitutionis recruited to any appreciable extent from Europe.It may be true that the majority of prostitutes of NewYork City are foreigners, but that is because themajority of the population is foreign. The momentwe go to any other American city, to Chicago or theMiddle West, we shall find that the number of foreignprostitutes is by far a minority.

Equally exaggerated is the belief that the majorityof street girls in this city were engaged in this business before they came to America. Most of the girls speak excellent English, are Americanized in habitsand appearance,—a thing absolutely impossible unlessthey had lived in this country many years.That is,they were driven into prostitution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American custom for excessive display of finery and clothes, which, of course,necessitates money,—money that cannot be earned in shops or factories.

In other words, there is no reason to believe that ​any set of men would go to the risk and expense of getting foreign products, whenAmerican conditions are overflooding the market with thousands ofgirls. On the other hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove thatthe export of American girls for the purpose of prostitution is by nomeans a small factor.

Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State Attorney of Cook County, Ill., makes the open charge that New England girls are shipped toPanama for the express use of men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr.Roe adds that "there seems to be an underground railroad betweenBoston and Washington which many girls travel." Is it notsignificant that the railroad should lead to the very seat of Federalauthority? That Mr. Roe said more than was desired in certainquarters is proved by the fact that he lost his position. It is notpractical for men in office to tell tales from school.

The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there are nobrothels in the Canal Zone. That is the usual avenue of escape for ahypocritical world that dares not face the truth. Not in the Canal Zone, not in the city limits,—therefore prostitution does not exist.

Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson Reynolds, who has made athorough study of the white slave traffic in Asia. As a staunchAmerican citizen and friend of the future Napoleon of America,Theodore Roosevelt, he is surely the last to discredit the virtue ofhis country. Yet we are informed by him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai,and Yokohama, the Augean stables of American vice are located. ThereAmerican prostitutes have made themselves so con​spicuous that in the Orient "American girl" is synonymous with prostitute. Mr. Reynolds reminds his countrymen that while Americans in China are underthe protection of our consular representatives, theChinese in America have no protection at all. Everyone who knows the brutal and barbarous persecutionChinese and Japanese endure on the Pacific Coast,will agree with Mr. Reynolds.

In view of the above facts it is rather absurd topoint to Europe as the swamp whence come all thesocial diseases of America. Just as absurd is it toproclaim the myth that the Jews furnish the largestcontingent of willing prey. I am sure that no onewill accuse me of nationalistic tendencies. I am gladto say that I have developed out of them, as out ofmany other prejudices. If, therefore, I resent thestatement that Jewish prostitutes are imported, it isnot because of any Judaistic sympathies, but becauseof the facts inherent in the lives of these people. Noone but the most superficial will claim that Jewishgirls migrate to strange lands, unless they have sometie or relation that brings them there. The Jewishgirl is not adventurous. Until recent years she hadnever left home, not even so far as the next village ortown, except it were to visit some relative. Is it thencredible that Jewish girls would leave their parents orfamilies, 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 foryourself if these girls do not come either with theirparents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk. Theremay be exceptions, of course, but to state that large ​numbers of Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or anyother purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them;besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will breakeasily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

To ascribe the increase in prostitution to alleged importation, tothe growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highlysuperficial. I have already referred to the former. As to the cadetsystem, abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it isessentially a phase of modern prostitution,—a phase accentuated bysuppression and graft, resulting from sporadic crusades against thesocial evil.

The procurer is no doubt a poor specimen of the human family, but inwhat manner is he more despicable than the policeman who takes thelast cent from the street walker, and then locks her up in thestation house? Why is the cadet more criminal, or a greater menaceto society, than the owners of department stores and factories, whogrow fat on the sweat of their victims, only to drive them to thestreets? I make no plea for the cadet, but I fail to see why heshould be mercilessly hounded, while the real perpetrators of allsocial iniquity enjoy immunity and respect. Then, too, it is well toremember that it is not the cadet who makes the prostitute. It isour sham and hypocrisy that create both the prostitute and the cadet.

Until 1894 very little was known in America of the procurer. Then we were attacked by an epidemic ​of virtue. Vice was to be abolished, the country purified at all cost. The social cancer was therefore driven out of sight, but deeper into the body. Keepers of brothels,as well as their unfortunate victims, were turned over to the tendermercies of the police. The inevitable consequence of exorbitantbribes, and the penitentiary, followed.

While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they representeda certain monetary value, the girls now found themselves on thestreet, absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police.Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection, these girlsnaturally proved an easy prey for cadets, themselves the result ofthe spirit of our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was thedirect outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and attemptedsuppression of prostitution. It were sheer folly to confound thismodern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter.

Mere suppression and barbaric enactments can serve but to embitter,and further degrade, the unfortunate victims of ignorance andstupidity. The latter has reached its highest expression in theproposed law to make humane treatment of prostitutes a crime,punishing any one sheltering a prostitute with five years'imprisonment and $10,000 fine. Such an attitude merely exposes theterrible lack of understanding of the true causes of prostitution, asa social factor, as well as manifesting the Puritanic spirit of theScarlet Letter days.

There is not a single modern writer on the subject who does not referto the utter futility of legislative ​methods in coping with the issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko finds that governmental suppression andmoral crusades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secretchannels, multiplying its dangers to society. Havelock Ellis, themost thorough and humane student of prostitution, proves by a wealthof data that the more stringent the methods of persecution the worsethe condition becomes. Among other data we learn that in France, "in1560, Charles IX. abolished brothels through an edict, but thenumbers of prostitutes were only increased, while many new brothelsappeared in unsuspected shapes, and were more dangerous. In spite ofall such legislation, or because of it, there has been no country inwhich prostitution has played a more conspicuous part."^[22]

An educated public opinion, freed from the legal and moral hounding of the prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate present conditions. Wilful shutting of eyes and ignoring of the evil as a social factor of modern life, can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our foolish notions of "better than thou," and learn to recognize in the prostitute a product of social conditions. Such a realization will sweep away the attitude of hypocrisy, and insure a greater understanding and more humane treatment. As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values—especially the moral ones—coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery.

​

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

We boast of the age of advancement, of science,and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we stillbelieve in fetich worship? True, our fetiches havedifferent form and substance, yet in their power overthe human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old.

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Thosewho have not yet achieved that goal fight bloodyrevolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyedits reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of thisomnipotent diety. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worshipper, and though her idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her hands, ever blind to thefact that her god has feet of clay. Thus woman hasbeen the greatest supporter of all deities from timeimmemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the pricethat only gods can exact,—her freedom, her heart's blood, her very life.

Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When you go towoman, take the whip along," is considered very ​brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods.

Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman tothe life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature andfettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greatersupporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to saythat religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives ofthe people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman.The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries theworld over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the godsthat have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.

The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear andprecious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in returngives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatestsupporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills thelove of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispersthe glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocksher baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns. It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from thebattlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that insatiable monster, war.

Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps the very life-energy of woman,—this modern prison with golden bars. Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman ​clings tenaciously to the home, to the power that holds her in bondage.

It may be said that because woman recognizes theawful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State,and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free.That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffragewhich will make her a better Christian and home-keeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence ofthe very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.

What wonder, then, that she should be just asdevout, just as zealous, just as prostrate before thenew idol, woman suffrage. As of old, she endurespersecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms ofcondemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old,the most enlightened, even, hope for a miracle fromthe twentieth-century deity,—suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,—all that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotionwoman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has butclosed their eyes that they may not see how craftilythey were made to submit.

Woman's demand for equal suffrage is basedlargely on the contention that woman must have theequal right in all affairs of society. No one could,possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas,for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see ​a right in animposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set ofpeople to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought somuch misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity andself-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted thepeople, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free totramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universalsuffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs.The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting theright of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except theright to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all thesedisastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on theconventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neitherphysical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not havethe equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind meto the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man hasfailed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could notmake them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed inpurifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is tocredit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either ​angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placedon earth; namely, in being considered human, andtherefore subject to all human follies and mistakes.Are we, then, to believe that two errors will makea right? Are we to assume that the poison alreadyinherent in politics will be decreased, if women wereto enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.

As a matter of fact, the most advanced studentsof universal suffrage have come to realize that allexisting systems of political power are absurd, andare completely inadequate to meet the pressing issuesof life. This view is also borne out by a statementof one who is herself an ardent believer in womansuffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her able workon Equal Suffrage, she says: "In Colorado, we findthat equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system." Of course, Dr. Sumnerhas in mind a particular system of voting, but thesame applies with equal force to the entire machineryof the representative system. With such a basis, itis difficult to understand how woman, as a politicalfactor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished—in Australia, NewZealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and inour own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, andUtah. Distance lends enchantment—or, to quote a ​Polish formula—"it is well wherewe are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and Statesare unlike other countries or States, that they have greaterfreedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciationof human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make thelaws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are inEngland, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle?Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer childrenthan in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sexcommodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical doublestandard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but theordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions inthe affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point toAustralia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real politicalconditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enactingthe most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction ofan arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of woman's accom​plishment, since her influence has been unable to freelabor from the thraldom of political bossism.

Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay,even the right to sit in Parliament. Has that helpedto develop a greater heroism, an intenser zeal thanthat of the women of Russia? Finland, like Russia,smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar.Where are the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas,Figners, Breshkovskaias? Where are the countlessnumbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully goto Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in needof heroic liberators. Why has the ballot not createdthem? The only Finnish avenger of his people wasa man, not a woman, and he used a more effective weapon than the ballot.

As to our own States where women vote, andwhich are constantly being pointed out as examples ofmarvels, what has been accomplished there throughthe ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoyin other States; or that they could not achieve throughenergetic efforts without the ballot?

True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteedequal rights to property; but of what avail is thatright to the mass of women without property, thethousands of wage workers, who live from hand tomouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot,affect their condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner,who certainly is in a position to know. As an ardentsuffragist, and having been sent to Colorado by theCollegiate Equal Suffrage League of New YorkState to collect material in favor of suffrage, shewould be the last to say anything derogatory; yet ​we are informed that "equal suffrage has butslightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women donot receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman inColorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers arepaid less than in California." On the other hand, Miss Sumner failsto account for the fact that although women have had school suffragefor thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census inDenver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousanddefective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in theeducational department, and also notwithstanding that women inColorado have passed the "most stringent laws for child and animalprotection." The women of Colorado "have taken great interest in theState institutions for the care of dependent, defective, anddelinquent children." What a horrible indictment against woman's care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defectivechildren. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it hasfailed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? Andwhere is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring intothe political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine ownerswaged a guerilla war against the Western Miners' Union; when GeneralBell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of beds at night,kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens,declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why didthey not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They helped to defeat ​the most fair-minded and liberal man, GovernorWaite. The latter had to make way for the toolof the mine kings, Governor Peabody, the enemyof labor, the Tsar of Colorado. "Certainly malesuffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted.Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman andsociety from woman suffrage? The oft-repeatedassertion that woman will purify politics is also buta myth. It is not borne out by the people who knowthe political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming,and Utah.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotedand relentless in her effort to make others as goodas she thinks they ought to be. Thus, in Idaho, shehas disfranchised her sister of the street, and declaredall women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd"not being interpreted, of course, as prostitution inmarriage. It goes without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine gender: italways prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful.They go no further, but their very tendencies openall the floodgates of hell. Prostitution and gamblinghave never done a more flourishing business thansince the law has been set against them.

In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman hasexpressed itself in a more drastic form. "Men ofnotoriously unclean lives, and men connected withsaloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the vote."^[23] Could Brother Comstock do more? ​Could all the Puritanfathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravityof this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is thevery thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her apolitical spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people,not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Coloradowoman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in,and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."^[24] Yes, andinto the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothingsatisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when didshe ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's?

"Notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with the saloons."Certainly, the lady vote gatherers can not be accused of much senseof proportion. Granting even that these busybodies can decide whoselives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics,must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same category?Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry, so manifest in theprinciple of Prohibition, which sanctions the spread of drunkennessamong men and women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch onthe only place left to the poor man. If no other reason, woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive field, ​man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment, ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination to measure everyone's moralitywith a Puritanic yardstick. In his political activities,too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He knowsthat quantity and not quality is the material for thepolitical grinding mill, and, unless he is a sentimentalreformer or an old fossil, he knows that politics cannever be anything but a swamp.

Women who are at all conversant with the processof politics, know the nature of the beast, but intheir self-sufficiency and egotism they make themselves believe that they have but to pet the beast, and he will become as gentle as a lamb, sweet andpure. As if women have not sold their votes, as ifwomen politicians cannot be bought! If her bodycan be bought in return for material consideration,why not her vote? That it is being done in Coloradoand in other States, is not denied even by those infavor of woman suffrage.

As I have said before, woman's narrow view ofhuman affairs is not the only argument against heras a politician superior to man. There are others.Her life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurredher conception of the meaning of equality. Sheclamors for equal rights with man, yet we learn that"few women care to canvas in undesirable districts."^[25]How little equality means to them compared with theRussian women, who face hell itself for their ideal!

Woman demands the same rights as man, yet ​she is indignant that herpresence does not strike him dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, anddoes not jump from his seat like a flunkey. These may be trivialthings, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of Americansuffragists.To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown thesesilly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatestdemands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to theheroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to theirenergetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to someof our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, thesuffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of realequality. Else how is one to account for the tremendous, trulygigantic effort set in motion by those valiant fighters for awretched little bill which will benefit a handful of propertiedladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass ofworkingwomen? True, as politicians they must be opportunists, musttake half measures if they can not get all. But as intelligent andliberal women they ought to realize that if the ballot is a weapon,the disinherited need it more than the economically superior class,and that the latter already enjoy too much power by virtue of theireconomic superiority.

The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors. If so, how will the workingwoman of England, already inferior economically to the ladies who are benefited ​by the Shackleton bill,^[26]be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass?Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal,devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backstheir female political bosses, even as they are carrying theireconomic masters. They would still have to do it, were universalsuffrage for men and women established in England. No matter whatthe workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those whobelieve in the power of the vote show little sense of justice whenthey concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it might serve most.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently,altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economicneeds of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptionaltype of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor;nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, sheadvised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.^[27] I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.

There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with workingwomen—the Women's Trade Union League, for instance; but they are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic. The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Provi​dence. Whatwould become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become ofthese idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than theirvictims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage workers?Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness asAmerica. Particularly this is true of the American woman of themiddle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, buthis superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality.Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote themost miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see howtruly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own sillynotions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact;it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.

One of the great American women leaders claims that woman is entitlednot only to equal pay, but that she ought to be legally entitled evento the pay of her husband. Failing to support her, he should be putin convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by hisequal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the cause claimfor woman that her vote will abolish the social evil, which has beenfought in vain by the collective efforts of the most illustriousminds the world over? It is indeed to be regretted that the allegedcreator of the universe has already presented us with his wonderfulscheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to outdo him completely.

Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a ​fetich. If we haveoutlived the time when such heresy was punishable at the stake, wehave not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who darediffer with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put downas an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking thequestion squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in thebeginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; norcan I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man's mistakes, why perpetuate the latter?

History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a fewtruths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. Thehistory of the political activities of men proves that they havegiven him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in amore direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter offact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constantfight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not throughsuffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in herclimb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism,woman has become man's equal, not through the ballot, but by her willto be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenueof learning and vocation, but she has won man's esteem, his respect,his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained theadmiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not throughsuffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, ​her ability,will power, and her endurance in the struggle for liberty. Where arethe women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to sucha victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America,we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffragehas helped her in the march to emancipation.

It is just sixty-two years ago since a handful of women at the SenecaFalls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equaleducation with men, and access to the various professions, trades,etc. What wonderful accomplishment, what wonderful triumphs! Whobut the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge?Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open toher? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a newlife for herself. She has become a world power in every domain ofhuman thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, withoutthe right to make laws, without the "privilege" of becoming a judge, a jailer, or an executioner.

Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see the light, I shall not complain.

The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work ofman, but that she is wasting her life force to outdo him, with atradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable ofkeeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what

cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give ​suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.; by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life giving; a creator of free men and women.

​

The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation

I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economictheories, treating of the fundamental differences between variousgroups within the human race, regardless of class and racedistinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines betweenwoman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point wherethese differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The generalsocial antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public lifetoday, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictoryinterests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of oursocial life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shallhave become a reality.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does notnecessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nordoes it call for the elimination of individual traits andpeculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which thenearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet ​in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and stillretain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to bethe basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democratand the true individuality, man and woman, can meet withoutantagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive oneanother; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence ofMadame de Staël: "To understand everything means to forgiveeverything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odorof the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the ideaof pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-beingsuffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect ofmy views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in thetruest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion andactivity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriersshould be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared ofevery 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 robbedher of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essentialto her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman anartificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels,and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner quali​ties. Such artificially grownplants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especiallyin the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations thesewords awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblestand bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glorywas to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free todirect her own destiny—an aim certainly worthy of the greatenthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of thetremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everythingagainst a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that theemancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today,has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted withthe necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if shereally desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is,nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in afew States. Has that purified our political life, as manywell-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, itis really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should ceaseto talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone.Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or thelaxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause isaltogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the businessand industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is moreblessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell ​dear"; "one soiled handwashes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her rightto 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 andpresent physical training has not equipped her with the necessarystrength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust allher energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order toreach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact thatwomen teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers areneither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, norreceive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticingequality, generally do so at the expense of their physical andpsychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls andwomen, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack offreedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack offreedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? Inaddition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a"home, sweet home"—cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting—after aday's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds ofgirls are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick andtired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing ortypewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of themiddle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy.A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merestsubsistence is not so ​enticing, not so ideal, that one could expectwoman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praisedindependence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling andstifling woman's nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more naturaland human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in themore cultured professional walks of life—teachers, physicians,lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence andemancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her socialequal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom andindependence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will onlyhinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these togethermake of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whomlife, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancingjoys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents andexponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love andecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart,mother, in freedom.

The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not lie in too many, but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human ​nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack oflife's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and withoutwhich the majority of women have become mere professional automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by thosewho realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained manydecaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man;ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important,a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along withoutthem. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existinginstitutions and the replacement thereof with something moreadvanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for themost radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-daypractice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectabilityand clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are,for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the ideathat property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owethem the value of a half-dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman'semancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurshave painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair ofthe good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Everymember of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sandin her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her.She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reck​less life of lust and sin;regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents ofwoman's rights were highly indignant at such misrepresentation, and,lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they werenot at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Ofcourse, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be goodand pure, but now that she was free and independent she would provehow good she could be and that her influence would have a purifyingeffect on all institutions in society. True, the movement forwoman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forgednew ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with agreat race of women who could look liberty in the face. Theirnarrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtfulcharacter, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be toleratedat any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a childcould not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, themost rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innatecraving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied withman's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem tooverlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love anddevotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman.Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations thathas brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian, Laura Marholm, called Woman, a Character Study. She was one of ​the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness ofthe existing conception of woman's emancipation, and its tragiceffect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholmspeaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: thegenius Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer SonyaKovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature Marie Bashkirtzeff, whodied so young. Through each description of the lives of these womenof such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfiedcraving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and theunrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through thesemasterly psychological sketches one cannot help but see that thehigher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is forher to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, butalso the human being, the friend, the comrade and strongindividuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superiorairs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility forwoman as depicted in the Character Study by Laura Marholm. Equallyimpossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more thanher mentality and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessaryattributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of themodern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the completeassertion of her being. For over a hundred years the old ​form ofmarriage, based on the Bible, "till death doth part," has beendenounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of theman over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims andcommands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time andagain it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonialrelation restricted woman to the function of man's servant and thebearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women whoprefer marriage, with all its deficiencies, to the narrowness of anunmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of many advancedwomen is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood themeaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed wasindependence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far moreharmful to life and growth—ethical and social conventions—were leftto take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves.They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and hearts of themost active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads andhearts 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 todefy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist uponher own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature,whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or hermost glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, shecannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women arebrave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildlybeating against their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be satisfied.

The French writer Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, New Beauty,attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. Thisideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks verycleverly and wisely of how to feed infants; she is kind, andadministers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with ayoung man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of thefuture, and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated bythe use of stone walls and floors, and by the doing away with rugsand hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practicallydressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their firstmeeting, was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend,gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day thathe loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful, andthough always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by aspotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that hewould tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushingfaces before the pure beauty ​of the lady. He silences the voice ofhis nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, alwaysrational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union,the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confessthat I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as coldas the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have thelove songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, ratheran elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by thefather's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors,than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love doesnot know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love,but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day liesin its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, whichproduce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink fromthe fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be adeeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess,ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and thecomfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than betweenthe latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples ofemancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for thestake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparisonbetween the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly numberof 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 professionalwomen who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices.This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemnwoman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter andclearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of oldtraditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has sofar made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hopedthat it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, orequal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation beginsneither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberationfrom its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that womanlearn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach asfar as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore,far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, tocut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs.The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just andfair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love andbe loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a completeand true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with theridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, issynonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do awaywith the absurd ​notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man andwoman represent two antagonistic worlds.

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

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MARRIAGE AND LOVE

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they aresynonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover thesame human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not onactual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart asthe poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt somemarriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because lovecould assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because fewpeople can completely outgrow a convention. There are today largenumbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, butwho submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, whileit is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it isequally true that in some cases love continues in married life, Imaintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results frommarriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of amarried couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it ​will be found that it is a mere adjustment to theinevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far awayfrom the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, withoutwhich the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the womanand the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. Itdiffers from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it ismore binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly smallcompared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy onepays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinuepayments. If, however, woman's premium is her husband, she pays forit with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life,"until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemnsher to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness,individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as hissphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. Hefeels his chains more in an economic sense.

Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage."Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."

That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. Onehas but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize howbitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotypedPhilistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growinglooseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfthmarriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased ​from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third,that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material,dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in Together; Pinero, in Mid-Channel; Eugene Walter, in Paid in Full, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness,the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factorfor harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with thepopular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to digdeeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves sodisastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-longenvironment of the two sexes; an environment so different from eachother that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by aninsurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage hasnot the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for,each other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not—as the stupid critic would have it—because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-​long proximity between two strangers? No needfor the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As tothe knowledge of the woman—what is there to know except that she hasa pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myththat woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made outof his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was sostrong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes isresponsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has nosoul—what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul awoman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will sheabsorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence toman's superiority that has kept the marriage institution seeminglyintact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own,now that she is actually growing aware of herself as being outsideof the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage isgradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentationcan stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is herultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directedtowards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she isprepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know muchless about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisanof his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl toknow anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency ofrespectability, that needs the marriage vow ​to turn something whichis filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none darequestion or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of theaverage upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother iskept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitivefield--sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man onlyto find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by themost natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that alarge percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physicalsuffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sexmatters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at allan exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken upbecause of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a "good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

​Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked thewrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to thegossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions,young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are takenin care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become"sensible."

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man hasaroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important andonly God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? canhe support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage.Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams arenot of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams ofshopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty andsordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution.The State and Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it isthe one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love abovedollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that class whomeconomic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. Thetremendous change in woman's position, wrought by that mighty factor,is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short timesince she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wageworkers; six million women, who have equal right with men to beexploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even.Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the ​highest brain work to the mines and railroadtracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of womenwage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same lightas does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taughtto be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is reallyindependent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen ofa man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrownaside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder toorganize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going toget married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancyto look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enoughthat the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has moresolid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught canescape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home nolonger frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "onlabor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of thewage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they mustcontinue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add tothis horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains ofthe protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since ​it isthe man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether thehusband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is thatmarriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband.There she moves about in HIS home, year after year, until her aspectof life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as hersurroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome,gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She couldnot go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a shortperiod of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties,absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world.She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements,dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and abore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiringatmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? Afterall, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, thehypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands ofchildren destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yetorphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for thePrevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the littlevictims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in con-' ​s clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger ofthe child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity,what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to"justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however,goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but ablighted memory of his father's stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,—therein lies the curse ofmarriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is sorevolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to humandignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement—capitalism. It robs manof his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him inignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charitiesthat thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolutedependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates hersocial consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes itsgracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on humancharacter.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, whatother protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage butdefiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say towoman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does itnot condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her ifshe refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Doesnot marriage only sanction motherhood, ​conceived inhatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, oflove, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown ofthorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood thehideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtuesclaimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude itforever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger ofhope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of allconventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of humandestiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with thatpoor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains,but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man hassubdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subduelove. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could notconquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he hasbeen utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all thesplendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate,if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiantwith warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power tomake of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no otheratmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly,completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear ​fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting lifeagainst death.

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as lovebegets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the wantof affection. I know this to be true. I know women who becamemothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlockenjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood,lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Whowould create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, ifwoman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? Therace, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, thepriest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to amere machine,—and the marriage institution is our only safety valveagainst the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain thesefrantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, theedicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the armof the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production ofa race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who haveneither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke ofpoverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children,begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not bycompulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet tolearn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would ​she foregoforever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in anatmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she doesbecome a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best herbeing can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows thatin that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a masterstroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother becauseshe had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had brokenher chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned apersonality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescueher life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love infreedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, likeMrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritualawakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, emptymockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time orfor eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love's summit.

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Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

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So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly feltwithin a limited social class, the powers of reaction may oftensucceed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrestgrows into conscious expression and becomes almost universal, itnecessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeksits individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of existing values.

An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of the modern,conscious social unrest cannot be gained from merely propagandisticl*terature. Rather must we become conversant with the larger phasesof human expression manifest in art, literature, and, above all, themodern drama—the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of ourdeep-felt dissatisfaction.

What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent are the simple canvasses of a Millet! The figures of his peasants—what terrific indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs that condemn the Man With the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself excluded from Nature's bounty. ​The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity and defianceof labor in the group of miners carrying their maimed brother tosafety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of theseething unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth, andthe spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression.

No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modernliterature—Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiev, Gorki,Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit ofuniversal ferment and the longing for social change.

Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radicalthought and the disseminator of new values.

It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such animportant role. But a study of the development of modern ideas inmost countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in drivinghome great social truths, truths generally ignored when presented inother forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and France.

Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people thinkand has awakened their social sympathies, because of the tremendouscontrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people andthe despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while thegreat dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki, and Andreievclosely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirationsof the Russian people, they did not influence radical thought to theextent the drama has done in other countries. ​Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by The Power of Darkness or Night Lodging. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy of organized Christianity. With a master handhe portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power of darkness, the superstitions of the Christian Church.

What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, theresponsibility of the Church for crimes committed by its deludedvictims; what other medium could, in consequence, rouse theindignation of man's conscience?

Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki's Night Lodging. The social pariahs, forced into poverty and crime,yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration.Lost existences these, blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial environment.

France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty,is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such she, too, did notneed the drama as a means of awakening. And yet the works of Brieux—as Robe Rouge, portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary—and Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les Affaires—picturingthe destructive influence of wealth on the human soul—haveundoubtedly reached wider circles than most of the articles and bookswhich have been written in France on the social question.

In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in America—though in a lesser degree—the drama is the vehicle which is really making history, ​king history, disseminating radical thought in ranks nototherwise to be reached.

Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of a centurymen of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest integrity, made it theirlife-work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, amongthe oppressed and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendousrevolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumanesystem like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas!The cultured people remained absolutely indifferent; to them thatrevolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontentedmen, dangerous, illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place wasbehind prison bars.

Self-satisfied as the "cultured" usually are, they could notunderstand why one should fuss about the fact that thousands ofpeople were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth ofthe world. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, they could not believethat side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a positionlower than a beast's, shelterless and ragged, without hope orambition.

This condition of affairs was particularly pronounced in Germanyafter the Franco-German war. Full to the bursting point with itsvictory, Germany thrived on a sentimental, patriotic literature,thereby poisoning the minds of the country's youth by the glory ofconquest and bloodshed.

Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, and especially in ​the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev.But as no country can long maintain a standard of culture without aliterature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany graduallybegan to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of itsown people.

Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startledthe Philistines out of their ease and comfort with his Familie Selicke. The play deals with society's refuse, men and women of thealleys, whose only subsistence consists of what they can pick out ofthe garbage barrels. A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet whatother method is there to break through the hard shell of the mindsand souls of people who have never known want, and who thereforeassume that all is well in the world?

Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truthis bitter, and the people living on the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hatedto be confronted with the truth.

Not that Familie Selicke represented anything that had not beenwritten about for years without any seeming result. But the dramaticgenius of Holz, together with the powerful interpretation of theplay, necessarily made inroads into the widest circles, and forcedpeople to think about the terrible inequalities around them.

Sudermann's Ehre^[28] and Heimat^[29] deal with vital subjects. I have0 already referred to the sentimental patriotism so completely turning the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of― ​honor. Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerablelives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number of leadingwriters. But nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposer of thatnational disease as the Ehre.

Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it analyzes the realmeaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed, inborn feeling, butthat it varies with every people and every epoch, dependingparticularly on one's economic and social station in life. Werealize from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion willnecessarily define honor differently from his victims.

The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Muhling,being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty on his premises in theabsence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Muhling'srepresentative, is making a vast fortune for his employer in India.On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced byyoung Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matterswith a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indignant, resents the insult to his family's honor, and is forthwith dismissedfrom his position for impudence. Robert finally throws thisaccusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire:

"We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor."

An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by Count Trast, the principal character ​in the Ehre, a man widelyconversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that inhis many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honor hemortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him thecharms of the chieftain's wife.

The theme of Heimat treats of the struggle between the old and theyoung generations. It holds a permanent and important place in dramatic literature.

Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed anunpardonable sin: she refused the suitor selected by her father. Fordaring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home.Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into theworld to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebratedsinger. She consents to visit her parents on condition that theyrespect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father immediatelybegins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda isindignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedyof her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller hadin his student days been Magda's lover, while she was battling forher economic and social independence. The consequence of thefleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth.The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view ofMagda's social and professional success, Keller willingly consents,but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place the child in an institution. The struggle between the Old and the ​New culminatesin Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independenceof thought and action: ". . .I'll say what I think of you—of youand your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that Imust prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this goldupon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increasemy infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years?Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not builtup my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should Iblush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am."

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

The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. Hisfirst play Vor Sonnenaufgang^[30], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind abeer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating theentire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of anextensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his ​economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth,both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, isshown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy,and decay. But the most striking feature of Vor Sonnenaufgang, theone which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was thequestion as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeonalmost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forcepsover his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency andmorality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussedopenly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmannstands a colossal figure before the world.

When Die Weber^[31] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in theland of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists,"workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Povertyin all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusem*nt? That is too much!"

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to bebrought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. Itwas too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunderin the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'Accuse!

Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be hoarded ​except through the channels of poverty,hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lestthe victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is thepurpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of theoppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann indepicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia.Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough forbread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from thecold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnantwomen in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolentChristian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes,it was too much!

Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition. Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, Die Versunkene Glocke^[32], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world forever hindering individual and social emancipation.

​Max Halbe's Jugend^[33] and Wedekind's Fruhling's Erwachen^[34] are dramaswhich have disseminated radical thought in an altogether differentdirection. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance andnarrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularlythis is true of Fruhling's Erwachen. Young boys and girls sacrificedon the altar of false education and of our sickening morality thatprohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative tothe health and well-being of society,—the origin of life, and itsfunctions. It shows how a mother--and a truly good mother, atthat--keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance asto all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victimto her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed byquack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.

The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters isespecially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promisingchildren fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack ofappreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening.

Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with hermother to explain the mystery of life:

"I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about. . . . Don't be cross, Mother, dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't ​scold me forasking about it. Give me an answer.—How does it happen?—You cannotreally deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, stillbelieve in the stork."

Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, anaffectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter.But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame andembarrassment in this evasive reply:

"In order to have a child—one must love—the man—to whom one ismarried. . . . One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age arestill unable to love.—Now you know it!"

How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnantgirl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries indesperation, "You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl," theagonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it's not possible,Mother, I am not married yet. . . . Oh, Mother, why didn't you tellme everything?"

With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because hefails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful fatherof Wendla's unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, hisearly sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes ofteachers and parents.

For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. Mutterschutz, a publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of ​Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing theintroduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany.

Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much morethan through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on thescene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against theinequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his wasa voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen.His Brand, Doll's House, Pillars of Society, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People have considerably undermined the old conceptions, andreplaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to readBRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, ofreligion,—religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion asa principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.

Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil ofhypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is onthe four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society.First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, thefutility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, pettymaterial consideration, which is the only god the majority worships;and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These fourrecur as the Leitmotif in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in Pillars of Society, Doll's House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People.

Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,—pillars nicely gilded and apparently ​intact, yet merely hiding their true condition.And what are these pillars?

Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financialcareer, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of thecommunity, has reached the summit through the channel of lies,deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of hisgood name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marryher step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himselfby shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," andfinally even goes to the extent of endangering human life bypreparing the Indian Girl, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea.

But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptinessand meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the wakingconscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the betterlife of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soonfalls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on alie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebratethe great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, hehimself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to theassembled townspeople:

"I have no right to this homage—. . .My fellow-citizens must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction."

​With A Doll's House Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation.Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injusticedone her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

"While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all hisopinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealedthem, because he would not have approved. He used to call me hisdoll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I cameto live in your house. You settled everything according to yourtaste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When Ilook back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, fromhand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, butyou would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong."

In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty andsocial obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into fullstature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judgefor herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a humanbeing, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of thejustice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted. Her rebellingsoul rises in protest against the existing. In her own words: "I must make up my mind which is right, society or I."

In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for the great miracle. But it was not the disappointed hope that opened her vision to the falsehoods of marriage. It was rather the smug contentment of ​Helmer with a safe lie—one that would remain hidden and not endanger his social standing.

When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage and went out into the world a new, regenerated personality, she opened the gate of freedom and truth for her own sex and the race to come.

More than any other play, Ghosts has acted like a bomb explosion, shaking the social structure to its very foundations.

In Doll's House the justification of the union between Nora and Helmer rested at least on the husband's conception of integrity and rigid adherence to our social morality. Indeed, he was the conventional ideal husband and devoted father. Not so in Ghosts. Mrs. Alving married Captain Alving only to find that he was a physical and mental wreck, and that life with him would mean utter degradation and be fatal to possible offspring. In her despair she turned to her youth's companion, young Pastor Manders who, as the true savior of souls for heaven, must needs be indifferent to earthly necessities. He sent her back to shame and degradation,—to her duties to husband and home. Indeed, happiness—to him—was but the unholy manifestation of a rebellious spirit, and a wife's duty was not to judge, but "to bear with humility the cross which a higher power had for your own good laid upon you."

Mrs. Alving bore the cross for twenty-six long years. Not for the sake of the higher power, but for her little son Oswald, whom she longed to save from the poisonous atmosphere of her husband's home.

It was also for the sake of the beloved son that ​she supported thelie of his father's goodness, in superstitious awe of "duty anddecency." She learned—alas! too late—that the sacrifice of herentire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited bythe sins of his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too,she learned, that "we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what wehave inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It isall sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have novitality, but they cling to us all the same and we can't get rid ofthem. . . . And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid oflight. When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty andObligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soulrebelled against as something loathsome; it was then that I began tolook into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at asingle knot, but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelledout. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn."

How could a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething depths whenceissued the great masterpiece of Henrik Ibsen? It could notunderstand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom uponits greatest benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved byhis reply in An Enemy of the People.

In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites over adecaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes rises theregenerated individual, the bold and daring rebel. Dr. Stockman, anidealist, full of social sympathy and solidarity, is called to hisnative town as the physician of the baths. He soon discovers thatthe latter are built on a swamp, and that ​instead of finding reliefthe patients, who flock to the place, are being poisoned.

An honest man, of strong convictions, the doctor considers it hisduty to make his discovery known. But he soon learns that dividendsand profits are concerned neither with health nor principles. Eventhe reformers of the town, represented in the People's Messenger,always ready to prate of their devotion to the people, withdraw theirsupport from the "reckless" idealist, the moment they learn that thedoctor's discovery may bring the town into disrepute, and thus injuretheir pockets.

But Doctor Stockman continues in the faith he entertains for has townsmen. They would hear him. But here, too, he soon finds himself alone. He cannot even secure a place to proclaim his great truth. And when he finally succeeds, he is overwhelmed by abuse and ridicule as the enemy of the people. The doctor, so enthusiastic of his townspeople's assistance to eradicate the evil, is soon driven to a solitary position. The announcement of his discovery would result in a pecuniary loss to the town, and that consideration induces the officials, the good citizens, and soul reformers, to stifle the voice of truth. He finds them all a compact majority, unscrupulous enough to be willing to build up the prosperity of the town on a quagmire of lies and fraud. He is accused of trying to ruin the community. But to his mind "it does not matter if a lying community is ruined. It must be levelled to the ground. All men who live upon lies must be exterminated like vermin. You'll bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish."

​Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man, he thinks, must not behave like a blackguard. "He must not so act thathe would spit in his own face." For only cowards permit"considerations" of pretended general welfare or of party to overridetruth and ideals. "Party programmes wring the necks of all young,living truths; and considerations of expediency turn morality andrighteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous."

These plays of Ibsen—The Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People—constitute a dynamic force which isgradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying groundcalled civilization. Nay, more; Ibsen's destructive effects are atthe same time supremely constructive, for he not merely underminesexisting pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the foundationof a healthier, ideal future, based on the sovereignty of theindividual within a sympathetic social environment.

England with her great pioneers of radical thought, the intellectualpilgrims like Godwin, Robert Owen, Darwin, Spencer, William Morris,and scores of others; with her wonderful larks of liberty—Shelley,Byron, Keats—is another example of the influence of dramatic art.Within comparatively a few years, the dramatic works of Shaw, Pinero,Galsworthy, Rann Kennedy, have carried radical thought to the earsformerly deaf even to Great Britain's wondrous poets. Thus a publicwhich will remain indifferent reading an essay by Robert Owen, onPoverty, or ignore Bernard Shaw's Socialistic tracts, was made tothink by Major Barbara, wherein poverty is ​described as the greatestcrime of Christian civilization. "Poverty makes people weak,slavish, puny; poverty creates disease, crime, prostitution; in fine,poverty is responsible for all the ills and evils of the world."Poverty also necessitates dependency, charitable organizations,institutions that thrive off the very thing they are trying todestroy. The Salvation Army, for instance, as shown in Major Barbara, fights drunkenness; yet one of its greatest contributors isBadger, a whiskey distiller, who furnishes yearly thousands of poundsto do away with the very source of his wealth. Bernard Shaw,therefore, concludes that the only real benefactor of society is a man like Undershaft, Barbara's father, a cannon manufacturer, whosetheory of life is that powder is stronger than words.

"The worst of crimes," says Undershaft, "is poverty. All the othercrimes are virtues beside it; all the other dishonors are chivalryitself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horriblepestilences; strikes dead the very soul of all who come within sight,sound, or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing; a murderhere, a theft there, a blow now and a curse there: what do theymatter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there arenot fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there aremillions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed,ill-clothed people. They poison us morally and physically; they killthe happiness of society; they force us to do away with our ownliberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their ​abyss. . . . Poverty andslavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leadingarticles; they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach atthem; don't reason with them. Kill them. . . . It is the final testof conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a socialsystem. . . . Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the nameof the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments,inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders, and set up new."

No wonder people cared little to read Mr. Shaw's Socialistic tracts.In no other way but in the drama could he deliver such forcible,historic truths. And therefore it is only through the drama that Mr.Shaw is a revolutionary factor in the dissemination of radical ideas.

After Hauptmann's Die Weber, Strife, by Galsworthy, is the mostimportant labor drama.

The theme of Strife is a strike with two dominant factors: Anthony,the president of the company, rigid, uncompromising, unwilling tomake the slightest concession, although the men held out for monthsand are in a condition of semi-starvation; and David Roberts, anuncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the workingman andthe cause of freedom is at white heat. Between them the strikers areworn and weary with the terrible struggle, and are harassed anddriven by the awful sight of poverty and want in their families.

The most marvellous and brilliant piece of work in Strife is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of backbone. One moment they ​applaud old Thomas, who speaks of thepower of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion;the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, whopleads the cause of the union,—the union that always stands forcompromise, and which forsakes the workingmen whenever they dare tostrike for independent demands; again they are aglow with theearnestness, the spirit, and the intensity of David Roberts—allthese people willing to go in whatever direction the wind blows. Itis the curse of the working class that they always follow like sheepled to slaughter.

Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matterhow intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he willnot allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown onthe dustheap. Such was the fate of the president of the company,Anthony, and of David Roberts. To be sure they represented oppositepoles--poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terriblegap that can never be bridged over. Yet they shared a common fate.Anthony is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of ironmethods:

"I have been chairman of this company thirty-two years. I havefought the men four times. I have never been defeated. It has beensaid that times have changed. If they have, I have not changed withthem. It has been said that masters and men are equal. Cant. Therecan be only one master in a house. It has been said that Capital and Labor have the same interests. Cant. Their interests are as wideasunder as the poles. There is only one way of treating men— ​withthe iron rod. Masters are masters. Men are men."

We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yetthere is something admirable in the courage and consistency of thisman, nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed,as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers, andgive libraries with the tenth; who grind human beings like RussellSage, and then spend millions of dollars in social research work; whoturn beautiful young plants into faded old women, and then give thema few paltry dollars or found a Home for Working Girls. Anthony is aworthy foe; and to fight such a foe, one must learn to meet him inopen battle.

David Roberts has all the mental and moral attributes of hisadversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt, and the depth of modernideas. He, too, is consistent, and wants nothing for his class shortof complete victory.

"It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting, not forour own little bodies and their warmth; it is for all those who comeafter, for all times. Oh, men, for the love of them don't turn upanother stone on their heads, don't help to blacken the sky. If wecan shake that white-faced monster with the bloody lips that hassucked the lives out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since theworld began, if we have not the hearts of men to stand against it,breast to breast and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cryfor mercy, it will go on sucking life, and we ​shall stay foreverwhere we are, less than the very dogs."

It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should pass onand leave two such giants behind. Inevitable, until the mass willreach the stature of a David Roberts. Will it ever? Prophecy is notthe vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. Onecannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methodsh*therto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard all thoseelements in their midst that are forever ready to reconcile theirreconcilable, namely Capital and Labor. They will have to learnthat characters like David Roberts are the very forces that haverevolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation outof the clutches of that "white-faced monster with bloody lips,"towards a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a deeper recognition of human values.

No subject of equal social import has received such extensiveconsideration within the last few years as the question of prison andpunishment.

Hardly any magazine of consequence that has not devoted its columnsto the discussion of this vital theme. A number of books by ablewriters, both in America and abroad, have discussed this topic fromthe historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, all agreeing thatpresent penal institutions and our mode of coping with crime have inevery respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. One wouldexpect that something very radical should result from the cumulative literary indictment of the social crimes perpetrated upon the prisoner. Yet with the excep​he exception of a few minor and comparativelyinsignificant reforms in some of our prisons, absolutely nothing hasbeen accomplished. But at last this grave social wrong has found dramatic interpretation in Galworthy's Justice.

The play opens in the office of James How and Sons, Solicitors. Thesenior clerk, Robert co*keson, discovers that a check he had issuedfor nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicionfalls upon William Falder, the junior office clerk. The latter is inlove with a married woman, the abused, ill-treated wife of a brutaldrunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man,Falder confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of hissweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with whom he had planned to escape tosave her from the unbearable brutality of her husband.Notwithstanding the entreaties of young Walter, who is touched bymodern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turnsFalder over to the police.

The second act, in the court-room, shows Justice in the very processof manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologicverity the great court scene in RESURRECTION. Young Falder, anervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before thebar. Ruth, his married sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burnswith anxiety to save the young man whose affection brought about hispresent predicament. The young man is defended by Lawyer Frome,whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of deep social philosophywreathed with the tendrils of human understanding and sympathy. He does not ​attempt to dispute the mere fact of Falder having alteredthe check; and though he pleads temporary aberration in defense ofhis client, that plea is based upon a social consciousness as deepand all-embracing as the roots of our social ills—"the background oflife, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commissionof a crime." He shows Falder to have faced the alternative of seeingthe beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband, whom she cannotdivorce; or of taking the law into his own hands. The defence pleadswith the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal bycondemning him to prison, for "justice is a machine that, whensomeone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself. . . . Isthis young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an actwhich, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a memberof the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships calledprisons? . . . I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man.For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable,stares him in the face. . . . The rolling of the chariot wheels ofJustice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him."

But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for—as the learnedJudge says—"the law is what it is--a majestic edifice, shelteringall of us, each stone of which rests on another."

Falder is sentenced to three years' penal servitude.

In prison, the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that youngFalder is mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be done in ​the matter: many others are in a similar position, and "thequarters are inadequate."

The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silentforce. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in Falder'sprison cell.

"In fast-falling daylight, Falder, in his stockings, is seen standingmotionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. Hemoves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making nonoise. He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hearsomething, any little thing that is going on outside. He springssuddenly upright—as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless.Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking atit, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of aman so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming tolife. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving hishead, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door,listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it with hisfingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turningfrom it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, holdinghis head, as if he felt that it were going to burst, and stops underthe window. But since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking,and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it, as iftrying to make a companion of his own face. It has grown very nearlydark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter—the only sound that has broken the silence—and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the ​darkness—he seems to be seeing somebody or somethingthere. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind theglass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted. Falder is seen gasping for breath.

A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, issuddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril wererolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him.He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The bangingsound, traveling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; Falder'shands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in thisbeating, and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the verycell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, heflings himself at his door, and beats on it."

Finally Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, thestamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul. Thanks to Ruth's pleading, the firm of James How and Son is willing to take Falder back in their employ, on condition that he give up Ruth. It is then that Falder learns the awful news that the woman he loves had been driven by the merciless economic Moloch to sell herself. She "tried making skirts. . .cheap things. . . . I never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton, and working all day. I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve. . . .And then. . .my employer happened—he's happened ever since." Atthis terrible psychologic moment the ​police appear to drag him backto prison for failing to report himself as ticket-of-leave man. Completely overwhelmed by the inexorability of his environment, youngFalder seeks and finds peace, greater than human justice, by throwinghimself down to death, as the detectives are taking him back toprison.

It would be impossible to estimate the effect produced by this play.Perhaps some conception can be gained from the very unusualcirc*mstance that it had proved so powerful as to induce the HomeSecretary of Great Britain to undertake extensive prison reforms inEngland. A very encouraging sign this, of the influence exerted bythe modern drama. It is to be hoped that the thundering indictmentof Mr. Galsworthy will not remain without similar effect upon thepublic sentiment and prison conditions of America. At any rate, itis certain that no other modern play has borne such direct andimmediate fruit in wakening the social conscience.

Another modern play, The Servant in the House, strikes a vital keyin our social life. The hero of Mr. Kennedy's masterpiece is Robert,a coarse, filthy drunkard, whom respectable society has repudiated.Robert, the sewer cleaner, is the real hero of the play; nay, itstrue and only savior. It is he who volunteers to go down into thedangerous sewer, so that his comrades "can 'ave light and air." After all, has he not sacrificed his life always, so that others may have light and air?

The thought that labor is the redeemer of social well-being has been cried from the housetops in every tongue and every clime. Yet the simple ​words of Robert express the significance of labor and itsmission with far greater potency.

America is still in its dramatic infancy. Most of the attempts alongthis line to mirror life, have been wretched failures. Still, thereare hopeful signs in the attitude of the intelligent public towardmodern plays, even if they be from foreign soil.

The only real drama America has so far produced is The Easiest Way, by Eugene Walter.

It is supposed to represent a "peculiar phase" of New York life. Ifthat were all, it would be of minor significance. That which givesthe play its real importance and value lies much deeper. It lies,first, in the fundamental current of our social fabric which drivesus all, even stronger characters than Laura, into the easiest way—away so very destructive of integrity, truth, and justice. Secondly,the cruel, senseless fatalism conditioned in Laura's sex. These twofeatures put the universal stamp upon the play, and characterize itas one of the strongest dramatic indictments against society.

The criminal waste of human energy, in economic and socialconditions, drives Laura as it drives the average girl to marry anyman for a "home"; or as it drives men to endure the worst indignitiesfor a miserable pittance.

Then there is that other respectable institution, the fatalism of Laura's sex. The inevitability of that force is summed up in the following words: "Don't you know that we count no more in the life of these men than tamed animals? It's a game, and if we don't play our cards well, we lose." Woman in the ​battle with life has but oneweapon, one commodity—sex. That alone serves as a trump card in thegame of life.

This blind fatalism has made of woman a parasite, an inert thing.Why then expect perseverance or energy of Laura? The easiest way isthe path mapped out for her from time immemorial. She could followno other.

A number of other plays could be quoted as characteristic of thegrowing role of the drama as a disseminator of radical thought.Suffice to mention The Third Degree, by Charles Klein; The Fourth Estate, by Medill Patterson; A Man's World, by Ida Croutchers,—all pointing to the dawn of dramatic art in America, an art which isdiscovering to the people the terrible diseases of our social body.

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road. Above all, the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart, is the strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition.