EMMA GOLDMAN, THE ANARCHIST LEADER.
Russia, the land of the nihilists, and the home of the “propaganda of
action”—which means assassination—was the birthplace of Emma Goldman.
Though still a young woman, she is recognized as a radical among
radicals, when it comes to expounding the principles of her faith. For
more than ten years she has been known as an enemy of government.
Miss Goldman’s contempt for the present system of law is pronounced,
bitter, and unrelenting, yet she never fails to deny that she is an
advocate of violence.
“I have never advocated violence,” she asserted some time ago, in an
interview, “but neither do I condemn the Anarchist who resorts to it. I
look behind him for the conditions that made him possible, and my horror
is swallowed up in pity. Perhaps under the same conditions I would have
done the same.”
Miss Goldman says she was born a revolutionist, but that her belief in
anarchy was not actually crystallized until after the hanging of the
Chicago Anarchists in 1887. Then she became what she describes as an
active Anarchist, and her activity has never flagged since then. She has
been a prolific writer for all publications in this country that would
give space to her articles upon anarchy, and has devoted much of her
time to lecturing.
Miss Goldman had frequently lectured in Chicago, but until the attack on
President McKinley, the police found no reason to arrest her.
The lectures in Chicago attracted little attention, seldom having been
announced in an obtrusive manner. Her reputation was such, however, that
the management of Hull House refused to permit her to speak in that
establishment.
In 1893 New York police arrested Miss Goldman on a warrant charging her
with “inciting to riot.” The arrest was a result of her activity during
the famous Debs strike, and it was followed by her imprisonment on
Blackwell’s Island for a term of one year, which was shortened to seven
months on account of good behavior. She formerly had led a strike of the
Waist and Shirt Maker Girls’ union in New York, but without attracting
much attention.
In an extended interview which Miss Goldman gave out a few months ago
while in New York she told many things about her life and her views on
social and political questions which have a special interest at the
present moment. She said:
“I am a Russian through and through, although little of my life was
spent there. I was born in Russia, but was brought up in Germany and
graduated from a German school. All that didn’t make a German of me. I
went back to Russia when I was 15 years old, and felt that I was
returning to my home. My family was orthodox. None of my revolutionary
tendencies was inherited—at least my parents were not responsible for
them and were horrified by them.
“While I was in Germany I did not think much about anarchy, but when I
went back to St. Petersburg my whole attitude toward life changed, and I
went into radicalism with all my heart and soul. You see, things are
different in Russia from what they are here or anywhere else. One
breathes a revolutionary thought with the air, and without being
definitely interested in anarchy one learns its principles. There was
discussion and thought and enthusiasm all around me, and something
within me responded to it all.
WOMAN’S EQUALITY IN RUSSIA.
“There is no other place in the world where woman has what she has in
Russia. There the women have not only the same rights in law as the men,
they have the same liberties and the same social and intellectual
freedom. There man respects woman, looks upon her as his equal, is her
good chum—yes, that is the word. Nowhere are men and women chums as they
are in Russia.
“A woman student in Russia may receive visitors all day and most of the
night, discuss all vital subjects with them, go with men when and where
she pleases, and yet she will not be criticised, and no landlady would
dream of insinuating that there was anything wrong with her morals. What
is more, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with them. The standard of
morals in the student class is phenomenally high, and the average
intelligent Russian woman’s mind is as pure as it is broad.
“The relation between the sexes in Russia is the most ideal of any I
know about. That is why young Russian women learn to think. And because
they think they become Anarchists.
“I was an Anarchist when I left Russia to come to America, but I had
hardly formulated my belief. The final influence that crystallized my
views was the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists in 1887. I followed that
case carefully and it made me an active Anarchist. I was living with my
family in Rochester then, and the nearest thing to a radical society the
town had was a Social Democratic society, tame as a house cat. I came
away to New York and went to work in a factory. That showed me a new
side of life. My family had been well-to-do, and I hadn’t come in actual
contact with the want and suffering of the world until I joined the
wage-earners.
“Of course the experience strengthened my revolutionary ideas. When the
Waist and Shirtmaker Girls’ union went out in 1888 I led the strike.
That is, in a way I led it. I have never been an Anarchist leader. I
cannot afford it. A leader must be a diplomat. I am not a diplomat. A
leader of a party makes concessions to his party, for the sake of
holding his power. He must give way to his followers in order to be sure
they will sustain him. I can’t do all that, I am an Anarchist because I
love individual freedom and I will not surrender that freedom.
“You know I am a professional nurse. It has always been the dream of my
life to be a doctor, but I never could manage it—could not get means for
the study. My factory work undermined my health, so I thought that if I
couldn’t be a doctor I could at least be a little part of the
profession. I went through the training for a nurse, did the hospital
work, and now nurse private cases.
“When I came out of prison on Blackwell’s Island I was nervous. I
decided to try a change and go to Europe for a year. I could lecture for
the cause and take a course in massage and in midwifery in Vienna. There
is no good training for either here, though we have the best training
schools for nurses in the world.
“Well, I went and did my studying and then went to Paris to study and
wait for the Anarchists’ congress. You know the government prohibited
the congress. We had it all the same, but the meetings were secret. I
received the honor or dishonor of especially strict surveillance. I was
to give a series of lectures, but after the third the authorities warned
me that if I gave any more I must leave France, and as I wanted to
attend the congress I kept quiet.
“Finally, detectives escorted me to the station and saw my luggage
checked to the steamer and then notified the government that the
dangerous woman was on her way out of France.”
Leon Czolgosz, the murderer of President McKinley, asserted immediately
after his arrest, that he was led to undertake the assassination of the
President by a speech delivered by Emma Goldman, the leader of the
Anarchist propaganda in America. This speech was delivered in Cleveland,
O., the home of Czolgosz, May 6. In it Miss Goldman outlined the
principles of anarchy, and detailed the methods whereby she expected to
secure the establishment of anarchy throughout the world. Her talk was
full of forceful passages, in some cases more notable for their strength
than for their elegance.
“Men under the present state of society,” she said, “are mere products
of circumstances. Under the galling yoke of government, ecclesiasticism,
and a bond of custom and prejudice, it is impossible for the individual
to work out his own career as he could wish. Anarchism aims at a new and
complete freedom. It strives to bring about the freedom which is not
only the freedom from within but a freedom from without, which will
prevent any man from having a desire to interfere in any way with the
liberty of his neighbor.
“Vanderbilt says, ‘I am a free man within myself, but the others be
damned.’ This is not the freedom we are striving for. We merely desire
complete individual liberty, and this can never be obtained as long as
there is an existing government.
“We do not favor the socialistic idea of converting men and women into
mere producing machines under the eye of a paternal government. We go to
the opposite extreme and demand the fullest and most complete liberty
for each and every person to work out his own salvation upon any line
that he pleases. The degrading notion of men and women as machines is
far from our ideals of life.
“Anarchism has nothing to do with future governments or economic
arrangements. We do not favor any particular settlement in this line,
but merely ask to do away with the present evils. The future will
provide these arrangements after our work has been done. Anarchism deals
merely with social relations, and not with economic arrangement.”
The speaker then deprecated the idea that all Anarchists were in favor
of violence or bomb throwing. She declared that nothing was further from
the principles they support. She went on, however, into a detailed
explanation of the different crimes committed by Anarchists lately,
declaring that the motive was good in each case, and that these acts
were merely a matter of temperament.
Some men were so constituted, she said, that they were unable to stand
idly by and see the wrong that was being endured by their
fellow-mortals. She herself did not believe in these methods, but she
did not think they should be condemned in view of the high and noble
motives which prompted their perpetration. She continued: “Some believe
we should first obtain by force and let the intelligence and education
come afterwards.”
Miss Goldman did not hesitate to put forward a number of sentiments far
more radical and sensational than any ever publicly advanced here.
During Miss Goldman’s lecture a strong detail of police was in the hall
to keep her from uttering sentiments which were regarded as too radical.
This accounts for the fact that the speaker did not give free rein to
her thoughts on that occasion. Because of anarchistic uprisings
elsewhere it was thought best by the city officials to curb the
utterances of the woman.
As soon as it was known that Czolgosz admitted being a disciple of Emma
Goldman, the police of a score of cities began an active hunt for her,
in the belief that the President’s assassination was the result of a
conspiracy, of which she was the head. It was known that Miss Goldman
had been in Chicago in July, and that she had visited Buffalo in July
and August. But her whereabouts immediately following the crime, could
not easily be traced. The arrest of a number of anarchists in Chicago,
and the capture of a number of letters, gave the police a clue that Miss
Goldman was in St. Louis, and the police of that city made active search
for her. She was not found, however, though the fact that she was in
that city after the attack of Czolgosz on the President, was
established. It was then surmised that she had gone to Chicago, and the
police of that city redoubled their vigilance. Through a telegram sent
to a man living on Oakdale avenue, the Chicago police learned that Miss
Goldman had made inquiries concerning the arrest of the Anarchists in
that city, and announced her purpose of going to Chicago, and would
arrive on Sunday night, Sept. 8. The police watched the house in Oakdale
avenue all Sunday night, but no one entered it. The watch was continued,
however, and Monday morning the vigilance of the officers was rewarded.
A woman approached the house and rang the front door bell. There was no
response, and she went around the house to the back door, where she
knocked. No one opened the door, nor was there any response. The woman
then walked to Sheffield avenue and rang the bell at No. 303, the third
flat in which is the home of Charles G. Norris. Here she was admitted,
and while one of the detectives watched the house, the other reported to
his superior officers. Captain Herman Schuettler, who had considerable
experience with the Chicago Anarchists in 1886, prior to and after the
Haymarket riot, immediately went to the Sheffield avenue house. The
officer on duty there reported that no one had entered or left the house
since the woman had disappeared behind its doors. The police officers
tried the usual mode of securing admittance, but no response came to
their signals. Then Detective Charles K. Hertz climbed in through a
window, and opening the door, admitted Captain Schuettler. Sitting in
the parlor, dressed in a light wrapper, with two partly filled valises
in front of her, was Emma Goldman. She turned pale when the policemen
confronted her and denied her identity, which was established by a
fountain pen box, on which her name was written. The woman had said that
she was a servant.
Miss Goldman was taken to the office of Chief of Police O’Neill and
served with a warrant charging her with having conspired with other
Anarchists then under arrest, to kill the President.
She detailed her meeting with the assassin in Chicago.
“I was at the house of Abraham Isaak. Yes, the house at 515 Carroll
street. I was preparing to take the Nickel Plate train for the East with
Miss Isaak. A ring came at the door. I answered the bell and found a
young man there. He asked for Mr. Isaak. The latter had left the house,
promising to meet us at the station and say good-by. I so told the young
man and I further told him that he might go to the station with us and
meet Mr. Isaak there. So you see,” she asserted, “he would not even have
been with me for thirty-five minutes had I not asked him to go to the
train.
“The young man—yes, it was Czolgosz, who shot the President—said that he
had met me before. He said he had heard me lecture in Cleveland. I had
delivered a lecture there on May 6, but I can’t remember all the people
who shake hands with me, can I? I had no remembrance of him. We went to
the station on the elevated train and this man accompanied us. I asked
him where he had heard of Mr. Isaak. He said he had read the latter’s
paper, Free Society. He did not talk to me about a plot. I never heard
of him from that time until McKinley was shot.”
Emma Goldman’s ideas on anarchy are contained in an interview had with
her some months before President McKinley’s assassination. She said:
“If a man came to me and told me he was planning an assassination I
would think him an utter fool and refuse to pay any attention to him.
The man who has such a plan, if he is earnest and honest, knows no
secret is safe when told. He does the deed himself, runs the risk
himself, pays the penalty himself. I honor him for the spirit that
prompts him. It is no small thing for a man to be willing to lay down
his life for the cause of humanity. The act is noble, but it is
mistaken. While I do not advocate violence, neither do I condemn the
anarchist who resorts to it.
“I was an anarchist when I left Russia to come to America,” she
continued, “but I had hardly formulated my belief. The final influence
that crystallized my views was the hanging of the Chicago anarchists in
1887.
“I am an anarchist because I love individual freedom, and I will not
surrender that freedom. A leader must sooner or later be the victim of
the masses he thinks he controls. When I definitely entered the work I
gave myself a solemn pledge that I would study, that I would make
passion bow to reason, that I would not be carried away from the truth
by sentiment. I soon saw that the safest and wisest way to keep myself
free was not to be a leader. That is why I am connected with no party. I
am a member of no group. Individual freedom and responsibility—there is
the basis of true anarchy.
“No, I have never advocated violence, nor do I know a single truly great
anarchist leader who ever did advocate violence. Where violence comes
with anarchy it is a result of the conditions, not of anarchy. The
biggest fallacy going is the idea that anarchists as a body band
together and order violence, assassinations of rulers and all that. I
ought to know something about anarchy, and I tell you that is
false—absolutely false.
“There is ignorance, cruelty, starvation, poverty, suffering, and some
victim grows tired of waiting. He believes a decisive blow will call
public attention to the wrongs of his country, and may hasten the
remedy. He and perhaps one or two intimate friends or relatives make a
plan. They do not have orders. They do not consult other anarchists.
“Perhaps under the same conditions I would do the same. If I had been
starving in Milan, and had raised my starving baby in the air as an
appeal for justice, and had that baby shot in my arms by a brutal
soldiery, who knows what I might have done? I might have changed from a
philosophical anarchist to a fighting anarchist. Do you suppose if Santo
Caserio had had anarchist organization back of him he would have tramped
all the weary way to Paris, without money, in order to kill Carnot? If
Bresci had been sent out from us, would he have had to scrape together
every cent he could, even forcing one of his anarchist friends to pawn
some of his clothes in order to repay a loan Bresci had made him? The
friend curses Bresci for a hardhearted creditor, but Bresci never told
why he needed the money so desperately.
“Anarchy’s best future lies in America. We in America haven’t yet
reached conditions—economic conditions, I mean—that necessarily breed
violence. I am thankful for that; but we are much nearer such conditions
than the old-time American ever dreamed we would be, and unless
something is done to stop it, the time will come.
“It’s all too absolutely silly, this talk about my being dangerous. Half
my fellow believers think me a fool because I am always talking against
violence and advocating individual work. I believe that the next ten
years will see a wonderful spreading of the true principles of anarchy
in this country.”
Emma Goldman, at the time of the assassination, was a woman thirty-two
years old, with coarse features, thick lips, a square jaw and prominent
nose. She wore glasses on account of nearsightedness, and her hair was
light, almost red—the color of the doctrine she teaches.
She was held without bail, but afterwards released.
After Czolgosz, the first arrests for complicity in the attempt on
President McKinley’s life were made in the city of Chicago. The
metropolis of Illinois, with its cosmopolitan population, has always
been a hotbed of anarchy, and it was there the police instantly looked
for traces of the movements of the assassin. The police learned from
Czolgosz himself that he had recently been in Chicago, and had visited
at the house of Abraham Isaak, Sr., 515 Carroll avenue. Isaak was known
as an anarchist and the publisher of a paper called Free Society. The
police procured warrants for the arrest of Isaak and others on a charge
of conspiracy to kill and assassinate the President of the United
States, William McKinley, and on visiting Isaak’s house Saturday,
September 7, found nine persons there, all of whom were arrested. They
were:
Abraham Isaak, Sr., publisher of the Free Society and former publisher
of the Firebrand, the organ of anarchy, which was suppressed; Abraham
Isaak, Jr., Clemence Pfuetzner, Alfred Schneider, Hippolyte Havel, Henry
Travaglio, Julia Mechanic, Marie Isaak, mother; Marie Isaak, daughter.
The same day three other men were arrested at 100 Newberry avenue,
Chicago, for the same crime. These men were: Martin Raznick,
cloak-maker, who rented the premises; Maurice Fox, Michael Raz.
In the house the detectives found box after box heaped with the
literature of anarchy and socialism. There were pictures of Emma Goldman
and other leaders and many copies of the Firebrand, Isaak’s old paper.
The arrests were decided on thus early because of the receipt by the
Chicago police of a telegram from the chief of police at Buffalo,
reading as follows:
“We have in custody Leon Czolgosz, alias Fred Nieman, the President’s
assassin. Locate and arrest E. J. Isaak, who is editor of a socialistic
paper and a follower of Emma Goldman, from whom Nieman is said to have
taken instructions. It looks as if there might be a plot, and that these
people may be implicated.”
After being taken to the police station the prisoners were taken before
Chief O’Neill and questioned. Isaak, Sr., was the first to be brought
in, and he told his story without any suggestion of reticence,
occasionally punctuating his answers with anarchistic utterances, angry
nods of his head or emphatic gestures with his clenched fists. When
asked if he knew Emma Goldman he answered:
“Yes, she was at my house during the latter part of June and the first
two weeks of July. The last time I saw her was on the twelfth of July.
On that day she left Chicago for Buffalo. I met her at the Lake Shore
depot as she was leaving. When I reached the depot I found her talking
to a strange man, who appeared about 25 years old, was well dressed and
smooth shaven. Miss Goldman told me that the fellow had been following
her around wanting to talk to her, but she had no time to devote to him.
She asked me to find out what the fellow wanted.
“The man made a bad impression on me from the first, and when he called
me aside and asked me about the secret meetings of Chicago anarchists I
was sure he was a spy. I despised the man as soon as I saw him and was
positive he was a spy.
“Emma Goldman went away on a train which left in about half an hour
after my meeting with this stranger, who gave his name as Czlosz
(Czolgosz). I wanted to learn more about the stranger, so, when I went
home, I asked him to accompany me. On the way to my house he asked me
again and again about the secret meetings of our societies, and the
impression grew on me that he was a spy. He asked me if we would give
him money, and I told him no, but added that if he wanted to stay in
Chicago I would help him get work.
“When we reached my house we sat out on the porch for about ten minutes,
and his talk during that time was radical. He said he had been a
Socialist for many years, but was looking for something more active than
socialism. I was sure then that the fellow was a spy, and I wanted to
search and unmask him, so I arranged with him to come to my house on the
following morning for breakfast.
[Illustration:
PRESIDENT McKINLEY AT THE BEDSIDE OF HIS WIFE WHEN SHE WAS ILL IN SAN
FRANCISCO.]
[Illustration:
THEODORE ROOSEVELT SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT.]
“I took him over to Mrs. Esther Wolfson’s rooming-house, at 425 Carroll
avenue, and engaged a room for him. Mrs. Wolfson has since moved to New
York.
“I didn’t see Czolgosz again after that night. He failed to come to my
house for breakfast, and when I went over to Mrs. Wolfson’s to inquire
about him I was told that he had slipped away without saying where he
was going. I was suspicious of him all the time, so I wrote to E.
Schilling, one of our comrades in Cleveland, Ohio, and asked him if he
knew of such a man.
“Schilling replied that a fellow answering his description had called on
him, and that he believed the man was a spy in the employ of the police.
He said he wanted to ‘search’ the stranger, but was alone when he called
and did not care to attempt the job. Schilling arranged a meeting for
another night, but Czolgosz didn’t show up, and all trace of him was
lost. I wrote to Cleveland because Czolgosz had told me he once lived
there.
“After I received Schilling’s letter I printed an article in my paper
denouncing the fellow as a spy and warning my people against him.”
The article renouncing Czolgosz, alluded to by Isaak, was published in
the issue of Free Society September 1, and was couched in the following
language:
ATTENTION!
The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well
dressed, of medium height, rather narrow shoulders, blond and about
25 years of age. Up to the present he has made his appearance in
Chicago and Cleveland. In the former place he remained but a short
time, while in Cleveland he disappeared when the comrades had
confirmed themselves of his identity and were on the point of
exposing him. His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be
greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid
for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his
appearance elsewhere the comrades are warned in advance, and can act
accordingly.
The police were suspicious of this alleged fear of Czolgosz, and
asserted that the publication of the notice might have been done for the
purpose of exculpating the Chicago Anarchists in case they were accused
of being parties to the conspiracy.
In his further examination Isaak answered proudly that he was an
Anarchist, and when asked what he meant by anarchy, replied:
“I mean a country without government. We recognize neither law nor the
right of one man to govern another. The trouble with the world is that
it is struggling to abolish effect without seeking to get at the cause.
Yes, I am an Anarchist, and there are 10,000 people in Chicago who think
and believe as I do. You don’t hear about them because they are not
organized.
“Assassination is nothing but a natural phenomenon. It always has
existed and will exist as long as this tyrannical system of government
prevails. However, we don’t believe tyranny can be abolished by the
killing of one man. Yet there will be absolute anarchy.
“In Russia I was a Nihilist. There are secret meetings there, and I want
to tell you that as soon as you attempt to suppress anarchy here there
will be secret meetings in the United States.
“I don’t believe in killing rulers, but I do believe in self-defense. As
long as you let Anarchists talk their creed openly in this country the
conservatives will not be in favor of assassinating executives.”
Isaak had had an eventful career and had been a socialist and
anarchistic agitator for years. He was born in Southern Russia and came
to Chicago seven months ago. In Russia, he says, he was a bookkeeper. He
was forced to leave the country, and after traveling over South America
he came to this country and located first in San Francisco. There he
worked as a gardener. Later he removed to Portland, Ore., and began the
publication of a rabid anarchistic paper called the Firebrand, but the
publication was suppressed by the United States postal authorities.
Then Isaak came to Chicago and started Free Society, a paper devoted to
the interests of local Anarchists. Isaak talked intelligently but
rabidly on matters pertaining to sociological questions.
Hippolyte Havel, the next in importance to Isaak in the anarchistic
group, was also examined by the chief. He proved to be an excitable
Bohemian, 35 years of age. In appearance he was the opposite of Isaak.
Dwarfed of stature, narrow-eyed, with jet black hair hanging in a
confused mass over his low forehead, and a manner of talking that
brought into play both hands, he looked the part when he boldly told
Chief O’Neill that he was an Anarchist. In Bohemia he was an agitator,
and in 1894 was sentenced to two years’ confinement in the prison at
Plzen for making incendiary speeches. He admitted that he knew Emma
Goldman and Czolgosz, and said that if he had known the latter was going
to Buffalo to kill the President, he would not have notified the police.
Later, these anarchists were released, as there was no evidence to prove
a conspiracy.