himself; but he remained, he stood the consequences.
His reasons for the act are set forth in so simple, dignified, and
childlike manner that one is reminded of the touching tribute paid
Caserio by his teacher of the little village school, Ada Negri, the
Italian poet, who spoke of him as a sweet, tender plant, of too fine
and sensitive texture to stand the cruel strain of the world.
"Gentlemen of the Jury! I do not propose to make a defense, but only
an explanation of my deed.
"Since my early youth I began to learn that present society is badly
organized, so badly that every day many wretched men commit suicide,
leaving women and children in the most terrible distress. Workers,
by thousands, seek for work and can not find it. Poor families beg
for food and shiver with cold; they suffer the greatest misery; the
little ones ask their miserable mothers for food, and the mothers
can not give them, because they have nothing. The few things
which the home contained have already been sold or pawned. All they
can do is beg alms; often they are arrested as vagabonds.
"I went away from my native place because I was frequently moved to
tears at seeing little girls of eight or ten years obliged to work
fifteen hours a day for the paltry pay of twenty centimes. Young
women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hours daily, for a
mockery of remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow
countrymen, but to all the workers, who sweat the whole day long for
a crust of bread, while their labor produces wealth in abundance.
The workers are obliged to live under the most wretched conditions,
and their food consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice,
and water; so by the time they are thirty or forty years old, they
are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals. Besides, in
consequence of bad food and overwork, these unhappy creatures are, by
hundreds, devoured by pellagra--a disease that, in my country,
attacks, as the physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a
life of toil and privation.
"I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry,
and many children who suffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the
towns. I saw many and large shops full of clothing and woolen
stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn,
suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other hand, I saw
thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live on
the labor of others; who spend every day thousands of francs for
their amusement; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own
dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses, many
servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life.
"I believed in God; but when I saw so great an inequality between
men, I acknowledged that it was not God who created man, but man who
created God. And I discovered that those who want their property to
be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise
and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance.
"Not long ago, Vaillant threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, to
protest against the present system of society. He killed no one,
only wounded some persons; yet bourgeois justice sentenced him to
death. And not satisfied with the condemnation of the guilty man,
they began to pursue the Anarchists, and arrest not only those who
had known Vaillant, but even those who had merely been present at any
Anarchist lecture.
"The government did not think of their wives and children. It did
not consider that the men kept in prison were not the only ones who
suffered, and that their little ones cried for bread. Bourgeois
justice did not trouble itself about these innocent ones, who do not
yet know what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their
fathers are in prison; they only want to eat.
"The government went on searching private houses, opening private
letters, forbidding lectures and meetings, and practicing the most
infamous oppressions against us. Even now, hundreds of Anarchists
are arrested for having written an article in a newspaper, or for
having expressed an opinion in public.
"Gentlemen of the Jury, you are representatives of bourgeois society.
If you want my head, take it; but do not believe that in so doing you
will stop the Anarchist propaganda. Take care, for men reap what
they have sown."
During a religious procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a bomb was
thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested.
Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and
Socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bastille, Montjuich,
and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been
killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal
press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors.
The man primarily responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was
Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered
the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bones
crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art of brutality
during his regime in Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the
appeals and protests of the awakened civilized conscience.
In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian,
Angiolillo. The latter was an editor in his native land, and his
bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities.
Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to
France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he
found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend
of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo:
"His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of
Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he
had not grown up at the 'case.' With his handsome frank face, his
soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the
vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French,
but no English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to carry
on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to
acquire the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was
not long until he became very popular with his fellow compositors.
His distinguished and yet modest manner, and his consideration
towards his colleagues, won him the hearts of all the boys."
Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailed accounts in the
press. He read of the great wave of human sympathy with the helpless
victims at Montjuich. On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes
the results of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards, who escaped
Castillo's clutches, came to seek asylum in England. There, at the
great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible
scars of burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a
thousand theories; the impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments,
beyond himself even.
Senor Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain,
sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in such cases, all strangers
were kept away from his exalted presence. One exception was made,
however, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly dressed
Italian--the representative, it was understood, of an important
journal. The distinguished gentleman was--Angiolillo.
Senor Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped on the veranda.
Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was
a corpse.
The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene. "Murderer!
Murderer!" she cried, pointing at Angiolillo. The latter bowed.
"Pardon, Madame," he said, "I respect you as a lady, but I regret
that you were the wife of that man."
Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its most terrible form--for
the man whose soul was as a child's.
He was garroted. His body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid in
twilight. And the people came, and pointing the finger of terror and
fear, they said: "There--the criminal--the cruel murderer."
How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It misunderstands always,
condemns always.
A remarkable parallel to the case of Angiolillo is to be found in the
act of Gaetano Bresci, whose ATTENTAT upon King Umberto made an
American city famous.
Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has
but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to
succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors
for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood,
self-respect.
Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled in Paterson, New Jersey,
and there found a lucrative job at six dollars per week in one of the
weaving mills of the town. Six whole dollars per week was, no doubt,
a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on in the new country.
He loved his little home. He was a good husband and devoted father
to his BAMBINA, Bianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked for a
number of years. He actually managed to save one hundred dollars out
of his six dollars per week.
Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an
ideal,--the Anarchist paper published in Paterson, LA QUESTIONE
SOCIALE.
Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the
paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little
pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair,
Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, the entire
savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.
In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor,
and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They
appealed to their good King Umberto; he would help. And he did.
The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King,
held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would
move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.
Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Paterson, read of the horrible
massacre. His mental eye beheld the defenceless women and innocent
infants of his native land, slaughtered right before the good King.
His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the
wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why
these foul murders?
The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended
almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his hundred dollars. His
comrades begged, implored him to give them a respite. The paper
would go down if they were to return him his loan. But Bresci
insisted on its return.
How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost
the good will, the confidence of his comrades. They would have
nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals.
On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo.
The young Italian weaver of Paterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the
life of the good King.
Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an
Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to
the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its
extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and
infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken
word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white
heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms.
The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those
whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to
respond--even as does steel to the magnet--to the wrongs and horrors
of society.
If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political
violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in
India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old
philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the
drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet
the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently
resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon
Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra.
If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually
permeated for centuries with the spirit of passivity, can one
question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character
exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the
justice of these words:
"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men
have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in
India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods.
The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India.
They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down
India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the
more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more
terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and
foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny
continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but
the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for
a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair.
It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the
tyrant."[4]
Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity
is not the sole factor moulding human character. Climate, food,
occupation; nay, color, light, and sound must be considered in the
study of human psychology.
If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great
social abuses will and must influence different minds and
temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the
stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain
exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of
political violence.
Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above
things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth:
if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of
human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not
do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that Anarchism
teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering,
all misery, all ills, result from the evil of submission?
Has not some American ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance
to tyranny is obedience to God? And he was not an Anarchist even.
I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So
long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration
must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government,
political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few
resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict
between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.
High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so
relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the
string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who
feel the agonized cry understand its harmony; they hear in it the
fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature.
Such is the psychology of political violence.
[1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.
[2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
[3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.
[4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN.
PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE
In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the
following story of THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL:
"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest.
'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What tortures of
hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the
tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and
the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is
you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten
them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'
"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the
air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the
workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the
scorching heat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too
much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the
devil: 'Let me go! Let me leave this hell!'
"'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil
gets hold of him again and drags him off to a farm. There he sees
workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable.
The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls
to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.
"Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same workers live
with their families--dirty, cold, smoky, ill-smelling holes. The
devil grins. He points out the poverty and hardships which are at
home here.
"'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seems as if even he, the
devil, pities the people. The pious servant of God can hardly bear
it. With uplifted hands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes,
yes! This is hell on earth!'
"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell.
You torment them, torture them to death mentally when they are
already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more
hell--one more, the very worst.'
"He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air
and the many human forms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on
the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked,
emaciated bodies.
"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put
on your ankles heavy chains such as these unfortunates wear; lie down
on the cold and filthy floor--and then talk to them about a hell that
still awaits them!'
"'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more
dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away from here!'
"'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this. Did you
not know it? Did you not know that these men and women whom you are
frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter--did you not know
that they are in hell right here, before they die?'"
This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall of one
of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny that the same applies
with equal force to the present time, even to American prisons?
With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our
far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the
worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured,
that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.
Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such
an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a
widespread contagion.
After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde
gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL:
The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there.
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
Society goes on perpetuating this poisonous air, not realizing that
out of it can come naught but the most poisonous results.
We are spending at the present $3,500,000 per day, $1,000,095,000 per
year, to maintain prison institutions, and that in a democratic
country,--a sum almost as large as the combined output of wheat,
valued at $750,000,000, and the output of coal, valued at
$350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington, D.C., estimates the
cost of prisons at $6,000,000,000 annually, and Dr. G. Frank Lydston,
an eminent American writer on crime, gives $5,000,000,000 annually as
a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of
maintaining vast armies of human beings caged up like wild beasts![1]
Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in America there
are four and a half times as many crimes to every million population
today as there were twenty years ago.
The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is murder, not
robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the South. London is five
times as large as Chicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteen
murders annually in the latter city, while only twenty in London.
Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on
the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco
and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it
seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from its
prisons.
The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most
thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an
excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the
dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past
when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is
"ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.
The widespread prison investigations, agitation, and education during
the last few years are conclusive proof that men are learning to dig
deep into the very bottom of society, down to the causes of the
terrible discrepancy between social and individual life.
Why, then, are prisons a social crime and a failure? To answer this
vital question it behooves us to seek the nature and cause of crimes,
the methods employed in coping with them, and the effects these
methods produce in ridding society of the curse and horror of crimes.
First, as to the NATURE of crime:
Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases, the political, the
passional, the insane, and the occasional. He says that the
political criminal is the victim of an attempt of a more or less
despotic government to preserve its own stability. He is not
necessarily guilty of an unsocial offense; he simply tries to
overturn a certain political order which may itself be anti-social.
This truth is recognized all over the world, except in America where
the foolish notion still prevails that in a Democracy there is no
place for political criminals. Yet John Brown was a political
criminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is every striker.
Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, the political criminal of our time
or place may be the hero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso
calls the political criminal the true precursor of the progressive
movement of humanity.
"The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome birth and
honest life, who under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong has
wrought justice for himself."[2]
Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in THE MENACE OF THE POLICE, cites the case of Jim
Flaherty, a criminal by passion, who, instead of being saved by
society, is turned into a drunkard and a recidivist, with a ruined
and poverty-stricken family as the result.
A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand Whitlock's novel,
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE, the greatest American expose of crime in the
making. Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and
death by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the
unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law. Archie and
Flaherty are but the types of many thousands, demonstrating how the
legal aspects of crime, and the methods of dealing with it, help to
create the disease which is undermining our entire social life.
"The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than
a child, since he is mentally in the same condition as an infant or
an animal."[3]
The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of a very
flagrant nature, or when the culprit's wealth permits the luxury of
criminal insanity. It has become quite fashionable to be the victim
of paranoia. But on the whole the "sovereignty of justice" still
continues to punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its
power. Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing
that in Germany, one hundred and six madmen, out of one hundred and
forty-four criminal insane, were condemned to severe punishment.