We found the Anarchist at his own fireside, playing with a kitten. Two
children stood at his knee, and he was telling them stories, while the
kitten made dashes at his long gray beard.
He lived in one of the workmen’s houses that have lately sprung up on
the outskirts of the city. They are two-story houses, made of brick,
with narrow windows and narrow stone doorsteps. Standing, row after row
in uniform regularity, they look like blocks made for some queer game
which nobody ever plays.
The Anarchist reached out both hands to me with a cordial smile. He was
doubly cordial when I introduced the Tailoress and told him why I had
come.
That was right, he said, as he seated us in great wooden rocking-chairs.
We were starting a movement in the right direction. Organization alone
could protect women against atrociously low wages and against long hours
of work. They were now absolutely at the mercy of their employers.
“There ain’t no animal,” said the Anarchist, raising his arm in a
sweeping gesture, “that gets so little wage in proportion to its work as
half the women in this city. And that’s because they don’t organize.
They ain’t got the fraternity spirit. They’re comin’ on, but in one
respect the men’s ahead. The Brotherhood of Man is fur outstrippin’ the
Sisterhood of Women!
“But draw up by the fire and warm ye,” he added, dropping the tone of a
demagogue for a natural voice. “It’s a right cold day out-doors.”
The Anarchist’s large, patriarchal figure looked out of place in this
tiny sitting-room. His gray age emphasized the newness of his
surroundings. He should have for a background, I thought, the great elms
and weather-beaten porches of an ancestral farmhouse, instead of the
gaudy wall-paper and cheap, stained wood-work of this roughly finished
room.
My companion did not look at the apartment. Her gaze was fastened on the
Anarchist, and a look, now of terror, now of kindling enthusiasm,
dilated her eyes.
The difficulty, the Anarchist repeated, was with the women themselves.
They would not band together to demand their rights, because they were
afraid. They did not want to do anything “unladylike.” It seemed to me
that under the flowery and confused style, there was much sound sense in
his remarks.
“Now if you,” he said, rising and striding up and down the room, with
his long cretonne dressing-gown flapping about his slippered heels, “if
you could influence any shop of ill-paid girls to form a union for
mutual protection of each other, and to go out on a strike, for their
lawful rights, which are theirs, you would be opening the eyes of the
captive and letting the maimed and halt and blind go free!”
I do not know whether the Tailoress liked the rhetoric, but the idea had
taken possession of her. Her face was illumined by a new inspiration.
She looked, with her high cheek bones and her deep-set eyes, like an
ancient Sybil about to deliver a solemn message.
The Anarchist seated himself again in his great rocking-chair, and one
of the children—a curly-headed boy of four—crept to his knee, and
cuddled down on his shoulder.
“More,” coaxed the boy, “more Jack and the Bean-stalk.”
The Anarchist looked up at us with smiling pride.
“Is this a grandchild?” I asked.
“No, no; he belongs to one of my neighbours. The two of ’em come over to
play with me since I give up work. I had to do it. What with organizin’
and the conferences and the committee-meetings, I couldn’t get time for
no work.”
I did not mean to look inquiringly at my host, but perhaps I did, for he
continued:—
“The organization helps us considerable, and my wife, she sews. We
manage to get along.”
I fancied that the Anarchist’s wife had laid aside her sewing and was
getting supper, for she was moving up and down in the kitchen. I
wondered if she were tired.
The Tailoress was rapt and silent, with a Jeanne D’Arc look upon her
face. She was too much absorbed to hear the friendly remarks that the
Anarchist was making.
“I’m glad you come to me,” he said. “I’ll do all I can to help on your
enterprise. There’s nothin’ in the world I wouldn’t do for a woman.”
To check the thoughts that the busy footsteps in the kitchen suggested,
I asked the Anarchist a question.
“Isn’t the idea of combining for any purpose contrary to your
principles? I thought that the first article in your political creed was
that each man should stand alone.”
“E-ventually,” answered the Anarchist, with deliberation. “That’s the
eyedeal. This is only a perliminary step. We’ve got to combine first to
break the bands of unlawful power. It’s jest the same thing I said the
other night at the banquet. I reckon I scairt ye a little then?” he
queried, with a broad smile. “I don’t know but what I ought to have said
less, and yet I don’t know as I had. Those are only my temporary
sentiments.”
“Yes?” I said, suggestively.
“I’m a man of peace,” said the Anarchist, slowly. “A man of peace. I
want to see the day when we all stand side by side, free and equal, and
no man the minion of any other. That’s anarchy, that is. There won’t be
no injestice then, for there won’t be no gover’ment to meddle and mess
things up. We’ll all work separate and harmonious, and every man will
know that his interests and the interests of his neighbour are
eyedentical.
“But I tell you,” he cried, starting up suddenly, and then subsiding for
the sake of the child nestled on his arm, “we’ve got to fight to bring
about this peace! The gover’ment’s on our shoulders, and it’s got to be
got off. That’s somethin’ we can’t do without co-operation, and we’ll
hev to fight together.
“And it’s comin’,” he added solemnly. “The crisis is comin’. It won’t be
long before the worm will turn. Soon you’ll see the poor worms of the
dust ridin’ triumphant on the whirlwinds of war!”