Contents:

1

An introductory word to the ‘anarchive’ 2

Mother Earth Vol 1 No 1 8

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box Madison SQ Station, N.Y. City 8

CONTENTS 8

MOTHER EARTH 8

E. Goldman and M. Baginski 8

The Song of the Storm-Finch* 10

By Maxim Gorky 10

To the Readers 11

Observations and Comments 11

Tragedy of Women's Emancipation 13

By Emma Goldman 13

TRY LOVE 18

By GRACE POTTER 18

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT 19

By MAX BAGINSKI 19

VIVE LE ROI 23

By Frances Maule Bjorkman 23

Reflections of A Rich Man 24

COMSTOCKERY 27

By John R. Corvell 27

DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET 33

ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON 34

By Edwin Bjorkman 34

The British Elections and the Labor Parties 35

By H. KELLY 35

AND YOU? 38

BOLTON HALL 38

NATIONAL ATAVISM 38

By Internationalist 38

Mine Owners' Revenge 42

By M.B. 42

M. N. Maisel's 44

BOOK STORE 44

194 E. Broadway 44

New York 44

Special Sale 44

MEETINGS 44

"Mother Earth" 44

Mother Earth Vol 1 N4 45

Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature 45

Published Every 15th of the Month 45

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box 217, Madison SQ Station, New York, N.Y. 45

MRS. GRUNDY. 45

By Viroqua Daniels. 45

A GREETING. 46

By Alexander Berkman. 46

HENRIK IBSEN 48

M.B. 48

THE ANTICHRIST. 49

BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. 52

By PETER KROPOTKIN. 52

Footnote 58

Mother Earth Vol 1 N5 59

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box Madison SQ Station, N.Y. City 59

LIGHT! 59

AUTHORITY. 61

BY SAMUEL BUTLER 61

THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA. 61

BY PETER KROPOTKIN 61

THE LAW OF THE "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST." 65

BY EMMA LEE. 65

Mother Earth Vol 1 N7 67

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM 67

By Peter Kropotkin 67

III. 68

IV. 69

V 72

Footnotes 74

Mother Earth Vol 2 N3 76

PUBLISHED BY 76

EMMA GOLDMAN 76

CONTENTS 76

THE SONG OF THE EARTH 77

By Ralph Waldo Emerson 77

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS 79

Our Program: 80

THE FIRST MAY AND THE GENERAL STRIKE 82

ON THE ROAD 85

By Emma Goldman (Continuation) 85

SOCIALISM AND FATALISM 89

By H. Kelly. 89

FLASHES FROM THE FLINT 92

By Victor Robinson. 92

STIRNER: "THE EGO AND HIS OWN" 93

By Max Baginski. 93

I. 93

II. 95

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 98

L I B E R T Y 98

By A. T. Heist. 98

MOTHER EARTH SUSTAINING FUND 101

RECEIPTS.* 101

THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST CONFERENCE 102

TRUTH IN COMBAT 103

By W. F. Barnard 103

GIORDANO BRUNO 103

By T. F. Meade. 103

ON GOVERNMENT 107

Translated "from the Greek" by Bolton Hall 107

NOTE. 107

Alexander Berkman. 108

THREE QUOTATIONS AND A COMMENT 108

By H. K. 108

ON THE EVE 109

By Leopold Kampf. 109

BOOKS RECEIVED 110

INTERNATIONAL NOTES 110

FRANCE. 110

GERMANY. 111

SWITZERLAND. 112

ITALY 112

ENGLAND 113

BOHEMIA 113

JAPAN 113

Mother Earth Vol V N3 114

FORS CLAVIGERA 115

MAY 1886-1910 115

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS 115

THE KING 120

By HARRY WEIR BOLAND. 120

THE FIRST OF MAY 121

By H. KELLY. 121

MY CREED 125

By MAGAR THORNE. 125

THE DOMINANT IDEA 126

By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. 126

LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN THE LIFE OF AN AVANT-GUARD 130

By EMMA GOLDMAN. 130

ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUM on TOLSTOY. 133

LIBERAL OPPONENTS AND CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS OF UNABRIDGED FREE SPEECH.* 136

By THEODORE SCHROEDER. 136

OUR LIBERAL EDITORS. 138

HAVELOCK ELLIS' STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX 138

VARIOUS CONCEPTIONS OF FREEDOM. 139

SIR OLIVER LODGE ON OBSCENITY. 140

THE NUPTIAL OF FILTH AND AGNOSTICISM. 141

LIBERALS ON THE RIGHT TO ADVOCATE CRIME. 142

ON PUNISHING UNDESIRABLE STATES OF MIND. 143

LORD MACAULAY. 144

A. J. WILLARD. 145

SIR LESLIE STEPHENS. 145

AUBERON HERBERT. 146

FREE SPEECH FUND 146

RECEIPTS. 146

147

Footnotes 147

Return to table of contents Return to Emma Goldman's Collected Work 147

Mother Earth Vol 5 N6 148

Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature 148

Published Every 15th of the Month 148

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box 217, Madison SQ Station, New York, N.Y. 148

By Wm. C. Owen. 154

NOTE 158

ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUM on Emerson 158

AN IMMORAL WRITER 159

By Hippolyte Havel. 159

By Lillian Browne. 162

By Sadakichi Hartmann. 163

TO FRIENDSHIP 166

INTERNATIONAL NOTES 167

BOOKS RECEIVED 168

Mother Earth Vol 6 N1 170

TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR 170

By JOHN DAVIDSON. 170

Our Sixth Birthday 171

EMMA GOLDMAN, ALEXANDER BERKMAN. 173

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS 173

IN THE DAYS OF MARCH 177

THE PIONEER OF COMMUNIST ANARCHISM IN AMERICA 179

By MAX BAGINSKI. 179

THE PIONEER 182

ON THE TRAIL 183

EMMA GOLDMAN. 187

DISCUSSION AT MEETINGS 187

By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. 187

THE RIGHT WAY 188

STRAY THOUGHTS 189

ECONOMY AS VIEWED BY AN ANARCHIST 190

BOOKS RECEIVED 193

Footnotes 193

Mother Earth Bulletin October 1917 (Vol 1 N1) (pgs 1-7) 194

Freedom of Criticism and Opinion 194

Emma Goldman 194

DEDICATION 194

Apropos 194

Alexander Berkman 194

San Francisco's Sixth Victim 195

Emma Goldman 195

To the Postmaster 197

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER 197

LAW 199

Russia and Elsewhere 199

A.B. 199

Shall 1887 Be Repeated? 201

In Milwaukee 203

Remember 203

Mother Earth Bulletin November 1917 (Vol 1 N2) 205

Miracles Do Happen 205

How Wars Are Made 206

The Boylsheviki Spirit and History 206

Reflections 209

Free Speech 211

Chicago, 1887 -San Francisco, 1917 211

Mother Earth Bulletin February 1919 (Vol 1 N5) 214

On The Way to Golgatha 214

Gone to Jail 215

Harry Weinberger 215

Reflections 216

The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners 219

Its Purpose and Programme By Emma Goldman 219

Rochester Visit 222

To the Organized Workers of San Francisco 223

NATHANSON, KRUPNIC, GRUBER JUDIN, COHN, REITMAN. 225

Report of the Russian Convention 225

* HELP CIRCULATE THESE WORKS * 226

Mother Earth Vol 1 No 1

10c. A COPY $1.00 PER YEAR

Emma Goldman, Publisher

P.O. Box Madison SQ Station, N.Y. City

Vol.1 pp. 1 March, 1906, No. 1

CONTENTS

PAGE

Mother Earth, E. Goldman and M. Baginski I The Song of the Storm-Finch, Maxim 4 Observations and Comments, 5 The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation, E. GOLDMAN 9 Try Love, Grace Potter 18 Without Government, Max Baginski 20 Vive Le Roi, Frances Wauls Bjorkman 27 Reflections of a Rich Man 28 Comstockery, John R. Corvell 30 Don Quixote and Hamlet Turgenieff 40 On the Banks of Acheron Edwin Bjorkman 42 The British Elections and the Labor Parties. H. Kelly 44 And You? Bolton Hall 48 National Atavism Internationalist 49 Mine Owners' Revenge M. B. 56 International Review 58 Literary Notes 61 Advertisements 63

MOTHER EARTH

E. Goldman and M. Baginski

HERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it.

When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust.

Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, creating the "Great Beyond" and proclaiming Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being, tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience.

In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: "Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!"

But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs.

To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource.

During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a go od business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in awe.

MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual!

Emma Goldman,

Max Baginski.

The Song of the Storm-Finch*

By Maxim Gorky

HE strong wind is gathering the storm-clouds together above the gray plain of the ocean so wide. The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning, between clouds and ocean is soaring with pride.

Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high, the storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly; the clouds can hear joy in the bird's fearless cry.

In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest, and anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard; the keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph-all these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird . . . . .

The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring; with flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glow o'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings, and quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.

Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing, the lightnings reflected there quiver and shake as into the blackness they vanish forever. The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!

The storm-finch soars fearless and proud 'mid the lightnings, above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret; and what is the prophet of victory saying? "Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet-fiercer yet!"

*From "Songs of Russia," rendered into English by ALICE STONE BLACKWELL

To the Readers

The name "Open Road" had to be abandoned, owing to the existence of a magazine by that name.

Observations and Comments

The importance of written history for the people can easily be compared with the importance of a diary for the individual. It furnishes data for recollections, points of comparison between the Past and Present. But as most diaries and auto-biographies show a lack of straight-forward, big, simple, sincere self-analyses, so does history seldom prove a representation of facts, of the truth, of reality.

The way history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools, or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating crowd in the background. Quacks of history speak only of "great men" like Bonapartes, Bismarcks, Deweys, or Rough Riders as leaders of the people, while the latter serve as a setting, a chorus, howling the praise of the heroes, and also furnishing their blood money for the whims and extravagances of their masters. Such history only tends to produce conceit, national impudence, superciliousness and patriotic stupidity, all of which is in full bloom in our great Republic.

Our aim is to teach a different conception of historical events. To define them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might. A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities of the human race.

The American Brutus is, of course, a business man and has no time to overthrow Caesar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall of the Republic.

Between ourselves, the number of those who still believe in the American Republic can be counted on one's fingers. One has either pierced through the lie, all for the people and by the people-in that case one must become a Revolutionist; or, one has succeeded in putting one's bounty in safety-then he is a conservative. "No disturbances, please. We are about to close a profitable contract." Modern bourgeoisie is absolutely indifferent as to who is to be their political boss, just so they are given opportunity to store their profits, and accumulate great wealth. Besides, the cry about the decline of the great Republic is really meaningless. As far as it ever stood for liberty and well-being of the people, it has long ceased to be. Therefore lamentations come too late. True, the American Republic has not given birth to an aristocracy. It has produced the power of the parvenu, not less brutal than European aristocracy, only narrower in vision and not less vulgar in taste.

Instead of mourning one ought to rejoice that the latest display of disgusting servility has completely thrown off the mantle of liberty and independence of Dame Columbia, now exposed before the civilized world in all her slavish submissiveness.

The storm in Russia has frightened many out of their warm bed-clothes.

A real Revolution in these police-regulated times. More than one voice was raised against the possibility of a Revolution, and they who dared to predict it were considered fit for the lunatic asylum.

The workingmen, peasants and students of Russia, however, have proven that the calculations of the "wise" contained a hitch somewhere. A Revolution swept across the country and did not even stop to ask permission of those in authority.

Authority and Power are now taking revenge on their daring sons and daughters. The Cossacks, at the command of the "good Czar" are celebrating a bloody feast-knouting, shooting, clubbing people to death, dragging great masses to prisons and into exile, and it is not the fault of that vicious idiot on the throne, nor that of his advisors, Witte and the others, if the Revolution still marches on, head erect. Were it in their power, they would break her proud neck with one stroke, but they cannot put the head of a hundred million people on the block, they cannot deport eighty millions of Peasants to Siberia nor ran they order all the workingmen in the industrial districts shot. Were the working bees to be killed, the drones would perish of starvation--that is why the Czar of the Peace Treaty still suffers some of his people to live? --

In Mayville, Wis., a transvaluation society has been formed, the purpose of which is, to bring about the transvaluation of all values in matters of love and the relations of the sexes. The members of this society are to contribute by word and deed towards the breaking of all barriers that prevent an ideal and healthy conception of love.

The president of this society, Emil Ruedebusch, known in this country through his work, "The Old and New Ideal," which, by the way, was condiscated upon the grounds of obscenity and the author put on trial. It is an undisputed fact that robust, graft-greedy Columbia abhors every free expression on love or marriage. Emil Ruedebusch, like many others who have dared to lift the veil of hypocrisy, was condemned to a heavy fine. A second work of the author, "Die Eigenen," was published in Germany.

His idea, that the relation of the sexes must be freed oppressing from the fetters of a lame morality that degrades every human emotion to the plane of utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy, and stupid prudery, against the simplest manifestation of nature.

Tragedy of Women's Emancipation

By Emma Goldman

BEGIN my article with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between the various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life to-day, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.

Peace and harmony between the sexes, and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits or peculiarities. The problem that confronts us, to-day, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own innate qualities. This seems to me the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should, not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's being suffices. This admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for her to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activivy should reach expression; and all artificial barriers should be broken and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs--pyramids, wheels and wreaths; anything except the forms which would be reached by the expression of their own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all its light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny, an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I insist that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipation from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal Suffrage in a few states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottoes of which are: "to take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell clear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope that even woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present physical training have not equipped tier with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the same remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet home" cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder, that hundreds of girls are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their independence behind the counter, or at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of of middle class people who long to throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal that one can expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman's nature, her love instinct and her mother instinct.

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

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence, the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

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

The tragic fate of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not consist of too many, but of too few experiencees. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; and it is because of that that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul and without which the majority of women have become mere automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who realized that in the domain of ethics, there still remained decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, which is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with such as are more advanced more perfect, has followers, who in theory stand for the most extreme radical ideas, and who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the next best Philistine, feigning respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk and water literateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the women's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such a misrepresentation, and, lacking in humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she could be and how her influence would have a purifying effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also established new ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women, who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow puritanical vision banished man as a disturber and doubtful character out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the rigid puritanism never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied to man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian writer, Laura Marholm, called "'Woman, a Character Study." She was one of the first to call attention to the, emptiness and narrowness of the existing conception of woman's emancipation and its tragic effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work she speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: The genius, Eleanora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sanja Kovalevskaja; the artist and poet nature, Marie Bashkirzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women of such extraordinary mentality, runs a marked trail of unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete and beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate, who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, comrade and strong individuality who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

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

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For over one hundred years, the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till death us do part" has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her of complete submission to his whims and commands and the absolute dependence upon his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proven that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of man's servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women prefer marriage with all its deficiencies to the narrowness of an unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The cause for such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth, such as ethical and social conventions, were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along beautifully in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers.

These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt or relative of any sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against, their breasts demanding to be satisfied.

The French novelist, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, "New Beauty," attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very clearly and wisely of how to feed infants, she is kind and administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the future and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and the doing away of rugs and, hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The young man who, at their first meeting was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her, and, recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young and she is kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by her spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing, beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan, and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by a father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restriction it is not love, but a transaction that never fail to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me heathen, merely fit for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, equal civil rights, are all very good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained its true liberation from its masters through its, own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is therefore far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for various equal rights in every vocation in life is just and fair, but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed if the partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonomous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.

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

TRY LOVE

By GRACE POTTER

N the human heart it lies. The key to happiness. Men call the key love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they, laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door for very bliss and waiting. just outside they laugh and play and blow wild kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their youth found happiness in just that way, is gathered round to see it found again.

When at last the man and maid unlock the door and go in joy to find their happiness, the men and women who have been watching them bury their faces in their hands and weep. Why do they weep? Because they are thinking that soon other doors in life will be met by this man and maid and that there will be no keys to unlock them. They, themselves, could find no key.

They never thought of trying the key of love in all the doors of life. Long, and wearily, eyes searching wide, hands eagerly groping, they have spent their time trying to find other keys. They have looked for and found knowledge. And tried that. Looked for and found fame. And tried that. Looked for and found wealth. And tried that. Looked for and found many, many other keys. And tried them all. And when at last they have lain down on their deathbeds, they have turned gray hopeless faces to the world and died saying, "We could not find the right key."

Some few, some very few, there are, who try the key of love in all life's doors. Radiant, they turn to the men and women about and cry, "Try love! It unlocks all other doors as surely as it does the first in life. Try love!"

And though their fellow beings see that these are the only ones in all the world who find happiness, they turn doubting from them. "It cannot be," they say, "that the key we used in youth should be used again in all the other doors of life." And so they keep on trying the keys that every disappointed, dying man calls out in warning voice will fail.

Only a few there are who learn--a very few--that love unlocks all other doors in life as surely as it does the first. Try love!

Japan.--A new civilization. The land of a new culture! was the cry of every penny-a-liner at the time she began to display her battleships, cannon, and her accomplished method of drilling her soldiers. They were mocking themselves and did not know how. They talk of culture and civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported, are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now that Japan is a civilized country.

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT

By MAX BAGINSKI

HE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and institutions of the present social order.

On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie, in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mehanical: "In the name of the king," or his more hypocritical: "In the name of the people I pass sentence"; the soldier with his training for murder, and the priest with his: "Authority comes from God."

The exteriors of prisons, armories, and churches show that they are institutions in which the body and soul are subdued. He whose thoughts reach beyond this philosophy of the menagerie sees in them the strongest expression of the view, that it is not possible to make life worth living the more with the help of reason, love, justice, solidarity. The family and school take care to prepare man for these institutions. They deliver him up to the state, so to speak, blindfolded and with fettered limbs. Force, force. It echoes through all history. The first law which subjected man to man was based upon force. The private right of the individual to land was built up by force; force took way the claims upon homesteads from the majority and made them unsettled and transitory. It was force that spoke to mankind thus: "Come to me, humble yourself before me, serve me, bring the treasures and riches of the earth under MY roof. You are destined by Providence to always be in want. You shall be allowed just enough to maintain strength with which to enrich me infinitely by your exertions and to load me down with superfluity and luxury."

What maintains the material and intellectual slavery of the masses and the insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional part of the values which they produce? It is force.

What is it that makes the brain-worker just as dependent in the intellectual realm as the artisan in the material world? Force. The artist and the writer being compelled to gain a livelihood dare not dream of giving the best of their individuality. No, they must scan the market in order to find out what is demanded just then. Not any different than the dealer in clothes -who must study the style of the season before he places 'his merchandise before the public. Thus art and literature sink to the level of bad taste and speculation. The artistic individuality shrinks before the calculating reckoner. Not that which moves the artist or the writer most receives expression; the vacillating demands of mediocrity of every-day people must be satisfied. The artist becomes the helper of the dealer and the average men, who trot along in the tracks of dull habit.

The State Socialists love to assert that at present we live in the age of individualism; the truth, however, is that individuality was never valued at so low a rate as to-day. Individual thinking and feeling are incumbrances and not recommendations on the paths of life. Wherever they are found on the market they meet with the word "adaptation." Adapt yourself to the demands of the reigning social powers, act the odedient servant before them, and if you produce something be sure that it does not run against the grain of your "superiors," or say adieu to success, reputation and recompense. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, prejudices which they hold as righteousness and falsehoods which they hold as truths. Paint the whole, crown it with regard for good manners, for society does not like to hear the truth about itself. Praise the men in power as fathers of the people, have the devourers of the commonwealth parade along as benefactors of mankind.

Of course, the force which humbles humanity in this manner is far from openly declaring itself as force. It is masked, and in the course of time it has learned to step forward wit the least possible noise. That diminishes the danger of being recognized.

The modern republic is a good example. In it tyranny is veiled so correctly, that there are really great numbers of people who are deceived by this masquerade and who maintain that what they perceive is a true face with honest eyes.

No czar, no king. But right in line with these are the landowners, the merchants, manufacturers, landlords, monopolists. They all are in possession, which is as strong a guarantee for the continuance of their power, as a castle surrounded by thick walls. Whoever possesses can rob him who possesses nothing of his independence. If I am dependent for a living on work, for which I need contrivances and machines, which I myself cannot procure, because I am without means, I must sacrifice my independence to him who possesses these contrivances and machines. You may work here, he will tell me, but only under the condition that you will deliver up the products of your labor to me, that I may trade with and make profit on them.

The one without possessions has no choice. He may appeal to the declaration of human rights; he may point to his political rights, the equality before the law, before God and the archangels--if he wants to eat, drink, dress and have a home he must choose such work as the conditions of the industrial mercantile or agricultural plants impose upon him.

Through organized opposition the workingmen can somewhat improve this condition; by the help of trade unions they can regulate the hours of work and hinder the reduction of wages to a level too low for mere living. The trade unions are a necessity for the workingmen, a bulwark against which the most unbearable demands of the class of possesors rebound; but a complete freeing of labor--be it of an intellectual or of a physical nature--can be brought about only through the abolition of wage work and the right of private ownership of land and the sources of maintenance and nourishment of mankind. There are heart-rendering cries over the blasphemous opinion that property is not as holy a thing as its possessors would like to make it. They declare that possessions must not be less protected than human life, for they are necessary foundations of society. The case is represented as though everybody were highly interested in the maintenance of the right of private property, whereas conditions are such that non-possession is the normal condition of most people.

Because few possess everything, therefore the many possess nothing. So far as possession can be considered as an oppressive measure in the hands of a few, it is a monopoly. Set in a paradox it would read: The abolition of property will free the people from homelessness and non-possession. In fact, this will happen when the earth with its treasures shall cease to be an object of trade for usurers; when it shall vouchsafe to all a home and a livelihood. Then not only the bent bodies will straighten; the intellect free itself as might the bound Prometheus rid himself of his fetters and leave the rock to which he is chained, but we shall look back on the institutions of force, the state, the hangman, et al, as ghosts of an anxious fantasy.

In free unions the trades will organize themselves and will produce the means of livelihood. Things will not be produced for profit's sake, but for the sake of need. The profit-grabber has grown superfluous just as his patron, the state, which at present serves by means of its taxes and revenues, his anti-humanitarian purposes and hinders the reasonable consumption of goods. From the governing mania the foundation will be withdrawn; for those strata in society will be lacking which therefore had grown rich and fat by monopolizing the earth and its production. They alone needed legislatures to make laws against the disinherited. They needed courts of justice to condemn; they needed the police to carry out practically the terrible social injustice, the cause of which lay in their existence and manner of living. And now the political corruptionists are lacking who served the above-mentioned classes as helpers, and therefore had to be supported as smaller drones.

What a pleasant surprise! We see now that the production and distribution of means of livelihood are a much simpler matter without government than with government. And people now realize that the governments never promoted their welfare, but rather made it impossible, since with the help of force they only allowed the right of possession to the minority.

Life is really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a repugnant struggle for a mere existence.

Truth and beauty are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as Esau sold his primogeniture.

At last the individuality of man has struck a solid social foundation on which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the state and ownership--which is far-reaching--must take the direction of prescribed models that are acknowledged, and must not be directed against the continuance of the leisure classes.

Love will be free. Love's favor is a free granting, a giving and taking without speculation. No prostitution; for the economic and social power of one person over another exists no longer, and with the falling off of external oppression many an internal serfdom of feeling will be done away with, which often is only the reflex of hard external compulsion. Then the longing of large hearts may take tangible shape. Utopias are arrows aimed into the future, harbingers of a new reality.

Rabelais, in his description of life in the "Thelemite Abbey," wrote:

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed: 'Do What Thou Wilt.'

"Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable to the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us. By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, 'Let us drink,' they would all drink. If any one of them said, 'Let us play,' they all played. If one said, 'Let us go a walking into the fields,' they went all. If it were to go a hawking, or a hunting, the ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists either a sparhawk, or a laneret, or a marlin, and the young gallants car- the other kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six. several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there."

A few days ago the red ghost of revolution showed itself in the White House. The President saw it and threatened it with his boxing fists: "What are you looking for here, be off to Russia." "You are comical in your excitement," answered Revolution. "You must know, I am not only Russian, I am international, at home here as well as on the other side of the great water."

A Proposition.--Would it not be wiser to explain theories out of life and not life out of theories?

VIVE LE ROI

By Frances Maule Bjorkman

ye, vive le roi. The King is dead--

So move our lives from day to day.

The triumph of to-morrow's lord

Meets for our former chief's decay.

Then love and live and laugh and sing--

   The world is good and life is free--

There's not a single care I know

   That's worth a single tear from me.

What's love or fame or place or power?

   What's wealth when we shall come to die?

What matters anything on earth

   So long as only I am I?

The joy or grief or love or shame

   That holds its little hour of sway

Is only worth its destined time--

   What use to try to make it stay?

Aye, let it go. The monarch dead,

   A better king our shouts may hail

And if a worse--well, still be glad;

   He too will pass behind the vail.

They all must pass--fame, joy and love,

   The sting of grief, the blot of shame;

The only thing that really counts

   Is how we bear the praise or blame.

I'll take the good the while it lasts

   And when it goes I'll learn to sing,

All eager for the coming joy--

   "The king is dead, long live the king."

Reflections of A Rich Man

     If God were not in existence we would have to order one from the Professors of Theology.

     The fear, instilled in the majority of the poor, with the God, Devil, Heaven and Hell idea, is greater than their dread of a hundred thousand policemen. Had we not given God the place of Chief Gendarme of the Universe, we would need twice as many soldiers and police as we have to-day.

     A poor devil who owns but one million dollars said to me the other day: "I, in your place, would rather contribute money towards art and literature than to donate it to the Baptist Church." What an impracticable fellow! Art and literature, among the common people, only tends to cause mischief. They are to remain our privilege. We know the demands of good taste and we can afford to pay for the aesthetic pleasures of life. The majority is unable to do that; besides, to teach them the beauty of art only means to make them discontented and rebellious against our authority.

     I frankly admit I never had a great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth. A man of disordered circumstances arouses my disgust. Jesus was neither engaged in any kind of a business, nor did he possess as much as a bank account, nor even a steady home. He preached to the poor. What for? The poor should work and not philosophize. The Scriptures tell nowhere that Jesus returned the mule, upon which he made his entry into Jerusalem, to the owner, or that he paid him for it. I strongly suspect he did not do it. One thing is certain, I never would have taken this dreamer of the abolition of profits as my business partner.

     It was very hot yesterday. I walked through my park, intending to betake myself to my favorite place for rest and reverie. Suddenly I stood still, arrested by the sight of a man lying under a tree. In my park? And how the fellow looked! In rags and dirty! I have been told I was kind-hearted, and I realized this myself at the moment. I walked over to the man and inquired interestedly: "Are you ill?" He grunted in reply. The wretch must have thought, in his sleep, that I was one of his kind. My generosity did not cease. "If you need money, do not feel shy about telling me. How much do you need. I am the rich X Y Z, who has a fabulous fortune, as you have undoubtedly heard." At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side, with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: "What I want? I want to sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two hours?" Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I fear our charitable efforts in their behalf will accomplish little.

     Eleven million, nine hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-six dollars and fifty-eight cents is what the gallant Gen. Bingham asks us for protecting us from each other for the ensuing year. With a population of four million and 4.50 members to a family, we pay a fraction less than $3 per head, and about $13.50 for a family, a year for police protection in this enlightened Christian (750,000 of us are Jews, but ours is a Christian city) city of ours, I'd give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no higher ambition than to love my fellow-man--and woman, and mind my own business: but his reply has invariably been, "I'm Dr. Tarr, and my system prevails in this lunatic asylum!" I recognize the logic of his argument all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful for the privilege of grumbling a little now and again.

COMSTOCKERY

By John R. Corvell

BE it understood that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the least comprehending the spirit of his lofty conception.

The man Comstock, who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it.

It may be said, too, in dismissing him, that it is of no consequence whether the very unpleasant stories current concerning him are true or not. It is altogether probable that a man who stands for what he does and who glories in proclaiming the things he does, will also do things for which he does not stand and which he does not proclaim. That is a characteristic of most of us and only proves that, after all, he is not less than human.

The only point that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the abhorrence and the contempt of his fellows.

Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to regulate the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it would be absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals are only the observances which the conditions of life impose upon a people; and an act depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to those conditions. As, for example, horse-stealing in a closely settled community, which has its railroads and other means of communication, is a crime to be punished by a brief period of imprisonment; while in the sparsely settled sections of a country, where the horse is an imperative necessity of life, its theft becomes a hanging matter, whatever the written law for that section of the country may be as to the punishment of the crime. And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality. In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves.

What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential immorality -using that word in its conventional sense -having its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the character of the simulator.

Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first Anglo-Saxon whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on this soil; certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower, and was soon blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out such a fragrance that the peculiar odor of it has become a characteristic of this land of liberty.

When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene books and pictures which were being freely circulated among the children of the land, boarding-schools, whether for girls or boys, being fairly flooded with the pernicious literature. The work of confiscation, suppression and of imprisonment was done thoroughly and conscientiously, so that in the course of a comparatively short time it was difficult to find books or pictures of the kind in question. It is said that the effectiveness of the work done is best shown by the one or more libraries of obscene books which the society, or some of its officers, have collected.

The value of the work done and the efficiency of the workers were recognized in the passage from time to time of laws giving extraordinary powers not alone to the popularly so-called "Comstock Society," but to officers of the government. A perfect fury of purity took possession of our legislators; they were determined to stamp out impurity. And perhaps they were establishing reputations for themselves. It is recorded that in the days of the Inquisition men established their orthodoxy by the loudness of their cries against heresy; that in the times of the French Revolution, men proved their patriotism by making charges of treason against their neighbors; that practicing polygamists have purified themselves by hounding a theoretical polygamist out of their legislative body. Anyhow, the laws were passed, the thing was done.

And what was the thing that was done? A moral Inquisition had been established. Arguing from a wrong premise a hideous conclusion had been reached. It was voiced only a few weeks ago by an official of the postoffice in Chicago, when confiscating a publication. He said in substance, if not literally: "Any discussion of sex is obscene."

There it is in a few words -a complete and perfect treatise on Comstockery! In the early days in some parts of New England, a man might not kiss his wife on a Sunday. On common days, the filthy act was permissible, but the Sabbath must not be so defiled. And now, any discussion of sex is obscenity!

Pause a while and consider what this means and whither it will lead, where it has already lead. Discussion of sex is obscene; then sex, itself, must be obscene; life and all that pertains to it must be filthy. That is, providing it be the life of Man. The sex of flowers may be discussed frankly and freely either for the pleasure of knowledge, or in order to use knowledge for the purpose of improving the flower. The sex of animals may be discussed; it is discussed in government publications and in the many farm journals published throughout the country, because it is necessary to improve the breed of our domestic animals, because these animals are valuable. But discussion of the sex of man is obscene!

There have been some changes in public sentiment, some changes, perhaps, in the grey matter on the judicial bench, since the early days in New York when Comstockery was most rampant; for what was tolerated then is not tolerated now; some things that were judicially wrong then are judicially right now. And in this change there is hope and the promise of greater change.

In those early days a confectioner on Fulton street sought to attract customers by exhibiting in his window a painting by a great artist. If memory serves, it was "The Triumph of Charles V," by Hans Makart. Figures of nude females were in the picture, and Comstockery established in its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and -not ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not even to be solved by the theory of change in public sentiment; for it is only a few months ago that the art censor in chief of Comstockery saw in the window of an art dealer on Fifth Avenue a landscape in which figured several nude children discreetly wandering away from the beholder. The picture was ordered out of the window forthwith. And went. A few blocks below, on Broadway, there were then and are now exhibited in a window, numerous photographs of nude children, not all of them discreet as to way of their going. Why? Has the art censor decided that the photographs are innocuous, or that they are art?

But these instances and the amazing expeditions made by the censor into the realm of literature are hardly more than ludicrous; and they can and will correct themselves. But the frightful results of Comstockery, as applied to life and to real purity, cannot be so lightly passed over. And let it not be forgotten that an indictment of Comstockery is an indictment or ourselves, for the prurient, hypocritical, degrading thing can exist not one instant after we have declared that it shall perish.

It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of society. It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert impurity into a basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has legislated knowledge into a crime, and it seeks its perpetuation in the degradation of an enfeebled human race. And that these are not over-statements can easily be established to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind.

The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said, all is said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that physician would be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and powder and permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows, unwarned even of the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his life. Nay, worse! What if the physician should have himself clothed with plenary powers and should compel the poor wretch to refrain from making his case known after he had discovered is nature? But this is precisely what Comstockery does.

The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate the disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything possible was done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was done to prevent anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew anything about it, from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was ignorance; ignorance of self, of life, of sex. And not only does Comstockery strive to perpetuate ignorance, not only does it glorify ignorance and miscall it innocence, not only does it elevate it into a virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a crime. The offence of the book it had eliminated was not its vicious misinformation, but its use of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that any discussion of sex is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man of over seventy years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged woman physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of themselves.

It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it better be called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the standing that it once had. When it was made generally known that a postoffice official had said that any discussion of sex was obscene, there followed such a rattling fire of reprobation and condemnation even from many startled conventionalists, who could support the thing but could not look it in the face, that themaker of the now historic phrase was moved to deny that he had said it officially. In fact, there are many signs, most of them still small, on the distant horizon, it is true, which indicate that we are becoming alive to the fact that it is imperative that sex should be discussed.

This is an age of radical ideas. Radicalism in politics, in religion, in ethics, is ripe; which is only another way of saying that we are beginning to dare to think. Probably the most apparent, if not the most significant, sign of the general radicalism, is the tendency to exalt the science of life to an even higher plane than that which it occupied in the days of Hellenic supremecy. We are beginning to understand that right living is a purely physical matter, and that morals are only laws of health; and if there are yet but few who dare take so radical a view of morals as that, still there are quite as few who will not admit freely that nothing can be immoral which is beneficial to the human body.

Of course, it is unthinkable, even from the point of view of the most conventional of orthodox Christians, that there can be any immorality in sex, for sex in itself is absolutely a work of the deity, hence of the highest morality, if it can have any such attribute at all. As well might one give digestion a moral quality. Morality is surely a matter or personal conduct. One may say that it is immoral to eat so much as to injure one's health, but it is not a matter of record that any considerable body of persons declares the stomach to be an immoral organ, or the digestive function to be an immoral one, or any discussion of digestion immoral. Then why sex or sex functions?

It is true that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for the "limbs" of a female; and it does a variety of other absurd things, all going to show that in some singular fashion it has confounded acts with things; as one might call all knives immoral because a few knives had been used to do murder with.

By what extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which was a virtue, knowledge of which a crime. And then, under those conditions, if a person, possessed of a little knowledge such as might have crept stealthily down the ages, were in a fine humanitarian spirit to dare to publish some of the things he knew in order to help dyspeptic humanity, he would have been robbed of his worldly goods and clapped forthwith into jail. Fancy that under such circumstances a man who had lived his three score and ten years and had learned something from his own suffering and experience, something from the secretly imparted information of others, might not say a word to help his fellows. Is it not too absurd to contemplate without both tears and laughter that that man who should plead with his fellow men to abstain from habitually living on butter cakes and coffee, should be charged with obscenity and imprisoned in consequence? And imagine some sapient postoffice official solemnly declaring that any discussion of digestion is obscene. Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats! Consider, too, trying to cure indigestion and to suppress the orgies of our children in pies, crullers, fritters and butter cakes by the na&i;ve device of forbidding all knowledge of the digestive function and making the utterance of the name of a digestive organ an obsecenity punishable by fine and imprisonment!

Digestion is a matter to be considered in the light of hygiene. So is sex. Digestion is not in itself either moral or immoral. Neither is sex. But there is the most hideous immorality in the ascription of obscenity to sex, sex function or any phase of sex life. And this is the crime of Comstockery. It has reared an awful idol to which have been sacrificed the best of our youth; with hypocrisy the high-priest, ignorance the creed, and pruriency the detective.

Comstockery strikes at the very root of life. It forbids that we shall know how to live our best; it forbids that we shall know how to save our children from the perils we have so discreditably passed through; it raises barriers of false modesty between parents and children by branding the very science of life an obscenity. Owing to the shocking suggestions of Comstockery all that relate to life is degraded into the gutter; and that which would be pure and sweet and wholesome in the home or in the school, becomes filthy Comstockery on the snickering lips of ignorant playfellows.

The wonder is that we have endured the nasty thing for so long a time. We have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our school-mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are entitled by very reason of living, but, more than all, because of our need to live right. We all know the hideous untruths we were told because of Comstockery; we all know how much we had to unlearn, and how great the suffering mentally, how great the deterioration physically in the unlearning; we all know our unfitness for parentage at the time we entered it; every man knows how the brothels kept open doors and beckoning inmates by the thousand for his undoing. And yet we endure it -Comstockery.

It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in wherever it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it touches. Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see it, but such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but to cover our nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but only in man. You may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked human being. The summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in New York, and a poor wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on the top floor of a crowded tenement was half crazed by the heat and the lack of fresh air which there was absolutely none in the closet in which he was trying to sleep. He ran down into the street nude at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of finding a surcease of his distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.

Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health; or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children.

The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes, at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex, should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the the select company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.

Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live well ourselves and fit us to bring into the world such children as will amaze us with their health of body and purity of mind. No alteration of the facts of life is necessary, but only a change of attitude. Why, when Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was gravely debated whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It was assumed that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand? Why any one part of the body more than another? Comstockery! Comstockery!

DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET

In Peter Kropotkin's Book: "Russian Literature" (published by McClure, Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from Turgenieff's works, which shows the Russian poet's genius and psychological insight in all its wonderful depth. Here it is:

"Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life itself he values only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the ideal, for the promotion of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for his brothers, for opposing the forces hostile to mankind: the witches, the giants--that is, the oppressors.... Therefore he is fearless, patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food, the poorest cloth: he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is great and daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is an egotist; but to believe in one' self--even an egotist cannot do that: we can believe only in something which is outside us and above us. . . . As he has doubts of everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself; his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force wherefrom results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated - undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from his oppressor falls twice as heavy upon the head of the innocent himself? . . . What does it matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills? . . . Nothing of the sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills, he does not believe in giants . . . but he would not have attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism. . . . But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, bow to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? Here it is that the oftennoticed tragical aspect of human life comes in: for action we require will, and for action we require thought; but thought and will have parted from each other, and separate every day more and more...

"And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought...."

ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON

By Edwin Bjorkman

THE air was still and full of a gray meloncholy light, yet the waters of the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The billows rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness of fear. When they sank back again, they were black -black as despair that knows of no hope.

Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they touched the sullen, colorless cloudbanks overhead. Their sides were seamed with numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the other, from the river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving along those paths; they swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I could not see whence they were coming nor whither they were going. All were pushing and jostling and scratching and howling and fighting. Every one's object seemed to be to raise himself to the path above his own and to preven all others from doing the same.

Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down, shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while its surface of heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river near by, and a man would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the paths above. Then each face would be turned toward him for a breathless moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before.

The crush on paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails, distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above. Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising of falling, they all pushed onward, onward -from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years -always the same wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost unto bursting.

"Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all, turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment.

"Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing into my face, laughing like demons rather than men.

My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.

"Why?"

As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked, bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment of consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing, bell-like voice that came from within myself. That last word was:

"Why?"

The British Elections and the Labor Parties

By H. KELLY

e are a left-center country; we live by compromise."

The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to the truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of political economy, Adam Smith--for Scotland is included in our generalization--Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which in the forties stood almost at the head of the Socialist movement in Europe, which has been the scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's congresses and has furnished a refuge for so many distinguished exiles, it is passing strange, to say the least, that up to the present no one has been elected to Parliament on a purely Socialist platform; this notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of forty-three labor members elected nineteen are members of the Independent Labor Party and one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was elected to Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union record and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a Radical, and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated. In 1900 he was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical mining district in Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and undoubtedly received a large number of votes on the ground of having been a miner once himself. R. B. Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest Socialist who has yet sat in the British Parliament, was elected as a Radical, announcing himself a Socialist some time after his election.

The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch, editor of "Justice," the official organ of that party, for more than a decade, and Geo. Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most respected members, refused to compromise in the recent election, and paid the inevitable penalty. Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is a man of exceptional ability, has devoted himself for twenty-five years to the Socialist and labor movement, was endorsed by all the labor bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip Stanhope, recently created a lord and one of the ablest Liberal politicians in the country, did him the honor of declining to stand against him. Still he was defeated-while politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected on a labor platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a "Labor Platform!" Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid members, one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but not Socialism and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit another and leaving untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real Socialism, the right of labor to the fruits of its toil.

Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive from the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly forced the gilded doors of the "Mother of Parliaments" and about which the guilty middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H. Broadhurst, W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but nominal labor men not having worked at their various trades for years and are middle class by training and income, that others like Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John Ward and many more are at best labor politicians so steeped in political bargaining and compromising that the net results to labor from them will be very small indeed. It is not necessary nor would it be just to question the honesty or well-meaning of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove that a distinct disappointment. awaits those who elected them. Past history foretells the future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the Dock Strike, who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming in a few short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the "hero of Featherstone," H. H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot down in real American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo Imperialists--and the end is not yet. There are our other friends (?). H. Broadhurst, special favorite of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner, who so endeared himself to the coal operators of Wales in his capacity as official of the Miners' Union and Scale Committee that when his daughter was married several years ago she received a cheque for £100 from one of the aforesaid operators, and others whom space forbids in mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor parties now in the House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent stretch of imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed masses. An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of inherent good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and the Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the forces which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the agitation which preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing desire on the part of the workers for a larger share of the product of their toil and a part in the management of industry that we see hope. The form that movement has taken or the beneficial results from the efforts of the elected are details. It is scarcely five years since the Labor Representation Committee sprang into existence, and it says much for the solidarity of labor that over a million trade unionists, thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party and eight hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so short a time.

For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action and will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of thought and used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a rigid account of the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his suffrage. When the disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real progress may come. The process of disillusionment does not come with geometrical precision. To some it comes over night, to others it is a process of years, and to some it is denied altogether. For years the Anarchists have been scoffed at as impossible dreamers for advocating the General Strike as the only effective means of overthrowing the present system. The glorious fight of the Russian people for freedom has changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening the German Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw the franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the shape of the unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although temporarily allayed by the elections, it will blossom forth again.

If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to take the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought in. The Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish Archbishops and attacking secular education, will be amended and not repealed. The endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass, Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of modern pirates.

They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the superstitions of the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in what Christians call "the eternal righteousness of their cause," they meet the future with smiling face; and far from being downcast over the turn of events in Great Britain, see hope in the formation of the Labor Parties.

AND YOU?

BOLTON HALL

"What would you do," asked the Idealist, "if you

were Czar of Russia?"

"I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is

fundamental," said the Reformer, "and then resign.

What would you do?"

"I would first resign, and then teach the people to

abolish monopoly of land, the same as now," answered

the Idealist. "But what would you do, Teacher?"

"I would teach the people from the throne that they

were oppressed by their system of monopoly--and by

their Czar."

NATIONAL ATAVISM

By Internationalist

THE Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities in America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population.

The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised land, the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they long for themoment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish state, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic peace.

Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious conception that "the world is my country" to the conception of exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial.

The Zionism of Max Noreau and his followers never was more than a sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism and Revolution; and this at a moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity. Nothing could be more injurious to the Russian revolution, nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present nationalistic agitation.

The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and superstition.

From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical nationalistic elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question: Will it give us our own territory where we can surround ourselves with walls and watch-towers? Yes, the very people, who once spoke with a divine fire of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, and that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further.

These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality than logic.

The Poles have their own territory; still this fact does not hinder Russia from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children; neither does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And of what avail is native territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian; Turkish and Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition. Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on them, have proven what little protection their territorial independence has given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks, pillage and attempts at annexation. Nothing is left them but to bow before the superior powers, or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might, in a measure, temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold, but never end in a complete overthrow of the powerful enemy.

Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider what circumstances have made this possible.

It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of European powers, who consider her a foreign detective bureau which watches over, annoys and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements.

Italian, Russian and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy, as when they can render constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier, where they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes. A very enticing national independence, is it not?

Is it possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar conditions? Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases and who would rather follow the broad path of Internationalism, are accused of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish race. Rather it is far more likely that those who stand for the establishment of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment.

Especially the radicals among the Nationalists seem to be altogether lost in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label "nationalist" because it stands for so much retrogression for so many memories of hatred, of savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name. And who does not wish to appear advanced and modern? Therefore the name of Nationalist is rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the same thing. True, the territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized Jewish state; they aim for a free commune. But, if it is certain that small states are subordinated to great powers and merely endured by them, it is still more certain that free communes within powerful states, built on coercion and land robbery, have even less chance for a free existence. Such cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social revolution?

If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life of all peoples is never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism, national vanities; everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth and supremacy.

Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the various ranks within the Jewish race?

It is not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic agitation. The social and economic motives for concerted action or separation are of far more vital influence than the national.

The feeling of solidarity of the working-people is bound to prove stronger than the nationalistic glue. As to the remainder of the adherents of the nationalistic movement, they are recruited from the ranks of the middle Jewish class.

The Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian or Mohammedan banker than to his Jewish factory worker, or tenement house dweller. Equally so will the Jewish workingman, conscious of the revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power, find his brother in a fellow worker, and not in a Jewish banker.

True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold: he is exploited, oppressed and robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon, because he is a Jew; but he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the maintainance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination, and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind, as the Christian employer and owner of wealth.

The Jewish population of the East side has little in common with the dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the workingmen of other nationalities of the country -he has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building of a Jewish commonwealth?

Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace and well-being to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature and not of a nationalistic one. The former brightens and widens the horizon, the latter stupefies the reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision was far beyond the Liliputian sphere of Nationalism. Only that which contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy with the seal of the government attached thereto is bound to fall flat and to be insignificant.

It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and victory, with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires. In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees, by Maeterlink, the music of Wagner, Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanore Duse.

I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of the Jewish people; and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized world within a few years. But it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian Church, and not the Russian people, that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews.

Jewish, Socialists and Anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of the Nationalists and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people and have even blamed the Revolutionists for them, whereas it is an undisputed fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by the ruling clique, in the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said, "we have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed, let the Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them."

Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish brethren were to say, "Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated and killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union with the intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people for the overthrow of the abominable tyranny; and when we have accomplished that let us co-operate in the great work of building a social structure upon which neither the nation nor the race but Humanity can live and grow in beauty."

Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment with the demand for another form of national sentiment means only to lay the foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish Nationalists ever to materialize, the world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by another.

In one respect the Jews are really a "chosen people." Not chosen by the grace of God, nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people, as well as with the Jews, merely prove national narrowness. They are "chosen" by a necessity, which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews; they have grown big in their endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul.

Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind.

Owing to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True, they have not their own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race. That is certainly a greater, nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty nationality.

It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as Gentiles; and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the birth of the new era-mankind clasped in universal brotherhood.

Mine Owners' Revenge

By M.B.

Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G. A. Pettibone, former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th.

They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-Governor of Idaho, Mr. Steunenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple Creek and Haines, Oregon.

The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to kill the Miners' Union. This accord and harmony is so apparent that thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of the mine owners against the miners

Requisition papers and a special train in seem to have been prepared in advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone a few moments sufficed to close the whole proceedings.

Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible-that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no such hope.

The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners consists largely of one individual, who is supposed to have known and witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the District Attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused. An expert perjurer, it seems.

The Governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not know that it has ever been the mission of the Supreme Being to serve as Impresario to Falsehood and Wretchedness?

The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results, The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, á la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake? Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy, ere America becomes thoroughly Russified?

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Mother Earth Vol 1 N4

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Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature

Published Every 15th of the Month

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box 217, Madison SQ Station, New York, N.Y.

Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N.Y.,

under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Vol.1 June, 1906, No. 4

MRS. GRUNDY.

By Viroqua Daniels.

Her will is law. She holds despotic sway.

Her wont has been to show the narrow way

Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave,

From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave.

"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands.

The high, the low, in great or little lands.

She folds us all within her ample gown.

A forward act is met with angry frown.

The lisping babes are taught her local speech;

Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech.

They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,-

In everything the little tots obey.

The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims.

They play her games. They sing her holy hymns.

They question not; accept both truth and fiction,

(The OLD is right, within her jurisdiction!).

Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow.

She with contempt or ridicule may cow.

They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate,

At variance with the programs on her slate.

Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown,

Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone.

With great ado, they publicly conform-

Vain, cowards, vain; revolt MUST raise a storm!

The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight,

Attempt to live as they consider "right."

Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere

The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"

In tyranny the Mistress is supreme.

"Obedience," that is her endless theme.

Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen,

Her aid is sought by bosses over men.

Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised.

From Ignorance, her bulky body body's sized.

When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury.

But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury.

Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe

To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know,

So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing.

Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring.

A GREETING.

By Alexander Berkman.

Dear Friends:-

I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of four teen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;-'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx-and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't-but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians.

It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning-my first breath of freedom in fourteen years-it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly. "Welcome Home!" It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.

I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I was retired from the world-that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century-at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that, is different now-I thought as I left the prison-for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother wouldn't know it again." And that -thought made me doubly happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in, the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellowmen.

Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils-automobiles you call them-and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads-talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps-and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any -ground at all.

These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face only. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings,. down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dias of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.

With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning, into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet. . . .

No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real. improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rationel, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization.

But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization?

Simply this:-a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie-the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams und unnameable able crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book, of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstitiion, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mighter and greater nation of the ancient world.

It is because of these thing that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways.

And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that nobelest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to be new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood.

HENRIK IBSEN

M.B.

I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his sould would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life.

[missing pages 7-14]

THE ANTICHRIST.

From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Title, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York.

I make war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has thenlogical blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight-of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the false mode of seeing,-he demands that no other mode of perspective be longer of sacrosanct any value, after he has made his own with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly subterranean form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, must needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the judgment of value is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."

Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the methods. All methods, all presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men-he passed for an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala . . . We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us-their concept of that which truth ought to be, which the service of truth ought to be: every thou shalt" has been hitherto directed against us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent mistrustful mode all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible. -In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a picturesque effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our modesty was longest against the taste of mankind . . . Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God---.

The Christian concept of God-God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit-is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal yea, In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!

That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have. got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of decadence. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts-they have created no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an ultimatum and maximum of the God-shaping force, of the creator spiritus in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotone-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all decadence instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction!

Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible-the story of God's mortal terror of science? It has not been understood. This priest-book par excellence begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great danger.-

The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man-man is entertaining . . . But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The first mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining-he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"-God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium-but of other things also! Woman was the second mistake of God.-"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"-every priest knows that: "from woman comes all the mischief in the world"-every priest knows that likewise. Consequently, science also comes from her . . . Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.-What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his greatest mistake, he had created a rival, science makes godlike; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!-Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself-it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alone is morality.-"Thou shalt not know;"-the rest follows therefrom.-By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one defend one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,-thoughts are bad thoughts . . Man shall not think-and the "priest in himself'; contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all sickness,-nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not permit man to think, . . . And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,-what to do!The old God contrives war, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war . . . ).

War, among other things, a great disturber of science!-Incredible! Knowledge, the emancipation from the priest, augments even in spite of wars.-And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,-- there is no help for it, he must be drowned!"

--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the entire psychology of the priest.-The priest knows only one great danger: that is science, -the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,-one must have superfluous time, one must have superfluous intellect in order to "perceive" . . . Consequently man must be made unfortunate,-this has at all times been the logic of the priest. -One makes out what has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:-"sin" . . . The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised in opposition to science, -in opposition to a severance of man from the priest . . . Man is not to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is not to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to suffer . . . And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. A Saviour is needed.-The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"- lies through and through, and without any psychological reality-have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!-And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conseptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed-the greatest crime against mankind has been committed. Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation par excellence, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest rules by the invention of sin.

I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To do away with any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it created states of distress in order to perpetuate itself eternally . . . The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state, of distress! ...-"Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity! -Parasitism as the sole praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,-against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself . . .

This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,-I have letters for making even the blind see . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is, sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean,-I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!

BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.

By PETER KROPOTKIN.

IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father-a practical gardener-in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches-it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to be come later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry."

It may be objected that nevertheless There is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars-the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry-and of science as well, as I am about to prove-that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers-not men of science nor trained engineers-have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?

"At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers have invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions-those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine-not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings- who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for naive improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together-unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.

Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination, of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science-and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manuel production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being -accomplished in our miserably organized society. . .

The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections-the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical seetion. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge, of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences -so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated with their own hands , and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus-all for the trade-and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers-workers with university education -highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted-according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston-in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch-the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.

In America the same system has - been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual TrainingSchool, and later on in the Boston Technical School the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops-but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and vice versa, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys work with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room, Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.

The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school. 1 It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment-not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments-has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skiled laborer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.

It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not took at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the Kindergarten--German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand-has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know I-low to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the "lower classes only." They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.

    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a clay would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work-if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age-say of forty or more-ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.

Footnote

1. What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good institutions of the early part of his reign.

Go to Volume 1, Number 5

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Mother Earth Vol 1 N5

Emma Goldman, Publisher

P.O. Box Madison SQ Station, N.Y. City

Vol.1 JULY, 1906 No. 5

CONTENTS

  PAGE Light!       ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 1 Observations and Comments 2 The Revolution in Russia       PETER KROPOTKIN 5 The Law of the "Survival of the Fittest"       EMMA LEE 11 The Enobling Influence of Sorrow       OSCAR WILDE 12 Anti-Militarian Documents 19 The Skeleton       EMMA CLAUSEN 23 At Night 24 That Holy Law 26 Aim and Tactics of the Trades-Union Movement           MAX BAGINSKI 27 The Reporter       IVAN TURGENVEFF 32 If They Couldn't Grow Flowers       GRACE POTTER 33 The Confiscated Picture 34 The Revolutionary Spirit in French Literature           ALVAN F. SANBORN 38 In the Treadmill       M. B. 57

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LIGHT!

BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

(From Songs Before Sunrise.)

Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder

All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind

Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,

And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;

There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder

Nor are the links not malleable that wind

Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;

The hands are mighty were the head not blind

    Priest is the staff of king,

    And chains and clouds one thing,

And fettered flesh, with devastated mind

    Open thy soul to see,

    Slave! and thy feet are free;

Thy bonds and thy belief are one in kind,

And of thy fears thine irons wrought

Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own

      thought.

closed a few unpleasant features of the stockyards which really cannot be easily avoided in such a tremendous industry, but which will eventually be remedied.

    People of this and other countries, you may now buy the stockyard products in good faith! The wisdom of paternal government stands sponsor for them.

    In this way the good reputation of our national industry and commerce will be rescued from obloquy. The people will continue to be fed on carcasses and Government will again have proved itself the faithful agent and patron saint of Capitalism.

    Too much common sense in this country! Common sense may suffice to discredit the story that the universe was created in six days or the legend of the Virgin Mary and the Child. Equally so may common sense be a necessary adjunct of horse-traders. But common sense is never sufficient to pave the way for great, liberating ideas. To accomplish the latter one must bear in mind the words of the father of Saint Simon. Every morning, when awakening his son, he greeted him with the following words, "Remember, my son, one must have enthusiasm to carry out great deeds."

    Several years ago the Italian king lamented the fact that his is a very dangerous profession. The same plaint was uttered by the Spanish king during the recent excitement in Madrid. The poor young man seems to eternally see the terrible bombs flying about his long kingly ears. Why will these reigning gentlemen not withdraw from their dangerous profession? Their parasite existence is as useless as it is injurious; it is neither necessary nor beneficial; it is a burden and a curse to humanity.

    They really should welcome every bomb-thrower as an Omen that their divine right has reached an end.

AUTHORITY.

BY SAMUEL BUTLER

Authority intoxicates,

And makes mere sots of magistrates;

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men giddy, proud and vain:

By this the fool commands the wise,

The noble-with the base complies,

The sot assumes the rule of wit,

And cowards make the brave submit.

THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.

BY PETER KROPOTKIN

The Russian Revolution has lately entered into a new phase. Dark gloom hung about the country during the months of January to April. Now it is all bright hopes owing to the unexpected results of the Duma elections all turning in favor of the Radicals. But before speaking of the new hopes, let us cast a glance on that terrible gloomy period which the country has just lived through.

    In every revolution a number of local uprisings is always required to prepare the great successful effort of the people. So it has been in Russia. We have had the local uprisings at Moscow, in the Baltic provinces, in the Caucasus and in the villages of Central Russia. And each of these uprisings, remaining local, was followed by a terrible repression.

    The General Strike, declared at Moscow in January last, did not succeed. The working men had suffered too much during the great General Strike in October, 1905, and the partial strikes which followed . And when the provocations of the Government compelled the Moscow workingmen to strike, the movement did not generalize. Only a few factories on the Presnya and a few railway lines joined it. The Grand Trunk--Moscow to St. Petersburg--continued to work, and troops were brought on it to Moscow.

    As to the troops stationed at Moscow itself they showed signs of deep discontent, and probably would have sided with the people if the strike had been general and a crowd of 300,000 workingmen had flooded the streets, as they did flood in October last. But when they saw that the General Strike had failed they obeyed their commanders.

    And yet the week during which a handful of armed revolutionists--less than 2,000--and the workers on strike in the Presnya fought against the artillery and the soldiers, and when several miles of barricades were built by the crowd--by the man and the boy in the street-- this week proved how wrong were all the "fire-side revolutionists" when they proclaimed the impossibility of street warfare in a revolution.

    As to the Letts and the Esthonians in the Baltic provinces, their uprising against their haughty and rapacious German landlords was a great movement. All over a large country the peasants and the artisans of the small towns rose up. They nominated their own municipalities, they sent away the German judges, refused to work for the landlords, paid no rents,--proceeded in short as if they were free. And if their uprising was finally drowned in blood, it has shown at least what the peasants must do all over Russia. In fact the latent insurrection continues still.

    The repression which followed the uprising was terrible. The British press has not told one-tenth of the atrocities which were committed by the imperial troops in the Baltic provinces, along the Moscow to Kazan railway line, in the Caucasus, in Siberia, or in the Russian villages. And when we tried to tell the truth about these atrocities, either in some widely read English review, or before large public meetings, we always felt the dead wall of some inexplicable opposition rising against us. The treaty or agreement which has been concluded a few days ago between the Governments of Great Britain and Russia explains now the cause of the opposition to the divulgation in this country of facts which were openly published in the Russian papers, in Russia itself.

    The repression was a story of a wholesale murder, accomplished by the troops systematically, in cold blood. Modern history knows only one similarly savage repression: the wholesale murders by the middle-class army at Paris after the defeat of the Commune, in May, 1871. And yet these murders were committed after a fierce fight, in the lurid light of burning Paris.

    The detachment of the guard which was sent along the Moscow-Kazan line had not one single shot fired against it. The revolutionists had already left the line and disbanded when that regiment came. But at every station Colonel Minn, head of this detachment, and his officers, shot from ten to thirty men, simply taking their names from lists supplied to the troops by the secret police. They shot them without any simulation of a trial, or even of identification. They shot them in batches, without any warning. Shot anyhow, from behind, into the heap. Colonel Minn shot them simply with his revolver.

    As to the peasants in the Baltic provinces it was still worse. Whole villages were flogged. Those men whom a local landlord would name as "dangerous" were shot on the spot, without any further inquiries--very often a son for his fattier, one brother for another, an Ivanovsky for an Ivanitsky. . . . It was such an orgy of flogging and killing that a young officer, having himself executed several men in this way, shot himself next day when he realized what he had done.

    In Siberia, in the Caucasus, the horrors were even more revolting. And in the villages of Russia, where the peasants had shown signs of unrest, the same executions went on, sometimes with an unimaginable cruelty, as was, for instance, the case in Tamboff, with that governor's aid, Luzhenovsky, whom the heroic girl Spiridonova killed. "When I came to the villages and saw the old men who had grown insane after having been tortured under the whips, and when I had spoken to the mother of the girl who had flung herself into the well after the Cossacks had violated her, I felt that life was impossible so long as that man, Luzhenovsky, would go on unpunished." Thus spoke this heroic girl on her trial.

    But worse than that was in store. All the world has shuddered when it learned the tortures to which Miss Spiridonova was submitted by the police officer Zhdanoff and the Cossack officer Abramoff after her arrest. The tortures of our Montjuich comrades and brothers fade before the sufferings which were inflicted upon this girl. And all over Russia there was lately a sigh of satisfaction when that Abramoff was killed and the revolutionist who killed that beast made his escape, and again the other day when it was known that the other beast, Zhdanoff, had met the same fate.

    The gloominess which prevailed in Russia when the Witte-Durnovo ministry had inaugurated the wholesale shooting of the rebels could not be described without quoting pages from the Russian newspapers. Over 70, 000 people were arrested; the prisons were full to overflowing. Batches of exiles began to be sent, as of old, by mere order of the Administration, to Siberia. The old exiles, returning under the amnesty of November 2, 1905, meeting on their way home the batches of the Witte-Durnovo exiles. The revolutionists of all sections of the Socialist party, Revolutionary Socialists, Anarchists, and even Social Democrats, took to revolver and bomb, and every day one could read in the Russian papers that one, two, or more functionaries of the Crown had been killed by the revolutionists in revenge for the atrocities they had committed. Scores of men and women, like Spiridonova, the sisters lzmailovitch, and so many other heroic women and young men, felt sick of life under such a system of Asiatic rule, and made the vow of taking revenge upon the executioners.

    It was under such conditions that the elections to the Duma took place. And now the few supporters of the Tsar had to discover that their satraps had overdone the oppression. Various measures were taken by the Government to manipulate the elections so as to have a crushing majority in their favor. The Liberal candidates were arrested, the meetings forbidden, the newspapers confiscated--every governor of a province acting as a Persian satrape on his own responsibility. Those who spoke or went about for the advanced candidates were most unceremoniously searched and sent to jail. . . . And all that was--labor lost!

    The reaction had developed within these three months such a bitter hatred against the Government that none but opposition candidates had any chance of being listened to and elected. "Are you against these wild beasts or for them?" This was the only question that was asked.

    And the Constitutional Democrats obtained a crushing majority in the Duma (pronounce Dooma), such a majority that the Russian Government is now perplexed as to what is to be done next.

    The Revolutionary Socialists and the Social Democrats abstained from taking any part in the elections, and therefore there are very few avowed Socialists in the Duma. But apart from that the Duma contains all those middle-class Radicals whose names have come to the front during the last thirty years as foes of autocracy.

    The most interesting element in the Duma are the peasants, who have nearly 120 representatives elected. With the exception of some thirty men, who are of unsettled opinion, the peasant representatives are absolutely and entirely with the most advanced Radicals in political matters, and with the Socialist workingmen in all the labor demands. But, in addition to that, they put forward the great question--the greatest of our century--the land question.

    "No one who does not till the land himself has any right to the land. Only those who work on it with their own hands, and every one of those who does so, must have access to the land. The land is the nation's property, and the nation must dispose of it according to its needs." This is their opinion--their faith, and no economists of any camp will shake it.

    "Eighty years ago we were settled in these prairies," one of those peasants said the other day. That land was a desert. "We have made the value of all this region; but half of it was taken by the landlords (in accordance with the law, of course; but we, peasants, do not admit that a law could be a law once it is unjust). It was taken by the landlords--we must have it back."

    "But if you take that land, and there are other villages in the neighborhood which have no land but their poor allotments, what then ?"

    "Then they have a right to it, just as we have. But not the landlords !"

    There is all the Social Question, all the Socialist wisdom, in these plain words.

    "If the peasants seize the land, then the factory hands will apply the same reasoning to the factories!" exclaim the terrified correspondents of the English papers in reporting such plain talk.

Yes, they will. Undoubtedly they will. They must. Because, if they don't do it all our civilization must go to wreck and ruin--like the Roman, the Greek, the Egyptian, the Babylonian civilizations went to the ground.

    Another important feature. The Russian peasants don't trust their representatives. These men from the plough have understood the gist of parliamentarism better than those who have grown infected gradually by Parliament worship. Their election fell upon this or that man; but they knew they must not trust him. Election is somewhat of a piece of gambling. And therefore a number of private peasant delegates are now seen in the galleries of the Russian Duma, whom their villages have sent to keep watch over their representatives in Parliament. They know that these representatives will soon be spoiled and bribed one way or another. So they sent delegates--mostly old, respected peasants, not fine in words, not of the self-advertising class, men who never would be elected, but who will honestly keep their, eye upon the M.P.'s.

    However, although the Duma has been only a few days together, a general feeling grows in Russia that all this electioneering is not yet the proper thing. "What can the Duma do?" they ask all over Russia. "If the Government doesn't want it they will send it away. How can 500 men resist the Government if they make up their minds to send them back to their homes?"

    And so, all over Russia the feeling grows that the Parliament and its debates are not the right thing yet. It is only a preliminary to something else which is to come. "They will express our needs; they will agree upon. certain things" . . . but a feeling grows in Russia that the action will have to come from the people.

    And the underground work, the slow work of maturing convictions and of grouping together, goes on all over Russia as a preparation to something infinitely more important than all the debates of the Duma.

    They don't even pronounce the name of this more important thing. Perhaps most of them don't know its name. But we know it and we may tell it. It is the Revolution: the only real remedy for the redress of wrongs.

THE LAW OF THE "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST."

BY EMMA LEE.

The law of the "Survival of the Fittest" is the Fetich with which every man who has succeeded in life at the expense of his less fortunate fellow-man conjures.

    If he would only take the trouble to reason it out, he would find that this "law" is far from immutable. In prehistoric times, when the world was young, the "law" operated on the individual.

    Learned men tell us that in this era of the world's youth men were born, lived and died with no companionship save that which the (immutable) law of Being necessitated.

    Literally every men's hand was against that of every other man.

    Then came the era of the Patriarch, in which the weaker members of a family were protected by the stronger. The "law" shifted. It was no longer man against man, but family against family.

    Next we, find the Tribal era.

    Again the "law" shifted to meet the growing demands of human advancement. No longer family against family, but tribe against tribe.

    Following the Tribal era came that of nations--countries. Again the "law" shifted.

    No longer was it tribe against tribe--but one nation against others.

    This era is fast disappearing and the time is not far distant when the "law" will operate between but two classes in all the world--the class that hath and the class that hath not.

    The ushering in of the dawn of the day when class distinctions no longer exist will sign the death warrant of that much vaunted "Law of the Survival of the Fittest."

Mother Earth Vol 1 N7

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MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM

By Peter Kropotkin

(Continued.)

To predict what direction science will take in its further development is, evidently, impossible. As long as men of science depend upon the rich and the governments, so long will they of necessity remain subject to influence from this quarter; and this, of course, can again arrest for a time the development of science. But one thing is certain: in the form that science is now assuming there is no longer any need of the hypothesis which Laplace considered useless, or of the metaphysical "words" which Goethe ridiculed. The book of nature, the book of organic life, and that of human development, can already be read without resorting to the power of a creator, a mystical "vital force," an immortal soul, Hegel's trilogy, or the endowment of abstract symbols with real life. Mechanical phenomena, in their ever-increasing complexity, suffice for the explanation of nature and the whole of organic and social life. There is much, very much, in the world that is still unknown to us--much that is dark and incomprehensible; and of such unexplained gaps new ones will always be disclosed as soon as the old ones have been filled up. Butwe do not know of , and do not see the possibility of discovering, any domain in which the phenomena observed in the fall of a stone, or in the impact of two billiard balls, or in a chemical reaction--that is, mechanical phenomena--should prove inadequate to the necessary explanations.

III.

It was natural that, as soon as science had attained such generalizations, the need of a synthetic philosophy should be felt; a philosophy which, no longer discussing "the essence of things," "first causes," the "aim of life," and similar symbolic expressions, and repudiating all sorts of anthropomorphism (the endowment of natural phenomena with human characteristics), should be a digest and unification of all our knowledge; a philosophy which, proceeding from the simple to the complex, would furnish a key to the understanding of all nature, in its entirety, and, through that, indicate to us the lines of further research and the means of discovering new, yet unknown, correlations (so-called laws), while at the same time it would inspire us with confidence in the correctness of our conclusions, however much they may differ from current superstitions. ---- Such attempts at a constructive synthetic philosophy were made several times during the nineteenth century, the chief of them being those of Auguste Comte and of Herbert Spencer. On these two we shall have to dwell. The need of such a philosophy as this was admitted already in the eighteenth century--by the philosopher and economist Turgot and, subsequently, even more clearly by Saint-Simon. As has been stated above, the encyclopaedists, and likewise Voltaire in his "Philosophical Dictionary, " had already begun to construct it. In a more rigorous, scientific form which would satisfy the requirements of the exact sciences, it was now undertaken by Auguste Comte. It is well known that Comte acquitted himself very ably of his task so far as the exact sciences were concerned. He was quite right in including the science of life (Biology) and that of human societies (Sociology) in the circle of sciences compassed by his positive philosophy; and his philosophy has had a great influence upon all scientists and philosophers of the nineteenth century. But why was it that this great philosopher proved so weak the moment he took up, in his "Positive Politics," the study of social institutions, especially those of modern times? This is the question which most admirers of Comte have asked themselves. How could such a broad and strong mind come to the religion which Comte preached in the closing years of his life? Littre and Mill, it is well known, refused even to recognize Comte's "Politics" as part of his philosophy; they considered it the product of a weakened mind; while others utterly failed in their endeavors to discover a unity of method in the two works.1 And yet the contradiction between the two parts of Comte's philosophy is in the highest degree characteristic and throws a bright light upon the problems of our own time. When Comte had finished his "Course of Positive Philosophy," lie undoubtedly must have perceived that he had not yet touched upon the most important point--namely, the origin in man of the moral principle and the influence of this principle upon human life. He was bound to account for the origin of this principle, to explain it by the same phenomena by which he had explained life in general, and to show why man feels the necessity of obeying his moral sense, or, at least, of reckoning with it. But for this he was lacking in knowledge (at the time he wrote this was quite natural) as well as in boldness. So, in lieu of the God of all religions, whom man must worship and to whom he must appeal in order to be virtuous, he placed Humanity, writ large. To this new idol he ordered us to pray, that we might develop in ourselves the moral concept. But once this step had been takenonce it was found necessary to pay homage to something standing outside of and higher than the individual in order to retain man on the moral path-all the rest followed naturally. Even the ritualism of Comte's religion moulded itself very naturally upon the model of all the preceding positive religions. Once Conde would not admit that everything that is moral in man grew out of observation of nature and from the very conditions of men living in societies,-this step was necessary. He did not see that the moral sentiment in man is as deeply rooted as all the rest of his physical constitution inherited by him from his slow evolution; that the moral concept in man had made its first appearance in the animal societies which existed long before man had appeared upon earth; and that, consequently, whatever may be the inclinations of separate individuals, this concept must persist in mankind as long as the human species does not begin to deteriorate,--the anti-moral activity of separate men inevitably calling forth a counter-activity on the part of those who surround them, just as action causes reaction in the physical world. Comte did not understand this, and therefore he was compelled to invent a new idol-Humanity-in order that it should constantly recall man to the moral path. Like Saint-Simon, Fourier, and almost all his other contemporaries, Comte thus paid his tribute to the Christian education be had received. Without a struggle of the evil principles with the good--in which the two should be equally matched--and without man's application in prayer to the good principle and its apostles on earth for maintaining him in the virtuous path, Christianity cannot be conceived. And Comte, dominated from childhood by this Christian idea, reverted to it as soon as he found himself face to face with the question of morality and the means of fortifying it in the heart of man.

IV.

But it must not be forgotten that Comte wrote his Positivist Philosophy long before the years 1856-1862, which, as stated above, suddenly widened the horizon of science and the world-concept of every educated man. The works which appeared in these five or six years have wrought so complete a change in the views on nature, on life in general, and on the life of human societies, that it has no parallel in the whole history of science for the past two thousand years. That which had been but vaguely understood--sometimes only guessed at by the encyclopoedists, and that which the best minds in the first half of the nineteenth century had so much difficulty in explaining, appeared now in the full armor of science; and it presented itself so thoroughly investigated through the inductive-deductive method that every other method was at once adjudged imperfect, false and--unnecessary. Let us, then, dwell a little longer upon the results obtained in these years, that we may better appreciate the next attempt at a synthetic philosophy, which was made by Herbert Spencer. Grove, Clausius, Helmholtz, Joule, and a whole group of physicists and astronomers,--as also Kirchhoff, who discovered the spectroscopic analysis and gave us the means of determining the composition of the most distant stars,--these, in rapid succession at the end of the fifties, proved the unity of nature throughout the inorganic world. To talk of certain mysterious, imponderable fluids-calorific, magnetic, electrical--at once became impossible. It was shown that the mechanical motion of molecules which takes place in the waves of the sea or in the vibrations of a bell or a tuning fork, was adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of heat, light, electricity and magnetism; that we can measure them and weigh their energy. More than this: that in the heavenly bodies most remote from us the same vibration of molecules takes place, with the same effects. Nay, the mass movements of the heavenly bodies themselves, which run through space according to the laws of universal gravitation, represent, in all likelihood, nothing else than the resultants of these vibrations of light and electricity, transmitted for billions and trillions of miles through interstellar space. The same calorific and electrical vibrations of molecules of matter proved also adequate to explain all chemical phenomena. And then, the very life of plants and animals, in its infinitely varied manifestations, has been found to be nothing else than a continually going on exchange of molecules in that wide range of very complex, and hence unstable and easily decomposed, chemical cornpounds from which are built the tissues of every living being,

Then, already during those years it was understood--and for the past ten years it has been still more firmly established-that the life of the cells of the nervous system and their property of transmitting vibrations from one to the other, afforded a mechanical explanation of the nervous life of animals. Owing to these investigations, we can now understand, without leaving the domain of purely physiological observations, how impressions and images are produced and retained in the brain, how their mutual effects result in the association of ideas (every new impression awakening impressions previously stored tip), and hence also--in thought. Of course, very much still remains to be done and to be discovered in this vast domain; science, scarcely freed yet from the metaphysics which so long hampered it, is only now beginning to explore the wide field of physical psychology. But the start has already been made, and a solid foundation is laid for further labors. The old-fashioned classification of phenomena into two sets, which the German philosopher Kant endeavored to establish,--one concerned with investigations "in time and space" (theworld of physical phenomena) and the other "in time only" (the world of spiritual phenomena),--now falls of itself. And to the question once asked by the Russian physiologist, Setchenov: "By whom and how should psychology be studied?" science has already given the answer: "By physiologists, and by the physiological method." And, indeed, the recent labors of the physiologists have already succeeded in shedding incomparably more light than all the intricate discussions of the metaphysicists, upon the mechanism of thought; the awakening of impressions, their retention and transmission. In this, its cheif stronghold, metaphysics was thus worsted. The field in which it considered itself invincible has now been taken possession of by natural science and materialist philosophy, and these two are promoting the growth of knowledge in this direction faster than centuries of metaphysical speculation have done. ----- In these same years another important step was made. Darwin's book on "The Origin of Species" appeared and eclipsed all the rest. Already in the last century Buffon (apparently even Linnaeus), and on the threshold of the nineteenth century Lamarck, had ventured to maintain that the existing species of plants and animals are not fixed forms; that they are variable and vary continually even now. The very fact of family likeness which exists between groups of forms- Lamarck pointed out-is a proof of their common descent from a common ancestry. Thus, for example, the various forms of meadow buttercups, water buttercups, and all other buttercups which we see on our meadows and swamps, must have been produced by the action of environment upon descendants from one common type of ancestors. Likewise, the present species of wolves, dogs, jackals and foxes did not exist in a remote past, but there was in their stead one kind of animals out of which, under various conditions, the wolves, the dogs, the jackals and the foxes have gradually evolved. But in the eighteenth century such heresies as these had to be uttered with great circumspection. The Church

was still very powerful then, and for such heretical views the naturalist had to reckon with prison, torture, or the lunatic asylum. The "heretics" consequently were cautious in their expressions. Now, however, Darwin and A. R. Wallace could boldly maintain so great a heresy. Darwin even ventured to declare that man, too, had originated, in the same way of slow physiological evolution, from some lower forms of ape-like animals; that his "immortal spirit" and his "moral soul" are as much a product of evolution as the mind and the moral habits of the ant or the chimpanzee. We know what storms then broke out upon Darwin and, especially, upon his bold and gifted disciple, Huxley, who sharply emphasized just those conclusions from Darwin's work which were most dreaded by the clergy. It was a fierce battle, but, owing to the support of the masses of the public, the victory was won, nevertheless, by the Darwinians; and the result was that an entirely new and extremely important science-Biology, the science of life in all its manifestations-has grown up under our very eyes during the last forty years. At the same time Darwin's work furnished a new key to the understanding of all sorts of phenomena-physical, vital, and social. It opened up a new road for their investigation. The idea of a continuous development (evolution) and a continual adaptation to changing environment, found a much wider application than the origin of species. It was applied to the study of all nature, as well as to men and their social institutions, and it disclosed in these branches entirely unknown horizons, giving explanations of facts which hitherto had seemed quite inexplicable. Owing to the impulse given by Darwin's work to all natural sciences, Biology was created, which, in Herbert Spencer's hands, soon explained to us how the countless forms of living beings inhabiting the earth may have developed, and enabled Haeckel to make the first attempt at formulating a genealogy of all animals, man included. In the same way a solid foundation for the history of the development of man's customs, manners, beliefs and institutions was laid down--a history the want of which was strongly felt by the eighteenth century philosophers and by Auguste Comte. At the present time this history can be written without resorting to either the formulae of Hegelean metaphysics or to "innate ideas" and "inspiration from without"--without any of those dead formulae behind which, concealed by words as by clouds, was always hidden the same ancient ignorance and the same superstition. Owing, on the one hand, to the labors of the naturalists, and, on the other, to those of Henry Maine and his followers, who applied the same inductive method to the study of primitive customs and laws that have grown out of them, it became possible in recent years to place the history of the origin and development of human institutions upon as firm a basis as that of the development of any form of plants or animals. It would, of course, be extremely unfair to forget the enormous work that was done earlier-already in the thirties-towards the working out of the history of institutions by the school of Augustin Thierry in France, by that of Maurer and the "Germanists" in Germany, and in Russia, somewhat later, by Kostomarov, Belyaev and others. In fact, the principle of evolution had been applied to the study of manners and institutions, and also to languages, from the time of the encyclopaedists. But to obtain correct, scientific deductions from all this mass of work became possible only when the scientists could look upon the established facts in the same way as the naturalist regards the continuous development of the organs of a plant or of a new species. The metaphysical formulae have helped, in their time, to make certain approximate generalizations. Especially did they stimulate the slumbering thought, disturbing it by their vague hints as to the unity of life in nature. At a time when the inductive generalizations of the encyclopaedists and their English predecessors were almost forgotten (in the first half of the nineteenth century), and when it required--some civic courage to speak of the unity of physical and spiritual nature-the obscure metaphysics still upheld the tendency toward generalization. But those generalizations were established either by means of the dialectic method or by means of a semi-conscious induction, and, therefore, were always characterized by a hopeless indefiniteness. The former kind of generalizations was deduced by means of really fallacious syllogisms--similar to those by which in ancient times certain Greeks used to prove that the planets must move in circles "because the circle is the most perfect curve"; and the meagerness of the premises would then be concealed by misty words, and, worse still, by an obscure and clumsy exposition. As to the semi-conscious inductionís which were made here and there, they were based upon a very limited circle of observations-similar to the broad but unwarranted generalization of Weissmann, which have recently created some sensation. Then, as the induction was unconscious, the generalizations were put forth in the shape of hard and fast laws, while in reality they were but simple supposition s--hypotheses, or beginnings only of generalizations, which, far from being "laws," required yet the very first verification by observation. Finally, all these broad deductions, expressed as they were in most abstract forms-as, for instance, the Hegelcan "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,"--left full play for the individual to come to the most varied and often opposite practical conclusions, so that they could give birth, for instance, to Bakunin's revolutionary enthusiasm and to the Dresden Revolution, to the revolutionary Jacobinism of Marx and to the recognition of the "reasonableness of what exists," which reconciled so many Germans to the reaction then existing-to say nothing of the recent vagaries of the so-called Russian Marxists.

V

Since Anthropology--the history of man's physiological development and of his religious, political ideals, and economic institutions-came to be studied exactly as all other natural sciences are studied, it was found possible, not only to shed a new light upon this history, but to divest it for ever of the metaphysics which had hindered this study in exactly the same way as the Biblical teachings had hindered the study of Geology. It would seem, therefore, that when the construction of a synthetic philosophy was undertaken by Herbert Spencer, he should have been able, armed as lie was with all the latest conquests of science, to build it without falling into the errors made by Comte in his "Positive Politics." And yet Spencer's synthetic philosophy, though it undoubtedly represents an enormous step in advance (complete as it is without religion and religious rites), still contains in its sociological part mistakes as gross as are found in the former work. The fact is that, having reached in his analysis the psychology of societies, Spencer did not remain true to his rigorously scientific method, and failed to accept all the conclusions to which it had led him. Thus, for example, Spencer admits that the land ought not to become the property of individuals, who, in consequence of their right to raise rents, would hinder others from extracting front the soil all that could be extracted from it under improved methods of cultivation; or would even simply keep it out of use in the expectation that its market price will be raised by the labor of others. An arrangement such as this he considers inexpedient and full of dangers for society. But, while admitting this in the case of the land, be did not venture to extend this conclusion to all other forms of accumulated wealth--for example, to mines, harbors, and factories. Or, again, while protesting against the interference of government in the life of society, and giving to one of his books a title which is equivalent to a revolutionary programme, "The Individual vs. The State," he, little by little, tinder the pretext of the defensive activity of the State, ended by reconstructing the State in its entirety, such as it is to-day, only slightly limiting its attributes. These and other inconsistencies are probably accounted for by the fact that the sociological part of Spencer's philosophy was formulated in his mind (under the influence of the English, radical movement) much earlier than its natural--scientific part-namely, before 1851, when the anthropological investigation of human institutions was in its rudimentary stage. In consequence of this, Spencer like Comte, did not take up the investigation of these institutions by themselves, without preconceived conclusions. Moreover, as soon as he came in his work to social philosophy--to Sociology-lie began to make use of a new method, a most unreliable one-the method of analogies-which he, of course, never resorted to in the study of physical phenomena. This new method permitted him to justify a whole series of preconceived theories. Consequently, we do not possess as yet a philosophy constructed in both its parts-natural sciences and sociology -with the aid of the same scientific method. Then, Spencer, it must also be added, is the man least suited for the study of primitive institutions. In this respect he is distinguished even among the English, who generally do not enter readily into foreign modes of life and thought. "We are a people of Roman law, and the Irish are common-law people: therefore we do not understand each other," a very intelligent Englishman once remarked to me. The history of the Englishmen's relations with the "lower races" is full of like misunderstandings. And we see them in Spencer's writings at every step. He is quite incapable of understanding the customs and ways of thinking of the savage, the "blood revenge" of the Icelandic saga, or the stormy life, filled with struggles, of the mediaeval cities. The moral ideas of these stages of civilization are absolutely strange to him; and he sees in them only "savagery," "despotism," and "cruelty." Finally-what is still more important-Spencer, like Huxley and many others, utterly misunderstood the meaning of "the struggle for existence." He saw in it, not only a struggle between different species of animals (wolves devouring rabbits, birds feeding on insects, etc.), but also a desperate struggle for food, for living-room, among the different members within every species--a struggle which, in reality, does not assume anything like the proportions he imagined. How far Darwin himself was to blame for this misunderstanding of the real meaning of the struggle for existence, we cannot discuss here. But certain it is that when, twelve years after "The Origin of Species," Darwin published his "Descent of Man," he already understood struggle for life in a different sense. "Those communities," he wrote in the latter work, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring." The chapter devoted by Darwin to this subject could have formed the basis of an entirely different and most wholesome view of nature and of the development of human societies (the significance of which Goethe had already foreseen). But it passed unnoticed. Only in 1879 do we find, in a lecture by the Russian zoologist Kessler, a clear understanding of mutual aid and the struggle for life. "For the progressive development of a species," Kessler pointed out, citing several examples, "the law of mutual aid is of far greater importance than the law of mutual struggle." Soon after this Louis Buchner published his book "Love," in which he showed the importance of sympathy among animals for the development of moral concepts; but, in introducing the idea of love and sympathy instead of simple sociability, he needlessly limited the sphere of his investigations. To prove and further to develop Kessler's excellent idea, extending it to man, was an easy step. If we turn our minds to a close observation of nature and to an unprejudiced history of human institutions, we soon discover that Mutual Aid really appears, not only as the most powerful weapon in the struggle for existence against the hostile forces of nature and all other enemies, but also as the chief factor of progressive evolution. To the weakest animals it assures longevity (and hence an accumulation of mental experience), the possibility of rearing its progeny, and intellectual progress. And those animal species among which Mutual Aid is practiced most, not only succeed best in getting their livelihood, but also stand at the head of their respective class (of insects, birds, mammals) as regards the superiority of their physical and mental development. This fundamental fact of nature Spencer did not perceive. The struggle for existence within every species, the "free fight" for every morsel of food, Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw with ravine"--he accepted as a fact requiring no proof, as an axiom. Only in recent years did he begin in some degree to understand the meaning of mutual aid in the animal world, and to collect notes and make experiments in this direction. But even then he still thought of primitive man as of a beast who lived only by snatching, with tooth and claw, the last morsel of food from the mouth of his fellowmen. Of course, having based the sociological part of his philosophy on so false a premise, Spencer was no longer able to build tip the sociological part of his synthetic philosophy without falling into a series of errors.

(To be Continued.)

Footnotes

1 None that know the author's fairness of mind will be likely to accuse him of partiality in the scathing criticism he here makes of the Apostle of Positivism. Lest any reader be inclined to do so, however, it may not be amiss to cite on this point the opinion of a critic unquestionably conservative and. presumably, impartial-an opinion I came upon by mere chance while engaged on this translation. Scattered through pages 560 to 563 of Falckenberg's "History of Modern Philosophy" (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1893), I find the following estimate of Comte and his uneven work: "The extraordinary character of which [Comte's philosophy] has given occasion to his critics to make a complete division between the second, ,subjective or sentimental period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to be transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, the positivistic period. . . . Beneath the surface of the most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte from the beginning. . . . The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings is extremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. . . . Comte's school divided into two groupsthe apostates, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlier doctrine, and the faithful. "-Translator.

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CONTENTS

The Song of the Earth Poem Ralph Waldo Emerson ... 117 Observations and Comments ............................. 119 The First of May and the General Strike .............. 124 On The Road (Continuation) Emma Goldman .......... 128 Socialism and Fatalism H. Kelly ...................... 130 Flashes from the Flint Victor Robinson ............... 141 Stirner: "The Ego and His Own" Max Baginski .......... 142 Liberty A. T. Heist .................................. 152 Mother Earth Sustaining Fund ......................... 156 The International Anarchist Conference ............... 157 Truth in Combat Poem W. F. Barnard ............. 158 Giordano Bruno T. F. Meade ........................... 159 On Government (An Explanation) ................... 165 Three Quotations and a Comment H. K. ................. 167 On the Eve (Review) .............................. 168 Books Received ....................................... 170 International Notes .................................. 170

10 Cents per Copy     $1 Year Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Published Every 15th of the Month

EMMA GOLDMAN, Proprietor, 210 East Thirteenth Street, New York, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, as the post office at New York, N. Y.,
under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.



Vol. II          MAY, 1907        No.3

THE SONG OF THE EARTH

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

     Bulkely, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Merian, Flint,

Possessed the land which rendered to their toil

Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood

Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,

Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's.

How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!

How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!

I fancy these pre waters and the flags

Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize ;

And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil."

     Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds;

And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;

Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet

Clear of the grave.

They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,

And sighed for all that bounded their domain;

"This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;

We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,

And misty lowland, where to go for peat.

The land is well, - lies fairly to the south.

'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back

To find the sit-fast acres where you left them."

     Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds

Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.

Hear what the Earth says:-

EARTH-SONG

"Mine and yours;

Mine, not yours.

Earth Endures;

Stars abide-

Shine down in the old sea;

Old are the shores;

But where are old men?

I who have seen much,

Such have I never seen.

"They lawyer's deed

Ran sure,

'In tail,

To them, and to their heirs

Who shall succeed,

Without fail,

For evermore.'

"Here is the land,

Shaggy with wood,

With its old valley,

Mound and flood.

But the heritors?

Fled like the flood's foam.

The lawyer, and the laws,

And the kingdom,

Clean swept herefrom.

"They called me theirs,

Who so controlled me;

Yet every one

Wished to stay, and is gone.

How am I theirs,

If they cannot hold me,

But I hold them?"

When I heard the Earth-song,

I was no longer brave;

My avarice cooled,

Like lust in the chill of the grave.

*   *   *

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

     As long as the capitalists of Europe and America could, with the aid of their respective governments, carry their "civilization" into Asia and force the latter's truly cultured people to buy their shoddy wares, there existed no yellow peril. Only when the "heathens" began to practically apply the lessons taught them by their white "benefactors"; when they, too, began to propagate civilization -- lo! suddenly we perceived the yellow peril.

     "Guard your most sacred possessions, ye nations of Europe!" cried the German Emperor, and the international boodlers applauded unanimously. Many working-men, especially those of America, joined in the cry; even some revolutionists were deluded into belief that the competition of Asiatic labor was dangerous to their ideas. How unjustified this fear has fully been demonstrated within the last few years by the remarkable spreading of social revolutionary ideas among the Japanese and Chinese. The intellectuals of these nations are as familiar with modern radical ideas as the people of America and Europe. The labor question is now no less acute in those countries than with us.

     A very hopeful sign of the times is the recent organization of the "Social Revolutionary Party of Japanese in America," whose aim it is to enlighten their countrymen with regard to existing social conditions and to prepare them for the social revolution.

     Herewith we publish the proclamation of the new organization, a remarkable document, which indicates that the American workingmen have a great deal to learn from their "heathen" brothers:

   "We proclaim to the people of the whole world the organization of the Social Revolutionary Party of Japanese in America.

   Who says that labor is divine, while a few people are fed and clothed well and millions are suffering from poverty and hunger?

   What is life for, when one man takes away the rights and liberty of millions that he may live in luxury and ease?

   What is the dignity of a nation when the lives of millions are sacrificed in war to satisfy a few men's ambition and vanity?

   Yes, labor is intolerable, life is miserable, the nation is cruel, and society is unjust.

   The cries of the sufferers all over the world are increasing day after day, and the enthusiastic attempts to abolish these torments and to try to secure true liberty and happiness and peace are increasing month after month.

   How can a man who has heart and soul look at suffering humanity without a feeling of sympathy or a desire to assist in the alleviation of the wrongs?

   It is our duty to revolutionize this unjust system of society and make it a beautiful, free, happy one, both to the honor of our forefathers, and for the benefit of our sons. It is not only our duty, but it is our right.

   The purpose of our revolutionary society is to realize this fact, and to discharge this duty and secure our rights.

   Come, those who are interested, and join us. Do not hesitate!

Our Program:

1. We shall abolish the industrial, economic competitive system of to-day, which breeds pauperism, and let the people who own the nation's wealth.

2. We shall endeavor to destroy traditional and superstitious ideas of class lines, and will try to insure equal rights for all.

3. We shall endeavor to abolish racial prejudice and learn to realize the true meaning of the brotherhood of men.

4. In order to accomplish the above stated purposes we recognize the necessity of uniting with the comrades of the world."

*   *   *

     If anything more was necessary to convince the American public of the existence of a capitalistic conspiracy to hang Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, and destroy the Western Federation of Miners, the high-handed interference of Theodore Roosevelt has accomplished that.

     To curry favor with the pirates whose stolen millions sent him to the White House, our political desperado did not hesitate to stoop to the use of his official position against the Idaho defendants. Such base attempts to influence justice have seldom been witnessed outside of Morocco and Turkey.

     We say, to influence justice ; because the private opinion of a professional politician as to the moral worth of the representatives of revolutionary ideas is a matter of entire indifference to the latter. It is self-evident that the chief lackey of the plutocrats cannot consider the opponents of the latter as anything but "undesirable citizens." There are many citizens, however - and by no means the worst - who look upon the White House parasites as highly undesirable citizens.

     It is time that the American people, and especially organized labor, should realize that the White House is the very last place to look for justice, a "square deal," or even common decency.

*   *   *

     We mourn the tragic fate of William McLaughlin - better known as "Billy" -late Inspector of Police, Chief of the New York Detective Bureau, and Head of the "Anarchist Squad," of recent creation. Yesterday a power in the land ; to-day a mere Captain of Westchester, familiarly known as Goatville, with nothing to do but sign his name in the blotter twice a day. The salary is a paltry two thousand five hundred a year, and but little graft. The Sun, whose editor claims friendship with "Billy," informs us that the former detective is rich - his wealth, no doubt, saved from the yearly salary of three thousand five hundred - and that he is expected to resign at once. Others say that "he is game and will stick it out." All of this is very sad for a man who can buy twenty-thousand dollar houses and live like a bank president on a salary of three thousand five hundred a year. Such a genius deserves to be chancellor of the exchequer of a South American Republic. Alas, poor William!

*   *   *

     Our friend Luigi Galleani was tried during the last week of April for alleged participation in the Paterson riots of 1902. We are happy to state that the trial resulted in a disagreement, seven jurymen voting for conviction and five for acquittal. We do not think that the District Attorney of Paterson will seek new laurels by bringing Galleani to trial again. It is to be hoped that he will not succeed in finding twelve men to send our innocent brother to prison.

     On the heels of the trial comes the information that William McQueen - whose five-year sentence for "complicity" in the Paterson troubles had almost expired - was pardoned on condition that he leave at once our hospitable shores. The Paterson capitalists and their political lackeys may now rest in peace.

*   *   *

     Maurice Donnay, an enfant terrible of French literature, has recently been elected member of the Academic Francaise. Loyalty, rather than literary merit, is nowadays the key that unlocks the door of immorality ; mere loyalty is often sufficient ; merit alone - never. Maurice Donnay is one of the few possessing both.

     Besides Antaloe France and Jules Lemaitre, he is now the only artist in the Academy who considers industrious erudition, alexandrines of proper measure and fine sounding parliamentary speeches as meritorious literary productions.

     Ten years ago, however, he would have knocked for admittance in vain. All his poetic finesse, his manifold talents and power of ingenious observation did not suffice to open the door, until he had conclusively proven by one of his recent mediocre plays that he was eligible to immortality.

      His receptive soul must often suffer tortuous hours by the incarceration of his wild spirit within the confines of academic respectability. In truth, but once has he succeeded in taming down his genius to the strict requirements of a conventional play. In all his following works his artistic spirit soon manifested itself by rising above all literary dogmas and puritanic morality.

     The academic sedateness demanded by the mossy institution from its Immortals will hardly prove a sufficient guarantee against an occasional "bad break" - no more than Donnay's erudite engineer training prevented his public appearance as chansonnier in the Chat Noir of Rodolphe Salis.

     The eternal fitness of things: the p&eolig;ns of peace sung by professional exponents of war.

      The peace farce of recent date was as fiendish a caricature of the Brotherhood of Man as Satan could desire. A glance at the list of participants is sufficient to characterize the sincerity of those friends of peace.The parvenu steel king in the role of chief peace-maker, - ye gods, what a spectacle!

     Having had his praises sung on Founders' Day, at Pittsburg, the hero of Skibo and Homestead, this chief beneficiary of the war on classes, came to New York to witness his triumph as king of peace. As such he was felicitated by his imperial brothers, Oily Bill and Terrible Teddy, and decorated by the French Government with the cross of the Legion of Honor. This honor, however, is now of such questionable quality that it may properly be said of an honest man thus decorated : "He has been dishonored with the Legion of Honor."

*   *   *

      In the sign of prosperity.

     On the benches in Madison Square cower, chilled, human debris - ragged, dirty, hollow-eyed, mere caricatures of man ....

     It is not permitted to sleep in the parks. Soon comes the night stick, awakening the dozing ; the policeman drives the frightened wretches out of the park. They go, resigned in the abyss of despair, further - further!

     At Union Square the cruel performance is repeated. The nearer we approach the lower part of the city, the more pronounced and heartrending the misery and suffering. From foul-smelling alleys and filthy hallways there comes the sound of heavy breathing and low coughing. The dark steps of the railroad tunnel are plastered with the forbidding figures of unemployed and homeless - men for whom there is no room in all the forest of houses and who cannot afford the price of a night's lodging ; men to whom work is a luxury, unattainable by those run down at the heels and whose shoes are tied with strings ; men past vice or virtue ; men who have long since forgotten to live and are too misery-stupified to cross the threshold of the land of the dead.

     In the sign of prosperity.

*   *   *

THE FIRST MAY AND THE GENERAL STRIKE

WITH the Spring awakening of Nature the dormant energies of the people are revivified - the oppressed feel their self-consciousness and the joy of combat stirring within them.

     Stormy March - the red month of revolution ; stirring May - the fighting month of the proletariat striving for independence.

     The basic revolutionary idea of the first of May has characterized all the battles of labor in modern times, and the historic origin and development of that idea prove its great significance for the labor movement.

     The May idea - in the relation of its revolutionary spirit to labor struggles - first manifested itself in the economic battles of the Knights of Labor. The final theoretical aim of that organization - founded by Uriah S. Stephens and fellow workers in 1869, and bearing a pronounced radical character in the beginning of its history - was the emancipation of the working classes by means of direct economic action. Its first practical demand was the eight-hour day, and the agitation to that end was an unusually strenuous one. Several strikes of the Knights of Labor were practically General Strikes. The various economic battles of that period, supported by the American Federation of Labor during its young days, culminated , on the first of May, 1886, in a great strike, which gradually assumed almost national proportions. The workingmen of a number of large cities, especially those of Chicago, ceased their work on that day and proclaimed a strike in favor of the eight-hour day. They thus served notice on their capitalistic masters that henceforth they will not be submissively exploited by the unlimited greed of the capitalists, who had appropriated the means of production created by the many generations of labor, thus usurping the position of masters - the kind masters who had cordially leave labor the alternative of either prostituting their brawn or dying with the families of starvation.

     The manly attitude of labor in 1886 was the result of a resolution passed by the Labor Congress held at St. Louis, one year previously. Great demonstrations of a pronounced social revolutionary character took place all over the country, culminating in the strike of two hundred thousand workingmen, the majority of whom were successful in winning the eight-hour day.

     But great principles of historic significance never triumph without a blood baptism. Such was also the case in 1886. The determination of the workingmen to decide to sell to the purchasers of labor was looked upon by the exploiters as the height of assumption, and condemned accordingly. Individual capitalists, though unwilling, were nevertheless forced to submit to the demands of organized labor ; perceiving, however, in the self-respecting attitude of the working masses a peril threatening the very foundations of the capitalistic economic system, they thirsted for revenge ; nothing less would satisfy the cannibalistic masters but human sacrifices : the most devoted and advanced representatives of the movement - Parsons, Spies, Engel, Fischer and Lingg - were the victims.

     The names of our murdered brothers, sacrificed to propitiate an enraged Moloch, will forever remain indivisibly linked with the idea of the first of May. It was the Anarchists that bore the brunt of those economic battles.

     In vain, however, did organized capital hope to strangle the labor movement on the scaffold ; a bitter disappointment awaited the exploiters. True, the movement had suffered an eclipse, but only a temporary one. Quickly rallying its forces, it grew with renewed vigor and energy.

     In December, 1888, the American Federation of Labor decided to make another attempt to win the eight-hour day, and again by means of direct economic action. The strike was to be initiated by a gigantic demonstration on the first of May, 1890.

     In the meantime there assembled at Paris (1889) an International Labor Congress. A resolution was offered to join the demonstration, and the day which three years previously initiated the eight-hour movement became the slogan of the international proletariat, awakened to the realization of the revolutionary character of its final emancipation. Chicago was to serve as an example.

     Unfortunately, however, the direction was not followed. The majority of the congress consisting of political parliamentarists, believers in indirect action, they purposely ignored the essential import of the first of May, so dearly bought on the battlefield ; they decided that henceforth the first of May was to be "consecrated to the dignity of labor," thus perverting the revolutionary significance of the great day into a mere appear to the powers that be to grant the favor of an eight-hour day. Thus the parliamentarists degraded the noble meaning of the historic day.

     The first of may "consecrated to the dignity of labor!" As if slavery could be dignified by anything save revolutionary action. As long as labor remains mere prostitution, selling its producing power for money, and as long as the majority of mankind are excluded from the blessings of civilization, the first of May must remain the revolutionary battle cry of labor's economic emancipation.

     The effect of the Paris resolution soon manifested itself : the revolutionary energy of the masses became dormant ; the wage slaves limited their activity to mere appeals to their masters for alleviation and to political action, either independent of, or in fusion with, the bourgeois parties, as is the case in England and America. They quietly suffered their representatives in Parliament and Congress to defend and strengthen their enemy, the government. They remained passive while their alleged leaders made deals with the exploiters, hobnobbed with the bourgeois, and were banquetted by the exploiters, while oppression steadily grew in proportion and intensity, and all attempts of the wage slaves to throw off their yoke were suppressed in the most merciless manner.

     Only a small minority of the working class, especially in the Latin countries, remained true to the revolutionary spirit of the first of May ; but the effect of their noble efforts was materially minimized by their international isolation, repressed as they were by the constantly growing power of the governments, strengthened by the reactionary political activity of the labor bodies.

     But the disastrous defeats suffered by labor on the field of parliamentarism and pure-and-simple unionism have radically changed the situation in recent years. To-day we stand on the threshold of a new era in the emancipation of labor : the dissatisfaction with the former tactics is constantly growing, and the demand is being voiced for the most energetic weapon at the command of labor - the General Strike

     It is quite explicable that the more progressive workingmen of the world should hail with enthusiasm the idea of the General Strike. The latter is the truest reflex of the crisis of economic contrasts and the most decisive expression of the intelligent dissatisfaction of the proletariat.

     Bitter experience has gradually forced upon organized labor the realization that it is difficult, if not impossible, for isolated unions and trades to successfully wage war against organized capital ; for capital is organized, into national as well as international bodies, co-operating in their exploitation and oppression of labor. To be successful, therefore, modern strikes must constantly assume ever larger proportions, involving the solidaric co-operation of all the branches of an affected industry - an idea gradually gaining recognition in the trades unions. This explains the occurrence of sympathetic strikes, in which men in related industries cease work in brotherly co-operation with their striking bothers - evidences of solidarity so terrifying to the capitalistic class.

      Solidaric strikes do not represent the battle of an isolated union or trade with an individual capitalist or group of capitalists ; they are the war of the proletariat class with its organized enemy, the capitalist regime. The solidaric strike is the prologue of the General Strike.

     The modern worker has ceased to be the slave of the individual capitalist ; to-day, the capitalist class is his master. However great his occasional victories on the economic field, he still remains a wage slave. It is, therefore, not sufficient for labor unions to strive to merely lessen the pressure of the capitalistic heel ; progressive workingmen's organizations can have but one worthy object -- to achieve their full economic stature by complete emancipation from wage slavery.

     That is the true mission of trades unions. They bear the germs of a potential social revolution ; aye, more - they are the factors that will fashion the system of production and distribution in the coming free society.

     The proletariat of Europe has already awakened to a realization of his great mission ; it remains for the American workers to decide whether they will continue, as before, to be satisfied with the crumbs off the board of the wealthy. Let us hope that they will soon awaken to the full perception of their great historic mission, bearing in mind the battle scars of former years. Especially at this time, when organized capital of America - the most powerful and greedy of the world - is again attempting to repeat the tragedy of 1887, American labor must warn the overbearing masters with a decisive "Thus far and no further!"

*   *   *

ON THE ROAD

By Emma Goldman

(Continuation)

CHICAGO. City of the greatest American crime! City of that black Friday when four brave sons of the people were strangled to death - Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fischer, and you young giant who preferred to take your own life rather than allow the hangman to desecrate you with his filthy touch. You noble free spirits who walked along the open road, believing its call to be "the call of battle, of rebellion." 'Tis therefore you went "with angry enemies, with desertion."

     O for the indifference, the inertia of those whose cowardice permitted you to die, to be strangled - the very people for whom you had given your life's blood.

     O city of shame and disgrace! City of gloom and smoke, filth and stench. You are rotten with stockyards and slums, poverty and crime. What will become of you on the day of reckoning, when your children will awaken to consciousness? Will their battle for liberty and human dignity cleanse your past? Or will they demolish you with their wrath, their hatred, their revenge for all you have made them endure?

     As my train neared this hole, bellowing suffocating smoke and dust, covering the sky with a dark, gloomy cloth, on the morning of the eighteenth of March, I thought of you, Paris. Great, glorious Paris! Cradle of rebellion, mother of that glad, joyous day, thirty-six years ago, when your flying colors proclaimed brotherhood and peace in the grand spirit of the Commune. What a contrast between you and Chicago! The one inspiring, urging on to rebellion and liberty ; the other making her children mercenary and indifferent, clumsily self-satisfied. What a contrast! What an awful contrast!

     I arrived at Chicago at the high tide of politics, the various parties wrangling, huckstering and wrestling for political supremacy, each claiming to stand for a principle : the greatest good of the people.

     What Bernard Shaw says of the English in "The Man of Destiny" holds equally good with us in this country : "When the Englishman wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently till there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he wants. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it colonization. When he wants a market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary, he flies to arms in defence of Christianity, fights for it, conquers for it, and takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores he puts a chaplain on board his ship, mails a flag with a cross onto his top gallant mast and sails to the ends of the earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas with him. You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles, he robs you on business principles, he enslaves you on imperial principles, he bullies you on manly principles."

     No better picture could be drawn of our own good people, especially our politicians Of course they do not want the job of mayor, governor or president ; of course they do not want to get fat as the proverbial seven cows ; it is only for a principle that they enter politics, for the dear people's sake, for municipal ownership's sake, for the sake of purifying our bad morals, for good government, for child labor laws, factory improvement, for anything and everything, only not for their own sake. 'Tis for the sake of principle our politicians fight, lie and abuse one another ; for the sake of principle they invest their money in land robbery, in cotton mills where the children of the dear majority are forced to work under the industrial lash, or in stockyards and packing houses where human beings are made to rot in filth.

     For the sake of principle liberals, the Single Taxers, have made a compact with the Democratic Party, hailing Dunne, Hearst and others of their caliber as the Messiahs of the people, and indulging in the same cheap methods of abuse and attack. One of our Single Tax brothers was elated over the discovery that his opponent lived with a "nigger." "We'll use it against him. It is sure to kill his chances," said our "liberal" friend, and no doubt it is. Just think, advanced people prying into the private life of a man and publicly dissecting it for the sake of a political job, - I beg your pardon, for the sake of principle. How coarse, how vulgar "principle" has made man.

     And our Socialist friend, is he not ready to string up anyone who disputes "economic determinism" and "the materialistic conception of history" ? For the sake of his principle he will kick anyone out of the party who dares doubt the infallibility of political action ; he will denounce us as dynamiters, when we venture to suggest some other method. For the sake of principle the Socialistic paper of Chicago devotes its front page to the discussion of "gowns for the ladies," and a Socialistic candidate appeals for votes on the ground that he has a good law practice and an income of a hundred thousand dollars. And the majority goes into the trap and allows itself to be humbugged - for the sake of a principle.

     While in Chicago I delivered nine lectures before various nationalities - Jewish, Bohemians, Danish, not to forget of course the dear, fortunate natives who make the Social Science League their headquarters. Whether it was due to the subject, "The Revolutionary Spirit of the Modern Drama," or to the innate curiosity of the Americans, I do not know ; at any rate the meeting at the Masonic Temple was the largest and most interesting. Two real life professors from the Chicago University, quite a host of students from the same institution, as well as lawyers, politicians and workingmen packed the hall. Great strides must have been made in the last few years to bring out instructors and students from the Rockefeller College. It is not so very long ago that Tolstoi's picture was turned face to the wall because he dared criticise the endower of that hall of learning.

     Some naive people were so enthusiastic over my lecture that they suggested to one of the professors that he invite me to the University to repeat my lecture. Alas, they forgot the "principle" for the sake of which the good professor could not invite the Anarchist, Emma Goldman, to the College. Probably he thought that at the sound of Anarchism the University buildings would crumble to pieces, as the walls of Jericho did at the sound of the Jewish trumpet. No one can blame the professor - "principle" before freedom of knowledge.

     Life in Chicago has always been hateful and trying to me, but the great kindness at the home of my dear comrades, Annie and Jack Livshis, and especially the untiring goodness and the fine tact at the discretion of the Anarchistic Mother, Annie, helped to overcome my aversion to the jungle city.

     Cincinnati. The old sensational speculations as to whether I will or will not be allowed to speak in that city greeted me in the newspapers when I arrived. Madam Alice R. Longworth living on Walnut Hill, it was quite reckless of the city fathers to alow dangerous utterances at Cincinnati. However, Anarchism has been heard at three large meetings, and Walnut Hill is still intact. America is full of parasites - Anarchism has greater things to do than to bother about some particular member. It has to build character, to develop individuality, to clear the human mind of spooks and shadows. It has to call men and women "out from the dark refinement, out from behind the screen, out from traditions and prejudices - into the open road."

     St. Louis. Some people seem to be incapable of learning that Anarchism and dirty halls in squalid sections of the city are not synonymous. True, Anarchism does not exclude the poor, the dirty or the tramp any more than the sun excludes them, but it does not make a virtue of filth. It seems to me that so long as people remain satisfied with their present conditions, absolutely indifferent to cleanliness, air and beauty, they cannot possibly feel the burning shame of their lives, nor will they strive for anything that might lift them out of the ugliness of their existence. I do not censor anyone, for I am convinced that the boys of St. Louis tried their best ; yet I am grieved that they should be satisfied with so little. True, the halls were cheap, but through the future of Mother Earth depends upon the success of this tour, I cannot even for her sake speak in dingy little halls, dark and gloomy, with the dust and smoke making it impossible to breathe.

     Minneapolis. Those who believe that only organizations or groups can accomplish things should profit by the example of Minneapolis, where two energetic workers did wonders.

      The population of this city is composed of shopkeepers, bankers, doctors and lawyers - not the element that is usually interested in radical ideas. Nor were such ideas ever put before them. Anarchism was a spook, an evil spirit in that town, but daring is the only way to success. The audiences that thronged the halls for three successive evenings far surpassed in number and intelligence the most optimistic expectations. When I looked into the earnest faces, I felt that here were people who did not come to see but to hear, to be enlightened and to learn, and I was grateful to my good star, or rather the energy and perseverance of the two comrades who made such meetings possible.

     The world is full of freaks - the Minneapolis Spook Club can certainly boast a large following. This organization is composed of professional men only, and they are known for their purity and morality, they never suffered the evil spirit of woman to invade their sanctum before. But thanks to the generosity of a friend, the rigid rules of the Spook Club were temporarily set aside. Possibly the members thought that one could not be a woman and an Anarchist at the same time. The angelic chastity of the Spookers would have been quite discomforting to me, were it not for the presence of a few daughters of that arch seducer Eve, who helped to bring some wit and humor into the dead atmosphere of statute and dissecting room wisdom. Specialists were there a-plenty, doctors enough to create any amount of disease, lawyers and a real live judge to induce one to commit crime, bump interpreters and bump producers, and so forth ; all important and awe inspiring gentlemen, but as innocent of the great questions of the day as new born bobs , their heads full of spooks and fears of all that their lack of wisdom could not grasp.

     Winnipeg. The dirty crows - as a certain French artist named the priests - who infest the streets and cars of Montreal are not as numerous in Winnipeg, but the horrors of their creed are as dominant here as there - the creed that has for centuries gone about killing, burning and torturing is still holding the Canadian people in power, befogging their minds as in ages past.

     The city was white on my arrival ; everything in the tight clutches of grim winter ; apparently not a sign of life or warmth. But the greetings of my comrades and the enthusiasm of the audiences soon convinced me that all was not cold or dead. Spring, the great awakener of life and growth, was stirring in the hearts of those who had come to hear me.

     Men and women from every nook in the world gather at Winnipeg, the land of promise. They are soon made to realize, however, that the causes which drove them from their native shores - oppression, greed and robbery - are quite at home in this new, white land. The true great promise lies in all these nations coming together, to look one another in the face, to learn for the first time the real force that makes for wealth. Men and women knowing one another and clasping hands for one common purpose, human brotherhood and solidarity. Yes, Winipeg is the place of promise. It is the fertile soil of growth, life and ideas.

     The Radical Club, but two years old, has become a tremendous factor in creating interest in new thought. My six days' visit seemed a dream. Large, eager audiences every evening and twice on Sunday, a beautiful social gathering that united two hundred men, women and children in one family of comrades, and people constantly coming and going during the day, all anxious to learn, made the time pass like a flash. When I stood on the platform of the train bidding a last farewell to a large group of friends, I keenly felt the pains of parting ; but this, too, I felt:

Allons! We must not stop here -

However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient

    this dwelling we cannot remain here,

However shelter'd this port and however calm these

    waters, we must not anchor here,

However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we

   are permitted to receive it but a little while."

     I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, alone with my impressions of those who had passed before me in long processions during my stay in Winnipeg. However, the official zeal of the Immigration Inspectors willed it differently. With the usual impudence that goes with authority I was subjected to the "third degree" : my name, occupation, whether American citizen, how long in America, and whether I had been out of the States before. Evidently the uniformed gentlemen had studied that infamous anti-Anarchist Immigration Law that will not admit "disbelievers in organized government." I assured my anxious protector that he would have to let me return, since I had been in America eighteen yeas before that stupid law was passed. Though myself a citizen of the world, my father happened to be privileged enough to become a citizen of this free country. After a long conversation with some others of his ilk, my good friend decided to let me go on. I know from experience that our law makers can do anything they please ; still, I venture to keep me out of this "sweet land of liberty." Besides, what are laws for if not to be evaded? No wonder so many "disbelievers in organized government" have flocked to American since the law against them became operative.

     Poor, stupid Immigration Inspector! If you could have foreseen the result of your zeal, you might not have made it so public that the dangerous Emma Goldman was on the train. You got my fellow passengers intensely interested, with the result that I added a seventh meeting to those held at Winnipeg and disposed of a large number of magazines and pamphlets - not in the hall but in the Pullman sleeper. When will our fool governors learn that the best government is the one that governs least or not at all? Never before have I felt as convinced of this truth as on this tour. The rigid laws against Anarchists, passed within the past four or five years, the shameful misrepresentation of Anarchism, and the persecution of its adherents have awakened the most intense interest in our ideas in this country.Still more striking is the tremendous change in the attitude of the press. The papers in Toledo, Toronto, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Winnipeg, especially those of the last two cities, have been remarkable for their fairness and decency in reporting my meetings. Probably they have learned that yellow journal methods, sensational, vulgar, untruthful reports are no longer believed by the thinking readers of newspapers. I wish our Eastern journalists would learn the same lesson and follow the example of one of their colleagues, the editor of the Winnipeg Tribune, who has this to say:

     "Emma Goldman has been accused of abusing freedom of speech in Winnipeg, and Anarchism has been denounced as a system that advocates murder. As a matter of fact, Emma Goldman indulged, while in Winnipeg, in no dangerous rant and made no statement that deserved more than moderate criticism of its wisdom or logic. Also, as a matter of fact, the man who claims that Anarchism teaches bomb-throwing and violence doesn't know what he is talking about. Anarchism is an ideal doctrine that is now, and always will be, utterly impracticable. Some of the gentles and most gifted men of the world believe in it. The fact alone that Tolstoi is an Anarchist is conclusive proof that it teaches no violence.

     "We all have a right to laugh at Anarchy as a wild dream. We all have a right to agree or disagree with the teachings of Emma Goldman. But we should not make ourselves ridiculous by criticising a lecturer for the things that she did not say, nor by denouncing as a violent and bloody a doctrine that preaches the opposite of violence."

(To be continued.)

*   *   *

SOCIALISM AND FATALISM

By H. Kelly.

THE relation between the two theories, roughly defined as Socialism and Fatalism, respectively, is more real than apparent. By Socialism I mean the Marxian brand, known in Europe as Social Democracy : the collective ownership of the land, means of production, distribution and exchange, controlled and regulated by a democratic State. Fatalism - the doctrine of inevitability : what is, had to be ; what was, will be. Leaving out of the question the law of gravitation, change of seasons and other natural phenomena, and applying the inevitability theory to individuals, fatalism is neither more nor less than a state of mind, resulting from repeated suggestion and repetition.

     To illustrate. A fortune teller, after her palm has been crossed by a (the inevitable) piece of silver, solemnly informs a young lady of impressionable years that she will be married twice. The girl repeats the suggestion to herself and her friends throughout a number of years, until she finally becomes convinced that she must get married twice - and she does. Ergo, the fortune teller is vindicated.

     Social Democrats have repeated the half-truth that man is the creature of circumstance and environment so often, that in the end their actions are moulded to fit their theory: they lose all individuality and initiative, becoming mere creatures of the ideas they have mouthed, without will or desire to act differently from the people they despise and look upon with contempt.

     It has long been recognized by advanced thinkers that different races and different countries will work out their salvation in their own particular way and time. Anarchism and Socialism are theories applicable to the whole human race, but it is more than probably that certain countries will attempt the practical application of the new ideas before others and, necessarily, with certain modifications. If we compare France with Turkey, England with Persia, America with India, we appreciate the fact that things do not work out the same in all countries and with all races. Capitalism is common to them all, yet how differently it manifests itself in the development of the various countries.

      Social Democracy, as taught by Marx and Engels, was expected to develop along similar lines in all countries. In fact, we have witnessed in recent years the spectacle, still extant, of the Social Democrats of Russia advocating a system whereby the peasants were to be deprived of their land and driven into the cities ; because, forsooth, in order to reach Socialism it is necessary to go through a period of industrialism of the kind we have in England and America. It is for this reason that Social Democrats have failed so signally to make converts among the peasants, while the Socialist Revolutionists, who advocated the retention of the land by the peasants, succeeded so well with the latter. All doubt on this point will be dissipated by consulting the current Russian revolutionary periodicals.

      Collectivism was supposed to mean the same thing all over the globe ; yet time has proven the contrary.

     European Socialists have rather a poor opinion of, amounting in some cases to positive contempt for, the intellectual ability of their American comrades. They will not be surprised to hear that we are evolving a set of Socialists here who, though worshiping Marx, hold ideas positively ludicrous in their heterodoxy to his gospel, as set forth in the Communist Manifesto. Heterodoxy is sometimes as foolish as orthodoxy. Some Socialists say that there is no reason why millionaires should not exist under Socialism ; others claim that even titles - purely for merit, or course - my be bestowed under that "Democratic Republic." In amazement we rub our eyes and wonder if the Collectivist ship has not slipped her moorings and the old religion lost its hold on its disciples. Wages will exist under Collectivism, we are told, and if a Melba refuses to sing unless we pay her ten or twenty times the amount that ordinary mortals receive, we will comply ; for as Mr. Wilshire says, we can't make her sing, and to put her on a bread and water diet is both impracticable and inhuman. There will always be, he says, lovers of a beautiful voice who will be willing to give this gentle rebel a portion of their remuneration in order to enjoy her golden notes. It's true, she will not be allowed to invest these "hours of labor" in any land or enterprise where unearned increment or exploitation is possible, but she can spend them in marble palaces, steam yachts or hogsheads of champagne. Leaving the solution of this "new Socialism" to others more apt at solving puzzles than myself, I will now pass on to the tactics advocated and practiced by American Socialists.

     Inspired with the belief that capital is concentrating so rapidly that we shall soon have a great financial panic - with millions of men out of work and, therefore, lacking food, which condition will result in a Social Revolution - Mr. Gaylord Wilshire floats a gold mining company with shares valued at twenty-five million dollars, and uses the pages of a Socialist publication, Wilshire's Magazine, to sell the stock. Mr. Wilshire's efforts on behalf of Socialism have been in the past sincere, if undistinguished ; there is no reason why we should doubt his honesty of purpose now. His intention, we are informed, is to make a fortune and use it to help on the revolution. Quite as laudable and more respectable - he is nothing if not respectable - than those Anarchists who used to advocate stealing for the propaganda and ended by stealing for themselves. Of course, if this mine succeeds (Mr. Wilshire estimates that there is over three billion dollars worth of ore there), it will make all the shareholders rich and increase the number of the middle class by some scores of thousands. With righteous indignation against any "comrade" who openly seeks to defy and upset the law of gravitation (concentration of capital and abolition of the middle class) and jeopardize the honor of the movement, the National Executive of the party, who are proletarian lawyers, editors and so forth, are moved to protest. The situation is peculiar. If the mine is a failure, poor comrades lose their money ; if a success, they become middle-class exploiters. It is but natural that the most vigorous protestant against Mr. Wilshire is Mr. Hillquit, the "historian" of the party. The latter has been in the censuring business aforetime - only, on a never to be forgotten occasion, he was the censured - and it is quite natural he should be indignant over any violation of party ethics. In the language of his campaign literature, Mr. Hillquit is "a rising young lawyer" ; he is firmly grounded in Marxian fatalism and is reputed in some quarters to be worth no less than one hundred thousand dollars of unconcentrated capital. Far be it from me to suggest that the filthy lucre accumulated by this thrifty young man is invested in tenement houses or factories á la Frederick Engels ; or that he is drawing a beggarly four percent from a savings bank. It is, to use a colloquialism, a "cinch" that his money is buried in some sub-cellar where its contaminating influence is safely quarantined from the "comrades" and the "movement."

     The campaign waged by Mr. Hillquit last fall, as Congressional candidate from the ninth district, was undoubtedly the last word in political opportunism; the most charitable person, if free from party prejudice, can have nothing but contempt for methods which differed in no particular from a rotten Tammany or a debauched Republican party. If this gentleman enjoys but one-forth of the income he is credited with, he receives considerably more from his law practice than he would as Congressman ; as is the case of Mr. Wilshire, we may absolve him from any desire to profit financially by going to Congress. (In passing we may add that the mileage graft and other extras paid Congressmen are so great that on a salary of five thousand dollars per year a certain Congressman from my State, Missouri, had saved eleven thousand dollars in two years, besides paying all his expenses. Congressional salaries have recently been increased to seven thousand five hundred dollars a year.) While not doubting Mr. Hillquit's honesty, we are not clear as to the principles he holds in trying to ride into office by the methods he pursued.

     For a generation the workers have been told that a vote for a Socialist candidate is a vote for Socialism ; how pale and sickly that sounds in the light of the campaign we have been speaking of. The voters of the ninth Congressional district were urged to vote for the party candidate on the grounds that "Mr. Hillquit is a rising young lawyer and a Russian Jew ; he will look after the interests of the Jews in Russia ; be the spokesman for the Russian revolution ; the workers of the ninth district are among the poorest paid in the United States, living in the most overcrowded und unsanitary conditions" ; finally the voters were instructed how they could split the ticket, voting for Tammany or the Republican party and still electing the Socialist Congressional candidate. We have here an appeal to race prejudice and snobbishness, and the implication that a Socialist Congressman could increase wages, improve local sanitary conditions, and reduce overcrowding, when the veriest child at schools knows that Congress has nothing ever to do with such matters.

     It may be said: "Yes, all that you say is true, but did not the party censure Mr. Hillquit?" Yes, after the election! Not a word of disapprobation was heard during the campaign, and it requires a mind singularly inexperienced in politics to conceive of any member of the Socialist party raising the question, had the party candidate been elected. The end would have justified the means ; an attack upon the honor or good faith of the first Socialist Congressman would have been considered high treason. In fact, it is doubtful if the question would have even arisen, had it not been for the instructions regarding the split ticket. This was the real crime ; the other incidents were trifles. The answer of a member of the Executive of the party to my protest against such dishonest tactics was that my objections were "petty, even childish, and they bored him."

     When it is pointed out that every reform or revolutionary movement must, in order to have nay real or lasting success, have an ethical basis, and the morals of the party be judged by its meanest member, we are informed that it is a utopian doctrine long since exploded or that we do not understand Socialism ; further, that Socialism will come, not because it is just or demanded by the people, but because it is necessary. Socialists, such as those we have mentioned - they are typical, representing fairly accurately the party at large - have repeated so often that capitalist politics are rotten, and men's ethics, religion and every-day actions are governed and determined by the manner in which they obtain their livelihood, that they have arrived at the point where their actions conform to their theories. Socialism is inevitable, and man is the creature of circumstance and environment ; the fact that I, who advocate the abolition of exploitation and point out its evil effects, am myself an exploiter, does not affect the sum total of human happiness or misery, or the ultimate realization of Socialism. The individual counts for nothing ; Socialism is inevitable. Acting on this basis, our politics are as corrupt, proportionally, as our environment, and we exploit in the name of a principle. Truly a wonderful philosophy, this fatalistic Socialism which justifies everything from exploitation to the beating of one's wife, on the ground that "we are the creatures of our environment and victims of the present system." It is the proud boast of the advocates of Socialism that there are no less than thirty million Socialists in the world. Of course there are not, but if there were, and if each one of them considered himself an individual, conscious of his powers as well as of his limitations - a human entity of sufficiently intelligent to understand the necessity of a social change, as well as to realize the importance of the individual as a determining social factor ; if to this understanding were added a moral concept of exploitation, what a mighty revolution those thirty millions could accomplish!

*   *   *

FLASHES FROM THE FLINT

By Victor Robinson.

THE history of progress is written in one word: disobedience.

     What is all this talk I hear about a Redeemer and a coming Messiah? The world has but one Savior, and his name is Freedom!

     Authority is the dam which has blocked the river of civilization ; it is the clog in the wheel of improvement, the barnacle on the ship of science, the dark cloud which obscures the dawn of day.

     Where God is king, the people are devils.

     The reformer in prison is more free than the conservative who imprisoned him, for the chains of superstition in a man's mind are more cruel than the fetters of iron on the convict's ankles.

*   *   *

STIRNER: "THE EGO AND HIS OWN"

By Max Baginski.

I.

     Benjamin R. Tucker has published the first English translation of "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum," written in 1845 by the ingenuous German thinker Kaspar Schmidt under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The book has been translated by Steven T. Byington, assisted by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm. Mr. Tucker, however, informs us in his Preface to the book that "the responsibility for special errors and imperfections" properly rests on his shoulders. He is therefore also responsible for the Introduction by the late Dr. J. L. Walker, whose narrow-minded conception of Stirner is suggestive of Individualistic idolatry.

     Stirner said: "Ich hab' mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt." ("I have set my cause on naught.")1 It seems that the Individualist Anarchists have set their cause on Stirner. Already they have sent money to Bayreuth and Berlin, for the purpose of having the customary memorial tables nailed to the places of Stirner's birth and death. Like the devout pilgrims wending their way Bayreuth-wards, lost in awed admiration of the musical genius of Richard Wagner, so will the Stirner worshipers soon begin to infest Bayreuth and incidentally cause a raise in the hotel charges. The publishers of Baedeker will do well to take note of this prophecy, that the attention of the traveling mob be called to the Stirner shrines.

     A harmless bourgeois cult. Involuntarily I am reminded of another theoretic Individualist Anarchist, P. J. Proudhon, who wrote after the Paris February Revolution : "Willy-nilly, we must now resign ourselves to be Philistines."

     Possibly Dr. J. L. Walker had in mind such resignation when he contemptuously referred in his Introduction to Stirner's book to the "so-called revolutionary movement" of 1848. We regret that the learned doctor is dead; perhaps we could have successfully demonstrated to him that this revolution - in so far as it was aggressively active - proved of the greatest benefit to at least one country, sweeping away, as it did, most of the remnants of feudalism in Prussia. It were not their evolutionists who compromised the revolution and caused the reaction ; the responsibility for the latter rests rather on the champions of passive resistance, á la Tucker and Mackay.

     Walker did not scruple to insinuate that Nietzsche had read Stirner and possibly stolen his ideas in order to bedeck himself with them ; he had omitted, however, to mention Stirner. Why? That the world might not discover the plagiarism. The disciple Walker proves himself not a little obsessed by the god-like attributes of his master, as he suspiciously exclaims: "Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read everything, and not read Stirner?"

     Good psychologic reasons stamp this imputation as unworthy of credence.

     Nietzsche is reflected in his works as the veriest fanatic of truthfulness with regard to himself. Sincerity and frankness are his passion - not in the sense of wishing to "justify" himself before others : he would have scorned that, as Stirner would - it is his inner tenderness and purity which imperatively impel him to be truthful with himself. With more justice than any of his literary contemporaries could Nietzsche say of himself : "Ich wohne in meinem eignen Haus," 2 and what reason had he to plagiarize? Was he in need of stolen ideas - he, whose very abundance of ideas proved fatal to him?

     Add to this the fact that the further and higher Nietzsche went on his heroic road, the more alone he felt himself. Not alone like the misanthrope, but as one who, overflowing with wealth, would vain make wonderful gifts, but finds no ears to hear, no hands capable to take.

     How terribly he suffered through his mental isolation is evidenced by numerous places in his works. He searched the past and the present for harmonious accords, for ideas and sentiments congenial to his nature. How ardently he reveres Richard Wagner and how deep his grief to find their ways so far apart! In his latter works Nietzsche became the most uncompromising component of Schopenhaur's philosophy ; yet that did not prevent his paying sincere tribute to the thinker Schopenhaur, as when he exclaims:

"Seht ihn euch an --

Niemandem war er untertan."3

     Were Nietzsche acquainted with Stirner's book, he would have joyfully paid it - we may justly assume - the tribute of appreciative recognition, as he did in the case of Stendhal and Dostoyevsky, in whom he saw kindred spirits. Of the latter Nietzsche says that he had learned more psychology from him than from all the textbooks extant. That surely does not look like studied concealment of his literary sources.

     In my estimation there is no great intellectual kinship between Stirner and KNietzsche. True, both are fighting for the liberation of individuality. Both proclaim the right of the individual to unlimited development, as against all "holiness," all sacrosanct pretensions of self-denial, all Christian and moral Puritanism ; yet how different is Nietzsche's Individualism from that of Stirner!

     The Individualism of Stirner is fenced in. On the inside stalks the all-too-abstract I, who is like unto an individual as seen under X-rays. "Don't disturb my circle!" cries this I to the people outside the fence. It is a somewhat stilted I. Karl Marx parodied Stirner's Einzigkeit by saying that it first saw the light in the narrow little Berlin street, the Kupfergraben. That was malicious. In truth, however, it cannot be denied that Stirner's Individualism is not free from a certain stiffness and rigidity. The Individualism of Nietzsche, on the other hand, is an exulting slogan, a jubilant war-cry ; more, it joyfully embraces humanity and the whole world, absorbs them, and, thus enriched, in turn penetrates life with elementary force.

     But why contrast these two great personalities? Let us rather repeat with M. Messer - who wrote an essay on Stirner - Goethe's saying with regard to himself and Schiller: "Seid froh, dass ihr solche zwei Kerle habt."4

     That the champions of pure-and-simple Individualism can be as captious and petty towards other individualities as the average moralist is proven by the extremely tactless remark in Tucker's Preface about Stirner's swetheard, Marie Daehnhard. Stirner dedicated his book to her ; for that he must now be censored by Mackay-Tucker in the following manner:

     Mackay's investigations have brought to light the Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no Eigene. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy."

     No doubt Tucker is firmly convinced that Individualism and Einzigkeit are synonymous with Tuckerism. FOrtunately, it's a mistake.

     Max Stirner and Marie Daehnhardt surely knew better what they had in common at the time of the dedication than Tucker-Mackay knows now.

     But we must not take the matter too seriously. Stirner belongs to those whom even their admirers and literary executors cannot kill off. Mr. Traubel and the Conservator have not as yet succeeded in disgusting me with Walt Whitman ; neither can the Individualists Anarchists succeed in robbing me of Stirner.

     A great fault of the translation is the failure to describe the contemporary intellectual atmosphere of Germany in Stirner's time. The American reader is left in total ignorance as to the conditions and personalities against which the ideas of Stirner were directed. This is, moreover, dishonest - undesignedly so, no doubt - with regard to the Communists. Stirner's controversy was specifically with Wilhelm Weitling - who, by the way, is probably quite unknown to most American readers ; it were therefore no more than common honesty to state that the Communism of Weitling bears but a mere external resemblance to modern Communism as expounded, among others, by Kropotkin and Reclus. Modern Communism has ceased to be a mere invention, to be forced upon society ; it is rather a Weltanschauung founded on biology, psychology and economy.

     The English edition of "The Ego and his Own" impresses one with the fact that the translator spared no pains to give an adequate and complete work ; unfortunately, he has not quite succeeded. It is a case of too much philogy and too liter intuitive perception. Stirner himself is partly responsible for this, because in spite of his rebellion against all spooks, he is past master in playing with abstractions.

II.

     Stirner's "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" was a revolutionary deed. It is the rebellion of the individual against those "sacred principles" in the name of which he was ever oppressed and subjected. Stirner exposes, so to say, the metaphysics of tyrannical forces. Luter nailed his ninety-five accusations against Popery to the door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg ; Stirner's declaration of independence of the individual throws down the challenge to ALL things "sacred" - in morals, family and State. He tears off the mask of our "inviolable institutions" and discovers behind them nothing but - spooks. GOD, SPIRIT, IDEAS, TRUTH, HUMANITY, PATRIOTISM - all these are to Stirner mere masks, behind which - as from the holy mountain - issue commands, the Kantian categoric imperatives, all signed to suppress the individuality, to train and drill it and thus to rob it of all initiative, independence and Eigenheit All these things claim to be good in themselves, to be cultivated for their own sake and all exact respect and subjection, all demand admiration, worship and the humiliation of the individual.

     Against all this is directed the rebellion of the I with its Eigenheit and Einzigkeit. It withholds respect and obedience. It shakes from its feet the dust of "eternal truths" and proclaims the emancipation of the individual from the mastery of ideals and ideas; henceforth the free, self-owning Ego must master them. He is no more awed by the "good" ; neither does he condemn the "bad." He is sans religion, sans morals, sans State. The conception of Justice, Right, General Good are no more binding upon him ; at the most , he uses them for his own ends

     To Stirner, the Ego is the centre of the world ; wherever it looks, it finds the world its own - to the extent of its power. If this Ego could appropriate the entire world, it would thereby establish its right to it. It would be the universal monopolist. Stirner does not say that he wants his liberty to be limited by the equal liberty of others ; on the contrary, he believes that his freedom and Eigenheit are bounded only by his power to attain. If Napoleon uses humanity as a football, why don't they rebel?

     The liberty demanded by his democratic and liberal contemporaries was to Stirner as mere alms thrown to a beggar.

     J. L. Walker entirely misunderstands the very spirit of Stirner when he states in his Introduction : "In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty." Stirner has nothing but contempt for political liberty. He regards it in the light of a doubtful favor that the powerful grant to the powerless. He, as Eigener would scorn to accept political liberty if he could have it for the asking. He scoffs at those who ask for human right and beg liberty and independence, instead of taking what belongs to them by virtue of their power.

     It is this very criticism of political liberty that constitutes one of the most ingenuous parts of Stirner's book. This is best proven by the following quotation:5

     "'Political liberty,' what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No ; on the contrary, the individual's subjection in the State and to the State laws. But why 'liberty'? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it ; because one is a - citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as 'supreme head of the State.' . . .

     "Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free ; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free ; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty , but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me ; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave."

     Stirner is anti-democratic as well as anti-moral He did not believe that the individual would be freed from his moral fetters by "humanizing the diety," as advocated by Ludwig Feuerbach ; that were but to substitute moral despotism for religious. The divine had grown senile and enervated ; something more virile was required to further keep man in subjection.

     By embodying the "God idea" in man, the moral commands are transformed into his very mental essence, thus enslaving him to his own mind instead of to something external ; thus would the former merely external slavery be supplanted by an inner thraldom through his ethical fear of being immoral. We could rebel against a mere external God ; the moral, however, becoming synonymous with the human, is thus made ineradicable. Man's dependence and servitude reach in this humanizing of the divine their highest triumph - freed from the thraldom of an external force he is now the more intensely the slave of his own "inner moral necessity."

     Every good Christian carries God in his heart; every god moralist and Puritan , his moral gendarme.

     The freethinkers have abolished the personal God and then absorbed the ethical microbe, thus inoculating themselves with moral scrofula. They proudly proclaimed their ability to be moral without divine help, never suspecting that it is this very morality that forges the chains of man's subjugation. The rulers would cheerfully ignore the belief in God if convinced that moral commands would suffice to perpetuate man in his bondage. While the "hell of a sick conscience" is in yourself - in your bones and blood - your slavery is guaranteed.

     In this connection Stirner says :

     "Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its external bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you - prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!" monaed itself away, and - the soul was at rest. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new - prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon! how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue!"

     The the chains fall one by one from the sovereign I. It rises ever higher above all "sacred commands" which have woven his strait-jacket.

     That is the great liberating deed of Stirner.

     Abstractly considered, the Ego is now einzig ; but how about his Eigentum?6 We have now reached the point in Stirner's philosophy where mere abstractions do not suffice.

     The resolving of society into einzige individuals leads, economically considered, to negation. Stirner's life is itself the best proof of the powerlessness of the individual forced to carry on a solitary battle in opposition to existing conditions.

     Stirner demolishes all spooks ; yet, forced by material need to contract debts which he cannot pay, the power of the "spooks" proves greater than that of his Eigenheit : his creditors send him to prison. Stirner himself declares free competition to be a mere gamble, which can only emphasize the artificial superiority of toadies and time-servers over the less proficient. But he is also opposed to Communism which, in his opinion, would make ragamuffins of us all, by depriving the individual of his property.

     This objection, however, does not apply to a very large number of individuals, who do not possess property anyhow ; they become ragamuffins because they are continually compelled to battle for property and existence, thus sacrificing their Eigenheit and Einzigkeit.

     Why were the lives of most of our poets, thinkers, artists and inventors a martyrdom? Because their in individualities were so eigen and einzig that they could not successfully compete in the low struggle for property and existence. In that struggle they had to market their individuality to secure means of livelihood. What is the cause of our corruption of character and our hypocritical suppression of convictions? It is because the individual does not own himself, and is not permitted to be his true self. He has become a mere market commodity, an instrument for the accumulation of property - for others.

     What business has an individual, a Stinerian, an Eigener in a newspaper office, for instance, where intellectual power and ability are prostituted for the enrichment of the publisher and shareholders. Individuality is stretched on the Procrustes of bed of business ; in the attempt to secure his livelihood - very often in the most uncongenial manner - he sacrifices his Eigenheit, thus suffering the loss of the very thing he prizes most highly and enjoys the best.

     If our individuality were to be made the price of breathing, what ado there would be about the violence done to personality! And yet our very right to food, drink and shelter is only too often conditioned upon our loss of individuality. These things are granted to the propertyless millions (and how scantily!) only in exchange for their individuality - they become the mere instruments of industry.

     Stirner loftily ignores the fact that property is the enemy of individuality , - that the degree of success in the competitive struggle is proportionate to the measure in which we disown and turn traitors to our individuality. We may possibly except only those who are rich by inheritance ; such persons can, to a certain degree, live in their own way. But that by no means expresses the power, the Eigenheit of the heir's individuality. The privilege of inheriting may, indeed, belong to the veriest numskull full of prejudice and spooks, as well as to the Eigener. This leads to petty bourgeois and parvenu Individualism which narrows rather than broadens the horizon of the Eigener.

     Modern Communists are more individualistic than Stirner. To them, not merely religion, morality, family and State are spooks, but property also is no more than a spook, in whose name the individual is enslaved - and how enslaved! The individuality is nowadays held in far stronger bondage by property, than by the combined power of State, religion and morality.

     Modern Communists do not say that the individual should do this or that in the name of Society. They say : "The liberty and Eigenheit of the individual demand that economic conditions - production and distribution of the means of existence - should be organized thus and thus for his sake." Hence follows that organization in the obedience or despotism. The prime condition is that the individual should not be forced to humiliate and lower himself for the sake of property and subsistence. Communism thus creates a basis for the liberty and Eigenheit of the individual. I am a Communist because I am an Individualist.

     Fully as heartily the Communists concur with Stirner when he puts the word take in place of demand - that leads to the dissolution of property, to expropriation.

     Individualism and Communism go hand in hand.

1. Erroneously translated by Byington: "All things are nothing to me." Return

2. Literally, "I live in my own house." Return

3. "Observe him - he is mastered by no one." Return

4. "Rejoice that you have two such capital fellows." Return

5. We quote Byington's version.Return

6. Meaning, in this connection, property. Return

*   *   *

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

     A discreet intimation to all those whose subscription has long since expired. We hate to leave an old friend behind. If you feel likewise, send in your dollar.

*   *   *

L I B E R T Y

By A. T. Heist.

WHEN I speak to my "intelligent" friends about the beauty of individual independence and personal liberty, I am informed that we are all dependent both upon nature and one another, and that, therefore, there can be no such thing as human independence or human liberty. Such stupid ones are confounding absolute freedom with civil or social liberty, and think that by disbelieving the existence of the former they are denying the possibility of the latter.

     Many who esteem themselves to be "radical" libertarians also seem to me to have blurred notions about the nature and limitations of liberty. For this reason I write, hoping that by so doing I will clarify my own vision a little, and that of some readers a great deal.

     It may be just as well to being by stating some matters that are not involved in my idea of liberty. It seems to me that no scientific conception of human freedom can imply the idea of freedom from the operation of natural law, either in the physical world or in the social organism. Neither can it involved the assumption of the lawlessness of human volition, for be it remembered that most people still cling to the old "free will" superstition. I say, then, that every rational conception of human freedom must be grounded upon the demonstrated fact that each of us, even in the realm of the intellect, is always subject to the uniformity and universality of the reign of natural law.

     Liberty under subjection to universal natural law only means that every person shall be permitted to find his own happiness in his own most perfect adjustment to the conditions of his own well being, under the natural law of the social organism, operating without interruption or interference from any artificial state-made or other abnormal conditions, such as actually subvert the normal operations of natural law. In this last clause I have in mind the intervention of mental disease, through which unhealthy condition there might be produced such effects as are an invasive subversion of the natural law of the social organism.

     May be this generalization is too abstruse for some. In the fear of this I shall endeavor to make it more plain and particular by re-stating the formula as applied separately to physical liberty, intellectual liberty and civil liberty.

     When I appply my formula about liberty to the bodily life of man, I come to this conclusion : physical liberty for the human infant means the universal admission of its claim to develop an unmutilated and undeformed full maturity. From this it follows that parents are guilty of invasive conduct towards their child, whenever they contribute, even though unconsciously and remotely, toward their offspring's failure to reach the full stature of an unmutilated and undeformed manhood.

     For the healthy adult physical liberty means the exercise of all his faculties in freedom from all artificial, man-made restraints, and so long as the indulgence of his capacities does not in itself constitute an unwelcome, artificial restraint or invasion upon another.

     But here I come again to the difficult task of stating what I mean by artificial restraints, since, in the broadest sense, even limitations of human contrivance are a part of nature. By artificial restraints I mean those restraints of human contrivance which find the necessity for their existence solely in the special attitude of mind of those individuals who restrain or invade, and which restrictions would be avoidable, because unnecessary, except for that special psychologic necessity.

     For the infant, intellectual liberty under natural law must mean the universal admission of his claim to be instructed in the laws of nature, under which term I include not only things and their forces, but men and their ways, and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to live inharmony with those laws.

     For the adult, intellectual liberty under natural law can only mean that his opportunity for the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge shall be unrestricted by any artificial hindrance of human contrivance, so long as the means employed are not in themselves a direct impairment of another's equal liberty. It seems to me that one's liberty cannot include the destruction of another's liberty uninvited by that other. Academically this is incontrovertible, practically the difficulty lies in drawing the line.

     Already I have invited controversy over the difficult question which involves the existence , within the social organism, of a natural limitation upon the liberty of each, by the just claim of another to an equality of liberty. This is the crux of the whole discussion about the existence and province of government.

     The tyrannies of states consist only in the action of some official persons, under the claim of rightful power confirmed in them by a dominant social influence, and exercised against other persons who decline to be voluntarily submissive. If, then, I admit the claim of right, on the part of any citizen, to impair the equal liberty of another, it seems to me that I am also justifying the rightfulness of the assumption of tyrannous governmental power. This follows because government is only a combination of individuals and has the same right to invade that any one of the citizens possesses and yields to it. At the same time, by conceding the right to invade, I am admitting that there is no possible appeal against tyranny by actual or threatened force, except by opposing violence, and that no motive exists for joining the forces of resistance to tyranny except a desire to secure the power to supplant the tyrant.

     To make this entirely clear, we must bear in mind the difference between the liberty which may be unanimously conceded power to revoke the permission. So long as the rightful power to destroy any liberty is admitted, there can be no real liberty, but only a temporary semblance of it, due to a mere transitory lenience of a tyrant, acting upon considerations of expedience and not upon an abdication of authoritative rightful power.

     If, on the contrary, we assume that there is a rational appeal for the cessation of tyranny, its object must be to seek the abolition of the inequalities of liberty, since tyranny cannot otherwise manifest itself, and since not to seek equality of liberty is to be content with inequality of liberty - that is, with tyranny. Furthermore, a rational appeal for liberty must find its materials in nature - in the natural law of the social organism.

     This, then, brings me to the point of stating what I mean by civil liberty. TO me, civil liberty means living in social relations with my fellow man, subject only to nature's law of justice. Whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. If it declares and enforces what is not known to be in accord with the natural law of the social organism, it may or may not be in accord with it. It may or may not be tyrannous. When the state declares that to be law which is in conflict with natural law or with natural justice, the enforcement of such a rule of conduct against those who do not willingly conform, is always tyranny.

     The natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity. Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation.

     I must add a few words descriptive of my conception of natural liberty and natural justice. Natural liberty, untempered by the requirements of equal liberty or of any artificial restraints, necessarily implies the right of each to invade the other even to killing him, and this from any motive or impulse which may enter even a disordered brain. Such a conception of liberty would imply the liberty to enslave, if only the power existed.

     Natural liberty, restrained only by imminent danger of retaliation for invasion, is a liberty which can be maintained at an equality only by considerations of expediency personal to each individual ; it necessarily admits the right to invade, whenever the power and personal expediency are combined in the same individual or group.

     Either of the foregoing conceptions of liberty seems to involve equality of opportunity in exercising the power to abridge the greatest liberty consistent with an equality of liberty, and to impair that equality. This is the very essence of tyranny, whether accomplished by, or without, organized government.

     Natural liberty, limited by natural justice, implies the knowledge that in the very nature of man and of human relations, there exists a natural law of justice demanding for each equality of opportunity with all others in subjecting nature's forces to pleasure-giving ends. To the extent of our relatively perfect knowledge of this law of natural justice, and of our conscious submission to it do we attain the highest human liberty for all. Whether that natural liberty, as limited only by the requirements of natural justice, be maintained by the help of organized government, or without it, is quite immaterial. In the fact of its maintenance exists the essence of liberty.

     We are happy just to the degree in which we live in perfect accord with all the phases of natural law, and are free just to the extent that we suffer no artificial interference with our efforts to adjust to it. The progress of liberty depends upon our advancement in the knowledge of natural justice, and progressively living more and more nearly in exact conformity to its demands. The ideal liberty can be attained only when every human knows all there is to know about the natural law of the social organism, and when everybody is willing to allow everybody else to live in harmony with that law, then every one will be his own legislator and his own governor. Only then will the absolute of natural liberty be possible, because only then will no one be tempted to exercise the right to invade the greatest liberty consistent with an equality of liberty.

*   *   *

MOTHER EARTH SUSTAINING FUND

RECEIPTS.*

Balance on hand in April ................... $70.20 Proceeds from Emma Goldman's lectures in Cincinnati, Ohio..... 20.00 Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in St. Louis, Mo. 30.00 Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Minneapolis, Minn. ..... 45.00 Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Winnipeg, Man.. 140.00 Proceeds from E. G.'s lectures in Denver...... 35.00 Emil N. Ling, Winnipeg ....................... 1.00 H. Korbgoweit, Mt. Pleasant, Pa .............. 1.00 John Daycompay, Long Island City ............. 4.00 Russian Tea Party, Philadelphia, per N. Notkin 15.00 Harlem Liberal Alliance, New York ............ 10.16 $376.36

• * : Figures quoted represents proceeds from meetings after traveling expenses have been deducted. Return

*   *   *

THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST CONFERENCE

UPON comrade Emma Goldman's departure from Winnipeg, the local Anarchist group held a meeting to discuss matters pertaining to the International Anarchist Conference, which is to take place at Amsterdam, Holland, in August, 1907.

     After a thorough consideration of the subject we came to the conclusion that:

  a. Considering the prominence of a comrade Emma Goldman as an Anarchist propagandist in the United States and Canada, and

b.  In view of the fact that her repeated tours of America have made her thoroughly familiar with the movement, both general and local, and

  c. Believing her fully competent to advise the International Conference as to the spirit and trend of the Anarchist movement in America, as well as to report to us - upon her return - the proceedings at Amsterdam with a view of our profiting by the ideas and suggestions advanced at the latter ; therefore

     We unanimously agree to use our best efforts to enable comrade Emma Goldman to take part in the Amsterdam Conference - not, of course, as our representative authorized to act in our behalf, but as a comrade whose participation in the Conference cannot fail to prove beneficial to our friends abroad, as well as to the movement at home.

     It is further agreed to publish this communication in the Anarchist press of the country, calling upon the various groups to co-operate with us in this project.

               J. RICHMAN, Secretary Winnipeg Group.

*   *   *

AN International Anarchist Conference is to take place at Amsterdam, Holland, in August. It is superfluous to enlarge upon the importance of having an American attend the Conference ; we have no assurance, however, that such will be the case.

     To insure the attendance of a comrade of ability, we therefore suggest that Emma Goldman be requested to attend. Expenses to be defrayed by voluntary subscription ; all money for this purpose to be forwarded to J. M. Livshis (1245 Milwaukee avenue, Chicago), who has been selected to act as a treasurer of the Conference fund.

     Those who favor this plan are urged to act at once, as time is very pressing. All contributions will be acknowledged by receipt, and published in Mother Earth and The Demonstrator.

               JULIUS BLOOMFELD.

               BEN CAPES.

               J. M. LIVSHIS

               M. RUBENSTEIN.

               J. FOX.

               S. HAMMERSMARK.

               M. NEWMAN.

*   *   *

TRUTH IN COMBAT

By W. F. Barnard

     Or friendless under night's cold stars,

       Or pilloried in the sun's hot glow,

       Or vile betrayed by kissing foe,

     Or bound and gagged behind steel bars,

     Or swathing round thy battle scars,

       Or bleeding, with life ebbing low

       Thy spirit none could overthrow

     Through all thy long uncounted wars.

     For thou art mightier than the might

       Of every form of legioned lies;

       Stronger in strength than those that rise,

     By thee sore-stricken, still to fight;

     Stronger than day or than the night:

       Triumphant from thy first-drawn breath

     Till torture leaves thee at the last

       Immortal on the lips of death.

*   *   *

GIORDANO BRUNO

By T. F. Meade.

THE motto of Galileo was that no man can teach the truth to others; he can only aid them find it. Such an aid was Michael Bakunin. The world will know Bakunin better anon. He was a firebrand burning with the love of truth, and he had to light dull, dead minds. Toiling here or there, in mine, factory or field, he almost immediately divined the man with the most magnetism, the greatest facility of speech; the man the most receptive of ideas and most fired by truth. Bakunin began at once to inoculate him with the virus of revolution. He poured it into him in his magnificent, brilliant, overpowering way, till the man was hot as his mentor. Then Bakunin quit work and locality, and sought new fields.

     Thomas Paine so burned. He left England to help America revolt. As soon as it had gained its independence, he set sail for France where revolution was in the throes of birth.

     Such scalding blood coursed through the veins of Giordano Bruno. His thought reached far towards the infinite and be longed to fire this world with it. He called himself "The Awakener," believing it to be his mission to announce the truth, not to develop or establish it. To fling away the awful yoke of the time-the Church and the Inquisition-required the courage of Luther, Calvin and Savonarola, and much more than that of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. But Bruno "prayed to be all arms and eyes, a new Briareus and a new Argus, that he might penetrate and embrace the whole of the infinite universe." He had never enough. He loved and sought the truth, and howled it everywhere. "He who drinks of this Elysian nectar," he said, "bums with an ardor that the ocean cannot quench nor the cold of Arctic temper."

     Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, Italy, in 1548. He was burned at the stake at Rome in 1600 Entering a Dominican order at the age of sixteen, by 1576 Bruno had questioned one hundred and thirty beliefs of the Church. He probably felt that there was no hope for him when they counted up his heresies and were about to try him; feeling the circumscribing atmosphere of the place and realizing that his best thought could never be heard there, he fled. From then until 1590 - in only fourteen years- - this remarkable man constructed the philosophy pedestal on which the monument of modern philosophy has been erected; he propounded facts, theories and fancies, then held wild and visionary, but which modern science is now approaching. Bruno said: "Difficulty is ordained to deter mean spirits. Rare, heroic and divine men pass over the road of difficulty and compel necessity to yield them the palm of immortality." He continued on his way, always advancing into the fairy realm of the intellect and science until he approached confines which scientists are only now revisiting. He was driven from place to place by the authority of the time, or he found it well to leave-Naples, Genoa, Turin, Venice, Padua, Geneva, Toulouse, Paris, London, Oxford, Wittenberg, Frankfort, Zurich, Rome. But he talked on. He was uttering that splendid cry, still to bring balm to Many hearts in the thraldom of "The Wolf of Rome":

     "A time shall come, a new desired age, when the Gods shall lie in Orcus and the dread of everlasting punishment shall vanish from the world."

     Great men generally believe their age is in sight of a revolution. And posterity believes the great men were chiefly the cause of the revolution, when they only made waves in the stormy sea. Bruno thought his age would tee the change and he preached the New World though he was the only one who foresaw and wanted it. He began by rejecting in Christianity the doctrine of a supernatural interference with nature for the benefit of one special person or people. Miracles, he claimed, were impostures or a kind of magic. He hated the way the priests dwelt on the morbid side of Christ's life, his sufferings and death, the religion of hysterics, emotions and ignorance; he propounded a religion of human love and reasoned knowledge.

     "The perfecting of the individual soul" was his anarchic slogan. "Evidence, evidence. Observation, observation," he was always asking for and aiming at, and he cautioned, "Doubt all things."

     Here is the foundation of the Cartesian philosophy.

     It was in the sixteenth century that this man lived the close of the Dark Ages. Ingersoll calls Bruno the "first star of the morning after the long night." Copernicus dared not give forth this discovery of the heliocentric system, except as a cryptogram in 1543 as he died, and it had to wait to be flung in the teeth of the Church and science, till Bruno - born five years afterwards - boldy proclaimed it. Bruno himself tells us what kind of age it was. He says the monks of CAstello in Genoa held up the tail of an ass for the people to kiss, telling them it was the tail of the ass that carried Christ from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. The tail of Balaam's ass was preserved in the Church of St. John Lateran at Rome. Three coals which roasted St Lawrence were adored in as many Roman churches. The table-cloth on which the Lord's Last Supper was eaten was at Limousin. Murder and suspicion so reigned that it was the custom for the Pope (according to Montaigne), when at mass at St. Peter's, to drink from the chalice by means of an instrument that was a precaution against poison.

     Bruno is justly credited with having modified all the sources of modern philosophy, of which he has as high claim to be considered the founder as Bacon or Descartes. He proclaimed the New World while he was as high claim to be considered the founder as Bacon or Descartes. He proclaimed the New World while he was laughed to scorn ; his theories were to become demonstrations in the hands of Kepler, Huygens, Newton and Herschel ; one may trace his ideas filtered through many minds ; of the philosophers who represent the main line of development of modern thought on the Continent in the 17th century-Descartes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Leibnitz - there is not one who has not been accused of having borrowed his chief doctrine without acknowledgment from Bruno; he propounded the philosophy of the Absolute almost two centuries before Schelling and Hegel- was the forerunner of Immanuel Kant. Thomas exercised a Davidson said of Bruno: "His thought has exercised a determining influence on many great minds, as on Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel, and through them on Goethe, Coleridge and Emerson, though these last have risen to but one side of Bruno's thought."

     During the ignorance and superstition of the time in which Bruno lived, his daring mind figured on the theory of the centre of gravity of the planets; other worlds than ours; the orbits and character of comets; and the imperfect sphericity of the earth. He upheld the Copernican system but went far beyond it in his intuition of the infinity of the universe, of the identity of the earth with the matter of the planets and stars, and of the possibility of such living beings- inhabiting them as inhabit the earth. The earth and stars themselves, he said, were living organisms, so there are not seven planets or wandering stars, but myriads such, for every world is in motion. He taught the eternity of matter and he insisted that the earth was not the centre of the universe. His theory of optimism Leibnitz borrowed; and that of the perfectibility of man, Herbert Spencer. Bruno's "Shadow of Ideas" seems to Dr. Brunton to forestall Pasteur's famous doctrine of asymmetry and non-symmetry. Bruno anticipated Lessing's teaching that myths may contain foreshadowings of truths and should be interpreted by the spirit and not by the letter. He speaks of gradual changes brought about on the surface of the earth, the seas and islands, the configuration of the land, the climate in different countries, by the constant if imperceptible operations of natural causes. lie descants on the true nature of mountains, which he calls only excrescences as compared to the real mountain, or the large continents that slope upwards from the sea.

     Bruno was the first to propound the theory of evolution, in support of which Darwin and Haeckel marshaled so much proof. It was not known to ancient philosophy, though hints of it had been made.

     Bruno used to speak of the soul as matter under certain forms, and in many passages he definitely describes monism. No wonder he "paralyzed his audiences at Oxford with astonishment and indignation."

     Bruno has been pictured as vulgarly stern, repulsively severe in manner and speech, vituperative and galling, impatient with ignorance and stupidity. It is claimed by many people that this is a necessary fault of some great men at certain times. They are needed to wipe aside the ignorant as one might a row of wooden figures, the argument being that when an obvious truth is hindered in its progress by the dull brute, he ought to be summarily treated. This side of Bruno has overshadowed, through the vehemence with which his enemies have accentuated it, a very beautiful and essential phase of his genius. Bruno was a poet as well as a philosopher, and the combination made him that imaginative, scientific scholar, who enlarged the boundaries of the visible universe, and who delved in the fields of solid thought till he had plunged into the fairyland of romance, and even beyond. His romantic nature led him far from the dry-as-dust spirit of scientists; his thought soared into the empyrean, establishing by his tremendous wealth of learning and exquisite fancy the great nexus between reality and ideality.

     Bruno's mysticism is very peculiar. It contains more intricacies and ambiguities than the mysticism of the present day, because it embraced magic, and Bruno has even been accused of allowing the ignorant - and the intelligent, too-to think that he had ponderous secrets locked up in his weighty brain. His mysticism has been compared to that of the Bhagavad Gita. This would open up a tremendous field of research. But with his rationalism, his love of nature, his ideality, his boundless imagination, his scholarship, his undoubted kinship with the Muses, his optimism, his so-called Pantheism, Bruno's mysticism is surely the forecast, the fundament of the transcendentalism of the New England school, which has proved itself the open sesame to the inviting, almost appalling, realm of Christian Science, Mental Science and New Thought. Bruno's bold asseveration that "mind is common to all things in Nature" is the knob of the door of the New Thought. The great door, so long locked-since Bruno's time-swings gingerly open on what seems to be a dark, damp cave, but our eyes are piercing the gloom and we are perceiving that the cave is one of those magnificent rooms entered by Ajib, the Kalendar, in the "Thousand and One Nights," proving to be a glorified garden, itself only the propylaea of a sublime new world.

     Giordano Bruno was burned alive February 17, 1600 Many liberals date from this epoch, 1907 being E. M. 307, the year 307 of the Era of Man. He was arrested in May, 1592, in Venice and taken to Rome by the Inquisition. Bruno was not beard of from January, 1593, to January, 1599, having been all that time in a dungeon in the Eternal City. Then he was convicted of heresy on eight counts, and asked to recant. He refused, saying: "I ought not to recant and I will not recant." He was sentenced to die, "with as great clemency as possible and without effusion of blood," the cold-blooded phrase for burning alive. Yet he said calmly to his murderers: "It may be you fear more to deliver the judgment than I to hear it."

     His death took place on the Campo di Flora. In 1889 a statue of Bruno was unveiled there. It is just outside the Pope's window in the Vatican. That day the Pope fasted and prayed.

     La vita nuova, the New Italy, is represented by Giordano Bruno. The awakening people have established him as their champion, their symbol of liberty, of the intellect, of the pursuit of truth, of a life that spreads out beyond the Alp, beyond the seas - the international brotherhood of man.

     Col. Ingersoll pronounced Bruno "one of the greatest men this world has produced. He was nobler than inspired men, grander than the prophets, greater and purer than the Apostles. Above all the theologians of the world, above the makers of creeds, above the founders of religions rose this severe, unselfish and intrepid man. The first of all the world who died for truth without the expectation of reward."

     The verdict of Professor Davidson is very striking: "Bruno's thought is of infinite value. It is the loftiest yet attained."

     This is high praise. Yet when we look over the life and accomplishments of this wonderful man, when we sound his thought, when we realize the outgrowth of his philosophy, try to compass his idealism, attempt to fathom his realism, his naturalism, his rationalism, and then, too, gaze into the beautiful domain of his fancy and his sublime imaginative power, we approach the possibility that if there has ever been the superlatively great in man it lay in Giordano Bruno.

*   *   *

ON GOVERNMENT

Translated "from the Greek" by Bolton Hall

     Plato, having laid a brick in the path, stood aside to see what might befall; the first man who stumbled over it said nothing, but went his way. "There," said the Philosopher, "is a Conservative Citizen, the backbone of our Institutions!"

     The next one fell on his face and railed upon the Tetrarch, but he also left the brick, and went On his way. "That is a Good Government man," said Plato. "He will one day found a Goo-Goo Club!"

     The third also broke his shins, and, having called upon Pluto, removed the brick in the path.

     "That man," said Plato, "is a Reformer; he believes in doing 'ye nexte Thinge."' Then Plato replaced the brick in the path.

     But a certain man came along and when he had stubbed his toe, he took up the brick and hurled it at the Philosopher. "That," said Plato, as he dodged the brick, "is an Anarchist; he is dangerous to the Government."

     But he was not; he was only a Nihilist. - From Life.

NOTE.

     This parable, except the last line, appeared in the April issue of Mother Earth. Mr. Hall has since called my attention to the failure to give Life credit, as well as to the omission of the last sentence. I take pleasure in making public my reply to Mr. Hall, by the latter's request.

     "My dear Mr. Hall: The failure to give Life credit was accidental. The omission of the final phrase, 'But he was not; he was only a Nihilist,' was intentional.

     "I confess that I failed to appreciate the relation of the last sentence to the context; in fact, I considered it quite irrelevant. A friend of mine being present when I read the proof, I consulted him; but he, too, could not fathom the purpose of 'He was a Nihilist.'

     "Your letter has enlightened me on this point. You used the word Nihilist in the sense of terrorist But I am a Russian - to me, Nihilism is by no means synonymous with terrorism; no, not even suggestive of violence.

     "It was Turguéneff who originated the term Nihilist ('Fathers and Sons') prior to the introduction of terroristic tactics in Russia.

     "The term was intended to characterize the 'sons,' the new ones, the Russian modems, who had emancipated themselves from the ideas and ideals of their 'fathers,' and who, consequently, denied all existing institutions and beliefs.

     "To them, nihil est - at least Turguéneff thought so; therefore he labelled them Nihilists. The Nihilists themselves subsequently accepted the name originally used in derision.

     "In fine, neither so far as Turguéneff himself was concerned, nor in the popular Russian mind, did Nihilism ever stand for terrorism. In Russia, Nihilism was the social and political equivalent of universal atheism, so to speak.

     "Knowing you to be a progressive radical, it never occurred to me that you had used the term Nihilist in any other than its legitimate sense.

     "As the thing stands, you say, it directly advocates violence. Indeed, 'tis true that different minds see different meanings in the same thing.

     "To my mind, the Anarchist in your parable was the only one of all those that passed, who had courage enough to resent the action of the fool philosopher. Experience taught him that it was not sufficient to remove the stone from the path, so long as the wise fool was there to put the stone back again. The wise one needed a lesson, and he got it.

     "To say, as you do, that the moral of the story, as it stands, teaches violence, seems rather far-fetched. To me it means, if anything, that it is worse than useless to attempt to abolish an evil, while ignoring the cause of the same.

     "However, all that is merely apropos. My personal interpretation of the meaning of the story is of no consequence. Since you are the author of the parable, I owe you an apology for having omitted the last sentence. I shall gladly carry out your wishes in the matter of correction."

Alexander Berkman.

*   *   *

THREE QUOTATIONS AND A COMMENT

By H. K.

     "The latest idiocy of the violent revolutionaries is the murder of an Italian professor for criticising their methods. How can one work with such people for free speech. They claim the right to murder and deny others the liberty to condemn it." - Liberty, December, 1906

     "Alexander Berkman told a New York Times reporter the other day that the Individualist Anarchist has vague ideas and can achieve nothing. This is the opinion that naturally would be held by one who thinks that vast progress toward the acme of human achievement is made when a knife is stuck into a millionaire." - Liberty, April, 1907.

     "I have been engaged for more than thirty years in the propaganda of Anarchism, and have achieved some things of which I am proud." - Liberty, April, 1907.

     Why this modesty? Or is it lack of space that prevents an enumeration of those virtues which are a hundredfold? Allow us to remove the offending bushel which hides the shining light and so render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's Immortality awaits the editor of Liberty for having defined the rights of motherhood; aye, even to the right of a mother to throw her child into the fire. Society in general and the Anarchists in particular can never repay the debt they owe him for his definition of contract rights: do we not know that in an Anarchist society a contract will be enforced to the last ducat when made with a drowning man. For these and many other benefactions do we pay homage; but all, even the publication of "Instead of a Book," pale into insignificance compared to the service the editor of Liberty has rendered society by the "exposure" of the violent revolutionaries and Anarchist Communists. True, the information upon which those "exposures" were based was derived from a "reptile press" and reading John Henry Mackay, but a great mind like his cannot be expected to concern itself with the mere details of confirming facts ( ? ) before commenting upon them; it were a waste of time and - might spoil the comment.

     The editor of the "Pioneer Organ of Anarchism" is some ten or twelve years past the allotted span of Dr. Osler judging by the last two or three numbers of Liberty, he has fairly earned his right to the lethal chamber.

     When a man reads newspapers he is justly under suspicion; when he believes them he should be placed under the care of a trained nurse; when he quotes them he has reached the armchair and photograph album stage, and his soul will soon be with God. A silent toast to the editor of Liberty-he was a great man, if badly brought up. (Apologies to Talleyrand.)

*   *   *

ON THE EVE

By Leopold Kampf.

(REVIEW)

A DRAMA in three acts, dealing with characters and scenes in the present Russian revolution. The first act pictures a secret press and the capture of the same by the police. The second, preparation for the killing of a governor responsible for the torture of the prisoners, and for interference with a procession of strikers. The third, the consummation of the plot. Incidentally are introduced many characters, who serve to exhibit the devotion, the unselfishness of the revolutionists, and the methods whereby they are compelled to work. The whole is strung on a thin love-story, - the attraction of the terrorist for a young girl who is extremely devoted to the cause of liberty, dramatic interest centering in the scene where the lover's human nature, asserting itself, contends with his resolve to kill the governor and pleads for his "young happiness," and in the last act where the young girl, at her lover's request, places the candle in the window as the signal for the killing.

     However much we wish that we could speak only in praise of this work, because of its purpose, truth compels us to say that were it not for the actual condition of Russia, which is such that almost any word aiming to arouse sympathy with that heroic struggle strikes an answering chord in freedom lovers the world over, the drama would not be tolerated. It is disconnected, incoherent, and, worse than all, bombastic. The author makes his heroine, who is engaged in an active practical struggle with the Russian police system, wander off in an oration to the half dozen comrades who surround her, all as convinced as herself, entangle herself in a mass of false rhetoric, and shock all our sense of the fitness of metaphors by "swinging the bell Of blood." This he has evidently considered his climatic expression, and he iterates and reiterates it throughout the remainder of the play with intrusive pertinacity. If he had been content with saying it once, and letting us forget it! But no: till the very end that impossible "bell" keeps on "swinging." It spoils even the last really heart-rending scene where the maddened girl repeats in her raving: "The bell must swing-the bell must ring. . . . Onward brothers. . . . The bell of blood."

     Numbers of characters are introduced apparently for no purpose but to make a speech and disappear. One passage in particular, which the author himself indicates for omission in the performance, has been introduced merely to express the attitude of the active strugglers towards European indifference. It contains the following passage: "Yes, you sympathize with us in Europe, don't you? Perhaps even start beggarly subscriptions for us? Ah, you mean well, you mean to be noble I But where you have shed a pint of blood, we must shed whole seas of it. For a hundred years we have fought like this, and you look on -- calmly, cynically - resting on your liberties. And our desperate struggling you watch only as a kind of horse race-who will win. And I really don't know which is the favorite -the Russian people or the house of the Romanoffs. It is a stain on the nations of our day which they will never be able to wipe out!"

     The person to whom this speech is addressed, having been created for the purpose of listening to it, is then shoved off the boards and is seen no more. The accusation is just, but the manner of getting it in is as inartistic as its truth is bitter.

     European criticism has credited the piece with much poetic merit. This does not appear in the translation; but if the author has, in the original, really imbued the drama with poetic fervor, it is simply renewed proof of the inadaptability of the poetic form to dramatic requirements.

*   *   *

BOOKS RECEIVED

The Ego and His Own.

Max Stirner. Translated from the German by Steven T. Byington. Benj. R. Tucker, New York.

On The Eve.

Leopold Kampf.

The Conquest of Bread.

P. Kropotkin. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. $1.00 net.

Studies in Socialism.

Jean Jaurès. Translated from the French by Mildred Minturn. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.

Three Acres and Liberty.

Bolton Hall. The Macmillan Co., New York.

Before Adam.

Jack London. The Macmillan Co., New York.

Felicity.

Clara E. Laughlin. Illustrated. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

*   *   *

INTERNATIONAL NOTES

FRANCE.

     Our comrades of the Saint Germain colony (founded for the threefold purpose of maintaining a farm, a school and a press) have had their littler internal troubles, as well as other colonies. These being reported to the police commissioner, he arose one morning happy in the thought that at last the hated intruders on his preserves were about to disappear. What was his disenchantment to find the walls of the churches and stores decorated with multicolored placards proclaiming Anarchist principles. No sooner were they torn down in one place than they appeared in another. There is a lot of fun in posting placards ; besides, it keeps the comrades busy and prevents quarrels.

     The latest colonizing experiment is announced as in formation at Paris with the following purposes : "We do not want to be wage-slaves ; we do not want to be traders ; we do not want to make fraud and trickery our constant means of existence. We wish nothing from the crowd, nor will we yield anything to them. We wish to produce, neither exploiting nor exploited." Five persons announce themselves as the nucleus of this attempt. Meanwhile more failures are reported, the Corsican colony among these.

     The second volume of the works of Michael Bakunin, edited by James Guillaume, the author's friend, has just appeared. It contains three pamphlets : "The Bears of Berne and the Bear of St. Petersburg" (1870) ; "Letters to a Frenchman" (1870) ; "The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution" (1870-71). Published by Stock.

     In an interesting interview with Louis Grandidier, recently released after serving nine months of his year's sentence, Le Libertaire reports him as saying :: "Bourgeois society has pardoned me, but I have not pardoned bourgeois society. This long time at war with it, I will not lay down my arms till it has succumbed, or until I succumb ; which last is of no great importance ; others will take up the gun when I shall have let it fall."

GERMANY.

     The most interesting news of the month is the report of the Conference of the Anarchist Federation of Germany, held March 31st and April 1st. The program had been announced as follows: Reports fo Business Committee ; Report of Grievance Committee ; Reports of Delegates ; Speech on the Necessity of Organization, by Sepp Oerter ; On the Ideas and Tactics of Anarchism, by Dr. Friedeberg ; Anti-militarist Propaganda, by H. Dewes ; Anarchism and Religion, by Aug. Kettenbach ; The Press, by P. Frauböse ; Discussion concerning the Amsterdam Congress. The place of meeting first chosen was Offenbach. The police, however, forbade the meeting ; reason : the anti-militarist discussion. Then it was sought to hold the conference at FRankfurt; but the chief of police likewise forbade the meeting, without giving any reason. To find out whether the prohibition was a general order by the government of Hesse, the town of Mühlheim was next chosen ; but the same prohibition greeted them. Satisfied that the order proceeded from the provincial government, it was now decided to hold the conference at Mannheim, where previous Anarchist conferences have been held. The delegates arrived on Sunday morning, and were met by police in civilian dress, who dogged them about till their arrival at the meeting place ; two were arrested and detained for two hours at the police station. The rest came together about four P. M. at a hotel. Before anything had been done, however, the police commissioner appeared and declared that the conference could not be held either in Mannheim or its suburbs. Half an hour later a second body of police appeared, and demanded that all present (some 50 persons) accompany them to the police station. Seeing no way out of it, the delegates formed in a procession to the station, where, after having their names inscribed, they were let go.

     They then agreed to march to the cemetery, in memory of the martyrs of March, thinking that they should somehow contrive means on the way to get rid of the detectives who were dropping out. From the cemetery they turned towards Feudeheim and boarded a steam street car ; the remaining detectives, who had not been able to keep up with the rapid march, were lost. On the other side of the Neckar, the comrades got out and began holding the conference as they walked ; being tired, they presently turned into an open field, and there sitting and lying on the ground, like our old Saxon forefathers, they held their meeting. The question of organization was earnestly discussed, the general spirit being in favor of closer organization. When the discussion closed it was eleven P. M. The delegates were tired, cold and hungry. The meeting was adjourned for refreshments. Then it appeared that the best thing to do was to continue the night session. As they were no longer within the precincts of the Mannheim prohibition, they could proceed openly, and having commissioned a few comrades to secure a place at a hotel the whole body (consisting now of 42 delegates) found themselves installed at midnight, ready to continue the discussion.

     The meeting was prolonged till the afternoon of the next day, when having completed their work they adjourned. A few of the comrades, unable to resist a triumph over the police, telegraphed their compliments to the chief. In a quarter of an hour the police appeared, only to find the nest empty. A number of delegates were afterwards arrested at the stations, but immediately released.

     Dr. Friedeberg and Comrade Karfunkelstein were arrested in Mannheim on the Tuesday following the conference ; but after the usual station-house indignities they were realsed.

     It will be remembered that at Bremerhaven a number of comrades were arrested and detained without formal charge, and after nine weeks released with the exception of one. This one, Karl Lehman, committed suicide in prison on the seventh of January. But not till the fifth of April were any of his relatives informed of his death. No special reasons for his detention were given when the rest were released, nor are the causes of his suicide yet known. His real offence was anti-militarist agitation.

SWITZERLAND.

     In September, 1906, Tatiana Léontiva, a young Russian girl, killed, in a hotel at Interlaken, one M. Müller, a rich landholder, by mistake for Durnovo, the Russian butcher. Tried by the courts of Berne, she has been sentenced to four years' imprisonment and twenty years interdiction from the canton of Berne. Before the court she said " "I regret that I did not kill Durnovo ; but the man whom I killed in his place was a bourgeois, consequently an enemy ; hence my regret is diminished." Mlle. Léontiva had been so mistreated by Judge Launer during her imprisonment that inquest into his behavior was ordered.

     Henry Mieville, a blacksmith of Chaux-de-Fonds, having refused to join a military company, has been sentenced to four months in prison and three months' deprivation of civil rights. Jacques Schmid, of Zurich, ordered the service, likewise refused in an interesting letter concluding with these words :: "My ideal is a social state in which all intellectual supremacy, all material subjugation of man by man shall be impossible." He has been arrested and by this time sentenced.

     During the recent general strike at Vevey, a sympathize agitation followed at Lausanne, of so lively a nature that the local governments decided to suppress it. The "Maison du Peuple" of Lausanne was occupied by the military, the Communist Printing House was closed, at Vevey the union meetings were dispersed by troops. All foreigners were ordered expelled, whereby Sebastien Faure, then in Lausanne for the purpose of giving a freethought lecture, was hastily reconducted to the French frontier.

ITALY

     During a recent conference of Socialists at Bologna, a split occurred between the partisans of legislative action and direct action, the latter being in the majority. These greeted the epithet "Anarchists" with cheers, and the minority withdrew.

     On the 25th of March it was decided to hold an Italian Anarchist conference at Rome during the month of June. Duration, four or five days ; purposes, to arrange propagandist meetings, and prepare for the Amsterdam Congress.

ENGLAND

     The Voice of Labour, owing to financial pressure, has reduced its size one-half ; also its price. Still it is large enough to contain interesting reports and comments on the trade union and suffragist movements in England.

BOHEMIA

     The comrades of Práce announce a forthcoming paper for children.

     An entire edition of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel" has been confiscated.

JAPAN

     A daily revolutionary Socialist paper, Heimin Shimbun, is out at Tokyo. If some Japanese-American comrade will kindly offer to give us an idea of its contents we shall be glad to send him copies.

Mother Earth Vol V N3

Click the Page Number for the desired article and location.

FORS CLAVIGERA

MAY 1886-1910

Sweet height of Spring! thou bring'st to me

  Thoughts timed but ill with linnet's song,

With breathing bud, with robing tree,

  With evening sunshine ling'ring long.

Thoughts on a throng convened when airs

  Of freedom, trill'd a witch, who charm'd

To steep, with dreams that boon was theirs,

  Though, wakeful, Pow'r drew nigh them, arm'd.

Fierce bound! mad flight, of course!-a breath:

  A bolt of bursting thunder, hurl'd

By hands unknown whose deed of death

  The siren hus'd;-and woke the world.

That hour my soul espoused a cause

  Which, like Pandora, call'd from hell

A swarm of ills, resolved as laws;

  But with them she brought Hope as well!

That evil fortunes mate in May

  Is told; but did this idle word

Portend, perchance, that festful day

  When Wrong, matured, shall clasp-the Sword?

Hark! 'round our globe, the moan of hate

  Epithalamium sounds once more!

The bells ring: and Key-bearing Fate

  Stands, veil'd and mute, before the door!

C. L. JAMES.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

THE First of May is THE holiday of the revolutionary proletariat. It represents the protest of awakened labor against industrial slavery and social injustice. It crystallizes the expression of intelligent dissatisfaction, the demand for better and higher things.

As such, the day is of tremendous significance. The voluntary stoppage of labor on that day is in itself a declaration of war, the bugle call to the exploited to form their ranks for the coming combat. The street demonstrations signify the springtime of awakened hope and life, the overflow of energies gathered in the long winter night.

Thus the First of May is labor's Declaration of Independence from all the forces of oppression, tyranny, and exploitation,-a declaration whose efficacy and ultimate success depend on labor's determined, uncompromising stand against the powers of darkness.

Unfortunately, the workers-especially those of America-have failed fully to grasp the revolutionary purpose of labor's great day. They have permitted themselves to be led-and, consequently, misled-by false and blind counsellors. Gradually the First of May has been shorn of its elemental meaning and force, and emasculated into an inane Sunday best parade, by the grace of the very powers against whom the protest is directed.

The First of May, 1910, falling on a Sunday, the calendar was revolutionized to guard against the revolutionizing of the proletariat: the demonstrations, by order of the authorities, took place on the preceding Saturday, April 30th. This stupid pusillanimity of labor robbed the day of all its revolutionary significance, and merely served to demonstrate the weakness of the giant whose mission is the overthrow of the capitalist régime.

LEISURE is a lost art. Our mechanical age has hopelessly involved the simple business of life, has made it inextricably complicate and complex. We are so busy making a living we have no time to live.

The dance around the golden calf is strenuous and exhausting. Modern commercial and industrial conditions make even the mere gaining of a livelihood a matter of ceaseless effort. No leisure is left for thought or study. Serious reading, life's purest joy, is a luxury. The average man, in office or factory, reads practically nothing save the daily paper. The press thus naturally becomes his chief, if not sole, source of information on all matters of vital social interest.

Evidently, the press wields a tremendous power. It not merely voices, it directly shapes and moulds public opinion and sentiment. This it does, not only through editorial channels representing the publishers' and advertisers' interests; but even more by doctoring the news of day, giving, undue prominence to certain features, minimizing and often entirely suppressing others.

With the press in capitalist hands, marshalling an army of editorial and news hirelings, a demoralized, readymade public opinion is the result. The situation is fraught with the gravest danger. The more pronounced the social contrasts and economic inequalities, the more vicious the influence of the press. Unpopular ideas and their advocates are wilfully and persistently misrepresented, ridiculed, and suppressed, and the public mind systematically prejudiced in favor of things as they are. Among the chief sufferers of this corrupt situation is the labor movement, the hand of capitalism reaching even to the Associated Press-the very fountain-head of the world's information-falsifying and suppressing the truth in the struggle of capital and labor.

The public school, the college, the pulpit,-all are being vitiated by the malignant influence of capitalist power. But none of them exercises as evil a spell over the social consciousness as a perverted press.

THE most disgusting of all forms of hypocrisy is that which is obvious. To try to deceive is hypocritical; but to write that which the writer knows that his readers do not believe is nauseating.

The editorials, fake telegrams, and descriptive articles written on the death of one Edward, late parasite-in-chief of the British Empire, are the most sickening thing we have seen in a long time, and that is saying a good deal. To show "our grief" we use miles of flag and bunting, speech and article, and-last but not least-the cablegram, thus "proving" our love for the kinsmen beyond the sea over the loss of as great a libertine as modern times can show. "President Taft sends Queen Nation's sympathy,"-which means nothing more or less than that "our President" has cabled a wilful lie. There surely is not a single individual in these United States, above the reasoning power of an infant, but knows that the nation does not care one iota whether Edward or George sits on the British throne. The sycophancy of the ruling classes over the death of this libertine and parasite is so disgusting, one wonders with Thomas Paine "whether they have lost all sense of honor or ever had any to lose."

N0 words could so forcibly characterize the dominance of greed-the cheapness of the workman's life and the criminal negligence of the employers-as the accident report just issued by the National Association of Manufacturers. According to the conservative statistics gathered by the Association, over five hundred thousand workingmen were injured in the United States during the last year.

Staggering as these figures are, their sinister meaning is emphasized by the admission that this awful number of accidents was due entirely to preventable causes. "Preventable causes" euphoniously covers a multitude of capitalist sins. We are informed by the Association report that "ninety-nine per cent. of the employers have this subject deeply at heart, and it will be thoroughly considered" at the coming annual convention of the Manufacturers' Association.

Certainly, it is very laudable on the part of the employers to give their serious attention to this important question of preventing accidents to their employees. Without any covert intention of minimizing the much talked-of risks of the manufacturers, we make bold casually to mention the circumstance that some risk is also involved in the production of wealth by means of the capital "risked" by the employer. Mere incident though this be, the fact is neither an invention of the Anarchist nor a discovery of the Manufacturers, Association. The question naturally arises, Were the employers here to fore ignorant of it? If not, whence this sudden humanitarian awakening?

Some light on this question is thrown by the President of the Association, Mr. John Kirby, Jr. "Practically every large manufacturer," he assures us, "has joined in the movement. The question of appliances for preventing accidents to workmen and accident indemnity are at present receiving more attention than any other issues in the field of industry. They are questions of vital im portance to our members from an economic as well as humanitarian standpoint."

We may safely ignore the humanitarianism of the employer toward his employee. Its quality is too evident ice to in practice require restatement. But the economic consideration is Important indeed. The growing public sentiment in favor of employers' liability has evidentlyappealed to Mammon's most sensitive spot,-the pocket. No intelligent worker will be misled by this sudden altruism, calcium-lighted the dark lantern of capitalist benevolence. The tender care of the worker on the part of the capitalist can be measured exactly by dollars and cents, to be coined from the producers' blood and bone. Self -respecting labor scoffs at the philanthrophy of hypocrisy. The Man with the Hoe will straighten his back when his benevolent rider is thrown off, and not before.

OCCASIONALLY even a governmentalist may catch a glimpse of the light. Of course, it is not always practical or politic, especially for a District Attorney, to speak the truth. But sometimes it is hard to suppress. Thus, in an unguarded moment, the official defender of the accumulated stupidity of the ages, called law, permitted himself the luxury of a wider vision. What he said is nothing new to those that dare to think. But such a public confession on the part of the District Attorney of New York is a noteworthy sign of the times. Said he, in reference to crime:

"Some of the noblest acts of history have been crimes. There is nothing necessarily wrong about a crime, Crime is the violation of a written criminal statute. That's all. A statute may be vicious. It may prohibit something which it is perfectly right to do. The people who participated in the Boston Tea Party were guilty of grand larceny. The Minute Men who at Concord Bridge fired the shot heard round the world were criminals. Those who assisted the slaves by means of the underground railroad were guilty of a felony."

But can an honest man hold such views and still continue to send to death or prison violators of laws "prohibiting something which it is perfectly right to do"?

THE tenth annual convention of the Workmen's Circle closed after a five days' session. The convention has earned congratulations on the work accomplished, which was mostly of an eminently progressive character. It is bound to have a salutary effect upon the further life and growth of the Circle.

The truest friendship expresses itself not merely in laudation, but perhaps even more in sincere criticism. We would therefore suggest to all friends of the Circle that a spirit of the broadest tolerance is the very foundation of a progressive movement. The Circle should discourage an intolerant attitude towards its well-meaning critics. Partiality, financial and otherwise, toward those who praise us indiscriminately, in and out of season, -means opening the doors to favoritism. To be just to all, partial to none, must be the motto of every earnest endeavor, by individual or organization.

In this connection it is well for the Circle to remember that it is a non-political body. It is equally incorrect to label it Socialist or Anarchist. The Circle is a mutualhelp organization, welcoming into its midst all earnest men and women who strive for the abolition of wage slavery, irrespective of political faith and affiliation. For the Circle, or its convention, to presume to prescribe or proscribe certain political activities to its members or delegates, were an unpardonable usurpation of authority, contrary to the very purpose of the Circle's existence.

This has been the spirit in which the Circle was born and reared. Some mistakes have been made. We have offended, now and then, against the beneficent spirit of justice and tolerance. But may we in future jealously guard the genius of liberty, that our light may grow into great fires pointing the way of labor's emancipation.

THE intellectual level Of a country or nation is best judged by the things which arouse a people's greatest interest and enthusiasm.

Ancient Athens went into raptures over her philosophers, poets, and singers. The glory that was Greece is still with us. Rome deified her Caesars, and was swallowed up by the despised barbarians. Mediaeval Europe was inspired by her mystics and reformers. Hence the Reformation. In modern Europe enthusiasm waxes over art or poetry, constitutions and revolutions, financial budgets and political rights. But greater than all is our own sweet land of liberty, the home of the brave, where an eighty-million headed nation rises as one man to the Olympian heights of California to witness the most momentous event of the centuries: the Jeffries-Johnson fisticuffs.

MR. KEIR HARDIE has called the attention of the Parliament to the prevalence in India of the practice of torturing untried prisoners, for the purpose of extorting evidence from them.

Though the British Penal Code of 1860, which contains the existing criminal law of India, expressly forbids A ' torture of prisoners, the practice seems to be quite general in India. We read in the report of the Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon about-five years ago: "Though physical torture which leaves' external marks is rare, moral pressure, often of the most serious character, leaving no marks of physical violence, but amounting to very effective torture, is quite common." The practice of torturing prisoners is so widespread in India that the judicial tribunals often set aside the confessions of prisoners on the ground that they were probably extorted by physical or moral agony.

One of the most hideous cases of torture came to light recently as a result of an official investigation. A woman was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband, although she declared that the confession was wrung from her by terrible torture. According to the sworn testimony of the prison surgeon, he found the woman "terribly inflamed and ulcerated, a condition which, in my opinion, could only have been caused by an assault similar to that described by the prisoner." The assault so described was that the police tied a rope round her feet, suspended her from a rafter of the roof, and then tortured her by means of red pepper in a manner which cannot be quoted here. Is it surprising, under these conditions, that England's cruel rule in India has lately been tempered by assassination ?

THE KING

By HARRY WEIR BOLAND.

Bury him, then, face downward in the dust,

And o'er his grave may lizards creep, may all

Vile spineless things which on the earth do crawl

Thrive on his marrow while corroding rust

Eats his faint heart that knew not Self to trust,

And may his honeyed spirit turn to gall;

May Terror, which has held him in its thrall,

Pursue him till in deep hell he is thrust.

Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness;

Fair Hope's voice called him from his barren fen;

Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace.

His lips forever framed a thoughtless yes

When Tyranny enslaved the minds of men,

And Courage looked on his averted face.

THE FIRST OF MAY

By H. KELLY.

The workingmen who march today, or who come together in meetings, will gain all those things to which they aspire just as soon as they make an equally effective demonstration at the ballot box.-N. Y. Call, April 30, 1910.

T IS twenty-one years since the resolution, proposed by a Knights of Labor del egate to the International

Socialist Congress at Paris, that May First be set aside as a day when labor all over the world should show its solidarity, was adopted. Proposed and accepted as labor's declaration of independence it was a revolutionary step; at least it was so recognized by the Anarchists and, we believe, by a very large section of the general labor movement.

That the workers must win their freedom from capitalism and wage slavery on the economic battlefield, instead of the political, is a truism. And yet, owing to the false prophets of Socialism, a large section of the workers are hoodwinked into believing that the contrary is the case. Men capable of reasoning logically on matters pertaining to man's other activities, reason like children when discussing the efficacy of putting pieces of paper into ballot boxes. It matters not that we live ten years after the time promised by Marx as the date when the bourgeoisie shall have disappeared, and that they are with us in increased numbers. With the pontiffs of Socialism it is merely a pleasure deferred, and the facts and figures of daily life are denied with a vigor worthy of a better cause. To call attention to the fact that the Standard Oil Co. had half a million shareholders and shares, just prior to the panic, selling at $750 each, has no effect on this type of mind. Blinded by Rockefeller's millions, the Social Democrat refuses to admit that a man holding a share of stock valued at $750, paying high dividends, is a capitalist and exploiter. He says that the trusts are crushing the middle class out of existence and, the Standard Oil Co. being a trust, it cannot manufacture exploiters; it must destroy them. To admit otherwise is 'agin his principles."

The department store is another superstition with him. He points with pardonable pride to it as a proof of that wonderful discovery of Marx which ranks the latter with Darwin. That the said department store is a series of small shops under one roof and owned by a large number of shareholders, all parasites plundering the people proportionately to the number of shares held, is lost on him similarly with his belief in politics. In fact, the Social Democratic theory of politics and that of the concentration of capital stand and will fall together. If the middle class were being squeezed out and dropped into the ranks of the workers, they would in all probability augment the working class vote; if not, they would swell the capitalist vote. The latter is what they are doing, and while the poitical Socialists deny this fact, their principles have grown so emasculated as to become more and more acceptable to the bourgeoisie.

1-Home rule for the city.

2-Initiative and referendum.

3-Better schools.

4-Municipal ownership.

5-Penny lunches.

6-Street car company to sprinkle streets.

7-Trade union conditions of labor.

8-A seat for every passenger in the street cars, lifting jacks, automatic brakes, and fenders.

9-Three cent street car fare.

10-Eight hour day for labor.

11-Cheaper gas.

12-Cheaper ice by means of municipal plant.

13-Cheaper coal and wood by means of municipal coal and wood yards.

14-Cheaper and better light, and more of it, by means of municipal plant.

15-Corporations to pay their full share of taxes.

16-Clean street cars. Glasgow cleans and disinfects cars every day, it is pointed out.

17-Street closets and comfort stations.

18-Work for the unemployed at union wages and eight hour days.

19-Widows who do washing for support of families to have water rates remitted by city.

20-Cheap bread, by requiring standard weight in every loaf.

Not one of the above reforms, promised by the new Social Democratic administration at Milwaukee, is objectionable to the bourgeoisie as a class. Of course we know that many of these reforms will not even be attempted, as for instance, Home Rule for the city and Initiative and Referendum are matters determined by the State government; while the reforms promised in the street car service, such as three cent fares, are mere talk, since the company has its franchise from the State, granted for some fifty years. "Comrades must not expect the impossible of us," says Mayor Seidel. "We feel sure the intelligent ones will not." Victor Berger, the most reactionary force in the American Socialist movement, is in the saddle at Milwaukee, and the very most that may be expected is an honest attempt to conduct the affairs of the city along constitutional, i. e. bourgeois lines. It may be urged that an honest official is better than a dishonest one. Yes, but what of the "class war," the "working class kept down to the point of mere subsistence" ? If these theories are true, of what value to the starved and stunted wage slave and the "jobless worker" are these so-called reforms. It cannot be urged too strongly that it is no part of the Anarchist or Socialist to administer bourgeois government more efficiently. It is their business to destroy capitalism, and on the ruins of that system found the Free Commune or Socialist Common- wealth. With Mayor Gaynor at the head of the New York City government, the city bids fair to have the best administration in its history; but the bread line is still with us, and the capitalist's right to exploit his wage slaves is still unquestioned. Politics will not, because it cannot, touch fundamental questions, and if the "Milwaukee Victory" were duplicated in every city in America, the capitalist question would remain unsolved, unless the exploited themselves rose in revolt against their oppressors and took possession of the land, railways, factories, etc.

In due time the "Milwaukee Victory" will become a legend like the "three million Socialists in Germany," and- like all legends-interesting as such, but disappointing when tested in the furnace of fact. After "Comrade" Seidel and the Socialist administration have become a part of Milwaukee history, our query will be in regard to the "three million Socialists," What have they done? We have been asking that about the German Social Democratic party for some years, and the answer has invariably been: "Well, we are in the minority yet, but when we are in the majority-"

Socialists all over the world will be interested in one reform Mayor Seidel inaugurated immediately after assuming office. He increased the hours of labor for municipal employees from six to eight a day. Every capitalist paper in the country has applauded this "Socialist reform," as well they might, for this is "efficiency in government" with a vengeance, and has no doubt brought the Co-operative Commonwealth several laps nearer. True to the party platform, which calls for eight hours a day even when it means increasing the hours instead of decreasing them.

Hard on the news of Milwaukee comes the announcement that Karl Kautsky, "scientific theorist," as the press calls him' has considerable hopes the German Social Democrats will double their vote at the next election and gain a majority over all parties in the Reichstag. He supplements this hope with another, that the party will not jeopardize their chances by acting rashly and advocating a general strike. We have no fear of such a thing happening. There are too many reactionary forces in the party, on the one hand, and too large and varied a membership on the other. If we thought for a moment there was the slightest possibility of such a victory ( ?) at the polls, we would join our prayers to Kautsky's against that rashness ( ?) of a general strike, that the world might witness on a gigantic scale the impotence of voting. Nothing short of such a miracle will convince some people. Kautsky in his "Social Revolution and the Day After" is careful to distinguish between "scientific Socialism" and "Utopian Socialism," the latter being "the day after," which is mere prophecy. His hopes of victory belong to "Utopian Socialism," and should not be taken more seriously than Upton Sinclair's dream of a national Socialist victory in America in 1912. It were easy to extend the date and still maintain a reputation as a prophet.

It is now about a year since the Social Democrats fulminated against Briand for forming a "Capitalist Ministry" in France; traitor was a mild term for him. The fulminations were due to the fact that he had gone back on his principles and was lending himself to a perpetuation of capitalism, in so far as that is possible with a system doomed to death in accordance with Marx's theory. We had occasion to point out then, and repeat it now, that in so far as he lent himself to the upholding of the present system, by enforcing laws defending private property, he was not one whit different from any elected official. We have not heard that the man or woman out of employment through no fault of their own is immune from punishment for expropriating the necessaries of life in cities governed by Socialists. We "do not expect the impossible" from Comrade Seidel at Milwaukee, and we are sure that private property will be defended with as much zeal and vigor against the starving man or woman as in a stronghold of capitalism. To assert they must govern according to the laws or, as Victor Berger would say, "to an antiquated charter," is begging the question. No one forced M . Millerand to order out troops to shoot down strikers; no one forced M. Briand to form a "Capitalist Ministry," and no one forces "Comrade" Seidel to assume an office wherein he will be compelled to defend capitalist institutions, which he began doing the moment he assumed office. Of course, Socialism is inevitable (?), and to assert that the individual plays any part in the history of man is to indulge in "hero worship' " a form of heresy against "Scientific Socialism."

We are of the opinion that the club of "Comrade" Seidel's policeman will be found as hard as M. Lepine's, and sweat shops, slum dwellings, unemployment, and all the evils attendant on capitalism will be equally abhorrent to the victims whether the government be called Socialist or Capitalist.

There are two ways of breaking down the present system, and two only. One, by active revolutionary opposition; the other, by refusing to co-operate in any way whatsoever with the governing classes or their supporters. The latter is only a theory; but, while it has never been tested to the limit, as a theory it seems inpregnable. The former has been tested on many a battlefield, and when the fulcrum is great enough, existing governments or institutions fall.

This brings us back to the First of May, and our recent epoch-macking general strike at Philadelphia. Many bourgeois writers have tried to picture the struggle as a failure, and now comes that erstwhile "anarch of Art," Mr. James Huneker, to prove that the general strike is impossible and the Philadelphia affair a fiasco. Reviewing the book called "La Vague Rouge" (the Red Wave), by J. H. Rosny, Sr., in a two column article in the N. Y. Sun of April 27th, our art critic proves to his entire satisfaction that the general strike is a hopeless, impracticable dream and a pernicious idea causing "discomfort, misery, crime, etc." Says our art critic, turned sociologist for the nonce: "We hope to see slain some day that silliest of superstitions, the general strike." To those who would glean in unfamiliar fields we would say, Beware of the ditches and pitfalls. For the benefit of amateur sociologists like Mr. Huneker, we would say: First, the Philadelphia strike was not a general strike; it was a sympathetic strike of various trades of one city to obtain certain concessions for the members of one union It had no definite revolutionary aim, but was a spontaneous outburst of sympathy of labor for members of a downtrodden trade, and, as such, it was magnificent. Second, far from being a failure it was a brilliant, scintillating success, as was pointed out in MOTHER EARTH for April, in an article by Voltairine de Cleyre, from which we quote: "Six different companies in as many cities have raised the trolley men's wages since this strike." To those who, like our art critic, are in receipt of comfortable incomes, the loss of ten or a dozen lives may seem too high a price to pay for a mere rise in wages; but who can tell how many lives have been saved by this mere raising of wages in six cities as the result of a strike in one, or how many years have been added to the trolley men's lives by the increased comforts obtained. The Socialist administration of Milwaukee has, as the first fruits of a twenty-five year agitation, raised the hours of labor, while the strike of Philadelphia raised wages. The general strike, purely as an idea, has inspired millions of working people all over the world to resist oppression and has wrung concessions from exploiters everywhere. It is a great inspirational force, not only for the direct tangible benefits it has won, but as a great moral neutralizer of the poisonous and fatally noxious influence of politics in the revolutionary movement throughout the world. Slowly but surely the idea of the First of May spreads, an idea which spells solidarity of labor and the direct, conscious revolutionary defy of the exploiter. We do not claim the workingman is turning from politics; we do not know. But we do say that side by side with this flirting with old superstitions there grows a revolutionary spirit of which the Philadelphia strike stands forth as a beacon light. The First of May is but a symbol, the germinating of spring, the awakening of labor. The emancipation of labor which it portends will come because labor is becoming conscious of its strength and, its rights. Emancipation is its goal; Direct Action its method. That is the real significance of the First of May.

MY CREED

By MAGAR THORNE.

HAD never taken the trouble to formulate a creed, having for creed the rejection of all creedsuntil one night it was presented to me in a dream, and I found it was -quite simple. In this dream I saw a diabolic face which changed shortly into a seraphic one; and then again into a demoniac face.

I find from this that life has never presented itself to me as a matter of conduct, but as a material for criticism; that I have refused to have convictions; that I have defended nothing entirely and condemned nothing wholly; that I have found good in everything from certain points of view, and bad in everythink from certain other points of view; that I have made it a matter of calculation, arbitrarily to find for the bad in anything an equal amount of good, and for the good of bad. I have shown to my own satisfaction that it is never the whole man which commits a fault; that, indeed, it is not so much the man who commits an unique fault, as the universal fault which subjects the man to the tender levities of the human race; that in the worst faults humanity only recognizes itself; and that hatred and punishment are not so much the outgrowth of differences between Society

and the individual, as of a damnable and too-obvious likeness. Mankind torturing its criminals is very ridiculously like an ugly woman taking that pathetic revenge which is expressed by the smashing of mirrors.

It is quite possible, I think, for even the good man to be mistaken; and to be mistaken is a degree worse than to be bad. I have noted that the sinning individual is certainly as apt to be a prophet, as is the virtuous mob to be an army generalled by the good Devil himself; and that I find much that is lovable in the Devil, who, in his dishonor, is admirably honest. Is it not rather tedious to repeat that the younger generation is seldom educated by the older, but rather by the two or three whom the older generation condemned?

I could never approve a law that incarcerates for life because it does not take into account the affecting truth that, as a general rule, a man is only what he was yesterday, and-just as accurately-that tomorrow a man is not at all what he was yesterday; nor does it consider that a man is always a child in his infinite potentiality, never a machine of calculated efficiency. Progress is eked out by men at fifty turning into something very different to what they were at forty-nine; even in the lexicon of senility the law is not "I am," but "I become." Nor could I approve a law which takes life because it does not consider that it is taking, not a life, but a future of which its philosophy cannot dream.

In these matters in which Society takes a high hand, however, it is well to remember that if one cannot rescue oneself from degradation, one can rescue one's degradation from infamy by undergoing it well. I am almost willing to think, too, that it is much better to end a frivolous life in a noble rage, than to live with a purpose and die for nothing but a disease. And we are too little ready, nowadays, to acknowledge the principle by which nothing mitigates so thoroughly as a lack of mitigating circumstances.

Enfin, I find in Christ much of Pierrot, and in Pierrot a great deal that Pierrot would refuse to believe about himself.

THE DOMINANT IDEA

By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.

ON EVERYTHING that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea-an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern, immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying bodies-living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass-blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air.

Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning-glory vines up over a secondstory balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple-dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun-seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened,some cut-worm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead,-all but the top which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and pitied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid-NIGHT, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon-faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. I gazed at them in dumb wonder. Dear, dead vine, whose will had been so strong to bloom, that in the hour of its sudden cut off from the feeding earth, it sent the last sap to its blossoms; and, not waiting for the morning, brought them forth in storm and flash, as white night-glories, which should have been the children of the sun.

In the daylight we all came to look at the wonder, marveling much, and saying, "Surely these must be the last." But every day for three days the dead vine bloomed; and even a week after, when every leaf was dry and brown, and so thin you could see through it, one last bud, dwarfed, weak, a very baby of a blossom, but still white and delicate, with five purple flecks, like those on the live vine beside it, opened and waved at the stars, and waited for the early sun. Over death and decay the Dominant Idea smiled: the vine was in the world to bloom, to bear white trumpet blossoms dashed with purple; and it held its will beyond death.

Our modern teaching is, that ideas are but attendant phenomena, impotent to determine the actions or relations of life, as the image in the glass which should say to the body it reflects: "I shall shape thee." In truth we know that directly the body goes from before the mirror, the transient image is nothingness; but the real body has its being to live, and will live it, heedless of vanished phantoms of itself, in response to the ever-shifting pressure of things without it.

It is thus that the so-called Materialist Conception of History, the modern Socialists, and a positive majority of Anarchists would have us look upon the world of ideas,-shifting, unreal reflections, having naught to do in the determination of Man's life, but so many mirror appearances of certain material relations, wholly powerless to act upon the course of material things. Mind to them is in itself a blank mirror, though in fact never wholly blank, because always facing the reality of the material and bound to reflect some shadow. To-day I am somebody, tomorrow somebody else, if the scenes have shifted; my Ego is a gibbering phantom, pirouetting in the glass, gesticulating, transforming, hourly or momentarily, gleaming with the phosphor light of a deceptive unreality, melting like the mist upon the hills. Rocks, fields, woods, streams, houses, goods, flesh, blood , bone, sinew,-these are realities, with definite parts to play, with essential characters that abide under all changes; but my Ego does not abide; it is manufactured afresh with every change of these.

I think this unqualified determinism of the material, is a great and lamentable error in our modern progressive movement; and while I believe it was a wholesome antidote to the long-continued blunder of Middle Age theology, viz., that Mind was an utterly irresponsible entity making laws of its own after the manner of an Absolute Emperor, without logic, sequence, or relation, ruler over matter, and its own supreme determinant, not excepting God (who was himself the same sort of a mind writ large)-while I do believe that the modern reconception of Materialism has done a wholesome thing in pricking the bubble of such conceit and restoring man and his "soul" to its "place in nature," I nevertheless believe that to this also there is a limit; and that the absolute sway of Matter is quite as mischievous an error as the unrelated nature of Mind; even that in its direct action upon personal conduct, it has the more ill effect of the two. For if the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel. the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self -excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it! To be sure, the influence of such a character rarely reaches as far as that of the principled persecutor; but for every one of the latter, there are a hundred of these easy, doughy characters who will fit any baking tin, to whom determinist self-excusing appeals; so the balance of evil between the two doctrines ,is about maintained.

What we need is a true appraisement of the power and rôle of the Idea. I do not think I am able to give such a true appraisement: I do not think that any one-even much greater intellects than mine-will be able to do it for a long time to come. But I am at least able to suggest it, to show its necessity, to give a rude approximation of it.

And first, against the accepted formula of modern Materialism, "Men are what circumstances make them," I set the opposing declaration, "Circumstances are what men make them;" and I contend that both these things are true up to the point where the combating powers are equalized, or one is overthrown. In other words, my conception of mind, or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely.

All over the kingdom of life, I have said, one may see dominant ideas working, if one but trains his eyes to look for them and recognize them. In the human world there have been many dominant ideas. I cannot conceive that ever, at any time, the struggle of the body before dissolution can have been aught but agony. If the reasoning that insecurity of conditions, the expectation of suffering, are circumstances which make the soul of man uneasy, shrinking, timid, what answer will you give to the challenge of old Ragnar Lodbrog, to that triumphant death-song hurled out, not by one cast to his death in the heat of battle, but under slow prison torture, bitten by serpents, and yet singing: "The goddesses of death invite me awaynow end I my song. The hours of my life are run out. I shall smile when I die"? Nor can it be said that this is an exceptional instance, not to be accounted for by the usual operation of general law, for old King Lodbrog the Skalder did only what his fathers did, and his sons and his friends and his enemies, through long generations; they set the force of a dominant idea, the idea of the superascendant ego, against the force of torture and of death, ending life as they wished to end it, with a smile on their lips. But a few years ago, did we not read how the helpless Kaffirs, victimized by the English for the contumacy of the Boers, having been forced to dig the trenches wherein for pleasant sport they were to be shot, were lined up on the edge, and seeing death facing them, began to chant barbaric strains of triumph, smiling as they fell? Let us admit that such exultant defiance was Owing to ignorance, to primitive beliefs in gods and hereafters; but let us admit also that it shows the power of an idea dominant.

Everywhere in the shells of dead societies, as in the shells of the sea-slime, we shall see the force of purposive action, of intent within holding its purpose against obstacles without.

I think there is no one in the world who can look upon the steadfast, far-staring face of an Egyptian carving, or read a description of Egypt's monuments, or gaze upon the mummied clay of its old dead men, without feeling that the dominant idea of that people in that age was to be enduring and to work enduring things, with the immobility of their great still sky upon them and the stare of the desert in them. One must feel that whatever other ideas animated them, and expressed themselves in their lives, this was the dominant idea. That which was must remain, no matter at what cost, even if it were to break the everlasting hills: an idea which made the live humanity, beneath it, born and nurtured in the coffins of caste, groan and writhe and gnaw its bandages till in the fullness of time it passed away: and still the granite mould of it stares with empty eyes out across the world, the stern old memory of the Thing-that-was.

I think no one can look upon the marbles wherein Greek genius wrought the figuring of its soul without feeling an apprehension that the things are going to leap and fly; that in a moment one is like to be set upon by heroes with spears in their hands, by serpents that will coil around him; to be trodden by horses that may trample and flee; to be smitten by these gods that have as little of the idea of stone in them as a dragon-fly, one instant poised upon a wind-swayed petal edge. I think no one can look upon them without realizing at once that those figures came out of the boil of life; they seem like rising bubbles about to float into the air, but beneath them other bubbles rising, and others, and others,-there will be no end of-it. When one's eyes are upon one group, one feels that behind one, perhaps, a figure is uptoeing to seize the darts of the air and hurl them on one's head; one must keep whirling to face the miracle that appears about to be wrought-stone leaping! And this though nearly every one is minus some of the glory the old Greek wrought into it so long ago; even the broken stumps of arms and legs live. And the dominant idea is Activity, and the beauty and strength of it. Change, swift, ever-circling Change! The making of things and the casting of them away, as children cast away their toys, not interested that these shall endure, so that they themselves realize incessant activity. Full of creative power, what matter if the creature perished. So there was an endless procession of changing shapes in their schools, their philosophies, their dramas, their poems, till at last it wore itself to death. And the marvel passed away from the world. But still their marbles live to show what manner of thoughts dominated them.

And if we wish to know what master-thought ruled the lives of men when the mediaeval period had had time to ripen it, one has only at this day to stray into some quaint, out-of-the-way English village, where a strong old towered Church yet stands in the midst of little straw-thatched cottages, like a brooding mother-hen surrounded by her chickens. Everywhere the greatening of God, and the lessening of Man: the Church so looming, the home so little. The search for the spirit, for the enduring thing (not the poor endurance of granite which in the ages crumbles, but the eternal), the etenal,-and contempt for the body which perishes, manifest in studied uncleanliness, in mortifications of the flesh, as if the spirit should have spat its scorn upon it.

Such was the dominant idea of that middle age which has been too much cursed by modernists. For the men who built the castles and the cathedrals, were men of mighty works, though they made no books, and though their souls spread crippled wings, because of their very endeavors to soar too high. The spirit of voluntary subordination for the accomplishment of a great work, which proclaimed the aspiration of the common soul, that was the spirit wrought into the cathedral stones; and it is not wholly to be condemned.

In waking dream, when the shadow-shapes of world-ideas swim before the vision, one sees the Middle-Age Soul an ill-contorted, half-formless thing, with dragon wings and a great, dark, tense face, strained sunward with blind eyes.

(To be continued.)

LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN THE LIFE OF AN AVANT-GUARD

By EMMA GOLDMAN.

DENVER is not unlike a prison. Its inhabitants, too, have been sent there "to do time." That which makes the position of the prisoner preferable, is the consolation that the State will feed him and that some day his time will expire. The majority of Denverites have no such cheerful outlook, Although arriving there with hopes of a speedy return, it's usually imprisonment for life.

We all know the paralizing effect of the daily grind for existence, even for most of us who can boast an average physique. How much more paralizing must it be for those who go to Denver as a last resort to rescue life from its downward path?

Under such conditions and in such an atmosphere people are not interested in abstract ideas. "To hell with Bebel's speech," said the consumptive in "Sanin," in reply to the query of his companion enthused over the latest word- battle in the Reichstag. "I am interested in one thing-Life, and how long I may still see the sky, the stars."

Artzibasheff, himself a victim of tuberculosis, understands the psychology of these people only too well.

And yet, those who attended our meetings in Denver must have been interested. Else they would not have come, night after night. Or was it merely to get away from the grim reality? If so, I am happy to have furnished that opportunity, even though it was but for the moment.

The Ferrer lecture and the one on "Marriage and Love" brought the largest audience. Particularly the latter. Sex is a vital factor, after all; few people realize how very vital it must be for the exiles of Denver.

Fair newspaper treatment of an Anarchist is as scarce as light in the life of the avant-guard. One must therefore consider it an event if three papers in one city, during almost a week, devoted columns to verbatim reports of Anarchistic lectures, not to forget the extraordinary discovery of the dramatic critic of the Denver Times, to wit: "Emma Goldman is being treated as an enemy of society because, with Dr. Stockman, she is pointing out the ills and defects of society." 0, for the naivety of an American dramatic critic! As if that was not the crime of all crimes, to point to the swamps of society.

CHEYENNE.-Even woman's votes have failed to affect the grey matter of the police. Yet my sisters still believe in the miraculous power of woman suffrage. Wyoming can boast women politicians, but the police are just as stupid as in other States, and a little more, as our dear editor has already described in a delightfully humorous comment in the April issue. I shall, therefore, only add that the danger signal was hoisted in Cheyenne by the Acting Mayor. The poor fellow was quite a nonentity in his town. To make himself conspicuous, he set the town afire, and when the smoke was over, he found he had only burned his own fingers. By noon of the day after our arrest the "hero" came slinking into our lawyer's office, whining' "Please, sir, I'll be good. IT never do it again." As for the majesty -of the law, four meetings instead of the original two, and the sale of a quantity of literature, helped to make her majesty appear pretty flat and silly.

I cannot close this very important chapter without expressing our thanks to the faithful few in Denver, who came to the rescue the moment they heard of our arrest. The money they sent helped us to reimburse, in a small measure, the attorney who was instrumental in setting the dislocated funny bone of the Acting Mayor.

SALT LAKE CITY.-The Mormon husband may be as agreeable around the house as the Christian dears, but as builder of cities the Mormons are certainly superior.

I have traveled through the length and breadth of this very Christian country, but I know of no city that can compare with the stronghold of the Mormons. Nothing mean about these people, whatever else they may be. They could not indulge in many wives if they were small or miserly. No wonder they are so generous with their city.

Spacious, beautifully laid out, and spotlessly clean, Salt Lake City has much more the appearance of an European than an American city, where every inch of ground is mutilated for business purposes. As regards public buildings, the Mormons are almost as extravagant as in the number of wives. Quite a variety of them, each one a joy to the eye.

My dear old friend Thurston Brown (who lost a fat church because he dared, as few did, give reasons for Czolgosz's act), together with Comrade Cline, of Salt Lake City, arranged two meetings, which proved the most successful of the second part of our tour. The audiences were large and remarkably appreciative, which was best proved by the quantity of literature purchased.

A drive into the glorious country surrounding Salt Lake City, with Comrade and Mrs. Cline, added to our short but delightful visit to the Mormons.

RENO, NEV.-The divorce mill of America. What a farce the marriage institution is, anyway. Here are thousands of women flocking to Reno, to buy their freedom from one owner in order to sell it more profitably to another. Thus a well known lady married the second man four hours after she was divorced from the first. These respectable women do have it easy. No heartache, no soul agony of the free woman, who suffers a thousand torments in the transitory period between an old and new experience. just a piece of paper bought for so many dollars, and all is proper. What shallowness, what terrible hypocrisy. Yet these same respectable ladies of

Reno hold up their hands in holy horror when they hear of a free relationship of the free woman, who would never think of giving herself to any man, except when she loves. Some of these good women were perfectly scandalized when Emma Goldman registered in the same hotel. No, they could not stand for that. Either they or Emma Goldman must go. And the hotel keeper, poor lackey. The ladies have money; never mind their lack of character, or provincialism. Emma Goldman was told to get out. It would have been surprising if she hadn't. Respectability is indeed a shallow thing.

The greatest farce of Reno, however, is that in democratic America divorce is but an exclusively aristocratic privilege. The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the "sanctity of the home" are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.

Reno, the divorce mill of America, needed more than any other place to learn the cause of the failure of marriage and the meaning of love. Not the kind that is bought and sold, but the kind that is free as the elements to give itself in abundance or to deny itself in the same measure.

The beginning was made in Reno. I spoke on Anarchism, and on Marriage and Love. What I said may have been Greek to some. But that a few did understand, their faces betrayed. Theirs was the expression of the blind beholding the light of day for the first time.

To accomplish this much it was worth going even to Reno. The supreme effort of the avant-guard is onward, ever onward.

ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUM on TOLSTOY.

TOLSTOY asks how it is that the people submit to oppressive governments, and answers that it is owing to "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain."

The first means is the "hypnotization of the people," leading them to the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld." It is accomplished by "fomenting the two forces of superstition called religion and patriotism."

The second means that the State employs is the bribery of a small class, to which it gives official positions and special privileges.

The third means is intimidation, which "consists in setting down the present State order-of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic -as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it.

The fourth means is to "separate a certain part of all the men, whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special, stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon." "Intimidation bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money; hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."

Tolstoy is positive that the conditions that he describes so graphically cannot endure much longer, for he says: "To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life."

To those who fear that it will be impossible for the masses to come together and co-operate without a State center around which to gather, he replies that danger of isolation no longer exists. "The means of intercourse have developed extraordinarily. For the forming of societies, associations, corporations; for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are not needed; nay, in most cases, they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends."

With remorseless logic Tolstoy points out that the same objections that are made to the forcible rule of the few hold good as against the attempts of the many to overthrow that rule by force. He insists that the existing regime is to he wrecked , not by revolutionary enemies from outside, but by passive resistance from within; men refusing to do at the behest of the ruling powers that which their consciences tell them is unjust, and wrong; and he points out that already in Russia men are refusing on these very grounds to pay taxes, to take the general oath of allegiance, to exercise police functions, and to serve in the army.

In a word, Tolstoy conceives that the great change for which he longs can be brought about only by a previous change in our conceptions, knowledge, and aims; by our taking larger and wiser views of the meaning of life, and that the way to quicken such change-which must come sooner or later-is, first, to speak out our opinions with perfect frankness, and, secondly and still more important, to act up to our convictions.

As regards the first he says: "If we would only stop lying and acting as if we did not see the truth; if we would only testify to the truth that summons us and boldly confess it, it would at once turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, millions of men in the same situation as ourselves; that they see the truth like us; are afraid, like us, of remaining isolated if they confess it, and are only waiting, like us, for the rest to testify to it."

To enforce his argument that it is most important of all that we should make our lives square with our convictions, he uses the following illustration: "Men in their present situation are like bees that have left their hive and are hanging on a twig in a great mass, The situation of the bees on the twig is a temporary one and absolutely must be changed. They must take flight and seek a new abode. Every bee knows that, and wishes to make an end of its own suffering condition and that of the others, but this cannot be done so long as the others do not help. But all cannot rise at once, for one hangs over another and hinders it from letting go; therefore all remain hanging. One might think that there was no way out of this situation for the bees, and there would be none, were it not that each bee is an independent living being. But it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees."

He gives another forcible illustration along the same line of thought: "The passage of men from one order of life to another does not take place steadily, as the sand in the hour-glass runs out, one grain after another from the first to the last, but rather as a vessel that has been sunk into water fills itself. At first the water gets in only on one side, slowly and uniformly; but then its weight makes the vessel sink, and now the thing takes in, all at once, all the water that it can hold."

I have left to the last the consideration of Tolstoy's views on the subject of property, although they seem to some the most important part of his teaching, because, as has been shown already, Tolstoy deprecates all endeavors to dictate the mould in which the society of the future shall be cast, saying that it will be "as circumstances and men shall make it." But Tolstoy is the strongest of Communists, believing that the law of love, on which he bases all his views of life (since he holds that it alone gives us true happiness) requires that we should at all times be willing to share our possessions.

He declares that it is a "crime that tens of thousands of hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings are living in Moscow, while I, with a few thousand others, have tenderloin and sturgeon for dinner, and cover horses and floors with blankets and carpets. He considers himself (tan accomplice in this unending and uninterrupted crime so long as I still have a superfluous bit of bread while another has no bread at all." He further explains that the evil significance of property is specially felt in the case of such things as are necessary to the production of wealth, and notably as regards land and tools-a position in which the Socialists will all agree with him-showing that the propertyless is thus compelled to hand over more and more of the products of his toil to the non-worker. The dependence of the poor on the rich becomes most prominent when we pass to a consideration of money, for, as the saying is, "he who has money has in his pocket those who have none."

In direct line with his main attack on government, as being the incarnation of force, Tolstoy points out, in passage after passage, that the dominion of the propertied rests on physical force. "If men hand over the greatest part of the product of their labor to the capitalist or landlord, though they, as do all laborers now, hold this to be unjust , " this is done "only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not."

He declares his belief that the existing r^eacute;gime will be replaced by societies in which men will be held together by the mutual respect which, by an inherent characteristic of human nature, men who are less advanced in knowledge always pay to those whom they recognize as more advanced, and that in this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory, for "the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes."

This last sentence shows how basic with Tolstov is his objection to all external rule, his insistence throughout being that the individual must act in accordance with the dictates of his own reason. It must be stated, however, that Tolstoy distinctly refuses, even more emphatically than does Proudhon, to map out the future, his answer to the question of the form that it will take being: "The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it. We are not at this moment able to get perfectly clear ideas of it. The details of a new order of life cannot be known to us; they have to be worked out by ourselves. Life consists only in learning to know the unknown, and putting our action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of the individual, in this the life of human societies and of humanity."

But he is certain that the change that lies before us will be an approach to the truth and its realization. "How can the forms in which truth appears be brought to naught by an approach to the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means will they be brought to naught. Only that which was false in the forms of its appearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine will but unfold itself the more splendidly." Thus Tolstoy, who has a profound belief in the wisdom, beneficence, and righteousness of the entire scheme of life, is the most optimistic of revolutionists.

Nevertheless he faces the questions that are asked as to what defense there will be against enemies when the State shall have disappeared. As regards the protection against bad men, he says that they are not "special creatures like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like committing crimes as little as we do," and he adds, "we know that the activity of governments, with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not correspond to the present stage of morality; their prisons, tortures, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals."

The army and the police are those who render the régime of property possible. "If there did not exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any -one whatever at the word of command, no one would dare assert, as the non-laboring landlords do so confidently, that the soil which surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man who does not work on it." "It would not come into the head of the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes, nor would any one say that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit."

"Man lives not to be served but to serve, and in exerting his powers for others he finds the most complete realization of his highest and truest individuality."

We have given much space to Tolstoy because he is unquestionably the foremost writer of the day, and his honesty and power are alike beyond cavil. In this combination lies the secret of his strength.

LIBERAL OPPONENTS AND CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS OF UNABRIDGED FREE SPEECH.*

By THEODORE SCHROEDER.

IN the present contest for the unabridged freedom of speech guaranteed by our Constitutions, the sources of irritation and agitation are three. The first is Socialist groups, among which the most acute recent crisis came in Spokane, Washington. The issue there was one of time, place, and manner, rather than a question of the subject matter of the offending speeches. No doubt, the real secret motive behind the police activity was a vague hatred and fear of Socialism, but no definite issue was made over the right to advocate any specific doctrine. The only issue tendered by the authorities was as to the right to use the streets for purposes of agitation, and the right to conspire to violate alleged ordinances regulative of street oratory. These issues are of practical importance, as a means to an end for those wishing to use this method of propagating their tenets, but seldom offer definite controversy over free speech principles, such as are capable of academic discussion.

The second source of free speech agitation has come chiefly through my own effort in defense of freedom of sex- discussion, which naturally lead me to a consideration of the right to advocate other doctrines of disapproved, and even criminal, tendencies. Here definite statements of principles are asserted and denied. On these issues some of our liberal friends have taken sides, and their contentions will be somewhat discussed. My consideration of the right to advocate crime connects me in a subordinate way with another center of free speech interests.

The third focus of irritation in relation to free speech is Emma Goldman, in her effort to secure a hearing for Anarchism. The reason assigned for suppressing Emma Goldman's speech is the fear that evil consequences will come as the result of her utterances. It is believed that these evils arise directly from her intellectual attack upon religion,. the legally maintained family, and from her attacks upon our economic structure and coercive government.

It is claimed that because of these elements, or of some of them, her speeches have a tendency to lawlessness and riot. It is seldom claimed, and never truthfully claimed, that any riots have followed her speeches. Once she was convicted and punished on the pretense of inciting to riot, though no riot occurred. The official justification for suppressing Emma Goldman is in effect the assertion of a rightful power officially to suppress in advance of utterance, and punish after the fact, all discussions which are suspected or believed, even remotely and indirectly, to produce evil results. (However, I am glad to see that the hysteria over Miss Goldman and Anarchism is subsiding a little.)

The issues and arguments thus presented by the suppression of Miss Goldman, and of sex-discussion, should be fairly and frankly answered, or supported by our liberal friends. It seems to me that this has not been done, and I am going to call attention to this record for the purpose of exhibiting what seem to me to be the evasions and mistakes my liberal friends have made, in the hope that some may be dissuaded from the repetition of their folly, which may have been induced by an excessive zeal for retaining a speaking acquaintance with respectability.

One of the first essays I wrote in defense of freedom for sex-discussion was a paper presented to the XV International Medical Congress held in Lisbon, Portugal.1 There I argued that the only thing common to all "obscenity," is a subjective emotional condition. In other words, I tried to make a scientific demonstration that unto the pure all things are pure. Later, I wrote of obscenity and witchcraft as twin superstitions, asserting that both would cease to be when people ceased to believe in them. Now let us see how our liberal friends met the argument made in support of that contention.

*Condensed from a lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Philosophical Association, March 13, 1910.

OUR LIBERAL EDITORS.

The Truth Seeker, probably the best of our Agnostic papers, editorially expressed its unconscious desire to help Mr. Comstock. The late editor wrote: "We have little confidence in this argument and would enjoy seeing it demolished."2 I promptly sent the editor another copy of the essay and a letter requesting that he demolish the argument, by pointing out errors of fact or logic. Profound silence was the only answer. However, other liberal friends were not disposed of so easily.

The editor of Secular Thought, the best free thought paper published in Canada, wrote: "In our humble opinion, such an argument is childish in the extreme,"3 but he did not even attempt to answer it.

Dr. Robinson, who edits several magazines and claims to be a "sane radical," without criticising my argument assured his readers that "This argument is exceedingly childish."4 He also thought a popular dogmatism was a sufficient answer.

Mr. Comstock showed himself to be in entire harmony with these dogmatizing liberals. He comments in these words: "It is all right, from the mere standpoint of debate and discussion, to theorize and say that there is no such thing as an obscene book or picture. The man who says it simply proclaims himself either an ignoramus, or is so ethereal that there is no suitable place on earth for him."5 In a letter to me he explained that he was too busy to point out defects in my argument.

HAVELOCK ELLIS' STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX

Since these liberals thought it unadvisable to answer my argument, and were satisfied merely to express their emotional disapproval of my conclusions, I may content myself with an approving quotation, from one who does not advertise his radicalism, but is a mere scientist and happens to be the world's most famous sexual psychologist. The following words are from his last (sixth) volume of "Studies in the Psychology of Sex:" 'Anything which sexually excites a prurient mind is , it is true, 'obscene' for that mind, for, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder remarks, obscenity is 'the contribution of the reading mind.'"6 I think with this endorsement of my conclusion, and my unanswered argument, I can let this issue rest.

Dr. Robinson made argumentative comment which is in the nature of a confession and avoidance. He wrote: "And so [as in the case of beauty and ugliness] it is in regard to obscenity. The thing in itself is not obscene; in the midst of the desert, or at the bottom of the sea, it is not obscene. But if it induces some people, however small a number, to commit indecent, unhealthy things, then that thing is indecent, and no amount of sophistry can do away with the fact."7 He of course fails to see that he is only restating the argument formerly made in support of witchcraft. How absurd for a man with some of the credentials of a scientist, to argue that something which is not obscene in itself can be made so by vote. Had he read my argument intelligently he would have seen that by his last test even "Uncle Tom's Cabin" comes under his condemnation as an obscene book.

There is another type of comment upon my argument, also in the nature of a confession and avoidance because it does not attack the argument itself, but which deserves more explicit criticism than it has hitherto received. The matter is well presented by the editor of Secular Thought, who no doubt believed he had delivered a stunning blow when he wrote this: "Would Mr. Schroeder take a virtuous and modest lady friend to a Seeley dinner? If not, why not? The lady would not see anything obscene, because nothing objectively obscene exists, and consequently she would not blush or be shocked in the least. Would he take home a brutal coarse-mouthed jade from the Bowery and expect his wife to be entertained by her filthy jests? Would he show a number of so-called 'obscene' transparent picture-cards to his daughters and expect them to be edified thereby? Have Free Speech extremists made an alliance with Christian Scientists?"8

If a woman is afflicted with the modesty of-prurient prudery, then I would not take her either to a Seeley dinner or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If she was modest only in the sense of having a clean healthy mind and body, I might take her to either place. Sucha woman as I have postulated has viewed her own body without shame, or injury to herself, and would not be any more injured by other sights of mere nudity in art or nature. The experience of art students in life studies is a proof. If I refused to take a woman to a Seeley dinner, it would not be because there was any obscenity in the mere nudity of the dancer, but on account of the probable obscenity in the mind of other spectators, and who, by reason thereof, might make themselves disagreeable. It is these disagreeable experiences which come from associating with the coarse-mouthed jade of the Bowery, or the spiritualized sensualism of the lewd purists, or the impudence of the avowed voluptuary, which alone makes truly decent people avoid nudity, when such are around. It is not the - obscenity in the nudity, but that obscenity which is in the minds of some excessively lewd co-spectators, which I would seek to avoid, for myself and for my women friends. It is evident, therefore, that the questions propounded by the editor of Secular Thought do not in the least degree impair or answer my argument.9

VARIOUS CONCEPTIONS OF FREEDOM.

From the comment presently to be quoted it appears that these editors, like Mr. Comstock, believe in a limited liberty by permission and do not see that my only object is to secure an unabridged and an unabridgable freedom of utterance as a matter of constitutionally guaranteed, natural right. I am opposed to all mere psychologic crimes; they are not. Failing to see this difference, they scold me for injuring this cause of freedom because I am asking for a liberty which they are willing to destroy. One of these editors thus condemned my effort to secure unabridged freedom of utterance: "We certainly look for and work for more liberal laws than those under which we live at present, but we imagine they can only be enacted through an enlightened public sentiment, and we think their advent will be retarded rather than assisted by such ultra-rationalism as that of Mr. Schroeder."10

Dr. Robinson scolded me for seeking the unabridged right to hear and read, which by the constitution is guaranteed to me and every other adult. This is what he mid: "I wish to add that you would do the cause of free press if you admitted openly that you a much greater service do draw the line at nasty 'literature' and filthy 'art,' the purpose of which is exclusively to pander to the vices of immature youths and degenerate roués. If you claim that we must not draw the line anywhere, you destroy your usefulness, and rational normal people cease to consideryou seriously."11

So strenuous is he in his insistence that I should be content with a limited intellectual liberty as a matter of permission only, that he even thought it necessary to falsify my contention. In an article on "What we would have to maintain to find favor with certain 'Radicals,'" he wrote a paragraph manifestly intended for me. It reads thus: "That there is no such thing as obscenity, and that all the pornographic filth sold secretly to young boys and old roués is pure and noble literature, and is declared filthy only by mentally strabismic and over-sensitive purists."12

The editor of The Humanitarian Review, in order to justify himself in the matter of abridging my freedom to read what I please, was unconsciously driven to adopt the Anarchist position that the co-operation of which the State is the embodiment, has its moral justification only in the consent of the entire community. He wrote: "There is not, never was, and never can be such a thing as absolute liberty or freedom (of speech or other kind of human conduct) of men in association.***** Society has the right, by his own agreement with it, to restrain him from doing (or saying, if you will) things harmful to society or any of its individual members."13If I denied ever having made such an agreement, I suppose this "rationalist" would tell me I was simply ignorant of what I had done in a former incarnation.

Thus this "liberal" editor justifies every persecution which has ever blighted the human intellect, for all persecutors have claimed that the persecuted one uttered something "harmful to society." If by that phrase he had meant an actually realized material injury, he would have agreed with me. But he is evidently willing to punish imaginary and constructive injuries.

SIR OLIVER LODGE ON OBSCENITY.

Now let me contrast the foregoing views with those of mere conservative scientists and thinkers who believe in more intellectual liberty than these radicals whom I have quoted. Sir Oliver Lodge recently said: "And lower than these [trashy, cheap novels] there lurks in holes and corners pernicious trash written apparently with the object of corrupting youth-if that horrible and barely human suggestion can be tolerated; but this is not literature, nor does it pretend to be, or if it does, it can only do so by obvious cant. The way to root out this abomination is to cultivate the soil round the growing organism, to strengthen the phagocytes of its own system, to make it immune to the attacks of vermin."14

I will quote another who had similar views and yet was so conservative and respectable that even MR. Comstock says he ought to have known better:

"The tares of error must be left to grow in the same field with the wheat of truth, 'until the harvest' that is, until they bear their natural fruits and their true character reveals itself in actual deeds-when they may be rooted up, in the persons of those who illustrate them, and cast into the fiery furnace of the law!"15

THE NUPTIAL OF FILTH AND AGNOSTICISM.

I am now going to quote a few paragraphs from authors who imagined themselves to be great antagonists, and I am sure that few could guess their names, merely from reading the following extracts, or, knowing their names, few could guess which part belongs to each.

"Suppose some man has been indicted, and suppose he is guilty. Suppose he has endeavored to soil the human mind. Suppose he has been willing to make money by pandering to the lowest passions in the human breast.

What will that [defense] committee do with him then? We will say, 'Go on; let the law take itscourse. **'***There is not a man here but is in favor, when these books and pictures come into the control of the United States, of burning them up when they are manifestly obscene. You don't want any grand jury there. ***** It is easy to talk right-so easy to be right, that I never care to have the luxury of being wrong." * * *

"I believe in liberty as much as any man who breathes. * * * Every man should be allowed to write, publish, and send through the mails his thoughts upon any subject, expressed in a decent and becoming manner."16 "I accord to every man the fullest scope for his views and convictions. He may shout from the housetop, or print them over the face of every fence and building for all I care."

"There never had been a man arrested under these laws, except for sending obscene and immoral articles or ad- vertisements through the mails; there was but one reason why these laws should be repealed, and that was, because it interfered with their infamous traffic, and prevented these scoundrels from using the mails of the United States for their base purposes."17 "I am not in favor of the repeal of those laws. I never have been, and I never expected to be."18

"It is a question, not of principle, but of means."19

Thus Ingersoll and Comstock are quite in harmony that something ought to be suppressed by arbitrary and lawless power, without accusation or trial. However, they were not agreed as to all that should be included within the arbitrary power. Ingersoll as a lawyer saw that frequently evil results came from the fact that obscenity could not be defined. He sought to remedy this by having the statute so amended as to make intent the essence of the offence. When the motive of the accused was to benefit society, no matter how mistaken he might be, Ingersoll would acquit. This much is to be credited to his generous impulses. He did not see that courts would have wiped out such a statute by saying that the accused must be presumed to have the intended the evil consequences, which a hostile judge would imaginatively and prospectively ascribe to the indicated literature, as the natural consequences of the act of the accused person.

Ingersoll failed to see another thing. In proposing to punish a man for having an evil intention, independent of any actual and material injury having flowed from it, he too was getting back to the evil basis of all persecution, namely a proposal to punish the mere psychologic crime of having an evil state of mind which had actually injured no -one. That Ingersoll should have been guilty of this does not speak well for his intellect. Of this proposition I shall have more to say later on.

LIBERALS ON THE RIGHT TO ADVOCATE CRIME.

I soon saw that the Constitutions made no exception for any particular class of intellectual "evils," but protected them all alike, so long as the mere utterance of one's sentiments was the only factor involved. Thus the advocate of crime might be punished as an accessory before the fact if a crime actually resulted from his advocacy, but could not be punished for his utterance, merely as such. Upon this proposition several of my radical friends took more or less definite issue with me. Mr. Edwin C. Walker, who usually sees very clearly in such matters, yet failed to see the importance of a precedent allowing one exception to unabridged freedom, wrote the following words:

"Even to argue for the right or alleged right to advocate the performance of criminal acts, on the ground that without unrestricted freedom for such advocacy of invasion the right to liberty of expression is denied, is to sacrifice essential substance to empty form. * * * * * What may or may not be a theoretical right in the premises is relatively unimportant; what is important, is the fact that to insist that we have such a right is to menace and cripple our defensible right of expression, to seriously limit, if not destroy, our opportunity to teach and persuade. It is enough for us to affirm the right and benefit of the utmost freedom for the discussion of all suggested peaceful changes in belief and society, and to keep it ever before all the authorities that in the long run their tenure of office depends far more on non interference with even the most incendiary utterance than on suppression of that utterance."20

A century ago, when a similar argument was made for the unimportance of a little tax levied for the support of a particular church, Dr. Priestly made the answer that "A penny of a tax is a trifle, but a power imposing that tax is never considered as a trifle, because it may imply absolute servitude in all who submit to it!' The few who may care to exercise the right to advocate what everybody else admits an evil may be relatively unimportant, but the power to suppress them merely on account of a speech the evil tendency of which is only speculatively, prospectively, and imaginatively ascertained, is the admission of a power to enslave the mind of all, and upon all subjects. Our Constitutions make no distinction.

Mr. Walker is very much interested in the question of freedom for sex-discussion. I can best show the evil of his admitting the power to suppress any mere expression of opinion by quoting an address made before the National Purity Federation by the Rev. Charles Carverno. He said:

"Let us look at a case that is somewhat plain. The police of this city will break up a gathering and prohibit speeches whose intent, or 'evident tendency, is to excite to acts of Anarchy. Why should not the same attitude be observed and the same action taken when a play is put on the boards whose tendency -is to cultivate indifference to sex crime? There is sex Anarchy as well as political or civic Anarchy. It is as important that society be protected against the one as against the other. The family, and that too predominately monogamic, is older than the State it is the MORE basic condition and relation."21 Thus do Mr. Walker's chickens come home to roost, if I may adapt that homely proverb. We need to learn the solidarity of all liberty.

Mr. Louis Post, who edits the best American newspaper devoted to fundamental democracy, attacks my argument more directly. He said: "To us it seems that the man who so advises another to commit a crime as to make himself an accessory before the fact, if the crime be actually committed, should be criminally liable though the crime be not committed." * * * "If it be destructive of freedom of speech to punish advocacy of crime when the crime advocated does not result, then it must be destructive of freedom of speech to punish advocacy of crime when the crime advocated does result. * * * Without the criminal intent, of course they should not be [punished]. But with the criminal intent, why not punish, whether the intended injury occurs or not ?"22

ON PUNISHING UNDESIRABLE STATES OF MIND.

Like Ingersoll, in the case of "obscenity," Post, in the case of advocacy of crime, would punish a mere undesirable state of mind, although no actual or material injury to any one has actually resulted therefrom. According to my way of thinking, this proposition implies the uttermost limit of outrage upon liberty of conscience. If there exists a power which can punish any mere psychologic "crime," I see no reason why it may not punish every other psychologic offense, for then no limit exists which ignorance, passion, or idiosyncrasy need respect.

Montesquieu tells us of a case of inquisition to discover, and punish, a man for having an unpopular state of mind. He says: "Marsyas dreamed that he had cut Dionysius's throat. Dionysius put him to death, pretending that he would never have dreamed of such a thing by night if he had not thought it by day. This was a most tyrannical action, for though it had been the subject of his thoughts, he had made no attempt toward it. The laws do not take upon them to punish any but overt acts."23 This inference as to a "criminal" state of mind was no less logical than those which usually underlie the determination of criminal intent. It was as proper to punish that unpopular state of mind, or desire, as though it had been ascertained by other evidence.

But that was in Greece about fifteen hundred years ago, and yet substantially the same thing occurred only a few centuries ago, though the "undesirable" state of mind was revealed in a little different manner. Fabian, in his Chronicle, tells us of a Welshman "drawen, hanged, and quartered for prophesying of the kyng his Majesties death."24 But why not, if any mere state of mind, unaccompanied by actual injury, can be made a subject of criminal punishment?

If under obscenity laws we may punish the expression or promotion in others, of an undesirable state of mind, why not punish the existence of such an undesirable state of mind even before verbal expression? Why wait until the harm of publicity is achieved? Then why not establish inquisitions to discover the existence of such undesirable states of mind and punish them? We already compel immigrants to disclose their mental condition, and if they have that undesirable state of mind known as non-resistant Anarchism we punish them, by denying them admittance to the United States. If we admit the existence of a power to punish any mere state of mind, any mere psychologic offense, entirely separate from any actual injury to any one, then it becomes a mere matter of legislative discretion to determine what states of mind shall be punishable, and a mere matter of judicial speculation how the existence of the prohibited state of mind shall be discovered, or proven. I cannot agree with these radical friends that such a power either ought to be, or is vested in any body of American legislators. In this matter I prefer to stand with those eminent and conservative gentlemen whom I shall now quote in support of my own contention. These are some of the conservative friends of unabridged freedom of utterance as a matter of acknowledged natural right.

LORD MACAULAY.

"The true distinction [between persecution and punishment) is perfectly obvious. To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime is not persecution. To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution; and is, in every case, foolish and wicked. * * *

"Let it pass) however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable consequence of making any attempt."25

"It is altogether impossible to reason from the opinions which a man professes to his feelings and his actions and in fact no person is such a fool as to reason thus, except when he wants a pretext for persecuting his neighbors. * * * It was in this way that our ancestors reasoned, and that some people in our own time still reason about the Catholics. A Papist believes himself bound to obey the pope. The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen Elizabeth. Therefore, every Papist is a traitor. Therefore every Papist ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. To this logic we owe some of the most hateful laws that ever disgraced our history. Surely the answer lies on the surface. The church of Rome may have commanded them to do many things which they have never done. She enjoins her priests to observe strict purity. You are always taunting them with their licentiousness. * * * When we know that many of these people do not care enough for their religion to go without beef on a Friday for it, why should we think that they will run the risk of being racked and hanged for it?"26

A. J. WILLARD.

"The most general office of speech is to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of one in others. In this sense the liberty of speech is absolute, according to the principles of the law. It is impossible to conceive of an actionable wrong existing solely on the ground that one has attempted to impart his thoughts and feelings to another, unless some public law affords such remedy, or unless such speech is accompanied by some action that is an aggression on the rights of another. * * * "It [speech] is a means of combining and constituting the common or mutual action of individuals, and, therefore, must be examined as among the means of performing such actions as depend upon co-operation. It would follow that, when an action is unlawful, speech used as a means to such end would partake of that unlawful character. This results from the fact that what is said, as well as what is done, may form a part of a transaction, and thus the lawful or unlawful character imputed to such transaction must affect all the elements of that transaction. Speech in this way may be part of the means of connecting the action of rioters or conspirators against governments. It may even point the nature and tendency of the actions which it accompanies, and thus become a means of conferring upon them the legal character of lawfulness or unlawfulness. * * * "In all these cases, even where the character of what is spoken determines the legal character of what is done, it is the act alone that can convert the mere use of words into violations of right. Again, speech may be used for purposes of deception, and in that case, as in the cases previously mentioned, the act of wrong is not consummated by the speech alone, but by the action produced by the speech.

"In the instance of slander, words uttered may be attended by consequences rendering them injurious to the right of character. In these cases the wrong consists in what is actually or presumably done by individuals, by society at large-, or by the community, as a consequence of words spoken; the words in such a case being the cause of injurious consequences, are regarded as in themselves injurious.27

SIR LESLIE STEPHENS.

"The doctrine of toleration requires a positive as well as a negative statement. It is not only wrong to burn a man on account of his creed, but it is right to encourage the open avowal and defense of every opinion sincerely maintained. Every man who saysfrankly and fully what he thinks, is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions. * * * Toleration, in fact, as I have understood it, is a necessary correlative to a respect for truthfulness. So far as we can lay it down as an absolute principle that every man should be thoroughly trustworthy and therefore truthful, we are bound to respect every manifestation of truthfulness. * * *

"A man must not be punished for openly avowing any principles whatever. * * * Toleration implies that a man is to be allowed to profess and maintain any principles that he pleases; not that he should be allowed in all cases to act upon his principles, especially to act upon them to the injury of others. No limitation whatever need be put upon this principle in the case supposed. I, for one, am fully prepared to listen to any arguments for the propriety of theft or murder, or if it be possible, of immorality in the abstract. No doctrine, however well established, should be protected from discussion. The reasons have been already assigned. If, as a matter of fact, any appreciable number of persons are so inclined to advocate murder on principle, I should wish them to state their opinions openly and fearlessly, because I should think that the shortest way of exploding the principle and of ascertaining the true causes of such a perversion of moral sentiment. Such a state of things implies the existence of evils which cannot be really cured till their cause is known, and the shortest way to discover the cause is to give a hearing to the alleged reasons .28

I will quote another who, though not to be classified as a conservative, was yet conservative enough to be elected to the English Parliament. In America he would have been denounced as an "undesirable citizen" and treated as an object of suspicion.

AUBERON HERBERT.

"Of all the miserable, unprofitable, inglorious wars in the world is the war against words. Let men say just what they like. Let them propose to cut every throat and burn every house-if so they like it. We have nothing to do with a man's words or a man's thoughts, except to put against them better words or better thoughts, and so to win in the great moral and intellectual duel that is always going on, and on which all progress depends,"29

I think I have made it plain that there are scientists and other thoughtful persons who believe in freedom of utterance as an unabridgable right, while some professing radicals believe in it only as an abridgable liberty-by permission. In this respect I am quite willing to be classed with these conservative non-liberals.30

FREE SPEECH FUND

RECEIPTS.

Balance, as per March M. E., $140.78. Per Mr. Spanier, Denver, Colo.: Mr. Singman, 50c.; Mr. Lewin, 50c.; Mr. Letwin, 50c.: Mr. Citron, 50c.; Mr. Tivin, 50c,; Mr. Morris, 25c.: Mr. Goldberg, 50c,; Mr. Teback, 25c.; Mr. Sabinsky, 25c.: Mr. Tobatshuck, 25c.: Mr. Kaudritzer, 25c.: Mr. Spanier, 50c.: Mr. Lesson, 25c.: Mr. Tobin, 25c.: Mr. Feman, $1.00. Per A. Vogl, Denver, Colo.: J. H. Tilden, $10.00; A Friend, $5.00; Whitehead & Vogl, $5.00; Dr. Spivak I $1.00. Frank Monroe, $2.00. Per S. Oliveras, New York, $1.50; F. Barone, Prairie Creek, Ark., $1.00; A Friend, 50c. Total-$173.03.

EXPENDITURES.

Cheyenne F. S. Fight: Lawyer, $25.00; Telegr., Stenogr., Postage, $12.75; Loss through police interference, $38.25. Total-$76.00.

Receipts $173-03

Expenditures 76.00

Balance ............................. $97-03

Footnotes

Footnote 1) See Proceedings, also Albany Law Journal, July, 1906.

Footnote 2) Truth Seeker, June 29, 1907.

Footnote 3) Secular Thought, August, 1907, P. 312.

Footnote 4) Altruria, June, 1907, P. 1

Footnote 5)The Light, January, 1907, p. 61.

Footnote 6)Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. 6, P. 54.

Footnote 7) Altruia, --- 1907, p. 2.

Footnote 8) Secular Thought, Aug., 1907, P. 312.

Footnote 9) See Psychologic Study of Modesty in Medical Council, January, 1909.

Footnote 10) Secular Thought, Aug., 1907, P. 311.

Footnote 11) Altruria, June, 1907, P. 3.

Footnote 12) Altruria, March, 1908. (Italics are mine. T. S.)

Footnote 13) Humantarian Review, September, 1908, p. 108.

Footnote 14 ) Fortnightly Review, Feb. 1910, P. 264. (Italics are mine. T.S.)

Footnote I5) Oliver Johnson, Orange Jour. N. J., Aug. 24, 1878, requoted from "Frauds Exposed."

Footnote 16) Ingersoll, As He Is, pp. 124-128-129-131-116.

Footnote 17) "Frauds Exposed," by Anthony Comstock, pp. 402-420-421.

Footnote 18) Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 129.

Footnote 19) Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 129. Ingersoll, As He Is, p. 132.

20) Liberty and Assassination, by E. C. Walker.

21) The Light, Nov. 1906, p. 236.

22)The Public, May 15, 1908, pp. 147-148.

23)Spirits of the Laws, V. I., P. 232, Aldine edition.

24) See end of Fabian's Chronicle, which he nameth the Concordance of Histories.

25) Macaulay's "Civil Disabilities of the Jews."

26)Macaulay's "Civil Disabilities of the Jews."

27)"The Law of Personal Rights," PP. 349-351, by Willard. Italics are mine. T. S.)

28) Macaulay's "Civil Disabilities of the Jews." 26) Macaulay's "Civil Disabilities of the Jews."

29)Auberon Herbert Westminster Gazette, Nov. 22, 1 1893

30) For a more elaborate defense of my views on the precise point here involved see "The Historical Interpretation of Unabridged Freedom of Speech," in Central Law Journal, through March, 1910.

Return to table of contents

Return to Emma Goldman's Collected Work

Mother Earth Vol 5 N6

Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature

Published Every 15th of the Month

Emma Goldman, Publisher P.O. Box 217, Madison SQ Station, New York, N.Y.

Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N.Y.,

under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Vol. V         AUGUST, 1910        No.6

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
   Anti-Clerical Movement in Spain
   Francisco Ferrer Anniversary
   Draconian Injunctions
   The Spirit of Conservative Unionism
   Generous Advisors of Labor
   Class Consciousness Lost in Milwaukee
   Uncle Sam in Mexico
   Mother Earth and Prosperity ............................. 177 A Song of Academic Liberty Ida Ahlborn Weeks ......... 184 Marx vs. Nietzsche Wm. C. Owen ....................... 185 Lecture Tour Voltairine de Cleyre .................... 191 Anarchist Symposium Ralph Waldo Emerson .............. 192 An Immoral Writer Hippolyte Havel .................... 194 The Parable of the Benefactor Lillian Browne ......... 199 Picturesque Features of the Ghetto Sadakichi Hartman . 200 To Friendship Friedrich Nietzsche .................... 205 International Notes .................................. 206 Books Received ....................................... 208

Emma Goldman     . . . .    Publisher Alexander Berkman     . . . .    Editor   Office: 210 East 13th Street, New York City   Price, 10 Cents per Copy     One Dollar per Year

Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature

Published Every 15th of the Month

EMMA GOLDMAN, Proprietor, 210 East Thirteenth Street, New York, N.Y.

Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, as the post office at New York, N.Y.,

under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Vol. V         AUGUST, 1910        No.6

ANARCHY - Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of, invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government.

The anti-clerical movement in Spain sounds like an echo from the eighteenth century. It sharply accentuates the spiritual darkness still supreme in that priest-ridden country.

      If social justice and liberty be the test of civilization, no nation can be said to be truly civilized. But humanity is gradually advancing toward the ultimate goal. In that progress there are degrees, but Spain has unfortunately remained far behind in the forward march. All but the most backward nations have long since passed the milestone of religious toleration, at least theoretically. But Spain is even now in the throes of a struggle, the extreme of which does not exceed the demand that non-Cathoic religions my be publicly practiced, and that religious orders shall be taxed and subject to the secular power, similar to other societies.

      The separation of Church and State in Spain may still belong to the future. But ultimately it must come. And when it does, the result will be due to the leaven now at work in that country - the leaven, the original germs of which have been planted by the noble band of men whose devotion and high purpose were so brilliantly typified by the martyred Francisco Ferrer.

*  *  *

LEST the foul murder of Francisco Ferrer be forgotten, we call our readers' attention to the international demonstration to take place October 13, 1910. On that day the liberty-loving world will commemorate the first anniversary of the black deed committed by the power of darkness which is now facing its ultimate extinction in Spain and Portugal.

      The American Ferrer Association, whose headquarters are in New York, will hold a commemoration meeting in Cooper Union, October 13. It is urging upon all sympathizers with Ferrer and his work to arrange similar meetings all over the country - on the same date, if possible. The Association is also preparing a Ferrer memorial issue, which will contain valuable documents and articles on the life and work of our martyred comrade.

      All those willing to aid in the work, or desiring to order in advance copies of the memorial, should communicate with the Secretary of the Association, Mr. Van der Weyde, 241 Fifth avenue, New York.

*  *  *

THE puerility and blindness of the American Federation of Labor pass all comprehension. That "powerful" organization calmly continues claiming victories for labor in the face of constantly growing oppression, sweeping injunctions, and almost uniform defeat in strikes.

      For almost two decades the Federation has practiced the principles of craft unionism, with its resultant internal divisions and external policy of vacillation, compromise, and servility. The net result of twenty years of such "struggle" is evidenced by the Draconian injunction of Judge Richardson, of the Superior Court of Boston, Mass. The injunction is the most vicious assault that organized labor has had to sustain from the courts. Not only does it prohibit the Photo Engravers' Union from conducting a strike against a certain Boston firm, but it also formulates general rules as to when the workers may or may not strike. It further paves the way for an almost total prohibition of union support to striking members, even when the latter are engaged in a "lawful" strike.

      Thus the chains of slavery are continually tightening around American labor. Are the fetters not yet sufficiently galling to open the workmen's eyes to the futility of conservative methods and craft disorganization? to convince them that the old methods of fighting exploitation have resulted in failure and defeat, and that only a united industrial army, determined and revolutionary, can hope to wage a successful war for economic independence?

*  *  *

THE death of James W. Van Cleave, president of the Bucks Stove & Range Company, no doubt afforded that concern a much-desired opportunity to recede from its former position of fighting organized labor.

      Van Cleave, incidentally also president of the National Association of Manufacturers, was the bitterest foe of unions. He was a strong man, but hopelessly near-sighted as a captain of industry. His successor, the new president of the Bucks Company, sees much further. He knows that an apparently friendly attitude towards labor organizations is far more conducive to successful exploitation than open enmity. Accordingly, he hastened to enter into an agreement with the American Federation of Labor, unionizing the Bucks Stove & Range Company.

      Claiming the changed attitude of the company as a victory for labor, Secretary Morrison, of the A. F. of L., evidently failed to realize the true significance of his explanation. The agreement, Mr. Morrison says, is a manifestation of the steady growth of sentiment among employers in favor of the principles for which the A. F. of L. stands. Such agreements are satisfactory to employers, promote peace of mind among employees, and are conducive to good workmanship.

      Quite true. And as long as "to be satisfactory to employers" is the ideal of the Gompers-Morrison organization, capitalism has nothing to fear in its stronghold. Indeed, it can afford to co-operate on the friendliest terms with Messr. Gompers, Morrison, et al.

*  *  *

WHETHER West or East, North or South, the local and State authorities rush to the aid of the employers, strikers are clubbed and shot down, and "law and order" vindicated.

      The proverbial peace of Warsaw reigns in the strike regions. In Columbus, Ohio, the troops help to run the street cars; in Brooklyn, N.Y., the police protect the interests of the Sugar Trust. At both places the good fathers of the Church advise the strikers to return to work, to be quiet and patient, though their wives and children starve to death.

      It is remarkable what an amount of gratuitous advice labor receives. But still more remarkable is the fact that the generous advice, from whatever source, always sounds the same note : Be patient, keep quiet. Even our step-brothers, the Socialists, join the chorus, in no uncertain voice.

      Unfortunately, the wage slave generally follows this advice - with evident results. Exploitation grows more intense, poverty constantly increases, the spirit of manly resistance is paralyzed. Some day the toilers may awaken to this all-too-evident fact. They will then realize that salvation from the terrible economic hell lies not in servile submission to robbery and extortion, but in organized, determined resistance with every weapon at hand.

*  *  *

THE New York Socialists are jubilant over the official approval of Mayor Gaynor who has declared them the most law-abiding citizens in the community. It only remains now to secure the O.K. of Taft to make the triumph of Socialism complete.

      The first fruits of that triumph have already revolutionized the Socialist-ruled city of Milwaukee. Indeed, the change is so tremendous as to astonish even the much-experienced Victor Berger himself. He thus analyzes the situation in his Social Democratic Herald:

      We have been in power now for almost three months. Now, what have we done for the working class as such? What measures have we passed and carried out that are of interest to the city collectively?

      Let's see. We have abolished the three-headed board of public works and have put in a one-man commissioner. A good measure if our man makes good-but not a Socialist measure in itself.

      We have passed an ordinance establishing the cost unit system. Also a very good thing and of great interest to the city collectively. But as yet we could not secure the right man to take the job, so this can hardly be called an accomplishment now.

      We have introduced a number of ordinances to compel the street car company to give efficient and decent service. But so far there has been very little accomplished in that respect. The street car service is as irregular and insufficient as ever. The indecent overcrowding of cars is still going on.

      It is much too early to pride ourselves on our success in Milwaukee. Only one thing is certain.

      The most dangerous part of the situation is that some of our comrades seem to forget that we are a Socialist party. They not only begin to imitate the ways and methods of old parties, but even their reasoning and their thoughts are getting to be more bourgeois and less proletarian. To some of these men the hold of office - whatever they office may be - seems to be the final aim of the Socialist party. And even some of the aldermen seem to have lost their Socialist class consciousness - if they ever had any. Instead of that they seem to make it a point "to be agreeable" to the old party politicians. Their kindness extends even to the memory of the old capitalist and grafters' regime.

      Socialism may indeed be proud of its Milwaukee achievements "in the interest of the collectivity and the working class as such."

*  *  *

WITHIN the past three years over four thousand men have deserted from the United States army. Evidently the soldier's lot in the land of the free is not as alluring as Uncle Sam tries to make it appear in his broadcast advertisements for recruits.

      The government has been deeply considering the question of desertion. At last it has solved the perplexing problem : more circulars should be sent out, containing accurate description of the deserters and offering a reward for their capture. All apprehended deserters should be punished with the utmost rigor.

      It could not be expected, of course, that the government should stoop to a consideration of the causes leading to desertion. The brutal treatment, underfeeding and underpaying - these are matters beneath the government's notice. Indeed, a "strong" government should rather consider the advisability of conscription. It holds out a rich promise for a "great power." Other monarchies have it, why not America?

*  *  *

JOHN KENNETH TURNER'S articles on "Barbarous Mexico," now running in the Appeal to Reason, are of the first importance to all revolutionists and should be studied carefully. Turner proves that the United States has, to all intents and purposes, annexed Mexico, the investment of $900,000,000 by American capitalists being the real governing power, and Diaz a mere tool of Washington.

      He also shows that the leading monopolists of the United States - The Guggenheims, Standard Oil, etc., have seized the natural resources of Mexico, gained control of her railroads, and made themselves her masters. To do this they have not hesitated to bring about such tragedies as that of the war in which the Yaquis were decimated and driven into the most atrocious chattel slavery, American capitalists having bought their lands through connivance with Diaz and other American officials.

      Furthermore, he proves conclusively that at this moment American capitalists are engaged in buying and selling Mexican slaves, just as the Southerners bought and sold them before the civil war. Thus the people of this country face the fact that their war was fought in vain, and that their government is today conniving actively in the perpetration of the very crime they shed oceans of blood to make impossible.

      The work Turner is doing will prove infinitely more potent than the capture of Milwaukee or three academic harangues of "Scientific Socialism" that have plagued our ears so long. It is putting putrid facts under the public's nose - facts so putrid that their stench cannot be stifled. For Turner shows us the pirates in the saddle ; a country raped in the name of business ; the most brutal form of chattel slavery again in vogue, and Americans active in the traffic.

*  *  *

SOME friends of Mother Earth, with a peculiar lack of the sense of proportion, have been led astray by the account of the lecture tour, contained in the last issue.

      Thus one correspondent writes: "I am so glad you have succeeded in placing the magazine on a safe financial basis." Another informs us that he "rejoices to learn that Mother Earth is out of financial difficulties." A third sends congratulations on "having made the magazine self-supporting," and so forth.

      Evidently our good correspondents are not the only ones who have gathered such an altogether exaggerated notion from the report. At any rate, our subscribers seem to have forgotten to remit during the last month, and as to our generous contributors - they apparently do not feel "called," since "prosperity has overtaken" our publication.

      For more the benefit of all concerned, we will state that, considering the expenses of a magazine, the surplus of five hundred dollars is barely sufficient to tide Mother Earth over the few summer months. As to having the magazine on a safe material basis, or out of financial difficulties, - that is out of the question, at least until the social revolution arrives. We therefore very gently call the attention of our readers to the eternal struggle for existence of a magazine like Mother Earth.

*  *  *

 

A SONG OF ACADEMIC LIBERTY

By Ida Ahlborn Weeks.

Arise, who bend o'er song and story,

   Who search for truth in her retreat;

What profits all your learned glory

   If freedom suffer a defeat?

Arise and listen! Down the ages

   The shackles on the thinker ring;

And what ye read on placid pages

   Was once condemned by priest and king.

O ye who guard the sacred portals

   With vigilance of heart and brain,

Through which the troop of the immortals

   Comes ever with their glistering train -

O thinker, teacher, seer, bestowing

   Such guardian service, shall ye be

The slaves of tyrants, all unknowing

   The highest gifts are from the free?

Shall ye not see a Hamlet's passion

  Portrayed upon the tragic stage?

Must truth be right to you in fashion

   When it is duly stamped with age?

Shall ye not dare condemn the writer

   Who writes from vanity and greed?

And dare to be the public smiter

  Of men who mount by evil deed?

Of old did Galileo mutter

  As he recanted, "yet it moves"? -

Ye, too, below your breath must utter

   What blinded custom disapproves.

O ye, for truth who groan in travail,

  Shall ye be driven to obey

The barren slaves who basely cavil

   At life and life's imperious way?

For you no sword that cleaves asunder,

   And not for you the piercing ball;

But Eloquence has still her thunder, -

  The people are the open hall.

The law that underlies our nation

   Is still to tyranny a foe;

And to your help comes all creation

  When once ye are in freedoms's throe.

*  *  *

MARX VS. NIETZSCHE

A REVIEW OF "MEN VS. THE MAN"

By Wm. C. Owen.

EVERYONE has heard of the man who apologized for the length of his letter with the plea that he had had no time to make it shorter.This has been my own experience with this correspondence between R. R. La Monte and H. L. Mencken, published under the title of "men vs. The man, " by Henry Hold & Co., New York. Mr. La Monte announces himself on the first page as a "faithful follower" of Karl Marx, and is therefore, to me at least, a Socialist of the authoritarian type. Mr. Mencken, on the other hand, is a noted interpreter of Nietzsche, from the "Redbeard" standpoint; that is to say , he is an individualist who believes that, by the basic law of nature, to the victor belong the spoils. Obviously the two men have nothing whatever in common save mutual discontent, yet their debate rips open the whole social question.

      It was easy to make voluminous notes and mark paragraphs, on each of which an essay could be written. But to squeeze the discussion into a single article was a problem. However, since La Monte relies manly on Marxian economics and Mencken on biology, I found my criticism falling naturally into two sections, the first of which deals with La Monte's Socialist view.

      As an orthodox Socialist La Monte proclaims that the advent of a new order is inevitable and gives reasons for his faith. First, society is organized today on lines that differ essentially from all antecedent forms, production being not for use but profit. Interrupt sale, and panic ensues. Secondly, panics are due to the diminished purchasing power of the workers, whose wages enable them to buy back only a portion of what their labor produces, thus leaving the market glutted. Thirdly, this condition makes a revolution inevitable, and we shall have a choice only between placing in power "an oligarchy of Nietzschean Immoralists" or making "the means of life the common property of all," so abolishing poverty forever. Fourthly, we shall choose the latter alternative because the factory system is drilling us out of individualism and into collectivism. Fifthly, the revolution will be facilitated unspeakably by the automatic extinction of the middle class, as to which he makes this prophesy: "Within a decade, as a social force or factor, they will be negligible."

      The foregoing is a full synopsis of La Monte's position, which is the orthodox Socialist position. For my part, I hold that each of the five statements is erroneous, and I shall examine them in detail.

      (1) It is the universal Socialist catchword that modern production is for profit. But, unfortunately, for the argument, production always has been for profit. Man is instinctively a trader, and it has been pointed out repeatedly that his fact differentiates him most clearly from the other animals, who look only to the satisfaction of their own individual needs. The real distinction, as I see it, between society today and that of a hundred years ago is not that we produce for profit, but that we produce for profit on a vastly larger scale, improved means of communication having made the world our market. It is a difference of degree and not of kind, and I submit that the trouble is not profit, but the diversion of profit to those who have not earned it - a diversion due to the inequalities begotten by monopoly.

      (2) In the dictum that panics come from decrease of purchasing power there appears to me to lurk an appalling confusion of thought. If I, a publisher, cut in half the wages previously paid by me to La Monte, a writer, La Monte will have simply less while I shall have more to spend. The book market will not be glutted, all that will happen being that the distribution of wealth will be changed, I becoming richer and La Monte poorer. Henceforth he will be able to make less demands on the labor market, but I shall make greater, and in each case the market will answer the demand by furnishing the required supply. Panics come, as the word implies, from loss of confidence, which may arise from various causes, among others from the glutting of the market by wild speculation or from ignorance of its actual demands. The latter has been a frequent cause of panics in the past, when little was known of the actual requirements of the market, and statistics, trade journals, etc., were still in their infancy. To-day, however, the gauging of the market's needs is becoming one of the exact sciences. Our last panic, that of 1907, came at a time when factories were rushed with orders, and was a monopoly-manufactured panic, underconsumption having nothing to do with it. Surplus value, or - to use a term I prefer - unearned increment , has simply the effect of distributing wealth inequitably, but wealth may be distributed with utter inequity, as it has been for ages, without any glutting of the market. Between surplus value and panics there is, in my opinion, no connection, and the Socialist philosophy on that head seems to me false and one that leads to deplorable conclusions, making them rely on expectations that are doomed to disappointment.

      Thirdly, La Monte's dogmatic declaration that the inevitable can be must be either to a Nietzschean oligarchy or a collectivism of the Marxian type seems to me preposterous presumption. Single Taxers, for instance believe that with free land and the abolition of special privilege society will abolish poverty, competition becoming the purest form of social co-operation. The Individualist Anarchists of the Tucker school, who follow Proudhon, Josiah Warren, etc., believe, as do the Single Taxers, that the land must be freed, but consider that monopoly of the medium of exchange - money - also must be abolished. Both these groups, together with the Anarchist Communists, believe that, given equality of opportunity, society would arrange itself spontaneously along decentralized lines and not under centralized authority. There is a world of difference between these schools and that of Marx, and it seems to me supremely ridiculous on the part of Mr. La Monte to assert that there are only two possible alternatives. I myself consider that most radical changes will and must be made, but I would lay long odds that they will not be to any great extent along the lines of the present Socialist platform, and that the Socialist platform itself will change materially. Nothing ends as it began, metamorphosis being a universal law.

      Fourthly : La Monte argues that the machine system is drilling us for such a centralized collectivism as Karl Marx visioned, and thereby rendering that the next imperative step in social evolution. To me this is one of those loose generalizations any one can make. You might argue similarly that congregation in cities makes us co-operators, whereas nowhere is life conducted in so narrowly selfish, cut-throat a fashion as in a great metropolis, where one may occupy a house for years without even knowing the name of one's next-door neighbor. I question seriously whether there was not more true co-operation among the handicraftsmen of the past, and among the villagers who toiled side by side in the fields before harvesters were invented. Consider how the French peasant, for example, to-day co-operates in the hiring of machinery. But, however this may be - and absolute proof is of necessity lacking - the factory system affects only a small proportion of the population. The enormous residue is receiving, as I submit, not a drilling for the Co-operative Commonwealth, but daily instruction in the individualistic need of looking after "Number One." If you are prophesying as to the future this point is of importance.

      Fifthly: The middle class "is fast disappearing before the advance of the trust and the department store" and "within a decade, as a social force or factor, they will be negligible." Here La Monte indorses the leading dogma of his master - that the big swallows up the little capital, and that the bourgeoisie is destined to dig its own grave. This fatalistic philosophy, which has taken the backbone out of the Socialist movement for the last two generations, was, to my thinking, the profoundest error into which Karl Marx fell ; and he fell into it precisely because he was a dialectician, who reasoned from assumed premises, and not an inductive scientist who built on facts.For even when he wrote, the middle class in Germany was rising to power, and for the last fifty years in every country its growth has kept pace with the development of capitalism. Thus the United States, which is the most advanced of all capitalist countries, has the largest and most powerful middle class, whereas in Russia and Mexico, where capitalism is still in its infancy, the middle class is but now coming into being. Tcherkesoff, in his "Pages of Socialist History," has given the absolute proof of this as it applies to Europe, and I could more than duplicate it for this country did space permit. A single instance. The owner of an automobile does not belong to the proletariat. Here in Los Angeles, a city of some 325,000 inhabitants, there are 12,000 automobile owners, the number having increased one-third within the last twelve months. Only a humorist would see in this the impending bankruptcy of the middle class.

      It appears to me that Marx, engrossed in his study of the capitalist as manufacturer and distributor of goods, lost sight of the far greater enterprises that engage his activities - activities in which combination, and not competition, plays the most important part. The very titles of the Trusts which dominate the modern field of industry - such as oil trust, lumber trust, coal trust, copper trust, railroad trust, etc. - should suggest to us that in the seizure of natural resources capitalism has dealt the masses its deadliest blow. And in this great robbery combination, and not competition, has been the weapon. Companies without number are formed to exploit this and that form of natural wealth, and invariably the first aim of the promoters is to "interest money" - to combine. It has not been a question of the big capitalistic fish eating up the little capitalistic fish, but of the capitalists, as a species, making a terrific onslaught on the proletariat spawn.

      Moreover, in answer to the claim that all wealth is centering in a few hands, Kropotkin - a hated Anarchist, of course, but somewhat of a scientist - has shown in "Fields, Factories, and Workshops" that decentralization has been a most marked feature of recent industrial development. A century ago England was the workshop of the world. To-day each country is doing its own manufacturing, even China having joined the procession.On this Pacific coast thirty years ago San Francisco was the distributing center from Arizona to British Columbia. To-day she has a hundred rivals in towns that have become manufacturing and jobbing centers. I may add that in "Anarchy vs. Socialism" I have given my reasons for thinking we are on the eve of an infinitely vaster decentralization movement.

      La Monte says: "If one fact stands out above another in modern financial history it is that stock companies are the most efficient means ever devised to transfer the savings of the middle and working classes to the pockets of the lords of finance." La Monte, the middle class is composed mainly of business men. They know what is to their own interest, believe me, far better than you, a literary person, do; and they would not run more and more to the formation of joint stock companies if it was their experience that they lost money by so doing. The fact is that the invention of joint stock companies has rendered capital infinitely more fluid, and has given moneyed men, of all grades, far greater opportunities of combining their means for the exploitation of the workers than they previously enjoyed. It is one of the great causes of the increase of the middle class and the impoverishment of the workingman, for it has led directly to the bringing of natural opportunities under corporate control on a scale impossible to individual effort.

      I have now dealt with La Monte's five central positions, and it is needless to say that they are the five central positions of the orthodox Socialist movement in which he is an active worker. I submit that I have shown good reasons for holding that each of those positions is false - most tragically false - and if they are false the matter is no light one. For, while the Socialist movement will continue to grow throughout the world, thanks to certain vitally true instincts that inspire it, this false philosophy is imposing on us a spurious Socialism which may pick us out of the frying pan of one slavery only to land us in the hotter fire of another. This is what Herbert Spencer, Renan, Tolstoy and many other thinkers have feared, and their fears are not to be dismissed, at the behest of mere rhetoricians, without examination. At any rate, all errors will retard the progress of the movement, making the transition to the new order slower and more painful.

      This criticism grows too long, but I wish to give an illustration of the looseness of speech in which leading Socialist lights have indulged - a looseness that always means inexact thought. La Monte quotes with approval the following from Ferdinand Lasalle : "Its (the working class') interest is in truth the interest of the whole of humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, and its domination is the domination of all." I remark that freedom and domination are incompatible terms, the one being contradiction of the other. It is precisely the domination of the working class, operating through the tyranny of the majority, that we, passionately attached to freedom, regard with such apprehension. But on this head Menchen is eloquent, and it is time to turn to him.

      Meanwhile, since I have criticised La Monte freely, I wish to quote one sentence from him of which I approve most heartily. In his third letter he says : "What vast wealth in practice consists of are (sic) certain legal papers that give their holders the power to compel other men to work for them." Correct, eternally correct. But cannot that monstrous iniquity be abolished without the erection of the clumsy structure Marxian Socialism sketches?

(To be continued.)

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NOTE

      About October 15th I intend starting on a lecture tour which will extend as far as Chicago, or perhaps farther west. Organizations and Comrades wishing to arrange lectures should kindly communicate with me at once.

                VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE

                531 N. Marshall Street

                Philadelphia, Pa.

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ANARCHIST SYMPOSIUM on Emerson

NOTHING is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statutory right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or act.

     Is not the State a question? All society is divided in opinion on the subject of the State. Nobody loves it, great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance ; and the only defense set up, is the fear of doing worse in disorganizing.

     We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints as well as the solar system ; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange, too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them dares to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen ; and men of talent and women of superior sentiment cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men - if indeed I can speak in the plural number - more exactly I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for one moment appear impossible that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.

     Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word "politic," which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick.

     This undertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers as in a pair, only not so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but when a quarter of the human race assumes to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic besides private ones. For any laws but those which men can make for themselves are laughable.

     This is the history of governments - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rules from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. The tendency of the times favors the idea of self-government, and leave the individual for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution which work with more energy than we believe, while we depend upon artificial restraints. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions, nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an end.

     Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. For according to the order of nature which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus: there will always be a government of force where men are selfish ; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post office, of the highways, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered.

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AN IMMORAL WRITER

By Hippolyte Havel.

GENIUS without end has been discovered of late by our critics and art connoisseurs, and quickly transplanted to our shores. True, it takes several decades for our discoverers to find really great talent. Still, what can one expect : all good things require time. A work of art must first be stamped with the approval of European connoisseurs before it can hope to receive tardy artistic appreciation and commercial value in America. We are modest - the rehashed fully satisfies us. Was not Frank Wedekind discovered for us but lately, and - wonderful to say - Przybyszewski, the German-Polish genius, now also celebrates here his resurrection. The good Stanislaus would certainly never have dreamed of it. After he had given up German as the vehicle of his artistic expression and passed through repeated accouchements in Polish, his original German offsprings are suddenly discovered by our critics and translated into English. If our discoveries continue at the same rate, the American public may within a decade or two become acquainted with a truly great artist, one whose works are being read and passionately discussed in Russia, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan - M. Artzibashev.

     At present, however, there is slender hope of such a contingency. Do not our successful translators consider Artzibashev immoral? As patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel, so the final argument of the impotent critic against a disliked author is an appeal to morality. He is conclusively annihilated by such critics with the charge of demoralizing the youth, and is damned vicious. No eminent artist ever escaped this charge ; it would almost seem as if it were the ultimate crown of genius.

     But Artzibashev is not an ordinary sinner. He is not merely a demoralizer of youth, morally; nay, even worse : he is the enemy of governmentally ordered life ; in fact, an Anarchist. This the partisans of State find impossible to forgive him.

     Next to Andreiev and Gorki, Artzibashev is the most prominent personality in modern Russian literature. Since the appearance of his novel "Sanin," he must be classed with those whose names are inseparably connected with the annals of their time. In the history of Russian literature "Sanin" will find its deserved place among masterpieces, of Gogol Gontcharov, Dostoyevski, Turgeniev, and Tolstoy. Its socio-historical significance cannot be doubted. Intellectual Europe is agreed upon it.

*  *  *

     M. Artzibashev was born in 1878 in a small city of Southern Russia. By descent he is aTartar, yet with a considerable mixture of other blood ; his great-grandfather on the maternal side was no less a man than Kosciusko, the famous Polish patriot. His father was a small landowner, living in straightened circumstances. His mother died when he was but three years old, bequeathing to him tuberculosis as his sole inheritance. After a course in a provincial gymnasium, Artzibashev, at the age of sixteen, entered an art school. Like Goethe, he was enthused with art, believing to possess the talent of a painter. He fared badly : he lived in squalid quarters, often suffering hunger ; but worse than all , he even lacked money for colors. To earn a living he drew caricatures and wrote sketches for obscure papers. Some of his writings, especially "Pasha Tumanov" - dealing with the then suicide epidemic among the college youth - attracted the attention of Miroliubov, the publisher of a magazine of liberal tendencies. Among the collaborators on the latter were Maxim Gorki, Leonid Andreiev, A. Kuprin, and other modern writers. Miroliubov, recognizing the talent of young Artzibashev, offered him to join the editorial staff and thus paved the way for his future literary career.

     It was during this period, seven years ago, that Artzibashev wrote his famous work, "Sanin." The manuscript was declined by several publishers, who feared to offend against the censorship. The revolution came. The emotional life of the people underwent a tremendous change. All classes manifested a ravenous hunger for literature. The editors of "Sovremenni Mir," which had previously declined "Sanin," now remembered the work and hastened to publish it.

     This circumstance is not generally known. The public was led to believe by the Russian critics that "Sanin" was the product of reaction, and that Artzibashev followed the modernist tendencies of the decadent school, manifesting themselves in Russian literature with the downfall of the Revolution. In reality, however, the "Sanin" manuscript had already been perused by prominent writers in 1903, two years before the great upheaval.

     Following "Sanin," Artzibashev wrote a collection of splendid sketches, among them "Millions" and "The Death of Ivan Lande." The latter assured his fame in Russian letters. Various works, written during this period by Artzibashev for propaganda purposes, came under the ban of the censor, and only the timely success of the Revolution saved the author from prison.

     Artzibashev is now living in Crimea, undergoing - according to a letter to his translator - treatment for consumption, "without special hop of cure."

*  *  *

      "Sanin" has caused an almost unprecedented division in the ranks of intellectual Russia. Its effect can be compared only with that produced by such works as "Yevgeni Oniegin," "Fathers and Sons," "What's To Be Done," and "Kreutzer Sonata." Even if its purely artistic qualities had not stamped "Sanin" as one of the most important literary events, socio-historic reasons would have impressed upon the work lasting significance. Its social effects alone characterize "Sanin" above the class of merely literary effort.

      Similarly to Turgeniev's "Fathers and Songs," "Sanin" was understood neither by the reactionists nor revolutionists. At the same time that the government confiscated the romance, the revolutionists stigmatized ARtzibashev as the ally of the reaction. But most of all "Sanin" was misinterpreted by "the youngest youth." A wild sexual intoxication followed upon the publication of the book. The college youth formed themselves into associations for the unhindered practice of eroticism. They called themselves Saninists, claiming to live the vies of Artzibashev's hero.

      These excesses are easily explained psychologically. The Revolution was suppressed ; the intellectuals withdrew ; the revolutionary parties became disintegrated. General weariness took the place of activity. But the stimulated energies would not be so easily stemmed : the wakened emotions demanded satisfaction. Such feelings dissolve themselves most readily in sexual passion. Because of its erotic suggestiveness, "Sanin" became the programme of the young generation. A misinterpretation, from which almost all extraordinary works have in their day suffered.

      In his "Reminiscences" Goethe says in regard to "Werther's Leiden":

      The influence of this book was so great and unusual because it appeared at exactly the right moment. As it requires but a small fuse to explode a tremendous mine, so the explosion which thereupon followed among the public was so strong because the young generation had already undermined itself, and the shock so terrific, because everyone, being filled with exaggerated demands, unsatisfied passions, and imaginary sufferings, was about to explode. the public cannot be expected to receive a spiritual work in a spiritual manner. In reality only the contents, the material, were considered; to it was added the old prejudice concerning the printed word : namely, that its purpose must be didactic. But true art has none : it neither praises nor condemns ; it merely presents the emotions and actions in their sequence, and thus it enlightens and teaches.

      These splendid words apply precisely to "Sanin." Artzibashev wrote neither a defence nor a slander of the Russian youth. He pictured in Sanin a new type of Russian life, a type whose spirit lives in the strongest and most daring representatives of new Russia. Sanin is an individuality which has broken with all the views dominant in modern life, an individuality which has withdrawn from all political parties, however revolutionary, - a man who stands alone.

      The book is an apotheosis of individualism. Were a classification attempted, Sanin would have to be characterized as a Stirnerian, an Individualist Anarchist. He represents the reaction against the old type of revolutionist, who did not consider his own individuality, and who devoted his whole life to the "cause," to the people. But Artzibashev did not content himself with portraying merely the ordinary, self-satisfied Stirnerian. In "The Workman Shevyriov," from the "Stories of the Revolution," he pictures the complement of Sanin in the active revolutionary Individualist.

      Sanin and Shevyriov give a complete view of Artzibashev's social and political beliefs. Either total aloofness from the problems of the day, and the free development of one's individuality, - that is Sanin ; or Shevyriov's intense participation in the struggle with every fiber of his being, perishing in active resistance.

      The post-revolutionary period, beginning with the October manifesto of 1905, followed within two years by the downfall of the great social expectations, serves as the background of the "Stories of the Revolution."

      The original unity of the Revolution is broken, its tremendous energy paralyzed. In place of the great Socialist parties, side-tracked by parliamentarism, we find the actions of separate organizations of Anarchists and Maximialists, partly loosely connected with each other, but mostly operating independently. In their midst are the solitary figures, those who believe in nothing except themselves, and who, protesting by deed, perish.

      In this milieu live the types described in the "Stories of the Revolution." They contain powerful characterizations of great psychologic depth. These stories are a part of Artzibashev's Weltanschauung. They are, as he himself states, the sermon of his dearest ideas, his political faith : Anarchism.

      My development - Artzibashev writes in a short autobiography - has been strongly influenced by Tolstoy, although I have never shared his opinion regarding "resist not evil." He overwhelmed me only as an artist, and it has been difficult for me to free my style from his influence. Almost a similar role Dostoyevsky and partly Tchechov played in my life. Victor Huge and Goethe also stood before me. These five names are those of my teachers and literary masters. Much has been written about Nietzsche's influence on me. The assertion always seemed to me peculiar, for the simple reason that I am not familiar with Nietzsche. I am better acquainted with Max Stirner, whose views I share.

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THE PARABLE OF THE BENEFACTOR

By Lillian Browne.

ONCE a village was stricken with famine and pestilence. The people were rotting with disease, and, indifferent to life, listlessly awaited Death's release. Yet, so persistent is Life, and so reluctant to resign his reign, he created an intolerable thirst and tormented even the weakest with hopeless desire.

      By chance a stranger came to the village gates which with astonishment he beheld unguarded. He saw the ravages of disease and death and, although footsore and weary, turned back to a hillside where a clear, unpolluted stream shone sparkling in the sunlight. The earthen jar which he brought from the dried-up cistern was large and heavy. This he filled with cool, clean water and, bending his back, walked with careful haste back to the village.

      Many times he traveled back and forth between the village gates and the hillside stream and often he tottered with weariness. And the people began to bless their benefactor and to say : "God has sent us a saint from Heaven in our hour of dire distress."

      And some began to revive, and a few crawled to the spring

      Back and forth the stranger went, until exhausted, he fell under his burden and the earthen jar broke into a thousand fragments where he stumbled to the ground.

      And they who awaited his coming became fevered and impatient ; and they who crawled to the spring cursed the stranger, saying : "He was a wicked fellow. See, he wasted the water and broke the urn."

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PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE GHETTO

THE ESTHETIC SIDE OF JEWTOWN

By Sadakichi Hartmann.

WHAT strange part of the city have we strayed to? Are we really in New York, at the beginning of the twentieth century, or have we suddenly been conveyed to some European town of the medieval times? The sight that greets our eye reminds us indeed of the various descriptions which we have read of Italian Ghettos and the Judengassen of Prague and Amsterdam.

      Everywhere Hebrew faces and Hebrew signs, and the incessant chatter of "Yiddish," the queer jargon of the street, which all Jews, no matter of what nationality, use in their daily life of bargaining, surrounds us on all sides.

      No mistake, we are in Jewtown. No other part of the city bears such an outlandish aspect and is so overcrowded in its thoroughfares. The traffic is so dense that it threatens to reach the neighboring districts and inundate all New York.

      Hucksters' and peddlers' carts and wagons long the curb form two rows of booths in the streets, and along the houses, beneath old shreds of awnings are tow other rows, where the same perpetual marketing goes on. Marketing of a very peculiar order, for everything has to be ridiculously cheap to find a buyer. The push-car market in Hester and the adjoining side street is like an ambulating department store, which restricts itself to a lively trade in damaged goods. It is an avalanche of eatables (reported as "not entirely unwholesome" by the Health Department), queer staples emptied on counters improvised on ash barrels, cases torn asunder and barrels turned upside down, with their contents poured on the sidewalks ; bags of white and blue bed-tick and loaves of bread in the shape of giant crullers bursting out of them. And everywhere women, young and old alike, with odd shawls and head coverings, rummage with both hands in the displayed wares and jabber about the quality, which is never beyond suspicion, and the price, which, no matter how low, is still too high. How they haggle about the fraction of a cent, how anxiously they figure and pluck at each purchase, even if it is only a bit of frowsy soup green.

      To the Gentile, the aristocratic uptowner, the scene is like a nightmare. It reminds him involuntarily of some cheap dining-room of vast dimensions, which being open night and day is still warm and greasy from the previous meal, its huge table cloth in the form of paving stones, covered with remnants and refuse. A restaurant, where the orders to clear away are never given, and where clean linen are unknown things.

      And as a fitting background to this poverty and filth loom long rows of tenement houses, dusty bright walls with broken windows, shutters dangling on one hinge, and grimy fire escapes crowded with every sort of refuse. Each of these fire escapes is a rag shop in miniature. Bedding is being aired on the black railings. The family wash flutters gaily in the wind and forms a sort of canopy to that open-air lumber room. These are boxes which serve as impromptu ice-boxes, battered cook-pots and stewing pans used to make the Sabbath broth, faded rugs, heaps of rags, shapeless mattresses, on which two families may sleep at night, a lot of objects without a name that have ceased to have either color or form, all innumerable times washed by the rain, bleached in the sun, and again and again covered with the rising dust and dirt of the street.

      Yes, life in Jewtown with its sunless backyards and dark alleyways, its damp cellars and ramshackle rooms, has at the first glance but little grace and few poetic charms. To the curious sightseer it appears doubly bold and materialistic. The pleasures are even scantier than its fare, as it needs must be with a community which has but one passion : that of thrift. The synagogues of Bayard street, where venerable-bearded men with quaint skull-caps and long skirted caftans worship as in the days of Israel, only add to the gloom.

      Yet Jewtown, despite all its social shortcomings and hygienic disadvantages, has its esthetic side, which we, who know the Ghetto largely from Eliot's "Daniel Deronda" and Zangwill's "Children of the Ghetto," or from an accidental visit to Baxter or Ludlow streets, should not overlook.

      The Hebrew quarter is undoubtedly the most picturesque part of New York City, i. e., the one which would lend itself most easily to esthetic interpretation. It overflows with suggestions. Its very dinginess and squalor render it interesting. For filth - as disagreeable as it is in actual contact - is the great harmonizer in the pictorial arts, the wizard who can render every scene and object - even the humblest one - picturesque. It generalizes each pictorial vision and takes out all discordant notes. Rembrandt realized this ; each of his genre pictures is a glorification of human squalor, taken by the quivering rays of the supernatural light. And Raffaelli, whose paintings look as if drawn with colored chalks and stained with mud, has become the modern champion of pictorial dirt. He has accomplished with his suburban scenes, almost too realistic in their filth and poverty-stricken atmosphere, a feat similar to Zola, who never tired of delineating the seemy side of Parisian life, and whose fertile pen has transformed many a heap of refuse into a heap of roses.

      Look at Whistler's Thames etchings. They will show you that a modern dwelling, clean and comfortable, can never have the same pictorial fascination as a ramshackle structure in some waste logicality of the river frontage, the haunts of vagabondage and pauperism. Even an ordinary garbage dump with its heaps of shining tin cans, will convince us of the truth. It contains such a wealth of subtle values and warm color notes and varieties of texture, that it should send, not only painters but every person in search of the picturesque into ecstacies. The New York Ghetto is full of such pictorial incidents, and I know of no place with promises more artistic possibilities for out-of-door photography than this curious hive of human industry in the lower East-side.

      The settings for a picture are ready at every moment of the day. They surround one on all sides. One never need to wish for a composition. The crowd takes care of that.

      This is the true drama of life that is enacted here along the curbstones. Humorous and pathetic scenes follow each other in endless variety.

      The army of peddlers, who have neither a stand nor a cart, but carry all their wares in a basket, or dangling over their shoulders, carelessly make their way through the hubbub of the crowd. How they ever get rid of their notions is a mystery. The competition is a most bitter one. They seem to move in brigades of half a dozen ore more, and if one of them is on the verge of making a bargain, the other will cut his price until nearly all profit is gone. The suspender peddler, one of the most characteristic figures of Jewtown, in particular never seems to make a sale. There are so many of them and their article is an absolute luxury, as for Jacob A. Riis so aptly remarks: "The pants of Jewtown hang down with a common accord, as if they had never known the support of suspenders."

      Everybody seems to peddle one thing or another in these thoroughfares. Even the womenfolk engage in the precarious business, and every bargain is sure to form an interesting group. Some dispense their wares from old tubs and peach baskets, other perambulate whole dried goods stores in cast-off baby carriages. Space is at a premium in Jewtown. Almost every hallway, cellar, and alleyway has been turned into a shop. How picturesque are some of the second-hand stores and old clo' shops with their "pullers in," and above all else the antiquarian shops which are littered with brass and copper ware of every description. Nothing is so bad that it could not be turned to some use. Everywhere in the midst of overcrowded tenements, the same pushing, struggling, babbling, and shouting. No matter whether of Bulgarian, Roumanian, Russian, or Polish origin, they can all understand each other. Their gesticulations alone seem to be sufficient for that.

      And through this ceaseless traffic and clamor now and then men, groaning under heavy burdens of unsown garments, stagger along the sidewalk and disappear in the dark hallway of some Ludlow street tenement. They represent the dark side of Jewtown which neither legislation nor charity can altogether improve, but we have no time to follow them to the qualmy rooms of the sweatshops , - the pictures there are too dreary, and we are only in search of the picturesque.

      What a chance to study types! One occasional visit would soon make us acquainted with the candle women, the instalment peddler, the Thora teacher, the Schatchen, and the Chasen (i. e. prayer leader), five types found nowhere on American ground save in the Ghetto. We would learn to differentiate between the orthodox Jews who still keep up the habit of owning three special sets of clothes, one for holidays, one for half holidays, and one for every day life, and the young bucks of Jewtown in their semi-fashionable dress who do not even hesitate to dive into a Gentile restaurant.

      How impressive the old men look. Whole chapters of the Bible seem to be personified in them. They smile sadly, absent-mindedly into their long, white beards, as they sit on the curbstones, their lean hands folded across their knees. Frugality is their life's philosophy. They are attired in cast-off garments, picked up God knows where. Their favorite head covering seems to be the crowns of old felt hats, out of which they have made skull caps by cutting off the brims.

      The women also are interesting. What anatomical peculiarities and features of ethnological interest. The shriveled up old ones are hideous in their emaciation and disheveled hair, and resemble witches. Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. With their colored petticoats, and shawls covering their shoulders, with their black hair plaited in thick tresses or looped up behind the ears, some have the grand air of Oriental queens, fallen to the very depths of penury. And the children - there is always a whole flock of them on the move. They overflow the streets and make a crowd wherever there is an empty spot. Their tatters beggar all description. Here a baby crawls about, dressed in an old chintz curtain, there a boy has a man's dress coat, from which the tails have been torn, flapping against his calves. And how dirty they are, one might mistake them for Florentine bronzes, those charming little figures of the Renaissance period.

      Jewtown is a world in itself, and a world unknown to most of us. I believe it would be a grateful task to explore it. Very little has been done until now.

      True enough, Jewtown has its own literature. The names of Peretz and Gordin are on every tongue. Sheikevitch was the Alexander Dumas of the Ghetto and wrote more than two hundred volumes. There is no lack of other talented writers. I only mention Sholem Aleichem, Seiffert, Biabeck, and the poets Rosenfeld, Reisen, Winchevsky. But they write in Hebrew and Yiddish, and tell us but little of their own people. People who live in squalor do not wish to be reminded of it. For realistic glimpses of Jewtown we have to turn to the writings of Bernstein and Abraham Cahan, who have grown up in the milieu of the Tenth Ward. They have contributed a few charming episodes to our literature, but until now nothing of importance or of lasting value.

      The artists, with the exception of a few illustrators, have run shy of these subjects, and the East-side art leagues, with localism as their aim, consist of too young an element who have shown much more than enthusiasm.

      Perhaps the photographer will be the first to conquer their domain. He will any way be able to give us instantaneous fragments of life, but if rendered in their most concise aspects, they may after all reflect a good deal of the true character of the children of the ghetto, who despite their lifelong hunt for wealth can boat of qualities which, with their warm breath of sympathy and spasms of joy, appeal to the recognition of every observer.

*  *  *

TO FRIENDSHIP

Hail thou, Friendship! Earliest red of morning Of my highest longing! Endless often Seemed the path, the night, to me; And all life Hateful, without aim! Now will I live doubly That in thine eyes have beheld Victory and dawn, Thou dearest Goddess! -Friedrich Nietzsche.

*  *  *

INTERNATIONAL NOTES

GUSTAVE HERVE, the famous anti-militarist and editor of La Guerre Sociale, is now serving a four-year sentence at Clarevout, the prison wherein were, at one time, incarcerated Peter Kropotkin and Jean Grave.

      In taking leave from his comrades, Herve wrote: "Though not as speedily as our impatience would have, we are nevertheless marching onward. This certainty should serve as a great impetus to all those who have retained their faith in, and enthusiasm for, a brighter future. I beg of my friends and comrades not to fret on my account. I feel strong enough to face, like Blanqui, thirty-two years' imprisonment, if need be. Nor would that for one moment even cause me to look upon life from its unpleasant side, nor rob me of my unbounded faith in our ideal. I wish Briand as much peace of mind at the moment of his zenith as I shall enjoy in my cell. With a serene conscience prison life even is endurable."

*  *  *

      L'Ere Nouvelle which has been suspended for some time, is again being published by our indefatigable comrade, E. Armand. The issue just received contains, among other interesting contributions, translations from Mother Earth articles by Bolton Hall, James F. Morton, Victor Robinson, and Sadakichi Hartmann.

      Address: L'Ere Nouvelle, 29, rue de Recouvrance, Orleans, France.

*  *  *

      The big and little tyrants of the Latin republics believe with the trustocrats of Europe and America that brutal methods can suppress the increasing power of the workers' awakened consciousness. How stupid this belief is has recently been demonstrated in Argentine. As reported in Mother Earth, several hundred thousand workers were arrested and many more deported ; a number of labor organizations were dissolved, and the Anarchist and Socialist publications suppressed. Yet the zeal and devotion of our Argentine comrades have remained undaunted. An anti-Anarchist law has been passed, with the object of exterminating by severe punishment the "ringleaders." By the provisions of the new statue, the residence of Anarchists in the republic is rigorously interdicted. Representatives of navigation companies, captains, or agents who knowingly engage in the bringing of Anarchists to this country will be liable to heavy fine or imprisonment. Capital punishment is provided for those who are responsible for any Anarchistic movement resulting in death.

*  *  *

      Since the overthrow of absolutism in Turkey, the labor movement has been growing tremendously. The weekly paper Ichtisch, which leans strongly toward revolutionary Socialism, contains several instructive articles about the condition of workers in factory and field ; also biographies of Anarchists and Socialists : Bakunin, Proudhon, Blanqui, Lassalle, Fourile, and others.

*  *  *

      The annual convention of the Anarchists of Germany has just closed. Twenty-three cities were represented by forty-five delegates.

      The report of the committee on written and oral propaganda called forth considerable discussion, and resulted in the very commendable decision to avoid as much as possible all personal disputes in the press.

      The congress further recommended that, in case of a national general strike - which the Social Democrats intent proclaiming as a demand for equal suffrage - the Anarchists should join as a matter of solidarity, though repudiating the political action as a useless and injurious waste of energy.

      The congress also recommends to Anarchists at large to actively participate in the next International Anarchist Congress, to take place in 1911.

      The Anarchist movement of Germany now publishes the following four organs : Der freie Arbeiter, Der Anarchist, Der Weckruf, and Der Socialist..

*  *  *

      We recommend to the Yiddish-reading comrades the new monthly, Freie Gesellschaft, published at New York. The three numbers which have so far been issued contain good articles of theoretic and literary interest. Address: 30 Canal Street, New York. Price $1.00 per year.

BOOKS RECEIVED

LE CONCOURS POUR LE MONUMENT FRANCISO FERRER.

Bruxelles, Belgium.

HOMMANGE A FERRER.

Emile Caudelier. Bruxelles, Belgium.

LE CRIME DE MONTJUICH.

Alfred Naguet. Bruxelles, Belgium.

THE FAMOUS SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT CHICAGO ANARCHISTS IN COURT.

Lucy E. Parsons, Chicago, Illinois.

ELEVEN BLIND LEADERS

B. H. Williams, New Castle, PA.

AMEN

Lewis J. Duncan, Butte, Mont.

LE TRADIZIONI AMERICANE E L'ANARCHISMO

Voltairine de Cleyre. Sciarpa Nera. Milano

LIFE'S BEAUTIFUL BATTLE

J. William Lloyd, Box 511, Westfild, N. J.

THE ETIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OUR CENSORSHIP OF SEX-LITERATURE

Theodore Schroeder, New York

THE HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF UNABRIDGED FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Theodore Schroeder, New York

A LOBBY FOR LIBERTY

Theordore Schroeder, Editorial Review Co., New York

THE LEGEND OF THE HILLS

A play. Cleveland Rodgers, New York.

THE FREE PRESS PERSECUTION

Free Press Publishing Company, New Castle, Pa.

PACIFISME ET ANTIMILITARISME

Victor Dave. Petite Bibliotheque des "Hommes du Jour," Paris , France

FERNAND PELLOUTIER

Victory Dave. Portraits d'Hier, Paris, France

TYPES FROM CITY STREETS

Hutchins Hapgood. Funk & Wagnalls, New York

I WELCOME DISORDER

Joseph A. Labadie. Detroit.

REFLEXIONS SUR L'INDIVIDUALISME

Manuel Devaldes. "Le Libertaire," Paris, France.

THE FREE PRESS PERSECUTION

Free Press Publishing Company, Drawer 644, New Castle, Pa.

Mother Earth Vol 6 N1

Click the title of the desired article

Vol. VI MARCH, 1911 No. 1

TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR

By JOHN DAVIDSON.

Break-break it open; let the knocker rust;

Consider no "Shalt not," nor no man's "must";

And, being entered, promptly take the lead,

Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;

Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;

Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream;

Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;

High hearts and you are destiny enough.

The mystery and the power enshrined in you

Are old as time and as the moment new;

And none but you can tell what part you play,

Nor can you tell until you make essay,

For this alone, this always, will succeed,

The miracle and magic of the deed.

Our Sixth Birthday

WITH this issue Mother Earth begins her sixth journey through life.

Five years! What an infinitesimal drop in the ocean of eternity; yet how terribly long a time when travelled on a hard, thorny road. With a world of ignorance and prejudice to battle against, a thousand obstacles to overcome, hosts of enemies to face, and with but few friends, MOTHER EARTH has withstood, for five years, the storm and stress of the firing line, and has wavered not.

More than once was she stabbed by the enemy, and hurt by the thrusts of the well-meaning; more than once was her body bruised, her flesh torn by conflicting forces; yet never has she fallen by the wayside, nor her ardor been subdued.

Now that Mother Earth begins her sixth journey, it behooves us to halt a moment and to ponder the question: Was the struggle and pain worth while? has the magazine justified the expectations that gave it life?

Not long ago a f friend wrote to us: Why don't you give up? Why waste your time and energy in a lost cause? Mother Earth has not reached the people you had hoped to reach, nor does the magazine satisfy even some of our own comrades, because-as they say-more reading matter than is contained in MOTHER EARTH can be had in the ordinary magazines, for ten cents.

Viewed from the dominant standpoint of success, our friend is right. In that sese Mother Earth has failed. Our circulation is still far from the fifty-thousand mark; our subscribers, too, do not represent the multitudes. Nor is our financial rating such that we need feel any anxiety lest a Wall Street panic break our bank. Again, Mother Earth has lost in averdupois; it began as a heavyweight of sixty-four pages, but is now reduced to the lightweight class.

But since when do Anarchists measure success by quantity? Are numbers, weight, or following the true criterion of success? Should not the latter consist, first of all, in adherence to the chosen purpose, no matter at what cost? Indeed, the only success of any value has been the failure of men and women who struggled, suffered, and bled for an ideal, rather than give up, or be silenced.

Mother EARTH is such a success. Without a party to back her, with little or no support from her own ranks, and consistently refusing to be gagged by a profitable advertising department, she has bravely weathered the strain of five years, stormy enough to have broken many a strong spirit. She has created an atmosphere for herself which few Anarchist publications in America have been able to equal. She has gathered around her a coterie of men and women who are among the best in the country, and, finally, she has acted as a leaven of thought in quarters least expected by those who are ready with advice, yet unable to help.

Many an editor of our better-class dailies has found in MOTHER EARTH a source of information and inspira- and though they would be loth to admit it, it is nevertheless true that they have used our magazine for copy on numerous occasions. That, among other things, may help to account for the decided change in the tone of the press towards Anarchism and Anarchists.

But for want of space many instances could be cited, showing how well and widely MOTHER EARTH is read by journalists and writers, and what is thought of her merits by those who value quality above quantity.

As to the original raison d'etre of MOTHER EARTH, it was, first of all, to create a medium for the free expres on of our ideas, a medium bold, defiant, and unafraid. That she has proved to the fullest, for neither friend nor foe has been able to gag her.

Secondly, MOTHER EARTH was to serve as a gathering point, as it were, for those, who, struggling to free themselves from the absurdities of the Old, had not yet reached firm footing Suspended between heaven and hell, they have found in MOTHER EARTH the anchor of life.

Thirdly, to infuse new blood into Anarchism, which-in America-had then been running at low ebb for quite some time.

All these purposes, it may be said impartially, the magazine has served faithfully and well.

We cannot claim for MOTHER EARTH hosts of followers, but she has made some friends whose steadfast devotion and generosity has accomplished greater results than would have been possible with a large income. Besides, our magazine would have long ere this been selfsupporting, were it not for the many other issues drawing upon its resources.

We have created an American Anarchist propaganda literature, which has consumed the largest part of the magazine's income; indeed, it is this, more than anything else, which has been such a drain on our funds.

On the whole, we feel that our fighter has more than justified its existence. True, MOTHER EARTH is far from perfect; but, after all, it is the striving for, rather than the attainment of, perfection which is the essence of all effort, of life itself.

The struggle is ever before us. With increased determination and greater enthusiasm MOTHER EARTH enters upon the sixth year, confident that her friends need no other assurance than that the magazine will continue on the great Open Road, with face ever turned toward the Dawn.

EMMA GOLDMAN,

ALEXANDER BERKMAN.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

TWO intellectuals-American exchange Professors Munsterberg and Smith-recently fell upon each other regarding the question which of them had the better right to be invited to the annual exhibition of naked busts and shoulders at the Berlin court.

Professor Smith claimed priority because the Kaiser had conversed with him thirteen minutes longer than with his learned colleague. Smith asserted that His Majesty even deigned to grin at him once. But Professor Munsterberg angrily retorted that though it was true that the Kaiser had talked with him only a couple of minutes, the royal manner was so gracious as to entirely discount the thirteen minutes of Smith. The matter threatened to cause international complications, when it was finally settled by inviting both sycophants to the court ball.

A couple of country schoolmasters from Darkest Pomerania could not have demeaned themselves worse than these representatives of American science. Of such professional intellectuals Schopenhauer was wont to say, "They don't live for, but off, science." There is another well-known adage which fitly characterizes such worthies: Professors and prostitutes are for sale.

THE people of the United States are to be blessed by President Taft with an extra session of Con gress. Is it for the purpose of "filling the empty mar ket basket," as the phrase runs? Far from it. The special Danai gift has the sole purpose of obscuring, by superficial legal phraseology, the real causes of the empty market basket. Expropriation of the monopo- lords of land and industry by the dear, victimized patriots is the best and only way to terminate the usury in the necessaries of life. This, it's dead sure, will never be decided by Congress.

THERE are strong indications that Washington is mobilizing troops against the revolution in Mexico, to protect the property interests of the Morgans, Gugenheims, Hearsts, et al. A beautiful prospect for the American soldier, to be maimed or killed for the sake of protecting the dividends of the multi-millionaires, and then be persuaded that he had helped to enhance the honor and glory of his country.

It is high time that anti-militarist arguments begin to be studied in America.

THE greatest triumph of the reigning morality manifestly consists in trials for breach of promise. It seems hardly possible for our merchant order of buy and selling to go much further than counting romance, affection, kisses, and embraces in dollars and cents.

All poets of love songs, dead or living, should be indicted and brought before the American courts. It would be easy to prove against them that they have aroused, a thousandfold, sweet yearnings, emotions, and tender hopes in female hearts, without giving further satisfaction. Surely these sinners should be punished.

To simplify matters, love and proofs of love, genuine or counterfeit, could be sold at auction. For instance: Here, gentlemen, your kind attention, please! Here's a well-preserved daughter of an American millionaire- a European Count-now divorced. What 'm I offered? Five dollars, first bid! Five, ten, twenty. . .

0NE of the fashionable preachers of New York, Dr. Aked, of the Rockefeller Church, threatens to leave his flock to go to the Pacific Coast, where a more remunerative position has been offered to him.

Yes, the priests have inherited from the apostles only the purse and the Judas kiss.

OUR readers no doubt remember the case of Savakar, the Hindu revolutionist, referred to in a previous issue Of MOTHER EARTH.

The English courts sentenced Savakar to be transported to India and to be imprisoned there. On the way the Hindu succeeded in jumping overboard, at Marseille, and swimming safely to land. According to international agreement, Savakar should have been safe, on French soil, from the bloodhounds of England. But French gendarmes arrested and returned him to the English ship, feeling sure that all means are justified toward revolutionists.

They were right. The International Peace Conference, at The Hague, to which the case was submitted, decided that it was lawful to hunt down Savakar on French soil and deliver him into the hands of the British hangman.

Surely the decision would have been quite different had Savakar been an absconded banker instead of a revolutionist.

CONDITIONS in Japan are steadily growing more unbearable. From reliable information we learn about the increased persecution of radicals, numerous arrests of persons suspected of "political untrustworthi- secret trials, and long imprisonments.

"The government of the little brown men,"-we quote one of our correspondents, a personal friend of the martyred Kotoku-"is mad with thirst for human blood. Katsura asserts that he will spare no one. Hundreds are daily dragged off to the prisons, and none is secure. . . . What can be done? What is the International Socialist Bureau doing? Where is its influence? Can't the various Socialist representatives and newspapers in the different countries be moved to interpellate? . . . Leave nothing undone and arouse the comrades everywhere to the true condition of affairs." Will the cry of awakening Japan be heard?

WHEN Socialism had not yet become so fatally in fected with the germ of political tuberculosis, it used to preach: The efforts of bourgeois reformists are misleading and useless, since they can work no es sential change in the economic conditions of society upon which are founded our political, moral, and social in stitutions. That is to say, that so long as private prop erty, wage slavery, and capitalism rule economically, no political reforms are worth while, because they cannot in the least alter the character of existing society.

But since their infection with the bacillus of this tuberculosis, the Socialists have been claiming: Give us majorities, political power, and we will accomplish wonderful economic reforms.

In Milwaukee the yearned-for ballot majority has really been achieved, with the result that the Social Democratic politicians now find themselves in the same position as the bourgeois reformists. They can make no vital changes, because their cherished "economic foundation" faces them at every turn.

Poor Mayor Seidel! His moral heart longs to abolish prostitution in Milwaukee, but-economic interests and the police will not permit it. He would transform the city into a second Eden, but-Milwaukee is so much In debt (like every large city under capitalist regime) that nothing can be done, He would this and he would that, but he succeeds only in giving a poor imitation of the bourgeois reformists, whom the Socialists have always so justly ridiculed. Thus the much-praised "polit- power of the ploretariat" proves itself, in capitalist practice, a hollow mockery.

One thing, however, has been achieved: a salary of seven thousand five hundred per annum for Victor Berger, the newly elected member of Congress. But it is doubtful whether the proletarian voters of Wisconsin will find sufficient consolation in this only "practical result."

THE discussion in the New York Call between Upton Sinclair and Dr. Robinson as to whether fasting is preferable to eating fills us with dread lest a considerable number of donkeys and freak Socialists commit suicide by voluntary starvation. It would be sad, indeed, but we shall try to bear up manfully at the burial ceremonies.

WITH rather poor grace John Mitchell has given up his sinecure in the Civic Federation, after the Convention of the Mine Workers had decided that no official of that veiled plutocratic conspiracy may be a member of the miners' organization.

Reason prompted to obey the resolution of the Convention; but the heart of Mitchell remains with the Civic Federation, as is shown by the letter he addressed to Seth Low. Thus only half the work has been done. Neither one holding an office with the Civic Federation, nor one who strives to impregnate the workers with the spirit of that capitalist organization properly belongs in the labor movement.

The Miners' Union would do well to present John Mitchell, for good and all, as an unconditional free gift to the Civic Federation, In truth, they could well afford, if necessary, to throw some money in with the bargain.

THE friends of MOTHER EARTH will celebrate the Sixth Birthday of our little fighter, Friday, March 17th, at Terrace Lyceum, 206 East Broadway, where speeches, song, music, and "the light, fantastic toe" will give the proper spirit to the occasion.

We regret that distance will probably make it impossible for our friends "in the country" to participate in the jollification. But we know that they will be with us in spirit, and we hope they will remember the five-year-old by return mail. A word to the wise is sufficient.

IN THE DAYS OF MARCH

HISTORY relates that on March thirteenth, in the year 44 B. C., Julius Caesar fell a victim to the daggers of the conspirators who defended the old Roman liberties against the rising tide of imperialism. But, evidently, imperialism had not received on that occasion its death blow. After two thousand years it is still alive, and is-if certain prophets are rightabout to plant its banner upon the towers of this Republic. The struggle between Caesar and Brutus has not yet ceased.

It was in the Days of March, 1770, that the first blood of the martyrs of the Colonies was shed in Boston. Six years later the redcoats were ignominiously driven from that city.

In March, 1819, the German student, Karl Sand, killed the Russian spy Kotzebue. The month of March, in the year 1821, witnessed the beginning of the Greek struggle for independence, and in March, 1848, the fires of social upheaval swept the greater part of Europe.

Again it was in the Days of March, 1871, that the people of France rose against their oppressors and proclaimed the Paris Commune. That gigantic attempt toward a social revolution failed after two months and was drowned in blood. A certain statesman of France said, as the Versailles hirelings were murdering the hekatombs: "We can never kill enough of them." He may have fancied that the revolution could forever be extinguished in an ocean of blood. What folly! The reaction had thrown down all barriers, trampled all considerations under foot, and let loose every imaginable terror, yet utterly failed to quench the revolutionary fire of even a woman's heart-LOUISE MICHEL, who had fought on the barricades, was dragged through the streets with the captured Communards, beaten with gun and bayonet, and finally thrown into prison. Proudly and defiantly she faced the horrors of the penal colony at Caledonia, endured persecution and agony, and finally returned to France as unbroken in spirit as before. What she had suffered in prison had only served to make her stronger and surer of her convictions. "Thereis a curse upon power," she said upon her return; "therefore I am an Anarchist."

It was again in the month of March, in the year 1881, that Tsar Alexander II. was called to account. Severest oppression, saints, strict censorship, base espionage, and brutal Cossacks-all these could not save the Tsar from the avenging bomb. There is necessity and justice in the revolutionary acts.

Though sometimes, in our hours of darkness, it may seem as if the oppression of man is an eternal institution, we soon find consolation in the thought that resistance to tyranny is no less eternal.

The Days of March bear witness that ignorance and patience have their limits. They show us that right and liberty are no mere fancies in the misty distance, but that they can be translated into life, realized in the present through acts and deeds.

These Days teach us that there exists no institution whose continued existence is guaranteed by charter or patent. They have torn the veil of political compromise and diplomatic finesse, and demonstrated the power of the multitude, which-in spite of all apathy and systematic obscurantism-still sets in motion the Weltenrad. These Days prove that deeds are more comprehensive than theory.

In December, 1856, John Brown appeared before a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, to champion the cause of the slaves. But already in April of the next year he provided himself with ammunition, fully convinced that the legal procedure would merely sidetrack the issue, without touching the vital problem.

Thus the suffering masses clutch at one failing hope after another. They place their fate in the hands of governments, political parties, quacks, and reformers, till there grows up within their midst an energetic minority, which sees through the deceptive game and resorts to direct action. Strictly speaking, it can be said only of the Days of Revolution that the people act by themselves and for themselves.

The most vital initiative, the best impulses proceeded in the March Days from this minority, which, in times of struggle, becomes the interpreter of the sufferings and wishes of the multitude.

One feels almost an utopian when speaking hopefully of the Revolution in these epigone days of political horse swapping, petitioning, and pale theorizing. Is not everything quiet and orderly? Do not the rich wax steadily richer, their luxury more snobbish? Are not governments growing more invasive, the laws more numerous, and do not the masses continue to gnaw contentedly at the bones of reform thrown at them instead of good meat?

And yet, the Days of March are not in vain on the calendar of history. They point the way to the springtime of humanity. The memory of those Days sheds warmth and inspiration into the heart surcharged with disgust at all "golden rules," "good arguments," and "the only correct scientific methods."

THE PIONEER OF COMMUNIST ANARCHISM IN AMERICA

By MAX BAGINSKI.

THESE lines are in tender memoriam of John Most, who died in Cincinnati, five years ago, on the seventeenth of March, 19o6.

In the year 1882 Most came to America, as an exile, and continued the publication of the Freiheit, whose existence had been made impossible in England. After the execution of Alexander II, on the thirteenth of March, 1881, Most voiced his hope in a leading article in the Freiheit\ that all tyrants may thus be served. That article proved too much for the much-boasted-of British freedom. Prussian and Russian spies and diplomats intrigued an interpellation in the British Parliament, as a result of which Most was indicted for "inciting to kill the reigning sovereigns." The court sentenced our comrade to sixteen months at hard labor, and life in the prison of free England proved a veritable hell.

Most had previously been incarcerated in German and Austrian prisons, and his treatment there was always that of a political prisoner. In free England, however, he found himself treated even more brutally than the ordinary thief or murderer. His complaints against the barbaric methods elicited the sole reply thatthere were no political prisoners in a f ree country like England.

When he had paid the penalty for the free expression of his opinions, John Most was invited, immediately upon his discharge from prison, to come to America, there to begin an energetic propaganda along revolutionary Anarchist lines. This comradely invitation was signed, among others, by Justus Schwab, whom most of our old-time comrades no doubt still remember.

Most followed the call. An enthusiastic reception meeting in Cooper Union, in which thousands participated, was his greeting in the new land. A tour of agitation followed, during which Most succeeded in organizing a large number of propaganda groups among the German-speaking workingmen.

Most was the first to initiate, on a comparatively extensive scale, the propaganda of Communist Anarchism in America.

The German element in this country was at that time far more mentally alert and energetic than it is to-day: the Bismarckian muzzle-law, the expulsion of hundreds of socialistically inclined proletarians, the suppression of Socialist literature, and the brutal police persecution made the thinking workers rebellious. The lines between governmental and revolutionary Socialism, and between the latter and Anarchism were not so sharply drawn at the time when Most, the fiery agitator of the social revolution, arrived in America. He was an orator of convincing power, his methods direct, his language concise and popular, and he possessed the genius for glowing word-portrayal which had f ar more effect upon his auditors than long theoretic argumentation. He lived and felt entirely with the people, the men of toil. The great tragedy of his latter years was that the very people he loved so well turned from him, many of them even joining the general howl of the capitalistic press, which never abated its denunciations of Most as a veritable monster of degradation and blood-thirstiness.

In the meantime there widened the breach between the ballot-box Socialists on the one hand, and the revolutionary Socialists and Anarchists on the other. Many of those who bad so enthusiastically welcomed Most on his arrival in America, joined the ballot-box party andnow even denounced our comrade because he persisted in warning the people against the game of deception called politics. In this respect hespoke from personal experience: as former member of the Reichstag he felt convinced that parliamentarism could never serve as an aid in the emancipation of the working class.

The American labor movement followed its course. It was- able to stand a Powderly, and it has not even now grown strong enough to rid itself of men like Gompers and Mitchell. Naturally there was no room in it for a Most, a Parsons, a Spies, or a Dyer D. Lum. Gompers, a rising star on the labor firmament, may indeed not have been averse to making use of Lum's superior intellect and experience, even to the extent of signing his articles, it is said. But after he had attained bureaucratic power, he found it more politic to withdraw from such compromising associates.

The German movement, in particular, gradually grew weaker. The atmosphere of this country is not very conducive to the mental development of the Germans; as a rule, they lose here all incentive to intellectual pursuit. They either conserve the ideas they have brought over with them, till these become petrified, or they entirely throw idealism overboard and become "successful business men," philistines who are far more concerned with their little house and property than with the great events of the world.

Under these circumstances his exile was growing more and more unbearable for Most, his hounding ever more severe and base, the indifference and apathy of the Germans more impenetrable.

His friends had told Most, upon his arrival: "Here, at least, you are secure against imprisonment." Most had waived the remark aside, as altogether too optimistic, saying that it was only a question of time when he would come in conflict with the sham liberties of the Republic. He was only too justified in this view. When, in the eighties, the waves of the labor movement rose to exceptional height, and the proletariat began preparations for a general strike to secure the eight-hour day, the plutocrats and financiers grew alarmed. "Order"that is, profits-seemed in danger. The lackeys of the press were mobilized to denounce to the police and the courts every expression of rebellious independence on the part of the working people.

In April, 1886, there took place in New York a large meeting, addressed, among others, by Most, who called upon the audience to prepare and arm themselves for the coming great struggle. The speech was taken down stenographically and submitted to the grand jury, which found indictments against John Most, Braunschweig, and Schenk. On the second of July, judge Smyth condemned Most to one year's imprisonment in the penitentiary and five hundred dollars fine, while the other two comrades were doomed to nine months' prison and two hundred and fifty dollars fine.

It was the old wretched method. The police of various cities had systematically interfered with the numerous strikes and committed repeated assaults upon the workingmen, establishing "order" in the most brutal manner. The violence of the police naturally resulted in bitterness, riots, and killings. But instead of calling the uniformed ruffians to account, the authorities fell upon the spokesmen of the movement, marking them as their victims. The crimes of the guardians of the law were "legally" laid at the door of the Anarchists: in New York, upon Most; in Chicago, upon Spies and comrades, who-eighteen months later-paid for their love of humanity with their lives.

It became evident that freedom of speech and press was not tolerated in the Republic and that it was as severely persecuted in "free" America as in Germany, Austria, and England.

That was not Most's only conviction. He was repeatedly condemned to serve at Blackwell's Island. The press had so systematically lied about and misrepresented his ideals and personality that the "desirable citizen" came to regard our comrade as a veritable Satan. Especially were the German papers venomous in their denunciations and ceaselessly active in the manhunt against one who had sacrificed everything for his ideals.

When McKinley was shot at Buffalo, the Freiheit happened to reprint an article from the then longdeceased radical writer, Karl Heinzen. The article had no bearing whatever upon American conditions, and it was the greatest outrage and travesty upon the most elementary principles of justice that Most was condemned to serve nine months inprison-for reprinting an article written decades before. The New York Staatszeitung, "leading organ of the German intelligence," bravely assisted in this shameful proceeding by the most infamous denunciation.

Yet all this persecution and suffering Most could have borne much better than the growing apathy of the very elements to whom he was appealing. He found himself more and more isolated. The struggle for existence of the Freiheit, and his family-grew more difficult. He had dreamed beautiful dreams of the masses who would march side by side with him against the bulwarks of tyranny. And now he discovered himself a revolutionary free lance, standing almost alone. With grim humor he wrote in the Freiheit: "Henceforth I shall no more say 'we,' but 'I.'" In spite of it all, however, he fought bravely to the very end. His courage and Rabellaisian humor never forsook him. In the latter years there was even a noticeable improvement in his literary originality. After all, in the words of the Chantecler, "it is beautiful to behold the light when everything around is enveloped in darkness."

ANARCHISM-The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

ANARCHIST-A believer in Anarchism; one opposed to all forms of coercive government and invasive authority; an advocate of Anarchy, or absence of government, as the ideal of political liberty and social harmony.

ANARCHY-Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of, invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government.

THE PIONEER

To love to live-I choose this as my life,

The world is full of chatter, cheap and vain,

And painted sights and foolish paven lanes where people moil at pleasure,

Getting none, returning yet again for naught and less than naught--

And o'er-plussed emptiness of heart and soul

Which makes a mock of life and turns it sour.

All this I pass; not prudishly, as one who fears to mix with men,

Nor scorning human things,

Nor in a cloister mood, seeking aloofness and some mystic spell

But rather in a thirst for redder wine,

A crave for passions that are ne'er outworn,

A lust for one good hack at old Convention statued in the Square.

To those who love the groove, the patterned task, the vested rights,

I say, adieu.

Give me the thing to do that's not been done,

That helps my kind, and yields my spirit wide egress,

The ax upon the beech to mark my way,

A golden sunset from behind the rugged hills,

And, then, should the gods allow,

A white arm round my neck entwined

And on my lips the kiss of Her who understood and shared.

--Selected.

ON THE TRAIL

THE Trail of Life is like a beautiful woman, full of caprice and contradictions. Now it carries you to the sublime heights of expectation, now it hurls you to the very depths of despair, according to momentary whim. Yet like the heartless beauty, the Trail stands in all its radiance, ever luring one to new exploits.

Since we started on this journey the oscillations between hope and despair have repeatedly made us want to give up; but who can resist the Trail? Good or bad, success or failure-the tempteress calls, and poor mortals must follow.

DETROIT proved too weak for the large dose we had prepared for it. Six English meetings were more than the city could stand, its energies being sapped up by the Lady of Rome. Detroit is strongly Catholic; how can one expect to penetrate her tightly sealed mental channels . Yet there were a few faithful, eager for life, who attended every meeting and procured a liberal supply of intellectual ammunition. We realized only too late that four of the six evenings might have been employed to better advantage in nearby towns. We mean to make good on some other occasion.

ANN ARBOR again brought out a large array of students, less vicious than last year, but still very boisterous, especially on the evening of the lecture on Tolstoy. The sage of Yasnaya Poliana knew the emptiness of what passes for education to-day. His serenity would therefore not have been disturbed by the Ann Arbor demonstration of "learning." Not being quite so passive as our great Russian, it required much effort to keep sane in Bedlam; nor am I quite sure that I did. But, with lunatic luck, I succeeded in making the students think me the only sane person in the crowd. They toned down considerably at the end, asked a number of good questions, and-what is more-they did not break the chairs, nor raid the literature table, which was a decided improvement on our last year's experience.

The Keystone fraternity, keenly conscious of the shameful outrage on free speech in the City of Brotherly Love, invited us to break bread with them, as a sign of sisterly good-will. The wideawke spirit among these Pennsylvania boys has almost made me feel kindlier toward that Clay and Reyburn hunchbacked city, Philadelphia. Our last year's visit has helped to fertilize the soil. Prof. R. M. Wenley announced a course on Anarchism, of which the first lecture has already been delivered before a large audience. I am not conceited enough to assume that I induced the course, but that we have helped to arouse interest and to prepare the students for the "shock," is no doubt true.

GRAND RAPIDS furnished a new experience, doubly pleasant because of the opportunity it offered to meet once more our ex-soldier, William Buwalda. Our readers have probably been wondering what has become of our friend after his release from the tender arms of the government.

William Buwalda has exchanged the iron bands of mental deception for a free and broader outlook upon life, while his soul, dwarfed for fifteen years by the soldier's coat, has since expanded and blossomed out like a flower in the fresh and unrestricted air of mother earth. Our comrade has been left with an old mother to look after his father having died last year. He often longs to go back to the world and to more vital activity, but with his usual simplicity he said, "What right have I, as a free man, to inflict burdens upon others that I am unwilling to carry?" Therefore he remains to take care of the old lady; yet he has not become rusticated. On the contrary, William Buwalda has used his time well, not merely for extensive reading, but for the absorption and assimilation of our ideals. The old Dutch mother, the kindly hostess moving about in her quaint Dutch surroundings, was like a study of Rembrandt. It made one feel far removed from the mad rush of American life.

Buwalda's efforts for the Grand Rapids meeting proved a great success. It was one of the few splendid affairs of this tour.

CHICAGO, with her thousand sinister memories clutching at one's soul, is anything but an Eldorado. The gloom was increased by miserable weather, truly Chicagoan-wind, rain, and mud. The press, including that yellow sheet, the Daily Socialist, maintained a conspiracyof silence, and most of the preparatory work being done by one comrade, Sam Sivin, a stranger in the city, the prospects, too, looked muddy. Worst of all was the thought of having to go back to Hod Carriers' Hall, a place that would have affected the vocal chords of the trumpets of Jerico. It seemed to make the Chicago visit almost unbearable. But perseverance and lungs carried the day.

Our six English meetings brought out an average of two hundred people, which was very remarkable, considering the obstacles. Brother Reitman, with his usual mesmeric methods, disposed of a phenomenal quantity of literature. The Jewish meetings were, as usual, very large. Last, but not least, was a small but interesting meeting arranged by a group of Lithuanians, whom I addressed on the "Social Importance of the Modern School."

Credit for the hardest work is due chiefly to the indefatigable efforts of Sam Sivin and his friend Bessie; but there were also others who helped most faithfully: Edith Adams, our motherly Dr. "Becky" Yampolsky, our future Medicus Stein, and Comrade Lankis. Dr. J. H. Greer was the guardian angel. He turned his office into an E. G. headquarters, constituted himself ticket and book seller, and acted as knightly host to drive away the spooks, thus helping one to forget the sins of the Jungletown.

My greatest regret regarding Chicago is that I failed to interest our friends in the Kotoku Memorial. There was a lack of speakers; besides, Japan is far away; even Anarchists do not easily overcome distance.

URBANA, the seat of Illinois learning, is like unto the city of the German proverb, where people neither sing nor drink. It is a prohibition town; no wonder the mental lid is down tightly. Only a few students and professors turned out, but they, too, were as dry as Urbana.

The PEORIA meeting had been arranged in one day, in a hall on the outskirts of the city. We were therefore not disappointed in the size of the meeting. Yet while Urbana and Peoria gave small returns in proportion to our efforts, we are glad that we went there. We have driven in the wedge and are sure to meet with greater success next time.

ST. Louis. It seems almost like an idyl to come to the city after the desert of Sahara through which the Trail has led us for nearly two months. But, then, why should not St. Louis prove a rare spot, with Anheuser-Busch and William Marion Reedy as the great attractions. I do not know whether the city could do without Anheuser-Busch, but I am sure it would never be the same without Reedy, who is indeed a fountainhead of wisdom, rare humor, and good fellowship. To realize his importance for the intellectual life of St. Louis, one must have been here and followed his work. Thus with our "Hobo" I must say, "Reedy has put St. Louis on the map." With such a staunch sponsor and with the assistance of other friends, gained through Reedy's efforts, the work in St. Louis proved smooth sailing.

Three meetings at the Odeon Recital Hall were the very best so far, especially the meeting of March 1st, on "Victims of Morality," which brought out the largest American audience we have ever had outside of California. The literature sale represented a regular bargain counter, with Ben Reitman and several assistants strenuously busy supplying the demand.

The venture to arouse the ladies who think they are thinking was less successful. It was an unusual venture, to begin with, and as some of our comrades will no doubt say, apostatic on my part to consent. Two lectures in the most exclusive club hall of St. Louis, the Women's Wednesday Club, which resembles the Sorosis of New York:-a parasitic class of women who do not know what to do with their time. I was not at all in doubt as to the numbers that might come to such an affair. I consented to the proposition by our good friends, quaint little Alice Martin and William Marion Reedy, because of the chance it offered to tell those ladies what I thought of them.

"Tolstoy" and "Justice" were chosen-as "fit" subjectsfor the occasion: themes that contain enough revolutionary material to make the dear auditors anything but comfortable, and with E. G. as the speaker, they certainly "got their money's worth," the price of admission being one dollar. I should not care to make a practice of speaking before the Wednesday Club audiences. Not that I fear to be contaminated. I feel, with Gorki, that ours is a puny age, full of puny people who have not even the vitality to commit great sins. It is the mental apathy of the audience at that place which is so disagreeable, like the sight of dry old bones. I could forgive the rich Americans their money; but their dullness, never. The latter will save me at all times from "breaking" into society. Much rather should I prefer to break into jail. It is a much more interesting pastime. Yet the experience at the Wednesday Club had also its humorous side, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Our dear old Comrade Harry Kelly, who left for the Coast after my Sunday lectures, gave the preparatory work the old revolutionary flavor. Ada Capes, Kapicinell, and other friends made me feel, by their devotion, as in olden days when there were fewer personal quibbles and greater zeal for our cause, so sublime and all-absorbing

What a tremendous power one great individuality may exert is best proved by the new tone of the St. Louis press, created entirely by Mr. Reedy. Not a single paper has indulged in the old-time sensational methods. The reports have been accurate and the editorials unusually analytical. A complete revolution, one might say, judging from the following editorial in the Times:

Miss Emma Goldman, who made addresses in St. Louis yesterday, succeeded in voicing her sentiments without shocking any one very much, apparently, and without necessitating any calls for the trouble wagon.

It becomes apparent that Miss Goldman has a good many ideas which are sound, even though she may have others which are shocking enough; and it may be that those who disapprove most of her and her teachings are those who know least about her and what she has to teach.

There are a good many articles in the Goldman creed which might be given serious thought, and nobody would be any the worse for it. When she maintains that education of the stereotyped kind is not the right kind of education, she only affirms what many highly reputable thinkers have pointed out in a gentler fashion.

When she states her belief in the theory that there are no bad boys and girls, she is in line with the convictions of many a highly praised philanthropist. What is judge Ben Lindsay's creed, except that there are no bad boys and girls?

The trouble with this extraordinary woman is that she is a revolutionist, instead of an evolutionist. She is in a hurry; whereas the wisest men and women know that haste makes waste. Not one of the points made by Miss Goldman in her speeches Yesterday but is being put forth in gentler terms by good people everywhere. But others are encouraged when they realize what growth has been recorded in twenty years-in ten years.Miss Goldman is impatient because she cannot see great advancement since yesterday. Perhaps it is a matter of temperament, rather than of philosophy. Perhaps Miss Goldman is unfortunate only in respect to her temperament.

If our work had accomplished nothing else, this change of sentiment would justify all the hardships and bitter- ness most of us have and are still passing through. The Trail may i have a thousand whims and caprices, but it also has great charms. It is so alluring, one must follow it up to the very end.

I still have two Jewish meetings to address in this city; two lectures in Staunton, I11., before the miners, to which I look forward with great interest; also a meeting at Belleville, Ill., where our martyred Chicago comrades had fought more than one battle.

While MOTHER EARTH will be in the making, we shall have visited the Socialist citadel, Milwaukee. Will it survive us? Also Madison, Wis., where our last visit aroused so much discussion, especially among the students. March 15, 16 and 17 we will be in St. Paul; March 19-22 in Minneapolis. All information can be obtained through F. Kraemer, 1023 Marshall St., N. E., Minneapolis, Minn. March 24th, Sioux City; March 26th and 27th, Omaha, Neb. After that, Des Moines and Kansas City, for ten days.

EMMA GOLDMAN.

DISCUSSION AT MEETINGS

By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.

I HAVE read, in the last issue of MOTHER EARTH, Bolton Hall's opinion on the mixed blessing of discussion after meetings with interest, and-disagreement; mixed also.

I agree that a meeting of fifty with a good discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty with none; but with a bad discussion-nine times in ten it is a bad discussion-meeting of two hundred and fifty and silence is preferable.

For I do not agree that "almost anything is better than silence"; sometimes silence is better than almost anything; particularly the silence of a "buffoon." Nor do I consider newspaper notice such a desirable thing as to be thankful for it at the cost of misrepresentation. If a meeting of fifty people enlightened by a discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty without it, it is also better than two hundred thousand giving a cursory glance at a misrepresentation.

Also I would like to know what evidence Bolton Hall has that the best part of the audience sizes up the discussion well. It may be true, quite likely it is, but how does he know?

So far as I see, the real substitute for the after-benediction gathering is not the public discussion, but what we in Philadelphia used to dub "the adjourned meeting." That is the time when the timid and the reticent forget their timidity, and say their say. And it is really always far more interesting than the chairmanized discussion. For all that, I still think the evil of shutting off discussion is probably greater than the evil of "hot air."

One comrade has suggested that the lecture committee, expressing itself through the Chairman, reserve the right to have discussion or not; that a good lecture be left for "the gathering around the stove"; but an inadequate-lecture, or a poor one, be completed or rectified through a select discussion, such speakers being called upon by the Chairman as he knows are able to make good the deficiency.

The trouble is, this gives too much discretion to the Chairman (though as every one knows who has had experience in meetings such discretion is always exercised,more or less, if the Chairman is acquainted with his business. And as a member of the audience I have sometimes been grateful to him for his temporary blindness, or other symptoms of "benevolent despotism"). However, as Gail Hamilton once wrote: "I want my husband to be submissive without looking so"; I want the Chairman to be a despot without openly proclaiming himself such,-which is a very frank avowal for an Anarchist! I should be afraid to make it did I not know that "around the stove" pretty much everybody makes it. But as we all cling to our favorite phantoms, none of us wants the Chairman invested with Dictatorial Powers, notwithstanding our appreciation of the eccentricities of his eyesight; so I fear my comrade's proposition is not acceptable.

I should be glad to hear from others, not only as to the original question, but as to the incidental point of Mr. Hall, that newspaper report is always desirable, even though it be misrepresentation.

THE RIGHT WAY

Because they could not achieve the Right Way, people acquired benevolence.

Because they could not achieve the right benevolence, people acquired charitableness.

Because they could not achieve the right charitableness, people acquired courtesy.

Because they could not achieve the right courtesy, people acquired good manners,

Because they could not achieve the right good manners people acquired good works.

Because they could not achieve the right good works, people acquired law-abidingness.

Because they could not achieveright law-abiding-ness, people made laws.

This shows how far even perfect laws would be from

   the Right Way.

But there cannot be perfect laws;

There cannot even be good laws.

From the Chinese of Lont Lee.

STRAY THOUGHTS

By Wm. C. OWEN.

A TIME-HONORED Latin proverb has it that when war breaks out the voice of law grows silent. I am certain that in politics the voice of truth is drowned by clamarous bids for votes, and it does not seem to matter what politics they are. Here is the Socialist party, for example. If Socialism means anything it is that collectivist ownership for use shall take the place of private ownership for profit. There can be no doubt of this, and modern Socialist literature is to a great extent one song of triumph over the extent to which private enterprise is being driven to the wall. Yet here, in California, the party's candidate for governor, touring the State in a much advertised red car, kept assuring the farmer that Socialism, while freeing them from the transportation and moneysharks, will leave them in possesion of their private farms, to be worked, as now, for private benefit. A desperate effort of my own to set this matter straight almost produced a riot, and never can I find anything but violent contradiction when I tell Socialists they belong to a governmental party. Nevertheless, in a recent number of the Appeal to Reason I find this editorial answer to a question as to what is to be done if the capitalists should decide on a general lock-out: "If they were to close the shops it would be as good a thing as we could ask. Then, under the plea of emergency, we could take possession of the shops and set all the wheels to moving at once under GOVERNMENTAL MANAGEMENT." To fish for votes by repudiating your party's cardinal principle seems to me at once the most despicable and suicidal of policies.

My own experience with the rank and file of the Socialist party is that intellectually it has not the remotest conception of where it is actually at, but that all its aspirations are toward Anarchism' . Invariably private conversation with members brings out the declaration that all they want is equality of opportunity, and that the less government they have the better. But let us not deceive ourselves. That may be the aspiration of the proletarian, sick to death of the authoritarianism he learns from the policeman's club, but it is not the aspiration of the preachers and lawyers who have crowded into the party and are doing nearly all its talking, because talking is their trade. Almost invariably the preacher's ruling passion is to lay down the law for others to obey; almost invariably the lawyer longs to regulate the lives of others; and such leaders naturally seek to form a centralized society, of which they shall be directors.

In Los Angeles the Single Taxers are trying to resurrect themselves, and surely there was never time or place wherein they should be more alive. To boom the natural resources of the country, thereby attracting immigration; to shear such immigration to the skin by continuously raising the admission price to those monopolized resources-this has been the game played unceasingly by the moneyed class since the city passed out of the village stage. Never was it played so relentlessly, however, as at present, for we have entered on an era of frenzied municipal enterprise, anticipating the rush of labor that will come with the completion of the Panama canal. Millions are being spent, south of the city, on harbor improvements, and land speculators gloat daily over the real estate ticker as it records the advanced value of their holdings. North of the city gigantic sums are being invested by the municipality in the development of water, and a group of land cormorants is becoming multi-millionaires.

Los Angeles is of interest to the great world of social agitation only as she points a moral and exemplifies a principle. It is because she illustrates with unusual clearness how rotten is the sham of public ownership and operation, while land monopoly remains intact, that I give her, and her Single Tax club, publicity. This craze for municipal-improvements is the undercurrent of the Socialistic tide, and it is crushing us with bureaucracy and land speculation; digging the gulf between Dives and Lazarus wider and deeper than it was ever dug before. If they could wrench themselves free from what seem to me side issues, the Henry George men might do noble work. As it is, their "cat" has been smothered out of sight and hearing.

ECONOMY AS VIEWED BY AN ANARCHIST

By C. L. JAMES.

(Continuation.)

There was also a dispute between two great Fathers of the orthodox economic church, Ricardo and Malthus as to whether Rent cuts into Profit and Wages. Malthus denied that it affected either. Ricardo, by asserting that it reduced both, supplied the premises of an important Socialistic school whose bestknown representative is Henry George. The fallacies which make these controversies possible appear to me very largely founded in confusion of thought and language between such terms as (aggregate) rent and rent (per acre), interest (aggregate) and (per cent.), even real wages and nominal, though that is acknowledged to be a vulgar error. But they have a deeper root. The orthodox economists, having contracted the habit of generalizing from the capitalist's standpoint, are rarely able to see any other part of an universal truth than what concerns the capitalist, as such. And the Socialistic writers have not been able to correct them, because they, too, general 'zed from a special standpoint. Endeavoring myself to set both right by taking the Standpoint of Universal Man, or the Consumer, I shall most cheerfully acknowledge every anticipation I can find: for it will give me an opportunity to show that a view too limited and partial was what kept from the truth men who often got so very near it.

14. Rent, Profit, and Wages, are commonly assumed to be the shares in Distribution, falling respectively to landlords, capitalists, and laborers.13 But surely there are others. The share which falls to thieves is much too important to be justifiably ignored, if among thieves we include bad governments, corrupt monopolies, pestilent sinecurists, warriors employed in anything else than defense of their own countries, and these are, most deservedly, so classed by the orthodox Economy, which was the precursor and almost became the phoenix progenitor of Anarchism. This share is not like that of children, nursing mothers, beggars, unproductive laborers, who can get only what the producers or the producer's exploiters have had first. If conquerors and their creatures be thieves, as orthodox Economy teaches, the thief gets his share before the producer. There is also an impersonal sharer, Waste, which devours not what the producers choose to give it, for that would be nothing, but all it -can take against their will. Floods, flames, moths, rust, mice, kings, nobles, and pirates, must have their undivided share first. The producer gets only what they leave. The Socialistic writers are not insensible to part of this truth. Before Saint Simon gave them anything like a scientific method , they perceived that existing institutions were founded by barbarians whose, only trade was war, and that the taint of origin pervades them all. Adam Smith partly saw this, too."14 The reason neither he nor they have adequately reasoned from this historical premise, is that both the main economic schools were in a hurry to begin generalizing either from the capitalist's standpoint or the laborer's. Waste and Plunder, so important to the Consumer, i. e., to man, as man, were dismissed with the remark that they took only from the gross product, and that the laws of the net could be ascertained without considering them. But if, as Adam Smith, all Socialists, and all Historic Economists, perceive, the landlords and capitalists derive peculiar powers from government, an institution whose original purposes were war and Plunder, it evidently is not correct to say that we can get at the law of their share in Distribution without. first considerfrig the laws of Plunder.

15. This error, springing direct from the Original Sin of Political Economy, has been the fruitful parent of others. The definition of Capital as wealth employed to produce more wealth, is incorrect. The wealth consumed in war is not employed to produce wealth but to destroy it; and a bond given by the government to those who lend it money during war is not wealth at all. But to say, as Henry George does actually say, that the bonds of a government are not Capital, is to deny that Rothschild is a capitalist-a palpable reductio ad absurdum; for he is a typical capitalist-a capitalist who is nothing else than a capitalist, whereas most capitalists are also landowners and laborers; which embarasses us when we wish to class them, while he is classable at once and forever as a capitalist. And, as all Capital is not wealth employed to produce wealth, so much wealth employed to produce more wealth-for example, the tools belonging to a man who lets out the work he does with them-are capital in no ordinary tenable sense. For a correct definition of Capital we are indebted to Karl Marx. Capital is that which acquires Surplus Value, or a share in Distribution not due to labor. It may be wealth employed to produce wealth, but is not necessarily. It includes, therefore, slaves, accounts bearing interest, and Land, though this is a peculiar kind, needing, frequently, to be distinguished with much care from (other) Capital15." This definition certainly has the disadvantage of leaving us without a short term for wealth employed to produce wealth, After considerable embarassment from this lack, I determined to employ the symbol W. P. W.; and I find it very convenient. I shall maintain that W. P. W., as such, works, though it may be Capital, in quite the opposite way to Capital, as such. Capital is, in Wall street phrase, a "bear": W. P. W. is a "bull." W. P. W. raises the value of labor: Capital, as such, always tends to beat it down. "Orthodox" economy, having thus committed a non distributis medii, in identifying with Capital what is only sometimes a part of Capital, and fallen into the ambiguity of using the word Capital in two inconsistent senses,16 proceeds to give an incorrect account of the process by which both W. P. W. and Capital are brought into being. Because under the existing "bourgeois" methods of production and trade, most Capital is W. P. W., and because the individual capitalist often17 becomes one by saving money, this theory, still failing to distribute the middle term, asserts that Capital is created by saving money. But in whichever sense the word Capital is to be understood, Capital existed long before there was any money to save. Does Capital mean W. P. W.? Then the forked stick of the Digger; the bow of a more advanced barbarian; a tame horse, dog, cow; a boat, a net, is Capital. What had saving money to do with making these? They were made not by "adding parsimony to production," but wholly by production, of that peculiar kind which is called Invention. Now, it is a truth of the first importance that the economic functions are always essentially the same-that they advance, not by creation but only evolution,-a "simple indefinite homogeneity" becoming a "complex definite heterogeneity." All W. P. W., from a raft to a Great Eastern, an Esquimaux sled to a Union Pacific R. R.; a bow to a quick-firing rifled cannon, is produced by Invention, and by nothing but Invention. All the processes of trade-the opening of new markets, the use of bills, notes, banks, stocks, clearing houses, were brought into existence by invention, and by nothing else. Money owes its existence to Invention and its use has very largely given way to that of credit, a somewhat later invention which is admitted to serve all the same purposes. An imperfect system of credit-exchanges still makes cash payments periodically necessary, and the great cash accumulations of bankers very useful; but of these accumulations only a very small part is due to saving; which, moreover, to give it all the praise it has, can accumulate nothing but money, could not do that if all the people tried to save, and would be useless but for that series of exchanges whose end is always unproductive consumption. To suppose an extreme casea favorite device in economic reasoning,-we have seen what not only would happen if all tried to save money-they could not do it, and they would all be poor-but what actually does happen where this process is approached, as in "Jewtown"-they all are desperately poor. Now suppose, then, that nobody saved money-that every one bought whatever he fancied-what would happen? Since it is evident that if a man who starts with nothing proposes to build or buy a house he must meanwhile abstain from gratifying many desires of a more evanescent character, there might be less substantial comfort than there is. But this does not seem to me quite certain, for the number of such men who build or buy houses has never been great; and, if we inquired into their antecedents we should be apt to find they differed from less provident neighbors rather in their natural tastes than their acquired habits. At any rate, there would then, as now, be productive labor, without which no man starting poor in a pacific society could gratify his desires at all; trade, without which only the simplest desires can be gratified; and invention, which is what improves all the means of gratifying desire. In short, the effect of parsimony even in assisting production of W. P. W. is much exaggerated.

(To be continued)

BOOKS RECEIVED

NEO-MALTHUSISMO Y SOCIALISMO. Alfredo Naguet y G. Hardy. Barcelona, Spain.

THE AMERICAN HOUSE OF LORDS. Morrison 1. Swift. The Supreme Court Reform League, Boston, Mass.

DIE LUGE DES PARLAMENTARISMUS. Pierre Ramus. W. Schouteten, Bruscelles, Belgium.

THE MAN-MADE WORLD OR OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlton Co., N. Y. City.

MIMO SPOLECNOST. Jos. Kucera. Literarni Krouzek, Chicago, 111.

FABIAN ANARCHISM . Alexander Horr. Freeland Pub. Co., San Francisco, Cal.

THE CHASM. George Cram Cook. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York

SINGLE TAX CONFERENCE, 1910. Joseph Fels Fund Commission, Cincinnati, 0.

THE MODERN SCHOOL. Wm. Thurston Brown, Salt Lake City, Utah. ADVENTURE. Jack London. The Macmillan Co., New York. ($1.50)

Footnotes

Footnote 13: I am loth, yet it may be needful, to spend space on such remarks as that the same man may be all three of these characters; or that the "best" land does not mean the richest, but that whose culture pays best, for whatever reason.

Footnote 14: "He says the origin of Rent is the desire of landlords, a privileged class, to reap what they did not sow. Ricardo assumed to correct him by giving that theory of its origin stated above.

Footnote 15: Even Henry George, than whom no writer has insisted more on the difference between Land and Capital, says that Land Value is only "Rent commuted, or capitalized."

Footnote 16: "That the orthodox economists are aware of something loose about their definition of capital, is evident from their plentiful disagreement.

Footnote 17: "I can hardly say as a rule. Of the money in even savings banks only a part is "savings," the rest representing trades' balances for which the depositors had no immediate use.

Back to Emma Goldmans Collected Work Anarchist Archive

Mother Earth Bulletin October 1917 (Vol 1 N1) (pgs 1-7)

Freedom of Criticism and Opinion

Emma Goldman

Under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," the Postmaster General has become the absolute dictator over the press. Not only is it impossible now for any publication with character to be circulated through the mails, but every other channel, such as express, freight, newstands, and even distribution has been stopped. As MOTHER EARTH will not comply with these regulations and will not appear in an emasculated form, it prefers to take a long needed rest until the world has regained its sanity.

The MOTHER EARTH BULLETIN has been decided upon largely as a means of keeping in touch with our friends and subscribers, and for the purpose of keeping them posted about our movements and activities.

DEDICATION

This is the wee Babe of Mother Earth. It was conceived during the greatest human crisis -born into a tragic, disintegrating world. To give it life, Mother Earth had to choose death, yet out of Death must come Life again. The Babe is frail of body, but it comes with a heritage of strength, determination and idealism to be worthy of her who gave it birth.

To bring a child into the world these days is almost an unpardonable luxury. But the child of Mother Earth comes to you for a share of the beautiful love and devotion you gave its mother. Assured of that, it will make a brave effort to Live and to Do. -E.G.

Apropos

Alexander Berkman

"Mother Earth" has been suppressed, but how strikingly its position and ideas have been vindicated!

In two particulars, especially, has our propaganda been justified by the events.

First, our insistence on free expression is the foundation of all progress. "Mother Earth" was a voice in the wilderness when it first raised the cry for the imperative need of a determined and for free speech and free press. From the very beginning of our publication -now over ten years ago -and ever since we have persistently emphasized, over and over again, how imperative it was for all radicals to resist every encroachment upon the liberty of assembly and press, whoever the victim.

But as long as only Anarchist meetings were stopped, or Anarchist publications suppressed, no one cared much except the Anarchists. Yet repeatedly we warned the liberal elements at large that the most fundamental principle was at stake, and that the suppression of Anarchists was but the entering wedge.

Now the whole block is split, or almost so. Only the blind can fail to see that it is but a matter of weeks or days before the last critical word will be stilled by the hand that has gained practice as well as arrogant assurance through our lack of vigilance and co-operation in the past.

Nor is the evil temporary only. Some rules and laws may disappear with the war, but the tendencies no dominant, and the habits acquired, will persist long after their immediate stimuli have ceased to operate.

Similarly has the Anarchist opposition to forcible authority and centralization of power been vindicated by recent history.

The essence of authority is invasion, the impostion of a superior will -generally superior only in point of physical force. The menace of man-made authority is not in its potential abuse. That may be guarded against. The fundamental evil of authority is its use. The more paternal its character or the more humanistic its symbols and mottoes, the greater its danger. No slavery so deep-rooted and stable than the subtle hypnotism of Democracy's phraseology. It is mesmerizing to watch the girations of a balloon labelled "Liberty." The required optical intensity only too often lulls to forgetfulness even those vaguely conscious that the proudly soaring balloon holds nothing but gas -a child's toy with no substance.

The democratic authority of majority rule is the last pillar of tyranny. The last, but the strongest. It is at the base of this pillar that the Anarchist ax has been hewing. The autocracy of the minority is too patent an imposition to promise long life in modern days. The temple of Romanoff falls like a house of cards at the touch of a will-full Samson. But the despotism that is invisible because not personified, shears Samson of his passion and leaves him will-less.

Woe to the people where the citizen is a sovereign whose power is in the hands of his masters! It is a nation of willing slaves.

San Francisco's Sixth Victim

Emma Goldman

When Governor Stephens, of California, signed the requisition papers for Alexander Berkman (although he had solemnly promised a delegation of labor men and a body of women from the Civic League of San Francisco to give them a hearing before signing the papers), District Attorney Fickert rushed into print with the following statement: "Weinberg's case will now be postponed and we will try Berkman at once; he is more important."

Fickert reminds one of the milkmaid who, with the pail of milk balanced on her head, became so enthused over the prospective profits from it, that she began dancing with glee, and spilled the milk. Mr. Fickert, too, jumped with glee at the prospect of getting Berkman into his clutches. Had he not tried hard for a whole year to involve Alexander Berkman in the San Francisco frame-up? First, during the Billings trial; then again, during the farce of Tom Mooney's trial; finally, when Rena Mooney battled for her life. Each time District Attorney Fickert impressed it upon the jurors that Alexander Berkman was the principal villain in the play; each time this faithful servant of the Chamber of Commerce came nearer to the point where he felt sure of roping Berkman into his noose. And when the indictment was finally handed down, Fickert felt near his goal.

In his imagination he already saw Berkman tried, convicted, sentenced and executed. But lo and behold, down came the pail of milk with all of Fickert's calculations.

Having played fast and loose with his victims in San Francisco, Fickert could not imagine the difficulties that would confront him when he called for the indictment of Alexander Berkman. How was a man of Fickert's mentality to know Berkman's position among the workers of the East, and especially in New York City? How was he to know the love, esteem and devotion Berkman has gained during the twenty-seven years of his activity in behalf of the masses? Much less could Fickert realize Berkman's importance as an international figure in the revolutionary movement, and the protest and indignation his indictment would arouse!

Well, Mr. Fickert did not have to wait long. First of all came the enthusiastic response of the United Hebrew Trades and other radical organizations. The delegation that went to Albany to argue before Governor Whitman against the extradition of A.B., was a significant tribute to the man who had for twenty-seven years unreservedly given his ability and devotion to the cause of humanity. It certainly must have impressed the Governor or he would not have held up his signature to the extradition.

Then came President Wilson's order for a Federal investigation into the San Francisco frame-up, and right on its heels the glorious demonstration in Petrograd for Alexander Berkman. All this because of the indictment against a mere Anarchist! Who ever heard of such a thing? Fickert was frantic, but to save his face he wired Governor Whitman that Berkman's extradition "would not be pressed for the present." How magnanimous of the man who has all along used the vilest means to dispose of his victims!

Needless to say, we are not foolish enough to believe that Governor Whitman will not in the end sign Berkman's extradition. Nor do we bank too much on the outcome of the Federal Investigation. There is no doubt but that the Commission will have to brand as criminals the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco and its District Attorney. But what of this? Washington is not likely to declare war upon California because of the American lives endangered there and the frightfulness committed by District Attorney Fickert and his Huns. There are only two forces which will effectually put Fickert out of his criminal business: first, the continued protest in Russia; secondly, the solid front labor in this country must make. Already hundreds of organizations have come to the fore, morally and financially. But more is needed; we must awaken all of labor. Nothing must be left undone to stay the murderous hand ready to slay six innocent victims.

Thursday, October 11, Alexander Berkman could have walked out a free man; the legal extradition limit of thirty days had expired. The warden of the Tombs prison was not only ready but anxious to let Berkman go; he knew he had no legal power to hold him. But it takes a revolutionist to live up to his promise, even if made by his attorneys. So Alexander Berkman signed himself back into the Tombs prison for another thirty days. However, an attempt is now being made to get A.B. out on bail. He is entitled to it, especially in view of the fact that he is already under $25,000 bail on the Federal conviction.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of it all, District Attorney Fickert is likely to spend many sleepless nights and restless moons before he can get Alexander Berkman, and even if he does get him in the end, Fickert's troubles will only then begin. To set the background for that momentous event, we need the help of all our friends and all those who have been aroused to the scandal, the shame and the outrage of the San Francisco frame-up. For that purpose defense councils must be organized in every city, mass meetings arranged, and the whole case given the widest possible publicity for which, of course, a substantial campaign capital is indispensible. Radical labor and the friends of Alexander Berkman have already come to the rescue most generously, but we must ask for further aid, which we know the friends of Mother Earth will not withhold.

Justice is not settled by legislators and laws -it is in the soul; it can not be varied by status any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity can. -Walt Whitman.

To the Postmaster

EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER

September 22, 1917

Third Assistant Postmaster General, Washington D.C.

Dear Sir:

Outside of the technical ground which you may have for removing the second class mail privileges of "Mother Earth," I suppose we are justified in assuming that the only real reason you have for denying us the use of these privileges is that "Mother Earth" is an Anarchist magazine, Emma Goldman its publisher, and that "Mother Earth" has always maintained a vigorous anti-war attitude. I don't suppose it is within the jurisdiction of your department, nor have you the time or the inclination, to argue on the merits of the war, or the meaning of free press. But I do hope that you have the time and the interest to get our point of view.

A certain section of the American people, whose numbers are growing daily (whether for good or for evil), are anxious, desirous and determined to read radical literature, such as is contained in our magazine. It is too late to change their taste for such reading matter. "Mother Earth," "The Masses," "The Jeffersonian," "The Rebel," "The Free Press," "The International Socialist Review," and other papers that the Government is attempting to suppress, have become the Bible for millions of people living in America. These magazines are not only the favorite literature of these citizens, but their gospel as well. They are determined to have them and, if I know anything about history, it looks to me as though they would get them one way or another.

You are aware, of course, that censorship of the press is not new -is more than one hundred years old. I think it is as old as the printing press. Rigid Germany, autocratic Russia, temperamental France and our favorite ally England, have suppressed thousands of publications, but they still exist in large numbers. The law of suppression may be formulated as follows: The more a government suppresses a paper that the people really want, the more it is read with reverance, and the more powerful the paper becomes in its influence in the community. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that suppressed publications were one of the largest factors in the recent Russian Social Revolution.

I trust you will realize the importance of this issue to our mighty Government. I know full well the Government's power and its ability to jail or hang anyone who attempts to thwart its desire. I simply wish to call your attention to an undisputed historical and psychological fact, and remind you that in Belgium, where the Iron Hand of Germany rules, the determined Belgians are getting out their own papers in spite of the Kaiser's censors. In Russia, prior to the revolution, there was a despotism and a censorship of publication such as the world never before witnessed, yet millions of copies of papers and leaflets found their way into the hands and hearts of the workers and soldiers. It is not news to you, I am sure, that even in the trenches of Europe suppressed papers are being published. Please don't think that we are attempting to intimidate or bluff you when we say that if you do not permit "Mother Earth" and other publications to continue their mission in the open, someone will find a way of continuing the work and getting out the message of liberty to the American people. I suppose you are aware, through the newspapers or from the Secret Service Department, that dozens of underground presses have already been established, and with widespread education and the printing facilities which can be found in any city, hamlet and village in these great United States, there is every reason to believe that for each publication you suppress, underground presses will be established, and as fast as they are discovered and stopped, still others will take their place. For another great law of history reads: Thinking men and women who have a greievance or a message for the world will find a way to get their ideas to the people, and suppressing, jailing and hanging won't stop it. Five thousand years of history back this statement.

Does this mean that we want the right to be treasonable? No! We ask for our constitutionally guaranteed right to voice our grievances and to help build a world without tyranny, injustice and exploitation. Some of the radicals want to change the laws; others believe that governments are wrong, harmful and unnecessary, and that we can live and carry on production and distribution and do the right thing by our fellowmen and have a very beautiful world, without any laws or governments. Now we want to do propaganda in the open. We are willing to abide by the Constitution, provided that the authorities will obey the law and respect human rights, and that no judge or post office official will take it upon himself to decide what is or is not free press. In other words, if the Post Office really takes President Wilson seriously and wants to make the world safe for democracy, we are willing to cooperate, and I feel we will bring much intelligence and genuine interest for a democracy, such as Paine, Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution hoped for.

I understand that these are trying times, and the Government is in no mood to temporize with radicals and theorists. But unless America and the Post Office department, especially, respect the rights and needs of millions of her inhabitants who are feeling, thinking, struggling and desirous of maintaining constitutional democracy in a way which may be a little different from that desired by a small group of senators, legislators or officials -then America may have to pass through the experiences that we are now witnessing in Russia.

Yours very sincerely,

BEN L. REITMAN.

LAW

The highest form of despotism, falsehood and violence is the establishment by some people of a law which must not be discussed by the other people and which must be accepted by them. -Tolstoy.

Russia and Elsewhere

A.B.

The Russian Revolution is now affording every journalistic ignoramus the fertile opportunity of displaying -at so much per line -the depth of his socio-political wisdom and the fullness of his historical erudition.

Not a newspaper or a magazine in America but that has compared the Russian upheaval with the French Revolution and learnedly pointed to the "striking analogies" and drew the "inevitable" conclusions of débacle with that Karma finality that but illy hid the smirk of bourgeois satisfaction.

Vain fools! As if their penny minds could even conceive of the primal cosmic forces that have broken the bondage of centuries and are about to change the very course of the whole gamut of human experience.

For Russia is not going through a mere revolution. Comparisons with historical analogies, the tracing of superficial evolutionary "laws" are the veriest lilliputian efforts in the face of the titanic elements commanding untrammeled expression.

Never since the dawn of time has the world been pregnant with the mighty spirit that is now rocking Russia in the throes of a new birth -a new life, a new humanity, a new earth. It is the Messiah come, the Social Revolution.

The most tragic part of Russia's rebirth is the pity dished out to her by American editors. No doubt in many instances their ill-humored attitude merely cloaks the haunting fear that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" might indeed become a fact -and such things are terribly catching! What if the will of the proletariat should march across the borders of Russia and sweep the rest of the world in its compelling desire! Woe to all that's well established, parasites and all.

Hence the mad ravings against the Bolsheviki, the real pioneers of the Social Revolution. If journalistic assassination at long distance were effective, the Bolsheviki would all be dead by now. They are persistently misrepresented in the American press as the scum of the earth, criminals, Anarchists, a mere handful of malcontents who should be given the shortest shrift. It never enters the solid pate of the good American "news"-eater to inquire how it is possible for a handful of malcontents to keep such a vast country like Russia "in an uproar," and to influence a nation of almost two hundred million population.

Informed people know that the Bolsheviki are the majority elements in both the Social Revolutionary and the Social Democratic parties. "Bolshe," in Russian, means "more." Hence, Bolsheviki -the majority. And though the Bolsheviki of the Social Revolutionists in various matters disagree with the Social Democratic Bolsheviki, yet the plain truth of the Russian situation is that the overwhelming majority of the Russian people, the industrial and agrarian population, stand solidly behind the Bolsheviki, the true revolutionists who will not permit the Revolution to be exploited into a victory of the bourgeoisie. That is the fundamental difference between the Social Revolution in Russia and the French Revolution. The past martyrdom of Russia shall not be used as a stepping stone to capitalist domination. Russia must be free -from industrial despotism no less than from the tyranny of Tsardom.

On December 10th, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide the fate of three men and one woman, who took an active stand against the war -Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer, Morris Becker and Emma Goldman.

By the first of the new year, unless a miracle happens and the judges of the Supreme Court can conquer the war hysteria with reason and justice, Emma Goldman will find herself back in the confines of the Jefferson City prison; Berkman will be behind the iron bars of the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, and Kramer and Becker will remain in that institution where they are at the present time. The sentence is two years and a fine of $10,000 and deportation to Russia in the cases of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Louis Kramer. The latter is also to serve one year in the Mercer County, N.J., Prison. The sentence of Morris Becker is twenty months in Atlanta.

Ordinarily a case taken to the highest judicial tribunal in the United States must wait at least a year before it is argued before that body. But now the newspaper clamor for immediate condemnation of everyone opposed to war is responsible for the anti-draft cases being among the first to be presented at the first session of the Federal Supreme Court.

Miracles happened frequently in earlier days, so the Bible tells us. But they occur very rarely in these times, and so we cannot imagine that the Supreme Court will declare the draft-law unconstitutional. Indeed, if that should happen the whole war policy would be shattered. We can only have a faint hope -and it is a very faint one -that the decision of the lower court in the anti-draft cases will be reversed on the grounds of error. And although there were enough errors in the trials, men are blind and afraid to see justice when they are stricken with the war mania.

But unfortunately for the human race, no matter how many publications the censors may suppress, or how many agitators and propagandists may be lynched, hanged or jailed, the struggle for Liberty will go on. And "Mother Earth" activities will continue as far as possible. We need your assistance more than ever. So far the arrest and trial of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and the anti-draft cases, have already cost over $5,000. The printing of the briefs and minutes alone cost more than half of this amount. Our attorney, Harry Weinberger, has been working night and day, and has accomplished almost the impossible. If we are to make a favorable showing when the case comes up, December 10, we will have to have more funds for publicity and other expenses involved in the fight.

So great is the number of radicals in jail to-day that one almost has to offer an apology when he is at liberty. And although most of the cases of revolutionists in jail or undergoing trial for anti-war propaganda offer scant hope for victory on the side of justice and light, it is encouraging to know that in the case of Louis C. Fraina and Ralph Cheney one point of victory has at least been scored.

The two men were charged with conspiracy and with interfereing with the draft. Louis D. Boudin, attorney for the defendants was successful, however, in emphasizing to Judge Robert T. Ervin in the United States District Court that the indictment was false. Motion of the dismissal was made by Boudin on the ground that the section of the act refers to incitement, to insurrection or insubordination among those already in the armed forces of the government, and not one of those who attended the meeting on September 27, at the labor Temple, was in the Government's military service.

Long prison terms await these two comrades, nevertheless. They are still to be tried on the charge of conspiracy.

Shall 1887 Be Repeated?

It is nearly forty years since the Knights of Labor began their agitation for a national eight-hour day. Ridiculed at first, they next caused alarm among the employers, and this alarm soon developed into an active campaign of oppression and suppression.

The strike against the McCormick Harvester Co. was projected into the situation in the spring of 1886. Members of the Knights of Labor took an active part in the organization of the strikers and gave active support and counsel in their fight against what was then one of the greatest industrial concerns of the West.

Then came the Haymarket tragedy, the exact responsibility for which has not yet been placed. A bomb was thrown among a platoon of policemen which killed and wounded some of them. At once the cry was raised that the Knights of Labor was directly responsible for the affair, and a hunt was begun for the leaders. The charge was so flimsy and so absolutely without foundation that those in Chicago, who had been active in the councils of the strikers, thought there would be no difficulty in proving their innocence, and they walked boldly into the courts. But they reckoned without the power of blood money, as was proven on November 11, 1887.

At the time the veneration of the American people for judicial pronouncements was so great that, after the hanging of the so-called Anarchists on that fatal November day, the Knights of Labor rapidly declined in number and influence, and it has taken a generation for the workers of America to overcome the effects of that crime against them.

For twelve years the Industrial Workers of the World has carried a message of improved conditions on the jobs for all workers, of which the eight-hour day is but one of the demands. Ignored at first, then ridiculed, they soon caused alarm among the employing class, and this alarm has resulted in a campaign of oppression and suppression that is almost unbelievable in extent. It has been reliably reported that a campaign fund of several million dollars was subscribed by the employers to crush the I.W.W., and that amount of money can purchase oppression almost beyond belief.

The arrest of hundreds of members of the I.W.W., in all parts of the United States, and the cruel treatment that has been meted out to them can hardly be looked upon as disconnected events. They must be viewed, in the light of their similarity, and widely separated points, as parts of one comprehensive campaign that is directed with a definite purpose in view. Also the recent indictments against 166 members of the I.W.W. must be viewed in the same light.

At present there are nearly one hundred of those indicted who are under arrest, and the charges against them are so absolutely silly that many people are making light of the arrests. It is just this flimsy nature of the charges, and the perfect confidence of the accused in their innocence, that constitute the great danger in the present cases. We must take into consideration the power of the prosecution and the ferocity of those behind the prosecution. These cases must be tried by an aroused and enlightened public opinion.

If we are to prevent a repetition of the tragic crime of 1887, we must act vigorously and at once. It is not the charges that are placed against those who are indicted that constitute their menace, it is the gigantic slush fund that has been raised by the various employers' association throughout the country for the purpose of crushing all effective labor organization, that we must combat. And the way in which it must be met is by an aroused public sentiment. Organized labor dare not let the crime of 1887 be repeated. -Solidarity.

Send funds for the General Defense to I.W.W. Headquarters, 1001 West Madison Street, Chicago, Ill. And funds for The Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Arturo Giovannitti, Carlo Tresca Defense, who are fighting extradition, to Helen Marot, 206 West 13th Street, New York City

In Milwaukee

Chicago, Ill., Oct. 14, 1917.

Dear Comrade:

I am in receipt of your letter and am very glad to hear from you. Friend, talking about reaction these days is absolutely unnecessary, for we all know what's going on nearly every day in every city of this free America and land of democracy.

I think you are well acquainted with the happening in Milwaukee on the ninth of September. While our Italian comrades were coming out of their clubroom, walking toward their homes, on the corner of Bishop and Patters Avenues, they met a preacher by the name of A. Juliani, holding a revival meeting. He had organized a scheme, together with the policemen, to provoke trouble and land our comrades in jail. And he did. As soon as they were discovered the snake told those criminals, under policemen's uniform, that the Anarchists were coming. Nothing else -our comrades were attacked.

Of course they tried to defend themselves. You can imagine the result. Tony Fornasieri lived only a few minutes. August Maimelli died after five days' of agony, and Bortholo Testolini received a wound on one of his shoulders from the back. The others were all arrested -about twelve of them. While this was going on, one of the fanatic followers of the preacher tore the American flag and that made it harder for our comrades. I think you can conceive the struggle we are going through.

There is another big job on hand. The lawyer wants $3,000 to take up their defense, $1,500 before the trial and the remainder afterwards. To tell the truth I have lost faith even in the lawyer, for I have found out it is just as bad to trust him as it is to trust bankers, in fact the lawyers are nothing by blood-suckers.

Yours faithfully,

SAM CASTAGNA

Remember

The war not only means that, among many others, the "Mother Earth" Magazine has been silenced, but also that Emma Goldman has been gagged. That cut off one of the most important avenues of resources. Although it is almost a certainty that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman will have to return Jefferson and to Atlanta respectively, not for one minute must the fight lag. We must not for one instant lay down our arms and allow free speech to be utterly wiped out in the United States. Free press is practically in its grave, but the voice of Liberty must not be strangled. You, comrades, are the only ones who can win our rights to express our opinions and to blaze the trail toward a free society where men and women and children can live and love and be happy together, a world without war, without exploitation, without tyranny and hatred.

Although "Mother Earth" has been suppressed, our activities will be continued and our new publication, "Mother Earth" Bulletin, will appear every month and will contain important news vital to the movement, as well as a report of proceedings of the various trials in the draft propaganda. "Mother Earth" Bulletin ought to have a large circulation. If your former subscription to "Mother Earth" has run out, won't renew at once? If possible order some extra copies to give away. For $1.00 we will send you twenty copies.

If you want to be of genuine aid to us and to the struggle we are making, help us circulate our literature. We have just issued a new edition of Emma Goldman's "Anarchism and Other Essays," containing a biographical sketch of the author together with twelve propaganda lectures on Anarchism, labor, sex and other vital problems. The book sells for $1.00. We will send you six copies for $5.00.

In order to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the now famous Emma Goldman-Alexander Berkman draft case, we urge you to read their remarkable speeches made in court. We have issued "Trial and Speeches" in a paper edition at 40 cents; three copies for $1.00. We also have a handsome leather bound edition for $1.00. These speeches will live long after their authors. You cannot afford to be without them.

Mother Earth Bulletin November 1917 (Vol 1 N2)

Miracles Do Happen

Alexander Berkman has been released from the Tombs Prison without bail. On November 10th, the second thirty-day extradition period had expired. Again our friend had to go through the farce of signing himself back into the Tombs. It was even a more painful procedure than last month, in view of the fact that the motion for bail had been denied.

The group of faithful friends who had gathered in the court room on the morning of the 10th and who were given a chance to visit Alexander Berkman, with heavy hearts saw him go back to jail. Our gloom increased when we were told two days later that there was no legal ground for bail and that we had better make up our minds that Berkman must remain in the Tombs until he is sent back to Atlanta Prison.

Then on Tuesday, November 13th, came the marvelous news which was conveyed to our Attorney, Harry Weinberger, by the District Attorney of Albany representing California; District Attorney Fickert temporarily withdrew the request for the extradition of Alexander Berkman until the appeal in the anti-draft case is decided. Harry Weinberger immediately got on the job to get A.B. released. But the red tape of the law robbed our friend of another day. Finally, Wednesday, November 14th, at noon, Alexander Berkman walked out a free man.

What caused the miracle? Did District Attorney Fickert have a change of heart? Did he wake up to the realization that for the last eighteen months he had been engaged in a black crime against innocent human beings? Did he wish to make good by letting Berkman go free, to be followed by the release of the others? That would have indeed been a miracle of the kind that never happens.

No, Fickert is still on the job holding on to his victims who had the misfortune to fall into his clutches. But there is the Federal Commission looking into his crooked cards. There, too, is his recall staring him in the face. There is the big movement which sprung up into being to save Alexander Berkman from the fate of Mooney and the others.

Last, but not least, there is the fact that as a Federal prisoner, A.B. would not have been turned over to San Francisco so easily. Anyway, District Attorney Fickert after a heart-breaking struggle decided not to insist for the present on the extradition of his sixth victim.

Well, our Comrade is free -free to go about, free to visit his friends, free to enjoy the glorious weather we are having in New York now. But let no one be deceived as to the safety of Alexander Berkman. So long as Billings is languishing in Folsom prison with his last chance of a new trial denied, so long as the gallows is awaiting Mooney, and Rena is still in jail, so long as Weinberg is being put through the same hideous farce of a trial, and Nolan is to come next, A.B. is not safe. Our work, then, must not stop for one single moment. There is too much danger ahead.

How Wars Are Made

The loud little handful -as usual -will shout for the war. The pulpit will -wearily and cautiously -object -at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing, the speakers stoned from the platforms, and the free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -as earlier -but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation -pulpit and all -will take up the war-cry and shout itself hoarse and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -Mark Twain, in "The Mysterious Stranger."

The Boylsheviki Spirit and History

Some day the finger of history will point out the truth concerning the Boylsheviki of Russia and the tremendous significance of that movement. Nor need the time be long postponed, for the essential features of the Maximalist Revolution stand out in bold relief on the darkened horizon of Russia, all wilful and malicious press disfigurement notwithstanding.

A brief synopsis of recent Russian events may clear the view.

The dethronement of the Tsar and his clique came over night, and almost bloodlessly. The most powerful and feared autocrat of the world passed like a shadow, leaving hardly a trace of his existence. The régime of brutality and slavery had thoroughly undermined its own foundation, and the intensive revolutionary propaganda finally swept away the tottering pillars. A puff, and the whole structure was gone.

But the Constitutional Democrats, risen to power, had absolutely nothing to offer to the people. Representing the upper end middle business classes -the Russian bourgeoisie -the only raison d'être the cadets had, politically, was the protection of the interests of the landowners and commercial elements. Aside of paper constitutions and hollow "reforms" they could afford no relief to long-suffering Russia. But the people, the great proletariat of field and factory, was clamoring for the fruit of the Tsar's fall. It demanded Land and Well-being. The Cadets could not serve two masters, as no one can. The political representatives of Russian capitalism, they could not satisfy the need of the masses. The Cadets had to go.

The Kerensky government realized the situation. It knew that the people must have something more concrete than "Liberty" blazoned from the Winter Palace. Kerensky, the social revolutionist, began with a drastic measure -the famous Military Order No. 1, proclaiming the equality of soldiers and officers as common tovarishchi (comrades) of the Revolution. Differences in rank were virtually abolished, the soldier was not required to salute his officers, and the rank and file organized their own committees which chose officers for command. This endeared Kerensky to the army. It was the outward symbol of real Liberty to come, the first significant gesture of the Social Revolution. And Kerensky felt safe in the saddle.

But "gestures" alone, however revolutionary and unique, could not long still the passionate hunger for Land and Well-being. Nor could the most eloquent speeches of Kerensky and Co. The soldier-peasant took him at his word, literally, with the peasant's splendid naivity. He had real liberty this time, he was told. Liberty meant to him Land, and by the hundred thousand soldiers dropped their guns, and went back, peaceful and happy peasants, to the land, their land at last.

"Why, indeed, continue to fight," the soldier-peasant argued. "It's the Tsar's war, and now we're rid of him and his brood. Let's go home, then."

He did, almost two millions of them.

Kerensky faced a profound dilemma. The people -the city workers and the peasants -demanded the immediate solution of most vital problems: the redistribution of the land, the confiscation of royal, ducal, church, etc., property, and the arrangement of economic and industrial life according to the program of the Social Revolutionary Party, the program propagated by Kerensky for many years.

Gigantic as the task was, it was neither impossible nor impracticable. The bulk of the country expected it; nay, demanded it. The people were ready for it. It was a job for a strong man. But Kerensky, the Hamlet nature, vaccillated between the Social Revolution and the middle classes. He sought to compromise with the latter by inviting Cadets into his Cabinet, and ended by compromising the Revolution.

The Boylsheviki alone have the faith and the strength of actually putting the program of the Social Revolution into operation. All the revolutionary parties of Russia have preached it -the Social Democrats and the Social Revolutionists, the Bundists, Anarchists, Syndicalists and Internationalists. The Boylsheviki are of all these parties, though mainly of the Social Revolutionists and Social Democrats. Their practical program has been repeatedly stated in the writings and speeches of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and other Maximalists. They are clearly formulated in a pamphlet by Lenin, published some time ago, under the title "Political Parties and the Problem of the Proletariat."

Were the American correspondents in Russia not so densely ignorant of Russian conditions, not so superficial and bourgeois minded, the American press would not teem with the infamous lies and downright forgeries masquerading as "Petrograd news." There could be no more insidious poisoning of the public mind, and conscious falsification of history, than the persistent insinuation and even direct charge that Lenin is an agent of Prussia and the Boylsheviki movement the result of German propaganda. The "special correspondents," male and female, that set afloat and propagate these poison gases will be branded by true history as the usual type of mental prostitutes so prevalent in capitalist journalism.

In the work of Lenin referred to, the demands of the Maximalists -properly the Social Democratic Labor Party, were clearly set forth. They comprised:

(a) A democratic Republic managed by the Sovieti (Councils) of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies.

(b) Convocation of the Constitutional assembly at the earliest possible time.

(c) Opposition to all wars waged in the interests of international commerce and exploitation.

(d) Speedy general peace. No indemnities and no annexation. Abolition of all secret treaties. The peoples themselves, through chosen representatives, to hold conferences and make inter-nation agreements.

(e) Return of the land to the peasant population, according to need and actual working ability.

(f) Control of industries by the proletariat.

(g) The formation of an International in all countries for the complete abolition of all monarchies and capitallism, and the establishment of international brotherhood.

The Boylsheviki are now in power in Russia. It is to be expected, of course, that all the conservative and reactionary elements will combine against them. For the program and the will to do of the Boylsheviki threaten every vested interest, every established and prosperous wrong.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the Boylsheviki revolution, the raising of the Maximalist banner is itself the greatest and grandest event of these eventful days. The unbiased and clear-sighted future historian will hail it as the most significant phase of the Russian Revolution, the most inspiring moment of our whole civilization. It is rich with the promise of a true Social Revolution, the first joyous glimpse of which shall nevermore permit the people of Russia to bow to autocracy and capitalism.

Truly has Trotsky said that the Russian Revolution is continuous, permanent, till Liberty, Land and Well-being are in fact the heritage of the people.

Reflections

The New York Public recently published a very thoughtful essay by David Starr Jordan, on "The Scheme of Pan-Germany." The Pan-German League, made up of the Junker land-holding nobility, iron manufacturers, military leaders, some intellectuals, etc., Professor Jordan correctly characterizes as the chief promoter of the World War and the chief obstacle to World Peace. In the course of the article we meet this significant passage: "The current of feeling against these 'murderers of the state' (to use the words of a German editor) rises higher and higher in Germany as throughout the civilized world. But only the Germans themselves can suppress Pan-Germanism." (Italics are ours).

Ever since the war started, we -the Anarchist internationalists -have been arguing that democracy cannot be shot into people with bullets. We are glad that Professor Jordan, and many others with him, no doubt, have at last realized this. But only if the Germans themselves can suppress Pan-Germanism, Junkerism and autocracy, where, then, is the sense of continuing the war?

They say that war means misery and pauperization, heartaches and death. But certain statistics do not seem to substantiate this notion.

For instance, in the year preceding the beginning of the war, the Steel Trust had a clear profit of the comfortable sum of about $85,000,000. But that is a mere bagatelle compared with present "earnings." The first nine months of 1917 have netted the Steel Trust, over and above all expenditures, just $380,000,000.

The Steel Trust is only e pluribus unum. And surely no one but a maniac would expect the profiteers to kill the goose that lays such golden eggs. No, indeed; they are too good patriots to stand for such treasonable talk.

As we go to press, the news comes of the indictment against the Masses group. It was to be expected that the growing reaction would not stop with the mere suppression of radical publications, but that it will also reach out for the men and women who speak through the published medium. Were it not for this fact, we should feel deeply sorry to have been a contributory cause to the trouble of the Masses.

To speak a sympathetic work for Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman is now considered a crime. But, then, almost anything that shows independent thinking and kindly feeling is criminal in our days.

Frank Little, a crippled strike leader, taken out of bed in the dead of night and lynched by corporation gunmen in Utah, U.S.A.

President Wilson a few days later proclaims that America must crush barbarism in Prussia.

Dr. Bigelow kidnapped and whipped by vigilantes in Kentucky, U.S.A., for a speech he was about to deliver.

The President issues his Thanksgiving Proclamation, calling upon the people of America to be thankful for the privileges and liberties they enjoy.

Seventeen men -some of them members of the I.W.W. -beaten, tarred and feathered in Tulsa, Okla., and driven half-naked and bleeding into the brush.

Will Washington now issue another proclamation to carry the blessings of American civilization into Germany?

Two prisoners in the cell adjoining mine were having a heated argument.

"Bloody well you know," the Britisher was shouting, "there are things about England much superior to your country."

"T' hell you say!" the Bowery boy retorted.

"You see," the Britisher persisted, "Britain is a monarchy, and you can shame the king into decency, but a democracy has no king and no one to shame."

"Whatcher mean, you pudd'nhead?"

"You see, there is that hunger striker, Alice Paul, in jail in Washington. We in the monarchy didn't let them die. We turned them loose, and, guilty of arson, too, they were. But you people will let her croak, for nothing, too; just carried a banner. Get the point, m'boy?"

There was no reply. We could hear distinctly the muffled steps of the approaching guard.

Why does the superstition persist that we are ruled by majority will, in spite of all the facts to the contrary? To take an illustration of recent events:

Judge Hylan has been elected Mayor of New York City by about 250,000 voters. The population of the city is over five millions, but they will be ruled by a man who is the choice of only one-twentieth part of the inhabitants of New York. Is that majority rule?

Even if we consider only the voting population, then we will also find that the next mayor is not the choice of the majority. The total of ballots cast for Hillquit, Mitchel and Bennett was far greater than the vote in favor of Hylan.

Where, then, does "majority rule" come in? It is a myth.

Samuel Gompers knows that a concerted attack is to be made upon his "policies" at the Buffalo Convention of the American Federation of Labor. He knows and evidently fears it. His betrayal of the workers will be exposed, and his throne might be rudely shaken. But Sammy has learned something by his association with the military men on the War Board. Camouflage is a useful thing on the field of battle -why not also in the A.F. of L. Convention?

Saving thought! Let's get the President of the United States to address the delegates and furnish a fresh luster on the tarnished Labor Czar.

Free Speech

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.

Let him duly realize the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself -that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency -is a trait of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes, and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may.

It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of the time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future, and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelesxsly let die. Not as adventitiousness, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter.

Knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world, knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at -well; if not -well also; though not so well. -Herbert Spencer.

Chicago, 1887 -San Francisco, 1917

Read this short chapter on two tragic events in the American labor movement, and then consider whether there is any reason to maintain that real justice has made any headway in this country. Do this in memory of August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolf Fischer, George Engel, who died like heroes on the gallows on the 11th of November, 1887; and of Louis Lingg, who committed suicide in his cell shortly before he was to be led to his death. Also do not forget Tom Mooney, now in prison, under sentence of death, and Warren K. Billings, condemned to life imprisonment. The same sinister forces that demanded the blood of Parsons and his comrades are now at work also in San Francisco, demanding the blood of Tom and Rena Mooney, Weinberg, Billings, Nolan, and Berkman.

On May 4th, 1886, a meeting took place at the Haymarket in Chicago for the purpose of protesting against brutal police assaults upon striking workingmen and their meetings. The assembly was peaceful, and Mayor Harrison, after listening to several speakers, told Police Captain Bonfield to order his reserves to go home. Towards the close of the meeting, when Fielden was speaking, a force of about 180 policemen appeared on the scene in quick step and fighting formation. They made ready for attack, when suddenly a fiery something flew through the air, alighted amongst the police, and exploded. One policeman, E.J. Degan, was killed outright, seven died later, and about fifty received injuries. The few hundred people remaining on the square fled in all directions, pursued by the firing police.

The speakers of the meeting were arrested, except Albert Parsons, who had left Chicago. He presented himself to the court later, when the trial started and danger was near. A reign of white terror began. Labor papers were suppressed, printing plants demolished, spokesmen of the toilers imprisoned for no other reason than that they helped the workingmen to better their conditions. The big daily papers convicted the prisoners on the charge of murder before the trial had even begun.

Who threw the bomb no one knows to this day. The authorities of Chicago did not bother much about that. What they were after was the seizure, conviction and hanging of those labor agitators whom Big Business considered dangerous to its exploitation privileges. The Grand Jury on May 17th indicted August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, Adolph Fischer, Geo. Engel, Neebe, Schnaubelt, and Seliger for murder. Schnaubelt could not be found and Seliger turned informer against his former comrades. About 1,000 persons were examined for the jury, of which number not half a dozen belonged to the working class. Most of the prospective jurors declared they had a prejudice against anarchists, communists, and socialists; but according to Judge Gary, who presided, that was no cause to exclude them from the jury.

Later, in an affidavit included in a motion for a new trial, it was sworn that the official bailiff, Henry Rice, had said to well-known men in Chicago that "he was managing the case and that he knew what he was about; that those fellows should hang as sure as hell, and that he was only summoning such men as jurors as would not be acceptable to the defendants."

The most important witnesses for the State were Waller, Schrader and Seliger, all former comrades of the prisoners, now turned informers from fear of the gallows or hope of gain promised them by the police. The testimony of this trio was highly suspicious and very flimsy. The police had in some cases to admit payments of moneys to the witnesses. They contradicted each other in a compromising way, and disappointed even the prosecution by their hesitation and confusion. It was clear the State could not prove that the accused had instigated or advised or even known of the bomb throwing. But they had committed a crime that was in the eyes of the rich and influential people worse than bomb throwing. They had written and spoken against the tyranny of capital and State against exploitation and suppression. That was the real issue.

On the 20th of August the eight accused men were condemned, seven of them to die on the gallows, and Oscar Neebe to be sent to the penitentiary for fifteen years. The sentence against Schwab and Fielden was commuted to life imprisonment.

In the name of the law, murder had been committed. A few years after the crime had been consummated, the Chicago Herald, after investigation, published some interesting data. About three hundred leading American capitalists had met secretly to plan the destruction of Anarchy. They formed themselves into The Citizens' Association, and subscribed $100,000 in a short time. A like sum, it was stated, was guaranteed to the police and their agents every year, but some years later, about 1892, the payments stopped.

The wrongs and legal lynchings committed in this infamous trial against the Chicago Anarchists, the Governor of Illinois, John P. Altgelt, summed up and set forth when he made public his reasons for setting free Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe in the year 1893. In this document the mask was torn off the face of capitalistic justice, showing how pliable it is in the hands of those classes of society that accumulate power and wealth out of the labor and the misery of the masses.

If one changed the names, dates, and location one might just as well use the foregoing short account of the corrupt methods used in the Haymarket trial for the characterization of the shameful proceedings that have been carried on in the Preparedness Parade bomb case. But now the rich and influential people are better organized. Their organization in San Francisco is called the Chamber of Commerce. They did not start out with a measly $100,000 to lure on graft, bribery, and perjury. They were ready to sacrifice a whole $1,000,000 for that noble purpose. Also it may be said that the prosecution in the San Francisco cases excels the Grinnels and Bonfields of Chicago in the fine art of lying and conspiring to murder innocent workers. But these are only external dissimilarities. In principle both cases are alike. A bomb explosion, the perpetrator of which is not known, is made the excuse for murder charges against labor agitators obnoxious to Big Business, by using every form of deception and dastardly scheme to have them hanged.

But in Chicago these murderous schemes became known too late. The victims of a prostituted justice lay buried in their graves for years. It is different in San Francisco. There deception and corruption stare in the face of everyone who cares to look. The whole construction of the frame-up crumbles piece by piece, and Labor is aroused to the terrible conspiracy. The hope may be expressed that Tom and Rena Mooney, Billings and Weinberg, Nolan and Berkman may yet be torn out of the cluches of the legal murderers, to live and work with us for many years to come.

Mother Earth Bulletin February 1919 (Vol 1 N5)

VOL 1.           FEBRUARY, 1919, NEW YORK           NO. 5.

On The Way to Golgatha

February 6, 1918.

Dear Faithful Friends:

      How many have gone the way to Golgatha, and how many will yet have to go? Only Time, the Great Redeemer of all who are made to suffer for their ideals, can tell. Time hangs heavily an those who cherish great hope, but it moves with surprising swiftness and far beyond our fondest dreams.

      Russia stands a glowing proof of that. In 1905 the Tsar's troops drenched the streets of Petrograd and other cities with the blood of the Revolutionists. In 1917 the revolutionary troops, more humane than those who did the butchery, drove the Tsar out of Russia.

      This thought came to my mind when I was being dashed up Fifth Avenue in a police patrol automobile to the Pennsylvania Station on Monday, February 5th.

      The Avenue and streets were lined with a curious mob, awaiting the parade of the soldiers from Camp Upton. Like the soldiers of the Tsar before 1905 who saw in every revolutionist an enemy to their country, the American soldiers would have greeted me with scorn and jeers and at the command of their Tsar would have taken my life in the ignorant belief that they were saving their country from a dangerous enemy.

      Will Time do for America what it has done for Russia? Will her soldiers some day make common cause with her people? Who can say what the future will bring?

      The idealist may not be a prophet, but he nevertheless knows that the future will bring change, and knowing he lives for the future he is given infinite strength to support the present.

      So I, too, Dear Friend, will be strengthened while in prison by the passionate belief in the future, by the hope that the two years taken out of my life may help to quicken the great events Time has in store for the human race. With that as my guiding star, confinement, convict's clothes and the other indignities the guilty conscience of society heaps upon those it dares not face, mean no hardship.

      You will want to help me while I am in prison, I know. You can do so in various ways. First, take care of my love child, Mother Earth Bulletin. I leave her to your sympathetic care. I know that you will look after her tenderly, so that I may find her bigger, stronger and more worth while when I return from Jefferson. Secondly, spread my Boylsheviki pamphlet in tribute to their great courage and marvelous vision and for the enlightenment of the American people. Thirdly, join the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners which is working for the release of all Political Prisoners. And finally, write to Berkman and myself. Always address us as Political Prisoners. Always sign your full name.

      Good-bye, dear friends, but not for long -- if the spirit of the Boylsheviki prevails.

      Long live the Boylsheviki! May their flames spread over the world and redeem humanity from its bondage!

Affectionately,                                          

EMMA GOLDMAN,                        

U. S. Political Prisoner,                

Jefferson Prison,            

Jefferson City, Mo.        

EMMA GOLDMAN

Publisher and Editor

Office: 4 Jones Street, Now York City. Telephone, Spring 8711

10c a copy                                                                                                 $1 a year

Gone to Jail

Harry Weinberger

    Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have gone to jail. The struggle in the courts for eight months not only for Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman but for all conscientious objectors, for all who demand the right of liberty, of free speech and press, even in time of war, all of which was involved in the case, is ended as far as the courts are concerned, for the United States Supreme Court has spoken.

    Men and women in America are going to jail for having ideals and consciences and for expressing their opinions for terms longer than they gave in Russia for the same offenses under the Tsar. And always the plea is "necessity of War". History shows that the plea is always some "necessity" to prevent human thought and progress.

    Governments never seem to know what to do with idealists except put them in jail or kill them. Compulsion, always compulsion, or else conformity to the opinion of the masses or the opinion of those having governing power. Will civilization ever learn to do without jails, as we have learned to do without the ducking-school for heresy?

    They took Emma Goldman from the Tombs to the Pennsylvania station in a patrol wagon. The offer of a taxicab for Miss Goldman and the officers was refused by the U. S. Marshal McCarthy. Justice, I presume, is symbolized by a patrol wagon. Being gentlemen, with the belief that insult need not be added to punishment, is perhaps too much for the public officials charged with carrying out the letter of the law. The mills of justice grind slowly, but, it is said, they grind exceedingly small. That is no reason why the mills should be small and the miners smaller.

    Every generation thinks that what it does is absolutely right. But the study of history should give us pause in the belief that we are infallible. The fate of men like John Brown should make us hesitate to absolutely condemn. Idealists can only understand idealists. Have we in America ceased to be a people of ideals? Can we not be patient with those we do not agree? Can we not understand even that some people believe in the principles preached about 1900 years ago?

    With true ideals the human race can reach real heights, without them it creeps along with wars and prisons, death and disease, and without hope. Idealism has blasted more institutions and done more for the betterment of humanity than any or all inventions of mankind. But we learn so slowly. Well does Don Marquis write in his poem "The Wages"

    Earth loves to gibber o'er her dross

        Her golden souls, to waste;

    The cup she fills for her god-men

        Is a bitter cup to taste.

    Who sets he gyves that bind mankind

        And strives to strike them off.

    Shall gain the hissing hate of fools,

        Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.

    Who storms the moss-grown walls of old

        And beats some falsehood down

    Shall pass the pallid gates of death

        Sans laurel, love or crown;

    For him who fain would teach the world

        The world holds hate in fee--

    For Socrates, the hemlock cup;

        For Christ Gethsemane.

Reflections

    The New York Times, apparently with great moral satisfaction, reprints an article from the Sacramento Bee about the Mooney case, the writer of which must nearly have burst with poisonous gas when he composed it. His wrath is especially aroused by the fact that the Mooney case has become an international issue, and that the commission appointed by the President to investigate the crooked methods of Fickert & Co., instead of helping to deliver Tom Mooney and the others to the gallows, published a report, based upon facts, in favor of a new trial.

    The author of the article who must have studied the psychology and morals of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce diligently writes on this score:

    "In fact, the one 'gigantic frame up' in this whole matter has been the international 'frame up' for this professional dynamiter."

    Not the tiniest shred of evidence is offered to prove that Mooney and the other defendants planted the preparedness parade bomb. The reader has to be satisfied with the again and again repeated epithet 'professional dynamiter.' And not one word is said about the activities of the notorious Oxman or about the fact that the chief witnesses who testified against Mooney and his friends have since signed sworn affidavits that they lied and perjured themselves under the pressure of threats, bribery offers and promises emanating in great abundance from the district attorney's office.

    All these ugly features of the case which furnish only too convincing root that the frame-up exists and that it is one of the most reckless and infamous attacks upon justice ever made by corrupt officials, the writer of the Bee shoves away in the manner of Dickens' Mr. Podsnap.

    But the workers of America and Europe understand the terrible situation Mooney and the others have been placed in. And they will continue to raise their voices and to demand that justice must interfere before it is too late.

*     *     *

    The Boylsheviki consolidate their power in the wisest way possible. They don't care so much for nice dipomatic talk and agreements, but emphasize again and again the necessity of revolutionising society from the bottom up, not only in Russia but in all countries. To establish conditions that make the further existence of slave and master, of exploited and exploiters impossible is their grand aim.

    The spirit in which they conduct the fight for international brotherhood and well-being expresses itself in a recent speech of Lenine, from which a few significant sentences, read:

    "We have taken the land to give it to the poor peasants. External war is finished or is being finished now, internal war begins, but not a war with arms. This is an economic war. The masses must take back what has been stolen from them. Do not let the rich peasants or exploiters get the agricultural implements. Pit ten poor peasants against every rich one. The police are dead and buried, and the masses must take affairs in their own hands."

    Very likely the big American dailies express on the sly their profound abhorrence of such doctrine, when they write that It is so awfully hard to understand the philosophy of Boylshevikism.

*     *     *

    While the government insists that the President declared war upon Germany in order to save liberty and democracy more and more voices even from the camps of law and order are heard to the effect that liberty and democracy are the very principles which are most endangered by the warring government.

    Quotations from recent newspaper articles criticizing the Overman bill which, if passed, would clothe the President with unexcelled autocratic power, indicate that the "reds" are not the only ones who discover more than one hair in the soup.

    In the Boston Transcript we read:

    "The enactment by the Congress of the President's bill, as it was introduced by Senator Overman and referred to the Committee on judiciary, of which he is Chairman, would overthrow "Government of the people. by the people, for the people," and set up in its place government of the President, by the President, for the President."

    The Detroit News says:

    "In the plain language of unvarnished truth the President asks to be made dictator for the period of the war and a year thereafter. The bill he has sent to Congress will bear no other interpretation. It makes him absolute."

    The Evening Telegram, Portland, Ore., remarks:

    "It would create an autocracy never contemplated by the American people as a war measure."

    And the Pittsburg Gazette has this to say:

    "President Wilson, already wielding more authority than any ruler on earth, would have Congress by deliberate act strip itself of supervisory authority and make the Executive supreme dictator, virtually responsible to no one."

    From the Indianapolis Star:

    "The bill invites such executive despotism as we have not seen even in Prussia."

    None of the newspapers quoted have been suppressed or the writers imprisoned for seditious utterances.

    Pro-government papers In Germany denounce the general strike of the workers in the big munition factories of the empire an the outcome of a propaganda by wicked foreigners. That's an old out-worn trick not only in autocratic Germany but in bourgeois republics as well.

    The revolution of 1848 in Germany was the real genuine German article, the garrulous, educated German philistine being in the lead. Still the custodian of Wilhelm's castle in Berlin, probably to this very day, shows a stone to the visitor, explaining that it was thrown through a window of the castle during that uprising "which was brought about by Poles, Jews and Frenchmen."

    This time, however, there is some truth in the matter. In all countries the invigorating influence of the Russian Revolution is strongly felt. The foreigners who are partly responsible for the general strikes in Austria and Germany are the Boylsheviki.

*     *     *

    A wholesale indictment against 55 followers of the I. W. W. was returned on February 8th by the federal grand jury of Sacramento, Cal. This will probably increase the number of persons to over 200 who are indicted all through the country in connection with the raid on the I. W. W. headquarters and the arrest of Wm. D. Haywood and other spokesmen of the organization. The labor organization with an independent and militant spirit must be crushed, but coddled and praised to the spies must be the Gompers gang who sells the workers like serfs to the ruling classes to work for their further enrichment.

*     *     *

    Under the bloody sceptre of Mars those famous guarantees for the free expression of thought and opinions have become so sickly and enfeebled everywhere that they cannot stand the mildest test any move. A cast in evidence is that of the English anti-war philosopher Bertrand Bussell. He has been sentenced by a magistrate in London to serve six months in prison for a statement made by him in "The Tribunal." What he wrote was in the opinion of the court "likely to prejudice Great Britain's relations with the United States." The paragraph in question reads as follows:

    "The American Garrison, which by that time will be occupying England and France, whether or not they prove efficient against the Germans will no doubt be capable of intimidating strikers, an occupation to which the American army is accustomed at home!'

    In writing this Bertrand Russell may have had in mind a report published soon after the time when the first American troops had landed in France. In effect this report said that American soldiers had proved helpful and efficient in quelling a strike of the French railroad workers.

The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners

Its Purpose and Programme

By Emma Goldman

    In 1901 Peter Kropotkin, on his visit to America, addressed a letter to Alexander Berkman, then in Western Penitentiary, "Political Prisoner". The warden erased the title and wrote across the envelope: "No political prisoners in a Democracy."

    That a prison warden should not know that Democracy, like autocracy, creates political opposition need not surprise us. Besides there were few political offenders in America in 1901. To be sure, John Brown and Mrs. Surrat were political offenders, so were the Chicago Anarchists, but they had been put out of the way. Those who were sent to prison were isolated and then forgotten.

    Since 1901, and especially since the war, every city has contributed its share of men and women who have been sent to prison for periods of thirty days to forty-five years for their political opinions. But even to this day America refuses to recognize the existence of political Prisoners.

    When the women pickets were forcibly fed in Washington jail, they were told by a gentleman from Congress that if they would stop hunger striking, they would be given all the privileges of political Prisoners but would not be recognized as such, for that would automatically establish a political status which a Democracy could not tolerate. So for Democracy's sake men and women, guilty of the great crime of holding non-conformist views on social and political questions, are given outrageous sentences and are treated as common felons.

    Nothing like this condition exists anywhere in the civilized world. Even under the auto cratic rule of the Tsar distinction was made between the political and common offender. Imperialistic Germany distinguishes between the political prisoner and the so-called criminal. France and all the Latin countries were the first to recognize the distinction.

    From time to time political prisoners are released in these countries by the declaration of General Amnesty. In fact in Italy and Spain Political prisoners who are elected to office, even while serving their sentences, are immediately released. Even England grants political Amnesty. The Sinn Feiners who had been sentenced to death and later had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment are now free through the declaration of a political amnesty.

    Only Democracy has so far refused to face the fact that those opposed to war, or conscription, those who under no circumstance would raise a gun against their brothers, those who for social and economic reasons cannot subscribe to militarism -- that these men and women are not common felons but people of deep conviction. They have learned from history that institutions which have outgrown human need are subject to change and that the change can only be worth while if it is fundamental and from the bottom up.

    Now, this may not be pleasant to the powers that be, but they must nevertheless learn to draw the distinction between men and women of ideals, the forerunners of the future, and the unfortunate victims who are forced by an iniquitous social system into crime.

    The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners has been organized to perform a much needed function. The League declares its purpose as:

    1. To educate the public to the fundamental distinction between Political offenses and common crime.

    2. To work for the recognition in the United State of the status of political offenders.

    3. To crystallize public sentiment in this matter to that it can be made a subject for representation at the General Peace Conference.

    4. To obtain the release of all political off offenders through a general amnesty as soon as peace is declared.

    No doubt a few well-known people may be released when peace is declared. What is to become of those who are unknown and have neither friends not money? Are they to rot in prison to the end of their terms for something which is the direct consequence of the war? That is exactly what will happen unless a campaign is begun and a powerful opinion created which will insist upon amnesty as one of the urgent demands at the peace parleys.

    The League, then, can become not only of national importance, but of international scope in view of the fact that most political prisoners in America are from Russia and Italy. Certainly Russia will demand an amnesty for her citizens in America. She is already demanding that. The other countries will follow.

    As a very interesting sidelight, it is well to call attention to the fact that one of the demands made by the strikers in Germany was: IMMEDIATE GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. Thus do the German workers under imperialism demand even more than we do. We only ask for amnesty as soon as peace is declared. Little enough!

    The method the League will pursue is as follows:

    1. Headquarters will be established in New York. The work to be sustained by dues, contributions, subscriptions. through meetings and social affairs.

    2. The League will organize branches in every city. These branches will contribute to the general work and provide for its local needs.

    3. The League will receive from each local group and compile the number, names and terms of sentence of politicals in prisons in each city with a view of establishing an exact census of those who will benefit by the amnesty.

    4. The League will correspond with prisoners and assist them in every way possible while they are in prison.

    5. The League will carry on an educational campaign through literature and meetings with the assistance of labor, and other organizations, with the purpose of bringing public sentiment to bear upon Washington for the amnesty.

    To sum up: The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners, the first of its kind in America, comes to do a great and urgent work. It aims to become the hope and sustenance of all those who for the sake of their ideas are now confined in every state and federal prison and who must be freed. For further information write to Miss M. E. Fitzgerald, Secretary. Send your contributions to Leonard D. Abbott of the Financial Committee of the League.

    Address all communications to

MISS M. E. FITZGERALD

32 Union Square,         New York.

Room 708.

Book Review

The Boylsheviki and World Peace

By Leon Trotsky

Boni and Liveright, New York ($1.50)

    The book for which Mr. Lincoln Steffens wrote an introducion, who, since his return from Russia, has done much to spread light upon the subject, should prove full of valuable instruction and data for those who "cannot understand the Boylsheviki mind." A title which would read somewhat like this: The Downfall of the International and how to rebuild it, would be more appropriate to the contents of the book, the chapters of which were written when Trotsky was still the propagandist of the Social Revolution, expelled by the governments and traveling from country to country spreading his principles.

    International understanding and solidarity in action of the workers of all countries is to Trotsky and also to us the only possible solid foundation for world peace. Capitalism and government on the other hand are related to war like cause and effect. To talk about the possibility of world peace under capitalist rule is like talking about cholera as the best foundation for human health. Trotsky. it is true, has in his capacity as a representative of the Russian Revolution (only outside of Russia he is spoken of as "minister") negotiated on the war with delegates of capitalist governments, but to be sure he did that chiefly for the purpose of gaining greater momentum for the International Social Revolution. The German and Austrian governments may soon find out, now that according to reports peace has been established between Russia and Germany, that a "peaceful" revolutionary Russia is a much more formidable enemy to imperialism and capitalism than belligerent Tsarism could ever have been.

    Strongly Marxian as the author of this book is, he could not altogether avoid noticing that it was just the old fatalistic doctrine of Marxism that could be used so readily by the Social Democratic parties of all countries to hide their ever increasing degeneration from revolutionary socialism to an opportunistic policy. He himself describes this process of degeneration and disintegration very vividly in the case of German Social Democracy, the chief leaders of which were always particularly keen to maintain that they were not willing to give up one iota of the Marxian theory. To-day when we look at Trotsky and his revolutionary activity, he impresses us as being spiritually more related to Michael Bakunin than to Karl Marx.

Rochester Visit

    I have but one regret about having to go to prison now. It is that my work in presenting the truth about the Boylsheviki before American audiences has been cut short. The large attendance in each of the few cities I visited was sufficient indication of the awakened interest in the marvelous people of Russia who are compelling attention the world over. Even my "home town," Rochester, turned out in full force.

    The first evening it seemed that the meeting would not take place. A miserable detective, who had not yet forgotten his defeat after arresting Dr. Reitman on the charge of having in his possession a birth control pamphlet, evidently wanted to get revenge. So he reported that a meeting was scheduled to the Fuel Administrator. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was to open, and with nearly a thousand people present, I was notified of the detective's action.

    A long argument with the Fuel Administrator over the telephone finally induced the man to permit the meeting to go on, in view of the fact that the hall had been heated and that the war for Democracy had already sustained the loss.

    As in Chicago and Detroit, my Rochester audience responded most enthusiastically to "The Truth About the Boylsheviki." The following evening brought a large gathering to the lecture on "Women Martyrs in Russia."

    The two meetings have special significance because they were arranged by a few girls who work in shops all day and devoted their evenings to their labor of love.

    Rose and Sara Cominsky, Fanny Rosenthal, the Mink sisters, Anna Drexler, Yetta Brenner -- ardent, devoted and zealous, they are the material from which the American Boylsheviki will come. A few of our Italian Comrades helped with the literature, and our good friend Mr. Howser showed his courage by presiding at the meetings.

    A tour through the country would have been a veritable triumph. Perhaps that explains the great hurry on the part of Washington to send us away even before the customary thirty days' "grace."

    I take solace now in the fact that the work has been started. Elsewhere in this issue you will see an outline of our plans. The League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners promises to become one of the most important organizations in America. Lend it your support. Do what you can to spread my newly published pamphlet, "The Truth About the Boylsheviki." Single copies or large quantities can be obtained from us.

    You can also help to maintain our work by ordering books from our new bookshop. We have opened, in connection with our new office, a shop where we will sell radical or any other books or pamphlets you may require. Communicate by mail with us and your order will be filled without delay.

To the Organized Workers of San Francisco

    On Saturday list the Western newspapers were full of the story of the findings of the Presidential Commission sent to investigate the trials of Thomas J. Mooney and others, in whose cases there took place one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice that ever cursed this American Continent.

    That report conclusively found that the officials entrusted with the administration of justice in San Francisco, had prostituted it in the service of the labor-hating corporations and the Chamber of Commerce. And it has established beyond all doubt, that District Attorney Fickert, in spite of his re-election on December 18th, had been guilty of criminal malfeasance in office.

    But the same gang that was interested in the conviction of Thomas J. Mooney by every possible method, including perjury, was most vitally interested in his re-election in December last. And it is a matter of common knowledge, both in San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as a fact perfectly well-known to Governor Stephens and to the Federal officials in California, that the explosion at the Governor's mansion was the work of Fickert's friends, and was done with the sole purpose of securing his re-election.

    To cover up their flagrant misdeeds, it was absolutely necessary that the gang should find a new goat. And as in San Francisco, they were already on the point of being shown up in their frame-up on Mooney, it was imperative that they should look elsewhere. That elsewhere was not hard to find, for in Sacramento there was a kindred gang that was desperately anxious to break up the local branch of that greatest modern national scapegoat, the I. W. W.

    Both gangs jumped with joy. "The I. W. W. The very thing!" And at once they started a press campaign to blame the explosion on the I. W. W. in spite of the fact that the evidence pointed and still points in the direction of Fickert's friends, and was done with the purpose of influencing his re-election. They succeeded however, in holding sixty-five members of the I. W. W. by forcing the hand of the California Federals, who after investigating had found them absolutely clear of all share in the explosion.

    But the official in direct charge of these prosecutions is so much at his wit's end to find any foundation for a case, that he has to resort to tricks of the most despicable meanness to prejudice the minds of the Grand jury and the public. And by his circulation of unfounded and utterly false press statements, he tends to reduce the Federal Government to the level of the same ghastly indecency that the findings of the Commission so bitingly scores in the Fickertian conduct of the Bomb cases in San Francisco.

    We call your attention to the two sets of facts and the close connection between them; and if we are fortunate enough to secure your personal interest, we will keep you supplied with the latest developments.

        CALIFORNIA DISTRICT DEFENSE

                COMMITTEE I. W. W.,

                        95 Third Street,

                                                San Francisco, Cal.

*     *     *

    As this issue goes to press, announcement comes from San Francisco that the life of Israel Weinberg will be placed in jeopardy for the second time on charges growing out of the Preparedness Day Parade bomb explosion. At the first trial it required but one ballot for the jury to declare his innocence. But the Chamber of Commerce is persistent, and, regardless of the decisions of court and jury, will bend every effort to carry out its lynch program against labor.

*     *     *

Alexander Berkman -- Emma Goldman,

Tombs Prison, New York.

    Your Chicago comrades gather at the Workers' Institute Ball and unite in sending love and greetings. The Revolutionary and Boylsheviki movement will go on during your stay in Atlanta and Jefferson City, The workers are spurred on to greater activity.

NATHANSON, KRUPNIC, GRUBER JUDIN, COHN, REITMAN.

Report of the Russian Convention

    The First United Russian Convention in America was held in New York on February 1-4. The convention was called for the purpose of uniting the Russian colony and, mainly, its toiling elements. It may be said that this purpose was accomplished.

    The convention was attended by over 160 delegates who represented different Russian organizations existing in America. There were delegates from Eastern States, from the Middle West, from the West and also from Canada. In some cities mass-meetings were held, which elected delegates to the convention. The convention thus represented not only organizations, but also the unorganized masses.

    The convention was non-partisan. The different currents of Russian socialist and revolutionary thought were represented there, but there were also a quite considerable number of non-partisan delegates.

    The convention was dominated by a revolutionary spirit. By a vast majority the policies of the Russian Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies and of the Government of People's Commissaries were endorsed.

    The following questions attracted the general attention of the convention: the form of the organization of the Russian colony, the attitude toward the present official "representatives" of Russia in the United States, and the attitude toward the draft. It was decided to organize Councils, which will take up the task of serving the interests and needs of the Russian Labor Colony. The activity of the Russian embassy, of the consuls and of the heads of the Russian Supply Commission was condemned as directed against the interests of new Russia. It was decided to request the Russian Councils and People's Commissaries to remove the present official "representatives" of Russia in the United States, because they really represent nobody but themselves. It was also decided to ask the People's Commissaries to replace the embassy and the consulates by organs which would express the real will and aspirations of the revolutionary people of Russia.

    Among the resolutions passed were the following:

    1. A demand that Russian citizens among whom are Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Louis Kramer and Morris Becker, convicted for political offenses in America to imprisonment and deportation should be released immediately and sent to Russia.

    2. A demand that all ports be opened to political exiles from Russia, and that passports should be supplied to all Russian citizens who desire to return, and that the Russian consulates in America provide transportation for such exiles.

    At the close of the convention it was decided to send telegrams of greeting and assurance of solidarity to Alexander Bertman and Emma Goldman to their respective prisons, voicing the determination of the delegates that no effort would be lost in gaining for them their liberty.

    Will you help maintain the BULLETIN while we are in prison, and at the same time aid the propaganda?

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UNDER FIRE by Henri Barbusse The greatest book written on the world catastrophe by an actual participant.
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$1.50 Price ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS by Emma Goldman Most timely especially at this moment when the government is breaking down and current history is vindicating Anarchist ideas.

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The Boylsheviki Have Come to Challenge the World


THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BOYLSHEVIKI
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A compelling analysis of the historic background, the aims and aspirations of the Boylsheviki
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