Libro N° 9789. Anarquismo Y Otros Ensayos. Goldman, Emma.

 

© Libro N° 9789. Anarquismo Y Otros Ensayos. Goldman, Emma. Emancipación. Abril 9 de 2022.

 

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LEAMOS SIN RESERVAS, ANALICEMOS SIN PEREZA Y SOMETAMOS A CRÍTICA TODA LA CULTURA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANARQUISMO Y OTROS ENSAYOS

Emma Goldman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anarquismo Y Otros Ensayos

Emma Goldman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anarquismo Y Otros Ensayos

 

Emma Goldman

 

 

 

Con bosquejo biográfico de Hippolyte Havel

 

 

 

CONTENIDO

Bosquejo biográfico

Prefacio

Anarquismo: lo que realmente representa

Minorías contra mayorías

La psicología de la violencia política

Prisiones: un crimen y un fracaso social

Patriotismo: una amenaza para la libertad

Francisco Ferrer y la Escuela Moderna

La hipocresía del puritanismo

El tráfico de mujeres

sufragio femenino

La tragedia de la emancipación de la mujer

matrimonio y amor

El drama: un poderoso difusor del pensamiento radical

 

 

 

 

 

 

EMMA GOLDMAN

 

La propaganda no es, como algunos suponen, un "negocio", porque nadie seguirá un "negocio" en el que se puede trabajar con la industria de un esclavo y morir con la reputación de un mendigo. Los motivos de cualquier persona para ejercer tal profesión deben ser diferentes de los del comercio, más profundos que el orgullo y más fuertes que el interés.

 

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

 

Entre los hombres y mujeres destacados en la vida pública de los Estados Unidos, hay pocos cuyos nombres se mencionen con tanta frecuencia como el de Emma Goldman. Sin embargo, la verdadera Emma Goldman es casi desconocida. La prensa sensacionalista ha rodeado su nombre de tanta tergiversación y calumnias, que parecería casi un milagro que, a pesar de esta red de calumnias, la verdad se abra paso y comience a manifestarse una mejor apreciación de esta idealista tan calumniada. Hay poco consuelo en el hecho de que casi todos los representantes de una nueva idea han tenido que luchar y sufrir bajo dificultades similares. ¿Sirve de algo que un ex presidente de una república rinda homenaje en Osawatomie a la memoria de John Brown? O que el presidente de otra república participe en la inauguración de una estatua en honor de Pierre Proudhon, y presenta su vida a la nación francesa como un modelo digno de emulación entusiasta? ¿De qué sirve todo esto cuando, al mismo tiempo, los John Brown y los Proudhon VIVENTES están siendo crucificados? El honor y la gloria de una Mary Wollstonecraft o de una Louise Michel no se ven realzados por los padres de la ciudad de Londres o París que nombran una calle con su nombre: la generación viva debe preocuparse por hacer justicia a las Mary Wollstonecrafts y Louise Michels VIVAS. La posteridad asigna a hombres como Wendel Phillips y Lloyd Garrison el lugar apropiado de honor en el templo de la emancipación humana; pero es deber de sus contemporáneos traerles el debido reconocimiento y aprecio mientras vivan. los John Browns y Proudhons VIVOS están siendo crucificados? El honor y la gloria de una Mary Wollstonecraft o de una Louise Michel no se ven realzados por los padres de la ciudad de Londres o París que nombran una calle con su nombre: la generación viva debe preocuparse por hacer justicia a las Mary Wollstonecrafts y Louise Michels VIVAS. La posteridad asigna a hombres como Wendel Phillips y Lloyd Garrison el lugar apropiado de honor en el templo de la emancipación humana; pero es deber de sus contemporáneos traerles el debido reconocimiento y aprecio mientras vivan. los John Browns y Proudhons VIVOS están siendo crucificados? El honor y la gloria de una Mary Wollstonecraft o de una Louise Michel no se ven realzados por los padres de la ciudad de Londres o París que nombran una calle con su nombre: la generación viva debe preocuparse por hacer justicia a las Mary Wollstonecrafts y Louise Michels VIVAS. La posteridad asigna a hombres como Wendel Phillips y Lloyd Garrison el lugar apropiado de honor en el templo de la emancipación humana; pero es deber de sus contemporáneos traerles el debido reconocimiento y aprecio mientras vivan. La posteridad asigna a hombres como Wendel Phillips y Lloyd Garrison el lugar apropiado de honor en el templo de la emancipación humana; pero es deber de sus contemporáneos traerles el debido reconocimiento y aprecio mientras vivan. La posteridad asigna a hombres como Wendel Phillips y Lloyd Garrison el lugar apropiado de honor en el templo de la emancipación humana; pero es deber de sus contemporáneos traerles el debido reconocimiento y aprecio mientras vivan.

 

El camino del propagandista de la justicia social está sembrado de espinas. Los poderes de las tinieblas y la injusticia ejercen todo su poder para que un rayo de sol no entre en su triste vida. Es más, incluso sus camaradas de lucha —de hecho, con demasiada frecuencia sus amigos más íntimos— muestran poca comprensión de la personalidad del pionero. La envidia, que a veces se convierte en odio, vanidad y celos, obstruyen su camino y llenan su corazón de tristeza. Se requiere una voluntad inflexible y un tremendo entusiasmo para no perder, en tales condiciones, toda fe en la Causa. El representante de una idea revolucionaria se encuentra entre dos fuegos: por un lado, la persecución de los poderes existentes que lo responsabilizan de todos los actos derivados de las condiciones sociales; y, por el otro, la falta de comprensión por parte de sus propios seguidores que a menudo juzgan toda su actividad desde un punto de vista estrecho. Así sucede que el agitador se encuentra completamente solo en medio de la multitud que lo rodea. Incluso sus amigos más íntimos rara vez entienden lo solitario y abandonado que se siente. Esa es la tragedia de la persona prominente en el ojo público.

 

La niebla en la que durante tanto tiempo ha estado envuelto el nombre de Emma Goldman está comenzando a disiparse gradualmente. Su energía en la promoción de una idea tan impopular como el anarquismo, su profunda seriedad, su coraje y habilidades, encuentran una comprensión y admiración crecientes.

 

La deuda que el crecimiento intelectual estadounidense tiene con los exiliados revolucionarios nunca se ha apreciado por completo. La semilla diseminada por ellos, aunque tan poco comprendida en ese momento, ha producido una rica cosecha. Han enarbolado en todo tiempo la bandera de la libertad, impregnando así la vitalidad social de la Nación. Pero muy pocos han logrado preservar su educación y cultura europeas y al mismo tiempo asimilarse a la vida estadounidense. Es difícil para el hombre promedio formarse una concepción adecuada de qué fuerza, energía y perseverancia son necesarias para absorber el idioma, los hábitos y las costumbres desconocidos de un nuevo país, sin perder la propia personalidad.

 

Emma Goldman es una de las pocas que, preservando a fondo su individualidad, se han convertido en un factor importante en la atmósfera social e intelectual de Estados Unidos. La vida que lleva es rica en color, llena de cambios y variedad. Ella se ha elevado a las alturas más altas, y también ha probado las amargas heces de la vida.

 

Emma Goldman nació de padres judíos el 27 de junio de 1869 en la provincia rusa de Kovno. Seguramente estos padres nunca soñaron qué posición única ocuparía su hijo algún día. Como todos los padres conservadores, ellos también estaban bastante convencidos de que su hija se casaría con un ciudadano respetable, le daría hijos y completaría los años que le correspondían rodeada de un rebaño de nietos, una mujer buena y religiosa. Como la mayoría de los padres, no tenían ni idea de que un espíritu extraño y apasionado se apoderaría del alma de su hijo y la llevaría a las alturas que separan a las generaciones en una lucha eterna. Vivían en una tierra y en una época en que el antagonismo entre padres e hijos estaba destinado a encontrar su expresión más aguda, una hostilidad irreconciliable. En esta tremenda lucha entre padres e hijos, y especialmente entre padres e hijas, no hubo compromiso, ni ceder débilmente, ni tregua. El espíritu de libertad, de progreso, un idealismo que no conocía consideraciones ni reconocía obstáculos, ahuyentó a la joven generación de la casa paterna y del hogar. Así como este mismo espíritu una vez expulsó al revolucionario generador de descontento, Jesús, y lo alejó de sus tradiciones nativas.

 

El papel que desempeñó la raza judía —a pesar de todas las calumnias antisemitas de la raza del idealismo trascendental— en la lucha entre lo Viejo y lo Nuevo probablemente nunca se apreciará con total imparcialidad y claridad. Recién ahora comenzamos a percibir la tremenda deuda que tenemos con los idealistas judíos en el ámbito de la ciencia, el arte y la literatura. Pero muy poco se sabe aún del importante papel que han jugado los hijos e hijas de Israel en el movimiento revolucionario y, especialmente, en el de los tiempos modernos.

 

Los primeros años de su infancia Emma Goldman transcurrieron en un pequeño e idílico lugar de la provincia germano-rusa de Kurland, donde su padre se encargaba del escenario de gobierno. En ese momento, Kurland era completamente alemán; incluso la burocracia rusa de esa provincia báltica fue reclutada principalmente de JUNKERS alemanes. Los cuentos de hadas y las historias alemanas, ricas en hechos milagrosos de los heroicos caballeros de Kurland, entretejían su hechizo sobre la mente juvenil. Pero el hermoso idilio fue de corta duración. Pronto, el alma del niño en crecimiento quedó cubierta por las sombras oscuras de la vida. Ya en su más tierna juventud, las semillas de la rebelión y el odio implacable de la opresión iban a plantarse en el corazón de Emma Goldman. Temprano aprendió a conocer la belleza del Estado: vio a su padre acosado por los CHINOVNIKS cristianos y doblemente perseguido como suboficial y judío odiado. La brutalidad del servicio militar obligatorio siempre estuvo ante sus ojos: contempló a los jóvenes, a menudo el único sostén de una familia numerosa, brutalmente arrastrados a los cuarteles para llevar la vida miserable de un soldado. Escuchó el llanto de las campesinas pobres y fue testigo de las vergonzosas escenas de venalidad oficial que relevaban a los ricos del servicio militar a expensas de los pobres. La indignó el terrible trato al que eran sometidas las sirvientas: maltratadas y explotadas por sus BARINYAS, caían en las tiernas mercedes de los oficiales del regimiento, quienes las consideraban como su presa sexual natural. Las muchachas, dejadas encinta por caballeros respetables y expulsadas por sus amantes, a menudo encontró refugio en la casa de Goldman. Y la niña, con el corazón palpitante de simpatía, sacaba monedas del cajón de los padres para depositar clandestinamente el dinero en manos de las desdichadas mujeres. Así, la característica más llamativa de Emma Goldman, su simpatía por los desvalidos, ya se hizo manifiesta en estos primeros años.

 

A la edad de siete años, sus padres enviaron a la pequeña Emma a casa de su abuela en Konigsberg, la ciudad de Emanuel Kant, en Prusia Oriental. Salvo por interrupciones ocasionales, permaneció allí hasta su cumpleaños número 13. Los primeros años en este entorno no pertenecen precisamente a sus recuerdos más felices. La abuela, en efecto, era muy amable, pero las numerosas tías de la casa se preocupaban más por el espíritu práctico que por la razón pura, y el imperativo categórico se aplicaba con demasiada frecuencia. La situación cambió cuando sus padres emigraron a Konigsberg y la pequeña Emma fue relevada de su papel de Cenicienta. Ahora asistía regularmente a la escuela pública y también disfrutaba de las ventajas de la instrucción privada, habitual en la vida de clase media; Las lecciones de francés y música jugaron un papel importante en el plan de estudios. La futura intérprete de Ibsen y Shaw era entonces una pequeña Gretchen alemana, muy a gusto en el ambiente alemán. Sus especiales predilecciones en la literatura fueron los romances sentimentales de Marlitt; era una gran admiradora de la buena reina Luisa, a quien el malo Napoleón Bonaparte trataba con tan marcada falta de caballerosidad caballeresca. ¿Cuál podría haber sido su desarrollo futuro si hubiera permanecido en este medio? El destino -¿o fue la necesidad económica?- lo quiso de otra manera. Sus padres decidieron establecerse en San Petersburgo, la capital del Todopoderoso Zar, y allí emprender negocios. Fue aquí donde tuvo lugar un gran cambio en la vida del joven soñador. era una gran admiradora de la buena reina Luisa, a quien el malo Napoleón Bonaparte trataba con tan marcada falta de caballerosidad caballeresca. ¿Cuál podría haber sido su desarrollo futuro si hubiera permanecido en este medio? El destino -¿o fue la necesidad económica?- lo quiso de otra manera. Sus padres decidieron establecerse en San Petersburgo, la capital del Todopoderoso Zar, y allí emprender negocios. Fue aquí donde tuvo lugar un gran cambio en la vida del joven soñador. era una gran admiradora de la buena reina Luisa, a quien el malo Napoleón Bonaparte trataba con tan marcada falta de caballerosidad caballeresca. ¿Cuál podría haber sido su desarrollo futuro si hubiera permanecido en este medio? El destino -¿o fue la necesidad económica?- lo quiso de otra manera. Sus padres decidieron establecerse en San Petersburgo, la capital del Todopoderoso Zar, y allí emprender negocios. Fue aquí donde tuvo lugar un gran cambio en la vida del joven soñador.

 

Fue un período lleno de acontecimientos, el año de 1882, en el que Emma Goldman, entonces de 13 años, llegó a San Petersburgo. Una lucha a vida o muerte entre la autocracia y los intelectuales rusos barrió el país. Alejandro II había caído el año anterior. Sophia Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch, Michailov, los heroicos ejecutores de la sentencia de muerte del tirano, habían entrado entonces en el Walhalla de la inmortalidad. Jessie Helfman, la única regicida cuya vida el gobierno había perdonado a regañadientes debido a su embarazo, siguió a los innumerables mártires rusos hasta las etapas de Siberia. Fue el período más heroico de la gran batalla de la emancipación, una batalla por la libertad como nunca antes había presenciado el mundo. Los nombres de los mártires nihilistas estaban en todos los labios, y miles se entusiasmaron por seguir su ejemplo. Toda la INTELLIGENZIA de Rusia se llenó del espíritu ILEGAL: los sentimientos revolucionarios penetraron en todos los hogares, desde la mansión hasta la choza, impregnando a los militares, los CHINOVNIKS, los trabajadores de las fábricas y los campesinos. El ambiente atravesó las mismas casamatas del palacio real. Nuevas ideas germinaron en la juventud. Se olvidó la diferencia de sexo. Hombro con hombro lucharon los hombres y las mujeres. ¡La mujer rusa! ¿Quién hará justicia o retratará adecuadamente su heroísmo y sacrificio, su lealtad y devoción? Santa, la llama Turgeniev en su gran poema en prosa, EN EL UMBRAL. obreros fabriles y campesinos. El ambiente atravesó las mismas casamatas del palacio real. Nuevas ideas germinaron en la juventud. Se olvidó la diferencia de sexo. Hombro con hombro lucharon los hombres y las mujeres. ¡La mujer rusa! ¿Quién hará justicia o retratará adecuadamente su heroísmo y sacrificio, su lealtad y devoción? Santa, la llama Turgeniev en su gran poema en prosa, EN EL UMBRAL. obreros fabriles y campesinos. El ambiente atravesó las mismas casamatas del palacio real. Nuevas ideas germinaron en la juventud. Se olvidó la diferencia de sexo. Hombro con hombro lucharon los hombres y las mujeres. ¡La mujer rusa! ¿Quién hará justicia o retratará adecuadamente su heroísmo y sacrificio, su lealtad y devoción? Santa, la llama Turgeniev en su gran poema en prosa, EN EL UMBRAL.

 

Era inevitable que el joven soñador de Konigsberg se viera arrastrado a la vorágine. Quedarse fuera del círculo de las ideas libres significaba una vida de vegetación, de muerte. Uno no tiene por qué preguntarse por la edad juvenil. Los jóvenes entusiastas no eran entonces, y afortunadamente no lo son ahora, un fenómeno raro en Rusia. El estudio del idioma ruso pronto puso a la joven Emma Goldman en contacto con estudiantes revolucionarios y nuevas ideas. El lugar de Marlitt fue ocupado por Nekrassov y Tchernishevsky. La quondam admiradora de la buena reina Luisa se convirtió en una apasionada entusiasta de la libertad, resolviendo, como miles de otros, dedicar su vida a la emancipación del pueblo.

 

La lucha de generaciones ahora tuvo lugar en la familia Goldman. Los padres no podían comprender qué interés podía encontrar su hija en las nuevas ideas, que ellos mismos consideraban utopías fantásticas. Se esforzaron por persuadir a la joven de estas quimeras, y el resultado fue la repetición diaria de disputas desgarradoras. Solo en un miembro de la familia la joven idealista encontró comprensión: en su hermana mayor, Helene, con quien más tarde emigró a Estados Unidos, y cuyo amor y simpatía nunca le han faltado. Incluso en las horas más oscuras de la persecución posterior, Emma Goldman siempre encontró un refugio en el hogar de esta leal hermana.

 

Emma Goldman finalmente resolvió lograr su independencia. Vio a cientos de hombres y mujeres sacrificar carreras brillantes para ir a V NAROD, a la gente. Ella siguió su ejemplo. Se convirtió en obrera de una fábrica; al principio empleado como fabricante de corsés, y más tarde en la fabricación de guantes. Ahora tenía 17 años y estaba orgullosa de ganarse la vida. Si hubiera permanecido en Rusia, probablemente tarde o temprano habría compartido el destino de miles enterrados en las nieves de Siberia. Pero un nuevo capítulo de la vida iba a comenzar para ella. La hermana Helene decidió emigrar a América, donde otra hermana ya había establecido su hogar. Emma convenció a Helene para que le permitiera unirse a ella, y juntos partieron hacia América, llenos de la gozosa esperanza de una gran tierra libre, la gloriosa República.

 

 

¡America! Qué palabra mágica. El anhelo de los esclavizados, la tierra prometida de los oprimidos, la meta de todo anhelo de progreso. Aquí los ideales del hombre habían encontrado su cumplimiento: ningún zar, ningún cosaco, ningún CHINOVNIK. ¡La republica! Glorioso sinónimo de igualdad, libertad, hermandad.

 

Así pensaban las dos niñas mientras viajaban, en el año 1886, de Nueva York a Rochester. Pronto, demasiado pronto, les esperaba la desilusión. La concepción ideal de América ya se pinchó en Castle Garden y pronto estalló como una pompa de jabón. Aquí Emma Goldman fue testigo de lugares que le recordaron las terribles escenas de su infancia en Kurland. La brutalidad y humillación a la que fueron sometidos a bordo de los barcos los futuros ciudadanos de la gran República, fue repetida en Castle Garden por los funcionarios de la democracia de una manera más salvaje y agravante. ¡Y qué amarga decepción siguió cuando la joven idealista comenzó a familiarizarse con las condiciones de la nueva tierra! En lugar de un zar, encontró decenas de ellos; el cosaco fue reemplazado por el policía con el garrote pesado,

 

Emma Goldman pronto consiguió trabajo en el establecimiento de ropa de Garson Co. El salario ascendía a dos dólares y medio a la semana. En aquella época las fábricas no contaban con motor, y las pobres costureras tenían que conducir las ruedas a pie, desde la mañana temprano hasta la noche. Fue un trabajo terriblemente agotador, sin un rayo de luz, la monotonía del largo día transcurrió en completo silencio: la costumbre rusa de la conversación amistosa en el trabajo no estaba permitida en el país libre. Pero la explotación de las niñas no era sólo económica; los capataces y jefes consideraban a los trabajadores asalariados pobres como mercancías sexuales. Si una chica resentía los avances de sus "superiores", rápidamente se encontraría en la calle como un elemento indeseable en la fábrica. Nunca faltaron víctimas dispuestas:

 

Las horribles condiciones se hicieron aún más insoportables por la terrible monotonía de la vida en la pequeña ciudad estadounidense. El espíritu puritano suprime la más mínima manifestación de alegría; un embotamiento mortal nubla el alma; no es posible ninguna inspiración intelectual, ningún intercambio de pensamientos entre espíritus afines. Emma Goldman casi se asfixia en esta atmósfera. Ella, por encima de todos los demás, anhelaba un entorno ideal, amistad y comprensión, la compañía de mentes afines. Mentalmente todavía vivía en Rusia. No familiarizada con el idioma y la vida del país, vivía más en el pasado que en el presente. Fue en este período que conoció a un joven que hablaba ruso. Con gran alegría se cultivó el conocimiento. Por fin una persona con quien poder conversar, alguien que pudiera ayudarla a superar el aburrimiento de la estrecha existencia. La amistad maduró gradualmente y finalmente culminó en matrimonio.

 

Emma Goldman también tuvo que recorrer el doloroso camino de la vida matrimonial; ella también tuvo que aprender por amarga experiencia que los estatutos legales significan dependencia y abnegación, especialmente para la mujer. El matrimonio no fue una liberación de la monotonía puritana de la vida estadounidense; de hecho, se agravó bastante por la pérdida de la propiedad de uno mismo. Los caracteres de los jóvenes diferían demasiado. Pronto siguió una separación, y Emma Goldman se fue a New Haven, Conn. Allí encontró empleo en una fábrica, y su esposo desapareció de su horizonte. Dos décadas después, estaba destinada a que las autoridades federales se lo recordaran inesperadamente.

 

Los revolucionarios que participaron activamente en el movimiento ruso de los años 80 estaban poco familiarizados con las ideas sociales que entonces agitaban a Europa Occidental y América. Su única actividad consistía en educar al pueblo, su fin último la destrucción de la autocracia. Socialismo y anarquismo eran términos apenas conocidos ni siquiera de nombre. Emma Goldman tampoco estaba familiarizada con el significado de esos ideales.

 

Llegó a América, como cuatro años antes a Rusia, en un período de gran agitación social y política. El pueblo trabajador se rebeló contra las terribles condiciones laborales; el movimiento de ocho horas de los Caballeros del Trabajo estaba en su apogeo, y en todo el país resonaba el estruendo de la lucha sanguínea entre los huelguistas y la policía. La lucha culminó con la gran huelga contra la Harvester Company de Chicago, la masacre de los huelguistas y el asesinato judicial de los líderes laborales, que siguió a la histórica explosión de la bomba de Haymarket. Los anarquistas soportaron la prueba del mártir del bautismo de sangre. Los apologistas del capitalismo buscan en vano justificar el asesinato de Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer y Engel. Desde la publicación del motivo del gobernador Altgeld para la liberación de los tres anarquistas de Haymarket encarcelados,

 

Muy pocos han captado el significado del martirio de Chicago; menos de todas las clases dominantes. Con la destrucción de una serie de líderes sindicales pensaron detener la marea de una idea inspiradora mundial. No consideraron que de la sangre de los mártires crece la nueva semilla, y que la terrible injusticia ganará nuevos conversos para la Causa.

 

Las dos representantes más prominentes de la idea anarquista en Estados Unidos, Voltairine de Cleyre y Emma Goldman, la una nativa americana, la otra rusa, se han convertido, como muchos otros, a las ideas del anarquismo por el asesinato judicial. Dos mujeres que no se conocían antes, y que habían recibido una educación muy diferente, estaban a través de ese asesinato unidas en una sola idea.

 

Como la mayoría de los hombres y mujeres trabajadores de Estados Unidos, Emma Goldman siguió el juicio de Chicago con gran ansiedad y entusiasmo. Ella tampoco podía creer que los líderes del proletariado serían asesinados. El 11 de noviembre de 1887 le enseñó otra cosa. Se dio cuenta de que no se podía esperar piedad de la clase dominante, que entre el zarismo de Rusia y la plutocracia de América no había diferencia salvo en el nombre. Todo su ser se rebeló contra el crimen, y se hizo un voto solemne de unirse a las filas del proletariado revolucionario y dedicar todas sus energías y fuerzas a su emancipación de la esclavitud asalariada. Con el entusiasmo resplandeciente tan característico de su naturaleza, ahora comenzó a familiarizarse con la literatura del socialismo y el anarquismo. Asistió a reuniones públicas y se familiarizó con trabajadores con tendencias socialistas y anarquistas. Johanna Greie, la conocida conferenciante alemana, fue la primera oradora socialista que escuchó Emma Goldman. En New Haven, Connecticut, donde trabajaba en una fábrica de corsés, conoció a anarquistas que participaban activamente en el movimiento. Aquí leyó el FREIHEIT, editado por John Most. La tragedia de Haymarket desarrolló sus tendencias anarquistas inherentes: la lectura del FREIHEIT la convirtió en una anarquista consciente. Posteriormente se enteraría de que la idea del anarquismo encontró su máxima expresión a través de los mejores intelectos de América: teóricamente por Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; filosóficamente por Emerson, Thoreau y Walt Whitman. el conocido conferenciante alemán, fue el primer orador socialista escuchado por Emma Goldman. En New Haven, Connecticut, donde trabajaba en una fábrica de corsés, conoció a anarquistas que participaban activamente en el movimiento. Aquí leyó el FREIHEIT, editado por John Most. La tragedia de Haymarket desarrolló sus tendencias anarquistas inherentes: la lectura del FREIHEIT la convirtió en una anarquista consciente. Posteriormente se enteraría de que la idea del anarquismo encontró su máxima expresión a través de los mejores intelectos de América: teóricamente por Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; filosóficamente por Emerson, Thoreau y Walt Whitman. el conocido conferenciante alemán, fue el primer orador socialista escuchado por Emma Goldman. En New Haven, Connecticut, donde trabajaba en una fábrica de corsés, conoció a anarquistas que participaban activamente en el movimiento. Aquí leyó el FREIHEIT, editado por John Most. La tragedia de Haymarket desarrolló sus tendencias anarquistas inherentes: la lectura del FREIHEIT la convirtió en una anarquista consciente. Posteriormente se enteraría de que la idea del anarquismo encontró su máxima expresión a través de los mejores intelectos de América: teóricamente por Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; filosóficamente por Emerson, Thoreau y Walt Whitman. editado por John Most. La tragedia de Haymarket desarrolló sus tendencias anarquistas inherentes: la lectura del FREIHEIT la convirtió en una anarquista consciente. Posteriormente se enteraría de que la idea del anarquismo encontró su máxima expresión a través de los mejores intelectos de América: teóricamente por Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; filosóficamente por Emerson, Thoreau y Walt Whitman. editado por John Most. La tragedia de Haymarket desarrolló sus tendencias anarquistas inherentes: la lectura del FREIHEIT la convirtió en una anarquista consciente. Posteriormente se enteraría de que la idea del anarquismo encontró su máxima expresión a través de los mejores intelectos de América: teóricamente por Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; filosóficamente por Emerson, Thoreau y Walt Whitman.

 

Enferma por la excesiva tensión del trabajo en la fábrica, Emma Goldman regresó a Rochester, donde permaneció hasta agosto de 1889, momento en el que se mudó a Nueva York, escenario de la fase más importante de su vida. Ahora tenía veinte años. Las facciones pálidas por el sufrimiento, los ojos grandes y llenos de compasión, saludan a uno en su imagen de aquellos días. Su cabello, como es costumbre entre las estudiantes rusas, lo lleva corto, dejando libre juego a la frente fuerte.

 

 

Es la época heroica del anarquismo militante. A pasos agigantados el movimiento había crecido en todos los países. A pesar de la persecución gubernamental más severa, nuevos conversos engrosan las filas. La propaganda es casi exclusivamente de carácter secreto. Las medidas represivas del gobierno conducen a los discípulos de la nueva filosofía a métodos conspirativos. Miles de víctimas caen en manos de las autoridades y languidecen en las cárceles. Pero nada puede detener la creciente ola de entusiasmo, de autosacrificio y devoción a la Causa. Los esfuerzos de maestros como Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus y otros inspiran a los devotos con una energía cada vez mayor.

 

La disrupción es inminente con los socialistas, que han sacrificado la idea de libertad y abrazado el Estado y la política. La lucha es amarga, las facciones irreconciliables. Esta lucha no es meramente entre anarquistas y socialistas; también encuentra su eco dentro de los grupos anarquistas. Las diferencias teóricas y las controversias personales conducen a luchas y enemistades enconadas. La legislación antisocialista de Alemania y Austria había llevado a miles de socialistas y anarquistas a cruzar los mares para buscar refugio en América. John Most, habiendo perdido su escaño en el Reichstag, finalmente tuvo que huir de su tierra natal y se fue a Londres. Allí, habiendo avanzado hacia el anarquismo, se retiró por completo del Partido Socialdemócrata. Más tarde, viniendo a América, continuó la publicación del FREIHEIT en Nueva York,

 

Cuando Emma Goldman llegó a Nueva York en 1889, experimentó pocas dificultades para asociarse con anarquistas activos. Las reuniones anarquistas eran algo casi diario. El primer disertante que escuchó en la plataforma anarquista fue el Dr. A. Solotaroff. De gran importancia para su desarrollo futuro fue su relación con John Most, quien ejerció una tremenda influencia sobre los elementos más jóvenes. Su elocuencia apasionada, energía incansable y la persecución que había soportado por la Causa, todo combinado para entusiasmar a los camaradas. También fue en este período cuando conoció a Alexander Berkman, cuya amistad jugó un papel importante a lo largo de su vida. Su talento como oradora no podía permanecer mucho tiempo en la oscuridad. El fuego del entusiasmo la llevó hacia la plataforma pública. Animada por sus amigos, comenzó a participar como hablante de alemán y yiddish en reuniones anarquistas. Pronto siguió un breve recorrido de agitación que la llevó hasta Cleveland. Con toda la fuerza y ​​el fervor de su alma se lanzó ahora a la propaganda de las ideas anarquistas. El período apasionante de su vida había comenzado. A través de trabajar constantemente en talleres clandestinos, el joven orador fue al mismo tiempo muy activo como agitador y participó en varias luchas laborales, en particular en la gran huelga de los fabricantes de capas, en 1889, dirigida por el profesor Garsyde y Joseph Barondess.

 

Un año después, Emma Goldman fue delegada a una conferencia anarquista en Nueva York. Fue elegida miembro del Comité Ejecutivo, pero luego se retiró debido a diferencias de opinión sobre asuntos tácticos. Las ideas de los anarquistas de habla alemana en ese momento aún no se habían aclarado. Algunos todavía creían en los métodos parlamentarios, siendo la gran mayoría partidarios de un fuerte centralismo. Estas diferencias de opinión con respecto a las tácticas llevaron en 1891 a una ruptura con John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman y otros compañeros se unieron al grupo AUTONOMY, en el que Joseph Peukert, Otto Rinke y Claus Timmermann desempeñaron un papel activo. Las amargas controversias que siguieron a esta secesión terminaron solo con la muerte de Most, en 1906.

 

Una gran fuente de inspiración para Emma Goldman fueron los revolucionarios rusos que estaban asociados en el grupo ZNAMYA. Goldenberg, Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, el poeta Edelstadt, Ivan von Schewitsch, esposo de Helene von Racowitza y editor del VOLKSZEITUNG, y muchos otros exiliados rusos, algunos de los cuales aún viven, eran miembros de este grupo. Fue también en esta época cuando Emma Goldman conoció a Robert Reitzel, el Heine germano-estadounidense, quien ejerció una gran influencia en su desarrollo. A través de él conoció a los mejores escritores de la literatura moderna, y la amistad así iniciada duró hasta la muerte de Reitzel, en 1898.

 

 

El movimiento obrero de Estados Unidos no se había ahogado en la masacre de Chicago; el asesinato de los anarquistas no había logrado traer la paz al capitalista ávido de ganancias. La lucha por la jornada de ocho horas continuaba. En 1892 estalló la gran huelga de Pittsburg. La lucha de Homestead, la derrota de los Pinkerton, la aparición de la milicia, la supresión de los huelguistas y el triunfo completo de la reacción son asuntos de una historia relativamente reciente. Conmovido hasta lo más profundo por los terribles acontecimientos en el escenario de la guerra, Alexander Berkman resolvió sacrificar su vida por la Causa y así dar una lección objetiva a los esclavos asalariados de América sobre la solidaridad anarquista activa con el trabajo. Su ataque a Frick, el Gessler de Pittsburg, fracasó, y el joven de veintidós años estaba condenado a una muerte en vida de veintidós años en la penitenciaría. La burguesía, que durante décadas había exaltado y elogiado el tiranicidio, ahora estaba llena de una rabia terrible. La prensa capitalista organizó una campaña sistemática de calumnias y tergiversaciones contra los anarquistas. La policía hizo todo lo posible para involucrar a Emma Goldman en el acto de Alexander Berkman. El temido agitador debía ser silenciado por todos los medios. Fue solo por la circunstancia de su presencia en Nueva York que escapó de las garras de la ley. Fue una circunstancia similar la que, nueve años después, durante el incidente de McKinley, fue fundamental para preservar su libertad. Es casi increíble con qué cantidad de estupidez, bajeza y vileza los periodistas de la época trataron de abrumar al anarquista. Uno debe leer detenidamente los archivos de los periódicos para darse cuenta de la enormidad de la incriminación y la calumnia. Sería difícil retratar la agonía del alma que Emma Goldman experimentó en esos días. Las persecuciones de la prensa capitalista debían ser soportadas por un anarquista con relativa ecuanimidad; pero los ataques de las propias filas eran mucho más dolorosos e insoportables. El acto de Berkman fue severamente criticado por Most y algunos de sus seguidores entre los anarquistas alemanes y judíos. Siguieron amargas acusaciones y recriminaciones en reuniones públicas y reuniones privadas. Perseguida por todos lados, tanto porque defendió a Berkman y su acto, como por su actividad revolucionaria, Emma Goldman fue acosada hasta el punto de no poder conseguir refugio. Demasiado orgullosa para buscar seguridad en la negación de su identidad, prefirió pasar las noches en los parques públicos antes que exponer a sus amigos al peligro o la vejación con sus visitas. La copa ya amarga se llenó hasta rebosar por el intento de suicidio de un joven camarada que había compartido vivienda con Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman y un amigo artista en común.

 

 

Muchos cambios han tenido lugar desde entonces. Alexander Berkman ha sobrevivido al Infierno de Pensilvania y está de vuelta en las filas de los anarquistas militantes, su espíritu intacto, su alma llena de entusiasmo por los ideales de su juventud. El camarada artista se encuentra ahora entre los ilustradores más conocidos de Nueva York. El candidato suicida abandonó Estados Unidos poco después de su desafortunado intento de morir, y posteriormente fue arrestado y condenado a ocho años de trabajos forzados por introducir literatura anarquista de contrabando en Alemania. Él también ha resistido los terrores de la vida en prisión y ha regresado al movimiento revolucionario, desde entonces se ganó la bien merecida reputación de un escritor talentoso en Alemania.

 

 

Para evitar acampar indefinidamente en los parques, Emma Goldman finalmente se vio obligada a mudarse a una casa en Third Street, ocupada exclusivamente por prostitutas. Allí, entre los marginados de nuestra buena sociedad cristiana, al menos podría alquilar una pequeña habitación y encontrar descanso y trabajo en su máquina de coser. Las mujeres de la calle mostraban más finura de sentimiento y más sincera simpatía que los sacerdotes de la Iglesia. Pero la resistencia humana había sido agotada por demasiado sufrimiento y privación. Hubo un colapso físico completo y el renombrado agitador fue trasladado a la "República de Bohemia", una gran casa de vecindad que derivaba su eufónico apelativo del hecho de que sus ocupantes eran en su mayoría anarquistas bohemios. Aquí Emma Goldman encontró amigos dispuestos a ayudarla. Justo Schwab, uno de los mejores representantes del período revolucionario alemán de esa época, y el Dr. Solotaroff fueron infatigables en el cuidado del paciente. Aquí también conoció a Edward Brady, y la nueva amistad se convirtió posteriormente en una intimidad cercana. Brady había sido un participante activo en el movimiento revolucionario de Austria y, en el momento en que conoció a Emma Goldman, recientemente había sido liberado de una prisión austriaca después de un encarcelamiento de diez años.

 

Los médicos diagnosticaron la enfermedad como tisis y se aconsejó al paciente que abandonara Nueva York. Fue a Rochester, con la esperanza de que el círculo familiar la ayudara a recuperar la salud. Sus padres habían emigrado varios años antes a América, instalándose en esa ciudad. Entre los rasgos principales de la raza judía está el fuerte vínculo entre los miembros de la familia y, especialmente, entre padres e hijos. Aunque sus padres conservadores no podían simpatizar con las aspiraciones idealistas de Emma Goldman y no aprobaban su modo de vida, ahora recibieron a su hija enferma con los brazos abiertos. El descanso y el cuidado disfrutado en el hogar paterno, y la alegre presencia de la amada hermana Helene, resultaron tan beneficiosos que en poco tiempo se recuperó lo suficiente como para reanudar su enérgica actividad.

 

No hay descanso en la vida de Emma Goldman. El esfuerzo incesante y el esfuerzo continuo hacia la meta concebida son los elementos esenciales de su naturaleza. Ya se había desperdiciado demasiado tiempo precioso. Era imperativo reanudar sus labores de inmediato. El país estaba en plena crisis, y miles de desempleados abarrotaban las calles de los grandes centros industriales. Fríos y hambrientos vagaron por la tierra en la vana búsqueda de trabajo y pan. Los anarquistas desarrollaron una enérgica propaganda entre los desempleados y los huelguistas. En Union Square, Nueva York, tuvo lugar una manifestación monstruosa de fabricantes de capas en huelga y de desempleados. Emma Goldman fue una de las oradoras invitadas. Pronunció un discurso apasionado, describiendo con palabras feroces la miseria de la vida del esclavo asalariado, y citó la famosa máxima del cardenal Manning: “La necesidad no conoce ley, y el hambriento tiene derecho natural a una parte del pan de su prójimo”. Concluyó su exhortación con las palabras: "Pide trabajo. Si no te dan trabajo, pide pan. Si no te dan trabajo ni pan, entonces toma pan".

 

Al día siguiente partió para Filadelfia, donde debía dirigirse a una reunión pública. La prensa capitalista volvió a dar la voz de alarma. Si se permitía que socialistas y anarquistas siguieran agitando, existía el peligro inminente de que los trabajadores pronto aprendieran a comprender la manera en que se les roba la alegría y la felicidad de la vida. Tal posibilidad debía evitarse a toda costa. El Jefe de Policía de Nueva York, Byrnes, obtuvo una orden judicial para el arresto de Emma Goldman. Fue detenida por las autoridades de Filadelfia y encarcelada durante varios días en la prisión de Moyamensing, a la espera de los documentos de extradición que Byrnes confió al detective Jacobs. Este hombre, Jacobs (a quien Emma Goldman volvió a encontrar varios años después en circunstancias muy desagradables) le propuso matrimonio, mientras ella regresaba prisionera a Nueva York, traicionar la causa del trabajo. En nombre de su superior, el jefe Byrnes, ofreció una lucrativa recompensa. ¡Qué estúpidos son a veces los hombres! Qué pobreza de observación psicológica imaginar la posibilidad de traición por parte de un joven idealista ruso, que voluntariamente había sacrificado todas las consideraciones personales para ayudar en la emancipación del trabajo.

 

En octubre de 1893, Emma Goldman fue juzgada en los tribunales penales de Nueva York por el cargo de incitación a disturbios. El jurado "inteligente" ignoró el testimonio de los doce testigos de la defensa a favor de la evidencia presentada por un solo hombre: el detective Jacobs. Fue declarada culpable y sentenciada a cumplir un año en la penitenciaría de Blackwell's Island. Desde la fundación de la República fue la primera mujer—Sra. Surratt exceptuado, para ser encarcelado por un delito político. Mucho tiempo antes, la sociedad respetable le había estampado la Letra Escarlata.

 

Emma Goldman pasó su tiempo en la penitenciaría como enfermera en el hospital de la prisión. Aquí encontró la oportunidad de derramar algunos rayos de bondad en las oscuras vidas de los desafortunados cuyas hermanas de la calle no desdeñaron dos años antes compartir con ella la misma casa. También encontró en prisión la oportunidad de estudiar inglés y su literatura, y de familiarizarse con los grandes escritores estadounidenses. En Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Thoreau y Emerson encontró grandes tesoros.

 

Dejó Blackwell's Island en el mes de agosto de 1894, una mujer de veinticinco años, desarrollada y madurada e intelectualmente transformada. De vuelta a la arena, más rica en experiencia, purificada por el sufrimiento. Ya no se sentía abandonada y sola. Muchas manos se extendieron para darle la bienvenida. Había en ese momento numerosos oasis intelectuales en Nueva York. La cantina de Justus Schwab, en el número cincuenta de la calle Primera, era el centro donde se reunían anarquistas, literatos y bohemios. Entre otros, también conoció en este momento a varios anarquistas estadounidenses y formó amistad con Voltairine de Cleyre, Wm. C. Owen, Miss Van Etton y Dyer D. Lum, ex editor de ALARM y ejecutor de los últimos deseos de los mártires de Chicago. En John Swinton, el noble anciano luchador por la libertad, encontró a uno de sus amigos más fieles. Otros centros intelectuales allí fueron: SOLIDARIDAD, publicado por John Edelman; LIBERTY, del anarquista individualista Benjamin R. Tucker; el REBELDE, de Harry Kelly; DER STURMVOGEL, una publicación anarquista alemana, editada por Claus Timmermann; DER ARME TEUFEL, cuyo genio presidente fue el inimitable Robert Reitzel. A través de Arthur Brisbane, ahora lugarteniente principal de William Randolph Hearst, se familiarizó con los escritos de Fourier. Brisbane entonces aún no estaba sumergido en el pantano de la corrupción política. Envió a Emma Goldman una amable carta a Blackwell's Island, junto con la biografía de su padre, el entusiasta discípulo estadounidense de Fourier. una publicación anarquista alemana, editada por Claus Timmermann; DER ARME TEUFEL, cuyo genio presidente fue el inimitable Robert Reitzel. A través de Arthur Brisbane, ahora lugarteniente principal de William Randolph Hearst, se familiarizó con los escritos de Fourier. Brisbane entonces aún no estaba sumergido en el pantano de la corrupción política. Envió a Emma Goldman una amable carta a Blackwell's Island, junto con la biografía de su padre, el entusiasta discípulo estadounidense de Fourier. una publicación anarquista alemana, editada por Claus Timmermann; DER ARME TEUFEL, cuyo genio presidente fue el inimitable Robert Reitzel. A través de Arthur Brisbane, ahora lugarteniente principal de William Randolph Hearst, se familiarizó con los escritos de Fourier. Brisbane entonces aún no estaba sumergido en el pantano de la corrupción política. Envió a Emma Goldman una amable carta a Blackwell's Island, junto con la biografía de su padre, el entusiasta discípulo estadounidense de Fourier.

 

Emma Goldman se convirtió, tras su liberación de la penitenciaría, en un factor de la vida pública de Nueva York. Fue apreciada en las filas radicales por su devoción, su idealismo y seriedad. Varias personas buscaron su amistad y algunas trataron de persuadirla para que ayudara en la promoción de sus ediciones secundarias especiales. Por lo tanto, el Rev. Parkhurst, durante la investigación de Lexow, hizo todo lo posible para inducirla a unirse al Comité de Vigilancia para luchar contra Tammany Hall. Maria Louise, el espíritu conmovedor de un centro social, actuó como intermediaria de Parkhurst. Apenas es necesario mencionar qué respuesta recibió este último de Emma Goldman. Por cierto, Maria Louise posteriormente se convirtió en Mahatma. Durante la campaña de plata gratis, el ex Burgess McLuckie, una de las personalidades más genuinas de la huelga de Homestead, visitó Nueva York en un esfuerzo por entusiasmar a los radicales locales por la plata gratis. También intentó interesar a Emma Goldman, pero sin mayor éxito que el famoso Mahatma Maria Louise de Parkhurst-Lexow.

 

 

En 1894 la lucha de los anarquistas en Francia alcanzó su máxima expresión. El terror blanco de los advenedizos republicanos fue respondido por el terror rojo de nuestros camaradas franceses. Con febril ansiedad los anarquistas de todo el mundo siguieron esta lucha social. La propaganda de hecho encontró su eco reverberante en casi todos los países. Para familiarizarse mejor con las condiciones del viejo mundo, Emma Goldman partió hacia Europa en el año 1895. Después de una gira de conferencias en Inglaterra y Escocia, fue a Viena, donde ingresó al ALLGEMEINE KRANKENHAUS para prepararse como partera y enfermera. , y donde al mismo tiempo estudió las condiciones sociales. También encontró la oportunidad de familiarizarse con la literatura más reciente de Europa: Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, Thomas Hardy,

 

En el otoño de 1896 regresó a Nueva York vía Zurich y París. El proyecto de liberación de Alexander Berkman estaba a la mano. La bárbara sentencia de veintidós años había despertado una tremenda indignación entre los elementos radicales. Se sabía que la Junta de Indultos de Pensilvania buscaría el consejo de Carnegie y Frick en el caso de Alexander Berkman. Por lo tanto, se sugirió que se acerque a estos sultanes de Pensilvania, no con miras a obtener su gracia, sino con la solicitud de que no intenten influir en la Junta. Ernest Crosby se ofreció a ver a Carnegie, con la condición de que Alexander Berkman repudiara su acto. Eso, sin embargo, estaba absolutamente fuera de discusión. Él nunca sería culpable de tal renuncia a su propia personalidad y respeto por sí mismo. Estos esfuerzos llevaron a relaciones amistosas entre Emma Goldman y el círculo de Ernest Crosby, Bolton Hall y Leonard Abbott. En el año 1897 emprendió su primera gran gira de conferencias, que se extendió hasta California. Esta gira popularizó su nombre como representante de los oprimidos, su elocuencia resonando de costa a costa. En California, Emma Goldman se hizo amiga de los miembros de la familia Isaak y aprendió a apreciar sus esfuerzos por la Causa. Bajo tremendos obstáculos, los Isaak publicaron por primera vez FIREBRAND y, tras su supresión por parte del Departamento Postal, FREE SOCIETY. También fue durante esta gira que Emma Goldman conoció a ese gran rebelde de la libertad sexual, Moses Harman. que se extendía hasta California. Esta gira popularizó su nombre como representante de los oprimidos, su elocuencia resonando de costa a costa. En California, Emma Goldman se hizo amiga de los miembros de la familia Isaak y aprendió a apreciar sus esfuerzos por la Causa. Bajo tremendos obstáculos, los Isaak publicaron por primera vez FIREBRAND y, tras su supresión por parte del Departamento Postal, FREE SOCIETY. También fue durante esta gira que Emma Goldman conoció a ese gran rebelde de la libertad sexual, Moses Harman. que se extendía hasta California. Esta gira popularizó su nombre como representante de los oprimidos, su elocuencia resonando de costa a costa. En California, Emma Goldman se hizo amiga de los miembros de la familia Isaak y aprendió a apreciar sus esfuerzos por la Causa. Bajo tremendos obstáculos, los Isaak publicaron por primera vez FIREBRAND y, tras su supresión por parte del Departamento Postal, FREE SOCIETY. También fue durante esta gira que Emma Goldman conoció a ese gran rebelde de la libertad sexual, Moses Harman. Bajo tremendos obstáculos, los Isaak publicaron por primera vez FIREBRAND y, tras su supresión por parte del Departamento Postal, FREE SOCIETY. También fue durante esta gira que Emma Goldman conoció a ese gran rebelde de la libertad sexual, Moses Harman. Bajo tremendos obstáculos, los Isaak publicaron por primera vez FIREBRAND y, tras su supresión por parte del Departamento Postal, FREE SOCIETY. También fue durante esta gira que Emma Goldman conoció a ese gran rebelde de la libertad sexual, Moses Harman.

 

Durante la guerra hispanoamericana el espíritu chovinista estaba en su apogeo. Para frenar esta peligrosa situación, y al mismo tiempo recaudar fondos para los revolucionarios cubanos, Emma Goldman se afilió a los camaradas latinos, entre otros con Gori, Esteve, Palaviccini, Merlino, Petruccini y Ferrara. En el año 1899 siguió otra prolongada gira de agitación, que terminó en la costa del Pacífico. Arrestos y acusaciones repetidos, aunque sin malos resultados finales, marcaron cada gira de propaganda.

 

En noviembre del mismo año la incansable agitadora realizó una segunda gira de conferencias por Inglaterra y Escocia, cerrando su periplo con el primer Congreso Anarquista Internacional en París. Era la época de la guerra de los bóers, y de nuevo el jingoísmo estaba en su apogeo, como dos años antes había celebrado sus orgías durante la guerra hispanoamericana. Varias reuniones, tanto en Inglaterra como en Escocia, fueron perturbadas y disueltas por turbas patrióticas. Emma Goldman encontró en esta ocasión la oportunidad de reencontrarse con varios camaradas ingleses y personalidades interesantes como Tom Mann y las hermanas Rossetti, las hijas talentosas de Dante Gabriel Rossetti, entonces editores de la revista anarquista TORCH. Una de las esperanzas de toda su vida encontró aquí su cumplimiento: entró en contacto cercano y amistoso con Peter Kropotkin, Enrico Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov y Louise Michel. Viejos guerreros por la causa de la humanidad, cuyas hazañas han entusiasmado a miles de seguidores en todo el mundo, y cuya vida y obra han inspirado a otros miles con noble idealismo y abnegación. Viejos guerreros, pero siempre jóvenes con el coraje de días anteriores, inquebrantables en espíritu y llenos de la firme esperanza del triunfo final de la Anarquía.

 

El abismo en el movimiento obrero revolucionario, que resultó de la ruptura de INTERNATIONALE, ya no podía salvarse. Dos filosofías sociales estaban enzarzadas en un encarnizado combate. El Congreso Internacional de 1889, en París; en 1892, en Zurich, y en 1896, en Londres, produjeron diferencias irreconciliables. La mayoría de los socialdemócratas, renunciando a su pasado libertario y convirtiéndose en políticos, lograron excluir a los delegados revolucionarios y anarquistas. Este último decidió en adelante celebrar congresos separados. Su primer congreso iba a tener lugar en 1900, en París. El renegado socialista Millerand, que se había subido al Ministerio del Interior, aquí jugó un papel de Judas. El congreso de los revolucionarios fue suprimido y los delegados se dispersaron dos días antes de su inauguración prevista.

 

Sin embargo, el renegado no logró su objeto. Varios delegados lograron celebrar una conferencia secreta en la casa de un camarada en las afueras de París, donde se discutieron varios puntos de teoría y táctica. Emma Goldman tomó parte importante en estos procedimientos y en esa ocasión entró en contacto con numerosos representantes del movimiento anarquista de Europa.

 

Debido a la supresión del congreso, los delegados estaban en peligro de ser expulsados ​​de Francia. En este momento también llegaron las malas noticias de Estados Unidos con respecto a otro intento fallido de liberar a Alexander Berkman, lo que resultó ser un gran shock para Emma Goldman. En noviembre de 1900 regresa a América para dedicarse a su profesión de enfermera, al mismo tiempo que toma parte activa en la propaganda americana. Entre otras actividades organizó mítines monstruosos de protesta contra los terribles desmanes del gobierno español, perpetrados contra los presos políticos torturados en Montjuich.

 

En su vocación de enfermera Emma Goldman disfrutó de muchas oportunidades de conocer a los personajes más insólitos y peculiares. Pocos habrían identificado a la "notoria anarquista" en la pequeña mujer rubia, vestida simplemente con el uniforme de enfermera. Poco después de su regreso de Europa, conoció a una paciente llamada Sra. Stander, una adicta a la morfina que sufría agonías insoportables. Requería cuidadosa atención para poder supervisar un asunto muy importante que llevaba a cabo: el de la señora Warren. En Third Street, cerca de Third Avenue, estaba situada su residencia privada, y cerca de ella, conectada por una entrada separada, estaba su lugar de negocios. Una noche, la enfermera, al entrar en la habitación de su paciente, se encontró de pronto cara a cara con un visitante masculino, de cuello de toro y aspecto brutal. El hombre no era otro que el Sr. Jacobs, el detective que siete años antes había traído prisionera a Emma Goldman desde Filadelfia y que había intentado persuadirla, de camino a Nueva York, para que traicionara la causa de los trabajadores. Sería difícil describir la expresión de desconcierto en el semblante del hombre cuando se enfrentó tan inesperadamente a Emma Goldman, la enfermera de su amante. El bruto se transformó de repente en un caballero, esforzándose por excusar su vergonzoso comportamiento en la ocasión anterior. Jacobs era el "protector" de la Sra. Stander e intermediario entre la casa y la policía. Varios años más tarde, como miembro del equipo de detectives del fiscal de distrito Jerome, cometió perjurio, fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing durante un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. traicionar la causa de los trabajadores. Sería difícil describir la expresión de desconcierto en el semblante del hombre cuando se enfrentó tan inesperadamente a Emma Goldman, la enfermera de su amante. El bruto se transformó de repente en un caballero, esforzándose por excusar su vergonzoso comportamiento en la ocasión anterior. Jacobs era el "protector" de la Sra. Stander e intermediario entre la casa y la policía. Varios años más tarde, como miembro del equipo de detectives del fiscal de distrito Jerome, cometió perjurio, fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing durante un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. traicionar la causa de los trabajadores. Sería difícil describir la expresión de desconcierto en el semblante del hombre cuando se enfrentó tan inesperadamente a Emma Goldman, la enfermera de su amante. El bruto se transformó de repente en un caballero, esforzándose por excusar su vergonzoso comportamiento en la ocasión anterior. Jacobs era el "protector" de la Sra. Stander e intermediario entre la casa y la policía. Varios años más tarde, como miembro del equipo de detectives del fiscal de distrito Jerome, cometió perjurio, fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing durante un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. la nodriza de su amante. El bruto se transformó de repente en un caballero, esforzándose por excusar su vergonzoso comportamiento en la ocasión anterior. Jacobs era el "protector" de la Sra. Stander e intermediario entre la casa y la policía. Varios años más tarde, como miembro del equipo de detectives del fiscal de distrito Jerome, cometió perjurio, fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing durante un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. la nodriza de su amante. El bruto se transformó de repente en un caballero, esforzándose por excusar su vergonzoso comportamiento en la ocasión anterior. Jacobs era el "protector" de la Sra. Stander e intermediario entre la casa y la policía. Varios años más tarde, como miembro del equipo de detectives del fiscal de distrito Jerome, cometió perjurio, fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing durante un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing por un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable. fue condenado y enviado a Sing Sing por un año. Probablemente ahora esté empleado por alguna agencia de detectives privados, un pilar deseable de la sociedad respetable.

 

En 1901, Peter Kropotkin fue invitado por el Instituto Lowell de Massachusetts para dar una serie de conferencias sobre literatura rusa. Era su segunda gira americana y, naturalmente, los camaradas estaban ansiosos por utilizar su presencia en beneficio del movimiento. Emma Goldman entabló correspondencia con Kropotkin y logró obtener su consentimiento para organizarle una serie de conferencias. También dedicó sus energías a organizar las giras de otros conocidos anarquistas, principalmente las de Charles W. Mowbray y John Turner. De manera similar, siempre participó en todas las actividades del movimiento, siempre dispuesta a dedicar su tiempo, capacidad y energía a la Causa.

 

El seis de septiembre de 1901, Leon Czolgosz disparó al presidente McKinley en Buffalo. Inmediatamente se puso en marcha una campaña de persecución sin precedentes contra Emma Goldman como la anarquista más conocida del país. Aunque no había absolutamente ningún fundamento para la acusación, ella, junto con otros anarquistas prominentes, fue arrestada en Chicago, recluida durante varias semanas y sometida a un severo interrogatorio. Nunca antes en la historia del país se había llevado a cabo una persecución tan terrible contra una persona en la vida pública. Pero los esfuerzos de la policía y la prensa para conectar a Emma Goldman con Czolgosz resultaron inútiles. Sin embargo, el episodio la dejó herida en el corazón. El sufrimiento físico, la humillación y la brutalidad a manos de la policía que podía soportar. La depresión del alma era mucho peor. Se sintió abrumada al darse cuenta de la estupidez, la falta de comprensión y la vileza que caracterizaron los acontecimientos de esos terribles días. La actitud de incomprensión de la mayoría de sus propios camaradas hacia Czolgosz casi la llevó a la desesperación. Conmovida hasta lo más profundo de su alma, publicó un artículo sobre Czolgosz en el que intentaba explicar la gesta en su aspecto social e individual. Como una vez antes, después del acto de Berkman, ahora tampoco pudo encontrar alojamiento; como un verdadero animal salvaje, fue conducida de un lugar a otro. Esta terrible persecución y, sobre todo, la actitud de sus compañeros le imposibilitaron continuar con la propaganda. El dolor de cuerpo y alma primero tenía que sanar. Durante 1901-1903 no retomó la plataforma. Como "Miss Smith" vivió una vida tranquila,

 

Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Goldman accomplished. Her name was brought before the public with greater frequency and emphasis than ever before, the malicious harassing of the much maligned agitator arousing strong sympathy in many circles. Persons in various walks of life began to get interested in her struggle and her ideas. A better understanding and appreciation were now beginning to manifest themselves.

 

The arrival in America of the English Anarchist, John Turner, induced Emma Goldman to leave her retirement. Again she threw herself into her public activities, organizing an energetic movement for the defense of Turner, whom the Immigration authorities condemned to deportation on account of the Anarchist exclusion law, passed after the death of McKinley.

 

When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New York to acquaint the American public with Russian dramatic art, Emma Goldman became the manager of the undertaking. By much patience and perseverance she succeeded in raising the necessary funds to introduce the Russian artists to the theater-goers of New York and Chicago. Though financially not a success, the venture proved of great artistic value. As manager of the Russian theater Emma Goldman enjoyed some unique experiences. M. Orleneff could converse only in Russian, and "Miss Smith" was forced to act as his interpreter at various polite functions. Most of the aristocratic ladies of Fifth Avenue had not the least inkling that the amiable manager who so entertainingly discussed philosophy, drama, and literature at their five o'clock teas, was the "notorious" Emma Goldman. If the latter should some day write her autobiography, she will no doubt have many interesting anecdotes to relate in connection with these experiences.

 

The weekly Anarchist publication, FREE SOCIETY, issued by the Isaak family, was forced to suspend in consequence of the nation-wide fury that swept the country after the death of McKinley. To fill out the gap Emma Goldman, in co-operation with Max Baginski and other comrades, decided to publish a monthly magazine devoted to the furtherance of Anarchist ideas in life and literature. The first issue of MOTHER EARTH appeared in the month of March, 1906, the initial expenses of the periodical partly covered by the proceeds of a theater benefit given by Orleneff, Mme. Nazimova, and their company, in favor of the Anarchist magazine. Under tremendous difficulties and obstacles the tireless propagandist has succeeded in continuing MOTHER EARTH uninterruptedly since 1906—an achievement rarely equalled in the annals of radical publications.

 

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

 

Nowhere had the birth of the Russian revolution aroused such vital and active response as among the Russians living in America. The heroes of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Tchaikovsky, Mme. Breshkovskaia, Gershuni, and others visited these shores to waken the sympathies of the American people toward the struggle for liberty, and to collect aid for its continuance and support. The success of these efforts was to a considerable extent due to the exertions, eloquence, and the talent for organization on the part of Emma Goldman. This opportunity enabled her to give valuable services to the struggle for liberty in her native land. It is not generally known that it is the Anarchists who are mainly instrumental in insuring the success, moral as well as financial, of most of the radical undertakings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledged appreciation; the needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, and to these he devotes his energy and abilities. Yet it may be mentioned that some otherwise decent folks, though at all times anxious for Anarchist support and co-operation, are ever willing to monopolize all the credit for the work done. During the last several decades it was chiefly the Anarchists who had organized all the great revolutionary efforts, and aided in every struggle for liberty. But for fear of shocking the respectable mob, who looks upon the Anarchists as the apostles of Satan, and because of their social position in bourgeois society, the would-be radicals ignore the activity of the Anarchists.

 

In 1907 Emma Goldman participated as delegate to the second Anarchist Congress, at Amsterdam. She was intensely active in all its proceedings and supported the organization of the Anarchist INTERNATIONALE. Together with the other American delegate, Max Baginski, she submitted to the congress an exhaustive report of American conditions, closing with the following characteristic remarks:

 

 

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

 

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

 

"Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is farther from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor.

 

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

 

"The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of learning, are they not models of organization, offering the people fine opportunities for instruction? Far from it. The school, more than any other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.

 

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

 

"It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color and form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously will the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with the spirit of solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony, which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makes non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since it abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes.

 

"Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and social interests results in relentless war among the social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operative commonwealth.

 

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

 

"Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express their latent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does the individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his highest form of development.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

A propagandist of Emma Goldman's importance is necessarily a sharp thorn to the reaction. She is looked upon as a danger to the continued existence of authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then, that the enemy resorts to any and all means to make her impossible. A systematic attempt to suppress her activities was organized a year ago by the united police force of the country. But like all previous similar attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energetic protests on the part of the intellectual element of America succeeded in overthrowing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech. Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by the Federal authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of the rights of citizenship, the government revoked the citizenship papers of her husband, whom she had married at the youthful age of eighteen, and whose whereabouts, if he be alive, could not be determined for the last two decades. The great government of the glorious United States did not hesitate to stoop to the most despicable methods to accomplish that achievement. But as her citizenship had never proved of use to Emma Goldman, she can bear the loss with a light heart.

 

 

There are personalities who possess such a powerful individuality that by its very force they exert the most potent influence over the best representatives of their time. Michael Bakunin was such a personality. But for him, Richard Wagner had never written DIE KUNST UND DIE REVOLUTION. Emma Goldman is a similar personality. She is a strong factor in the socio-political life of America. By virtue of her eloquence, energy, and brilliant mentality, she moulds the minds and hearts of thousands of her auditors.

 

Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering humanity, and an inexorable honesty toward herself, are the leading traits of Emma Goldman. No person, whether friend or foe, shall presume to control her goal or dictate her mode of life. She would perish rather than sacrifice her convictions, or the right of self-ownership of soul and body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in living it,—and that is the one supreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to consider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to make concessions to existing society and compromise with old prejudices,—then even the most radical views could be pardoned in her. But that she takes her radicalism seriously; that it has permeated her blood and marrow to the extent where she not merely teaches but also practices her convictions—this shocks even the radical Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life; she associates with publicans—hence the indignation of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 

It is no mere coincidence that such divergent writers as Pietro Gori and William Marion Reedy find similar traits in their characterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with the vision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the oppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep earnestness, analyses the ills of society, and portrays, with artist touch, the coming dawn of humanity, founded on equality, brotherhood, and liberty."

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.

New York, December, 1910.

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

It is altogether different with the written mode of human expression. No one, unless intensely interested in progressive ideas, will bother with serious books. That leads me to another discovery made after many years of public activity. It is this: All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves. Already this truth is recognized by most modern educators in relation to the immature mind. I think it is equally true regarding the adult. Anarchists or revolutionists can no more be made than musicians. All that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought. Whether something vital will develop depends largely on the fertility of the human soil, though the quality of the intellectual seed must not be overlooked.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory remarks do but detract from the ideas set forth. However, I wish to forestall two objections which will undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference to the essay on ANARCHISM; the other, on MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES.

 

"¿Por qué no dices cómo funcionarán las cosas bajo el anarquismo?" es una pregunta con la que me he tenido que encontrar miles de veces. Porque creo que el anarquismo no puede imponer consistentemente un programa o método férreo sobre el futuro. Las cosas que toda nueva generación tiene que luchar, y que menos puede superar, son las cargas del pasado, que nos tiene a todos como en una red. El anarquismo, al menos como yo lo entiendo, deja libre a la posteridad para desarrollar sus propios sistemas particulares, en armonía con sus necesidades. Nuestra imaginación más vívida no puede prever las potencialidades de una raza liberada de restricciones externas. ¿Cómo, entonces, puede alguien asumir trazar una línea de conducta para los que vendrán? Nosotros, que pagamos muy caro cada bocanada de aire puro y fresco, debemos cuidarnos de la tendencia a encadenar el futuro.

 

La tendencia más desalentadora común entre los lectores es arrancar una frase de una obra, como criterio de las ideas o la personalidad del escritor. Friedrich Nietzsche, por ejemplo, es acusado de odiar a los débiles porque creía en la UEBERMENSCH. A los superficiales intérpretes de esa mente gigante no se les ocurre que esta visión de la UEBERMENSCH también reclamaba un estado de sociedad que no engendraría una raza de débiles y esclavos.

 

Es la misma actitud estrecha que ve en Max Stirner nada más que al apóstol de la teoría "cada uno para sí mismo, el diablo se lleva al trasero". Se ignora por completo que el individualismo de Stirner contiene las mayores posibilidades sociales. Sin embargo, no obstante, es cierto que si la sociedad alguna vez llega a ser libre, será a través de individuos liberados, cuyos esfuerzos libres hacen la sociedad.

 

Estos ejemplos me llevan a la objeción que se planteará a las MINORÍAS VERSUS LAS MAYORÍAS. Sin duda, seré excomulgado como enemigo del pueblo, porque repudio a la masa como factor creador. Preferiré eso antes que ser culpable de los tópicos demagógicos tan comúnmente en boga como cebo para la gente. Me doy cuenta demasiado bien de la enfermedad de las masas oprimidas y desheredadas, pero me niego a prescribir los ridículos paliativos habituales que no permiten que el paciente muera ni se recupere. Uno no puede ser demasiado extremo al tratar con los males sociales; además, lo extremo es generalmente lo verdadero. Mi falta de fe en la mayoría está dictada por mi fe en las potencialidades del individuo. Sólo cuando éste se vuelve libre para elegir a sus asociados para un propósito común,

 

Por lo demás, mi libro debe hablar por sí mismo.

 

emma goldman

 

 

 

 

ANARQUISMO: LO QUE REALMENTE SIGNIFICA

 

ANARQUÍA.

Siempre vilipendiado, maldito, nunca comprendido,

     eres el terror espeluznante de nuestra época.

"Naufragio de todo orden", grita la multitud,

     "eres tú, y la furia sin fin de la guerra y el asesinato".

Oh, déjalos llorar. A los que nunca se han esforzado por encontrar

     La verdad que se esconde detrás de una palabra,

A ellos no se les dio el significado correcto de la palabra.

     Seguirán ciegos entre los ciegos.

Pero tú, oh palabra, tan clara, tan fuerte, tan pura,

     dices todo lo que yo he tomado por meta.

¡Te doy al futuro! Tu seguro

     Cuando cada uno por lo menos a sí mismo despierte.

Viene con sol? ¿En la emoción de la tempestad?

     No puedo decirlo, ¡pero la tierra lo verá!

¡Soy un anarquista! ¡Por lo tanto

     no gobernaré, y también gobernaré no seré!

 

                     JOHN HENRY MACKAY.

 

La historia del crecimiento y desarrollo humanos es al mismo tiempo la historia de la terrible lucha de cada nueva idea que anuncia el acercamiento de un amanecer más brillante. En su tenaz aferramiento a la tradición, lo Antiguo nunca ha dudado en hacer uso de los medios más inmundos y crueles para detener el advenimiento de lo Nuevo, en cualquier forma o período en que este último se haya afirmado. Tampoco necesitamos volver sobre nuestros pasos en el pasado distante para darnos cuenta de la enormidad de la oposición, las dificultades y las dificultades que se encuentran en el camino de cada idea progresista. La rejilla, el tornillo de mariposa y el nudo todavía están con nosotros; también lo son el traje de presidiario y la ira social, todos conspirando contra el espíritu que marcha serenamente.

 

El anarquismo no podía esperar escapar al destino de todas las demás ideas de innovación. De hecho, como el innovador más revolucionario e intransigente, el anarquismo debe enfrentarse a la combinación de ignorancia y veneno del mundo que pretende reconstruir.

 

Para tratar, aunque sea remotamente, todo lo que se dice y se hace contra el anarquismo, sería necesario escribir un volumen completo. Por lo tanto, me enfrentaré sólo a dos de las principales objeciones. Al hacerlo, intentaré dilucidar qué representa realmente el anarquismo.

 

El extraño fenómeno de la oposición al anarquismo es que saca a la luz la relación entre la llamada inteligencia y la ignorancia. Y, sin embargo, esto no es tan extraño cuando consideramos la relatividad de todas las cosas. La masa ignorante tiene a su favor que no pretende saber ni tolerar. Actuando, como siempre lo hace, por mero impulso, sus razones son como las de un niño. "¿Por qué?" "Porque." Sin embargo, la oposición de los ignorantes al anarquismo merece la misma consideración que la del hombre inteligente.

 

¿Cuáles son, entonces, las objeciones? Primero, el anarquismo no es práctico, aunque es un ideal hermoso. En segundo lugar, el anarquismo representa la violencia y la destrucción, por lo que debe ser repudiado como vil y peligroso. Tanto el hombre inteligente como la masa ignorante juzgan no por un conocimiento completo del tema, sino por rumores o falsas interpretaciones.

 

Un esquema práctico, dice Oscar Wilde, es uno que ya existe, o un esquema que podría llevarse a cabo bajo las condiciones existentes; pero son exactamente las condiciones existentes las que uno objeta, y cualquier esquema que pudiera aceptar estas condiciones es erróneo y tonto. El verdadero criterio de lo práctico, por lo tanto, no es si este último puede mantener intacto el mal o la locura; más bien es si el esquema tiene suficiente vitalidad para salir de las aguas estancadas de lo viejo y construir, además de sostener, una nueva vida. A la luz de esta concepción, el anarquismo es ciertamente práctico. Más que cualquier otra idea, está ayudando a acabar con el mal y la tontería; más que cualquier otra idea, es construir y sostener una nueva vida.

 

Las emociones del hombre ignorante son continuamente mantenidas en un tono por las historias más espeluznantes sobre el anarquismo. No es algo demasiado escandaloso para ser empleado contra esta filosofía y sus exponentes. Por lo tanto, el anarquismo representa para el irreflexivo lo que el proverbial hombre malo le hace al niño: un monstruo negro empeñado en tragarlo todo; en definitiva, destrucción y violencia.

 

¡Destrucción y violencia! ¿Cómo va a saber el hombre corriente que el elemento más violento de la sociedad es la ignorancia; que su poder de destrucción es precisamente lo que combate el anarquismo? Tampoco es consciente de que el anarquismo, cuyas raíces, por así decirlo, son parte de las fuerzas de la naturaleza, destruye, no el tejido sano, sino los crecimientos parásitos que se alimentan de la esencia de la vida de la sociedad. Es simplemente limpiar el suelo de malas hierbas y artemisa, para que eventualmente pueda dar frutos saludables.

 

Alguien ha dicho que se requiere menos esfuerzo mental para condenar que para pensar. La indolencia mental generalizada, tan frecuente en la sociedad, prueba que esto es demasiado cierto. En lugar de ir al fondo de cualquier idea dada, para examinar su origen y significado, la mayoría de la gente la condenará por completo o se basará en alguna definición superficial o perjudicial de lo no esencial.

 

El anarquismo insta al hombre a pensar, a investigar, a analizar cada proposición; pero para no poner a prueba demasiado la capacidad cerebral del lector promedio, también comenzaré con una definición, y luego desarrollaré esta última.

 

ANARQUISMO:—La filosofía de un nuevo orden social basado en la libertad sin restricciones por la ley hecha por el hombre; la teoría de que todas las formas de gobierno se basan en la violencia y, por lo tanto, son incorrectas y dañinas, además de innecesarias.

 

El nuevo orden social descansa, por supuesto, sobre la base materialista de la vida; pero mientras todos los anarquistas están de acuerdo en que el principal mal hoy en día es económico, sostienen que la solución de ese mal puede lograrse sólo a través de la consideración de CADA FASE de la vida, tanto individual como colectiva; las fases internas y externas.

 

Una lectura minuciosa de la historia del desarrollo humano revelará dos elementos en amargo conflicto entre sí; elementos que recién ahora comienzan a ser entendidos, no como extraños entre sí, sino como íntimamente relacionados y verdaderamente armoniosos, aunque sólo sea colocados en el entorno adecuado: los instintos individuales y sociales. El individuo y la sociedad han librado una batalla implacable y sangrienta durante siglos, cada uno luchando por la supremacía, porque cada uno estaba ciego al valor y la importancia del otro. Los instintos individuales y sociales, el uno un factor más potente para el esfuerzo individual, para el crecimiento, la aspiración, la autorrealización; el otro, un factor igualmente potente para la ayuda mutua y el bienestar social.

 

La explicación de la tormenta que ruge dentro del individuo, y entre él y su entorno, no es difícil de buscar. El hombre primitivo, incapaz de comprender su ser, y mucho menos la unidad de toda vida, se sintió absolutamente dependiente de fuerzas ciegas y ocultas siempre listas para burlarse de él y burlarse de él. De esa actitud surgieron los conceptos religiosos del hombre como una mera mota de polvo dependiente de poderes superiores en lo alto, que solo pueden ser apaciguados mediante una entrega total. Todas las primeras sagas descansan sobre esa idea, que sigue siendo el LEIT-MOTIF de los relatos bíblicos que tratan de la relación del hombre con Dios, con el Estado, con la sociedad. Una y otra vez el mismo motivo, EL HOMBRE ES NADA, LOS PODERES LO SON TODO. Por lo tanto, Jehová solo aguantaría al hombre con la condición de que se rindiera por completo. El hombre puede tener todas las glorias de la tierra, pero no debe volverse consciente de sí mismo. El Estado, la sociedad y las leyes morales cantan el mismo estribillo: El hombre puede tener todas las glorias de la tierra, pero no debe tomar conciencia de sí mismo.

 

El anarquismo es la única filosofía que trae al hombre la conciencia de sí mismo; que sostiene que Dios, el Estado y la sociedad son inexistentes, que sus promesas son nulas y sin efecto, ya que sólo pueden cumplirse mediante la subordinación del hombre. El anarquismo es por tanto el maestro de la unidad de la vida; no meramente en la naturaleza, sino en el hombre. No hay conflicto entre el individuo y los instintos sociales, como tampoco lo hay entre el corazón y los pulmones: uno el receptáculo de una preciosa esencia de vida, el otro el depósito del elemento que mantiene la esencia pura y fuerte. El individuo es el corazón de la sociedad, conservando la esencia de la vida social; la sociedad es el pulmón que distribuye el elemento para mantener la esencia de la vida, es decir, el individuo, puro y fuerte.

 

"La única cosa de valor en el mundo", dice Emerson, "es el alma activa; todo hombre la contiene dentro de sí. El alma activa ve la verdad absoluta y pronuncia la verdad y crea". En otras palabras, el instinto individual es la cosa de valor en el mundo. Es el alma verdadera la que ve y crea viva la verdad, de la cual ha de salir una verdad aún mayor, el alma social renacida.

 

El anarquismo es el gran liberador del hombre de los fantasmas que lo tenían cautivo; es el árbitro y pacificador de las dos fuerzas para la armonía individual y social. Para lograr esa unidad, el anarquismo ha declarado la guerra a las influencias perniciosas que hasta ahora han impedido la combinación armoniosa de los instintos individuales y sociales, el individuo y la sociedad.

 

Religión, el dominio de la mente humana; la propiedad, el dominio de las necesidades humanas; y el Gobierno, el dominio de la conducta humana, representan el baluarte de la esclavitud del hombre y todos los horrores que conlleva. ¡Religión! Cómo domina la mente del hombre, cómo humilla y degrada su alma. Dios es todo, el hombre es nada, dice la religión. Pero de esa nada Dios ha creado un reino tan despótico, tan tiránico, tan cruel, tan terriblemente exigente que nada más que tristeza, lágrimas y sangre han gobernado el mundo desde el principio de los dioses. El anarquismo incita al hombre a la rebelión contra este monstruo negro. Rompe tus grilletes mentales, dice el Anarquismo al hombre, porque hasta que no pienses y juzgues por ti mismo no te librarás del dominio de las tinieblas, el mayor obstáculo para todo progreso.

 

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

 

"Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

 

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

 

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,—too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

 

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as "one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger." A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,—the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.

 

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

 

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

 

Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice."

 

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls."

 

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities,—the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

 

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary ONLY to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

 

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

 

Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions.

 

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

 

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government—laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,—is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society.

 

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

 

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

 

"Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end."

 

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

 

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

 

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change.

 

"All voting," says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

 

What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

 

 

 

 

MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES

 

If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life—production, politics, and education—rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.

 

In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god,—Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to verify this sad fact.

 

Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

 

Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none but a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infests American cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to a Michael Angelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true artistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions, who exercises originality, and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched existence. His work may some day become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted; not until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an idealless and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master.

 

It is said that the artist of today cannot create because Prometheus-like he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was dependent on his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far away from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the shrine of the master.

 

The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value,—the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the financier in Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES points to some blurred arrangement in colors, saying "See how great it is; it cost 50,000 francs." Just like our own parvenues. The fabulous figures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the poverty of their taste.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.

 

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

 

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with the white hands"[1] brings luck.

 

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

 

About fifty years ago, a meteor-like idea made its appearance on the social horizon of the world, an idea so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution, the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich man, as well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority, as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as the perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as well as the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal—why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us.

 

Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.

 

Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the earth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a creative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well that as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality. It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it will always be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I therefore believe with Emerson that "the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only."

 

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

 

 

[1] The intellectuals.

 

 

 

 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

 

To analyze the psychology of political violence is not only extremely difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on the other hand, human sympathy is expressed with the ATTENTATER,[1] one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.

 

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

 

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

 

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause.

 

Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in the second part of BEYOND HUMAN POWER, emphasizes the fact that it is among the Anarchists that we must look for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and who welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as truly as Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity.

 

Francois Coppee, the French novelist, thus expresses himself regarding the psychology of the ATTENTATER:

 

"The reading of the details of Vaillant's execution left me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and women pressing against each other in the middle of the oblong arena of the circus, under the gaze of thousands of eyes, while from all the steps of the immense amphitheatre went up the terrible cry, AD LEONES! and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts.

 

"I did not believe the execution would take place. In the first place, no victim had been struck with death, and it had long been the custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, was disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor. In the independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf, very loud and eloquent. 'A purely literary current of opinion' some have said, with no little scorn. IT IS, ON THE CONTRARY, AN HONOR TO THE MEN OF ART AND THOUGHT TO HAVE EXPRESSED ONCE MORE THEIR DISGUST AT THE SCAFFOLD."

 

Again Zola, in GERMINAL and PARIS, describes the tenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering, of these men who close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our system.

 

Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else understands the psychology of the ATTENTATER is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliant work, UNE PSYCHOLOGIE DU MILITAIRE PROFESSIONEL, who has arrived at these suggestive conclusions:

 

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

 

To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond compare.[2]

 

"There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget, when he is abusing the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be his BETE NOIRE for the moment, as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes, and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen, which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence, whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any special conviction, but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of this fact. To go no further, take the three most notorious examples of political parties goaded into violence during the last fifty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in Ireland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists? No. Did they all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The Mazzinians were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their social instincts.

 

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

 

y sobre todo los anarquistas, han perdido el trabajo y hasta la oportunidad del trabajo, únicamente en razón de sus opiniones. Es sólo el artesano especialmente dotado quien, si es un celoso propagandista, puede esperar conservar un empleo permanente. ¿Y qué le sucede a un hombre con el cerebro trabajando activamente con un fermento de nuevas ideas, con una visión ante sus ojos de una nueva esperanza que amanece para los hombres que trabajan y agonizan, con el conocimiento de que su sufrimiento y el de sus compañeros en la miseria no es causado por la crueldad del destino, sino por la injusticia de otros seres humanos, ¿qué le sucede a un hombre así cuando ve morir de hambre a sus seres queridos, cuando él mismo está muerto de hambre? Algunas naturalezas en tal situación, y de ninguna manera las menos sociales o las menos sensibles, se volverán violentas, y hasta sentirán que su violencia es social y no antisocial, que al golpear cuando y como pueden, lo hacen, no por sí mismos, sino por la naturaleza humana, ultrajada y despojada en sus personas y en las de sus compañeros de sufrimiento. ¿Y nosotros, que no estamos en esta horrible situación, vamos a quedarnos de brazos cruzados y condenar fríamente a estas lastimosas víctimas de las Furias y los Destinos? ¿Vamos a condenar como sinvergüenzas a estos seres humanos que actúan con heroica abnegación, sacrificando sus vidas en protesta, donde naturalezas menos sociales y menos enérgicas se acostarían y se arrastrarían en abyecta sumisión a la injusticia y al mal? ¿Debemos unirnos al clamor ignorante y brutal que estigmatiza a tales hombres como monstruos de maldad, que gratuitamente se vuelven locos en una sociedad armoniosa e inocentemente pacífica? ¡No! Odiamos el asesinato con un odio que puede parecer absurdamente exagerado para los apologistas de las masacres de Matabele. a los insensibles consentidores en ahorcamientos y bombardeos, pero declinamos en tales casos de homicidio o tentativa de homicidio, como los que estamos tratando, ser culpables de la cruel injusticia de arrojar toda la responsabilidad del hecho sobre el perpetrador inmediato. La culpa de estos homicidios recae en todo hombre y mujer que, intencionadamente o por fría indiferencia, contribuye a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan al ser humano a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. pero declinamos en tales casos de homicidio o tentativa de homicidio, como los que estamos tratando, ser culpables de la cruel injusticia de arrojar toda la responsabilidad del hecho sobre el perpetrador inmediato. La culpa de estos homicidios recae en todo hombre y mujer que, intencionadamente o por fría indiferencia, contribuye a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan al ser humano a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. pero declinamos en tales casos de homicidio o tentativa de homicidio, como los que estamos tratando, ser culpables de la cruel injusticia de arrojar toda la responsabilidad del hecho sobre el perpetrador inmediato. La culpa de estos homicidios recae en todo hombre y mujer que, intencionadamente o por fría indiferencia, contribuye a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan al ser humano a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. ser culpable de la cruel injusticia de arrojar toda la responsabilidad del hecho sobre el perpetrador inmediato. La culpa de estos homicidios recae en todo hombre y mujer que, intencionadamente o por fría indiferencia, contribuye a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan al ser humano a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. ser culpable de la cruel injusticia de arrojar toda la responsabilidad del hecho sobre el perpetrador inmediato. La culpa de estos homicidios recae en todo hombre y mujer que, intencionadamente o por fría indiferencia, contribuye a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan al ser humano a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. ayuda a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan a los seres humanos a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3]. ayuda a mantener las condiciones sociales que llevan a los seres humanos a la desesperación. El hombre que dedica su vida entera al intento, a costa de su propia vida, de protestar contra los errores de sus semejantes, es un santo comparado con los defensores activos y pasivos de la crueldad y la injusticia, incluso si su protesta destruye a otros. vive además de la suya. Aquel que esté libre de pecado en la sociedad, que tire la primera piedra contra tal persona”[3].

 

Que cada acto de violencia política se atribuya hoy en día a los anarquistas no es nada sorprendente. Sin embargo, es un hecho conocido por casi todos los que están familiarizados con el movimiento anarquista que un gran número de actos, por los cuales los anarquistas tuvieron que sufrir, se originaron con la prensa capitalista o fueron instigados, si no perpetrados directamente, por la policía.

 

Durante varios años se habían cometido en España actos de violencia, de los que se responsabilizaba a los anarquistas, acosados ​​como fieras y encarcelados. Más tarde se supo que los perpetradores de estos actos no eran anarquistas, sino miembros del departamento de policía. El escándalo se generalizó tanto que los periódicos conservadores españoles exigieron la aprehensión y castigo del líder de la banda, Juan Rull, quien posteriormente fue condenado a muerte y ejecutado. La sensacional evidencia, sacada a la luz durante el juicio, obligó al inspector de policía Momento a exonerar completamente a los anarquistas de cualquier conexión con los hechos cometidos durante un largo período. Esto resultó en el despido de varios oficiales de policía, entre ellos el Inspector Tressols, quien, en venganza,

 

Este es uno de los muchos ejemplos sorprendentes de cómo se fabrican las conspiraciones anarquistas.

 

Que la policía americana puede cometer perjurio con la misma facilidad, que es tan despiadada, tan brutal y astuta como sus colegas europeos, ha quedado demostrado en más de una ocasión. Basta recordar la tragedia del 11 de noviembre de 1887, conocida como el motín de Haymarket.

 

Nadie que conozca el caso puede dudar de que los anarquistas, asesinados judicialmente en Chicago, murieron víctimas de una prensa mentirosa y sanguinaria y de una cruel conspiración policial. ¿No ha dicho el propio juez Gary: "No porque hayan provocado la bomba de Haymarket, sino porque son anarquistas, están siendo juzgados".

 

El análisis imparcial y minucioso del gobernador Altgeld de esa mancha en el escudo estadounidense verificó la franqueza brutal del juez Gary. Fue esto lo que indujo a Altgeld a perdonar a los tres anarquistas, ganándose así la estima duradera de todos los hombres y mujeres amantes de la libertad en el mundo.

 

Cuando nos acercamos a la tragedia del 6 de septiembre de 1901, nos enfrentamos a uno de los ejemplos más llamativos de cuán pocas teorías sociales son responsables de un acto de violencia política. "Leon Czolgosz, un anarquista, incitado a cometer el acto por Emma Goldman". Sin duda, ¿no ha incitado a la violencia incluso antes de su nacimiento, y no seguirá haciéndolo más allá de la muerte? Todo es posible con los anarquistas.

 

Hoy, incluso, nueve años después de la tragedia, después de que se demostró cien veces que Emma Goldman no tuvo nada que ver con el evento, que no existe evidencia alguna que indique que Czolgosz alguna vez se llamó a sí mismo anarquista, nos enfrentamos a la misma mentira. , fabricado por la policía y perpetuado por la prensa. Ningún alma viviente escuchó a Czolgosz hacer esa declaración, ni hay una sola palabra escrita que demuestre que el niño alguna vez respiró la acusación. Nada más que ignorancia e histeria insana, que nunca han podido resolver el problema más simple de causa y efecto.

 

¡El presidente de una República libre asesinado! ¿Qué otra cosa puede ser la causa, sino que el ATENTADOR debe haber estado loco, o que fue incitado al hecho?

 

¡Una República libre! Cómo se mantendrá un mito, cómo continuará engañando, embaucando y cegando incluso a los comparativamente inteligentes ante sus monstruosos absurdos. ¡Una República libre! Y, sin embargo, en poco más de treinta años, una pequeña banda de parásitos ha robado con éxito al pueblo estadounidense y pisoteado los principios fundamentales establecidos por los padres de este país, que garantizan a cada hombre, mujer y niño "vida, libertad, y la búsqueda de la felicidad". Durante treinta años han estado aumentando su riqueza y poder a expensas de la gran masa de trabajadores, aumentando así el ejército de los desempleados, los hambrientos, los sin techo y la parte de la humanidad sin amigos, que están recorriendo el país de este a oeste, de norte a sur, en una vana búsqueda de trabajo. Durante muchos años el hogar ha quedado al cuidado de los más pequeños, mientras los padres agotan su vida y sus fuerzas por una mera miseria. Durante treinta años, los robustos hijos de América han sido sacrificados en el campo de batalla de la guerra industrial, y las hijas ultrajadas en el entorno corrupto de las fábricas. Durante largos y fatigosos años ha continuado este proceso de socavar la salud, el vigor y el orgullo de la nación, sin mucha protesta de los desheredados y oprimidos. Enloquecidos por el éxito y la victoria, los poderes del dinero de esta "tierra libre nuestra" se volvieron cada vez más audaces en sus crueles y despiadados esfuerzos para competir con las podridas y decadentes tiranías europeas por la supremacía del poder. Durante treinta años, los robustos hijos de América han sido sacrificados en el campo de batalla de la guerra industrial, y las hijas ultrajadas en el entorno corrupto de las fábricas. Durante largos y fatigosos años ha continuado este proceso de socavar la salud, el vigor y el orgullo de la nación, sin mucha protesta de los desheredados y oprimidos. Enloquecidos por el éxito y la victoria, los poderes del dinero de esta "tierra libre nuestra" se volvieron cada vez más audaces en sus crueles y despiadados esfuerzos para competir con las podridas y decadentes tiranías europeas por la supremacía del poder. Durante treinta años, los robustos hijos de América han sido sacrificados en el campo de batalla de la guerra industrial, y las hijas ultrajadas en el entorno corrupto de las fábricas. Durante largos y fatigosos años ha continuado este proceso de socavar la salud, el vigor y el orgullo de la nación, sin mucha protesta de los desheredados y oprimidos. Enloquecidos por el éxito y la victoria, los poderes del dinero de esta "tierra libre nuestra" se volvieron cada vez más audaces en sus crueles y despiadados esfuerzos para competir con las podridas y decadentes tiranías europeas por la supremacía del poder. ha estado sucediendo. Enloquecidos por el éxito y la victoria, los poderes del dinero de esta "tierra libre nuestra" se volvieron cada vez más audaces en sus crueles y despiadados esfuerzos para competir con las podridas y decadentes tiranías europeas por la supremacía del poder. ha estado sucediendo. Enloquecidos por el éxito y la victoria, los poderes del dinero de esta "tierra libre nuestra" se volvieron cada vez más audaces en sus crueles y despiadados esfuerzos para competir con las podridas y decadentes tiranías europeas por la supremacía del poder.

 

En vano una prensa mentirosa repudió a Leon Czolgosz como extranjero. El niño era un producto de nuestro propio suelo estadounidense libre, eso lo arrullaba para dormir,

 

Patria mía, eres tú,

dulce tierra de libertad.

¿Quién puede decir cuántas veces este niño americano se había gloriado en la celebración del Cuatro de Julio, o del Día de la Condecoración, cuando honró fielmente a los muertos de la Nación? Quién sabe si él también estuvo dispuesto a "luchar por su patria y morir por su libertad", hasta que se dio cuenta de que aquellos a los que pertenecía no tienen patria, porque les han despojado de todo lo que han producido; hasta que se dio cuenta de que la libertad y la independencia de sus sueños juveniles no eran más que una farsa. Pobre Leon Czolgosz, tu crimen consistió en una conciencia social demasiado sensible. A diferencia de sus hermanos estadounidenses sin ideales y sin cerebro, sus ideales se elevaron por encima del vientre y la cuenta bancaria. No es de extrañar que haya impresionado al único ser humano entre toda la multitud enfurecida en su juicio, una periodista, como una visionaria, totalmente ajena a su entorno.

 

Ahora, a un ejemplo reciente de complots anarquistas fabricados por la policía. En esa ciudad manchada de sangre, Chicago, un joven llamado Averbuch atentó contra la vida del jefe de policía Shippy. Inmediatamente se envió el grito a los cuatro rincones del mundo de que Averbuch era anarquista y que los anarquistas eran los responsables del acto. Todos los que eran conocidos por tener ideas anarquistas fueron vigilados de cerca, arrestaron a varias personas, confiscaron la biblioteca de un grupo anarquista y todas las reuniones se hicieron imposibles. No hace falta decir que, como en varias ocasiones anteriores, debo responsabilizarme por el hecho. Evidentemente, la policía estadounidense me atribuye poderes ocultos. No conocí a Averbuch; de hecho, nunca antes había escuchado su nombre, y la única forma en que posiblemente podría haber "conspirado" con él era en mi cuerpo astral. Pero, entonces, la policía no se preocupa por la lógica o la justicia. Lo que buscan es un blanco, para enmascarar su absoluto desconocimiento de la causa, de la psicología de un acto político. ¿Era Averbuch un anarquista? No hay prueba positiva de ello. Llevaba tres meses en el campo, no conocía el idioma y, por lo que pude averiguar, era bastante desconocido para los anarquistas de Chicago.

 

What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants, undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He received his first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutal dispersement of the unemployed parade. He further experienced American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an economic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the glorious land brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are in the same position the world over. In his native land he probably learned that necessity knows no law—there was no difference between a Russian and an American policeman.

 

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

 

But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committed acts of violence? Certainly they have, always however ready to shoulder the responsibility. My contention is that they were impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion. This is not a mere assertion, but a fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the circumstances bearing upon this question will further clarify my position.

 

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

 

During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the coke regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them out of the wretched Company houses.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

"Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have gone, I have seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of capital. Everywhere I have seen the same wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in the remoter parts of the inhabited districts of South America, where I had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there study nature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs.

 

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

 

"I am reproached with the wounds of those who were hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that, if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during the Revolution, it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of the nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. Add also those who die of hunger, and all this with the assent of our Deputies. Beside all this, of how little weight are the reproaches now brought against me!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Carnot would listen to no entreaty; he insisted on more than a pound of flesh, he wanted Vaillant's life, and then—the inevitable happened: President Carnot was killed. On the handle of the stiletto used by the ATTENTATER was engraved, significantly,

 

VAILLANT!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

"I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry, and many children who suffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the towns. I saw many and large shops full of clothing and woolen stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn, suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other hand, I saw thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live on the labor of others; who spend every day thousands of francs for their amusement; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses, many servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life.

 

"I believed in God; but when I saw so great an inequality between men, I acknowledged that it was not God who created man, but man who created God. And I discovered that those who want their property to be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

During a religious procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and Socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bastille, Montjuich, and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors.

 

The man primarily responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bones crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art of brutality during his regime in Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the appeals and protests of the awakened civilized conscience.

 

In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian, Angiolillo. The latter was an editor in his native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo: "His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had not grown up at the 'case.' With his handsome frank face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French, but no English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to acquire the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was not long until he became very popular with his fellow compositors. His distinguished and yet modest manner, and his consideration towards his colleagues, won him the hearts of all the boys."

 

Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailed accounts in the press. He read of the great wave of human sympathy with the helpless victims at Montjuich. On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes the results of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards, who escaped Castillo's clutches, came to seek asylum in England. There, at the great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible scars of burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a thousand theories; the impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments, beyond himself even.

 

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

 

Senor Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped on the veranda. Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was a corpse.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood, self-respect.

 

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

 

Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an ideal,—the Anarchist paper published in Paterson, LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE.

 

Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair, Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, the entire savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.

 

In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor, and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They appealed to their good King Umberto; he would help. And he did. The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King, held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms. The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to respond—even as does steel to the magnet—to the wrongs and horrors of society.

 

If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra.

 

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

 

"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods. The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India. They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the tyrant."[4]

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.

 

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

 

Such is the psychology of political violence.

 

 

[1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.

 

[2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

 

[3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.

 

[4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN.

 

 

 

 

PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE

 

In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the following story of THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL:

 

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

 

"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the scorching heat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the devil: 'Let me go! Let me leave this hell!'

 

"'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil gets hold of him again and drags him off to a farm. There he sees workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.

 

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

 

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

 

"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell. You torment them, torture them to death mentally when they are already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more hell—one more, the very worst.'

 

"He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air and the many human forms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked, emaciated bodies.

 

"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put on your ankles heavy chains such as these unfortunates wear; lie down on the cold and filthy floor—and then talk to them about a hell that still awaits them!'

 

"'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away from here!'

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a widespread contagion.

 

After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL:

 

The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,

     Bloom well in prison air;

It is only what is good in Man

     That wastes and withers there.

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

     And the Warder is Despair.

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

 

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

 

Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in America there are four and a half times as many crimes to every million population today as there were twenty years ago.

 

The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is murder, not robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the South. London is five times as large as Chicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteen murders annually in the latter city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from its prisons.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

First, as to the NATURE of crime:

 

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

 

"The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome birth and honest life, who under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong has wrought justice for himself."[2]

 

Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in THE MENACE OF THE POLICE, cites the case of Jim Flaherty, a criminal by passion, who, instead of being saved by society, is turned into a drunkard and a recidivist, with a ruined and poverty-stricken family as the result.

 

A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand Whitlock's novel, THE TURN OF THE BALANCE, the greatest American expose of crime in the making. Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and death by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law. Archie and Flaherty are but the types of many thousands, demonstrating how the legal aspects of crime, and the methods of dealing with it, help to create the disease which is undermining our entire social life.

 

"The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally in the same condition as an infant or an animal."[3]

 

The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit's wealth permits the luxury of criminal insanity. It has become quite fashionable to be the victim of paranoia. But on the whole the "sovereignty of justice" still continues to punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its power. Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing that in Germany, one hundred and six madmen, out of one hundred and forty-four criminal insane, were condemned to severe punishment.

 

The occasional criminal "represents by far the largest class of our prison population, hence is the greatest menace to social well-being." What is the cause that compels a vast army of the human family to take to crime, to prefer the hideous life within prison walls to the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron master, who leaves its victims no avenue of escape, for the most depraved human being loves liberty.

 

This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and economic arrangement. I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of crime. Granted even that there are innate criminal tendencies, it is none the less true that these tendencies find rich nutrition in our social environment.

 

There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against the person and the price of alcohol, between crimes against property and the price of wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that "the social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality; that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY SOCIETY HAS THE CRIMINALS IT DESERVES."[4]

 

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

 

Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes consist in some violation of property rights; but that is too low a figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible fact, though he may not be able to account for it.

 

A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso, and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A Milanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assault on a rich man would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud." Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs. Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."[5]

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do. The majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, which proclaims punishment as a means of purification, or the vicarious atonement of sin. But legally and socially the statute exercises punishment, not merely as an infliction of pain upon the offender, but also for its terrifying effect upon others.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the prison question,—reclamation, to restore once more to the prisoner the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I fear it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring good wine into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first step to be taken is the renovation of the social consciousness, which is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less, according to our mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate.

 

 

With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender, and give him a chance to live and breathe among his fellows. Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold, impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness quickened, it might be possible to free the prison victims from the brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion is a powerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it. They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that their jobs depend upon it.

 

 

But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right to work while in prison, with some monetary recompense that would enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the beginning of a new life.

 

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

 

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

 

The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg. Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen, while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory, charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts no taxes. What graft!

 

It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful citizens.

 

The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work does not come up to the excessive demands made.

 

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

 

If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their helpless victims of such tremendous profits, is it not high time for organized labor to stop its idle howl, and to insist on decent remuneration for the convict, even as labor organizations claim for themselves? In that way workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the prisoner an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said elsewhere that thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the social fold. These men and women must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison life has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors that meet them on their release are not likely to decrease their bitterness. The inevitable result is that they form a favorable nucleus out of which scabs, blacklegs, detectives, and policemen are drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organized labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH.

 

 

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

 

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

Out of his heart a white!

For who can say by what strange way

Christ brings his will to light,

Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

Bloomed in the great Pope's sight.

 

[1] CRIME AND CRIMINALS. W. C. Owen.

 

[2] THE CRIMINAL, Havelock Ellis.

 

[3] THE CRIMINAL.

 

[4] THE CRIMINAL.

 

[5] THE CRIMINAL.

 

 

 

 

PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY

 

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

 

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief.

 

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

 

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

 

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

 

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it—four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the PEOPLE. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

In Great Britain from 20 per cent. to 37; in the United States from 15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18; in Italy from 12 to 15; in Japan from 12 to 14. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the proportion in Germany decreased from about 58 per cent. to 25, the decrease being due to the enormous increase in the imperial expenditures for other purposes, the fact being that the army expenditures for the period of 1901-5 were higher than for any five-year period preceding. Statistics show that the countries in which army expenditures are greatest, in proportion to the total national revenues, are Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy, in the order named.

 

The showing as to the cost of great navies is equally impressive. During the twenty-five years ending with 1905 naval expenditures increased approximately as follows: Great Britain, 300 per cent.; France 60 per cent.; Germany 600 per cent.; the United States 525 per cent.; Russia 300 per cent.; Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700 per cent. With the exception of Great Britain, the United States spends more for naval purposes than any other nation, and this expenditure bears also a larger proportion to the entire national disbursements than that of any other power. In the period 1881-5, the expenditure for the United States navy was $6.20 out of each $100 appropriated for all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the next five-year period, to $8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, and to $16.40 for 1901-5. It is morally certain that the outlay for the current period of five years will show a still further increase.

 

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

 

It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per capita that the economic burden of militarism is most appreciable. The irresistible conclusion from available data is that the increase of expenditure for army and navy purposes is rapidly surpassing the growth of population in each of the countries considered in the present calculation. In other words, a continuation of the increased demands of militarism threatens each of those nations with a progressive exhaustion both of men and resources.

 

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

 

The usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that they can gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village; stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."

 

It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American war, supposedly a great and patriotic event in the history of the United States. How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards! True, our indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long after Butcher Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans and outraged many Cuban women. Still, in justice to the American Nation be it said, it did grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent—that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree—it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit, that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatened by the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitude of the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly in the clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberate Cuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great cigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war.

 

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

 

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

 

However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the internal enemy that the Powers of various countries are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader.

 

The powers that have for centuries been engaged in enslaving the masses have made a thorough study of their psychology. They know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And the more gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it will appeal to the million-headed child.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Such is the logic of patriotism.

 

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

 

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

 

Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough study of the subject. I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male prostitution.... The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins' pocket money."

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Of all the evil results, I have just described, none seems to me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, who reduced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

 

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

 

In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that the soldier's action was a "serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" really consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion."

 

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

 

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

 

A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article, commented on the power of the military man over the civilian in Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no other meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was not in Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. He probably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name of patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged about, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds of indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the growth of military power in the United States. There is hardly a strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of those in power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing the Kaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick military law. Had the writer forgotten that?

 

A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking honesty, they will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the Dick military law was rushed through Congress with little discussion and still less publicity,—a law which gives the President the power to turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly for the defense of the country, in reality for the protection of the interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President happens to be.

 

Our writer claims that militarism can never become such a power in America as abroad, since it is voluntary with us, while compulsory in the Old World. Two very important facts, however, the gentleman forgets to consider. First, that conscription has created in Europe a deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of society. Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest and, once in the army, they will use every possible means to desert. Second, that it is the compulsory feature of militarism which has created a tremendous anti-militarist movement, feared by European Powers far more than anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force—necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an element of character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain of the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy. This admission is a very encouraging sign. It proves that there is still enough of the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the average American to risk starvation rather than don the uniform.

 

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, "Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."

 

This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great human family. A solidarity that has proven infallible more than once during past struggles, and which has been the impetus inducing the Parisian soldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered to shoot their brothers. It has given courage to the men who mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It will eventually bring about the uprising of all the oppressed and downtrodden against their international exploiters.

 

The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, because they dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the movement limited to the working class; it has embraced representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents being men and women prominent in art, science, and letters.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN SCHOOL

 

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

 

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

 

On the first of September, 1909, the Spanish government—at the behest of the Catholic Church—arrested Francisco Ferrer. On the thirteenth of October, after a mock trial, he was placed in the ditch at Montjuich prison, against the hideous wall of many sighs, and shot dead. Instantly Ferrer, the obscure teacher, became a universal figure, blazing forth the indignation and wrath of the whole civilized world against the wanton murder.

 

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

 

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

 

Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for truth; he was also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just indignation against the iron regime of his country, and when a band of rebels, led by the brave patriot, General Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more ardent a fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,—I hope no one will confound it with the Republicanism of this country. Whatever objection I, as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of Latin countries, I know they tower high above the corrupt and reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of liberty and justice. One has but to think of the Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize that their efforts were directed, not merely towards the overthrow of despotism, but particularly against the Catholic Church, which from its very inception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism.

 

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

 

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

 

How his soul must have expanded in the new land! France, the cradle of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belated country,—how she must have inspired him. What opportunities, what a glorious chance for a young idealist.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The most important venture of a Modern School was that of the great, young old man, Paul Robin. Together with a few friends he established a large school at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris. Paul Robin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modern ideas in education. He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the bourgeois conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to exempt society from its terrible crimes against the young. The contention that the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers, that it must continue in poverty and filth, that it must grow up a drunkard or criminal, just because its parents left it no other legacy, was too preposterous to the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believed that whatever part heredity may play, there are other factors equally great, if not greater, that may and will eradicate or minimize the so-called first cause. Proper economic and social environment, the breath and freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy, and, above all, a deep understanding for the needs of the child—these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and criminal stigma imposed on the innocent young.

 

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

 

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

 

Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educational attempts,—among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a gifted writer and poet, author of L'AMOUR LIBRE, and Sebastian Faure, with his LA RUCHE,[1] which I visited while in Paris, in 1907.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

"I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes, mostly orphans, or those whose parents are too poor to pay. They are clothed, housed, and educated at my expense. Till their twelfth year they will receive a sound, elementary education. Between the age of twelve and fifteen—their studies still continuing—they are to be taught some trade, in keeping with their individual disposition and abilities. After that they are at liberty to leave LA RUCHE to begin life in the outside world, with the assurance that they may at any time return to LA RUCHE, where they will be received with open arms and welcomed as parents do their beloved children. Then, if they wish to work at our place, they may do so under the following conditions: One third of the product to cover his or her expenses of maintenance, another third to go towards the general fund set aside for accommodating new children, and the last third to be devoted to the personal use of the child, as he or she may see fit.

 

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

 

"It would be unjust to claim that our pupils have accomplished wonders; yet, considering that they belong to the average, having had no previous opportunities, the results are very gratifying indeed. The most important thing they have acquired—a rare trait with ordinary school children—is the love of study, the desire to know, to be informed. They have learned a new method of work, one that quickens the memory and stimulates the imagination. We make a particular effort to awaken the child's interest in his surroundings, to make him realize the importance of observation, investigation, and reflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they would not be deaf and blind to the things about them. Our children never accept anything in blind faith, without inquiry as to why and wherefore; nor do they feel satisfied until their questions are thoroughly answered. Thus their minds are free from doubts and fear resultant from incomplete or untruthful replies; it is the latter which warp the growth of the child, and create a lack of confidence in himself and those about him.

 

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

 

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of the child. The effort of every true educator should be to unlock that treasure—to stimulate the child's impulses, and call forth the best and noblest tendencies. What greater reward can there be for one whose life-work is to watch over the growth of the human plant, than to see its nature unfold its petals, and to observe it develop into a true individuality. My comrades at LA RUCHE look for no greater reward, and it is due to them and their efforts, even more than to my own, that our human garden promises to bear beautiful fruit."[2]

 

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

 

"We explain to our children that true history is yet to be written,—the story of those who have died, unknown, in the effort to aid humanity to greater achievement."[3]

 

Francisco Ferrer could not escape this great wave of Modern School attempts. He saw its possibilities, not merely in theoretic form, but in their practical application to every-day needs. He must have realized that Spain, more than any other country, stands in need of just such schools, if it is ever to throw off the double yoke of priest and soldier.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

It succeeded, almost, in 1906, when Ferrer was implicated in the attempt on the life of Alfonso. The evidence exonerating him was too strong even for the black crows;[4] they had to let him go—not for good, however. They waited. Oh, they can wait, when they have set themselves to trap a victim.

 

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

 

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

 

Then, and not until then, was their power of endurance at an end. Then, and not until then, did the workers of Spain turn against their masters, against those who, like leeches, had drained their strength, their very life-blood. Yes, they attacked the churches and the priests, but if the latter had a thousand lives, they could not possibly pay for the terrible outrages and crimes perpetrated upon the Spanish people.

 

Francisco Ferrer was arrested on the first of September, 1909. Until October first, his friends and comrades did not even know what had become of him. On that day a letter was received by L'HUMANITE, from which can be learned the whole mockery of the trial. And the next day his companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following letter:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909.

 

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

 

With such infamous lies they are trying to kill me.

 

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

 

FERRER.

 

 

Trece de octubre de 1909, el corazón de Ferrer, tan valiente, tan firme, tan leal, se aquietó. ¡Pobres tontos! Apenas se había extinguido el último latido agonizante de ese corazón cuando comenzó a latir cien veces más en los corazones del mundo civilizado, hasta convertirse en un trueno terrible, lanzando su maldición sobre los instigadores del crimen negro. ¡Asesinos de atuendo negro y porte piadoso, al tribunal de justicia!

 

¿Francisco Ferrer participó en el levantamiento antimilitar? Según la primera acusación, aparecida en un periódico católico de Madrid, firmada por el obispo y todos los prelados de Barcelona, ​​ni siquiera se le acusa de participación. La acusación fue en el sentido de que Francisco Ferrer era culpable de haber organizado escuelas sin Dios y de haber hecho circular literatura sin Dios. Pero en el siglo XX los hombres no pueden ser quemados simplemente por sus creencias impías. Había que idear algo más; de ahí la acusación de instigar el levantamiento.

 

En ninguna fuente auténtica investigada hasta ahora se ha podido encontrar una sola prueba que conecte a Ferrer con el levantamiento. Pero entonces, las autoridades no querían ni aceptaban pruebas. Hubo setenta y dos testigos, sin duda, pero su testimonio fue tomado en papel. Nunca se enfrentaron a Ferrer, ni él a ellos.

 

¿Es psicológicamente posible que Ferrer haya participado? No lo creo, y aquí están mis razones. Francisco Ferrer no solo fue un gran maestro, sino que también fue sin duda un maravilloso organizador. En ocho años, entre 1901-1909, había organizado en España ciento nueve escuelas, además de inducir al elemento liberal de su país a organizar otras trescientas ocho escuelas. En relación con su propia labor escolar, Ferrer había equipado una moderna imprenta, organizado un equipo de traductores y difundido ciento cincuenta mil ejemplares de obras científicas y sociológicas modernas, sin olvidar la gran cantidad de libros de texto racionalistas. Seguramente nadie sino el organizador más metódico y eficiente podría haber logrado tal hazaña.

 

Por otra parte, quedó absolutamente probado que el levantamiento antimilitarista no fue en absoluto organizado; que fue una sorpresa para el propio pueblo, como muchas olas revolucionarias en ocasiones anteriores. Los barceloneses, por ejemplo, tuvieron la ciudad bajo su control durante cuatro días y, según la declaración de los turistas, nunca prevaleció mayor orden y paz. Por supuesto, la gente estaba tan poco preparada que cuando llegó el momento, no supo qué hacer. En este sentido, eran como la gente de París durante la Comuna de 1871. Tampoco estaban preparados. Mientras se morían de hambre, protegieron los almacenes, llenos hasta los topes de provisiones. Pusieron centinelas para custodiar el Banco de Francia, donde la burguesía guardaba el dinero robado. Los trabajadores de Barcelona, ​​también,

 

Qué patética es la estupidez del desvalido; ¡Qué terriblemente trágico! Pero, entonces, ¿no han sido tan profundamente forjados sus grilletes en su carne, que él no los rompería, incluso si pudiera? El temor de la autoridad, de la ley, de la propiedad privada, cien veces grabado en su alma, ¿cómo va a deshacerse de él sin preparación, inesperadamente?

 

¿Alguien puede suponer por un momento que un hombre como Ferrer se afiliaría a un esfuerzo tan espontáneo y desorganizado? ¿No habría sabido que resultaría en una derrota, una derrota desastrosa para el pueblo? ¿Y no es más probable que si él hubiera tomado parte, él, el EMPRENDEDOR experimentado, hubiera organizado minuciosamente el intento? Si faltaran todas las demás pruebas, ese único factor sería suficiente para exonerar a Francisco Ferrer. Pero hay otros igualmente convincentes.

 

Para la misma fecha del estallido, veinticinco de julio, Ferrer había convocado una conferencia de sus maestros y miembros de la Liga de Educación Racional. Era para considerar el trabajo de otoño, y particularmente la publicación del gran libro de Elisee Reclus, L'HOMME ET LA TERRE, y la GRAN REVOLUCIÓN FRANCESA de Peter Kropotkin. ¿Es del todo probable, es del todo verosímil que Ferrer, sabiendo del levantamiento, siendo parte de él, invitara a sangre fría a sus amigos y compañeros a Barcelona para el día en que se dio cuenta de que sus vidas corrían peligro? Seguramente, solo la mente criminal y viciosa de un jesuita podría acreditar tal asesinato deliberado.

 

Francisco Ferrer tenía trazada la obra de su vida; tenía todo que perder y nada que ganar, excepto la ruina y el desastre, si prestara ayuda al estallido. No es que dudara de la justicia de la ira del pueblo; pero su obra, su esperanza, su misma naturaleza estaba dirigida hacia otra meta.

 

En vano son los esfuerzos frenéticos de la Iglesia Católica, sus mentiras, falsedades, calumnias. Ella está condenada por la conciencia humana despierta de haber repetido una vez más los crímenes inmundos del pasado.

 

Francisco Ferrer es acusado de enseñar a los niños las ideas más espeluznantes, por ejemplo, a odiar a Dios. ¡Horrores! Francisco Ferrer no creía en la existencia de un Dios. ¿Por qué enseñar al niño a odiar algo que no existe? ¿No es más probable que sacó a los niños al aire libre, que les mostró el esplendor de la puesta del sol, el brillo de los cielos estrellados, la maravilla imponente de las montañas y los mares; que les explicó en su forma sencilla y directa la ley del crecimiento, del desarrollo, de la interrelación de toda vida? Al hacerlo, hizo imposible para siempre que las malas hierbas venenosas de la Iglesia Católica echaran raíces en la mente del niño.

 

Se ha dicho que Ferrer preparó a los niños para destruir a los ricos. Historias de fantasmas de solteronas. ¿No es más probable que los haya preparado para socorrer a los pobres? Que les enseñó la humillación, la degradación, el horror de la pobreza, que es un vicio y no una virtud; que enseñó la dignidad y la importancia de todos los esfuerzos creativos, que son los únicos que sostienen la vida y construyen el carácter. ¿No es ésta la mejor y más eficaz manera de sacar a la luz la absoluta inutilidad y perjuicio del parasitismo?

 

Por último, pero no menos importante, Ferrer está acusado de socavar al ejército inculcando ideas antimilitaristas. ¿Por supuesto? Debe haber creído con Tolstoi que la guerra es una matanza legalizada, que perpetúa el odio y la arrogancia, que carcome el corazón de las naciones y las convierte en maníacos delirantes.

 

Sin embargo, tenemos la palabra del propio Ferrer respecto a sus ideas sobre la educación moderna:

 

"Me gustaría llamar la atención de mis lectores sobre esta idea: Todo el valor de la educación descansa en el respeto a la voluntad física, intelectual y moral del niño. Así como en la ciencia ninguna demostración es posible sino por hechos, sólo así que no hay verdadera educación sino aquella que está exenta de todo dogmatismo, que deja al niño mismo la dirección de su esfuerzo, y se limita a la secundarización de su esfuerzo.Ahora bien, nada más fácil que alterar este propósito, y nada más difícil que respetarla. La educación siempre impone, viola, constriñe; el verdadero educador es el que mejor puede proteger al niño contra sus propias ideas (del maestro), sus peculiares caprichos; el que mejor puede apelar a las propias energías del niño .

 

"Estamos convencidos de que la educación del futuro será de naturaleza enteramente espontánea; ciertamente no podemos realizarlo todavía, pero la evolución de los métodos en la dirección de una comprensión más amplia de los fenómenos de la vida, y el hecho de que todos los avances hacia la perfección significan la superación de la restricción, todo esto indica que estamos en lo correcto cuando esperamos la liberación del niño a través de la ciencia.

 

“No temamos decir que queremos hombres capaces de evolucionar sin parar, capaces de destruir y renovar su entorno sin cesar, de renovarse también a sí mismos; hombres, cuya independencia intelectual será su mayor fuerza, que no se apeguen a nada, siempre dispuestos a aceptar lo mejor, felices en el triunfo de las nuevas ideas, aspirantes a vivir múltiples vidas en una sola vida.La sociedad teme a tales hombres, por lo que no debemos esperar que alguna vez quiera una educación capaz de dárnoslos.

 

"Seguiremos los trabajos de los científicos que estudian al niño con la mayor atención, y buscaremos ansiosamente los medios de aplicar su experiencia a la educación que queremos construir, en la dirección de una liberación cada vez más completa del individuo. Pero, ¿cómo podemos alcanzar nuestro fin?, ¿no será poniéndonos directamente en la obra en favor de la fundación de nuevas escuelas, que se regirán en lo posible por este espíritu de libertad, que prevemos dominará toda la obra de la educación en el futuro?

 

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

 

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

 

"I know very well we could not thus realize all our hopes, that we should often be forced, for lack of knowledge, to employ undesirable methods; but a certitude would sustain us in our efforts—namely, that even without reaching our aim completely we should do more and better in our still imperfect work than the present school accomplishes. I like the free spontaneity of a child who knows nothing, better than the world-knowledge and intellectual deformity of a child who has been subjected to our present education."[5]

 

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

 

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

 

A dying age and a living truth,

The living burying the dead.

 

[1] THE BEEHIVE.

 

[2] MOTHER EARTH, 1907.

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Black crows: The Catholic clergy.

 

[5] MOTHER EARTH, December, 1909.

 

 

 

 

THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM

 

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

 

Mr. Burglum might have added that Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is, indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

 

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll—the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability.

 

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

 

Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. On the now famous Common a half-naked woman, with a baby in her arms, was publicly whipped for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Boston has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by Puritanism. Salem, in the summer of 1692, killed eighteen people for witchcraft. Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: "The Pilgrim fathers infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old." The horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in the American classic, THE SCARLET LETTER.

 

Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash; but it still has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American people. Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock. Like the Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of American morals; he dictates the standards of good and evil, of purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the private lives of the people, into their most intimate relations. The system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to shame the infamous Third Division of the Russian secret police. Why does the public tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating themselves. The visionless and leaden elements of the old Young Men's and Women's Christian Temperance Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and the Prohibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint, are the grave diggers of American art and culture.

 

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

 

The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true. The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the flesh as something evil; it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost. The result of this vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized by modern thinkers and educators. They realize that "nakedness has a hygienic value as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young or acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. It is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the world, with its vigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of the prime tonics of life."[1] But the spirit of purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of chastity. Yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern idea of chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses. "Chastity varies with the amount of clothing," and hence Christians and purists forever hasten to cover the "heathen" with tatters, and thus convert him to goodness and chastity.

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Art, literature, the drama, the privacy of the mails, in fact, our most intimate tastes, are at the mercy of this inexorable tyrant. Anthony Comstock, or some other equally ignorant policeman, has been given power to desecrate genius, to soil and mutilate the sublimest creation of nature—the human form. Books dealing with the most vital issues of our lives, and seeking to shed light upon dangerously obscured problems, are legally treated as criminal offenses, and their helpless authors thrown into prison or driven to destruction and death.

 

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

 

Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day. Naturally, only the workers are affected: our millionaires have their luxurious homes and elaborate clubs. The poor, however, are condemned to the monotony and dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and fun of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom of the church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people lack even the latter, unless they can invest their meager earnings in quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of Puritanism it, too, has but driven the "devil" deeper into the human system. Nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibition towns. But so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy, but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, it succeeds but in creating an abnormal life.

 

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

 

 

[1] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Havelock Ellis.

 

 

 

 

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With Mrs. Warren these girls feel, "Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?"

 

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

 

However, there is one commendable exception among the young writers: Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work, THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, is the first earnest attempt to treat the social evil, not from a sentimental Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr. Kauffman proves that our industrial system leaves most women no alternative except prostitution. The women portrayed in THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE belong to the working class. Had the author portrayed the life of women in other spheres, he would have been confronted with the same state of affairs.

 

Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.

 

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

 

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

 

"A prolific cause of female depravity can be found in the several tables, showing the description of the employment pursued, and the wages received, by the women previous to their fall, and it will be a question for the political economist to decide how far mere business consideration should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the savings of a small percentage on wages is not more than counter-balanced by the enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice, WHICH IS THE DIRECT RESULT, IN MANY CASES, OF INSUFFICIENT COMPENSATION OF HONEST LABOR."[1]

 

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

 

Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in PROSTITUTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, is even more emphatic in characterizing economic conditions as one of the most vital factors of prostitution.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

"It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social tradition, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that was passing out of the general social life. The typical example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the first stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess.

 

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

 

"The rise of Christianity to political power produced little change in policy. The leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution. Brothels under municipal protection are found in the thirteenth century. They constituted a sort of public service, the directors of them being considered almost as public servants."[3]

 

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

 

"Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostitutes would be tolerated if they pay a certain amount of their earnings to the Church.

 

"Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical; from one single brothel, which he himself had built, he received an income of 20,000 ducats."

 

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

 

Much as I should like to, my space will not admit speaking of prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and during the Middle Ages. The conditions in the latter period are particularly interesting, inasmuch as prostitution was organized into guilds, presided over by a brothel Queen. These guilds employed strikes as a medium of improving their condition and keeping a standard price. Certainly that is more practical a method than the one used by the modern wage slave in society.

 

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

 

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex. Everything dealing with the subject is suppressed, and persons who attempt to bring light into this terrible darkness are persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is nevertheless true that so long as a girl is not to know how to take care of herself, not to know the function of the most important part of her life, we need not be surprised if she becomes an easy prey to prostitution, or to any other form of a relationship which degrades her to the position of an object for mere sex gratification.

 

It is due to this ignorance that the entire life and nature of the girl is thwarted and crippled. We have long ago taken it as a self-evident fact that the boy may follow the call of the wild; that is to say, that the boy may, as soon has his sex nature asserts itself, satisfy that nature; but our moralists are scandalized at the very thought that the nature of a girl should assert itself. To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock. That this is no mere statement is proved by the fact that marriage for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and repudiated. Yet a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothing else than "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated to gain."[4]

 

"Those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of the sexual act and make of this a profession."[5]

 

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

 

Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as thousands of girls cannot marry, our stupid social customs condemn them either to a life of celibacy or prostitution. Human nature asserts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.

 

Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.

 

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

 

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

 

The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition is such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up, instead of dragging her down. Thus society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of. The meanest, most depraved and decrepit man still considers himself too good to take as his wife the woman whose grace he was quite willing to buy, even though he might thereby save her from a life of horror. Nor can she turn to her own sister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own position is in many respects even more deplorable than her sister's of the street.

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has a kept a "house" should be able to feel that way? But stranger still that a good Christian world should bleed and fleece such women, and give them nothing in return except obloquy and persecution. Oh, for the charity of a Christian world!

 

Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How would America ever retain her virtue if Europe did not help her out? I will not deny that this may be the case in some instances, any more than I will deny that there are emissaries of Germany and other countries luring economic slaves into America; but I absolutely deny that prostitution is recruited to any appreciable extent from Europe. It may be true that the majority of prostitutes in New York City are foreigners, but that is because the majority of the population is foreign. The moment we go to any other American city, to Chicago or the Middle West, we shall find that the number of foreign prostitutes is by far a minority.

 

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

 

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

 

Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State Attorney of Cook County, Ill., makes the open charge that New England girls are shipped to Panama for the express use of men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr. Roe adds that "there seems to be an underground railroad between Boston and Washington which many girls travel." Is it not significant that the railroad should lead to the very seat of Federal authority? That Mr. Roe said more than was desired in certain quarters is proved by the fact that he lost his position. It is not practical for men in office to tell tales from school.

 

The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there are no brothels in the Canal Zone. That is the usual avenue of escape for a hypocritical world that dares not face the truth. Not in the Canal Zone, not in the city limits,—therefore prostitution does not exist.

 

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

 

In view of the above facts it is rather absurd to point to Europe as the swamp whence come all the social diseases of America. Just as absurd is it to proclaim the myth that the Jews furnish the largest contingent of willing prey. I am sure that no one will accuse me of nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say that I have developed out of them, as out of many other prejudices. If, therefore, I resent the statement that Jewish prostitutes are imported, it is not because of any Judaistic sympathies, but because of the facts inherent in the lives of these people. No one but the most superficial will claim that Jewish girls migrate to strange lands, unless they have some tie or relation that brings them there. The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent years she had never left home, not even so far as the next village or town, except it were to visit some relative. Is it then credible that Jewish girls would leave their parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange lands, through the influence and promises of strange forces? Go to any of the large incoming steamers and see for yourself if these girls do not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk. There may be exceptions, of course, but to state that large numbers of Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any other purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology.

 

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

 

To ascribe the increase in prostitution to alleged importation, to the growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highly superficial. I have already referred to the former. As to the cadet system, abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it is essentially a phase of modern prostitution,—a phase accentuated by suppression and graft, resulting from sporadic crusades against the social evil.

 

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

 

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

 

While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they represented a certain monetary value, the girls now found themselves on the street, absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police. Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection, these girls naturally proved an easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of the spirit of our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the direct outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and attempted suppression of prostitution. It were sheer folly to confound this modern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter.

 

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

 

There is not a single modern writer on the subject who does not refer to the utter futility of legislative methods in coping with the issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko finds that governmental suppression and moral crusades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secret channels, multiplying its dangers to society. Havelock Ellis, the most thorough and humane student of prostitution, proves by a wealth of data that the more stringent the methods of persecution the worse the condition becomes. Among other data we learn that in France, "in 1560, Charles IX. abolished brothels through an edict, but the numbers of prostitutes were only increased, while many new brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes, and were more dangerous. In spite of all such legislation, OR BECAUSE OF IT, there has been no country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous part."[6]

 

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

 

 

[1] Dr. Sanger, THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

 

[2] It is a significant fact that Dr. Sanger's book has been excluded from the U. S. mails. Evidently the authorities are not anxious that the public be informed as to the true cause of prostitution.

 

[3] Havelock Ellis, SEX AND SOCIETY.

 

[4] Guyot, LA PROSTITUTION.

 

[5] Banger, CRIMINALITE ET CONDITION ECONOMIQUE.

 

[6] SEX AND SOCIETY.

 

 

 

 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

 

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

 

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

 

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

 

La máxima memorable de Nietzsche, "Cuando vayas a la mujer, lleva el látigo contigo", se considera muy brutal, pero Nietzsche expresó en una frase la actitud de la mujer hacia sus dioses.

 

La religión, especialmente la religión cristiana, ha condenado a la mujer a la vida de una inferior, de una esclava. Ha frustrado su naturaleza y encadenado su alma, sin embargo, la religión cristiana no tiene mayor apoyo, nadie más devoto, que la mujer. De hecho, es seguro decir que la religión habría dejado de ser un factor en la vida de las personas hace mucho tiempo, si no fuera por el apoyo que recibe de la mujer. Las más ardientes trabajadoras de la iglesia, las más incansables misioneras del mundo, son mujeres, siempre sacrificando en el altar de los dioses que han encadenado su espíritu y esclavizado su cuerpo.

 

El monstruo insaciable, la guerra, le roba a la mujer todo lo que es querido y precioso para ella. Exige a sus hermanos, amantes, hijos, ya cambio le da una vida de soledad y desesperación. Sin embargo, la mayor defensora y adoradora de la guerra es la mujer. Ella es quien inculca a sus hijos el amor a la conquista y al poder; ella es quien susurra las glorias de la guerra en los oídos de sus pequeños, y quien mece a su bebé para que se duerma con las melodías de las trompetas y el ruido de las armas. También es la mujer quien corona al vencedor a su regreso del campo de batalla. Sí, es la mujer quien paga el precio más alto a ese monstruo insaciable, la guerra.

 

Luego está el hogar. ¡Qué terrible fetiche es! Cómo mina la misma energía vital de la mujer, esta prisión moderna con barrotes de oro. Su aspecto brillante ciega a la mujer ante el precio que tendría que pagar como esposa, madre y ama de casa. Sin embargo, la mujer se aferra tenazmente al hogar, al poder que la mantiene esclava.

 

Puede decirse que porque la mujer reconoce el tremendo peaje que se le hace pagar a la Iglesia, al Estado y al hogar, quiere el sufragio para liberarse. Eso puede ser cierto para unos pocos; la mayoría de las sufragistas repudian por completo tal blasfemia. Por el contrario, siempre insisten en que es el sufragio femenino lo que la hará mejor cristiana y ama de casa, ciudadana incondicional del Estado. Por lo tanto, el sufragio es solo un medio para fortalecer la omnipotencia de los mismos dioses a los que la mujer ha servido desde tiempos inmemoriales.

 

Qué maravilla, entonces, que ella sea tan devota, tan celosa, tan postrada ante el nuevo ídolo, el sufragio femenino. Como antaño, soporta la persecución, el encarcelamiento, la tortura y todas las formas de condena, con una sonrisa en el rostro. Como en la antigüedad, los más ilustrados, incluso, esperan un milagro de la deidad del siglo XX: el sufragio. La vida, la felicidad, la alegría, la libertad, la independencia, todo eso y más debe brotar del sufragio. En su ciega devoción, la mujer no ve lo que la gente intelectual percibía hace cincuenta años: que el sufragio es un mal, que sólo ha ayudado a esclavizar a la gente, que sólo les ha cerrado los ojos para que no vean cuán astutamente fueron hechos para enviar.

 

La demanda de la mujer por la igualdad de sufragio se basa en gran medida en la afirmación de que la mujer debe tener los mismos derechos en todos los asuntos de la sociedad. Nadie podría, posiblemente, refutar eso, si el sufragio fuera un derecho. ¡Ay de la ignorancia de la mente humana, que puede ver un derecho en una imposición! ¿O no es la imposición más brutal para un grupo de personas hacer leyes que otro grupo es obligado a obedecer por la fuerza? Sin embargo, la mujer clama por esa "oportunidad de oro" que ha causado tanta miseria en el mundo y le ha robado al hombre su integridad y confianza en sí mismo; una imposición que ha corrompido profundamente al pueblo, y lo ha convertido en presa absoluta en manos de políticos sin escrúpulos.

 

¡El pobre, estúpido y libre ciudadano estadounidense! Libre para morirse de hambre, libre para hollar las carreteras de este gran país, disfruta del sufragio universal y, por ese derecho, ha forjado cadenas alrededor de sus miembros. La recompensa que recibe son estrictas leyes laborales que prohíben el derecho de boicot, de hacer piquetes, de hecho, de todo, excepto el derecho a ser despojado de los frutos de su trabajo. Sin embargo, todos estos resultados desastrosos del fetichismo del siglo XX no le han enseñado nada a la mujer. Pero, entonces, la mujer depurará la política, nos lo aseguran.

 

No hace falta decir que no me opongo al sufragio femenino por el argumento convencional de que ella no está a la altura. No veo razones físicas, psicológicas ni mentales por las que la mujer no debería tener el mismo derecho al voto que el hombre. Pero eso no puede cegarme de la noción absurda de que la mujer logrará aquello en lo que el hombre ha fallado. Si ella no empeorara las cosas, ciertamente no podría mejorarlas. Suponer, por tanto, que lograría purificar algo que no es susceptible de purificación, es atribuirle poderes sobrenaturales. Como la mayor desgracia de la mujer ha sido que se la ha mirado como un ángel o como un demonio, su verdadera salvación está en ser puesta en la tierra; es decir, en ser considerado humano, y por lo tanto sujeto a todas las locuras y errores humanos. ¿Somos, entonces, creer que dos errores harán un acierto? ¿Debemos suponer que el veneno ya inherente a la política disminuirá si las mujeres entraran en la arena política? Las sufragistas más ardientes difícilmente mantendrían tal locura.

 

De hecho, los estudiosos más avanzados del sufragio universal se han dado cuenta de que todos los sistemas de poder político existentes son absurdos y completamente inadecuados para enfrentar los problemas apremiantes de la vida. Esta opinión también se ve confirmada por una declaración de una ferviente creyente en el sufragio femenino, la Dra. Helen L. Sumner. En su hábil trabajo sobre IGUALDAD DE SUFRAGIO, dice: "En Colorado, encontramos que la igualdad de sufragio sirve para mostrar de la manera más llamativa la podredumbre esencial y el carácter degradante del sistema existente". Por supuesto, el Dr. Sumner tiene en mente un sistema particular de votación, pero lo mismo se aplica con igual fuerza a toda la maquinaria del sistema representativo. Con tal base, es difícil entender cómo la mujer, como factor político, se beneficiaría a sí misma o al resto de la humanidad.

 

Pero, dicen nuestros devotos del sufragio, miren los países y estados donde existe el sufragio femenino. Vea lo que ha logrado la mujer: en Australia, Nueva Zelanda, Finlandia, los países escandinavos y en nuestros cuatro estados, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming y Utah. La distancia presta encanto, o, para citar una fórmula polaca, "está bien donde no estamos". Así, uno asumiría que esos países y Estados son diferentes a otros países o Estados, que tienen mayor libertad, mayor igualdad social y económica, una apreciación más fina de la vida humana, una comprensión más profunda de la gran lucha social, con todas las cuestiones vitales que implica. para la raza humana.

 

Las mujeres de Australia y Nueva Zelanda pueden votar y ayudar a hacer las leyes. ¿Las condiciones laborales son mejores allí que en Inglaterra, donde las sufragistas están haciendo una lucha tan heroica? ¿Existe una maternidad mayor, niños más felices y libres que en Inglaterra? ¿Ya no se considera a la mujer una mera mercancía sexual? ¿Se ha emancipado ella misma del doble estándar puritano de moralidad para hombres y mujeres? Ciertamente, nadie más que la mujer política común y corriente se atreverá a responder afirmativamente a estas preguntas. Si es así, parece ridículo señalar a Australia y Nueva Zelanda como la Meca de los logros del sufragio igualitario.

 

Por otro lado, es un hecho para aquellos que conocen las condiciones políticas reales en Australia, que la política ha amordazado a los trabajadores al promulgar las leyes laborales más estrictas, convirtiendo las huelgas sin la sanción de un comité de arbitraje en un delito equivalente a la traición.

 

Ni por un momento quiero dar a entender que el sufragio femenino es responsable de este estado de cosas. Quiero decir, sin embargo, que no hay razón para señalar a Australia como un obrador de maravillas de los logros de la mujer, ya que su influencia no ha podido liberar a los trabajadores de la esclavitud del caciquismo político.

 

Finlandia ha otorgado igualdad de sufragio a la mujer; es más, incluso el derecho a sentarse en el Parlamento. ¿Ha ayudado eso a desarrollar un mayor heroísmo, un celo más intenso que el de las mujeres de Rusia? Finlandia, como Rusia, sufre bajo el terrible látigo del maldito zar. ¿Dónde están las Perovskaia finlandesas, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias? ¿Dónde están las innumerables chicas finlandesas que alegremente van a Siberia por su causa? Finlandia está tristemente necesitada de heroicos libertadores. ¿Por qué la papeleta no los ha creado? El único vengador finlandés de su pueblo fue un hombre, no una mujer, y usó un arma más eficaz que la votación.

 

En cuanto a nuestros propios Estados donde las mujeres votan, y que constantemente están siendo señalados como ejemplos de maravillas, lo que allí se ha logrado a través del voto que las mujeres en gran medida no disfrutan en otros Estados; o que no podrían lograr con esfuerzos enérgicos sin la votación?

 

Es cierto que en los Estados de sufragio se garantiza a las mujeres los mismos derechos de propiedad; pero ¿de qué sirve ese derecho a la masa de mujeres sin propiedad, a los miles de trabajadores asalariados, que viven al día? Que el sufragio igualitario no afectó ni puede afectar su condición es admitido incluso por el Dr. Sumner, quien ciertamente está en condiciones de saberlo. Como sufragista ferviente, y habiendo sido enviada a Colorado por la Liga Colegiada de Igualdad de Sufragio del Estado de Nueva York para recolectar material a favor del sufragio, sería la última en decir algo despectivo; sin embargo, se nos informa que "la igualdad de sufragio ha afectado levemente las condiciones económicas de las mujeres. Que las mujeres no reciben el mismo salario por el mismo trabajo, y que, aunque la mujer en Colorado ha disfrutado del sufragio escolar desde 1876, las maestras ganan menos que en Colorado". California." Por otro lado, la señorita Sumner no tiene en cuenta el hecho de que, aunque las mujeres han tenido sufragio escolar durante treinta y cuatro años, e igual sufragio desde 1894, el censo de Denver solo hace unos meses reveló el hecho de que quince mil niños en edad escolar defectuosos . Y eso, también, con la mayoría de las mujeres en el departamento de educación, y también a pesar de que las mujeres en Colorado han aprobado las "leyes más estrictas para la protección de niños y animales". Las mujeres de Colorado "se han interesado mucho en las instituciones del Estado para el cuidado de los niños dependientes, defectuosos y delincuentes". Qué horrible acusación contra el cuidado y el interés de la mujer, si una ciudad tiene quince mil niños defectuosos. ¿Qué pasa con la gloria del sufragio femenino, ya que ha fracasado por completo en el tema social más importante, ¿el niño? ¿Y dónde está el sentido superior de la justicia que la mujer iba a traer al campo político? ¿Dónde estaba en 1903, cuando los dueños de las minas libraron una guerra de guerrillas contra la Unión de Mineros Occidentales? cuando el general Bell estableció un reinado de terror, sacando a los hombres de las camas por la noche, secuestándolos al otro lado de la línea fronteriza, arrojándolos a los toriles, declarando "al diablo con la Constitución, el club es la Constitución"? ¿Dónde estaban entonces las mujeres políticas y por qué no ejercieron el poder de su voto? Pero lo hicieron. Ayudaron a derrotar al hombre más justo y liberal, el gobernador Waite. Este último tuvo que dejar paso a la herramienta de los reyes de las minas, el gobernador Peabody, el enemigo del trabajo, el Zar de Colorado. "Ciertamente, el sufragio masculino no podría haber hecho nada peor". Otorgado. en donde, pues, Cuáles son las ventajas para la mujer y la sociedad del sufragio femenino? La afirmación tantas veces repetida de que la mujer purificará la política también es un mito. No lo confirman las personas que conocen las condiciones políticas de Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming y Utah.

 

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

 

In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people, not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado woman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in, and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."[2] Yes, and into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's?

 

"Vidas notoriamente sucias y hombres relacionados con los salones". Ciertamente, a la señora recolectora de votos no se le puede acusar de mucho sentido de la proporción. Suponiendo incluso que estos entrometidos puedan decidir qué vidas son lo suficientemente limpias para esa atmósfera eminentemente limpia, la política, ¿debe seguirse que los taberneros pertenecen a la misma categoría? A menos que sea la hipocresía y el fanatismo americanos, tan manifiestos en el principio de la Prohibición, que sanciona la difusión de la embriaguez entre los hombres y mujeres de la clase rica, pero vigila atentamente el único lugar que le queda al hombre pobre. Si no es por otra razón, la actitud estrecha y purista de la mujer hacia la vida la convierte en un peligro mayor para la libertad dondequiera que tenga poder político. Hace tiempo que el hombre superó las supersticiones que aún envuelven a la mujer. En el campo económico competitivo, el hombre se ha visto obligado a ejercer la eficiencia, el juicio, la habilidad, la competencia. Por lo tanto, no tenía tiempo ni ganas de medir la moralidad de todos con un criterio puritano. En su actividad política tampoco ha andado con los ojos vendados. Sabe que la cantidad y no la calidad es el material del molino político y, a menos que sea un reformador sentimental o un viejo fósil, sabe que la política nunca puede ser otra cosa que un pantano.

 

Las mujeres que están familiarizadas con el proceso de la política conocen la naturaleza de la bestia, pero en su autosuficiencia y egoísmo se hacen creer que solo tienen que acariciar a la bestia, y se volverá tan manso como un cordero, dulce y puro. ¡Como si las mujeres no hubieran vendido sus votos, como si las mujeres políticas no se pudieran comprar! Si su cuerpo se puede comprar a cambio de una consideración material, ¿por qué no su voto? Que se está haciendo en Colorado y en otros Estados, no lo niegan ni siquiera los que están a favor del sufragio femenino.

 

Como he dicho antes, la visión estrecha de la mujer sobre los asuntos humanos no es el único argumento contra ella como política superior al hombre. Hay otros. Su parasitismo económico de toda la vida ha desdibujado por completo su concepción del significado de la igualdad. Ella clama por la igualdad de derechos con los hombres, pero nos enteramos de que "pocas mujeres se preocupan por trabajar en distritos indeseables". [3] ¡Qué poco significa la igualdad para ellas en comparación con las mujeres rusas, que se enfrentan al infierno mismo por su ideal!

 

La mujer exige los mismos derechos que el hombre, pero se indigna porque su presencia no lo mata: él fuma, lleva el sombrero puesto y no salta de su asiento como un lacayo. Estas pueden ser cosas triviales, pero sin embargo son la clave de la naturaleza de las sufragistas estadounidenses. Sin duda, sus hermanas inglesas han superado estas nociones tontas. Se han mostrado a la altura de las mayores exigencias de su carácter y capacidad de resistencia. Todo honor al heroísmo y tesón de las sufragistas inglesas. Gracias a sus métodos enérgicos y agresivos, han demostrado ser una inspiración para algunas de nuestras damas sin vida y sin carácter. Pero después de todo, a las sufragistas también les falta apreciar la igualdad real. De lo contrario, ¿cómo se puede dar cuenta del tremendo, esfuerzo verdaderamente gigantesco puesto en marcha por aquellos valientes luchadores por un mísero proyecto de ley que beneficiará a un puñado de damas adineradas, sin absolutamente ninguna provisión para la gran masa de mujeres trabajadoras? Cierto, como políticos deben ser oportunistas, deben tomar medidas a medias si no pueden conseguirlo todo. Pero como mujeres inteligentes y liberales deben darse cuenta de que si el voto es un arma, los desheredados lo necesitan más que la clase económicamente superior, y que ésta ya goza de demasiado poder en virtud de su superioridad económica.

 

La brillante líder de las sufragistas inglesas, la Sra. Emmeline Pankhurst, admitió ella misma, durante su gira de conferencias por Estados Unidos, que no puede haber igualdad entre superiores e inferiores políticos. Si es así, ¿cómo la mujer trabajadora de Inglaterra, ya inferior económicamente a las damas que se benefician con el proyecto de ley Shackleton,[4] podrá trabajar con sus superiores políticos, si se aprueba el proyecto de ley? ¿No es probable que la clase de Annie Keeney, tan llena de celo, devoción y martirio, se vea obligada a cargar sobre sus espaldas a sus jefas políticas femeninas, así como cargan a sus amos económicos? Todavía tendrían que hacerlo, si el sufragio universal para hombres y mujeres se estableciera en Inglaterra. No importa lo que hagan los trabajadores, están obligados a pagar, siempre. Todavía,

 

El movimiento sufragista estadounidense ha sido, hasta hace muy poco, un asunto de salón, absolutamente desvinculado de las necesidades económicas del pueblo. Así, Susan B. Anthony, sin duda un tipo excepcional de mujer, no sólo era indiferente sino antagónica al trabajo; tampoco dudó en manifestar su antagonismo cuando, en 1869, aconsejó a las mujeres que ocuparan el lugar de las imprentas en huelga en Nueva York[5]. No sé si su actitud había cambiado antes de su muerte.

 

Hay, por supuesto, algunas sufragistas que están afiliadas a las mujeres trabajadoras: la Liga de Sindicatos de Mujeres, por ejemplo; pero son una pequeña minoría y sus actividades son esencialmente económicas. Los demás ven el trabajo como una justa provisión de la Providencia. ¿Qué sería de los ricos, si no fuera por los pobres? ¿Qué sería de estas señoras ociosas y parasitarias, que despilfarran más en una semana de lo que ganan sus víctimas en un año, si no fuera por los ochenta millones de trabajadores asalariados? Igualdad, ¿quién ha oído hablar de algo así?

 

Pocos países han producido tanta arrogancia y esnobismo como Estados Unidos. En particular, esto es cierto en el caso de la mujer estadounidense de clase media. Ella no sólo se considera igual al hombre, sino superior a él, especialmente en su pureza, bondad y moralidad. No es de extrañar que la sufragista estadounidense reclame para su voto los poderes más milagrosos. En su exaltada presunción, no ve cuán verdaderamente esclavizada está, no tanto por el hombre, sino por sus propias nociones y tradiciones tontas. El sufragio no puede mejorar ese triste hecho; sólo puede acentuarlo, como de hecho lo hace.

 

Una de las grandes líderes estadounidenses afirma que la mujer tiene derecho no solo a la misma paga, sino que debería tener derecho legal incluso a la paga de su marido. Si no puede mantenerla, debe ser condenado a galones y sus ganancias en prisión deben ser recaudadas por su esposa igual. ¿Otra brillante exponente de la causa no pretende a favor de la mujer que su voto abolirá el mal social, que ha sido combatido en vano por el esfuerzo colectivo de las mentes más ilustres del mundo? De hecho, es de lamentar que el supuesto creador del universo ya nos haya presentado su maravilloso esquema de las cosas, de lo contrario, el sufragio femenino seguramente le permitiría a la mujer superarlo por completo.

 

Nada es tan peligroso como la disección de un fetiche. Si hemos sobrevivido a la época en que tal herejía se castigaba con la hoguera, no hemos sobrevivido al estrecho espíritu de condenación de aquellos que se atreven a diferir de las nociones aceptadas. Por lo tanto, probablemente seré humillado como oponente de la mujer. Pero eso no puede disuadirme de mirar la pregunta directamente a la cara. Repito lo que he dicho al principio: no creo que la mujer vaya a empeorar la política; ni puedo creer que ella pudiera hacerlo mejor. Si, entonces, ella no puede mejorar los errores del hombre, ¿por qué perpetuar estos últimos?

 

La historia puede ser una compilación de mentiras; sin embargo, contiene algunas verdades, y son la única guía que tenemos para el futuro. La historia de las actividades políticas de los hombres prueba que no le han dado absolutamente nada que no pudiera haber logrado de una manera más directa, menos costosa y más duradera. De hecho, cada centímetro de terreno que ha ganado ha sido a través de una lucha constante, una lucha incesante por la autoafirmación, y no a través del sufragio. No hay motivo alguno para suponer que la mujer, en su escalada hacia la emancipación, ha sido o será ayudada por el voto.

 

En el más oscuro de todos los países, Rusia, con su absoluto despotismo, la mujer se ha hecho igual al hombre, no por el voto, sino por su voluntad de ser y de hacer. No sólo ha conquistado para sí todas las avenidas del saber y de la vocación, sino que se ha ganado la estima, el respeto, la camaradería de los hombres; sí, incluso más que eso: se ha ganado la admiración, el respeto de todo el mundo. Eso, también, no a través del sufragio, sino por su maravilloso heroísmo, su fortaleza, su habilidad, fuerza de voluntad y su resistencia en la lucha por la libertad. ¿Dónde están las mujeres en cualquier país o estado de sufragio que pueda reclamar tal victoria? Cuando consideramos los logros de la mujer en Estados Unidos, encontramos también que algo más profundo y más poderoso que el sufragio la ha ayudado en la marcha hacia la emancipación.

 

Hace apenas sesenta y dos años que un puñado de mujeres en la Convención de Seneca Falls expuso algunas demandas por su derecho a la educación igualitaria con los hombres, y el acceso a las diversas profesiones, oficios, etc. Qué logro maravilloso, qué triunfos maravillosos ! ¿Quién sino los más ignorantes se atreven a hablar de la mujer como una mera esclava doméstica? ¿Quién se atreve a sugerir que tal o cual profesión no debería estar abierta para ella? Durante más de sesenta años ha moldeado una nueva atmósfera y una nueva vida para sí misma. Se ha convertido en una potencia mundial en todos los dominios del pensamiento y la actividad humanos. Y todo eso sin sufragio, sin derecho a hacer leyes, sin el "privilegio" de ser juez, carcelero o verdugo.

 

Sí, puedo ser considerado un enemigo de la mujer; pero si puedo ayudarla a ver la luz, no me quejaré.

 

La desgracia de la mujer no es que no sea capaz de hacer el trabajo del hombre, sino que está desperdiciando su fuerza vital para superarlo, con una tradición de siglos que la ha dejado físicamente incapaz de seguirle el paso. ¡Oh, sé que algunos han tenido éxito, pero a qué costo, a qué terrible costo! Lo importante no es el tipo de trabajo que hace la mujer, sino la calidad del trabajo que proporciona. No puede dar al sufragio ni a la papeleta ninguna calidad nueva, ni puede recibir nada de ellos que mejore su propia calidad. Su desarrollo, su libertad, su independencia, debe venir de ya través de ella misma. Primero, afirmándose como personalidad y no como mercancía sexual. Segundo, negando el derecho a cualquiera sobre su cuerpo; al negarse a tener hijos, a menos que los quiera; negándose a ser siervo de Dios, del Estado, de la sociedad, del marido, la familia, etc.; haciendo su vida más simple, pero más profunda y más rica. Es decir, tratando de aprender el significado y la sustancia de la vida en todas sus complejidades, liberándose del miedo a la opinión pública y la condena pública. Sólo eso, y no el voto, hará libre a la mujer, hará de ella una fuerza hasta ahora desconocida en el mundo, una fuerza para el amor real, para la paz, para la armonía; una fuerza de fuego divino, de dar vida; un creador de hombres y mujeres libres. una fuerza de fuego divino, de dar vida; un creador de hombres y mujeres libres. una fuerza de fuego divino, de dar vida; un creador de hombres y mujeres libres.

 

 

[1] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen Sumner.

 

[2] EQUAL SUFFRAGE.

 

[3] Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

 

[4] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-evident that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The English Parliament is full of such Judases.

 

[5] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen A. Sumner.

 

 

 

 

THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION

 

I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between 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 today, 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 or 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 and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be 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; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Madame 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 fellow-being suffices. The 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 woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; 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 her 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 were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his 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 hold that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself 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 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 mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that 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 has not equipped her 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 teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor receive equal 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 willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could 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 walks of life—teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.

 

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence 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 love and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in freedom.

 

The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without which the majority of women have become mere professional 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 many decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with something more advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the average 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 litterateurs 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 woman'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 representation, and, lacking 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 that 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 forged 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 most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied with 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, 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 Laura Marholm speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the genius, Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sonya Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature, Marie Bashkirtzeff, 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, the 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 her 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 a hundred years the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till death doth part," has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and commands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of a man's servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who 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 explanation of 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—ethical and social conventions—were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along as 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 heard, to be satisfied.

 

The French writer, 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 cleverly 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 by the doing away with 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 a 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 the 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 restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

 

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day 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 a heathen, fit only 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 the 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, or equal civil rights, may be 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 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 equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed, if 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 synonymous 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 of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

 

 

 

 

MARRIAGE AND LOVE

 

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

 

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

 

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in TOGETHER; Pinero, in MID-CHANNEL; Eugene Walter, in PAID IN FULL, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding.

 

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous.

 

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

 

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

 

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

 

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field—sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact.

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

 

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

 

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.

 

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love.

 

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

 

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

 

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

 

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,—and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood.

 

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

THE MODERN DRAMA: A POWERFUL DISSEMINATOR OF RADICAL THOUGHT

 

So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly felt within a limited social class, the powers of reaction may often succeed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrest grows into conscious expression and becomes almost universal, it necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of existing values.

 

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

 

What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent are the simple canvasses of a Millet! The figures of his peasants—what terrific indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs that condemn the Man With the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself excluded from Nature's bounty.

 

The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity and defiance of labor in the group of miners carrying their maimed brother to safety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of the seething unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth, and the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression.

 

No menos importante es el factor del despertar rebelde en la literatura moderna: Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiev, Gorki, Whitman, Emerson y muchos otros que encarnan el espíritu del fermento universal y el anhelo de cambio social.

 

Todavía de mayor alcance es el teatro moderno, como levadura del pensamiento radical y difusor de nuevos valores.

 

Podría parecer una exageración atribuir al teatro moderno un papel tan importante. Pero un estudio del desarrollo de las ideas modernas en la mayoría de los países probará que el drama ha tenido éxito en hacer comprender grandes verdades sociales, verdades generalmente ignoradas cuando se presentan en otras formas. Sin duda hay excepciones, como Rusia y Francia.

 

Rusia, con su terrible presión política, ha hecho pensar a la gente y ha despertado sus simpatías sociales, por el tremendo contraste que existe entre la vida intelectual del pueblo y el régimen despótico que pretende aplastar esa vida. Sin embargo, aunque las grandes obras dramáticas de Tolstoi, Tchechov, Gorki y Andreiev reflejan fielmente la vida y la lucha, las esperanzas y aspiraciones del pueblo ruso, no influyeron en el pensamiento radical en la medida en que lo ha hecho el drama en otros países.

 

Quién puede negar, sin embargo, la tremenda influencia que ejerce EL PODER DE LAS TINIEBLAS o ALOJAMIENTO NOCTURNO. Tolstoi, el verdadero cristiano, es sin embargo el mayor enemigo del cristianismo organizado. Con mano maestra retrata los efectos destructivos sobre la mente humana del poder de las tinieblas, las supersticiones de la Iglesia cristiana.

 

Qué otro medio podría expresar, con tanta fuerza dramática, la responsabilidad de la Iglesia por los crímenes cometidos por sus engañadas víctimas; ¿Qué otro medio podría, en consecuencia, despertar la indignación de la conciencia del hombre?

 

Similarmente directa y poderosa es la acusación contenida en ALOJAMIENTO NOCTURNO de Gorki. Los parias sociales, forzados a la pobreza y el crimen, se aferran desesperadamente a los últimos vestigios de esperanza y aspiración. Estas existencias perdidas, arruinadas y aplastadas por un entorno cruel y antisocial.

 

Francia, por el contrario, con su continua lucha por la libertad, es ciertamente la cuna del pensamiento radical; como tal, ella tampoco necesitaba el drama como medio para despertar. Y, sin embargo, las obras de Brieux —como ROBE ROUGE, que retrata la terrible corrupción del poder judicial— y LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES de Mirbeau —que describe la influencia destructiva de la riqueza en el alma humana— sin duda han llegado a círculos más amplios que la mayoría de los artículos y libros. que se han escrito en Francia sobre la cuestión social.

 

En países como Alemania, Escandinavia, Inglaterra e incluso en América, aunque en menor grado, el drama es el vehículo que realmente está haciendo historia, difundiendo el pensamiento radical en rangos que de otro modo no serían alcanzados.

 

Tomemos Alemania, por ejemplo. Durante casi un cuarto de siglo, hombres de cerebro, de ideas y de la mayor integridad, se dedicaron a difundir la verdad de la hermandad humana, de la justicia, entre los oprimidos y oprimidos. El socialismo, esa tremenda ola revolucionaria, fue para las víctimas de un sistema despiadado e inhumano como el agua para los labios resecos del viajero del desierto. ¡Pobre de mí! La gente culta permaneció absolutamente indiferente; para ellos esa marea revolucionaria no era más que el murmullo de hombres insatisfechos, descontentos, peligrosos, analfabetos, alborotadores, cuyo lugar apropiado era tras las rejas de la prisión.

 

Satisfechos de sí mismos como suelen ser los "cultos", no podían entender por qué uno debería preocuparse por el hecho de que miles de personas se estaban muriendo de hambre, a pesar de que contribuían a la riqueza del mundo. Rodeados de belleza y lujo, no podían creer que junto a ellos vivían seres humanos degradados a una posición inferior a la de una bestia, sin techo y harapientos, sin esperanza ni ambición.

 

Este estado de cosas fue particularmente pronunciado en Alemania después de la guerra franco-alemana. Llena hasta el punto de reventar con su victoria, Alemania prosperó con una literatura sentimental y patriótica, envenenando así las mentes de la juventud del país con la gloria de la conquista y el derramamiento de sangre.

 

La Alemania intelectual tuvo que refugiarse en la literatura de otros países, en las obras de Ibsen, Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, y especialmente en las grandes obras de Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy y Turgeniev. Pero como ningún país puede mantener durante mucho tiempo un estándar de cultura sin una literatura y un teatro relacionados con su propio suelo, Alemania comenzó gradualmente a desarrollar un drama que reflejaba la vida y las luchas de su propio pueblo.

 

Arno Holz, uno de los dramaturgos más jóvenes de ese período, sacó a los filisteos de su tranquilidad y comodidad con su FAMILIE SELICKE. La obra trata sobre los desechos de la sociedad, los hombres y mujeres de los callejones, cuya única subsistencia consiste en lo que pueden sacar de los cubos de basura. Un tema espantoso, ¿no? Y, sin embargo, ¿qué otro método existe para atravesar la dura coraza de las mentes y las almas de las personas que nunca han conocido la necesidad y que, por lo tanto, asumen que todo está bien en el mundo?

 

Huelga decir que la obra despertó una tremenda indignación. La verdad es amarga, y la gente que vive en la Quinta Avenida de Berlín odiaba enfrentarse a la verdad.

 

No es que FAMILIE SELICKE representara algo sobre lo que no se había escrito durante años sin ningún resultado aparente. Pero el genio dramático de Holz, junto con la poderosa interpretación de la obra, incursionó necesariamente en los círculos más amplios y obligó a la gente a pensar en las terribles desigualdades que les rodeaban.

 

EHRE[1] y HEIMAT[2] de Sudermann tratan temas vitales. Ya me he referido al patriotismo sentimental que vuelve tan completamente la cabeza del alemán medio como para crear una concepción pervertida del honor. Los duelos se convirtieron en un asunto de todos los días, costando innumerables vidas. Varios escritores destacados lanzaron un gran grito contra la moda. Pero nada actuó como esclarecedor y desenmascarador de esa enfermedad nacional como la EHRE.

 

No es que la obra trate simplemente de duelos; analiza el verdadero significado del honor, demostrando que no es un sentimiento fijo e innato, sino que varía en cada pueblo y en cada época, dependiendo particularmente de la posición económica y social de cada uno. Nos damos cuenta de esta obra que el hombre en la mansión de piedra rojiza necesariamente definirá el honor de manera diferente a sus víctimas.

 

La familia Heinecke disfruta de la caridad del millonario Muhling, y se le permite ocupar una chabola en ruinas en sus instalaciones en ausencia de su hijo, Robert. Este último, como representante de Muhling, está haciendo una gran fortuna para su empleador en la India. A su regreso, Robert descubre que su hermana había sido seducida por el joven Muhling, cuyo padre amablemente se ofrece a arreglar las cosas con un cheque de 40.000 marcos. Robert, ultrajado e indignado, resiente el insulto al honor de su familia y es inmediatamente destituido de su cargo por descaro. Robert finalmente lanza esta acusación en la cara del filántropo millonario:

 

"Somos esclavos para ti, sacrificamos la sangre de nuestro corazón por ti, mientras seduces a nuestras hijas y hermanas y amablemente pagas su desgracia con el oro que hemos ganado para ti. Eso es lo que llamas honor".

 

El conde Trast, el personaje principal de la EHRE, ​​un hombre muy versado en las costumbres de varios climas, da una luz incidental sobre la concepción del honor, y relata que en sus muchos viajes se encontró por casualidad con una tribu salvaje cuyo honor deseaba. ofendido mortalmente al rehusar la hospitalidad que le ofrecían los encantos de la mujer del cacique.

 

El tema de HEIMAT trata de la lucha entre las viejas y las jóvenes generaciones. Ocupa un lugar permanente e importante en la literatura dramática.

 

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

 

The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor.

 

The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents.

 

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world.

 

When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!"

 

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!

 

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

 

Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition. Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, DIE VERSUNKENE GLOCKE[5], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world forever hindering individual and social emancipation.

 

Max Halbe's JUGEND[6] and Wedekind's FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN[7] are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly this is true of FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN. Young boys and girls sacrificed on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to the health and well-being of society,—the origin of life, and its functions. It shows how a mother—and a truly good mother, at that—keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as to all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victim to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen. His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of religion,—religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.

 

Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

 

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

 

Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea.

 

But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople:

 

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

 

With A DOLL'S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

It was also for the sake of the beloved son that she supported the lie of his father's goodness, in superstitious awe of "duty and decency." She learned, alas! too late, that the sacrifice of her entire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited by the sins of his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too, she learned, that "we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same and we can't get rid of them.... And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of light. When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against as something loathsome; it was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot, but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn."

 

How could a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething depths whence issued the great masterpiece of Henrik Ibsen? It could not understand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom upon its greatest benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved by his reply in AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

 

In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites over a decaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes rises the regenerated individual, the bold and daring rebel. Dr. Stockman, an idealist, full of social sympathy and solidarity, is called to his native town as the physician of the baths. He soon discovers that the latter are built on a swamp, and that instead of finding relief the patients, who flock to the place, are being poisoned.

 

An honest man, of strong convictions, the doctor considers it his duty to make his discovery known. But he soon learns that dividends and profits are concerned neither with health nor principles. Even the reformers of the town, represented in the PEOPLE'S MESSENGER, always ready to prate of their devotion to the people, withdraw their support from the "reckless" idealist, the moment they learn that the doctor's discovery may bring the town into disrepute, and thus injure their pockets.

 

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

 

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

 

These plays of Ibsen—THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, A DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE—constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground called civilization. Nay, more; Ibsen's destructive effects are at the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines existing pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the foundation of a healthier, ideal future, based on the sovereignty of the individual within a sympathetic social environment.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

After Hauptmann's DIE WEBER, STRIFE, by Galsworthy, is the most important labor drama.

 

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

 

The most marvellous and brilliant piece of work in STRIFE is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of backbone. One moment they applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the power of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion; the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who pleads the cause of the union,—the union that always stands for compromise, and which forsakes the workingmen whenever they dare to strike for independent demands; again they are aglow with the earnestness, the spirit, and the intensity of David Roberts—all these people willing to go in whatever direction the wind blows. It is the curse of the working class that they always follow like sheep led to slaughter.

 

Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matter how intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he will not allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown on the dustheap. Such was the fate of the president of the company, Anthony, and of David Roberts. To be sure they represented opposite poles—poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over. Yet they shared a common fate. Anthony is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron methods:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should pass on and leave two such giants behind. Inevitable, until the mass will reach the stature of a David Roberts. Will it ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One cannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methods hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard all those elements in their midst that are forever ready to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely Capital and Labor. They will have to learn that characters like David Roberts are the very forces that have revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out of the clutches of that "white-faced monster with bloody lips," towards a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a deeper recognition of human values.

 

No subject of equal social import has received such extensive consideration within the last few years as the question of prison and punishment.

 

Hardly any magazine of consequence that has not devoted its columns to the discussion of this vital theme. A number of books by able writers, both in America and abroad, have discussed this topic from the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, all agreeing that present penal institutions and our mode of coping with crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. One would expect that something very radical should result from the cumulative literary indictment of the social crimes perpetrated upon the prisoner. Yet with the exception of a few minor and comparatively insignificant reforms in some of our prisons, absolutely nothing has been accomplished. But at last this grave social wrong has found dramatic interpretation in Galworthy's JUSTICE.

 

The play opens in the office of James How and Sons, Solicitors. The senior clerk, Robert Cokeson, discovers that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls upon William Falder, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused, ill-treated wife of a brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man, Falder confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his sweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with whom he had planned to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband. Notwithstanding the entreaties of young Walter, who is touched by modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns Falder over to the police.

 

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

 

Pero el carro de la justicia avanza sin piedad, porque —como dice el sabio juez— "la ley es lo que es, un majestuoso edificio que nos cobija a todos, cada piedra descansa sobre otra".

 

Falder es condenado a tres años de trabajos forzados.

 

En prisión, el joven convicto sin experiencia pronto se convierte en víctima del terrible "sistema". Las autoridades admiten que el joven Falder está mental y físicamente "en mal estado", pero no se puede hacer nada al respecto: muchos otros están en una situación similar y "los alojamientos son inadecuados".

 

La tercera escena del tercer acto es conmovedora en su fuerza silenciosa. Toda la escena es una pantomima, que tiene lugar en la celda de la prisión de Falder.

 

apoya su frente contra el hierro. Dándole la espalda, se mueve lentamente hacia la ventana, sujetándose la cabeza, como si sintiera que fuera a estallar, y se detiene debajo de la ventana. Pero como no puede ver a través de él, deja de mirar y, levantando la tapa de una de las latas, mira dentro, como si tratara de hacer de su propio rostro un compañero. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. retrocede lentamente hacia la ventana, sujetándose la cabeza, como si sintiera que fuera a estallar, y se detiene debajo de la ventana. Pero como no puede ver a través de él, deja de mirar y, levantando la tapa de una de las latas, mira dentro, como si tratara de hacer de su propio rostro un compañero. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. retrocede lentamente hacia la ventana, sujetándose la cabeza, como si sintiera que fuera a estallar, y se detiene debajo de la ventana. Pero como no puede ver a través de él, deja de mirar y, levantando la tapa de una de las latas, mira dentro, como si tratara de hacer de su propio rostro un compañero. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. y se detiene debajo de la ventana. Pero como no puede ver a través de él, deja de mirar y, levantando la tapa de una de las latas, mira dentro, como si tratara de hacer de su propio rostro un compañero. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. y se detiene debajo de la ventana. Pero como no puede ver a través de él, deja de mirar y, levantando la tapa de una de las latas, mira dentro, como si tratara de hacer de su propio rostro un compañero. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento. Se ha vuelto casi oscuro. De repente, la tapa se le cae de la mano con un estrépito, el único sonido que ha roto el silencio, y se queda mirando fijamente la pared donde la tela de la camisa cuelga bastante blanca en la oscuridad, parece estar viendo a alguien o Algo ahí. Hay un golpe seco y un clic; la luz de la celda detrás de la pantalla de cristal se ha encendido. La celda está brillantemente iluminada. Se ve a Falder sin aliento.

 

De repente se oye un sonido lejano, como de golpes distantes y sordos sobre un grueso metal. Falder retrocede, incapaz de soportar este repentino clamor. Pero el sonido crece, como si un gran torbellino rodara hacia la celda. Y poco a poco parece hipnotizarlo. Comienza a arrastrarse centímetro a centímetro más cerca de la puerta. El sonido de golpes, viajando de celda en celda, se acerca más y más; Se ven las manos de Falder moviéndose como si su espíritu ya se hubiera unido a esta paliza, y el sonido aumenta hasta que parece haber entrado en la misma celda. De repente levanta los puños cerrados. Jadeando violentamente, se arroja contra su puerta y la golpea".

 

Finalmente, Falder sale de la prisión, un hombre con la licencia rota, el sello del presidiario en la frente, el hierro de la miseria en el alma. Gracias a las súplicas de Ruth, la firma de James How and Son está dispuesta a volver a contratar a Falder, con la condición de que renuncie a Ruth. Es entonces cuando Falder se entera de la terrible noticia de que la mujer que ama ha sido impulsada por el despiadado económico Moloch a venderse. Ella "trató de hacer faldas... cosas baratas... Nunca gané más de diez chelines a la semana, comprándome mi propio algodón y trabajando todo el día. Casi nunca me acostaba hasta pasadas las doce... Y luego...". .. mi empleador sucedió, ha sucedido desde entonces". En este terrible momento psicológico, la policía parece arrastrarlo de regreso a prisión por no informarse como hombre con boleto de licencia.

 

Sería imposible estimar el efecto producido por esta obra. Tal vez se pueda obtener alguna idea de la circunstancia muy inusual de que resultó tan poderosa como para inducir al Ministro del Interior de Gran Bretaña a emprender amplias reformas penitenciarias en Inglaterra. Un signo muy alentador este, de la influencia ejercida por el teatro moderno. Es de esperar que la estruendosa acusación del Sr. Galsworthy no quede sin un efecto similar en el sentimiento público y las condiciones carcelarias de Estados Unidos. De todos modos, lo cierto es que ninguna otra obra moderna ha dado frutos tan directos e inmediatos en el despertar de la conciencia social.

 

Otra obra moderna, EL CRIADO DE LA CASA, da una clave vital en nuestra vida social. El héroe de la obra maestra del Sr. Kennedy es Robert, un borracho grosero y asqueroso, a quien la sociedad respetable ha repudiado. Robert, el limpiador de alcantarillas, es el verdadero héroe de la obra; no, su verdadero y único salvador. Es él quien se ofrece voluntario para bajar a la peligrosa cloaca, para que sus camaradas "puedan tener luz y aire". Después de todo, ¿no ha sacrificado siempre su vida para que otros tengan luz y aire?

 

El pensamiento de que el trabajo es el redentor del bienestar social ha sido clamado desde los techos de las casas en todas las lenguas y en todos los climas. Sin embargo, las sencillas palabras de Robert expresan la importancia del trabajo y su misión con una potencia mucho mayor.

 

América está todavía en su infancia dramática. La mayoría de los intentos a lo largo de esta línea para reflejar la vida han sido fracasos miserables. Aún así, hay signos esperanzadores en la actitud del público inteligente hacia las obras modernas, incluso si son de suelo extranjero.

 

El único drama real que Estados Unidos ha producido hasta ahora es THE EASIEST WAY, de Eugene Walter.

 

Se supone que representa una "fase peculiar" de la vida de Nueva York. Si eso fuera todo, sería de menor importancia. Lo que le da a la obra su verdadera importancia y valor es mucho más profundo. Se encuentra, primero, en la corriente fundamental de nuestro tejido social que nos impulsa a todos, incluso a personajes más fuertes que Laura, al camino más fácil, un camino tan destructivo de la integridad, la verdad y la justicia. En segundo lugar, el fatalismo cruel y sin sentido condicionado en el sexo de Laura. Estas dos características le dan el sello universal a la obra y la caracterizan como una de las acusaciones dramáticas más fuertes contra la sociedad.

 

El derroche criminal de energía humana, en condiciones económicas y sociales, impulsa a Laura como impulsa a la chica promedio a casarse con cualquier hombre por un "hogar"; o como impulsa a los hombres a soportar las peores indignidades por una miserable miseria.

 

Luego está esa otra institución respetable, el fatalismo del sexo de Laura. La inevitabilidad de esa fuerza se resume en las siguientes palabras: "¿No sabes que en la vida de estos hombres no contamos más que animales domesticados? Es un juego, y si no jugamos bien nuestras cartas, nos perder." La mujer en la batalla con la vida sólo tiene un arma, una mercancía: el sexo. Eso por sí solo sirve como carta de triunfo en el juego de la vida.

 

Este fatalismo ciego ha hecho de la mujer un parásito, una cosa inerte. ¿Por qué entonces esperar perseverancia o energía de Laura? La forma más fácil es el camino trazado para ella desde tiempos inmemoriales. Ella no podía seguir a ningún otro.

 

Podría citarse una serie de otras obras como características del papel creciente del drama como difusor del pensamiento radical. Basta mencionar EL TERCER GRADO, de Charles Klein; EL CUARTO PODER, de Medill Patterson; EL MUNDO DE UN HOMBRE, de Ida Croutchers, todos apuntan al amanecer del arte dramático en Estados Unidos, un arte que está descubriendo a la gente las terribles enfermedades de nuestro cuerpo social.

 

Se ha dicho en la antigüedad, todos los caminos conducen a Roma. En aplicación parafraseada a las tendencias de nuestros días, se puede decir con verdad que todos los caminos conducen a la gran reconstrucción social. El despertar económico del trabajador y su comprensión de la necesidad de una acción industrial concertada; las tendencias de la educación moderna, especialmente en su aplicación al libre desarrollo del niño; el espíritu de creciente inquietud expresado a través del arte y la literatura, y cultivado por ellos, allanan el camino hacia el Camino Abierto. Sobre todo, el drama moderno, que opera a través del doble canal del dramaturgo y del intérprete, afectando tanto la mente como el corazón, es la fuerza más fuerte en el desarrollo del descontento social, aumentando la poderosa marea de inquietud que se extiende sobre el dique de la ignorancia. , prejuicio y superstición.

 

 

[1] HONOR.

 

[2] MAGDA.

 

[3] ANTES DEL AMANECER.

 

[4] LOS TEJEDORES.

 

[5] LA CAMPANA HUNDIDA.

 

[6] JUVENTUD.

 

[7] EL DESPERTAR DE LA PRIMAVERA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fin del proyecto Anarquismo y otros ensayos de Gutenberg, por Emma Goldman

 

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