Anarchism and Other Essays | Page 7

autocracy. Socialism and
Anarchism were terms hardly known even by name. Emma Goldman,
too, was entirely unfamiliar with the significance of those ideals.
She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia, at a period
of great social and political unrest. The working people were in revolt
against the terrible labor conditions; the eight-hour movement of the
Knights of Labor was at its height, and throughout the country echoed
the din of sanguine strife between strikers and police. The struggle
culminated in the great strike against the Harvester Company of
Chicago, the massacre of the strikers, and the judicial murder of the
labor leaders, which followed upon the historic Haymarket bomb
explosion. The Anarchists stood the martyr test of blood baptism. The
apologists of capitalism vainly seek to justify the killing of Parsons,
Spies, Lingg, Fischer, and Engel. Since the publication of Governor
Altgeld's reason for his liberation of the three incarcerated Haymarket
Anarchists, no doubt is left that a fivefold legal murder had been
committed in Chicago, in 1887.
Very few have grasped the significance of the Chicago martyrdom;
least of all the ruling classes. By the destruction of a number of labor
leaders they thought to stem the tide of a world-inspiring idea. They
failed to consider that from the blood of the martyrs grows the new
seed, and that the frightful injustice will win new converts to the Cause.
The two most prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in
America, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman--the one a native
American, the other a Russian--have been converted, like numerous
others, to the ideas of Anarchism by the judicial murder. Two women
who had not known each other before, and who had received a widely
different education, were through that murder united in one idea.
Like most working men and women of America, Emma Goldman
followed the Chicago trial with great anxiety and excitement. She, too,
could not believe that the leaders of the proletariat would be killed. the
11th of November, 1887, taught her differently. She realized that no
mercy could be expected from the ruling class, that between the

Tsarism of Russia and the plutocracy of America there was no
difference save in name. Her whole being rebelled against the crime,
and she vowed to herself a solemn vow to join the ranks of the
revolutionary proletariat and to devote all her energy and strength to
their emancipation from wage slavery. With the glowing enthusiasm so
characteristic of her nature, she now began to familiarize herself with
the literature of Socialism and Anarchism. She attended public
meetings and became acquainted with socialistically and anarchistically
inclined workingmen. Johanna Greie, the well-known German lecturer,
was the first Socialist speaker heard by Emma Goldman. In New Haven,
Conn., where she was employed in a corset factory, she met Anarchists
actively participating in the movement. Here she read the FREIHEIT,
edited by John Most. The Haymarket tragedy developed her inherent
Anarchist tendencies: the reading of the FREIHEIT made her a
conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to learn that the idea of
Anarchism found its highest expression through the best intellects of
America: theoretically by Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews,
Lysander Spooner; philosophically by Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt
Whitman.
Made ill by the excessive strain of factory work, Emma Goldman
returned to Rochester where she remained till August, 1889, at which
time she removed to New York, the scene of the most important phase
of her life. She was now twenty years old. Features pallid with
suffering, eyes large and full of compassion, greet one in her pictured
likeness of those days. Her hair is, as customary with Russian student
girls, worn short, giving free play to the strong forehead.
It is the heroic epoch of militant Anarchism. By leaps and bounds the
movement had grown in every country. In spite of the most severe
governmental persecution new converts swell the ranks. The
propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret character. The repressive
measures of the government drive the disciples of the new philosophy
to conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall into the hands of the
authorities and languish in prisons. But nothing can stem the rising tide
of enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and devotion to the Cause. The efforts
of teachers like Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus, and

others, inspire the devotees with ever greater energy.
Disruption is imminent with the Socialists, who have sacrificed the idea
of liberty and embraced the State and politics. The struggle is bitter, the
factions irreconcilable. This struggle is not merely between Anarchists
and Socialists; it also finds its echo within the Anarchist groups.
Theoretic differences and personal controversies lead to strife and
acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist legislation of Germany and
Austria had driven thousands of Socialists and Anarchists across the
seas to seek refuge in