While the above events were transpiring in the Latin countries, the Bakouninists were keeping a sharp eye on America as a land of hopeful possibilities. As early as 1874 Bakounin himself considered the matter of coming here, while Kropotkin and Guillaume followed with interest the labor disturbances that were at that time so numerous and so violent in this country. The panic of 1873 had caused widespread suffering among the working classes. For several years afterward hordes of unemployed tramped the country. The masses were driven to desperation and, in their hunger, to frequent outbreaks of violence. When later a measure of prosperity returned, both the trade-union and the socialist movements began to attract multitudes of the discontented. The news of two important events in the labor world of America reached the anarchists of the Jura and filled them, Guillaume says, "with a lively emotion." In June, 1877, Kropotkin called attention to the act of the Supreme Court of the United States in declaring unconstitutional the eight-hour law on Government work. He was especially pleased with an article in theLabor Standardof New York, which declared: "This will teach the workers not to put their confidence in Congress and to trust only in their own efforts. No law of Congress could be of any use to the worker if he is not so organized that he can enforce it. And, if the workers arestrong enough to do that, if they succeed in solidly forming the federation of their trade organizations, then they will be able, not only to force the legislators to make efficacious laws on the hours of work, on inspection, etc., but they will also be able to make the law themselves, deciding that henceforth no worker in the country shall work more than eight hours a day." "It is the good, practical sense of an American which says that,"(1)comments Kropotkin. This act of the Supreme Court and this statement of theLabor Standardwere very welcome news to the anarchists. They were convinced that the Americans had abandoned political action and were turning to what they had already begun to call "direct action."
Another event, a month later, added to this conviction. In its issue of July 29 theBulletinpublished this article: "'Following a strike of the machinists of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a popular insurrection has burst forth in the states of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If at Martinsburg (West Virginia) the workmen have been conquered by the militia, at Baltimore (Maryland), a city of 300,000 inhabitants, they have been victorious. They have taken possession of the station and have burned it, together with all the wagons of petroleum which were there. At Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a city of 100,000 inhabitants, the workers are at the present time masters of the city, after having seized guns and cannon.... The strike is extending to the near-by railroads and is gaining in the direction of the Pacific. Great agitation reigns in New York. It is announced that the troops will concentrate, that Sheridan has been named commander, and that the Western States have offered their help.' In the following number, a detailed article, written by Kropotkin, recounted thedénouementof the crisis, the recovery of Pittsburgh, where two thousand wagons loaded with merchandise had been burned, the repression and the disarray of the strikers following the treachery of the miserable false brothers, and the final miscarriage of the movement. But if there had been, in this attempt of popular insurrection, weak sides that had brought about the failure, Kropotkin rightly praised the qualities of which the American working people had just given proof: 'This movement will have certainly impressed profoundly the proletariat of Europe and excited its admiration. Its spontaneity, its simultaneousness at so many distant points communicating only by telegraph, the aid given by the workers of different trades, the resolute character of the uprising from the beginning, call forth all our sympathies, excite our admiration, and awaken our hopes.... But the blood of our brothers of America shall not have flowed in vain. Their energy, their union in action, their courage will serve as an example to the proletariat of Europe. But would that this flowing of noble blood prove once again the blindness of those who amuse the people with the plaything of parliamentarism when the powder magazine is ready to take fire, unknown to them, at the fall of the least spark.'"(2)
The news of industrial troubles, such as the above, convinced the anarchist elements of Europe that America was ripe for direct action and the revolution. And it was indeed this period of profound industrial unrest that gave a forward impulse to all radical movements in the late seventies. Socialist newspapers sprang up in all parts of the country, and both socialist and trade-union organizations took on an immense development. Riots, minor insurrections, and strikes were symptoms of an all-pervading discontent. Simultaneously with this, manyrevolutionists, upon being expelled from Germany, were injected into the ferment. With many other refugees, the Germans then began to form revolutionary clubs, and, in 1882, Johann Most appeared in the United States scattering broadcast the terrorist ideas of Bakounin and Nechayeff.
Most was perhaps the most fiery personality that appeared in the ranks of the anarchists after the death of Bakounin. A cruel stepmother, a pitiless employer, a long sickness, and an operation which left his face deformed forever are some of the incidents of his unhappy childhood. He received a poor education, but read extensively, and as a bookbinder worked at his trade in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. He became attached to the labor movement toward the end of the sixties, and was elected to the German Reichstag in 1874. Forced to leave Germany as a result of the anti-socialist law, he went to London, where he establishedDie Freiheit, at first a social-democratic paper, which was smuggled into Germany. He became, however, more and more violent, and in 1880, at a secret gathering of the German socialists at Wyden in Switzerland, he and his friend Hasselmann were expelled from the Germany party. After this he no longer attempted to conceal his anarchist sympathies, and in theFreiheit, on the platform, and on every possible occasion he preached principles almost identical with those of Nechayeff and Bakounin. In a pamphlet on the scientific art of revolutionary warfare and of dynamiters he prescribes in detail where bombs should be placed in churches, palaces, and ball-rooms.[I]He advises wholly individual action, in order that the groups may suffer as little harm as possible. His pamphlet also contains a dictionary of poisonswhich may be usefully employed against politicians, traitors, and spies. "Extirpate the miserable brood!" he writes inDie Freiheit; "extirpate the wretches! Thus runs the refrain of a revolutionary song of the working classes, and this will be the exclamation of the executive of a victorious proletariat army when the battle has been won. For at the critical moment the executioner's block must ever be before the eyes of the revolutionist. Either he is cutting off the heads of his enemies or his own is being cut off. Science gives us means which make it possible to accomplish the wholesale destruction of these beasts quietly and deliberately." Elsewhere he says, "Those of the reptile brood who are not put to the sword remain as a thorn in the flesh of the new society; hence it would be both foolish and criminal not to annihilate utterly this race of parasites."(3)
It was this cheerful individual who, after being expelled from the German socialist party, made prodigious efforts to establish revolutionary organizations all over Europe. In London he captured the Communist Working Men's Educational Society, despite the protest of a considerable minority, and through it he undertook to launch other revolutionary clubs. The parliamentary socialists were bitterly assailed, and a congress was held in Paris and a later one in London for the purpose of uniting the revolutionists of all countries. According to Zenker, the headquarters of the association were at London, and sub-committees were formed to act in Paris, Geneva, and New York. Money was to be collected "for the purchase of poison and weapons, as well as to find places suitable for laying mines, and so on. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all rulers, ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most prominent capitalists, and other exploiters, any means are permissible, andtherefore great attention should be given specially to the study of chemistry and the preparation of explosives, as being the most important weapons. Together with the chief committee in London there will also be established an executive bureau, whose duty is to carry out the decisions of the chief committee and to conduct correspondence."(4)
After these attempts to establish an anarchist International, Most sailed for New York. Some of his ideas had preceded him, and when he arrived he was met and greeted by masses of German workingmen. Miss Emma Goldman, in "Anarchism and Other Essays," tells us of the impression he made upon her. "Some twenty-one years ago," she says, "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!"(5)At the time of Most's arrival the American socialist movement was hopelessly divided over questions of methods and tactics. Already there had been bitter quarrels between those in the movement who had formed secret drilling organizations which were preparing for a violent revolution, and those others who sought by education, organization, and political action to achieve their demands. In the year 1880 a number of New York members had left the socialist organization and formed a revolutionary group, and in October of the following year a convention was held to organize the various revolutionary groups into a national organization. Everything was favorable for Most, and when he arrived itwas not long, with his magnetic personality and fiery agitation, until he had swept out of existence the older socialist organizations. In 1883 representatives from twenty-six cities met in Pittsburgh to form the revolutionary socialist and anarchist groups into one body, called the "International Working People's Association." The same year a dismal socialist convention was held in Baltimore with only sixteen delegates attending. They attempted to stem the tide to terrorism by declaring: "We do not share the folly of the men who consider dynamite bombs as the best means of agitation. We know full well that a revolution must take place in the heads and in the industrial life of men before the working class can achieve lasting success."(6)
The tide, however, was not stayed. The advocates of direct action continued headlong toward the bitter climax at the Haymarket in Chicago in 1886. Just previous to that fatal catastrophe, a series of great strikes had occurred in and about that city. At the McCormick Reaper Works a crowd of men was being addressed by Spies, an anarchist, when the "scabs" left the factory. A pitched battle ensued. The police were called, and, when they were assaulted with stones, they opened fire on the crowd, shooting indiscriminately men, women, and children, killing six and wounding many more. Spies, full of rage, hurried to the office ofArbeiter Zeitung, the anarchist paper, and composed the proclamation to the workingmen of Chicago which has since become famous as "the revenge circular." It called upon the workingmen to arm themselves and to avenge the brutal murder of their brothers. Five thousand copies of the circular, printed in English and German, were distributed in the streets. The next evening, May 4, 1886, a mass meeting was called at the Haymarket.About two thousand working people attended the meeting. The mayor of the city went in person to hear the addresses, and later testified that he had reported to Captain Bonfield, at the nearest police station, that "nothing had occurred nor was likely to occur to require interference." Nevertheless, after Mayor Harrison had gone, Captain Bonfield sent one hundred and seventy-six policemen to march upon the little crowd that remained. Captain Ward, the officer in charge, commanded the meeting to disperse, and, as Fielden, one of the speakers, retorted that the meeting was a peaceable one, a dynamite bomb was thrown from an adjoining alley that killed several policemen and wounded many more.
In the agitation that led up to the Haymarket tragedy, dynamite had always been glorified as the poor man's weapon. It was the power that science had given to the weak to protect them from injustice and tyranny. As powder and the musket had destroyed feudalism, so dynamite would destroy capitalism. In the issue of theFreiheit, March 18, 1883, Most printed an article called "Revolutionary Principles." Many of the phrases are evidently taken from the "Catechism" of Bakounin and Nechayeff, and the sentiments are identical. During all this period great meetings were organized to glorify some martyr who, by the Propaganda of the Deed, had committed some great crime. For instance, vast meetings were organized in honor of Stellmacher and others who had murdered officers of the Viennese police. At one of these meetings Most declared that such acts should not be called murder, because "murder is the killing of a human being, and I have never heard that a policeman was a human being."(7)When August Reinsdorf was executed for an attempt on the life of the German Emperor, Most'sFreiheitappeared with a heavy blackborder. "One of our noblest and best is no more," he laments. "In the prison yard at Halle under the murderous sword of the criminal Hohenzollern band, on the 7th of February, August Reinsdorf ended a life full of battle and of self-sacrificing courage, as a martyr to the great revolution."(8)It was inevitable that such views should lead sooner or later to a tragedy, and, while most of the Chicago anarchists were plain workingmen, simple and kindly, at least one fanatic in the group deserves to rank with Nechayeff and Most as an irreconcilable enemy of the existing order. This was Louis Lingg, whose last words as he was taken from the court were: "I repeat that I am the enemy of the 'order' of to-day, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, 'If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.' You laugh! Perhaps you think, 'You'll throw no more bombs'; but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and, when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!"(9)
There are many minor incidents now quite forgotten that played a part in this American terrorism. Benjamin R. Tucker, of New York, himself an anarchist, but not an advocate of terrorist tactics, had in the midst of this period to cry out in protest against the acts of those who called themselves anarchists. In his paper,Liberty, March 27, 1886, Tucker wrote on "The Beast of Communism."(10)He began by quoting Henri Rochefort,who was reported to have said: "Anarchists are merely criminals. They are robbers. They want no government whatever, so that, when they meet you on the street, they can knock you down and rob you."(11)
"This infamous and libelous charge," says Tucker, "is a very sweeping one; I only wish that I could honestly meet it with as sweeping a denial. And I can, if I restrict the word anarchist as it always has been restricted in these columns, and as it ought to be restricted everywhere and always. Confining the word anarchist so as to include none but those who deny all external authority over the individual, whether that of the present State or that of some industrial collectivity or commune which the future may produce, I can look Henri Rochefort in the face and say: 'You lie!' For of all these men I do not recall even one who, in any ordinary sense of the term, can be justly styled a robber.
"But unfortunately, in the minds of the people at large, this word anarchist is not yet thus restricted in meaning. This is due principally to the fact that within a few years the word has been usurped, in the face of all logic and consistency, by a party of communists who believe in a tyranny worse than any that now exists, who deny to the laborer the individual possession of his product, and who preach to their followers the following doctrine: 'Private property is your enemy; it is the beast that is devouring you; all wealth belongs to everybody; take it wherever you can find it; have no scruples about the means of taking it; use dynamite, the dagger, or the torch to take it; kill innocent people to take it; but, at all events, take it.' This is the doctrine which they call anarchy, and this policy they dignify with the name of 'propagandism by deed.'
"Well, it has borne fruit with most horrible fecundity.To be sure, it has gained a large mass of adherents, especially in the Western cities, who are well-meaning men and women, not yet become base enough to practice the theories which they profess to have adopted. But it has also developed, and among its immediate and foremost supporters, a gang of criminals whose deeds for the past two years rival in 'pure cussedness' any to be found in the history of crime. Were it not, therefore, that I have first, last, and always repudiated these pseudo-anarchists and their theories, I should hang my head in shame before Rochefort's charge at having to confess that too many of them are not only robbers, but incendiaries and murderers. But, knowing as I do that norealanarchist has any part or lot in these infamies, I do not confess the facts with shame, but reiterate them with righteous wrath and indignation, in the interest of my cause, for the protection of its friends, and to save the lives and possessions of any more weak and innocent persons from being wantonly destroyed or stolen by cold-blooded villains parading in the mask of reform.
"Yes, the time has come to speak. It is even well-nigh too late. Within the past fortnight a young mother and her baby boy have been burned to death under circumstances which suggest to me the possibility that, had I made this statement sooner, their lives would have been saved; and, as I now write these lines, I fairly shudder at the thought that they may not reach the public and the interested parties before some new holocaust has added to the number of those who have already fallen victims. Others who know the facts, well-meaning editors of leading journals of so-called communistic anarchism, may, from a sense of mistaken party fealty, bear longer the fearful responsibility of silence, if they will; for one I will not, cannot. I will take the other responsibility ofexposure, which responsibility I personally and entirely assume, although the step is taken after conference upon its wisdom with some of the most trusted and active anarchists in America.
"Now, then, the facts. And theyarefacts, though I state them generally, without names, dates, or details.
"The main fact is this: that for nearly two years a large number of the most active members of the German Group of the International Working People's Association in New York City, and of the Social Revolutionary Club, another German organization in that city, have been persistently engaged in getting money by insuring their property for amounts far in excess of the real value thereof, secretly removing everything that they could, setting fire to the premises, swearing to heavy losses, and exacting corresponding sums from the insurance companies. Explosion of kerosene lamps is usually the device which they employ. Some seven or eight fires, at least, of this sort were set in New York and Brooklyn in 1884 by members of the gang, netting the beneficiaries an aggregate profit of thousands of dollars. In 1885 nearly twenty more were set, with equally profitable results. The record for 1886 has reached six already, if not more. The business has been carried on with the most astonishing audacity. One of these men had his premises insured, fired them, and presented his bill of loss to the company within twenty-four hours after getting his policy, and before the agent had reported the policy to the company. The bill was paid, and a few months later the same fellow, under another name, played the game over again, though not quite so speedily. In one of the fires set in 1885 a woman and two children were burned to death. The two guilty parties in this case were members of the Bohemian Group and are nowserving life sentences in prison. Another of the fires was started in a six-story tenement house, endangering the lives of hundreds, but fortunately injuring no one but the incendiary. In one case in 1886 the firemen have saved two women whom they found clinging to their bed posts in a half-suffocated condition. In another a man, woman, and baby lost their lives. Three members of the gang are now in jail awaiting trial for murdering and robbing an old woman in Jersey City. Two others are in jail under heavy bail and awaiting trial for carrying concealed weapons and assaulting an officer. They were walking arsenals, and were found under circumstances which lead to the suspicion that they were about to perpetrate a robbery, if not a murder.
"The profits accruing from this 'propagandism by deed' are not even used for the benefit of the movement to which the criminals belong, but go to fill their own empty pockets, and are often spent in reckless, riotous living. The guilty parties are growing bolder and bolder, and, anticipating detection ultimately, a dozen or so of them have agreed to commit perjury in order to involve the innocent as accomplices in their crimes. It is their boast that the active anarchists shall all go to the gallows together."
The history of terrorist tactics in America largely centers about the career of Johann Most. In August Bebel's story of his life he speaks in high terms of the unselfish devotion and sterling character of Most in his early days. "If later on," says Bebel, "under the anti-socialist laws, he went astray and became an anarchist and an advocate of direct action, and finally, although he had been a model of abstinence, ended in the United States as a drunkard, it was all due to the anti-socialist laws, laws which drovehim and many others from the country. Had he remained under the influence of the men who were able to guide him and restrain his passionate temper, the party would have possessed in him a most zealous, self-sacrificing, and indefatigable fighter."(12)Most, then, was one of the victims of Bismarck's savage policies, as were also nearly all the other Germans who took part in the sordid crimes related by Tucker. And the Haymarket—the greatest of all American tragedies—leads directly back to the Iron Chancellor and his ferocious inquisition.
A few minor incidents of anarchist activity may be recorded for the following years, but the only acts of importance were the shooting of President McKinley by Czolgosz and the shooting of Henry C. Frick by Alexander Berkman. In the "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," Berkman has now told us that as a youth he became a disciple of Bakounin and a fiery member of the Nihilist group. It was after the Homestead strike that Berkman saw a chance to propagate his gospel by a deed. Leaving his home in New York, he went to Pittsburgh for the purpose of killing Henry C. Frick, then head of the Carnegie Steel Company. Berkman made his way into Frick's office, shot at and slightly wounded him. In explanation of this act he says: "In truth, murder andattentat(that is, political assassination) are to me opposite terms. To remove a tyrant is an act of liberation, the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people."(13)For this attempt on the life of Frick, Berkman was condemned to a term of imprisonment of twenty-two years. Despite a few isolated outbreaks, it may be said, therefore, that the seeds of anarchism have never taken root in America, just as they have nevertaken root in Germany or in England. To-day there are no active American terrorists and only a handful of avowed anarchists. In the Latin countries, however, the deeds of terrorism still played a tragic part in the history of the next few years.
FOOTNOTE:[I]SeeRevolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft.
[I]SeeRevolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft.
[I]SeeRevolutionäre Kriegswissenschaft.
While Johann Most was sowing the seeds of terrorism in America, his comrades were actively at work in Europe. And, if the tactics of Most led eventually to petty thievery, somewhat the same degeneration was overtaking the Propaganda of the Deed in Europe. Up to 1886 robbery had not yet been adopted as a weapon of the Latin revolutionists. In America, in Austria, and in Russia, the doctrine had been preached and, to a certain extent, practiced, butl'affaire Duvalwas responsible for its introduction into France. Unlike most of the preceding demonstrations, the act of Duval was essentially an individual one. On October 5, 1886, a large house situated at 31 rue de Monceau, Paris, and occupied by Mme. Herbelin and her daughter, Mme. Madeleine Lemaire, the well-known artist, was robbed and half burned. Some days later, Clément Duval and two accomplices, Didier and Houchard, were arrested as the perpetrators of this act. At first the matter was treated by the newspapers as an ordinary robbery. TheCri du Peuplecalled it a simple burglary, followed by an incendiary attempt. But after some days, Duval announced himself an anarchist and declared that his act was in harmony with his faith.
On January 11 and 12, 1887, the case came before the court. The discussions were very heated. After M.Fernand Labori, then a very young advocate, who had been appointed to defend Duval, had made his plea, Duval became anxious to defend himself. He threatened, in leaving the prison, to blow up with dynamite the jury and the court, and heaped upon them most abusive language. The president ordered that he should be removed from the court. An enormous tumult then ensued in that part of the hall where the anarchists were massed. "Help! Help! Comrades! Long live Anarchy!" cried Duval. "Long live Anarchy!" answered his comrades. Thirty guards led Duval away, and the verdict was read in the presence of an armed force with fixed bayonets. He was condemned to death and his two accomplices acquitted.
Eight days afterward, on January 23, an indignation meeting against the condemnation of Duval was organized by the anarchists, at which nearly 1,000 were present. Tennevin, Leboucher, and Louise Michel spoke in turn, glorifying Duval. The opposition was taken by a Blanquist, a Normandy citizen, who censured the act of Duval, because such acts, he said, throw discredit on the revolutionists and so retard the hour of the Social Revolution.
Duval's case was appealed to the highest court in France, but the appeal was rejected. The President of the Republic, however, commuted his sentence of capital punishment to enforced labor. Then followed a long period of discussions and violent controversies between the anarchists and the socialists over the whole affair. The anarchists claimed the right of theft on the grounds that it was the beginning of capitalist expropriation and that stolen wealth could aid in propaganda and action. The socialists, on the other hand, protested against this theory with extreme vigor.
After Duval, there is little noteworthy in the terrorist movement for a period of four years, but with May 1, 1891, there began what is known asLa Période Tragique. Five notable figures, Decamps, Ravachol, Vaillant, Henry, and Caserio, within a period of three years, performed a series of terrorist acts that cannot be forgotten. Their utter desperation and abandon, the terrible solemnity of their lives, and the almost superhuman efforts they made to bring society to its knees mark the most tragic and heroic period in the history of anarchism. At Levallois-Perret a demonstration was organized by the anarchists for May 1. They brought out their red and black flags, and, when the police attempted to interfere and to take away their banners, they opened fire upon them. Several fell injured, while others returned the fire. The fight continued for some time, until finally reinforcements arrived and the anarchists were subdued. Six of the police and three of the anarchists were severely injured, one of the latter being Decamps, who had received severe blows from a sword. The trial took place in August, and, when Decamps attempted to defend himself, the judge refused to hear him. Finally he and his friends were condemned to prison.
The next year, 1892, the avenger of Decamps appeared. It was the famous Ravachol, who for a time kept all Paris in a state of terror. In the night of February 14 there was a theft of dynamite from the establishment ofSoisy-sous-Etioles. On March 11 an explosion shook the house on Boulevard Saint-Germain, in which lived M. Benoît, the judge who had presided in August, 1891, at the trial of Decamps at Levallois. On March 15 a bomb was discovered on the window of the Lobau barracks. On March 27 a bomb was exploded on the first floor of a house on rue de Clichy, occupied by M. Bulot,who had held the office of Public Minister at the trial in Levallois. It was only by chance, on the accusation of a boy by the name of Lhérot, who was employed in a restaurant, that the police eventually captured Ravachol. He admitted having exploded the bombs in rue de Clichy and Boulevard Saint-Germain, "in order to avenge," he said, "the abominable violences committed against our friends, Decamps, Léveillé, and Dardare."(1)On April 26 a bomb was exploded in the restaurant where Lhérot, the informer, worked, killing the proprietor and severely wounding one of the patrons.
The public was thrown into a state of dreadful alarm. The next day, when Ravachol was brought to trial, some awful foreboding seemed to possess those who were present. All Paris was guarded. In spite of the efforts of the Public Minister, the jury spared Ravachol on the ground of extenuating circumstances. It is difficult to say whether it was fear or pity that determined the decision of the jurors. In any case, Ravachol was acquitted, only to be condemned to death a few months later for strangling the hermit of Chambles, and he was then executed.
"What shall one think of Ravachol?" says Prolo inLes Anarchistes. "He assassinated a mendicant, he broke into tombs in order to steal jewels, he manufactured counterfeit money, or, more exactly, substituting himself for the State, he cast five-franc pieces in silver, with the authentic standard, and put them in circulation. Lastly, he dynamited some property. He is of mystical origin. Profoundly religious in his early youth, he embraces with the same ardor, the same passion, and the same spirit of sacrifice the new political theory of equality. He throws himself deliberately outside the limits of the society which he abhors—kills, robs, andavenges his brothers. And let anyone question him, he replies: 'A begging hermit, he is a parasite and should be suppressed. One ought not to bury jewels when children are hungry, when mothers weep, and when men suffer from misery. The State makes money. Is it of good alloy? I make it as the State makes it and of the same alloy! As to dynamite, it is the arm of the weak who avenge themselves or avenge others for the humiliating oppression of the strong and their unconscious accomplices.'"(2)
Although the anarchists accepted Duval and defended his acts, Ravachol was variously appreciated by them. Jean Grave, the French anarchist, and Merlino, the Italian anarchist, both condemned Ravachol. "He is not one of us," declared the latter, "and we repudiate him. His explosions lose their revolutionary character because of his personality, which is unworthy to serve the cause of humanity."(3)Élisée Reclus, on the contrary, wrote of Ravachol in theSempre Avantias follows: "I admire his courage, his goodness of heart, his grandeur of soul, the generosity with which he has pardoned his enemies. I know few men who surpass him in generosity. I pass over the question of knowing up to what point it is always desirable to push one's own right to the extreme and whether other considerations, actuated by a sentiment of human solidarity, ought not to make it yield. But I am none the less of those who recognize in Ravachol a hero of a rare grandeur of soul."(4)
In theEntretiens politiques et littéraires, under the title,Eloge de Ravachol, Paul Adam wrote: "Whatever may have been the invectives of the bourgeois press and the tenacity of the magistrates in dishonoring the act of the victim, they have not succeeded in persuading us of his error. After so many judicial debates, chronicles,and appeals to legal murder, Ravachol remains the propagandist of the grand idea of the ancient religions which extolled the quest of individual death for the good of the world, the abnegation of self, of one's life, and of one's fame for the exaltation of the poor and the humble. He is definitely the Renewer of the Essential Sacrifice."(5)Museux, inl'Art social, said: "Ravachol has remained what he at first showed himself, a rebel. He has made the sacrifice of his life for an idea and to cause that idea to pass from a dream into reality. He has recoiled before nothing, claiming the responsibility for his acts. He has been logical from one end to the other. He has given example of a fine character and indomitable energy, at the same time that he has summed up in himself the vague anger of the revolutionists."(6)
Hardly had the people of Paris gotten over their terror of the deeds of Ravachol when August Vaillant endeavored to blow up with dynamite the French Chamber of Deputies. He was a socialist, almost unknown among the anarchists. He said afterward that political-financial scandals were arousing popular anger and that it was necessary to thrust the sword into the heart of public powers, since they could not be conquered peaceably. In order to carry out his plan, he went toPalais-Bourbon, and, when the session opened, Vaillant arose in the gallery to throw his bomb. A woman, perceiving the intentions of the thrower, grasped his arm, causing the bomb to strike a chandelier, with the result that only Abbé Lemire and some spectators were injured. In the midst of commotion, with men stupefied with terror, the president of the Chamber, M. Charles Dupuy, called out the memorable words, "The session continues."
Arraigned before the court, Vaillant was condemned to death. He said in explanation of his act, "I carriedthis bomb to those who are primarily responsible for social misery."(7)"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....(8)
"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."(9)
The Abbé Lemire, Deputy from the North, the only member of the Chamber who had been slightly wounded by the explosion of the bomb, urged the pardon of the condemned man. The socialist Deputies likewise decided to appeal to the pardoning power of the President of the Republic and signed the following petition: "The undersigned, members of the Chamber of Deputies which was made the object of the criminal attempt of December 9, have the honor to address to the President of theRepublic a last appeal in favor of the condemned."(10)It has long been the custom in France not to punish an abortive crime with the death penalty, and it was generally believed that Vaillant's sentence would be changed to life imprisonment. President Carnot, however, refused to extend any mercy, and Vaillant was guillotined.
A few days after the execution of Vaillant, a bomb was thrown among some guests who were quietly assembled, listening to the music, in the café of the Hotel Terminus. Several persons were severely wounded. After a fierce struggle with the police, Émile Henry was arrested. In the trial it was learned that he had been responsible for a number of other explosions that had taken place in the two or three years previous. He had attempted to avenge the miners who had been on strike at Carmaux by blowing up the manager of the company. He had deposited the bomb in the office of the company, where it was discovered by the porter. It was brought to the police, where it exploded, killing the secretary and three of his agents. Henry was a silent, lonely man, wholly unknown to the police. Mystical, sentimental, and brooding, he believed that the rich were individually responsible for misery and social wrong. "I had been told that life was easy and with abundant opportunity for all intellects and all energies," he declared at his trial, "but experience has shown me that only the cynics and the servile can make a place for themselves at the banquet. I had been told that social institutions were based on justice and equality, and I have seen about me only lies and deceit. Each day robbed me of an illusion. Everywhere I went I was witness of the same sorrows about us, of the same joys about others. Therefore I was not long in understanding that the words which I had been taught to reverence—honor, devotion, duty—were nothing but a veil concealing the most shameful baseness....
"For an instant I was attracted by socialism; but I was not long in withdrawing myself from that party. I had too much love for liberty, too much respect for individual initiative, too much dislike for incorporation to take a number in the registered army of the Fourth Estate. I brought into the struggle a profound hatred, every day revived by the repugnant spectacle of this society in which everything is sordid, ... in which everything hinders the expansion of human passions, the generous impulses of the heart, the free flight of thought. I have, however, wished, as far as I was able, to strike forcibly and justly.... In this pitiless war which we have declared on the bourgeoisie we ask no pity. We give death and know how to suffer it. That is why I await your verdict with indifference."(11)
In the case of Henry appeals were also made to President Carnot for mercy, but they, too, were ignored, and Henry was guillotined a few days after Vaillant. A month or so later, June 25, President Carnot arrived at Lyons to open an exposition. That evening, while on his way to a theater, he was stabbed to death by the Italian anarchist, Caserio, on the handle of whose stiletto was engraved "Vaillant."
This was the climax to the series of awful tragedies. It would be impossible to picture the utter consternation of the entire French nation. The characters that had figured in this terrible drama were not ordinary men. Their addresses before condemnation were so eloquent and impressive as to awaken lively emotions among the most thoughtful and brilliant men in France. They challenged society. The judge refused Decamps a hearing, and Ravachol undertook individually to destroy thejudge. Vaillant, deciding that the lawmakers were responsible for social injustice, undertook with one bomb to destroy them. Henry, feeling that it was not the lawmakers who were responsible, but the rich, careless, and sensual, who in their mastery over labor caused poverty, misery, and all suffering, sought with his bomb to destroy them. Utterly blind to the sentiments which moved these men, the President of the Republic allowed them to be guillotined, and Caserio, stirred to his very depths by what he considered to be the sublime acts of his comrades, stabbed to death the President.
It is hard to pass judgment on lives such as these. One stands bewildered and aghast before men capable of such deeds; and, if they defy frivolous judgment, even to explain them seems beyond the power of one who, in the presence of the same wrongs that so deeply moved them, can still remain inert. Yet is there any escape to the conclusion that all this was utter waste of life and devotion? Far from awakening in their opponents the slightest thought of social wrong, these men, at the expense of their lives, awakened only a spirit of revenge. "An eye for an eye" was now the sentiment of the militants on both sides. All reason and sympathy disappeared, and, instead, every brutal passion had play. Politically and socially, the reactionaries were put in the saddle. Every progressive in France was placed on the defensive. Anyone who hinted of social wrong was ostracized. Cæsarism ruled France, and, throughles lois scélérates, every bush was beaten, every hiding-place uncovered, until every anarchist was driven out. The acts of Vaillant and Henry, like the acts of the Chicago anarchists, not only failed utterly as propaganda, they even closed the ear and the heart of the world to everythingand anything that was associated, or that could in any manner be connected, with anarchism. They served only one purpose—every malign influence and reactionary element took the acts of these misguided prodigies as a pretext to fasten upon the people still more firmly both social and political injustice. To no one were they so useful as to their enemy.
For three years after this tragic period little noteworthy occurred in the history of terrorism. In Barcelona, Spain, a bomb was thrown, and immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. They were all thrown into prison and subjected to torture. Some were killed, others driven insane, although after a time some were released upon appeals made by the press and by many notables of other countries of Europe. The Prime Minister of Spain, Canovas del Castillo, was chiefly responsible for the torture of the victims. And in 1897 a young Italian, Angiolillo, went to Spain, and, at an interview which he sought with the Prime Minister, shot him. The same year an attempt was made on the life of the king of Greece, and in 1898 the Empress of Austria was assassinated in Switzerland by an Italian named Luccheni. The latter had gone there intending to kill the Duke of York, but, not finding him, decided to destroy the Empress. In 1900 King Humbert of Italy was assassinated by Gaetano Bresci. The latter had been working as a weaver in America, where he had also edited an anarchist paper. He was deeply moved when the story reached him of some soldiers who had shot and killed some peasants, who through hunger had been driven to riot. He demanded money of his comrades in Paterson, New Jersey, and, when he obtained it, hurried back to his native land, where, at Monza, on the 29th of July he shot the King. The next year on September 5,President McKinley was shot in Buffalo by Leon Czolgosz.
No other striking figure appears among the anarchists until 1912. In the early months of that year all Paris was terrified by a series of crimes unexampled, it is said, in Western history. The deeds of Bonnot and his confederates were so reckless, daring, and openly defiant, their escapes so miraculous, and the audacity of their assaults so incredible, that the people of Paris were put in a state bordering on frenzy. Just before the previous Christmas, in broad daylight, on a busy street, the band fell upon a bank messenger. They shot him and took from his wallet $25,000. They then jumped in an automobile and disappeared. A short time later a police agent called upon a chauffeur who was driving at excess speed to stop. It was in the very center of Paris, but instead of slackening his pace one of the occupants of the car drew a revolver, and, firing, killed the officer. A pursuit was organized, but the murderers escaped.
Several other crimes were committed by the band in the next few days, but perhaps the most daring was that of March 25. In the forest of Senart, at eight o'clock in the morning, a band of five men stopped a chauffeur driving a powerful new motor car. They shot the chauffeur and injured his companion. The five men then took the car, and proceeded at great speed to the famous racing center of Chantilly. They went directly to a bank, descended from the car, and shot down the three men in charge of the bank. They then seized from the safe $10,000. A crowd which had gathered was kept back by one of the bandits with a rifle. The others came out, opened fire on the spectators, started the car at its utmost speed, and disappeared.
Not long after, Monsieur Jouin, deputy chief of theSûreté, and Chief Inspector Colmar were making a domiciliary search in a house near Paris. Instead of finding what they thought, a man crouching beneath a bed sprang upon them, and in the fight Jouin was killed and Colmar severely injured. Bonnot, although injured, escaped by almost miraculous means.
At last, on April 29, the band, which had defied the police force of Paris for four months, was discovered concealed in a garage said to belong to a wealthy anarchist. A body of police besieged the place, and after two police officers were killed a dynamite cartridge was exploded that destroyed the garage. Bonnot was then captured, fighting to the last. The police reported the finding of Bonnot's will, in which he says: "I am a celebrated man.... Ought I to regret what I have done? Yes, perhaps; but I must live my life. So much the worse for idiotic and imbecile society.... I am not more guilty," he continues, "than the sweaters who exploit poor devils."(12)His final thought, it is said, was for his accomplices, both of whom were women, one his mistress, the other the manager of theJournal Anarchie.
Such is the tragic story of barely forty years of terrorism in Western Europe. It reads far more like lurid fiction than the cold facts of history. Yet these amazing irreconcilables actually lived—in our time—and fought, at the cost of their lives, the entire organization of society. Surely few other periods in history can show a series of characters so daring, so bitter, so bent on destruction and annihilation. Bakounin, Nechayeff, Most, Lingg, Duval, Decamps, Ravachol, Henry, Vaillant, Caserio, and Luccheni—these bewildering rebels—individually waged their deadly conflict with the world. With the weakness of their one single life in revolt against society—protected as it is by countless thousands of police, millions of armed men, and all its machinery for defense—these amazing creatures fought their fight and wrote their page of protest in the world's history. Think of it as we will, this we know, that the world cannot utterly ignore men who lay down their lives for any cause. Men may write and agitate, they may scream never so shrilly about the wrongs of the world, but when they go forth to fight single-handed and to die for what they preach they have at least earned the right to demand of society an inquiry.
What was it that drove these men to violence? Was it the teachings of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, and of Most? Their writings have been read and pondered over bythousands of yearning and impressionable minds. They have been drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry. Yet one anarchist at least denies that the writings of these terrorists have moved men to violence. "My contention is," says Emma Goldman, "that they were impelled, not by the teachings of anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive natures."(1)Returning again to the same thought, she exclaims, "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."(21)To this indefatigable propagandist of anarchist doctrine, those who have been led into homicidal violence are "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."(3)
Yet, if it be true that doctrines have naught to do with the spread of terrorism, why is it that among many million socialists there are almost no terrorists, while among a few thousand anarchists there are many terrorists? The pressure of adverse social conditions is felt as keenly by the socialists as by the anarchists. The one quite as much as the other is a rebel against social ills. The indictment made by the socialists against political and economic injustice is as far-reaching as that of the anarchists. Why then does not the socialist movement produce terrorists? Is it not that the teachings of Marx and of all his disciples dwell upon the folly of violence, the futility of riots, the madness of assassination, while, on the other hand, the teachings of Bakounin, of Nechayeff, of Kropotkin, and of Most advocate destructive violence as a creative force? "Extirpate the wretches!" cries Most. "Make robbers our allies!" says Nechayeff."Propagate the gospel by a deed!" urges Kropotkin, and throughout Bakounin's writings there appears again and again the plea for "terrible, total, inexorable, and universal destruction." Both socialists and anarchists preach their gospel to the weary and heavy-laden, to the despondent and the outraged, who may readily be led to commit acts of despair. They have, after all, little to lose, and their life, at present unbearable, can be made little worse by punishment. Yet millions of the miserable have come into the socialist movement to hear the fiercest of indictments against capitalism, and it is but rare that one becomes a terrorist. What else than the teachings of anarchism and of socialism can explain this difference?
Unquestionably, socialism and anarchism attract distinctly different types, who are in many ways alien to each other. Their mental processes differ. Their nervous systems jar upon each other. Even physically they have been known to repel each other. Born of much the same conditions, they fought each other in the cradle. From the very beginning they have been irreconcilable, and with perfect frankness they have shown their contempt for each other. About the kindest criticism that the socialist makes of the anarchist is that he is a child, while the anarchist is convinced that the socialist is a Philistine and an inbred conservative who, should he ever get power, would immediately hang the anarchists.[J]They are traditional enemies, who seem utterly incapable of understanding each other. Intellectually, they fail to grasp the meaning of each other's philosophy. It is but rare that a socialist, no matter how conscientious a student, will confess he fully understands anarchism. Onthe other hand, no one understands the doctrines of socialism so little as the anarchist. It is possible, therefore, that the same conditions which drive the anarchist to terrorist acts lead the socialist to altogether different methods, but the reasonable and obvious conclusion would be that teachings and doctrines determine the methods that each employ.
The anarchist is, as Emma Goldman says, "high strung." His ear is tuned to hear unintermittently the agonized cry. To follow the imagery of Shelley, he seems to be living in a "mind's hell,"(4)wherein hate, scorn, pity, remorse, and despair seem to be tearing out the nerves by their bleeding roots. Björnstjerne Björnson, François Coppée, Émile Zola, and many other great writers have sought to depict the psychology of the anarchist, but I think no one has approached the poet Shelley, who had in himself the heart of the anarchist. He was a son-in-law and a disciple of William Godwin, one of the fathers of anarchism. "Prometheus Unbound," "The Revolt of Islam," and "The Mask of Anarchy," are expressions of the very soul of Godwin's philosophy. Shelley was "cradled into poetry by wrong," as a multitude of other unhappy men are cradled into terrorism by wrong. He was "as a nerve o'er which do creep the else unfelt oppressions of this earth," and he "could moan for woes which others hear not." He, too, "could ... with the poor and trampled sit and weep."(5)There is in nearly all anarchists this supersensitiveness, this hyperæsthesia that leads to ecstasy, to hysteria, and to fanaticism. It is a neuropathy that has led certain scientists, like Lombroso and Krafft-Ebbing, to suggest that some anarchist crimes can only be looked upon as a means to indirect suicide. They are outbursts that lead to a spectacular martyr-like ending to brains that "toomuch thought expands," to hearts overladen, and to nerves all unstrung. Life is a burden to them, though they lack the courage to commit suicide directly. Such is the view of these students of criminal pathology, and they cite a long list of political criminals who can only be explained as those who have sought indirectly self-destruction. It is a type of insanity that leads to acts which seem sublime to others in a state of like torture both of mind and of nerves.
This explains no doubt the acts of some terrorists, and at the same time it condemns the present attitude of society toward the terrorist. Think of hanging the tormented soul who could say as he was taken to the gallows: "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....
"I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry, and many children who suffer, while 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."(6)When such a tortured spirit is driven to homicide, how is it possible for society to demand and take that life? Shall we admit that there is a duel between society and these souls deranged by the wrongs of society? "In this duel," said Vaillant, "I have only wounded my adversary, it is now his turn to strike me."(7)It is tragic enough that a poor and desperate soul, like Vaillant, should have felt himself in deadly combat with society, but how much more tragic it is for society to admit that fact, accept thechallenge, and take that life! "If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you," said Louis Lingg.(8)And we answer, "If you dynamite us, we shall cannonade you." And in so far as this is our sole attitude toward these rebels, wherein are we superior? For Lingg to say that was at least heroic. For us so to answer is not even heroic. Our paid men see to it. It is done as a matter of course and forgotten.
These men say that justice exists only for the powerful, that the poor are robbed, and that "the lamp of their soul" is put out. They beg us to listen, and we will not. They ask us to read, and we will not. "It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear," said Vaillant. They then give all they have to execute one dreadful deed of propaganda in order to awaken us. Must even this fail? We can hang them, but can we forget them? After every deed of the anarchists the press, the police, and the pulpit carry on for weeks a frenzied discussion over their atrocities. The lives of these Propagandists of the Deed are then crushed out, and in a few months even their names are forgotten. There seems to be an innate dread among us to seek the causes that lie at the bottom of these distressing symptoms of our present social régime. We prefer, it seems, to become like that we contemplate. We seek to terrorize them, as they seek to terrorize us. As the anarchist believes that oppression may be ended by the murder of the oppressor, so society cherishes the thought that anarchism may be ended by the murder of the anarchist. Are not our methods in truth the same, and can any man doubt that both are equally futile and senseless? Both the anarchy of the powerful and the anarchy of the weak are stupid and abortive, in that they lead to results diametricallyopposed to the ends sought. Tennyson was never nearer a great social truth than when he wrote: