💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › adeline-champney-congratulations-plus.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:36:29. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Congratulations-Plus Author: Adeline Champney Date: March 1915 Language: en Topics: individualism, anarcha-feminism Source: *Mother Earth* bulletin ser.1 v.10 1915–16 on https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x004198269.
It is a time honored custom to offer congratulations and good wishes
upon the occasion of a birthday anniversary; one of the few accepted
customs which Time has not rather dishonored and outworn. Hence in
availing myself of this observance I experience something of the joy
peculiar to the careful housewife who in the course of her spring
cleaning discovers among the odds and ends which must be relegated to
the rubbish barrel a piece of perfectly good material which she can
utilize.
In the periods of intellectual house-cleaning which no life should be
too busy to afford, old valuations may often profitably be reviewed and
hasty judgments corrected, for a wise conversation of all which, though
old, rings true, is often as important as the discovery of the new. With
the consciousness that since the advent of MOTHER EARTH I have made such
a revaluation comes the feeling that some new declaration of myself is
necessary in the renewed assurance of friendship implied in this
presentation of congratulations.
Truly something more than congratulations are due MOTHER EARTH, for
while I know that the magazine has not been all that its publisher and
editor hoped to make it, while it has not done all they have dreamed for
it, it has in some ways accomplished more than their plans for it
contemplated. While the ultimate effect of those actitivities
originating in the MOTHER EARTH ASSOCIATION and centering around it are
too subtle, too far reaching to be measured or even adequately
conjectured, the traceable things are such that we may reasonably become
enthusiastic even as to probabilities beyond our ken. Who can declare
how much of the liberality of thought, freedom of discussion, and
tolerance of action which we see increasing every day may be direcly due
to these coast-to-coast tours, to the spoken word delivered, and the
printed words disseminated ? Emma Goldman has “toured exclusively for
MOTHER EARTH,” but in so doing she has scattered broadcast the seed of
liberty throughout the land, and the harvest is not yet. They who have
ears to hear have heard, and hearing, pondered. For Emma Goldman does
not set empty echoes rolling through vacant minds. Her intrepid
personality, fired by a noble ideal, energizes and vitalizes. At her
touch we vibrate, we breathe deeper, we feel ourselves more fully alive,
we are stirred and spurred to action.
When I would write of MOTHER EARTH I find myself thinking of Emma
Goldman; not that I would belittle her co-workers, but because her
tremendous personality puts its own stamp on the work and proclaims it
hers. Nay, more! She has put her stamp on the whole country. Not so long
ago a community which received Emma Goldman hospitably merited a gold
star for its liberalism, while now the community which attempts to
interfere with her work is marked down in black. From Emma Goldman
hunted and hounded to Emma Goldman commanding respectful attention from
colleges, exclusive clubs and scientific societies is a far cry, — but
it is not Emma Goldman who has changed. Her courage and determination
have forced recognition and respect, changing the attitude of the
people.
Thus has Emma Goldman, in the indefatigable pursuit of her own work for
the support of MOTHER EARTH, and the propaganda of Anarchism, been
enlarging and conserving the liberty of the whole people; for freedom of
speech for Emma Goldman means freedom of speech for you and for me, and
for every man and woman with a message. This constitutes a forceful
example of the social value of enlightened individual selfhood, for Emma
Goldman, in seeking her own ends, has been assuring the rights of all,
and accomplishing more for free speech and free assemblage than any
society organized for the purpose. This work alone is a notable
achievement and in itself gives MOTHER EARTH high rank as a factor in
social progress.
Another important work incidental to the MOTHER EARTH tours is the
spread of sex-rationalism. The innate purity and beauty and the eminent
common-sense of Emma Goldman’s lectures on the freedom of love and on
limitation of offspring make her work along this
line of vital import. The abominations of existing sex institutions are
sickening the pure in heart of all faiths, and the vision of clean,
healthy, sane and happy lives outside the pale is a revelation of
salvation to many. No propaganda is more fearfully needed, none more
farreaching in its potentialities for human happiness than the
propaganda of sex-rationalism, and MOTHER EARTH is not the least of its
prophets. Among Anarchists MOTHER Earth has made toward narmony, toward
breadth and fellowship. Standing for Communism, it has not been bigoted
either in respect to the contributed matter in the magazine or with
regard to the literature sold. It is looking toward the movement rather
than insisting on the economicism. This is a tendency in the right
direction. When Communists, Collectivists and Individialists can get
together on their Anarchism they become an influence, not merely a nest
of contentiousness.
Among the people in general — I speak now of the people of the United
States. I admit I am an American, and glad of it. Let those to whom all
patriotism is anathema sneer. I am quite sure my patriotism would not be
acceptable to the political campaign orator, but I have an affection for
America, a concern for America, passing my interest in any other part of
the globe. I find, moreover, an intrinsic reality in nationalism,
fundamental, developmental, and valuable to world-progress. While not
claiming that developments here are any more iraportant than those of
any other country, I am especially and keenly interested in American
social conditions, in the peculiar process of transition going on here.
So I am glad that MOTHER EARTH is in America, that it is making
Anarchism recognized and respected here as a world-fact; as a theory, an
ideal, that must be reckoned with. Not so long ago it was the
well-informed man only who understood the significance of the word; now
it is the ignorant man who does not know something of it. The Anarchist
is now seen as an idealist where but shortly he appeared a villain, a
brute or a clown. MOTHER EARTH shows him, not as a menace of darkness
but as a man and a comrade. He is no longer an anomaly; the causes of
his thinking and his feeling are made plain Agree with him or not, like
him or not, one has to feel him human.
As for numerical propaganda, I doubt if the actual number of avowed
Anarchists has very greatly increased. They are not standing up to be
counted, but the increase of Anarchistic thought which does not bear the
title is enormous. It is in this that the strength of the movement
consists, in this undercurrent that is sweeping inevitably toward
freedom. Insensibly, even while holding to the letter of outworn tenets
and outgrown usages, men and women are inclining more and more toward
liberty, and this inner transformation, this change in the feelings of
the people, is the Social Revolution.
A liberty-loving people cannot be enslaved. A despotically-minded people
cannot be freed. The instinctive feelings, the habits of thought of the
peoples do not change catastrophically, are not to be changed by
political overturnings. Spasmodic upheavals change nothing but temporary
local situations. Haste, repenting itself, too often sinks into deeper
lethargy. Violence provokes violence, begetting a train of petty
hatreds, stultifying love from which alone springs growth. Dynamite
proves nothing, creates nothing but fear which is never constructive.
The dynamiter, whatever his ideals, his motives, becomes temporarily but
an instrument of destruction, checking development, — his own and all
within his influence. Dynamite is but the stiletto thrust of Impatience,
never the ocean sweep of Power. A libertyloving people needs no
dynamite, nor can dynamite profit a people who love not liberty. From
the futilities of dynamite may you be freed, O MOTHER EARTH!
Likewise from that other petty obstruction, the personal animosity.
Often, when receiving your monthly visits, have I longed to gather up
all princes and potentates and tyrants, all money-kings and capitalists
and exploiters whatsoever, and presenting them to you, announce in tones
that must be heard “These, too, are men!” Intelligent, courageous,
large-hearted men, many of them; as are peasants, laborers, agitators,
many of them. Calloused and distorted and rotten altogether? Yes, many
of them. So are the proletariat, many of them; likewise their advocates,
some of them. And from the from the sathe cause institutionims. And same
cause. From the same cause! Your struggle, O MOTHER EARTH, is with the
cause of misery, not with its victims; your battle is against
institutions, against superstitions, not against their deluded victims.
And these anti-social institutions, these baleful superstitions, that
must be up-rooted and annihilated lest they throttle human progress —
where are they? In the instinctive feelings and the habits of thought of
their victims, the people, all the people. Be not deceived, O MOTHER
EARTH, when you are awakening the love of liberty you are not merely
“preparing the way for the Social Revolution,” you are conducting the
Social Revolution. When these inimical institutions are fully undermined
in the minds of the people, they will fall of their own rottenness.
Until that time, though you could dynamite kings, capitols, bourses,
monopolies, corporations, out of existence, yet would tyrannies,
exploitations, miseries rise again, since their roots would remain. More
than this, the Social Revolution is not catastrophic but cumulative. It
is a movement which gathers speed and momentum as it goes, unless
checked and thwarted by premature upheavals.
Here is where we part company, MOTHER EARTH! Your Anarchism is stressed
in its political value, mine in its psychological necessity. This value
you also discern, but you clothe it with a material structure. Seeing
the soul, you dream of a body incorporating it. You would
institutionalize Anarchism, but an ideal cannot be institutionalized.
Once imprisoned in form, it dies, and decay sets in.
Your dream is not my dream. Anarchism to me is a dynamic social factor,
not a political expedient. I do not foresee the State overthrown and
Anarchism established. Any violent overthrow of the State is but
temporary. The State is an historic economic development which bears
within itself the elements of its own metamorphosis. I foresee the State
becoming a Fellowship approximating a pure democracy. I doubt if
government can ever utterly be abolished. Purely Anarchistic groups
there will doubtless be, and some of them will be successful; but the
span of human life on the planet is limited. I doubt it can endure long
enough to inake Anarchists of the entire human race, certainly not
Anarchists capable of living harmoniously together. Nations will
persist, but woe betide the nation which has no Anarchist movement! Such
a nation would dry rot and be cast out from the World-Fellowship; or it
would petrify and be fit only for a Museum of Horrors. A pure democracy
vitalized by an Anarchistic ideal—this is my vision of the future.
This is why I love you, MOTHER EARTH. Though your dream is not as my
dream, you are doing my work. You are awakening the soul of humanity.
You are spurring it on to that future which neither you nor I can see.
And though we vision it otherwise, here are my congratulations for the
work you are doing, and my heartfelt thanks.
And among the good wishes I would shower upon your birthday, I am
“wishing on you” two things: more literary support from freedom lovers
everywhere; and a better perspective, a broader view of existing
conditions and a less doctrinaire interpretation of them; especially a
keener appreciation of the trend of things in this country, and of the
services to progress of some whose work is great, even though they may
not see its full import.
Last, and heartiest of all, Roadway and Good Speed!