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Title: In the Jungle
Author: Bruce Calvert
Date: February 1910
Language: en
Topics: Emma Goldman, Libertarian Labyrinth
Source: Retrieved on 26th April 2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/the-sex-question/bruce-calvert-in-the-jungle-1908/
Notes: The Open Road 4 no. 2 (February, 1910): 39–57.

Bruce Calvert

In the Jungle

But I started out to tell you of my intellectual bat in the city. The

jag opened with ‘Gene Debs’ lecture at Orchestra Hall, where the idol of

the socialists received the plaudits of three or four thousand

enthusiasts.

Then I listened to prim and scholarly John Spargo, another socialist

speaker and writer, well known to students of economics. Spargo looks

for all the world like a Presbyterian deacon, tho he doesn’t talk like

one by a darn site. I heard Arthur M. Lewis, also, at the Garrick

Theater, and a lecture by ex-Senator Billy Mason on the postal savings

bank. Next I went to hear Mangassarian spout his dainty and lady-like

parlor rationalism to his usual big audience at Orchestra Hall, and I

finally wound up at the German Hod Carriers’ Hall out on the West Side,

where Emma Goldman held forth for four nights on the beauties of Anarchy

to all the people that could crowd into the meeting place.

Emma Goldman! What a surprise in every way — both the lady herself and

her utterances! I had read so much about this terrible woman whom the

police so fear that the whole force is called out whenever she comes to

town, and who is usually followed about wherever she goes by a loving

escort of ten to a hundred bluecoats, that I expected to see an ogre

fierce and untamed, shrieking bombs and crying for blood.

But what I did see was a plump, motherly little woman, whose very

presence would seem to inspire hope and courage in the downtrodden, and

abused of society. A woman who appealed in the most intense and eloquent

terms to what she believes to be the highest in men and women.

Before everything else in this world I do dearly love a good speaker. I

am sure that the most potent factor in human affairs is the living

voice, and I am sure also that the day of the supremacy of the printed

page is passing. The world must begin now to develop a new race of

orators and speakers. The redemption of man from social evils and the

regeneration of society will come, I think, not from cold type, but thru

living speech, hot from the hearts of great souls filled with a great

love, on fire with a great theme.

And so I think Emma Goldman the greatest woman speaker I have ever

heard. I wish every woman who has a message or who wants to speak could

hear this little Russian Jewess in her sincere and terrible earnestness.

When you speak to her you look down into a round chubby face, lighted by

quick expressive eyes. You see a shapely, intellectual head rising from

a short, plump figure. But when she speaks, Emma Goldman seems to fill

the stage. The tones of her voice seek all the hidden springs of the

heart. Her words ring clear — I am sure she could be heard easily by an

audience of five thousand. Now she appeals with pathos, a woman whose

mother heart feels the sorrows of her children; again she pleads; she

can be sarcastic, too, sharp as a two-edged sword, in denouncing the

shams of society; and she can rouse her hearers to the wildest

enthusiasm, filling them with the courage to do and dare, to suffer and

hope, and work for the better day when the world’s social injustices

shall be righted. At such times she seems like a Jean D ‘Arc, leading

her legions on to victory.

I really do not see what the police have to fear from Emma Goldman. I

don’t think they know, either. She preaches an enlightened humanity that

is as far ahead of brutal policemen, ward bosses, and grafting mayors,

as the gentle Nazarene was ahead of the mad scene he looked in upon at

the temple in Jerusalem that morning when he gave way to his anger and

lashed the dirty loan sharks and note shavers from the house.

Police interference on the ground of apprehended violence or destruction

of property at or thru Emma Goldman’s lectures is too absurdly

ridiculous. The police might with equal reason station armed guards at

Christian Endeavor Societies, or break up the Wednesday afternoon

Mothers’ Meetings. The pretext is so flimsy it deceives no one. We know

why free speech is suppressed. We know from whom police officials take

their orders. The people who go to hear Emma Goldman are not rioters.

They are the most intellectual class in the world today. They are not

law less. The police and officers of the law themselves are the violent

ones, they are the lawbreakers when they deny her the right to speak and

drive away citizens who have peaceably and lawfully assembled to hear

her. Such action on the part of policemen is a thousand times more

dangerous to liberty, more destructive to government than all the

anarchists and all the bombs in creation. This is worse than Anarchy

ever could be. It is chaos. It is mob rule. What right have we to talk

of freedom, of government, of law, when one low-browed policeman with a

club can set aside the highest law of the land — trample upon the most

sacred rights of citizens?

If the police expect to suppress the truths for which this woman stands

they are acting the part of sodden idiots. They might just as well try

to stay Niagara’s mighty flood, or prevent the sun from rising tomorrow

morning. Violence never did suppress a principle. Truth will not down.

It goes on and on. Nothing can stay it. Nothing can subdue it. Races,

religions and governments pass away, but truth which is eternal

principle endures forever.

What is wrong in Emma Goldman’s philosophy will die of itself. What is

true will be here when policemen, politicians, tyranny, soldiers and

wars shall be no more.

But one thing is too true. Policemen with their clubs can trample upon

human rights. They can and they do break up meetings, drag lecturers

from the platform and drive law abiding citizens from lecture halls.

Albeit when the police do interfere with any man or woman in exercising

the right of free speech they create more disorder, do more in a few

minutes toward disrupting society than all the Anarchist speakers and

agitators could do in a life time.

Free speech is the cornerstone upon which our government was founded.

With out free speech and a free press, democracy cannot stand; our

republic must and will fall.

Emma Goldman is within her rights when she essays to speak anywhere in

our country upon any subject she may choose. And so are you, and so am I

comrades. But when police officials deny her or any one that privilege

they are acting entirely out side of right or law. They strike at the

very vitals of government, stab freedom to the heart, and outrage the

liberties of ninety million people.

If policemen with drawn clubs can do this brutal thing, then indeed is

liberty dead in this land. We may as well abandon our citizenship and

install an emperor over us at once.

Let us make no mistake on this point, comrades. The law of the land, and

the spirit of our American institutions make no reservation or

exceptions as to what you may or may not speak. The right of free speech

is fundamental, basic, unequivocal. It could not be otherwise, else were

liberty a ghastly joke and freedom a maniacal dream. Emma Goldman has

just as much right to speak from any platform in this country as has

President Taft, both be ing responsible under the law for their

utterances. And my right to hear Emma Goldman if I want to is just as

sacred as my right to hear the president or any holy Joe from his

pulpit.

What do you think then of five thousand people being clubbed away from a

hall where they had peaceably assembled and paid their good money to

hear Emma Gold man lecture? Sounds like darkest Russia, doesn’t it? But

it wasn’t. It was in good old Quaker Philadelphia, just a few weeks ago.

I wonder bronze Billy Penn did not topple from his proud pinnacle at the

top of city-hall tower.

In New York City, East Orange, N. J., in San Francisco and in

Indianapolis audiences have been dispersed or Miss Goldman refused the

right to fulfill her lecture engagements. Happily in Chicago she was not

molested this week. I saw no police uni forms at any of the meetings.

The last night I heard her she spoke on “The Drama as a Disseminator of

Radical Thought.” It was about the worst night of the winter. Streets

were over ankle deep with slush, while rain and sleet added to the

discomfort. The meetings were held at a most inaccessible place on the

West Side. The weather was so bad that the managers gave up the large

hall which had been secured and instead took a smaller one, seating

three or four hundred which was more than they expected. But by eight

o’clock the room was packed, and people still coming. They adjourned to

the large hall and by the time the lecture began that too was packed

with a crowd of fifteen hundred or more.

And such an audience. It was a revelation to me. A proletarian gathering

of all nationalities. But such great vital force, as you could plainly

feel; such deadly serious earnestness I never saw. They were students

every one of them. They do not waste any time with sociological and

economic frills, are not deterred by any conventional bogies, but have

plunged at once right into the heart of human philosophy. They are get

ting right down to bed rock principles. I saw young girls from the shops

and factories there following the lecturer over the most difficult

metaphysical ground with the keenest interest and evident comprehension.

And no wonder when I heard these same children speak familiarly of

philosophical questions. They know their Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Hauptman,

Kropotkin, Tolstoy; their Emerson and their Whitman. They are deeply

alive and they are thinking with a deadly earnestness which bodes ill

for the hypocritical grafting society and codfish aristocracy of our

times.

As I sat among these people, many with the marks of their toil still

upon them, I felt the conviction stealing into my soul, that right down

here in the ranks of the lowest, there was at work the saving force that

will redeem humanity. The real uplift will come from these people, from

below and not from the bourgeoisie or the upper crust. Just picture to

yourself what such an atmosphere of free thought and what such training

means to the boys and girls who are to be the fathers and mothers of the

next generation. Multiply this little society by thousands which are

growing up in all parts of our country and across the seas, and does one

need to be a prophet to foretell what is to come. Can you not almost

hear the shouts of victory and the trumpets of joy welcoming the morning

of that glad new day when man shall be free?

Why weren’t these meetings broken up? Oh simply because the present

chief of police in Chicago just happened to be a man with some sense of

humor. Two years ago Emma Goldman was not allowed to speak there. Crowds

were clubbed away, and Miss Gold man was trailed about the city with an

escort of forty of the finest. When she comes again another chief may be

in power and she or you or I may be dragged from the platform and the

audience driven home.

What then becomes of the constitutional rights of the people? Well they

haven’t any save those allowed by the police department. The policeman’s

club is the law under which American government is today administered.

Nice situation isn’t it? Perhaps you haven’t seen its workings in your

town yet, but it may be your turn next. And remember in a republic,

there is no liberty, no law, so long as one single individual’s rights

are infringed.

The trouble is that we have set up a gorgon among us which is eating us

alive. Our institutions are getting further and further away from the

people. We are not actually a government by the people any more, but we

have created an office holding oligarchy which has forgotten its source

and is using the powers we gave it, to exploit and oppress us. Yes that

is true. Even the courts are as rotten as the police force. The judge in

Philadelphia to whom Emma Gold man appealed for protection from the

annoyance of the police denied her petition, endorsing the action of the

police in forcibly preventing ten thousand people from hearing her

speak.

Whom did that judge and the police represent in Philadelphia? The

people? It is to laugh. Everyone knows better. How many people in

Philadelphia cared whether Emma Goldman spoke or not? Several thou sand

did want to hear her, and did come to the meeting. The rest had no

objection and did not care who spoke or who went to hear. Who did then!

Have the people anything to fear from the truth ? Have they anything to

lose in the triumph of right over wrong? Who is it that always fears the

truth? The rogues, isn’t it? Who is it that fears the spread of economic

understanding and the education of the masses as the devil hates holy

water? Honest men never fear the truth. Look behind the poor ignorant

policeman, look behind the venal judge, and you’ll find the few men,

financial buccaneers, vultures of special privilege, who fear Emma

Goldman as a pestilence, because the triumph of her doctrines would be

the death of their exploitations; and these men use their willing tools,

the courts and police officers to set aside the liberties of the people,

trampling the rights of American citizenship into the mud.

And all the time our newspapers at the bidding of their masters the

rogues, throw dust in the eyes of the people with scare heads about

“Anarchy! Violence! Bombs!”

Are the newspapers afraid of Emma Goldman? Do the editors think she is

the terrible archangel of crime which they picture her when they incite

the unthinking police to violence against her? Not at all. The men who

make the newspapers know that she is a great-hearted, great-souled

woman, no more of a rioter than was Harriet Beecher Stowe or Susan B.

Anthony. They know that she is well informed, that she is a deep and

forceful thinker, and that she knows her human history as few modern

students, men or women know it. They know that she is familiar with the

greatest literature of at least three languages. They know that her

lecture on the modern drama could not be equalled by any University man

in America. They know that she stands for human rights and individual

freedom, and that her position upon these questions is precisely the

same as was that of Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thoreau,

old John Brown, Wendell Philips, Wm. Lloyd, Garrison, Walt Whitman, and

Emerson. Yes, our own Ralph Waldo, the supreme anarchist of his age.

Read the essay on ” Self-Reliance ” again.

They know that law and order, which they pretend to worship, has no more

to fear from this woman than from the Salvation Army. They know that

their hysterical scare heads, and alarmist talk about anarchy are lies

pure and simple. Why do they print such stuff? Well didn’t you know that

the news paper editors of today have no opinions of their own upon any

thing. What they or their writers may know or think cuts no ice

whatever. They print what their masters the men who own them order them

to print. And do you think for a moment that the masters are running

great newspapers in the interests of the people ? It must be apparent

even to the most guileless that this is not so.

There were several newspaper men in Emma Goldman’s audience. Here was a

great gathering of intelligent people earnestly grappling with social

problems of the profoundest sequence to humanity. Here was a great

virile force at work in the hearts of the people — a great movement

gathering strength that will yet shake our social structure to the very

foundations, but do you suppose a single newspaper man had the courage

to print a line about the meetings? They did not. Not a word appeared in

any of the great dailies. Even the Daily Socialist paper, much to my

surprise did not mention the lectures, although many leading socialists

were present.

When government becomes an instrument in the hands of a few to thwart

the will of the many — to rob and enslave the whole people, then I want

some highbrow to show me wherein such a government is better than

anarchy.

No, comrades, we have nothing to fear from Emma Goldman, but we do have

everything to fear from the lawless despots who use their tools the

courts and the police and the press to assail our rights and de spoil us

of our liberties.

How the fetich of ownership, has cursed mankind. We uphold the dogma of

“mine” and “thine,” but we have only what the race has in common. We

focus on the thing for a moment and call it our own, but it is no more

ours than the sunshine or the south west breeze.

Too much heaven is hell.