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Title: Address To The Jury Author: Emma Goldman Date: July 9, 1917 Language: en Topics: World War I, Alexander Berkman Source: Proofed online source from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=618, retrieved on July 2, 2020. Notes: From U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. This speech was delivered during her Anti-Conscription trial in New York City on July 9, 1917
Gentlemen of the Jury:
As in the case of my codefendant, Alexander Berkman, this is also the
first time in my life I have ever addressed a jury. I once had occasion
to speak to three judges.
On the day after our arrest it was given out by the U.S. Marshal and the
District Attorney's office that the "big fish" of the No Conscription
activities had been caught, and that there would be no more
trouble-makers and disturbers to interfere with the highly democratic
effort of the Government to conscript its young manhood for the European
slaughter. What a pity that the faithful servants of the Government,
personified in the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney, should have
used such a weak and flimsy net for their big catch. The moment the
anglers pulled their heavily laden net ashore, it broke, and all the
labor was so much wasted energy.
The methods employed by Marshal McCarthy and his hosts of heroic
warriors were sensational enough to satisfy the famous circus men,
. A dozen or more heroes dashing up two flights of stairs, prepared to
stake their lives for their country, only to discover the two dangerous
disturbers and trouble-makers, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, in
their separate offices, quietly at work at their desks, wielding not a
sword, nor a gun or a bomb, but merely their pens! Verily, it required
courage to catch such big fish.
To be sure, two officers equipped with a warrant would have sufficed to
carry out the business of arresting the defendants Alexander Berkman and
Emma Goldman. Even the police know that neither of them is in the habit
of running away or hiding under the bed. But the farce-comedy had to be
properly staged if the Marshal and the District Attorney were to earn
immortality. Hence the sensational arrest; hence also, the raid upon the
offices of THE BLAST,
, and the No-Conscription League.
In their zeal to save the country from the trouble-makers, the Marshal
and his helpers did not even consider it necessary to produce a search
warrant. After all, what matters a mere scrap of paper when one is
called upon to raid the offices of Anarchists? Of what consequence is
the sanctity of property, the right of privacy, to officials in their
dealings with Anarchists! In our day of military training for battle, an
Anarchist office is an appropriate camping ground. Would the gentlemen
who came with Marshal McCarthy have dared to go into the offices of
, or
, or any of those men without a search warrant? They never showed us the
search warrant, although we asked them for it. Nevertheless, they turned
our office into a battlefield, so that when they were through with it,
it looked like invaded Belgium, with only the difference that the
invaders were not Prussian barbarians but good American patriots bent on
making New York safe for democracy.
The stage having been appropriately set for the three-act comedy, and
the first act successfully played by carrying off the villains in a
madly dashing automobile--which broke every traffic regulation and
barely escaped crushing everyone in its way--the second act proved even
more ludicrous. Fifty thousand dollars bail was demanded, and real
estate refused offered by a man whose property is rated at three hundred
thousand dollars, and that after the District Attorney had considered
and, in fact, promised to accept the property for one of the defendants,
Alexander Berkman, thus breaking every right guaranteed even to the most
heinous criminal.
Finally the third act, played by the Government in this court during the
last week. The pity of it is that the prosecution knows so little of
dramatic construction, else it would have equipped itself with better
dramatic material to sustain the continuity of the play. As it was, the
third act fell flat, utterly, and presents the question, Why such a
tempest in a teapot?
Gentlemen of the jury, my comrade and codefendant having carefully and
thoroughly gone into the evidence presented by the prosecution, and
having demonstrated its entire failure to prove the charge of conspiracy
or any overt acts to carry out that conspiracy, I shall not impose upon
your patience by going over the same ground, except to emphasize a few
points. To charge people with having conspired to do something which
they have been engaged in doing most of their lives, namely their
campaign against war, militarism and conscription as contrary to the
best interests of humanity, is an insult to human intelligence.
And how was that charge proven? By the fact that MOTHER EARTH and THE
BLAST were printed by the same printer and bound in the same bindery. By
the further evidence that the same expressman had delivered the two
publications! And by the still more illuminating fact that on June 2nd
MOTHER EARTH and THE BLAST were given to a reporter at his request, if
you please, and gratis.
Gentlemen of the jury, you saw the reporter who testified to this overt
act. Did anyone of you receive the impression that the man was of
conscriptable age, and if not, in what possible way is the giving of
MOTHER EARTH to a reporter for news purposes proof demonstrating the
overt act?
It was brought out by our witnesses that the MOTHER EARTH magazine has
been published for twelve years; that it was never held up, and that it
has always gone through the U.S. mail as second-class mail matter. It
was further proven that the magazine appeared each month about the first
or second, and that it was sold or given away at the office to whoever
wanted a copy. Where, then, is the overt act?
Just as the prosecution has utterly failed to prove the charge of
conspiracy, so has it also failed to prove the overt act by the flimsy
testimony that MOTHER EARTH was given to a reporter. The same holds good
regarding THE BLAST.
Gentlemen of the jury, the District Attorney must have learned from the
reporters the gist of the numerous interviews which they had with us.
Why did he not examine them as to whether or not we had counseled young
men not to register? That would have been a more direct way of getting
at the facts. In the case of the reporter from the New York Times, there
can be no doubt that the man would have been only too happy to
accommodate the District Attorney with the required information. A man
who disregards every principle of decency and ethics of his profession
as a newspaper man, by turning material given him as news over to the
District Attorney, would have been glad to oblige a friend. Why did Mr.
Content neglect such a golden opportunity? Was it not because the
reporter of the Times, like all the other reporters, must have told the
District Attorney that the two defendants stated, on each and every
occasion, they would not tell people not to register?
Perhaps the Times reporter refused to go to the extent of perjuring
himself. Patrolmen and detectives are not so timid in such matters.
Hence Mr. Randolph and Mr. Cadell, to rescue the situation. Imagine
employing tenth-rate stenographers to report the very important speeches
of dangerous trouble-makers! What lack of forethought and efficiency on
the part of the District Attorney! But even these two members of the
police department failed to prove by their notes that we advised people
not to register. But since they had to produce something incriminating
against Anarchists, they conveniently resorted to the old standby,
always credited to us, "We believe in violence and we will use
violence."
Assuming, gentlemen of the jury, that this sentence was really used at
the meeting of May 18th, it would still fail to prove the indictment
which charges conspiracy and overt acts to carry out the conspiracy. And
that is all we are charged with. Not violence, not Anarchism. I will go
further and say, that had the indictment been for the advocacy of
violence, you gentlemen of the jury, would still have to render a
verdict of "Not Guilty," since the mere belief in a thing or even the
announcement that you would carry out that belief, can not possibly
constitute a crime.
However, I wish to say emphatically that no such expression as "We
believe in violence and we will use violence" was uttered at the meeting
of May 18th, or at any other meeting. I could not have employed such a
phrase, as there was no occasion for it. If for no other reason, it is
because I want my lectures and speeches to be coherent and logical. The
sentence credited to me is neither.
I have read to you my position toward political violence from a lengthy
essay called "
The Psychology of Political Violence
."
But to make that position clearer and simpler, I wish to say that I am a
social student. It is my mission in life to ascertain the cause of our
social evils and of our social difficulties. As a student of social
wrongs it is my aim to diagnose a wrong. To simply condemn the man who
has committed an act of political violence, in order to save my skin,
would be as unpardonable as it would be on the part of the physician,
who is called to diagnose a case, to condemn the patient because the
patient has tuberculosis, cancer, or some other disease. The honest,
earnest, sincere physician does not only prescribe medicine, he tries to
find out the cause of the disease. And if the patient is at all capable
as to means, the doctor will say to him, "Get out of this putrid air,
get out of the factory, get out of the place where your lungs are being
infected." He will not merely give him medicine. He will tell him the
cause of the disease. And that is precisely my position in regard to
acts of violence. That is what I have said on every platform. I have
attempted to explain the cause and the reason for acts of political
violence.
It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the
bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong,
organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender
to his act. To condemn him means to be blind to the causes which make
him. I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than the physician
who were to condemn the patient for his disease. You and I and all of us
who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty, of war, of human
degradation, are equally responsible for the act committed by the
political offender. May I therefore be permitted to say, in the words of
a great teacher: "He who is without sin among you, let him cast the
first stone." Does that mean advocating violence? You might as well
accuse Jesus of advocating prostitution, because He took the part of the
prostitute, Mary Magdalene.
Gentlemen of the jury, the meeting of the 18th of May was called
primarily for the purpose of voicing the position of the conscientious
objector and to point out the evils of conscription. Now, who and what
is the conscientious objector? Is he really a shirker, a slacker, or a
coward? To call him that is to be guilty of dense ignorance of the
forces which impel men and women to stand out against the whole world
like a glittering lone star upon a dark horizon. The conscientious
objector is impelled by what President Wilson in his speech of Feb. 3,
1917, called "the righteous passion for justice upon which all war, all
structure of family, State and of mankind must rest as the ultimate base
of our existence and our liberty." The righteous passion for justice
which can never express itself in human slaughter--that is the force
which makes the conscientious objector. Poor indeed is the country which
fails to recognize the importance of that new type of humanity as the
"ultimate base of our existence and liberty." It will find itself barren
of that which makes for character and quality in its people.
The meeting of May 18th was held before the Draft Bill had actually gone
into effect. The President signed it late in the evening of the 18th.
Whatever was said at that meeting, even if I had counseled young men not
to register, that meeting cannot serve as proof of an overt act. Why,
then, has the Prosecuting Attorney dwelt so much, at such length, and
with such pains on that meeting, and so little on the other meetings
held on the eve of registration and after? Is it not because the
District Attorney knew that we had no stenographic notes of that
meeting? He knew it because he was approached by Mr. Weinberger and
other friends for a copy of the transcript, which request he refused.
Evidently, the District Attorney felt safe to use the notes of a
patrolman and a detective, knowing that they would swear to anything
their superiors wanted. I never like to accuse anyone--I wouldn't go so
far as my codefendant, Mr. Berkman, in saying that the District Attorney
doctored the document; I don't know whether he did or not. But I do know
that patrolman Randolph and Detective Cadell doctored the notes, for the
simple reason that I didn't say those things. But though we could not
produce our own stenographic notes, we have been able to prove by men
and women of unimpeachable character and high intelligence that the
notes of Randolph are utterly false. We have also proven beyond a
reasonable doubt, and Mr. Content did not dare question our proof, that
at the Hunts' Point Palace, held on the eve of registration, I expressly
stated that I cannot and will not tell people not to register. We have
further proven that this was my definite stand, which was explained in
my statement sent from Springfield and read at the meeting of May 23rd.
When we go through the entire testimony given on behalf of the
prosecution, I insist that there is not one single point to sustain the
indictment for conspiracy or to prove the overt acts we are supposed to
have committed. But we were even compelled to bring a man eighty years
of age to the witness stand in order to stop, if possible, any intention
to drag in the question of German money. It is true, and I appreciate
it, that Mr. Content said he had no knowledge of it. But, gentlemen of
the jury, somebody from the District Attorney's office or someone from
the Marshal's office must have given out the statement that a bank
receipt for $2,400 was found in my office and must have told the
newspapers the fake story of German money. As if we would ever touch
German money, or Russian money, or American money coming from the ruling
class, to advance our ideas! But in order to forestall any suspicion,
any insinuation, in order to stand clear before you, we were compelled
to bring an old man here to inform you that he has been a radical all
his life, that he is interested in our ideas, and that he is the man who
contributed the money for radical purposes and for the work of Miss
Goldman.
Gentlemen of the jury, you will be told by the Court, I am sure, that
when you render a verdict you must be convinced beyond a reasonable
doubt; that you must not assume that we are guilty before we are proven
guilty; and that it is your duty to assume that we are innocent. And
yet, as a matter of fact, the burden of proof has been laid upon us. We
had to bring witnesses. If we had had time we could have brought fifty
more witnesses, each corroborating the others. Some of those people have
no relation with us. Some are writers, poets, contributors to the most
conventional magazines. Is it likely that they would swear to something
in our favor if it were not the truth? Therefore I insist, as did my
codefendant Alexander Berkman, that the prosecution has made a very poor
showing in proving the conspiracy or any overt act.
Gentlemen of the jury, we have been in public life for twenty-seven
years. We have been haled into court, in and out of season--we have
never denied our position. Even the police know that Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman are not shirkers. You have had occasion during this
trial to convince yourselves that we do not deny. We have gladly and
proudly claimed responsibility, not only for what we ourselves have said
and written, but even for things written by others and with which we did
not agree. Is it plausible, then, that we would go through the ordeal,
trouble and expense of a lengthy trial to escape responsibility in this
instance? A thousand times no! But we refuse to be tried on a trumped-up
charge, or to be convicted by perjured testimony, merely because we are
Anarchists and hated by the class whom we have openly fought for many
years.
Gentlemen, during our examination of talesmen, when we asked whether you
would be prejudiced against us if it were proven that we propagated
ideas and opinions contrary to those held by the majority, you were
instructed by the Court to say, "If they are within the law." But what
the Court did not tell you is, that no new faith--not even the most
humane and peaceable--has ever been considered "within the law" by those
who were in power. The history of human growth is at the same time the
history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and
the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the
law.
Gentlemen of the jury, most of you, I take it, are believers in the
teachings of Jesus. Bear in mind that he was put to death by those who
considered his views as being against the law. I also take it that you
are proud of your Americanism. Remember that those who fought and bled
for your liberties were in their time considered as being against the
law, as dangerous disturbers and trouble-makers. They not only preached
violence, but they carried out their ideas by throwing tea into the
Boston harbor. They said that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to
God." They wrote a dangerous document called the
. A document which continues to be dangerous to this day, and for the
circulation of which a young man was sentenced to ninety days prison in
a New York Court, only the other day. They were the Anarchists of their
time--they were never within the law.
Your Government is allied with the French Republic. Need I call your
attention to the historic fact that the great upheaval in France was
brought about by extra-legal means? The Dantes, the Robespierres, the
Marats, the Herberts, aye even the man who is responsible for the most
stirring revolutionary music, the Marseillaise (which unfortunately has
deteriorated into a war tune) even Camille Desmoulins, were never within
the law. But for those great pioneers and rebels, France would have
continued under the yoke of the idle Louis XVI., to whom the sport of
shooting jack rabbits was more important than the destiny of the people
of France.
Ah, gentlemen, on the very day when we were being tried for conspiracy
and overt acts, your city officials and representatives welcomed with
music and festivities the Russian Commission. Are you aware of the fact
that nearly all of the members of that Commission have only recently
been released from exile? The ideas they propagated were never within
the law. For nearly a hundred years, from 1825 to 1917, the Tree of
Liberty in Russia was watered by the blood of her martyrs. No greater
heroism, no nobler lives had ever been dedicated to humanity. Not one of
them worked within the law. I could continue to enumerate almost
endlessly the hosts of men and women in every land and in every period
whose ideas and ideals redeemed the world because they were not within
the law.
Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that
idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of
human thought and expression--to science, literature, music; in fact,
everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move
within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed,
mechanical, "a chariot wheel" which grinds all alike without regard to
time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and
effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.
Progress knows nothing of fixity. It cannot be pressed into a definite
mold. It cannot bow to the dictum, "I have ruled," "I am the regulating
finger of God." Progress is ever renewing, ever becoming, ever
changing--never is it within the law.
If that be crime, we are criminals even like Jesus, Socrates, Galileo,
Bruno, John Brown and scores of others. We are in good company, among
those whom Havelock Ellis, the greatest living psychologist, describes
as the political criminals recognized by the whole civilized world,
except America, as men and women who out of deep love for humanity, out
of a passionate reverence for liberty and an all-absorbing devotion to
an ideal are ready to pay for their faith even with their blood. We
cannot do otherwise if we are to be true to ourselves--we know that the
political criminal is the precursor of human progress--the political
criminal of to-day must needs be the hero, the martyr and the saint of
the new age.
But, says the Prosecuting Attorney, the press and the unthinking rabble,
in high and low station, "that is a dangerous doctrine and unpatriotic
at this time." No doubt it is. But are we to be held responsible for
something which is as unchangeable and unalienable as the very stars
hanging in the heavens unto time and all eternity?
Gentlemen of the jury, we respect your patriotism. We would not, if we
could, have you change its meaning for yourself. But may there not be
different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty? I
for one cannot believe that love of one's country must needs consist in
blindness to its social faults, to deafness to its social discords, of
inarticulation to its social wrongs. Neither can I believe that the mere
accident of birth in a certain country or the mere scrap of a citizen's
paper constitutes the love of country.
I know many people--I am one of them--who were not born here, nor have
they applied for citizenship, and who yet love America with deeper
passion and greater intensity than many natives whose patriotism
manifests itself by pulling, kicking, and insulting those who do not
rise when the national anthem is played. Our patriotism is that of the
man who loves a woman with open eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty, yet
he sees her faults. So we, too, who know America, love her beauty, her
richness, her great possibilities; we love her mountains, her canyons,
her forests, her Niagara, and her deserts--above all do we love the
people that have produced her wealth, her artists who have created
beauty, her great apostles who dream and work for liberty--but with the
same passionate emotion we hate her superficiality, her cant, her
corruption, her mad, unscrupulous worship at the altar of the Golden
Calf.
We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for
democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is
the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily
being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up
by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is
curtailed and every independent opinion gagged. Verily, poor as we are
in democracy, how can we give of it to the world? We further say that a
democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their
economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not
democracy at all. It is despotism--the cumulative result of a chain of
abuses which, according to that dangerous document, the Declaration of
Independence, the people have the right to overthrow.
The District Attorney has dragged in our Manifesto, and he has
emphasized the passage, "Resist conscription." Gentlemen of the jury,
please remember that that is not the charge against us. But admitting
that the Manifesto contains the expression, "Resist conscription," may I
ask you, is there only one kind of resistance? Is there only the
resistance which means the gun, the bayonet, the bomb or flying machine?
Is there not another kind of resistance? May not the people simply fold
their hands and declare, "We will not fight when we do not believe in
the necessity of war"? May not the people who believe in the repeal of
the Conscription Law, because it is unconstitutional, express their
opposition in word and by pen, in meetings and in other ways? What right
has the District Attorney to interpret that particular passage to suit
himself? Moreover, gentlemen of the jury, I insist that the indictment
against us does not refer to conscription. We are charged with a
conspiracy against registration. And in no way or manner has the
prosecution proven that we are guilty of conspiracy or that we have
committed an overt act.
Gentlemen of the jury, you are not called upon to accept our views, to
approve of them or to justify them. You are not even called upon to
decide whether our views are within or against the law. You are called
upon to decide whether the prosecution has proven that the defendants
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have conspired to urge people not to
register. And whether their speeches and writings represent overt acts.
Whatever your verdict, gentlemen, it cannot possibly affect the rising
tide of discontent in this country against war which, despite all
boasts, is a war for conquest and military power. Neither can it affect
the ever increasing opposition to conscription which is a military and
industrial yoke placed upon the necks of the American people. Least of
all will your verdict affect those to whom human life is sacred, and who
will not become a party to the world slaughter. Your verdict can only
add to the opinion of the world as to whether or not justice and liberty
are a living force in this country or a mere shadow of the past.
Your verdict may, of course, affect us temporarily, in a physical
sense--it can have no effect whatever upon our spirit. For even if we
were convicted and found guilty and the penalty were that we be placed
against a wall and shot dead, I should nevertheless cry out with the
great Luther: "Here I am and here I stand and I cannot do otherwise."
And gentlemen, in conclusion let me tell you that my codefendant, Mr.
Berkman, was right when he said the eyes of America are upon you. They
are upon you not because of sympathy for us or agreement with Anarchism.
They are upon you because it must be decided sooner or later whether we
are justified in telling people that we will give them democracy in
Europe, when we have no democracy here? Shall free speech and free
assemblage, shall criticism and opinion--which even the espionage bill
did not include--be destroyed? Shall it be a shadow of the past, the
great historic American past? Shall it be trampled underfoot by any
detective, or policeman, anyone who decides upon it? Or shall free
speech and free press and free assemblage continue to be the heritage of
the American people?
Gentlemen of the jury, whatever your verdict will be, as far as we are
concerned, nothing will be changed. I have held ideas all my life. I
have publicly held my ideas for twenty-seven years. Nothing on earth
would ever make me change my ideas except one thing; and that is, if you
will prove to me that our position is wrong, untenable, or lacking in
historic fact. But never would I change my ideas because I am found
guilty. I may remind you of two great Americans, undoubtedly not unknown
to you, gentlemen of the jury; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau. When Thoreau was placed in prison for refusing to pay taxes, he
was visited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson said: "David, what are
you doing in jail?" and Thoreau replied: "Ralph, what are you doing
outside, when honest people are in jail for their ideals?" Gentlemen of
the jury, I do not wish to influence you. I do not wish to appeal to
your passions. I do not wish to influence you by the fact that I am a
woman. I have no such desires and no such designs. I take it that you
are sincere enough and honest enough and brave enough to render a
verdict according to your convictions, beyond the shadow of a reasonable
doubt.
Please forget that we are Anarchists. Forget that it is claimed that we
propagated violence. Forget that something appeared in MOTHER EARTH when
I was thousands of miles away, three years ago. Forget all that, and
merely consider the evidence. Have we been engaged in a conspiracy? has
that conspiracy been proven? have we committed overt acts? have those
overt acts been proven? We for the defense say they have not been
proven. And therefore your verdict must be not guilty.
But whatever your decision, the struggle must go on. We are but the
atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light that shines in
the darkness--the Ideal of economic, political and spiritual liberation
of mankind!