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Title: Roosevelt, Czolgosz and Anarchy Author: Jay Fox Date: 1901 Language: en Topics: assassination, propaganda of the deed, anarchy Source: https://archive.org/details/01FoxRooseveltczolgosz/page/n1/mode/2up
— Lowell
The shooting of President McKinley by Leon F. Czolgosz has brought the
question of Anarchy prominently before the public mind. Unfortunately,
Anarchy has been in the hands of its bitterest enemies, has been
venomously misrepresented, maligned, and every species of crime laid at
its door, those knowing the least about it howling the loudest against
it. The Anarchists have been held up to public execration as a set of
human monsters, who, hating mankind, are seeking to destroy its
institutions by killing its rulers and abolishing its governments; the
inference being that government is the great mother and protector of
society, and that were it to be abolished the whole human race would
lapse into a state of barbarism. The triumph of Anarchy, we are told,
would mean the destruction of all liberty, the rending of every human
tie and the annihilation of civilized society.
The thoughtful person will see at once that no such propaganda as that
could be carried on in any country, were it possible—that individuals
existed so excessively depraved as to espouse it. Thoroughly convinced
of the justice and truth of their ideas, the Anarchists waited until the
wild fury had spent itself and reason returned before attempting to
dispel the utterly false ideas regarding the aims and objects of Anarchy
which its enemies have so generously spread among the people; for,
unlike their enemies, Anarchists always address themselves to reason and
never to the blind furies—prejudice and hate.
In the following pages we propose to give a brief review of the possible
causes that led up to the shooting of President McKinley, the relation
the act bears toward Anarchy, a criticism of the attitude of the press,
the President, and of the possible effect of legislation having for its
purpose the suppression of Anarchy, closing with a short essay on
Anarchy and the methods of its propaganda.
In the mad frenzy of the hour, men vied with each other in making
proposals of the most atrocious methods of punishment for the
Anarchists. Many gentlemen of education, professing the broadest
principles of humanitarianism and Christian love—ministers and public
educators—so far forgot all their former avowals and the teachings of
the meek and lowly Carpenter of Nazareth, the forerunner of Anarchy,
whom they profess to follow, as to cry aloud for vengeance upon the
Anarchists.
This spirit of wolfishness did not manifest itself nearly so much among
the common people as it did in the so-called upper strata of society. In
proof of the attitude of “society” people towards the much-abused
Anarchists, we will quote from the National Tribune, of Washington, DC.
The editor of the Tribune moves in the highest ranks of “society,” and
is much esteemed by the dignitaries of Church and State. He attends the
social gatherings and costly dinners, and can rightly be said to have
given expression to the views of his aesthetic and well-fed Washington
society readers when he delivered himself of the following; “This is one
of the times when an aroused public vengeance should have full sway,
unhampered by legal interference, and every avowed Anarchist have no
further grace than the time to take him to the nearest tree.”
If an Anarchist printed a venomous, inhuman suggestion like that, in
reference to newspaper editors, he would be given a long term of
imprisonment and his paper suppressed. But when a highly “cultured”
society gentleman sits at his mahogany desk and such vile barbarity
flows from the point of his gold pen, he is given a round applause and
the seat of honor at the next social function. That is the difference
between being an Anarchist—an honest man with unpopular opinions, and a
capitalist editor—a hypocrite who panders to the vicious passions of his
readers in order to retain their support of his pernicious newspaper.
That such insidious vaporings could find a ready ear among the
self-styled “better” class is a sad commentary upon its culture and
refinement. The culture that approves such viciousness is worthy of the
Cannibal Islands; certainly not of a community claiming for itself the
top-notch of civilization.
---
If any excuse could be found for the terrible onslaught of the pulpit
and press at the hour of McKinley’s death, when so many lost their
patriotic heads, certainly no such excuse can be brought forth in
defense of Roosevelt for his venomous attack upon Anarchy and Anarchists
In his message to Congress.
Anarchy, says Roosevelt, in effect, is not the outgrowth of unjust
social conditions, but the daughter of degenerate lunacy, a vicious
pest, which threatens to uproot the very foundation of society if it is
not speedily stamped out by the death, imprisonment, and deportation of
all Anarchists, insinuating that he is the right man in the right place
at the moment of society’s great danger. He recommends to Congress that
special laws be passed dealing most strenuously with Anarchy; and the
party puppets have flooded the clerks with a most ludicrous assortment
of anti-Anarchist bills.
“Anarchist speeches and writings are essentially seditious and
treasonable,” foams the rough rider. But the “Century Dictionary,”
recognized as a much higher authority on definitions, has a different
story to tell:
“Anarchy.— A social theory which regards the union of order with the
absence of all direct government of man by mail as the political ideal;
absolute individual liberty.”
If we are to accept this latter definition as against Roosevelt’s, it
will be seen that his attack is leveled against those who are fighting
for Liberty—and this is the point we want to bring out most clearly in
the course of our essay, Roosevelt is training his batteries upon the
purveyors of Liberty, declaring it treason for them to write or speak of
a future when society will not need a president or a congress to
squander billions of wealth annually upon wars and the coronation of
European kings. If anything should sound treasonable to the ear of a
true American, it ought to be the vicious attack of Roosevelt upon
Liberty under the guise of an attack upon a bogie he has set up and
called “Anarchy.” He trusts to the ignorance of the people, not to their
intelligence; he is so fond of telling them at election time, to think
Anarchy a pest, that in stamping it out he may also stamp out every
radical idea and clear the way for the full consummation of Morgan’s and
Rockefeller’s ideal of an empire.
Nothing short of absolute ignorance or wilful knavery could have
inspired the utter misrepresentation of Anarchy which Roosevelt’s
message contains. His attack is as vicious as it is untruthful; his
language bombastic, and is a beautiful contrast to the tender, ambiguous
phraseology of that portion of his message devoted to the trusts. His
screed was assuredly not addressed to the citizens’ intelligence, but to
the low, rough-riding, animal-killing passions, and inspired by that
shoot-a-fleeing-enemy-in-the-back sentiment which pervades the
atmosphere of Washington.
It was exceedingly thoughtful, if not very manly, on the part of
Roosevelt to direct such a malicious attack upon Anarchy and the man
that made him president. For, had he passed the subject quietly by, or
spoken less strenuously, there might have been some among his subjects
wicked enough to have hinted that perhaps he secretly rejoiced in the
perpetration of an act that landed him with a bound and without the
fatigue and worry of a political campaign upon the uppermost round of
the ladder of his life’s ambition. But now, since he has so ably availed
himself of his literary talent, none, except indeed the “vile”
Anarchists, will dare to question the fathomless depths of his sorrow.
Indeed, it may readily be seen, if one but glance at his masterful
literary effusion, that nothing but a supreme hurst of patriotism,
seeing his country In such imminent danger from the Anarchists, could
have induced Roosevelt to tear himself away from the quiet seclusion of
the Senate chamber, don the flowing robes of office and assume the
arduous duties of President.
---
If Anarchism is what Roosevelt would have us believe It to be, a
peace-loving, common-sense people will dismiss it at once to the
oblivion to which it rightfully belongs without the heroic intervention
of Roosevelt and his Congress of political spoilsmen. If, on the
contrary, it is what every investigator knows it to be—a criticism of
the present unjust state of society, with its billionaires and paupers,
and an effort to show the people a better and more truly civilized and
equitable mode of social production and consumption, where each
individual will have free access to the means of life, can share fully
the product of his toil and enjoy all the benefits of liberty—full
Liberty, not the Liberty granted by law; for Anarchists claim Liberty as
a natural inalienable right of every individual, and any “granting” of
it is simply the removal of some criminal political restriction—if, we
repeat, Anarchy represents an honest effort of intelligent men and women
to solve the great social problem now crying out so bitterly for
solution, by analyzing history, showing the trend of evolution, and
advising the people to follow it and cease being led astray by the
Rockefellers, Morgans, and their tools in office and elsewhere, then, we
say, Roosevelt has no right to interfere. And in trying to prevent the
spread of these ideas he assumes the role of a tyrant, and must be
classed with the kings and despots of the Old World.
If men have not the privilege to think and speak differently from the
President and the ruling class, which, let it not be forgotten, is the
millionaire class, without being hung, cast into prison and deported,
then we may as well give up prattling about our “Free Country” and admit
at once that it is a Despotism.
Before the Revolution our forefathers complained of the despotism of
King George in suppressing free speech and imposing taxation without
representation. They rose in rebellion against these wrongs, and were
not satisfied with redressing them alone, but, on the advice of
Anarchist Tom Paine, who saw how well the people governed themselves
during the period of the rebellion when there was no
government—Anarchy—in these colonies, raised the further and more vital
question of the right of the King to rule over them at all. They
dismissed the King and elected a President—changing the form but not the
substance of the evil under which they had suffered. However, in framing
their Constitution they were particular that the abuses under which they
suffered the most when the King ruled should not be repeated under the
rule of the President. Therefore, the freedom of speech was especially
provided for in the Constitution. But Patrick Henry’s warning, that
“eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” was not heeded by the
people. And, gradually, as the power of the people HAS been supplanted
by the power of the trusts, that freedom HAS been abridged and annulled,
until today we see the President and Congress preparing laws for the
punishment of those who speak and write about a social philosophy with
which they do not agree.
This is common to all rulers, whether elected of God or of the People:
that, being rulers, they rule In the manner best calculated to serve
their own ends; and all this cant about the people ruling is the veriest
nonsense. Constitutional checks even do not thwart them, for they either
openly violate the Constitution or cunningly interpret it to suit their
purposes.
Roosevelt, working upon the credulity of the people and their blind
faith in the pulpit and press, is endeavoring to defeat the very letter
of the Constitution by having laws passed ostensibly against a bugaboo
it suits his purpose to give the name Anarchy, but really and actually
against free speech and free press. That will be the entering wedge.
Once such laws are on the statute books the rest will be easy. All
radical editors and speakers may be cast into jail and left there to
rot.
---
Anarchists have no fear of any laws Roosevelt may enact for the
suppression of Anarchy. For they know only too well, if he and Congress
do not, the utter futility of attempting to legislate ideas out of the
country. Certain individuals may be persecuted. Persecution manures the
soil upon which Ideas grow. Hang a man on a scaffold and yon hang his
ideas on the Stars.
The wholesale arrest of Anarchists and the sacking of their homes
without even the warrant of law when a copy of an Anarchist paper was
found in the pocket of Czolgosz, their retention for weeks in jail and
their final discharge without a particle of evidence or cause for their
arrest other than the fact of their being Anarchists, has done more for
the spread of Anarchy than years of agitation by the Anarchists
themselves. Even Roosevelt’s tirade helps the cause along, for since its
publication very many people, stimulated by its fierceness and not will
tug to take him as the sole authority on Anarchy, have evinced a desire
to investigate further, That is all the Anarchists want, and very many
of them are willing to submit to such persecution quite often if by no
other means can the people be drawn to an investigation of their ideas.
If the Revolutionary traditions of the country are to be outraged by the
passage of medieval legislation against “Anarchy” it will be easy for
every Anarchist to evade them. In the first place, the “Anarchy” that
Roosevelt speaks about has no existence outside the spacious recesses of
his rancorous Presidential imagination; and, secondly, no man need
proclaim himself an Anarchist, or that what he writes or speaks is
Anarchy. How is Roosevelt to know what is Anarchy unless he catches the
sound of the word or sees it printed? Who is to decide what utterances
are Anarchistic and therefore “treasonable?” Are the learned gentlemen
of the club and pistol to be stationed at every meeting place and be the
censors of speech; and won’t it first be necessary to open classes in
sociology in every police station in the country for their instruction?
And must not the judges, state’s attorneys and press censors be also
instructed on the subject if they are to render intelligent and “just”
decisions upon the “crime of Anarchy?” Must we not station one or more
thoroughly instructed censor, at a good salary in every town and city in
the country? Must they not have power to say what can and what cannot be
printed? And then what shall have become of our boasted freedom of
speech; and won’t ours then be a country like Russia—or worse, a
despotism complete?
---
History is surely repeating itself. The martyrdom suffered by the
Christians under Nero is to be visited upon the Anarchists under
Roosevelt The Christians were accused of every conceivable crime. No
charge was heinous enough to lay at their doors. They were hunted down
like wild beasts. Nero fed them to the tigers for the amusement of the
aesthetic, and “cultured” Roman “upper class,” Roosevelt would feed the
Anarchists to the disease germs that infect his jails; but his efforts
to stamp out Anarchy will be as fruitless as were Nero’s to stop the
growth of Christianity.
Granting Czolgosz was an Anarchist, what sort of reasoning is it whereby
every Anarchist in the country is to be held responsible for his act and
Anarchy suppressed? When Guiteau, a Republican, killed President
Garfield no one suggested the suppression of the Republican party; and
when Pendergast, a Catholic, killed Mayor Harrison no one thought of
deporting all the Roman Catholics. Why not have fastened Guiteau’s
offence upon the Republican party, and Pendergast’s upon the Roman
Church? The idea is absurd. But how much less absurd than the attempt of
Roosevelt to hold Anarchy responsible for the act of Czolgosz?
In placing the blame of McKinley’s death upon the Anarchists. Roosevelt,
to be logical, must himself accept responsibility for the death of
Garfield and the recently cowardly murder—a cowardly murder, because the
assassin hid himself, fearing to stand out in the open and take the
consequences of his act, as did Czolgosz—from ambush of Governor Goebel
of Kentucky; an inherently vile and contemptible act, for the murder, if
not committed by the Republican candidate himself, was committed by one
of his paid henchmen that he might plant himself in the murdered man’s
seat which he immediately did. Czolgosz killed McKinley because he
regarded him as one of the chief instruments with which a cruel system
of capitalism was exploiting himself and his fellows. Czolgosz killed
McKinley because he loved his fellowmen more than his own life; and no
rational-minded person, even though he condemn the act in itself, can
fail to recognize the nobility of character that will inspire a man to
give up his own life, hoping thereby to call attention to the wrongs
being perpetrated upon humanity.
At all times and in all ages the men who have been loved most were those
who did most for their fellowmen, and what more can any man do than give
up his life for his kind? It is the motive which inspires an act that
makes it good or bad. A pure motive lends purity to a rash act. If the
act of Czolgosz were inspired by some personal grievance he might have
had against McKinley, if it were the result of some real or fancied
personal injury, all men alike might justly regard him as a common
assassin. But Anarchists and many who are not Anarchists discriminate
between acts inspired by motives of narrow personal revenge and those
acts performed with the hope of benefiting humanity. Hence, they do not
class Czolgosz as a common assassin, but as a lover of mankind. Instead
of condemning him, they try to explain the causes which actuated his
deed.
---
Czolgosz had learned from personal observation in the various cities
which he visited that thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of his
fellow beings were struggling desperately with the pangs of hunger,
while he read in the papers of the $50,000 feasts of the rulers and
exploiters of those same struggling ones. He had seen troops sent to
Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Albany, Idaho, Brooklyn and elsewhere to
help the rich defeat the poor workingmen who struck against starvation
wages by shooting them down like dogs. He had seen the working of
McKinley’s policy of “benevolent assimilation” in the Philippines, how
thousands of liberty-loving natives were being massacred for the “crime”
of resisting the invasion of his troops—all those wrongs and many more
grouped themselves in his mind and moved his feeling heat to pain.
Tortured to the limit of endurance by the sight of a suffering humanity,
he registered a final protest against a cruel system that starved men,
women, and children while food lies rotting in the storehouses. McKinley
was a prominent representative of a vicious system of wage slavery which
is oppressing the people, and for that Czolgosz slew him.
The shooting was a social act, a mere incident in the great struggle
going on between the oppressed and oppressors, between the forces in
society which are making for progress and those which are attempting to
block the onward march of Evolution.
Czolgosz was an implement in the hands of Evolution, and to condemn him
for his act would be as silly as to condemn the flood for sweeping away
the village built in the bed of the river. Through experience, people
have learned that it is safest to build their villages on the heights.
And so, through a further experience with the innumerable forces that
surround them, and of which the act of Czolgosz was a part, that it is
safest and best to build their society upon the heights of individual
self-government and to cease ruling and exploiting each other at the
point of the bayonet and the muzzle of the cannon.
McKinley reaped only that which he had sown. He armed men with the most
improved implements of destruction and sent them forth to shoot down men
striking for bread at home and defenseless men, women and children in
the Philippines who have dared to assert a right once so dear to every
American—the right of self-government. And as McKinley has made war upon
these people, exterminating and enslaving them, when an individual,
exasperated by such tyranny, makes war upon him, there is no just cause
for complaint. All that can be done is to learn the lesson suggested by
an act inspired by the wrongs of government and the consequent misery
resulting therefrom.
---
To say that Czolgosz was inspired to commit his act by Anarchist
speeches and literature explains no more than to say he was inspired by
reading the Declaration of Independence, which lays it down as a
principle of nature that all men are created free and equal and entitled
to Liberty and happiness, all of which blessings he saw, without the aid
of an Anarchist telescope, that himself and his class were denied
absolutely. But if he had studied Anarchy and learned the truth that
Labor creates all wealth, that to the producers belong the product, and
that by the eternal law of Justice and Equity only the producer should
enjoy it; if he learned that the rich and mightly American Plutocracy
appropriated the wealth produced by the American worker, robbed him by
all the devices their crafty brains are capable of conceiving, Taxes,
Rent, Interest, and Profit being the legal names for the principal forms
of robbery; that through the liberal distribution of a portion of this
plunder, politicians, preachers and newspapers are purchased to glorify
the system of robbery and keep the toilers in ignorance of the fraud
being perpetrated upon them, by feeding their minds upon garbled news,
perverted history, religious cant and patriotic twaddle; if, we repeat,
he learned these few of the many unpleasant truths that might be
mentioned about our detestable system of wage slavery, don’t blame
Anarchy, unless you want that the truth shall not be known. If you do
not want to know the truth, then the thing to do is proceed at once and
get rid of the Anarchists, Socialists, and a host of “dangerous”
elements which “infest” society. Deport the Anarchists to some desert
island or hang them as did the Chicago police at the bidding of the rich
legal robbers of Labor in 1887.
---
But they have found that hanging will not do, that, for every Anarchist
hanged (legally murdered, as Governor Altgeld proved) thousands have
sprung up, and that thousands are being attracted to the cause every
year by reading the famous speeches they delivered before the court. And
the cowardly vengeance perpetrated upon the body of Czolgosz will not
tend to impress humane people overmuch with respect for government.
The wrath of government is a terrible wrath, its vengeance a double
vengeance, a hideous and ghastly vengeance. It crisped the life and soul
of its victim with the powerful electric spark; and ere the heart had
yet stopped beating, and while the blood was still warm in his veins—the
vengeful thirst for gore not yet satiated—it burned his limped body in
acid and lime. Oh, thou government! Merciful exampler of Christian love!
Is it thou who would guide the race of Man to a higher and a nobler
plane of life? By thy acts we know thee, and for thy acts you are
condemned by all men who have eyes and can see.
---
To show that the Anarchists are not alone in the belief that government
is the expression of the chief evil in society—the desire to exploit the
labor of others—we append quotations from a few of the world’s great
thinkers:
“Law grinds the poor, and the rich men rule the law.”—Oliver Goldsmith.
“Government is, in its essence, always a force working in violation of
Justice.”— Leo Tolstoi.
“No person will rule over me with my consent. I will rule over no
man.”—Wm. Lloyd Garrison.
“Government is the great blackmailer.... No good ever came from the law.
All reforms have been the offspring of Revolution.”—Buckle.
“In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall
out only with the abuse. The thing—the thing itself is the abuse.”—
Edmund Burke.
“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as
possible from one part of the citizens to give it to another.”—
Voltaire.
“The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant
and the most rascally individuals of mankind.”—Thomas Paine.
“Whatever form it takes—Monarchic, Oligarchic or Democratic—the
government of man by man is illegitimate and absurd.... As man seeks
justice in equity, so society seeks order in Anarchy.”—Proudhon.
“Did the mass of men know the actual selfishness and injustice of their
rulers, not a government would stand a year; the world would ferment
with Revolution.”—Theodore Parker.
“I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live with
out government, enjoy in the general mass an infinitely greater degree
happiness than those who live under governments.... That government is
best which governs least”—Thomas Jefferson.
“That government is best which governs not at all, and when men are
prepared for it, that is the kind of government they will have.” —Henry
Thoreau.
“A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me, ordains that part of
my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end; not as I, but as he
happens to fancy. Behold the consequences! Of all debts, men are least
willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is that on government ... Every
actual State is corrupt.... Good men must not obey the laws too well,”—
Emerson.
“Law in its guarantee of the results of pillage, slavery and
exploitation, has followed the same phase of development as capital;
twin brother and sister they have advanced hand in hand, sustaining one
another with the sufferings of mankind.... Judiciary, police, army,
public instruction, finance—all serve one God. capital; all have but one
object—to facilitate the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist.
“—Peter Kropotkin.
“By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of
government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by
the few, we call tyranny. The rule of the few by the many (Democracy) is
tyranny also, only of a less intense kind.”—Herbert Spencer.
“There is no government, however restricted in its powers, that may not,
by abuse, under pretext of exercise of its constitutional authority,
drive its unhappy subjects to desperation”—John Randolph.
Thus we see what a loathsome thing is government to the great man. The
Thinkers, Philosophers, Humanitarians, the men to whom we owe the
progress of society, have always abhorred government, and their efforts
have been to teach men to govern themselves, and not sublet the task of
governing to corrupt rascals or even honest men. For honest men
sometimes aspire to office, hoping thereby to correct the evils of
society. But they very soon discover their mistake. They find honesty a
very burdensome thing in office, and is largely outweighed by rascality.
So they must either succumb to the temptation of spoils and become
rascals themselves or retire in disgust, leaving the whole corrupt
business in the hands of the Hannas, Roosevelts, Crokers, and Platts,
gentlemen who have made the trade of governing a profitable business,
and with whom those who love truth and honesty have nothing in common.
It has always been those who have analyzed and criticized the forms of
society that have awakened the people to their errors and spurred them
on to better modes of life. Great minds have ever bewailed man’s
inhumanity to man.
It was the great Heine who said: “This old society has long since been
judged and condemned. Let Justice be done. Let this old world be broken
to pieces, ... where innocence has perished, where man is exploited by
man. Let the whited sepulchres full of lying and iniquity be utterly
destroyed.”
And Victor Hugo painfully asks:
“What kind of society is it which is based upon inequality and injustice
to such an extent as this?”
Wendell Philips, the giant champion of Truth and Freedom In America
speaks thus:
“Whenever you have met a dozen earnest men pledged to a new
idea—wherever you have met them, you have met the beginning of a
Revolution... Revolution is as natural a growth as an oak— it comes out
of the past.... Every line in our history, every interest of
civilization, bids us rejoice when the tyrant grows pale and the slaves
rebellious.”
Patrick Henry, who roused Virginia to arms against King George, said:
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take, but as for
me, give me liberty or give me death!”
—John Henry Mackay.
Anarchy springs from a higher conception of human relations awakening in
the breast of the mass of mankind as a result of the experience of the
ages. Once the dream of the poet and philosopher, it is now upon the
lips of the workers in factory, mine, and farm. The enemies of
Anarchy—the exploiters of labor whose privileges it would destroy—raise
the cry of conspiracy against it. As well to charge Evolution with being
a conspiracy. If the electric light is a conspiracy against the tallow
candle, if the Pullman train is a conspiracy against the stage coach, if
the self-binding harvester is a conspiracy against the sickle, if the
modern civilized man is a conspiracy against the savage—then Anarchy is
a conspiracy against government. Well, if you like, Anarchy is a
conspiracy. It is the conspiracy of the future against the past, of the
rose against the weed, of love against hate, of humanity against
barbarity, of knowledge against ignorance, of progress against
retrogression, of reason against belief, of science against
superstition, of liberty against slavery, of honesty against hypocrisy,
of truth against falsehood, of rationalism against mysticism. This is
the conspiracy of Anarchy. Now let the governments of the world proceed
to stamp It out.
Anarchy gives to the words Liberty and Freedom a new meaning.
Govern thyself and thyself alone.
Thy neighbor’s freedom hold sacred as thy own.
Thus doth Anarchy—the highest present conception of human
freedom—address the individual.
Restrict your rule exclusively to yourself and the armies and navies of
the world will immediately vanish, and millions of men whose special art
is now the taking of human life will turn their myriad hands to its
preservation and enjoyment. The gory-handed wholesale murderers who now
glory in deeds of war, because it is popular and their only means of
raising to high station, will have to seek other and more humane methods
of gaining popular favor.
The countless millions of wealth, the produce of your brain and brawn,
that you now lavish on petty statesmen, who write laws and keep you in
“order,”—and slavery—may be turned into a means for your own happiness
and development when you have discovered order and Liberty within the
confines of your own being.
The enormous profits and fabulous wealth accumulations of the captains
of industry, the promoters of trusts and combines, who you now permit to
control and regulate the work of your hands and the thoughts of your
mind, will vanish like darkness before the light ere the dawn of the era
of “no masters high or low” has well begun.
As no man made the land, it is therefore wrong for any man to claim it
as his own and charge rent for the use of it. To each man what he
himself can use; to no man any more. There will then be enough for all
and to spare. To the builder belongs the house. When land is free all
men may build for themselves, in compliance with their own ideas and
desires, the homes which will furnish them with comfort and help secure
to them the full enjoyment of health and happiness.
The factory and mill are built by those who work them, but who must sell
themselves for a wage to the men who claim them as their own. Anarchy
says, to the builders belong the factory and mill. By their united labor
have they built them and the great machinery for lessening the work of
creating the necessaries and comforts of life, and unitedly should they
control, produce and enjoy the product of their skill and invention, and
no man take more of the responsibility than his equal share. Then each
man will be the social equal of his neighbor, none claiming to be
greater or entitled to more of the social product than equity dictates.
The workers in factory, mine, and on the farm, each requiring the
product of the other’s toil, will exchange on a basis of equity. Under
Freedom—Anarchy—injustice will be impossible.
Free access to land and other means of production will destroy every
incentive to crime. The stomach makes nearly all the thieves and
murderers. Hunger makes men desperate. Desperate men take desperate
risks and perform desperate deeds. Crime is a social disease which
multiplies with injustice, and which only Freedom will eliminate.
Under Freedom—Anarchy—an enlightened public opinion will take the place
of laws and jails. The basis of society being love and comradeship,
instead of brute force, as today, government and politics, which breed
hate among meant, will not be tolerated. If any restraint will be
needed, in ostracism will be found a sufficient punishment. No man likes
to be shunned by his neighbors. Indeed, so strong is the love of
approbation that only under the strain of severe necessity does any man
ever do ought that incurs the displeasure of his fellows.
Peace, Love, and Brotherhood are the inevitable consequences of Anarchy.
“Your Anarchist ideals are very beautiful,” it will be said, “but your
methods of propaganda are barbarous.” Be not too hasty, friend. Have you
read the Anarchists’ literature? Have you studied their daily lives? No!
Then wait until you do so before pronouncing a verdict against them. If
you learned that very many Anarchists, so far from being the
bloodthirsty hyenas you no doubt picture them, are vegetarians, so
revolting to their moral senses is the taking of life even of the lower
creation, you would be surprised.
Anarchist groups are not suicide clubs organized to kill kings and
rulers. Such lies are terrible slanders upon the intelligence of the
Anarchists. The Anarchists, of all men, are the last to entertain the
delusion that a handful of intellectual weaklings called kings and
rulers are so powerful that their removal will issue in the Millenium.
It is not the rulers, but the ideas existing in the minds of the people,
that enslave them.
Who has ever seen a government? All we see is the policeman’s club.
But the Anarchist sees the idea behind it, and knows that immediately
that idea is destroyed the club will fall harmlessly to the ground. The
fight, then, is one of ideas—the Anarchist idea of Freedom against the
governmentalist’s idea of authority.
The Anarchist is essentially a man of ideas, and he is forever searching
for fertile soil in which to plant them. With tongue and pen, he battles
with the hosts of ignorance and authority. Being an Evolutionist, he
knows that only through ceaseless agitation will his ideas gradually
take root and finally become the dominant thought of the world.
The Anarchist has no elaborate program by which to issue in the “reign
of Anarchy;” he is too sensible for that. He knows the world does not
move according to programs; that programs soon become crystalized codes,
which, instead of facilitating progress, obstruct its path. A program or
platform is good only for today; tomorrow we shall need a different one.
When the time comes for the transformation of society, the means will
suggest themselves, After the revolution has taken place In the minds of
the people, it may outwardly take the form of an insurrection. This has
been the history of society, and will surely repeat itself while
government persists, as it has always done, in preventing the gradual
application and practice of the new ideas as they develop. All this,
however, will take care of itself. The Anarchist concerns himself, now,
only with the spreading of his ideas of an ideal society, knowing that
once they have taken a firm hold on the public mind the practice will
then be up for consideration and will solve itself, as all great
questions have ever done.
Openly and boldly, then, let us proclaim the new idea, for he who
compromiseth is a coward. Break away from the old mooring. Adjust
yourself to the new mode of life, and your happiness will be increased a
thousand fold. Raise in your might and shatter the bonds that bind you
to a code of two thousand years past. Cast aside the customs your
evolution has outgrown. Awaken to the new.
Anarchy infuses the human heart with feelings of comradeship and a love
of Liberty, Justice and right-doing beyond comparison. That one
word—Anarchy—encompasses all the hopes and aspirations of the new
Humanity, that Evolution is slowly but surely developing among us.
Marching across the threshold of the new century, enrapped with the
crimson banner of brotherhood and holding aloft the flaming torch of
Liberty, Anarchy leads the way to the land of freedom, burning as she
goes the cobwebs of ignorance and superstition which ages of statecraft
and priestcraft have woven across the path of progress.