Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination. Everett Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ The fare from here to Buffalo is $5.15.

      “Hoping this finds you well, as it leaves me, I remain

      Fred C. Nieman.”

      Czolgosz was placed on trial before Justice Truman C. White of the State Supreme Bench, at Buffalo, on Monday, September 23. On the following day the jury found him guilty, and on Thursday, September 26, he was sentenced to death by electrocution in the week beginning October 28. He refused to consult with the attorneys appointed to defend him, and practically made no defense.

CHAPTER V.

       EMMA GOLDMAN, THE ANARCHIST LEADER.

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      Russia, the land of the nihilists, and the home of the “propaganda of action”—which means assassination—was the birthplace of Emma Goldman. Though still a young woman, she is recognized as a radical among radicals, when it comes to expounding the principles of her faith. For more than ten years she has been known as an enemy of government.

      Miss Goldman’s contempt for the present system of law is pronounced, bitter, and unrelenting, yet she never fails to deny that she is an advocate of violence.

      “I have never advocated violence,” she asserted some time ago, in an interview, “but neither do I condemn the Anarchist who resorts to it. I look behind him for the conditions that made him possible, and my horror is swallowed up in pity. Perhaps under the same conditions I would have done the same.”

      Miss Goldman says she was born a revolutionist, but that her belief in anarchy was not actually crystallized until after the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists in 1887. Then she became what she describes as an active Anarchist, and her activity has never flagged since then. She has been a prolific writer for all publications in this country that would give space to her articles upon anarchy, and has devoted much of her time to lecturing.

      Miss Goldman had frequently lectured in Chicago, but until the attack on President McKinley, the police found no reason to arrest her.

      The lectures in Chicago attracted little attention, seldom having been announced in an obtrusive manner. Her reputation was such, however, that the management of Hull House refused to permit her to speak in that establishment.

      In 1893 New York police arrested Miss Goldman on a warrant charging her with “inciting to riot.” The arrest was a result of her activity during the famous Debs strike, and it was followed by her imprisonment on Blackwell’s Island for a term of one year, which was shortened to seven months on account of good behavior. She formerly had led a strike of the Waist and Shirt Maker Girls’ union in New York, but without attracting much attention.

      In an extended interview which Miss Goldman gave out a few months ago while in New York she told many things about her life and her views on social and political questions which have a special interest at the present moment. She said:

      “I am a Russian through and through, although little of my life was spent there. I was born in Russia, but was brought up in Germany and graduated from a German school. All that didn’t make a German of me. I went back to Russia when I was 15 years old, and felt that I was returning to my home. My family was orthodox. None of my revolutionary tendencies was inherited—at least my parents were not responsible for them and were horrified by them.

      “While I was in Germany I did not think much about anarchy, but when I went back to St. Petersburg my whole attitude toward life changed, and I went into radicalism with all my heart and soul. You see, things are different in Russia from what they are here or anywhere else. One breathes a revolutionary thought with the air, and without being definitely interested in anarchy one learns its principles. There was discussion and thought and enthusiasm all around me, and something within me responded to it all.

WOMAN’S EQUALITY IN RUSSIA.

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      “There is no other place in the world where woman has what she has in Russia. There the women have not only the same rights in law as the men, they have the same liberties and the same social and intellectual freedom. There man respects woman, looks upon her as his equal, is her good chum—yes, that is the word. Nowhere are men and women chums as they are in Russia.

      “A woman student in Russia may receive visitors all day and most of the night, discuss all vital subjects with them, go with men when and where she pleases, and yet she will not be criticised, and no landlady would dream of insinuating that there was anything wrong with her morals. What is more, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with them. The standard of morals in the student class is phenomenally high, and the average intelligent Russian woman’s mind is as pure as it is broad.

      “The relation between the sexes in Russia is the most ideal of any I know about. That is why young Russian women learn to think. And because they think they become Anarchists.

      “I was an Anarchist when I left Russia to come to America, but I had hardly formulated my belief. The final influence that crystallized my views was the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists in 1887. I followed that case carefully and it made me an active Anarchist. I was living with my family in Rochester then, and the nearest thing to a radical society the town had was a Social Democratic society, tame as a house cat. I came away to New York and went to work in a factory. That showed me a new side of life. My family had been well-to-do, and I hadn’t come in actual contact with the want and suffering of the world until I joined the wage-earners.

      “Of course the experience strengthened my revolutionary ideas. When the Waist and Shirtmaker Girls’ union went out in 1888 I led the strike. That is, in a way I led it. I have never been an Anarchist leader. I cannot afford it. A leader must be a diplomat. I am not a diplomat. A leader of a party makes concessions to his party, for the sake of holding his power. He must give way to his followers in order to be sure they will sustain him. I can’t do all that, I am an Anarchist because I love individual freedom and I will not surrender that freedom.

      “You know I am a professional nurse. It has always been the dream of my life to be a doctor, but I never could manage it—could not get means for the study. My factory work undermined my health, so I thought that if I couldn’t be a doctor I could at least be a little part of the profession. I went through the training for a nurse, did the hospital work, and now nurse private cases.

      “When I came out of prison on Blackwell’s Island I was nervous. I decided to try a change and go to Europe for a year. I could lecture for the cause and take a course in massage and in midwifery in Vienna. There is no good training for either here, though we have the best training schools for nurses in the world.

      “Well, I went and did my studying and then went to Paris to study and wait for the Anarchists’ congress. You know the government prohibited the congress. We had it all the same, but the meetings were secret. I received the honor or dishonor of especially strict surveillance. I was to give a series of lectures, but after the third the authorities warned me that if I gave any more I must leave France, and as I wanted to attend the congress I kept quiet.

      “Finally, detectives escorted me to the station and saw my luggage checked to the steamer and then notified the government that the dangerous woman was on her way out of France.”

      Leon Czolgosz, the murderer of President McKinley, asserted immediately after his arrest, СКАЧАТЬ