Anarchism Comes to the United States
While the battle between labor and capital seemed to be boiling over, one further, and at times complementary, leftist movement was the arrival of European anarchism in the United States, and this development was exceptionally important to July 22, 1916, and the broader undercurrent of radicalism at the time. After all, Berkman had clearly walked this line: on the one hand, a labor cause, the Homestead Strike, had inspired him to commit an anarchist act, an ideology he simultaneously espoused and grew associated with, demonstrating the often blurred lines between the labor and anarchist movements during the period.
As an ideology, which took—and continues to take—many forms, anarchism saw a proliferation after the French Revolution. Following the conservative crackdowns on the revolutionary spirit and the perversion of the Revolution’s ideals with the Reign of Terror, many began to worry about the possibilities of despotism in the early nineteenth century, and particularly how quickly the reestablishment of state power seemed the top postrevolution priority. Out of this fear came anarchism.
The 1905 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica called it “a principle or theory of life and conduct which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements.” At its core, anarchism seeks to identify hierarchical structures of domination and power, asks them to justify themselves, and if that case is unsatisfactory, deconstruct them from below.
Without question, American anarchism originated across the Atlantic, with a number of influential European thinkers first exploring anarchism. This transnational transmission of ideas played a key role in the radicalism of the Progressive Era. U.S. Communal anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed that the state positioned itself as a roadblock to social order. They offered criticisms of the state, though not, as often assumed, a simplistic endorsement of disorder or chaos. Often considered at the time simply as “a man who spent his time in exploding bombs,” anarchists, in actuality, called for the absence of government and did not automatically mean an embrace of violence and disorder. Instead, anarchists were fundamentally optimistic about human nature and its potential.
One central thinker was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), a French theorist who, besides being the first self-labeled anarchist, laid the groundwork for its ideological underpinnings. His famous 1840 work, What Is Property?, established him as a prominent socialist intellectual. In it, he outlined his faith in free, self-governing communes and communities, recognizing that while “property is theft,” so too “property is freedom.” Like many of his like-minded counterparts, he opposed state-enacted law and condemned state authority.1
Russian Michael Bakunin (1814–1876) was a key critic of Marxism and its opportunities for dictatorships. Born to a privileged, land-owning family, he abandoned a military career for a life as a revolutionary throughout Europe, especially during the great revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century. Authorities arrested him in Dresden in 1849 and he spent eight years in jail. He later escaped from a subsequent exile to Siberia to travel the world as a leading radical figure. He competed directly with Marx for control of the First International and Bakunin rightfully worried about Marxist models and their despotic potential, as “socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.” Instead, the charismatic Bakunin remained committed to action and not philosophizing. Skeptical of theories of history and revolution, he maintained “no theory, no ready-made system, no book has ever been written that will save the world.” Marx had his “scientific socialism,” while Bakunin’s socialist sensibilities were “purely instinctive.”
In late 1870, in the wake of the Prussian defeat of France, Bakunin penned his “Letters to a Frenchman,” which articulated his belief in actions over rhetoric, as the propagandized path to recovery and regeneration:
All of us must now embark on stormy revolutionary seas, and from this very moment we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda.2
Finally, Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), another Russian anarchist, worked to translate the natural world to societal models. During his travels in Eurasia (to Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria, specifically), he noticed that cattle, horses, birds, and more faced obstacles with steely resolve. Yet, as Darwinist ideas began to be applied to sociology, Kropotkin could not accept the notion that competition among men was a “law of Nature.” “No progressive evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen competition,” he concluded.3
Kropotkin did not care for the phrase “propaganda of the deed,” did not use it, and was more interested in “stern revolutionary acts.” Kropotkin did not care for the phrase “propaganda of the deed,” did not use it, and was more interested in “stern revolutionary acts.”
Outside of a specific set of beliefs, anarchism aimed to inquire into dominant human power structures, challenge them, and then force their defense. If those in power cannot support their legitimacy, it was up to the marginalized to engage in bottom-up social re- and deconstruction.4 This is not an exhaustive list of influential thinkers, but these profiles certainly highlight the number of important contributors to anarchist ideology and the diversity and breadth of nineteenth-century radical thinking that informed American radicals.
Alongside the philosophical questions of anarchism’s ideology and aims were the accompanying questions of tactics. Front and center of anarchist approach was the idea of “propaganda of/by the deed.” While it is not clear who can be credited with the phrase, though the Italian Carlo Pisacane deserves some consideration, it has since dominated the thinking and approaches of anarchist actions. “The only work a citizen can do for the good of the country,” Pisacane wrote in his Testamento politico, “is that of cooperating with the material revolution: therefore, conspiracies, plots, attempts, etc.” At the core of this strategy was the idea that illustrative revolutionary acts could “awaken” the masses, who already had underlying disobedient predispositions. Rooted in the thoughts of Michael Bakunin and others, these revolutionary deeds, the thinking went, could lead by example.5
Between 1878 and 1881, a series of acts served (though not necessarily perceived by the perpetrators) as examples of propaganda by the deed. A number of these types of acts in the form of assassination attempts (called attentats) included, over three years, attempts on the life of German Emperor Wilhelm I (in two separate attacks by socialists Max Hodel and Carl Nobiling within a month), King of Spain Alfonso XII, Italy’s King Umberto, and Russian Tsar Alexander II. Because of these attacks, propaganda by the deed became the most favored approach to anarchist agitation, exemplified by the July 1881 meeting of the London International Social Revolutionary Congress (attended by notable anarchists such as Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta), which formally endorsed propaganda by the deed and urged activists to effectively use explosives.6
As a “movement,” anarchism really arrived in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Ideologically, like its European counterparts, American anarchism took many forms and drew from many sources. In Chicago, for example, anarchists there emphasized the ideals and documents of the French Revolution, the American Revolution (Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and John Brown, specifically), Proudhon, Bakunin, and more. This was a fluid application of ideas, but anarchism, ideologically and practically, gained significant footing in the United States ever since Johann Most disembarked as an exile in New York in 1882. The former employer of Alexander Berkman became a central figure in the American anarchist movement and influenced a generation of American radicals.7
Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1846, Most embarked on a turbulent childhood. His mother died from cholera, his new stepmother mistreated him, and he struggled with adolescent teasing due to a deformed jaw, the result of a botched operation in his teens. While he had hoped to be an actor, his physical appearance squashed those aspirations, and Most found an early career as a bookbinder and editor, better complementing his introverted personality. Socialist workers in Switzerland accepted him socially and inspired him intellectually, it seemed, and it did not take long for him to take an interest in socialist writings. He joined the International Working Men’s Association in 1867. He lived for a time in Vienna, Austria, traveled throughout Europe, and grew into a prominent writer and lecturer on democratic socialism in these early years.
Austrian authorities jailed him three times during 1869 and 1870 for speaking against, among other things, the government and expelled him from the country in 1871. When he returned to Germany, he ran for office, winning election to the Reichstag in 1874 and reelection in 1878. Most had previously supported the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SAPD) and believed that the ballot box held the most potential for the country’s laborers. He initially spoke out against anarchists like Proudhon, who he denounced as “the most confused among the third-rate quacks.” While initially centered on socialism, by 1880, he and his journal Die Freiheit (Freedom) had shifted their focus to revolutionary action and propaganda by deed, earning Most a quick expulsion from the SAPD.
Most headed to England, believing he could speak more freely, and there became further radicalized. He also brought Freiheit with him to England, where, upon the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II in Russia, Most celebrated the moment in the pages of the paper, helping to force another banishment. He came to the United States in 1882, having been invited to the United States by like-minded anarchists, giving a rousing speech at Cooper Union not long after his arrival. He quickly followed it with a speaking tour of the United States, propagandizing anarchism his goal. His uncompromising revolutionary radicalism certainly stood at odds with American and Socialist Party of America (SPA) “ballot-box socialists.” Instead, Most openly advocated for “The Pittsburgh Manifesto,” which called for a unification of all the country’s radical and revolutionary socialist organizations. It also endorsed propaganda by the deed, encouraging “destruction of all the existing class rule, by all means, i.e., by energetic relentless, revolutionary and international action!” Bourgeois capitalists in power, he claimed, had “reptile blood,” and were a “race of parasites.”8
He wrote manuals for propaganda by the deed and penned cutting pamphlets such as “The God Pestilence” and “The Social Monster.” Perhaps the best link between propaganda of the deed and his ideas on explosives came in 1885, when Most published a booklet unsubtly titled “Revolutionary War Science: A Little Handbook of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerin, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, Etc. Etc.” In it, he called dynamite “the proletariat’s artillery.” In recent years, the new weapon had been used with great efficiency in the assassination of political leaders, beginning with the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Indeed, the cheap new weapon (it cost $1.75 a pound) seemed to level the battlefield in the fights of the late nineteenth century. As The Alarm declared, “One man armed with a dynamite bomb is equal to one regiment of militia.”
In the United States, as an offshoot of Marx’s International Workingman’s Association (which Marx led from London and Engels later moved to New York in 1872), Chicagoans established the International Working People’s Association (IWPA), purposefully avoiding gender-exclusive language and believing there were plenty of women who would like to join. Built around the unification ideas and demands of the Pittsburgh Manifesto, Most helped form the anarchist wing of the IWPA in the fall of 1883, which eventually boasted approximately 5,000 members, with a stronghold in German-heavy Chicago. Most established the anarchist branch of the IWPA, proving particularly popular among recent German immigrants like Most himself. Dubbed “the prince of anarchists,” Most, and American anarchists like him, directly advocated and justified the assassination of politicians and monarchs. Obviously far from conventional politics and unionism, Most withdrew from the broader labor movement of Powderly and Gompers. Instead, Most and New York’s anarchists, like saloon keeper Justus Schwab, worked with their Social Revolutionary Club to form a “weapons committee” and fund an “action and propaganda fund.” The goals of both were clear: buying and storing explosives for revolutionary acts. The Social Revolutionary Club was, according to historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, “the first organization in America explicitly focused on arming for and provoking the coming workers’ revolution.”9 Not surprisingly, at a large New York meeting in April 1886, Most urged the attendees to prepare—and arm themselves—for the imminent fight ahead of them. The speech was recorded and later presented to a grand jury, and on July 2, a judge brandished him with a $500 fine and a one-year prison sentence for his incendiary talk. He certainly emerged as one of the most iconic American anarchists and influencers.10
Yet, he was not working alone. Anarchist movements were interconnected, transnational, and fluid, and California and San Francisco did not escape their influence. Countless other figures such as Luigi Galleani, active early on in New Jersey and New England, helped spread the movement in the United States using his newsletter, the Subversive Chronicle, before heading to Northern California. Especially crucial to American anarchism, and the events that transpired in San Francisco, would be noted American agitator Emma Goldman and her longtime lover (and failed Frick assassin) Alexander Berkman. The city was no stranger to radicalism in many forms.
By the 1890s, San Francisco emerged as a full-time and part-time home for radicals and anarchists, including Berkman, Giuseppe Ciancabilla, and others. The Italian community—perhaps not surprisingly, given the prominence of Galleani and other prominent Italian anarchists—seemed to have the closest anarchist ties. The city’s anarchists often came from Europe, and exiles from France, Germany, Russia, and other European states found a safe haven in San Francisco. Others came from Chicago, where the police there had “made it too hot for them.” Over the years, these anarchists included not just residents but prominent visitors to the city.11
Various levels of concern existed about anarchism’s presence in the city. One newspaper exposé observed how the city’s anarchist headquarters sat “within a stone’s throw of the City Hall,” with police officers filing past daily and paying the locale little attention. Inside the epicenter at 232 Larkin Street operated an anarchist bookstore, run by the mild-mannered Richard Rieger. A diminutive man with an orangey beard, he never attempted to deny his anarchist views, instead happy to display his varied newspapers and pamphlets. He collected anarchist papers from across the country at the modest shop, showcasing publications like Chicago’s Free Society, formerly the Firebrand, for which he served as an authorized dealer. He collected “subscriptions” from an estimated 200 people. In a newspaper article interview, Rieger was remarkably nonchalant about the ideas and organization that “makes murder its motto.” He estimated that, in San Francisco, “there are between 200 and 500 anarchists” and how they had gathered a number of times to commemorate events like Haymarket or the visits of famed radicals like Emma Goldman or Johann Most. While the city’s anarchists did not have regular meetings, on Sunday afternoons some participated in the Independent Debating Club meeting at Pythian Castle, where, according to Reiger, “You will hear a true exposition of anarchism.” Probably, and perhaps understandably, there were not regular officers or formal organization, but the free-of-charge and open debates usually attracted between 50 and 100 individuals at their meetings. Reiger explained that the philosophies of anarchism were the focus and that the group could not be held responsible for “the actions of an insane man,” as the various crimes around the country were continually blamed on anarchists.12
Associations with anarchism had important consequences in the city, as one incident pointed out. In 1900, the San Francisco superior court heard the case of Frances Lemme, who filed for divorce against her husband. During the proceedings, she said that he was “crazy on socialism and anarchism,” and had neglected the family with his attention to these ideas. Mr. Lemme, described as a “well educated … but not over industrious” architect by profession, he had damning associations. In the suit, Mrs. Lemme complained that what little money her husband did receive he gave to the socialists and anarchists, instead of supporting his family. She also claimed after the Haymarket executions, he suggested to Sacramento’s Turn Verein, a German-American club, they fly their flags at half-mast. He denied these accusations, only admitting giving $41 to the Populist Party. After hearing the evidence, the court granted her separation and awarded her custody of their three children. Clearly, even an association with anarchism could be a legal liability.13
Despite its liabilities and reputation in the city, anarchist visitors filed through San Francisco. For example, Japanese anarchist Shusui Kotuku, influenced by Kropotkin, spent time in California during 1905 and 1906, mingling with militant and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members and enjoying the freedom to openly criticize his own imperialistic government. What he seemed to notice during his time in the United States and during his own radicalization was a pronounced shift away from electoral politics and toward anarcho-syndicalist tactics. “The revolution of the future, it goes without saying, is the socialist, the anarchist revolution,” he wrote.1
Yet, one of the most recognizable faces of the city’s radical left during the early twentieth century, and a prominent name in and around San Francisco, was Emma Goldman. The press described her as the “queen of the anarchists,” and she certainly maintained a profile keeping with this reputation. The product of a Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish family that emigrated to the United States in 1885 and a notable leftist for many years, Goldman boasted a radicalism that long extended beyond just radical talk. She began giving speeches on anarchism and revolution ever since meeting her mentor Johann Most in New York in 1889. He even did a lecture tour with her in 1890, and published, with her, a book Anarchy Defended by Anarchists (1896). It did not take her long to find herself in trouble with the law, seemingly wherever she traveled during these years. In October 1893, she was sentenced to a year in jail for “inciting to riot” in New York. Sent to Blackwell’s Island to serve her time, she spent 10 months incarcerated but saw her release due to good behavior. Soon after, she published an account of her time in prison and embarked on a national speaking tour. The press dubbed her “the prophetess of the Reds.”14
Goldman arrived in San Francisco in early April 1908, with the police keeping a close eye on her comings and goings. At the time, the city police’s captain of detectives estimated that over 500 anarchists lived there. Under supervision by police in Sacramento, she had delivered a speech to a few hundred. It did not take long for her to experience her first clash with authorities in San Francisco. At the St. Francis Hotel, one of her local supporters, by the name of Alex Horr, resentful of the police being on the scene and then following her from Sacramento, reportedly told the cops to move out of the way. As he often did on her speaking tours, Ben L. Reitman also accompanied her. Self-described as the “King of Tramps,” he played a role in the argument as well. At this moment, Chief Biggy arrived at the hotel and overheard the exchange of words. He had been asked by the state department to keep “close guard” on Goldman during her visit, and he told his detectives to arrest anyone interfering with her. Horr stood down, Reitman stepped aside, and at the registration desk Goldman signed into the hotel “with a flourish” before quickly making her way upstairs in an elevator.15
Goldman had arrived in town in 1908, with this auspicious start, to deliver a number of lectures at Walton’s Pavilion. There she gave one talk to about 1,000 audience members (and about 50 policemen). “I am proud I am an anarchist,” she said, “a sane and philosophical anarchist.” The crowd roared when she followed it with “but I deny, and would be ashamed to admit that I am a newspaper anarchist. The anarchism of the untruthful press is too much for me.” Her swipe at the newspapers hoped to point out their simplistic understanding of anarchism. The Sacramento Union covered her address, or what they called “the anarchistic queen’s vaporings.” Goldman emphasized her belief that anarchism would grow to be more respectable in American life as trade unionism had the potential to become a tool of the rich. She spoke out against negotiation and arbitration, which she thought had failed to elevate the condition of workers. Negotiation, she thought, always favored those in power and noted how, seemingly, every important national strike during the past 15 years resulted in a victory for capitalists and a loss for workers. Another of the planned evening events was a debate with socialist Nathan Griest. Police had learned that large quantities of anarchistic literature had been sent to San Francisco in advance of Goldman’s talks. Held in boxes, the material was kept at a house at 248 Bothwell Street. While police did not seize the literature, they told Goldman the materials could not be circulated there. From San Francisco, she planned to move on to Los Angeles on April 27.16
In addition to these comings and goings, local anarchists also established a group officially known as the “Gruppo Anarchio Volonta.” Often referenced as simply “Volonta,” its members described themselves as an “anarchist propaganda group” and provided a home for unapologetic devotees of Italian anarchist immigrant Luigi Galleani, by now a key figure in American and San Francisco anarchist circles.
Born in Vercelli, Italy, Galleani studied law at the University of Turin. Before graduation, he was banished by the Italian government to Pantelleria, a “convict settlement,” but escaped under the cover of night in a small boat, due to a careless guard. He came to the United States in 1901 at around 30 years old. Galleani helped spread the anarchist movement and strategies in the United States from his home in Lynn, Massachusetts. There, he edited and published his Cronoca Sovversive (Subversive Chronicle). His efforts were not always successful: he once made an error in an anarchist guidebook, causing followers to blow themselves up. Still, Galleanists, like those in San Francisco, in the words of historian Paul Buhle, explicitly and romantically affirmed anarchism, resolute to “live as revolutionaries in a class society.” In San Francisco, Volonta, modeled after Galleani’s teachings, met at 1602 Stockton Street every Saturday evening, with its discussions held in English and Italian.17
As the popularity and presence of anarchist figures and groups indicated, a radical climate persisted in the city. Newspaper advertisements, albeit often in radical journals (which saw unusual proliferation in San Francisco), revealed these types of socialist and anarchist sympathies. A bookstore calling itself McDevitt’s Book Omnorium advertised as “San Francisco’s headquarters for radical literature of all kinds.” In March 1916, on the eve of the Preparedness Day attack, the city hosted an “International Commune Festival” to commemorate the 1871 Paris Commune.18
Public, and even publicized, anarchist meetings like Volonta’s might not have surprised too many at the time. During the late nineteenth century, anarchism indeed arrived, and Europe had already been a tinderbox of anarchist terror in the late nineteenth century. Anarchist victims included the French President Sadi Carnot in 1894, Spanish Premier Antonio Cánovas del Castillo in 1897, and Austrian Empress Elizabeth in 1898. There were connections to American anarchism, too. Gaetano Bresci, a silk weaver who had lived in Paterson, New Jersey, killed Italy’s King Humbert I in 1901. Anarchism’s long American history, then, seemed in step with European developments, and it had come to San Francisco.
Anarchism most visibly arrived on American shores at the end of the summer of 1901. William McKinley, it had been said, had few other attributes that made him presidential besides the fact that he looked like one. Square jawed, high cheekbones, and strong dark eyes compensated for his height (he stood 5'6") and sometimes less-than-chiseled physique; he cut a handsome figure. He famously defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election and again in 1900.
In September 1901, the 58-year-old McKinley arrived in Buffalo to address the Pan American Exposition. President McKinley had certainly helped facilitate the successes trumpeted at the Expo, allowing American business to grow unchecked (with the help of protective tariffs) and, despite the criticisms of some, expand American reach abroad. At pavilions like the Tower of Light and Temple of Music, American exceptionalism and might saw great celebration.
Around 4 pm on September 6, McKinley arrived in an open car to the Expo. Waiting for him was Leon Czolgosz. A little over a week before the President’s visit to Buffalo, Czolgosz read about the Exposition and decided to head there to do something, although his plan had not been entirely clear. He stayed at 1078 Broadway in Buffalo, a combination saloon and hotel, visiting the Exposition grounds twice a day. Finally, as he told police, the resolve to shoot the President settled “in my heart,” and, in his trembling hand, he had an Iver Johnson .32 caliber pistol. He shot McKinley twice.
While many probably expected to nab the typical “wild-eyed madman” responsible for this kind of attack, instead Czolgosz’s appearance was that of any other visitor to the fair. He was pale and slender, but the Secret Service could report no “glint of madness.” Police interrogated Czolgosz for six hours. He calmly confessed to the crime and implicated no accomplices. In his statement to police, his background became a bit clearer. Born in Detroit, his Polish parents had immigrated to the United States from Russia. He received his education in public school and when his family moved to Cleveland, he said, his interest and reading in socialism grew. Czolgosz worked in the Newburg wire mills outside of the city and spent his free time with anarchist friends, growing “bitter.” Radicalized, he began calling himself “Fred C. Nieman” to avoid persecution during an 1893 strike at Cleveland Rolling Mill works. He attended a lecture by Emma Goldman in Cleveland, which, according to him, “set me on fire.” He left the talk thinking that he would love the opportunity to do “something heroic for the cause I loved.” When asked his name by authorities in Buffalo, he repeated the same name he had used years before: Fred Nieman. When pressed about his motivations, Nieman, a.k.a. Czolgosz, said “I only done my duty.”19
The assassination sent shockwaves across the country, and it seemed to mark a worrisome and unsettling turn. Cornelius Vanderbilt hosted a lavish costume ball at his home in Newport, Rhode Island. He heard the news that evening, removed his mask, and the band played the national anthem. Literally and perhaps for the privileged, “the party,” he said, “was over.” The next day, as the President recovered, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt called the assassination attempt “a crime against this republic and against free government all over the world.” But Czolgosz’s bullets had lodged in the President’s stomach and chest, leaving a glimmer of hope. Doctors operated on McKinley that evening and they remained confident that his intestines and kidneys were untouched. Despite earlier reports of a 50 percent chance of recovery, the president died.20
The McKinley assassination resonated with the wider anarchist community, and the authorities presumed a wider conspiracy that included America’s most famous anarchists. On September 7, 1901, the day after President William McKinley was shot, Johann Most ran a lengthy essay in his newspaper declaring murder to be the foundation of all existing government and approving the assassination of “a professional murderer.” He caught the suspicious eye of police for celebrating the assassination.
In Chicago, the police arrested Emma Goldman, by now considered “the high priestess of anarchy,” for her alleged role in the assassination conspiracy. Indeed, Goldman came to symbolize the leftist dissenter in the early twentieth century. During the 1901 interrogation, where she off-puttingly refused to denounce Czolgosz’s deed, the press happily reported that Goldman also showed weakness and according to them, “became a woman, pure and simple, and cried.” Ultimately released because authorities could not connect her to any broader plot beyond Leon Czolgosz’s actions, Goldman briefly retreated from a public life of radicalism. She founded Mother Earth in 1906, though, and proceeded to continue to crisscross the United States during speaking tours on behalf of anarchism and labor militancy. In each city, she took the podium only after a routine shot of whiskey to loosen her customarily unsettled nerves. Once she stepped on stage, though, anxiety quickly gave way to her rhetorical skill, espousing anarchism and other causes. Even critical journalists remarked that while it would be easy to not notice her in a crowd under normal circumstances (she was under 5 ft. tall and called an “insignificant person in appearance”), she became something altogether different at a lectern or on a dais. She quickly gained the attention of an audience, with a clear, strong, and committed voice. Her favorite targets included religion, the press, and the President. Passive workers, she said, were “fools and slaves” for failing to assert their rights.21
Most died in Cincinnati in 1906. He later served as the model for the character “Yundt” in Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel The Secret Agent. During his life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, he emerged as a key part of American anarchism’s rise and influence. Most died in Cincinnati in 1906. He later served as the model for the character “Yundt” in Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel The Secret Agent. During his life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, he emerged as a key part of American anarchism’s rise and influence.
Goldman, the persistent agitator, also grew fond of San Francisco. “The California wines were cheap and stimulating,” she recalled. During her visits, she admired the commitment of like-minded agitators there, but always appreciated how they balanced activism with “love, drink, and play.” The city was a perfect and frequent stop in between lecture tours.22
Goldman’s longtime political partner, and lover, was none other than another famed anarchist and assassin, Alexander Berkman, a man who had, of course, made his radical reputation years before during the Frick affair. He was also a part of this anarchist cadre that could also trace his work to San Francisco. Born in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) on November 21, 1870, he lived for a time in St. Petersburg before attending university at Odessa. Berkman’s path to anarchism began when he immigrated to the United States in 1888 at age 17. When he arrived, he found work as a printer. An early ideological disciple of Most’s, they had a falling out, but not before Berkman worked as a printer for him. While accounts of his printing abilities vary, he could set type in four languages. He later found himself working at a lunch parlor in Worcester, Massachusetts, thinking about the plight of the working class and his dream of anarchism. Also inspiring Berkman was the Russian literature of the 1860s that seemed to demonstrate social unrest, most notably Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862) and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? (1863). He hoped to save money for that return to Russia, though he found more revolutionary inspiration in Homestead.23
We know what happened next, obviously, on that day in Pittsburgh and his failed assassination attempt. Having served his time for the Frick attack, authorities released him from jail in 1906. His activism accelerated in the years that followed, and his speaking and writing took him far and wide. He served as Treasurer of the American Federation of Anarchists. In September 1908, authorities arrested him in New York City after he addressed a meeting of the unemployed at Cooper Union. The police, the New York Times reported, “dealt promptly with the situation” and charged him with disorderly conduct. Berkman received a sentence to the workhouse for five days. During a spring 1914 march of 1,000 anarchists in New York, Berkman stood front and center. He led the march, along with Goldman and Carlo Tresca, down Madison Avenue and under a black banner with red letters spelling “Demolitione,” a recognizable Italian anarchist slogan. According to the New York Times, the participants “jostled” bystanders along Fifth Avenue, sending them “scurrying” out of the way. Berkman led the chorus in singing the “Marseillaise” (according to reports, “in many tongues”) and participants also shouted to servants watching from the windows of the notable homes that fronted Fifth Avenue, particularly those of Montana mining magnate William Andrews Clark and the famed steel man Andrew Carnegie. They reached Union Square for some culminating speeches, but police only allowed the addresses after famed Muckraker Lincoln Steffens, the President of the Free Speech League of America, negotiated for a mutually agreeable spot. Berkman crisscrossed the Midwest later that year for a speaking tour advertised in the pages of Mother Earth, with stops in Chicago, Milwaukee, Toledo, and St. Louis. He delivered speeches on a variety of topics, but among them were speeches typical of his left-leaning positions, such as “War – At Home and Abroad,” “The War of the Classes,” and “Is Labor Justified in Using Violence?” As the European war loomed, his announcement also made plain his hope to organize antimilitarist leagues in the cities he visited. Berkman, like Goldman, loved San Francisco and he, too, settled there in 1915. “The climate is great, the country beautiful. The bay and the ocean and the mountains – all around you,” he wrote.24
By the eve of the 1916 attack, then, the city had its radical and anarchist elements, many of whom operated openly and unapologetically. The themes and ideologies had been building over a couple of decades to create a climate where Goldman, Berkman, Volanta, and these other anarchist groups, individuals, and meetings had prominence. In a matter of months after his arrival, Berkman founded his own anarchist newspaper at the center of the war debate, The Blast, which proved a sounding beacon for the preparedness critics. Anarchism functioned as an important international and national movement and network, with San Francisco as a notable part of it. Anarchism was alive and well on the eve of the Preparedness Day bombing. Goldman and Berkman, if not directly involved in the attack of 1916, were certainly an important part of San Francisco’s robust radical and anarchist community. In many ways when that bombing occurred, blame almost immediately fell on this movement, ideology, and group of radicals.
1 Peter Duus, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 6 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 671.
1 W. Bourke Cockran, A Heinous Plot: An Expose of the Frame-Up System in the San Francisco Bomb Cases Against Billings, Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Weinberg and Nolan (Chicago, IL: Chicago Federation of Labor, 1917); Iain McKay, ed., Property Is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology (Edinburgh, Scotland: AK Press, 2001), 2–7.
2 Paul Avrich, “Introduction to the Dover Edition,” in God and the State, ed. Michael Bakunin (New York: Dover, 1970), v–vi; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 5–6; Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 37.
3 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: William Heinemann, 1910), ix; Colin Ward, Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1–13.
4 Rudolph Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (London: Pluto Press, 1938), vi–vii.
5 Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy, 36.
6 George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 62; Candace Falk, ed., Emma Goldman: Made for America, 1890–1901 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 15.
7 James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 130–131.
8 Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy, 53, 57.
9 Green, Death, 50; J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 61, 64; The Marshall Republican (Marshall, MO), October 18, 1901. Messer-Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy, 61, 116.
10 Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 27; Candace Falk, ed., Emma Goldman: Made for America, 1890–1901 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 15; Max Baginski, “The Pioneer of Communist Anarchism in America,” Mother Earth 6 (March 1911); See also: www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0522.xhtml.
11 Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 88; San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901.
12 San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901.
13 Los Angeles Herald, September 8, 1900.
14 San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901.
15 Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State, 88.
16 San Francisco Call, April 18, 1908; Sacramento Union, April 24, 1908.
17 Galleani remained at the center of American anarchism before being deported in 1919. New York Herald, March 5, 1922; Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 254; Paul Buhle, “Anarchism and American Labor,” International Labor and Working-Class History 23 (Spring 1983): 27, 32; Michael Gordon, “To Make a Clean Sweep,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 93 (Winter 2009–2010): 10, 21; Chicago Tribune, February 10, 2016. Authorities later tried to link Galleani with Carlo Tresca and Errico Malatesta. New York Herald, March 5, 1922.
18 The Blast (San Francisco, CA), February 26, 1916, January 29, 1916.
19 Scott Miller, The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century (New York: Random House, 2011), 6–7; San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901.
20 San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901; Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford, 2003), 39; Eric Rauchway, Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003), 3, 7, 12, 16–17, 166, 168.
21 San Francisco Call, September 8, 1901.
22 San Francisco Call, September 11, 1901; Sasha and Emma, 136, 252–253; Kathy Ferguson, Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 291, 93; Day Book (Chicago, IL), July 17, 1914; Paul Kahan, The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American Industry (New York: Routledge, 2014), 95.
23 New York Times, July 2, 1936; Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner, eds., Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), xxii–xxiv.
24 New York Times, July 2, 1936, April 5, 1908, September 8, 1908, March 22, 1914; Mother Earth 9 (November 1914): 302–303; Gene Fellner, ed., Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 115.