Читать книгу Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination - Everett Marshall - Страница 12

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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.