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

looked the part when he boldly told Chief O’Neill that he was an Anarchist. In Bohemia he was an agitator, and in 1894 was sentenced to two years’ confinement in the prison at Plzen for making incendiary speeches. He admitted that he knew Emma Goldman and Czolgosz, and said that if he had known the latter was going to Buffalo to kill the President, he would not have notified the police.

      Later, these anarchists were released, as there was no evidence to prove a conspiracy.

CHAPTER VI.

       ANARCHISM AND ITS OBJECTS.

       Table of Contents

      Within a few minutes after the shooting of President McKinley at Buffalo, and before anything was known of the identity of the assailant, news of the affair was in every American town and village to which the telegraph reaches. Probably in every town those to whom this first report came exclaimed: “An Anarchist!” and many thousands added bitter denunciation of all anarchists.

      When later news arrived it was established definitely by the confession of the would-be slayer that he was an anarchist and fired the shots in a desire to further the cause of those who believe as he does.

      What, then, is anarchism, and who are the anarchists that the destruction of the head of a republican government can further their cause? What do they aim at, and what have they accomplished to stand in their account against the long list of murders, of attempted assassinations, and of destruction of property with which they are charged? The questions are asked on every hand, but the answers are hard to find.

      When, at the World’s Fair in Chicago in October, 1893, an international congress of anarchists was held and representative anarchists were here from every civilized country, an attempt was made to answer some of the questions. A proposition was made that, for the information of the people and the furtherance of anarchism, a document should be drawn up setting forth just what the belief is and what its followers are doing. The proposition almost brought the congress to an end, for it was found that there were as many different ideas of anarchism as there were delegates present, and no definition could be made satisfactory to more than one or two.

      Yet in behalf of this doctrine, which is in itself the anarchy of belief, there have been sacrificed in the last quarter of a century more than a hundred human lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of property by the most violent means. And, as far as can be judged by an outsider, and as is admitted by the leading thinkers of the cult, anarchism is not one whit the gainer by it.

      According to Zenker, himself an anarchistic theorist, “anarchism means, in its ideal sense, the perfect, unfettered self-government of the individual, and consequently the absence of any kind of external government.”

      That such a state is possible not one of the anarchistic philosophers has contended, and each has been eager to hold up his neighbor’s plan, if not also his own, as a Utopia. Its realization, said Proudhon, pioneer of the cult, would be an entirely new world, a new Eden, a land of the perfect idealization of freedom and of equality. Yet Proudhon wrote many books and made many addresses in behalf of his doctrine. Like every other anarchist, he found his theory ending in a contradiction—as soon as there was anarchy a new state would be built up.

      For anarchy is of two classes, individualistic and communistic. The first is the philosophy of the thinker, which has advanced as the object of its being the attainment of “Liberty, not the daughter but the mother of order.” That other anarchy is that which through the influence of terrorism shall crumble empires and republics alike, while from their dust shall rise a free people who shall be in no need of restraints at the hands of their fellow-men. Disciples of this philosophy would build communistic centers upon the ruins of government which violence should have brought about.

      Beginning with Proudhon, anarchy had no relationship to the secret society of the assassin. Proudhon simply had criticised a society which “seeks, in formula after formula, institution after institution, that equilibrium which always escapes it, and at every attempt always causes its luxury and its poverty to grow in equal proportion.” He had no retributive bomb or dagger for the heads of state under which such inequalities existed. He said, only: “Since equilibrium has never yet been reached, it only remains for us to hope something from a complete solution which synthetically unites theories, which gives back to labor its effectiveness and to each of its organs its power. Hitherto pauperism has been so inextricably connected with labor and want with idleness that all our accusations against Providence only prove our weakness.”

      Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in Besancon, France, in 1809. He was a poor man and became a printer, but in 1837 won a scholarship at the academy in his native town, secured an education, and became a philosopher. He followed the teachings of Hegel, the German philosopher, and going beyond them founded the modern cult of anarchist individualism. He became famous from a question and an answer. “What is property?” he demanded, and himself replied: “Property is theft.”

      Later he came to regret the saying and endeavored to assert his belief in property. “Individual possession is the fundamental condition of social life,” he said. He maintained that profit was unjust and that every trade should be an equal exchange.

      Proudhon was seeking some means by which the pauper workmen of Europe could be brought to an equality with the aristocracy. In it he came near socialism, but kept the boundary fixed, maintaining that the individual should have his property, should produce as much as he could, have the benefit of his product, and be rich or poor according to it.

      Not until the movement started by Proudhon had reached Russia did the “propaganda of action” come into it. In Russia the government, controlling the military, was able to check instantly any movement which might appear in any of the few big cities. In the country no movement could have effect.

      “Terrorism arose,” says Stepniak, “because of the necessity of taking the great governmental organization in the flank before it could discover that an attack was planned. Nurtured in hatred, it grew up in an electric atmosphere filled by the enthusiasm that is awakened by a noble deed.” The “great subterranean stream” of nihilism thus had its rise. From nihilism and its necessary sudden outbreaks anarchism borrowed terrorism, the propaganda of action.

      Prince Peter Kropotkin of Russia was the founder of the violent school of anarchists. Banished from Russia, he set about organizing in various countries bands of propagandists. Instead of the individualism of Proudhon he proclaimed anarchist communism, which is now the doctrine of force and is the branch of the cult most followed in Italy, France, Spain and among the Poles.

      That form of anarchy to-day is giving great concern to the police and military power of the world. It has its hotbed in continental Europe. Vienna, beyond all the other capitals on the continent, is said to harbor its doctrinaires. Switzerland has contended with its “propaganda of action,” which Kropotkin stood for in 1879. Italy, France, Spain, Russia, and nearly every other continental country has felt its force. London itself has been a nest of anarchistic vipers in times past. From all this territory, too, the gradual closing in of the police power has forced both leaders and tools of anarchy to seek asylums in America. The problem of anarchy as now presented to the United States government has to deal almost wholly with this foreign born element.

      Its principles, as voiced by the manifesto of the Geneva conference in 1882, stand in great measure for the propaganda of action of to-day:

      “Our ruler is our enemy. We anarchists are men without any rulers, fighting against all those who have usurped any power or who wish to usurp it.

      “Our enemy is the owner of the land who keeps it for himself and makes the peasant work for his advantage.

      “Our enemy is the manufacturer who fills his factory with wage slaves; our enemy is the state, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic, with its officials and staff officers, magistrates, and police spies.

      “Our enemy is every thought of authority, whether men call it God or devil, in whose name the priests have so long ruled honest people.

      “Our