Anarchy and Anarchist.

A history of the red terror and the social revolution in America and Europe.

Copyright, 1889 by Michael J Schaack

Chapter 4

The Constitution of the United States guarantees the right of free speech, free discussion and free assemblage. These are the cardinal doctrines of our free institutions. But when liberty is trenched upon to the extent of advocacy of revolutionary methods, subversion of law and order and the displacement of existing society, Socialism places itself beyond the pale of moral forces and arrays itself on the side of the freebooter, yond the pale of moral forces and arrays itself on the side of the freebooter, the bandit, the cut-throat and the traitor. Public measures and public men are open to the widest criticism consistent with truth, decency and justice, but differences of opinion are no more to be brought into harmony through blood than the settlement of private disputes is to be effected by means of the bludgeon, the knife or the bullet. The freedom of speech which is valuable either to the individual or to humanity is that which builds up, not destroys, society.

Now, what does Socialism, or Anarchy, precisely teach, and at what does it aim? It is true, there are two schools of Socialism -- one conservative and the other radical to a sanguinary degree; one seeking a change in existing society and government through enlightenment, and the other the attainment of the same principles through force. But the conservatives form so small a portion of the Socialistic body that they ut no figure in the general direction and management of the organization; and so far as relates to the visible manifestations of that body, Socialism in the United States may be regarded as synonymous with Anarchy.

As I have shown, the ostensible object of the organization in Chicago, as elsewhere, at the outset, was peaceful, but the ulterior aim -- the establishment of Socialism through force, when sufficiently powerful in numbers -- has in later years clearly developed. The early Socialist orators only hinted at force as a possible factor in the social revolution they advocated, and it was reserved for the active agitators of the past ten years to boldly and openly proclaim for the methods of the Paris Commune.

Before proceeding to particulars as to the utterances of Anarchist leaders, the sources of their inspiration and their definition of Socialism, it may be well to advert to some incidents in connection with their movements as a revolutionary party. One incident specially worthy of mention was a meeting held at Mueller's Hall, corner of Sedgwick Street and North Avenue, on the evening of January 12, 1885. It was a secret gathering, but, despite Socialistic vigilance, Officer Michael Hoffman managed to remain and quietly note the drift of the speeches. Parsons first took the floor, and said:

Gentleman, before we cal this meeting to order, I want you to be sure that we are all right and all one. I want you to see if there are any reporters or policemen present. See if you can discover any spies. If you find any one here, you can do with him as you please, but my advice to you is, take him and strangle him and then throw him out of the window; then let the people think that the fellow fell out. And if you should give one of them a chance for his life, tell him, if he has any more notions to come to our meetings, he should first go to St. Michael's Church, see the priest and prepare himself for death, say farewell to all his friends and family -- and then let him enter. I want all these people to know that I am not afraid of them; I don't like them, and let them stay away from me.

After precautions had been taken to exclude objectionable persons, the proceedings began. Four speeches were delivered, two in English and two in German. Parsons confined his remarks to the capitalists. All present were poor, he said, and they only had themselves to blame. One-half of all the wealth in the country belonged to the poor people, but the capitalists had robbed them of it. The poor offered no resistance, and yet the capitalist was doing the same thing day after day. He was getting richer, and the poor poorer, because the working people lay down and permitted themselves to be robbed. He recounted some of Most's experiences, and insisted that capitalists must submit to workingmen. They must be shown that their lives are worth no more than the lives of the working people.

He next touched upon the merits of a new invention by which, he said, many hundreds of houses could be set on fire, and exhibited a small tin box or can with a capacity of four ounces. This can, he remarked, could be filled with some chemical stuff to serve as an explosive. A great many of these cans could be carried in a basket, and, traveling around as match peddlers or under some other guise, his hearers could secure entrance to the houses of capitalists. All they would then be obliged to do was to either place or drop one of "those darlings" in a secure place and go about their business. It would do its work, without any one's presence to attend to it, in less time than an hour. If they would get the boxes ready, he would tell them where to get the "stuff." This plan of operations would keep the fire and police departments quite busy. If they organized and went to work with a resolute spirit, they could have things all their own way throughout the city and obtain possession of what remained after their work of destruction. He also urged all his comrades to become familiar with dynamite and said that for the necessary instructions they could come to a building on Fifth Avenue (107, the offices of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and Alarm), where he and others could be found to help them. There was no other way now left, he continued, except for the laborers to use the sword, the bullet and dynamite, and, closing sententiously, he said:

I probably will be hung as soon as I get out on the street, but if they do hang me, boys, don't forget what I have been telling you about the little can and the dear stuff, dynamite, because this is the only way I and you can get our rights.

It goes without saying that Parsons was applauded to the echo. Another speaker emphasized his remarks about dynamite, but refrained from making a speech, because, as he said, Parsons had "covered the ground so well and thoroughly." One of the Germans speakers gave his attention to King William and the Pope, scoring them in the strongest language he could command. He held that the "police of Chicago were only kept to protect the property of capitalists and to club poor workingmen."

Another event memorable in the history of the party was the flaunting of the black flag on the streets of Chicago for the first time. On that occasion -- November 25, 1884, Thanksgiving Day -- they marched through the fashionable thoroughfares of the South and North Divisions, and, with two women as standard-bearers for the black and the red, they made it to a point to halt before the residences of the wealthy, uttering groans and using threatening language. Their route included Dearborn Street to Maple on the North Side. There they massed in front of the residence of Hon. E.B. Washburne, ex-Minister to France. They pulled the door-bell and insulted the family by indulging in all sorts of noises, groans and cat-calls. They rested satisfied with this last exhibition, and retraced their steps, proceeding to Market Square, where they dispersed.

The preliminaries leading up to the procession just described were thus given in the Alarm on the following Saturday:

THE BLACK FLAG

The Emblem of Hunger Unfolded by the Proletarians of Chicago. -- The Red Flag Borne Aloft by Thousands of Workingmen on Thanksgiving Day. -- The Property of the Poor is Created by the Robbery of the Rich -- Speeches, Resolutions and a Grand Demonstration of the Unemployed, the Tramps and Miserables of the City. -- Significant Incidents.

Shortly before Thanksgiving Day some of the working people, after consultation, issued the following circular to wage-workers and tramps:

The Governor has ordained next Thursday for Thanksgiving. You are to give thanks because your masters refuse you employment; because you are hungry and without home or shelter, and your masters have taken away what you have created, and arranged to shoot you by the police or militia if you refuse to die in your hovels, in due observation of Law and Order. You must give thanks that you face the blizzards without an overcoat; without fit shoes and clothes, while abundant clothing made by you spoils in the storehouses; that you suffer hunger while millions of bushels of grain rots in the elevators. For this purpose a thanksgiving meeting will be held on Market Square at 2:30 o'clock, to be followed by a demonstration to express our thanks to our "Christian brothers on Michigan Avenue." Every one that feels the mockery of this Thanksgiving order should be present. Signed, the Committee of the Grateful Workingpeople's International Association.

Thursday opened with sleet and rain, cold and miserable. At 2:30 over three thousand people assembled on Market Street, under the unpitying rain and sleet. A stranger said, "What you want is guns! you don't want to be heard talking." He was stopped for the regular arrangements. The meeting being called to order, A.R. Parsons said: "We assemble as representatives of the disinherited, to speak in the name of forty thousand unemployed workingmen of Chicago -- two millions in the United States and fifteen millions in the civilized world." He compared the Thanksgiving feast to that of Belshazzar, and said the champagne wrung from the blood of the poor ought to strangle the rich. He then read as follows: "St. James, chapter 5, says, 'Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries which are to come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which ye have kept back by fraud, crieth: Woe to them that bring about iniquity by law.' The prophet Habakkuk says: 'Woe to him that buildeth a town by blood, and establish a city by iniquity.' The prophet Amos says; 'Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor to fail from the land, that I may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes.' The prophet Isaiah says: 'Woe unto them that chain house to house, and lay field to field, till there is no place, that they may be alone in the midst of the earth.' Solomon says; 'There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed of their filthiness; a generation, O, how lifted are their eyes, and how their eyelids are lifted up: A generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw-teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.'"

And, concluding, he said: "We did not intend to wait for a future existence, but to do something for ourselves in this."

He introduced S.S. Griffin, who said this was an international assembly in the interests of humanity, having no quarrel with each other and objecting to being set at work by governmental scheme. "Don't believe that any government or system should be allowed to pit man against man, for any cause; and to get at the root of these evils, we must go to the foundation of property rights and the wage system. The old system could not meet the demands of our present civilization. The present cry is against over-production, because it operates against humanity. Over-production, glutting the market, causes a lock-out, depriving the wage class of the means of purchasing. Vacant houses stop the building industry, and result in throwing builders out of employment. Ragged because of a surplus of clothing; homeless because of too many houses; hungry because there is too much bread; freezing because too much coal is produced. The system must be changed. Man can wear but one suit of clothes at a time and can consume only about so much. The genius of our age is inventing and increasing the productive power. A system than in effect tells the working classes that, the more they produce, the less they will have to enjoy, is a check on human progress and cannot continue. Everything must be made free. No man should control what he has no personal use for."

Upon Mr. Parsons' call the resolutions were read, as follows:

WHEREAS, We have outlived wage and property system; and whereas, the right of property requires more effort to adjust it between man and man than to produce and distribute it:

Resolved, That property rights should no longer be maintained or respected, and that all useless workers should be deprived of useless employment and required to engage in productive industry; and as this is impossible under the payment system.

Resolved, That no man shall pay for anything, or receive pay for anything, or deprive himself of what he may desire, that he finds out of use or vacant.

Resolved, That whoever refuses to devote a reasonable amount of energy to the production or distribution of necessaries is the enemy of mankind and ought to be so treated and so of the willful waster.

As this system cannot be introduced as against existing ignorance and selfishness without force, Resolved, That, when introduced, the good of mankind and the saving of blood requires that forcible opposition shall be dealt with summarily; but that no one should be harmed for holding opposite opinions.

Resolved, That our policy is wise, humane and practical and ought to be enforced at the earliest possible moment.

As an expression of thankfulness, Resolved, That we are thankful we have learned the true cause of poverty and the remedies, and can only be more thankful when the remedy is applied.

`The next speaker was Samuel Fielden. He denounced the hypocrisy of calling upon people to thank God for prosperity, while providing no changes for the better, when so many people were in actual want in the midst of abundance. When he was a boy, his mother had taught him to say, "Our Father who art in Heaven," but so far as he knew, God remained there and would not come here until things were better arranged. "Our motto is, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, embracing all men. Our international movement is to unite all countries and to do away with the robber class."

August Spies spoke. Pointing to the black flag, he said it was the first time the emblem of hunger and starvation had been unfurled on American soil. He said we had got to strike down these robbers who were robbing the working people.

In answer to a call from the Germans, Mr. Schwab spoke in German a few minutes. A stranger said: "Get your guns out and go for them. That is all I have got to say." Three cheers were given for the social revolution. The audience then formed a procession three thousand strong.

Another notable procession was on the evening of the opening of the new Board of Trade building. The Anarchists gathered in front of the Arbeiter-Zeitung office and were addressed by Parsons and Fielden. The speeches were highly inflammatory. Parsons insisted that they ought to blow up the institution, and urged them to arm themselves "to meet their oppressors with weapons." The Board of Trade, he said, was a robbers' roost, and they were reveling on the proceeds of the workingmen. "How many," he asked, "of my hearers could give twenty dollars for a supper to-night? We will never gain anything by arguments and words. While those men are enjoying a sumptuous supper, workingmen are starving." He characterized the police as bloodhounds and servants of the robbing capitalists, and suggested that the mob loot Marshall Field's dry-goods store and other places and secure such things as they needed. It was apparent that these sentiments appealed strongly to the inclinations of the assembled rabble, and when Parsons had concluded the mob was ready for an even more violent harangue.

Fielden went as far as to urge the mob to follow him and rob those places, and, like Parsons, held that the Board of Trade building had been built out of money of which they had been robbed, and that all who transacted business in that place were "robbers, and thieves, and ought to be killed."

There were hundreds of tramps in the throng addressed, and naturally all allusions to capitalists as robbers, and all suggestions to plunder, were greeted with applause. A procession was formed, with Oscar W. Neebe, Parsons and Fielden at the head, and with two women following next carrying the red and black flags. They marched down to the Board of Trade, but, arriving at the street leading to the building, a company of police headed them off. Thus balked, they had to content themselves with marching through the streets back to their starting-point, where they separated without further exhibition of violence than subsequently hurling a stone through the window of a carriage occupied by a prominent West Side resident and his wife, A tougher-looking lot of men than those who composed the procession it would be difficult to find, and, once started in the direction of violence at the building, there is no telling the extent of damage they might have inflicted. The toleration of such a parade by the municipal authorities was severely criticised by the community, for, had it not been for the action of the late Col. Welter, then Inspector of Police, in intercepting the procession, a serious riot would have occurred.

Parsons, when asked subsequently why they had not blown up the Board of Trade building, replied that they had not looked for police interference and were not prepared. "The next time," he said, "we will be prepared to meet them with bombs and dynamite." Fielden reiterated the same sentiments and expressed the opinion that in the course of a year they might be ready for the police.

NOW WHAT is the Socialism or Anarchy they seek to establish? In his speech before Judge Gary in the Criminal Court, when asked why sentence of death should not be imposed upon him, Anarchist Parsons, among other things, thus described the condition of affairs when Socialism should obtain sway:

Anarchy is a free society where there is no concentrated or centralized power, no state, no king, no emperor, no ruler, no president, no magistrate, no potentate of any character whatever. Law is the enslaving power of men. Blackstone defines the law to be a rule of action, prescribing what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. Now, very true. Anarchists hold that it is wrong for one person to prescribe what is the right action for another person, and then compel that person to obey that rule. Therefore, right action consists in each person attending to his business, and allowing everybody else to do likewise. Whoever prescribes a rule of action for another to obey is a tyrant, a usurper and an enemy of liberty. This is precisely what every statute does. Anarchy is the natural law, instead of the man-made statute, and gives men leaders in the place of drivers and bosses. All political law, statute and common, gets its right to operate from the statute; therefore, all political law is statute law. A statute law is a written scheme by which cunning takes advantage of the unsuspecting, and provides the inducement to do so, and protects the one who does it. In other words, a statute is the science of rascality or the law of usurpation. If a few sharks rob mankind of all the earth, -- turn them all out of house and home, make them ragged slaves and beggars, and freeze and starve them to death, -- still they are expected to obey the statute because it is sacred. This ridiculous nonsense, that human laws are sacred, and that if they are not respected and continued we cannot prosper, is the stupidest and most criminal nightmare of the age. Statutes are the last and greatest curse of men, and, when destroyed, the word will be free....The statute law is the great science of rascality, by which alone the few trample upon and enslave the many. There are natural laws provided for every work of man. Natural laws are self-operating. They punish all who violate them, and reward all who obey them. They cannot be repealed, amended, dodged or bribed, and it costs neither time, money nor attention to apply them. It is time to stop legislation against them. We want to obey laws, not men, nor the tricks of men. Statutes are human tricks. The law -- the statute law -- is the coward's weapon, the tool of the thief....Free access to the means of production is the natural right of every man able and willing to work. It is the legal right of the capitalist to refuse such access to labor, and to take from the laborer all the wealth he creates over and above a bare subsistence for allowing him the privilege of working. A laborer has the natural right to life, and, as life is impossible without the means of production, the equal right to life involves an equal right to the means of production....Laws, just laws -- natural laws -- are not made; they are discovered. Law-enacting is an insult to divine intelligence; and law-enforcing is the impeachment of God's integrity and His power.

August Spies on the same memorable occasion gave his views of Socialism in these words:

Socialism is a constructive and not a destructive science. While capitalism expropriates the masses for the benefit of the privileged class; while capitalism is that school of economics which teaches how one can live upon the labor (i.e. property) of the other, Socialism teaches how all may possess property, and further teaches that every man must work honestly for his own living, and not be playing the respectable Board of Trade man, or any other highly too respectable business man or banker. Socialism, in short, seeks to establish a universal system of cooperation and to render accessible to each and every member of the human family the achievements and benefits of civilization, which, under capitalism, are being monopolized by a privileged class, and employed, not, as they should be, for the common good of all, but for the brutish gratification of an avaricious class. Under capitalism, the great inventions of the past, far from being a blessed for mankind, have been turned into a curse! Socialism teaches that machines, the means of transportation and communication, are the result of the combined efforts of society, past and present, and that they are therefore rightfully the indivisible property of society, just the same as the soil and the mines and all natural gifts should be. This declaration implies that those who have appropriated this wealth wrongfully, though lawfully, shall be expropriated by society. The expropriation of the masses by the monopolists has reached such a degree that the expropriation of the expropriators has become an imperative necessity, an act of social self-preservation. Society will reclaim its own even though you erect a gibbet on every street-corner. And Anarchism, this terrible "ism," deduces that under a cooperative organization of society, under economic equality and individual independence, the "state" -- the political state -- will pass into barbaric antiquity. And we will be where all are free, where there are no longer masters and servants. Where intellect stands for brute force, there will no longer be any use for the policeman and militia to preserve the so-called "peace and order." Anarchism, or Socialism, means the reorganization of society upon scientific principles and the abolition of causes which produce vice and crime.

Michael Schwab, in his utterances before the same tribunal, held as follows:

Socialism, as we understand it, means that land and machinery shall be held in common by the people. The production of goods shall be carried on by producing groups which shall supply the demands of the people. Under such a system every human being would have an opportunity to do useful work, and no doubt would work. Some hours' work every day would suffice to produce all that, according to statistics, is necessary for a comfortable living. Time would be left to cultivate the mind and to further science and art. That is what Socialists propose. According to our vocabulary, Anarchy is a state of society in which the only government is reason. A state of society in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right and hate wrong because it is wrong. In such a society no laws, no compulsion will be necessary.

Samuel Fielden, standing before the same court, also dwelt upon Socialism, saying:

And it will be a good time, a grand day for the world; it will be a grand day for humanity; it will never have taken a step so far onward toward perfection, if it can ever reach that goal, as it will when it accepts the principles of Socialism. They are the principles that injure no man. They are the principles that consider the interest of every one. They are the principles which will do away with wrong; and injustice and suffering will be reduced at least to a minimum under such an organization of society. As compared to the present struggle for existence, which is degrading society and making men merely things and animals, Socialism will give them opportunities of developing the possibilities of their nature.

The platform of the International Association of Workingmen, indorsed by the local organization, formulates the principles of Socialism as follows:

1. Destruction of existing class domination, through inexorable revolution and international activity.

2. The building of a free society on communistic organizations or production.

3. Free exchange of equivalent products through the productive organization without jobbing and profit-making.

4. Organization of the educational system upon a non-religious and scientific and equal basis for both sexes.

5. Equal rights for all, without distinction of sex or race.

6. The regulation of public affairs through agreements between the independent communes and confederacies.

The above was published in the Alarm of November 1, 1884, with the following comment:

Proletarians of all countries, unite. Fellow workmen, all we need for the achievement of this great end is organization and unity.

There exists now no great obstacle to that unity. The work of peaceful education and revolutionary conspiracy will, can and ought to run in parallel lines.

The day has come for solidarity. Join our ranks! Let the drum beat defiantly the roll of battle; workingmen of all lands, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win. Tremble, oppressors of the world! Not far beyond your purblind sight there dawn the scarlet and sable lights of the judgment day!

Such, in brief, are the aims of Socialism as expounded by its most extreme representatives. The state of society they seek to establish may be highly beneficial to a class which, under any conditions, lacks sobriety, frugality, thrift and self-reliance' but just where the general mass of humanity is to be bettered or elevated, socially, morally or politically, is a point not satisfactorily explained. Their theory may look well on paper, and their glittering generalities may draw adherents from the ranks of the illiterate and the vicious, but a condition of society in which there are no masters and no authority can only lead to chaos. In a society "in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right," there can be neither stability nor permanence, unless human nature is recast, reconstructed and regenerated. Human nature must be treated as it is found in the general make-up of man; and therefore a society in which all special desires, all ambition and all self-elevation have been eliminated, precludes development and progress. It reduces everything to utter shiftlessness and stagnation. In such a society there can be no incentive to great achievements in art, literature, mechanics or invention. If all are to be placed on an equal footing, the ignorant with the educated, the dullard with the genius, the profligate with the provident, and the drunken wretch with the industrious, what encouragement for special effort? If you "render accessible to each and every member of the human family the achievements and benefits of civilization," holding "property in commons," why should a man rack his brain or strain his muscles in producing something which he expects to prove remunerative to himself in some way, but which under the Socialistic state would go to the financial benefit of all? Take away all incentive to improvement, and you make life scarcely worth the living. Where the state, or the "independent commune," is to be entrusted with the care and equal distribution of wealth and the employment of men, the individual will give little concern for the morrow or for anything beyond his immediate wants. What need he accomplish more than his neighbor, since everything that is produced is shared jointly?

In the Socialistic society, every man might "work honestly for his own living," as Spies declares, but what would be the inevitable result of a system in which the state or commune undertakes to see that all have employment?

History does not leave us room for doubt. The various constitutions of France recognized the right of the people to employment. It was provided in 1792 that it was the duty of society to afford such employment, and in the following year it was added that the remuneration of the laborer should be sufficient to support him. This doctrine was recognized until 1819, when it fell into "innocuous desuetude," and it was not revived until 1848. In that year a placard appeared on the dead walls of Paris, to the following effect:

The Provisional Government of the French Republic guarantees existence to the laborer by labor. It guarantees labor to every citizen. It guarantees that laborers may associate to obtain the profits of their legitimate labor.

In consequence of this proclamation the Government was appealed to, and national work-shops were established under the auspices of the Government. The establishments were open to all, but, as no one was specially interested in their financial success, they soon proved too great a drain upon the resources of the nation. Failure was the result. In the assignment of work at the factories, skill and fitness never entered into consideration. One workman was as good as another, and the men, so long as they had the Government at their back, with living guaranteed, did not bother much about the kind of article they produced. The result was that inferior goods were thrown upon the market, and purchasers were difficult to find. This speedily led to the closing of the work-shops, and since then the French Government has never maintained that society at large must operate workshops for the benefit of all. Any commune that undertakes the same task again must similarly fail.

Now, suppose that, in the new economic conditions, it should be determined by the "independent communes" that wages should in a measure be fixed according to the skill, ability and energy of the workingmen, what sort of allotment would fall to the great body of workers? Edward Atkinson, an accurate statistician of world-wide reputation, has furnished the public with a compilation showing what each would receive if the aggregate production in the United States were divided among its inhabitants. The annual production, he calculates, of all the industries of our country, does not exceed $200 per head of population. This would give a total of $12,000,000. If this were divided equally among families of five persons each, on a basis of a sixty-million population, each family would have $1,000 per annum. But, as I have said, suppose some families secure more than others, on account of greater efficiency, and that one-third of these families secure $2,000 each per annum. The remaining two-thirds would only secure an average of $500. "Suppose," it has been said, "one-half of this third to be fortunate enough, or skillful enough, to increase their average to $3,000. The remaining half continuing at $2,000, the average share of two-thirds would fall to $250, or $50 only per head, per annum."

As Prof. Barnard, dwelling upon the facts to be deduced from Atkinson's showing, says: "Inasmuch as the idea of an average implies that as many are below it as are above it, it is easy to see that the only way of removing the scourge of poverty from the entire human race is to increase the productiveness of labor so that want can only be a consequence of willful idleness, or improvidence, or vice."