more credit than all the parliamentary compromises did that of Wilhelm Liebknecht, Engels, and Bebel.

The years pass; and we witness the growing power of Anarchism in Spain. In 1882 great progress has been made in Catalonia and Andalusia. A distinct Anarchist element, co-operating with other schools of Socialist thought, but maintaining the principle of revolutionary Socialism, makes itself felt at a working-class congress held in Seville, when 254 delegates assembled, representing 10 provincial unions, 632 local sections, with 59,000 adherents. In December of this year a personal quarrel between two workers, resulting in the death of one of them, named Bartolome Gago Campos, illustrates the fear with which Anarchism now inspires the ruling class. Marx wrote well of the spectre of Communism. Let us consider Spain haunted by the spectre of Anarchism. The very ignorant commander of the Civil Guard at Jerez had one hundred Anarchists arrested, and invented, in his imagination a secret organization, known as "La Mano Negro" or "The Black Hand." Although it was proved that no such Anarchist organization existed, that the entire thing was a myth of a maddened militarist's brain. Capitalist journalism has persisted in using, with increasing dishonour, this "Black Hand" hobgoblin. It is fantastic enough to appeal to the jaded sense of romance which afflicts the bourgeois student of literature!

Nor was the lie all romance. The myth was grounded well in interest. The Capitalist conscience measures all things in the terms of profit. Its taste belongs to the Stock Exchange; its beauty is purchased and tainted and embellished; its love studies percentage and has a prostitute price; and it drags the Golden Calf to Church that it may preside, a more definite deity, in the temple of the Unknown God. The Real Presence of Capitalist society is not the man of sorrows but the gold that lures. "The Black Hand" myth was romance and calculation. It was a brutal and bloody calculation as the reader will understand.

As a matter of fact, the "Black Hand" campaign was but the aggravated aftermath of the terrible agrarian struggle. The ruling class was endeavouring to stamp out Anarchism. Fourteen Anarchists were condemned to death for complicity in the death of Bartolomie Gago, and scores of others were condemned to "chains for life." Cadiz received the sentences with threats of working class rebellion and in the end only seven of the condemned men mounted the scaffold. The scaffolds were erected on the Plaza of Jerez on 14th June, 1884. What tortures were experienced by those condemned to imprisonment, pen cannot describe. In 1903, twenty years after the arrests, eight prisoners were still held in durance vile. Others had died in prison. These eight, after much agitation, were reprieved. The shocking victimization of these Anarchist workers only stimulated the cause. In 1887, explosions occurred at the Palace of the Cortes in Madrid and in the courtyard of the

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