While the above events were transpiring in the Latin countries, the Bakouninists were keeping a sharp eye on America as a land of hopeful possibilities. As early as 1874 Bakounin himself considered the matter of coming here, while Kropotkin and Guillaume followed with interest the labor disturbances that were at that time so numerous and so violent in this country. The panic of 1873 had caused widespread suffering among the working classes. For several years afterward hordes of unemployed tramped the country. The masses were driven to desperation and, in their hunger, to frequent outbreaks of violence. When later a measure of prosperity returned, both the trade-union and the socialist movements began to attract multitudes of the discontented. The news of two important events in the labor world of America reached the anarchists of the Jura and filled them, Guillaume says, "with a lively emotion." In June, 1877, Kropotkin called attention to the act of the Supreme Court of the United States in declaring unconstitutional the eight-hour law on Government work. He was especially pleased with an article in the Labor Standard of New York, which declared: "This will teach the workers not to put their confidence in Congress and to trust only in their own efforts. No law of Congress could be of any use to the worker if he is not so organized that he can enforce it. And, if the workers are strong enough to do that, if they succeed in solidly forming the federation of their trade organizations, then they will be able, not only to force the legislators to make efficacious laws on the hours of work, on inspection, etc., but they will also be able to make the law themselves, deciding that henceforth no worker in the country shall work more than eight hours a day." "It is the good, practical sense of an American which says that," (1) comments Kropotkin. This act of the Supreme Court and this statement of the Labor Standard were very welcome news to the anarchists. They were convinced that the Americans had abandoned political action and were turning to what they had already begun to call "direct action."

Another event, a month later, added to this conviction. In its issue of July 29 the Bulletin published this article: "'Following a strike of the machinists of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a popular insurrection has burst forth in the states of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If at Martinsburg (West Virginia) the workmen have been conquered by the militia, at Baltimore (Maryland), a city of 300,000 inhabitants, they have been victorious. They have taken possession of the station and have burned it, together with all the wagons of petroleum which were there. At Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a city of 100,000 inhabitants, the workers are at the present time masters of the city, after having seized guns and cannon.... The strike is extending to the near-by railroads and is gaining in the direction of the Pacific. Great agitation reigns in New York. It is announced that the troops will concentrate, that Sheridan has been named commander, and that the Western States have offered their help.' In the following number, a detailed article, written by Kropotkin, recounted the dÉnouement of the crisis, the recovery of Pittsburgh, where two thousand wagons loaded with merchandise had been burned, the repression and the disarray of the strikers following the treachery of the miserable false brothers, and the final miscarriage of the movement. But if there had been, in this attempt of popular insurrection, weak sides that had brought about the failure, Kropotkin rightly praised the qualities of which the American working people had just given proof: 'This movement will have certainly impressed profoundly the proletariat of Europe and excited its admiration. Its spontaneity, its simultaneousness at so many distant points communicating only by telegraph, the aid given by the workers of different trades, the resolute character of the uprising from the beginning, call forth all our sympathies, excite our admiration, and awaken our hopes.... But the blood of our brothers of America shall not have flowed in vain. Their energy, their union in action, their courage will serve as an example to the proletariat of Europe. But would that this flowing of noble blood prove once again the blindness of those who amuse the people with the plaything of parliamentarism when the powder magazine is ready to take fire, unknown to them, at the fall of the least spark.'" (2)

The news of industrial troubles, such as the above, convinced the anarchist elements of Europe that America was ripe for direct action and the revolution. And it was indeed this period of profound industrial unrest that gave a forward impulse to all radical movements in the late seventies. Socialist newspapers sprang up in all parts of the country, and both socialist and trade-union organizations took on an immense development. Riots, minor insurrections, and strikes were symptoms of an all-pervading discontent. Simultaneously with this, many revolutionists, upon being expelled from Germany, were injected into the ferment. With many other refugees, the Germans then began to form revolutionary clubs, and, in 1882, Johann Most appeared in the United States scattering broadcast the terrorist ideas of Bakounin and Nechayeff.

Most was perhaps the most fiery personality that appeared in the ranks of the anarchists after the death of Bakounin. A cruel stepmother, a pitiless employer, a long sickness, and an operation which left his face deformed forever are some of the incidents of his unhappy childhood. He received a poor education, but read extensively, and as a bookbinder worked at his trade in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. He became attached to the labor movement toward the end of the sixties, and was elected to the German Reichstag in 1874. Forced to leave Germany as a result of the anti-socialist law, he went to London, where he established Die Freiheit, at first a social-democratic paper, which was smuggled into Germany. He became, however, more and more violent, and in 1880, at a secret gathering of the German socialists at Wyden in Switzerland, he and his friend Hasselmann were expelled from the Germany party. After this he no longer attempted to conceal his anarchist sympathies, and in the Freiheit, on the platform, and on every possible occasion he preached principles almost identical with those of Nechayeff and Bakounin. In a pamphlet on the scientific art of revolutionary warfare and of dynamiters he prescribes in detail where bombs should be placed in churches, palaces, and ball-rooms.[I] He advises wholly individual action, in order that the groups may suffer as little harm as possible. His pamphlet also contains a dictionary of poisons which may be usefully employed against politicians, traitors, and spies. "Extirpate the miserable brood!" he writes in Die Freiheit; "extirpate the wretches! Thus runs the refrain of a revolutionary song of the working classes, and this will be the exclamation of the executive of a victorious proletariat army when the battle has been won. For at the critical moment the executioner's block must ever be before the eyes of the revolutionist. Either he is cutting off the heads of his enemies or his own is being cut off. Science gives us means which make it possible to accomplish the wholesale destruction of these beasts quietly and deliberately." Elsewhere he says, "Those of the reptile brood who are not put to the sword remain as a thorn in the flesh of the new society; hence it would be both foolish and criminal not to annihilate utterly this race of parasites." (3)

It was this cheerful individual who, after being expelled from the German socialist party, made prodigious efforts to establish revolutionary organizations all over Europe. In London he captured the Communist Working Men's Educational Society, despite the protest of a considerable minority, and through it he undertook to launch other revolutionary clubs. The parliamentary socialists were bitterly assailed, and a congress was held in Paris and a later one in London for the purpose of uniting the revolutionists of all countries. According to Zenker, the headquarters of the association were at London, and sub-committees were formed to act in Paris, Geneva, and New York. Money was to be collected "for the purchase of poison and weapons, as well as to find places suitable for laying mines, and so on. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all rulers, ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most prominent capitalists, and other exploiters, any means are permissible, and therefore great attention should be given specially to the study of chemistry and the preparation of explosives, as being the most important weapons. Together with the chief committee in London there will also be established an executive bureau, whose duty is to carry out the decisions of the chief committee and to conduct correspondence." (4)

After these attempts to establish an anarchist International, Most sailed for New York. Some of his ideas had preceded him, and when he arrived he was met and greeted by masses of German workingmen. Miss Emma Goldman, in "Anarchism and Other Essays," tells us of the impression he made upon her. "Some twenty-one years ago," she says, "I heard the first great anarchist speaker—the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then, and for many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the masses with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could never be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all the multitudes who flocked to Most's meetings escape his prophetic voice!" (5) At the time of Most's arrival the American socialist movement was hopelessly divided over questions of methods and tactics. Already there had been bitter quarrels between those in the movement who had formed secret drilling organizations which were preparing for a violent revolution, and those others who sought by education, organization, and political action to achieve their demands. In the year 1880 a number of New York members had left the socialist organization and formed a revolutionary group, and in October of the following year a convention was held to organize the various revolutionary groups into a national organization. Everything was favorable for Most, and when he arrived it was not long, with his magnetic personality and fiery agitation, until he had swept out of existence the older socialist organizations. In 1883 representatives from twenty-six cities met in Pittsburgh to form the revolutionary socialist and anarchist groups into one body, called the "International Working People's Association." The same year a dismal socialist convention was held in Baltimore with only sixteen delegates attending. They attempted to stem the tide to terrorism by declaring: "We do not share the folly of the men who consider dynamite bombs as the best means of agitation. We know full well that a revolution must take place in the heads and in the industrial life of men before the working class can achieve lasting success." (6)

The tide, however, was not stayed. The advocates of direct action continued headlong toward the bitter climax at the Haymarket in Chicago in 1886. Just previous to that fatal catastrophe, a series of great strikes had occurred in and about that city. At the McCormick Reaper Works a crowd of men was being addressed by Spies, an anarchist, when the "scabs" left the factory. A pitched battle ensued. The police were called, and, when they were assaulted with stones, they opened fire on the crowd, shooting indiscriminately men, women, and children, killing six and wounding many more. Spies, full of rage, hurried to the office of Arbeiter Zeitung, the anarchist paper, and composed the proclamation to the workingmen of Chicago which has since become famous as "the revenge circular." It called upon the workingmen to arm themselves and to avenge the brutal murder of their brothers. Five thousand copies of the circular, printed in English and German, were distributed in the streets. The next evening, May 4, 1886, a mass meeting was called at the Haymarket. About two thousand working people attended the meeting. The mayor of the city went in person to hear the addresses, and later testified that he had reported to Captain Bonfield, at the nearest police station, that "nothing had occurred nor was likely to occur to require interference." Nevertheless, after Mayor Harrison had gone, Captain Bonfield sent one hundred and seventy-six policemen to march upon the little crowd that remained. Captain Ward, the officer in charge, commanded the meeting to disperse, and, as Fielden, one of the speakers, retorted that the meeting was a peaceable one, a dynamite bomb was thrown from an adjoining alley that killed several policemen and wounded many more.

In the agitation that led up to the Haymarket tragedy, dynamite had always been glorified as the poor man's weapon. It was the power that science had given to the weak to protect them from injustice and tyranny. As powder and the musket had destroyed feudalism, so dynamite would destroy capitalism. In the issue of the Freiheit, March 18, 1883, Most printed an article called "Revolutionary Principles." Many of the phrases are evidently taken from the "Catechism" of Bakounin and Nechayeff, and the sentiments are identical. During all this period great meetings were organized to glorify some martyr who, by the Propaganda of the Deed, had committed some great crime. For instance, vast meetings were organized in honor of Stellmacher and others who had murdered officers of the Viennese police. At one of these meetings Most declared that such acts should not be called murder, because "murder is the killing of a human being, and I have never heard that a policeman was a human being." (7) When August Reinsdorf was executed for an attempt on the life of the German Emperor, Most's Freiheit appeared with a heavy black border. "One of our noblest and best is no more," he laments. "In the prison yard at Halle under the murderous sword of the criminal Hohenzollern band, on the 7th of February, August Reinsdorf ended a life full of battle and of self-sacrificing courage, as a martyr to the great revolution." (8) It was inevitable that such views should lead sooner or later to a tragedy, and, while most of the Chicago anarchists were plain workingmen, simple and kindly, at least one fanatic in the group deserves to rank with Nechayeff and Most as an irreconcilable enemy of the existing order. This was Louis Lingg, whose last words as he was taken from the court were: "I repeat that I am the enemy of the 'order' of to-day, and I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it, 'If you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.' You laugh! Perhaps you think, 'You'll throw no more bombs'; but let me assure you that I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words; and, when you shall have hanged us, then, mark my words, they will do the bomb-throwing! In this hope I say to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it!" (9)

There are many minor incidents now quite forgotten that played a part in this American terrorism. Benjamin R. Tucker, of New York, himself an anarchist, but not an advocate of terrorist tactics, had in the midst of this period to cry out in protest against the acts of those who called themselves anarchists. In his paper, Liberty, March 27, 1886, Tucker wrote on "The Beast of Communism." (10) He began by quoting Henri Rochefort, who was reported to have said: "Anarchists are merely criminals. They are robbers. They want no government whatever, so that, when they meet you on the street, they can knock you down and rob you." (11)

"This infamous and libelous charge," says Tucker, "is a very sweeping one; I only wish that I could honestly meet it with as sweeping a denial. And I can, if I restrict the word anarchist as it always has been restricted in these columns, and as it ought to be restricted everywhere and always. Confining the word anarchist so as to include none but those who deny all external authority over the individual, whether that of the present State or that of some industrial collectivity or commune which the future may produce, I can look Henri Rochefort in the face and say: 'You lie!' For of all these men I do not recall even one who, in any ordinary sense of the term, can be justly styled a robber.

"But unfortunately, in the minds of the people at large, this word anarchist is not yet thus restricted in meaning. This is due principally to the fact that within a few years the word has been usurped, in the face of all logic and consistency, by a party of communists who believe in a tyranny worse than any that now exists, who deny to the laborer the individual possession of his product, and who preach to their followers the following doctrine: 'Private property is your enemy; it is the beast that is devouring you; all wealth belongs to everybody; take it wherever you can find it; have no scruples about the means of taking it; use dynamite, the dagger, or the torch to take it; kill innocent people to take it; but, at all events, take it.' This is the doctrine which they call anarchy, and this policy they dignify with the name of 'propagandism by deed.'

"Well, it has borne fruit with most horrible fecundity. To be sure, it has gained a large mass of adherents, especially in the Western cities, who are well-meaning men and women, not yet become base enough to practice the theories which they profess to have adopted. But it has also developed, and among its immediate and foremost supporters, a gang of criminals whose deeds for the past two years rival in 'pure cussedness' any to be found in the history of crime. Were it not, therefore, that I have first, last, and always repudiated these pseudo-anarchists and their theories, I should hang my head in shame before Rochefort's charge at having to confess that too many of them are not only robbers, but incendiaries and murderers. But, knowing as I do that no real anarchist has any part or lot in these infamies, I do not confess the facts with shame, but reiterate them with righteous wrath and indignation, in the interest of my cause, for the protection of its friends, and to save the lives and possessions of any more weak and innocent persons from being wantonly destroyed or stolen by cold-blooded villains parading in the mask of reform.

"Yes, the time has come to speak. It is even well-nigh too late. Within the past fortnight a young mother and her baby boy have been burned to death under circumstances which suggest to me the possibility that, had I made this statement sooner, their lives would have been saved; and, as I now write these lines, I fairly shudder at the thought that they may not reach the public and the interested parties before some new holocaust has added to the number of those who have already fallen victims. Others who know the facts, well-meaning editors of leading journals of so-called communistic anarchism, may, from a sense of mistaken party fealty, bear longer the fearful responsibility of silence, if they will; for one I will not, cannot. I will take the other responsibility of exposure, which responsibility I personally and entirely assume, although the step is taken after conference upon its wisdom with some of the most trusted and active anarchists in America.

"Now, then, the facts. And they are facts, though I state them generally, without names, dates, or details.

"The main fact is this: that for nearly two years a large number of the most active members of the German Group of the International Working People's Association in New York City, and of the Social Revolutionary Club, another German organization in that city, have been persistently engaged in getting money by insuring their property for amounts far in excess of the real value thereof, secretly removing everything that they could, setting fire to the premises, swearing to heavy losses, and exacting corresponding sums from the insurance companies. Explosion of kerosene lamps is usually the device which they employ. Some seven or eight fires, at least, of this sort were set in New York and Brooklyn in 1884 by members of the gang, netting the beneficiaries an aggregate profit of thousands of dollars. In 1885 nearly twenty more were set, with equally profitable results. The record for 1886 has reached six already, if not more. The business has been carried on with the most astonishing audacity. One of these men had his premises insured, fired them, and presented his bill of loss to the company within twenty-four hours after getting his policy, and before the agent had reported the policy to the company. The bill was paid, and a few months later the same fellow, under another name, played the game over again, though not quite so speedily. In one of the fires set in 1885 a woman and two children were burned to death. The two guilty parties in this case were members of the Bohemian Group and are now serving life sentences in prison. Another of the fires was started in a six-story tenement house, endangering the lives of hundreds, but fortunately injuring no one but the incendiary. In one case in 1886 the firemen have saved two women whom they found clinging to their bed posts in a half-suffocated condition. In another a man, woman, and baby lost their lives. Three members of the gang are now in jail awaiting trial for murdering and robbing an old woman in Jersey City. Two others are in jail under heavy bail and awaiting trial for carrying concealed weapons and assaulting an officer. They were walking arsenals, and were found under circumstances which lead to the suspicion that they were about to perpetrate a robbery, if not a murder.

"The profits accruing from this 'propagandism by deed' are not even used for the benefit of the movement to which the criminals belong, but go to fill their own empty pockets, and are often spent in reckless, riotous living. The guilty parties are growing bolder and bolder, and, anticipating detection ultimately, a dozen or so of them have agreed to commit perjury in order to involve the innocent as accomplices in their crimes. It is their boast that the active anarchists shall all go to the gallows together."

The history of terrorist tactics in America largely centers about the career of Johann Most. In August Bebel's story of his life he speaks in high terms of the unselfish devotion and sterling character of Most in his early days. "If later on," says Bebel, "under the anti-socialist laws, he went astray and became an anarchist and an advocate of direct action, and finally, although he had been a model of abstinence, ended in the United States as a drunkard, it was all due to the anti-socialist laws, laws which drove him and many others from the country. Had he remained under the influence of the men who were able to guide him and restrain his passionate temper, the party would have possessed in him a most zealous, self-sacrificing, and indefatigable fighter." (12) Most, then, was one of the victims of Bismarck's savage policies, as were also nearly all the other Germans who took part in the sordid crimes related by Tucker. And the Haymarket—the greatest of all American tragedies—leads directly back to the Iron Chancellor and his ferocious inquisition.

A few minor incidents of anarchist activity may be recorded for the following years, but the only acts of importance were the shooting of President McKinley by Czolgosz and the shooting of Henry C. Frick by Alexander Berkman. In the "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," Berkman has now told us that as a youth he became a disciple of Bakounin and a fiery member of the Nihilist group. It was after the Homestead strike that Berkman saw a chance to propagate his gospel by a deed. Leaving his home in New York, he went to Pittsburgh for the purpose of killing Henry C. Frick, then head of the Carnegie Steel Company. Berkman made his way into Frick's office, shot at and slightly wounded him. In explanation of this act he says: "In truth, murder and attentat (that is, political assassination) are to me opposite terms. To remove a tyrant is an act of liberation, the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people." (13) For this attempt on the life of Frick, Berkman was condemned to a term of imprisonment of twenty-two years. Despite a few isolated outbreaks, it may be said, therefore, that the seeds of anarchism have never taken root in America, just as they have never taken root in Germany or in England. To-day there are no active American terrorists and only a handful of avowed anarchists. In the Latin countries, however, the deeds of terrorism still played a tragic part in the history of the next few years.