George N. McLean

A description of Herr Most’s sanctum. A den where anarchy was begotten. The anarchist chief’s museum of weapons and infernal machines. Easy lessons in the art of assassination.

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1887.

Since Johann Most’s release I had often resolved to visit his editorial sanctum and see some of his surroundings, but I never had the opportunity until a few days ago, when I sought William street and paused a moment before 167. This is the place where undiluted anarchy presents itself through the medium of the Freiheit, which has succeeded so well that it has been enlarged to double its former size. On the ground floor a lager-beer saloon is doing a thriving business, and the old saying that Teutonic journalism always manifests an inclination to take up its abode in proximity to a place where honors are paid to King Gambrinus is borne out in this instance, even when the journalists wage war on all other monarchs.

Entering the hallway you will notice, as soon as your eyes are able to penetrate the darkness, a large red banner on the wall bearing the inscription, “Vive la Commune.” A cast-iron letter-box, marked “John Most,” attracts one’s attention for a moment, and then we ascend two flights of narrow, creaky stairs, and step into a large, dilapidated room, extending over the entire top floor of the building. Here the Freiheit is written, put into type, and, after being printed elsewhere, mailed to subscribers. There is hardly a country on the globe which has not the honor of giving shelter to some anarchist subscriber. A perfect deluge of revolutionary pamphlets issues from this forlorn-looking loft.

About a dozen men were engaged in folding and wrapping the latest number of the Freiheit. In order to keep up their spirits at this hard work a goodly quantity of the favorite German beverage is consumed, cigars and short pipes emit big clouds of smoke, and a noisy debate is carried on all the time. Every one of these savage-looking specimens of humanity strives to assume an air that suggests his merely waiting for a favorable opportunity to slaughter all monarchs and capitalists on the face of the earth. There are Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Bohemians, and a Dane in the group. Regular employment is a notion too conservative and utterly foreign to their minds. They are here folding papers to serve the revolutionary cause, and receive no other recompense than the consciousness of having performed their duty.

OVERAWING THE VISITORS.

One of the heroes, who evidently desires to overawe us, takes a small quantity of gun cotton out of his pocket, another produces a sample of dynamite, and each asserts that the stuff he carries is an excellent agent to further the grand idea of universal anarchy. All join in a dispute concerning the most effective methods for blowing up public institutions, and the folding business is meanwhile neglected. The anarchist chief, Herr Most, has been conversing with a good-looking young female anarchist, who came over for the purpose of paying her respects to the great dynamiter; but now his attention is directed to his hot-headed disciples.

“Get through your work,” he shouts; “you may babble all you want afterward.”

The admonition is heeded only for a few moments. The folders have a theme demanding urgent action. The sentence of the Chicago anarchists has excited the wrath and of every anarchist and frenzied cries of threatened vengeance burst forth from all sides. Herr Most again commands silence, and his announcement that a mass-meeting would be held on Sunday, at which both English and German speakers would be present, is hailed with tumultuous applause. The presence of strangers seems to be totally ignored for the moment. The anarchists fully understand that they are at liberty here to run the revolutionary machine at their own sweet pleasure, so long as the struggle is confined to the tongue. I conclude to invest 5 cents, and a copy of the Freiheit is handed to me. The editor reflects upon the propriety of a national thanksgiving. His language is not choice, but rather painfully harsh. Here is a goodly specimen:

“Our army of the unemployed, probably, will give thanks that the capitalists are so very prosperous. Poor, haggard women will give thanks over their weak tea and dry baker’s bread that they have been allowed to lay up wealth for their employers. Factory children, who never see anything but the grim shop walls by daylight, will give thanks that they have been brought into this beautiful world, and hard-working day laborers lucky enough to have any kind of a job will give thanks that the cormorants of society have not taken the last mouthful away from them.”

Another article deals with the anti-Chinese movement on the Pacific coast, and urges the white working men to expel every greedy monopolist instead of persecuting the poor celestial.

ANARCHISTIC LITERATURE AND WEAPONS.

Before I proceed to inspect the curiously decorated walls my attention is called to an assortment of anarchistic literature spread on a large table. The most extraordinary productions of fever-brained revolutionists from all countries are here exposed for sale. The works of Herr Most occupy the most conspicuous place, and titles like “Gottespect und Religrionsenche,” “Eigenthumsbestie,” and “Elements of Revolutionary Warfare” embelishembellish the title pages. I open the last book at haphazard and read:

“The best of all preparations to be used for poisoning is curaricurare.

“By heating a dagger and then tempering it in oil of oleander, the infliction of a light wound would be sufficient to produce blood-poisoning and death.

“The cheapest and least expensive way is to apply a mixture of red phosphorus and gum arabicum to the dagger, cartridge, etc.

“This precious stuff (dynamite), which is able to blast a mass of solid rock, might also do good service at an assembly of royal or aristocratic personages, or at an entertainment patronized by monopolists.”

Herr Most, who had eyed me sharply, asked at last: “Would you like to join our circle, or perhaps it is only a few of your private enemies you contemplate doing up? All necessary information can be had by studying my ‘Kriegswissencraft.’” The hint was a broad one, and I thought it the safest plan to spend a dime on the “murder pamphlet,” thus propitiating the tiger in his den.

The room might be considered at first glance an armory. There are revolvers of all constructions, daggers, rifles, infernal machines, and a big saber with a rusty scabbard. I could scarcely repress a laugh at this relic of the great French revolution, or some equally remote historic event.

“You make a mistake by laughing,” said Most, unsheathing the sword. “You will observe the blade is as sharp as a razor, and,” he added with a certain pride, “the point is, by way of experiment, coated with a solution of cyanide of potassium.”

The majority of the rifles are breech-loaders, formerly used in the United States army, and bought by Most in large lots at auction for retailing among his followers. On a shelf above the editor’s desk a variety of the most dangerous poisons, liquid and solid, are openly exposed. The anarchist chief remarked, with a grim smile, that he seriously contemplated breeding cholera and yellow-fever germs for the purpose of exterminating mankind, rather than suffer the present condition of society to perpetuate itself.

WALL DECORATIONS.

The walls of the room are almost totally covered with pictures, portraits, newspaper headings, etc. In crazy-quilt fashion is arranged Lieske, Shakspere, Hoedel, Rousseau, Karl Marx, Feurbach, Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Richard Wagner, Marat, Hans Sachs, St. Simon, Lassalle, Proudhon, Anton Kammerer, Stallmacher, the Irish patriots, Brady, Kelly, Curley, Tynan, Wilson, Gallagher, and Normann, a life-size picture of Louise Michel, an excellent photograph of prince Krapotkine, pictures from Puck, Punch, Fleigende Blatter, sketches from George Eber’s “Egypt”—a queer collection indeed.

Herr Most takes especial pride in a gibbet traced in red lines on the whitewashed wall and bearing portraits of the following persons: The emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria, Queen Victoria, President Grevey, King Humbert, King Christian of Denmark and his premier, Estrup; the Shah of Persha; the Sultan, the Emperors of China, Japan, and Brazil, and President Cleveland. As an illustration of the bitter feeling prevailing between the anarchists and socialists was a caricature of Alexander Jonas, the socialist politician, playing a flute to the inspiring tune, “Wait Till the Clouds Roll By.”

The German Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, is caricatured a dozen different ways, and blood-thirsty sentiments are written beneath the pictures. A large picture presents the famous Rus-conspirators against Alexander II.; another recalls the trial of Reinsdorf and comrades, charged with high treason; then follow some scenes from the Paris commune in 1871, and next to these sanguinary sketches an elegant fan is suspended, unconscious of its strange surroundings. Anarchistic papers from every quarter of the world are pasted from ceiling to floor, and we learn the existence of obscure journals like Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre, Fackel, Le Cri du Peuple, Alarm, Lucifer, Revolte, La Question Sociale, the Roumelian periodical Revista Sociale, Il Fascio Operairo, Der Arme Teufel, and Proletaren. Italians who stray into this nest have an opportunity of studying a “Programma Socialista, Anarchico, Revoluzionario del Giuppo Italiano.”

Perhaps the master of this queer den will soon view the world once more through prison bars.

COMYNS RAY.