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Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906

Author: Various

Editor: Emma Goldman

Release date: September 12, 2008 [eBook #26600]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26600

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER
EARTH, VOL. 1 NO. 1, MARCH 1906 ***

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Mother Earth E. Goldman and M. Baginski 1
The Song of the Storm-Finch Maxim Gorky 4
Observations and Comments 5
The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation E. Goldman 9
Try Love Grace Potter 18
Without Government Max Baginski 20
Vive Le Roi Frances Wauls Bjorkman 27
Reflections of a Rich Man 28
Comstockery John R. Coryell 30
Don Quixote and Hamlet Turgenieff 40
On the Banks of Acheron Edwin Bjorkman 42
The British Elections and the Labor Parties H. Kelly 44
And You? Bolton Hall 48
National Atavism Internationalist 49
Mine Owners' Revenge M. B. 56
International Review 58
Literary Notes 61
Advertisements 63

MOTHER EARTH
HERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the
universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created
merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a
supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put
them into possession of it.
When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of
science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars
floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust.
Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor
recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an
explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the
dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a
temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for
him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the
infinite sprang into being, creating the "Great Beyond" and proclaiming
Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being,
tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience.
In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each
other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-
constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only
refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that
asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete
subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge,
was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for
himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself,
the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty,
beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But
ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was
heard calling: "Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to
sin!"

But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a
source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the
autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken
possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march.
But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their
moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs.
To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas
Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth,
with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom,
extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from
arbitrary and despotic lands—Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all
her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom,
fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous
shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke,
soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on
wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle
between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with
greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had
sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an
arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and
intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every
material and mental resource.
During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say
about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian
censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than
him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by
the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the
money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they
forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the
people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and
to serve as a good business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The
number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is
very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the
moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human
race in awe.

Mother Earth will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose
encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive
for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that
stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those
who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender
shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread
of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free
individual!
Emma Goldman,
Max Baginski.

The Song of the Storm-Finch[A]
By Maxim Gorky

he strong wind is gathering the storm-clouds together
Above the gray plain of the ocean so wide.
The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning,
Between clouds and ocean is soaring in pride.

Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting
Up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high,
The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly;
The clouds can hear joy in the bird's fearless cry.

In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest,
And anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard;
The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph—
All these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird....

The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring;
With flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glow
O'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings,
And quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.

Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing,
The lightnings reflected there quiver and shake
As into the blackness they vanish forever.
The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!

The storm-finch soars fearless and proud 'mid the lightnings,
Above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret;
And what is the prophet of victory saying?
"Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet—fiercer yet!"

FOOTNOTE:

[A] From "Songs of Russia," rendered into English by Alice Stone
Blackwell

To the Readers
The name "Open Road" had to be abandoned, owing to the existence of a
magazine by that name.

Observations and Comments
The importance of written history for the people can easily be compared
with the importance of a diary for the individual. It furnishes data for
recollections, points of comparison between the Past and Present. But as
most diaries and auto-biographies show a lack of straight-forward, big,
simple, sincere self-analyses, so does history seldom prove a representation
of facts, of the truth, of reality.
The way history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the
writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will
altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or
narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools,
or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a
misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the
impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating crowd in the background.
Quacks of history speak only of "great men" like Bonapartes, Bismarcks,
Deweys, or Rough Riders as leaders of the people, while the latter serve as a
setting, a chorus, howling the praise of the heroes, and also furnishing their
blood money for the whims and extravagances of their masters. Such history
only tends to produce conceit, national impudence, superciliousness and
patriotic stupidity, all of which is in full bloom in our great Republic.
Our aim is to teach a different conception of historical events. To define
them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might.
A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the
recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human
beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the
individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to
shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and
strongest qualities of the human race.

The American Brutus is, of course, a business man and has no time to
overthrow Cæsar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and
too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a
bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with
nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy
mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall of the
Republic.
Between ourselves, the number of those who still believe in the American
Republic can be counted on one's fingers. One has either pierced through the
lie, all for the people and by the people—in that case one must become a
Revolutionist; or, one has succeeded in putting one's bounty in safety—then
he is a conservative. "No disturbances, please. We are about to close a
profitable contract." Modern bourgeoisie is absolutely indifferent as to who
is to be their political boss, just so they are given opportunity to store their
profits, and accumulate great wealth. Besides, the cry about the decline of
the great Republic is really meaningless. As far as it ever stood for liberty
and well-being of the people, it has long ceased to be. Therefore
lamentations come too late. True, the American Republic has not given birth
to an aristocracy. It has produced the power of the parvenu, not less brutal
than European aristocracy, only narrower in vision and not less vulgar in
taste.
Instead of mourning one ought to rejoice that the latest display of
disgusting servility has completely thrown off the mantle of liberty and
independence of Dame Columbia, now exposed before the civilized world in
all her slavish submissiveness.

The storm in Russia has frightened many out of their warm bed-clothes.
A real Revolution in these police-regulated times. More than one voice
was raised against the possibility of a Revolution, and they who dared to
predict it were considered fit for the lunatic asylum.
The workingmen, peasants and students of Russia, however, have proven
that the calculations of the "wise" contained a hitch somewhere. A

Revolution swept across the country and did not even stop to ask permission
of those in authority.
Authority and Power are now taking revenge on their daring sons and
daughters. The Cossacks, at the command of the "good Czar" are celebrating
a bloody feast—knouting, shooting, clubbing people to death, dragging great
masses to prisons and into exile, and it is not the fault of that vicious idiot on
the throne, nor that of his advisors, Witte and the others, if the Revolution
still marches on, head erect. Were it in their power, they would break her
proud neck with one stroke, but they cannot put the heads of a hundred
million people on the block, they cannot deport eighty millions of Peasants
to Siberia, nor can they order all the workingmen in the industrial districts
shot. Were the working bees to be killed, the drones would perish of
starvation—that is why the Czar of the Peace Treaty still suffers some of his
people to live?——

In Mayville, Wis., a transvaluation society has been formed, the purpose
of which is, to bring about the transvaluation of all values in matters of love
and the relations of the sexes. The members of this society are to contribute
by word and deed towards the breaking of all barriers that prevent an ideal
and healthy conception of love.
The president of this society, Emil Ruedebusch, known in this country
through his work, "The Old and New Ideal," which, by the way, was
confiscated upon the grounds of obscenity and the author put on trial. It is an
undisputed fact that robust, graft-greedy Columbia abhors every free
expression on love or marriage. Emil Ruedebusch, like many others who
have dared to lift the veil of hypocrisy, was condemned to a heavy fine. A
second work of the author, "Die Eigenen," was published in Germany.
His idea, that the relation of the sexes must be freed from the oppressing
fetters of a lame morality that degrades every human emotion to the plane of
utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal
seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against
the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy and stupid prudery, against the
simplest manifestation of nature.

The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation
By Emma Goldman

BEGIN my article with an admission: Regardless of all political and
economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between
the various groups within the human race, regardless of class and
race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's
rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these
differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.
With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social
antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life to-day, brought
about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble
to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the
principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.
Peace and harmony between the sexes and individuals does not
necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it
call for the elimination of individual traits or peculiarities. The problem that
confronts us to-day, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be
oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings
and still retain one's own innate qualities. This seems to me the basis upon
which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true
individuality, man and woman can meet without antagonism and opposition.
The motto should not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one
another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: "To understand
everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to
me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys
the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow being suffices.
This admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the
emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.
Emancipation should make it possible for her to be human in the truest
sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach
its fullest expression; and all artificial barriers should be broken and the road

towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission
and slavery.
This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation.
But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of
the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely
external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being
who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque
trees and shrubs—pyramids, wheels and wreaths; anything except the forms
which would be reached by the expression of their own inner qualities. Such
artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers,
especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.
Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words
awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest
souls of those days. The sun in all its light and glory was to rise upon a new
world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny, an aim
certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance and
ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who
staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.
My hopes also move towards that goal, but I insist that the emancipation
of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach
that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of
emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This
may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.
What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few
states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates
have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with
plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a
boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the
morals or the laxity of morals of various political personalities. Its cause is
altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial
world, the mottoes of which are: "to take is more blessed than to give"; "buy
cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope
that even woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is,
she can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present
physical training have not equipped her with the necessary strength to
compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up
her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very
few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors, lawyers, architects and
engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the
same remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality generally
do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the
great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained
if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the
narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store,
or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking
after a "home, sweet home"—cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting—after a
day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls
are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their
independence behind the counter, or at the sewing or typewriting machine.
They are just as ready to marry as girls of middle class people who long to
throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called independence which
leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal
that one can expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised
independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman's
nature, her love instinct and her mother instinct.
Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural and
human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured
professional walk of life. Teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who
have to make a dignified, straightened and proper appearance, while the
inner life is growing empty and dead.
The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and
emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the
fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that
love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her
profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a
compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its
deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

Emancipation as understood by the majority of its adherents and
exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless joy and ecstasy
contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in
freedom.
The tragic fate of the self-supporting or economically free woman does
not consist of too many, but of too few experiences. True, she surpasses her
sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; and
it is because of that that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which
alone can enrich the human soul and without which the majority of women
have become mere professional automatons.
That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who
realized that in the domain of ethics, there still remained many decaying
ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still
considered useful. And, which is more important, a goodly number of the
emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that
aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof
with such as are more advanced, more perfect, has followers, who in theory
stand for the most extreme radical ideas, and who, nevertheless, in their
every-day practice, are like the next best Philistine, feigning respectability
and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for
example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that
property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the
value of a half-dozen pins.
The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's
emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk and water literateurs have painted
pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen
and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the women's
rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of
morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation
between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless
life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion and morality. The
exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such a
misrepresentation, and, lacking in humor, they exerted all their energy to
prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very
reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be
good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove

how good she could be and how her influence would have a purifying effect
on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman's rights has
broken many old fetters, but it has also established new ones. The great
movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women,
who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow puritanical vision banished
man as a disturber and doubtful character out of their emotional life. Man
was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child,
since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately,
the most rigid puritanism never will be strong enough to kill the innate
craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied to man's
freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the
fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human
being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow
conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the
lives of the modern man and woman.
About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant
Norwegian writer, Laura Marholm, called "Woman, a Character Study." She
was one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of the
existing conception of woman's emancipation and its tragic effect upon the
inner life of woman. In her work she speaks of the fate of several gifted
women of international fame: The genius, Eleanora Duse; the great
mathematician and writer, Sanja Kovalevskaja; the artist and poet nature,
Marie Bashkirzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives
of these women of such extraordinary mentality, runs a marked trail of
unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete and beautiful life, and the
unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly
psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the higher the mental
development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial
mate, who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend,
comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single
trait of her character.
The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs of
patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for woman, as depicted
in the "Character Study" by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is
the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality and genius, and
who fails to awaken her woman nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes
of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these
attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For
over a hundred years, the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till
death us do part" has been denounced as an institution that stands for the
sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her complete submission to his
whims and commands and the absolute dependence upon his name and
support. Time and again it has been conclusively proven that the old
matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of man's servant and
the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who
prefer marriage with all its deficiencies to the narrowness of an unmarried
life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social
prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.
The cause for such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is
to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of
emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from
external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth,
such as ethical and social conventions, were left to take care of themselves;
and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along beautifully
in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman's
emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers.
These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or
what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt or relative of any sort; what
will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say?
All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will
they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her
own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the
voice of her nature, whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man,
or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot
call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough
to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against their
breasts demanding to be heard, to be satisfied.
The French novelist, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, "New Beauty,"
attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is
embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very clearly and wisely of
how to feed infants, she is kind and administers medicines free to poor

mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the
sanitary conditions of the future and how various bacilli and germs shall be
exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and the doing away of
rugs and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed,
mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first meeting was overawed
by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her,
and recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young and she is
kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is
softened by spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he
would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities.
Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure
beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature and remains correct.
She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they
had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I
must confess that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as
cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the
love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an
elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by a father's
curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than
correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know
how to give and take without restriction it is not love, but a transaction that
never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its
artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities which produce an emptiness
in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once
remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-
fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little
ones and the comfort of those she loved and the truly new woman, than
between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of
emancipation pure and simple declared me heathen, merely fit for the stake.
Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and
the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had
more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater
amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of
our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning,
and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does
it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer
future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and
habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so far made but the
first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to
make another. The right to vote, equal civil rights, are all very good
demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It
begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained its
true liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that
woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as
her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is therefore far more important
for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of
prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for various equal rights in
every vocation in life is just and fair, but, after all, the most vital right is the
right to love and be loved. Indeed if the partial emancipation is to become a
complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the
ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is
synonomous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with
the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman
represent two antagonistic worlds.
Pettiness separates, breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not
overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true
conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and
conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly
in order to find oneself richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the
emptiness and replace the tragedy of woman's emancipation with joy,
limitless joy.

TRY LOVE
By Grace Potter

N the human heart it lies. The key to happiness Men call the key
love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows
where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they,
laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door
for very bliss and waiting. Just outside they laugh and play and blow wild
kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their youth
found happiness in just that way, is gathered round to see it found again.
When at last the man and maid unlock the door and go in joy to find their
happiness, the men and women who have been watching them bury their
faces in their hands and weep. Why do they weep? Because they are thinking
that soon other doors in life will be met by this man and maid and that there
will be no keys to unlock them. They, themselves, could find no key.
They never thought of trying the key of love in all the doors of life. Long
and wearily, eyes searching wide, hands eagerly groping, they have spent
their time trying to find other keys. They have looked for and found
knowledge. And tried that. Looked for and found fame. And tried that.
Looked for and found wealth. And tried that. Looked for and found many,
many other keys. And tried them all. And when at last they have lain down
on their deathbeds, they have turned gray hopeless faces to the world and
died saying, "We could not find the right key."
Some few, some very few, there are, who try the key of love in all life's
doors. Radiant, they turn to the men and women about and cry, "Try love! It
unlocks all other doors as surely as it does the first in life. Try love!"
And though their fellow beings see that these are the only ones in all the
world who find happiness, they turn doubting from them. "It cannot be,"
they say, "that the key we used in youth should be used again in all the other
doors of life." And so they keep on trying the keys that every disappointed,
dying man calls out in warning voice will fail.

Only a few there are who learn—a very few—that love unlocks all other
doors in life as surely as it does the first. Try love!

Japan.—A new civilization. The land of a new culture! was the cry of
every penny-a-liner at the time when she began to display her battleships,
cannon, and her accomplished method of drilling her soldiers. They were
mocking themselves and did not know how. They talk of culture and
civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of
murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of
other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on
the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported,
are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now
that Japan is a civilized country.

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT
By Max Baginski

HE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present
in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization,
and co-operative work without the application of force. Such
qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are
either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they
can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and
individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In
human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate
instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy
the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not
be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and
institutions of the present social order.
On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power
of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie,
in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy
jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker
competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and
confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance
of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal
noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality
the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mechanical:
"In the name of the king," or his more hypocritical: "In the name of the
people I pass sentence"; the soldier with his training for murder, and the
priest with his: "Authority comes from God."
The exteriors of prisons, armories, and churches show that they are
institutions in which the body and soul are subdued. He whose thoughts
reach beyond this philosophy of the menagerie sees in them the strongest
expression of the view, that it is not possible to make life worth living the
more with the help of reason, love, justice, solidarity. The family and school

take care to prepare man for these institutions. They deliver him up to the
state, so to speak, blindfolded and with fettered limbs. Force, force. It echoes
through all history. The first law which subjected man to man was based
upon force. The private right of the individual to land was built up by force;
force took way the claims upon homesteads from the majority and made
them unsettled and transitory. It was force that spoke to mankind thus:
"Come to me, humble yourself before me, serve me, bring the treasures and
riches of the earth under MY roof. You are destined by Providence to always
be in want. You shall be allowed just enough to maintain strength with which
to enrich me infinitely by your exertions and to load me down with
superfluity and luxury."
What maintains the material and intellectual slavery of the masses and the
insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the
factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it
that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those
who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional part
of the values which they produce? It is force.
What is it that makes the brain-worker just as dependent in the intellectual
realm as the artisan in the material world? Force. The artist and the writer
being compelled to gain a livelihood dare not dream of giving the best of
their individuality. No, they must scan the market in order to find out what is
demanded just then. Not any different than the dealer in clothes who must
study the style of the season before he places his merchandise before the
public. Thus art and literature sink to the level of bad taste and speculation.
The artistic individuality shrinks before the calculating reckoner. Not that
which moves the artist or the writer most receives expression; the vacillating
demands of mediocrity of every-day people must be satisfied. The artist
becomes the helper of the dealer and the average men, who trot along in the
tracks of dull habit.
The State Socialists love to assert that at present we live in the age of
individualism; the truth, however, is that individuality was never valued at so
low a rate as to-day. Individual thinking and feeling are incumbrances and
not recommendations on the paths of life. Wherever they are found on the
market they meet with the word "adaptation." Adapt yourself to the demands
of the reigning social powers, act the obedient servant before them, and if
you produce something be sure that it does not run against the grain of your

"superiors," or say adieu to success, reputation and recompense. Amuse the
people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh,
prejudices which they hold as righteousness and falsehoods which they hold
as truths. Paint the whole, crown it with regard for good manners, for society
does not like to hear the truth about itself. Praise the men in power as fathers
of the people, have the devourers of the common wealth parade along as
benefactors of mankind.
Of course, the force which humbles humanity in this manner is far from
openly declaring itself as force. It is masked, and in the course of time it has
learned to step forward with the least possible noise. That diminishes the
danger of being recognized.
The modern republic is a good example. In it tyranny is veiled so
correctly, that there are really great numbers of people who are deceived by
this masquerade, and who maintain that what they perceive is a true face
with honest eyes.
No czar, no king. But right in line with these are the landowners, the
merchants, manufacturers, landlords, monopolists. They all are in
possession, which is as strong a guarantee for the continuance of their
power, as a castle surrounded by thick walls. Whoever possesses can rob him
who possesses nothing of his independence. If I am dependent for a living on
work, for which I need contrivances and machines, which I my self cannot
procure, because I am without means, I must sacrifice my independence to
him who possesses these contrivances and machines. You may work here, he
will tell me, but only under the condition that you will deliver up the
products of your labor to me, that I may trade with and make profit on them.
The one without possessions has no choice. He may appeal to the
declaration of human rights; he may point to his political rights, the equality
before the law, before God and the archangels—if he wants to eat, drink,
dress and have a home he must choose such work as the conditions of the
industrial mercantile or agricultural plants impose upon him.
Through organized opposition the workingmen can somewhat improve
this condition; by the help of trade unions they can regulate the hours of
work and hinder the reduction of wages to a level too low for mere living.
The trade unions are a necessity for the workingmen, a bulwark against

which the most unbearable demands of the class of possessors rebound; but a
complete freeing of labor—be it of an intellectual or of a physical nature—
can be brought about only through the abolition of wage work and the right
of private ownership of land and the sources of maintenance and
nourishment of mankind. There are heart-rending cries over the blasphemous
opinion that property is not as holy a thing as its possessors would like to
make it. They declare that possessions must not be less protected than
human life, for they are necessary foundations of society. The case is
represented as though everybody were highly interested in the maintenance
of the right of private property, whereas conditions are such that non-
possession is the normal condition of most people.
Because few possess everything, therefore the many possess nothing. So
far as possession can be considered as an oppressive measure in the hands of
a few, it is a monopoly. Set in a paradox it would read: The abolition of
property will free the people from homelessness and non-possession. In fact,
this will happen when the earth with its treasures shall cease to be an object
of trade for usurers; when it shall vouchsafe to all a home and a livelihood.
Then not only the bent bodies will straighten; the intellect free itself as might
the bound Prometheus rid himself of his fetters and leave the rock to which
he is chained, but we shall look back on the institutions of force, the state,
the hangman, et al, as ghosts of an anxious fantasy.
In free unions the trades will organize themselves and will produce the
means of livelihood. Things will not be produced for profit's sake, but for the
sake of need. The profit-grabber has grown superfluous just as his patron,
the state, which at present serves by means of its taxes and revenues, his
anti-humanitarian purposes and hinders the reasonable consumption of
goods. From the governing mania the foundation will be withdrawn; for
those strata in society will be lacking which therefore had grown rich and fat
by monopolizing the earth and its production. They alone needed legislatures
to make laws against the disinherited. They needed courts of justice to
condemn; they needed the police to carry out practically the terrible social
injustice, the cause of which lay in their existence and manner of living. And
now the political corruptionists are lacking who served the above-mentioned
classes as helpers, and therefore had to be supported as smaller drones.
What a pleasant surprise! We see now that the production and distribution
of means of livelihood are a much simpler matter without government than

with government. And people now realize that the governments never
promoted their welfare, but rather made it impossible, since with the help of
force they only allowed the right of possession to the minority.
Life is really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a
repugnant struggle for a mere existence.
Truth and beauty are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means
of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which
to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need
not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as Esau sold his
primogeniture.
At last the individuality of man has struck a solid social foundation on
which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies
art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the
state and ownership—which is far-reaching—must take the direction of
prescribed models that are acknowledged, and must not be directed against
the continuance of the leisure classes.
Love will be free. Love's favor is a free granting, a giving and taking
without speculation. No prostitution; for the economic and social power of
one person over another exists no longer, and with the falling off of external
oppression many an internal serfdom of feeling will be done away with,
which often is only the reflex of hard external compulsion. Then the longing
of large hearts may take tangible shape. Utopias are arrows aimed into the
future, harbingers of a new reality.
Rabelais, in his description of life in the "Thelemite Abbey," wrote:
"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to
their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they
thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it,
and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain
them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing. In all their rule and strictest tie of
their order, there was but this one clause to be observed: 'Do What Thou
Wilt.'
"Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest
companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto

virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor.
Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought
under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they
formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off that bond of servitude, wherein
they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable to the nature of man to
long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us. By this liberty
they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw
did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, 'Let us drink,' they
would all drink. If any one of them said, 'Let us play,' they all played. If one
said, 'Let us go a walking into the fields,' they went all. If it were to go a
hawking, or a hunting, the ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags,
seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists either a
sparhawk, or a lanneret, or a marlin, and the young gallants carried the other
kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she
amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical
instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all
very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so
noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and horseback, more
brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of
weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome,
so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with
their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were
there."

A few days ago the red ghost of revolution showed itself in the White
House. The President saw it and threatened it with his boxing fists: "What
are you looking for here, be off to Russia." "You are comical in your
excitement," answered Revolution. "You must know, I am not only Russian,
I am international, at home here as well as on the other side of the great
water."
A Proposition.—Would it not be wiser to explain theories out of life and
not life out of theories?

VIVE LE ROI
By Frances Maule Bjorkman

YE, vive le roi. The King is dead—
So move our lives from day to day.
The triumph of to-morrow's lord
Meets for our former chief's decay.

Then love and live and laugh and sing—
The world is good and life is free—
There's not a single care I know
That's worth a single tear from me.

What's love or fame or place or power?
What's wealth when we shall come to die?
What matters anything on earth
So long as only I am I?

The Joy or grief or love or shame
That holds its little hour of sway
Is only worth its destined time—
What use to try to make it stay?

Aye, let it go. The monarch dead,
A better king our shouts may hail
And if a worse—well, still be glad;
He too will pass behind the vail.

They all must pass—fame, joy and love,
The sting of grief, the blot of shame;
The only thing that really counts
Is how we bear the praise or blame.

I'll take the good the while it lasts

And when it goes I'll learn to sing,
All eager for the coming joy—
"The king is dead, long live the king."

Reflections of A Rich Man
If God were not in existence we would have to order one from the
Professors of Theology.
The fear, instilled in the majority of the poor, with the God, Devil, Heaven
and Hell idea, is greater than their dread of a hundred thousand policemen.
Had we not given God the place of Chief Gendarme of the Universe, we
would need twice as many soldiers and police as we have to-day.

A poor devil who owns but one million dollars said to me the other day:
"I, in your place, would rather contribute money towards art and literature
than to donate it to the Baptist Church." What an impracticable fellow! Art
and literature, among the common people, only tends to cause mischief.
They are to remain our privilege. We know the demands of good taste and
we can afford to pay for the æsthetic pleasures of life. The majority is unable
to do that; besides, to teach them the beauty of art only means to make them
discontented and rebellious against our authority.

I frankly admit I never had a great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth. A
man of disordered circumstances arouses my disgust. Jesus was neither
engaged in any kind of a business, nor did he possess as much as a bank
account, nor even a steady home. He preached to the poor. What for? The
poor should work and not philosophize. The Scriptures tell nowhere that
Jesus returned the mule, upon which he made his entry into Jerusalem, to the
owner, or that he paid him for it. I strongly suspect he did not do it. One
thing is certain, I never would have taken this dreamer of the abolition of
profits as my business partner.

It was very hot yesterday. I walked through my park, intending to betake
myself to my favorite place for rest and reverie. Suddenly I stood still,
arrested by the sight of a man lying under a tree. In my park? And how the
fellow looked! In rags and dirty! I have been told I was kind-hearted, and I
realized this myself at the moment. I walked over to the man and inquired
interestedly: "Are you ill?" He grunted in reply. The wretch must have
thought, in his sleep, that I was one of his kind. My generosity did not cease.
"If you need money, do not feel shy about telling me. How much do you
need. I am the rich X Y Z, who has a fabulous fortune, as you have
undoubtedly heard." At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side,
with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: "What I want? I want to
sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two
hours?" Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and
ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I
fear our charitable efforts in their behalf will accomplish little.

Eleven million, nine hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and
forty-six dollars and fifty-eight cents is what the gallant Gen. Bingham asks
us for protecting us from each other for the ensuing year. With a population
of four million and 4.50 members to a family, we pay a fraction less than $3
per head, and about $13.50 for a family, a year for police protection in this
enlightened Christian (750,000 of us are Jews, but ours is a Christian city)
city of ours. I'd give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own
business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is
my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for
it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no
higher ambition than to love my fellow-man—and woman, and mind my
own business; but his reply has invariably been, "I'm Dr. Tarr, and my
system prevails in this lunatic asylum!" I recognize the logic of his argument
all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful for the
privilege of grumbling a little now and again.

COMSTOCKERY
By John R. Coryell

E it understood that the shocking thing which we know as
Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being,
indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted
on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the
least comprehending the spirit of his lofty conception.
The man Comstock, who has the shameful distinction of having lent his
name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent,
may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only
the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands;
seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it.
It may be said, too, in dismissing him, that it is of no consequence
whether the very unpleasant stories current concerning him are true or not. It
is altogether probable that a man who stands for what he does and who
glories in proclaiming the things he does, will also do things for which he
does not stand and which he does not proclaim. That is a characteristic of
most of us and only proves that, after all, he is not less than human.
The only point that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of
representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul
would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for
most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took
pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the
abhorrence and the contempt of his fellows.
Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to regulate
the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it would be
absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals are only the
observances which the conditions of life impose upon a people; and an act
depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to those conditions. As, for
example, horse-stealing in a closely settled community, which has its

railroads and other means of communication, is a crime to be punished by a
brief period of imprisonment; while in the sparsely settled sections of a
country, where the horse is an imperative necessity of life, its theft becomes
a hanging matter, whatever the written law for that section of the country
may be as to the punishment of the crime. And men, brought up in law-
abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the
changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in
excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously
satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has
decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are
numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable
because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality.
In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves.
What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the
fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward a
certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential
immorality—using that word in its conventional sense—having its roots
deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the
cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful
expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the character of the simulator.
Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first Anglo-
Saxon, whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on this soil;
certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower, and was soon
blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out such a fragrance
that the peculiar odor of it has become a characteristic of this land of liberty.
When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to
be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene books and pictures
which were being freely circulated among the children of the land, boarding-
schools, whether for girls or boys, being fairly flooded with the pernicious
literature. The work of confiscation, suppression and of imprisonment was
done thoroughly and conscientiously, so that in the course of a
comparatively short time it was difficult to find books or pictures of the kind
in question. It is said that the effectiveness of the work done is best shown
by the one or more libraries of obscene books which the society, or some of
its officers, have collected.

The value of the work done and the efficiency of the workers were
recognized in the passage from time to time of laws giving extraordinary
powers not alone to the popularly so-called "Comstock Society," but to
officers of the government. A perfect fury of purity took possession of our
legislators; they were determined to stamp out impurity. And perhaps they
were establishing reputations for themselves. It is recorded that in the days
of the Inquisition men established their orthodoxy by the loudness of their
cries against heresy; that in the times of the French Revolution, men proved
their patriotism by making charges of treason against their neighbors; that
practicing polygamists have purified themselves by hounding a theoretical
polygamist out of their legislative body. Anyhow, the laws were passed, the
thing was done.
And what was the thing that was done? A moral Inquisition had been
established. Arguing from a wrong premise a hideous conclusion had been
reached. It was voiced only a few weeks ago by an official of the postoffice
in Chicago, when confiscating a publication. He said in substance, if not
literally: "Any discussion of sex is obscene."
There it is in a few words—a complete and perfect treatise on
Comstockery! In the early days in some parts of New England, a man might
not kiss his wife on a Sunday. On common days, the filthy act was
permissible, but the Sabbath must not be so defiled. And now, any discussion
of sex is obscenity!
Pause a while and consider what this means and whither it will lead,
where it has already led. Discussion of sex is obscene; then sex, itself, must
be obscene; life and all that pertains to it must be filthy. That is, providing it
be the life of Man. The sex of flowers may be discussed frankly and freely
either for the pleasure of knowledge, or in order to use knowledge for the
purpose of improving the flower. The sex of animals may be discussed; it is
discussed in government publications and in the many farm journals
published throughout the country, because it is necessary to improve the
breed of our domestic animals, because these animals are valuable. But
discussion of the sex of man is obscene!
There have been some changes in public sentiment, some changes,
perhaps, in the grey matter on the judicial bench, since the early days in New
York when Comstockery was most rampant: for what was tolerated then is

not tolerated now; some things that were judicially wrong then are judicially
right now. And in this change there is hope and the promise of greater
change.
In those early days a confectioner on Fulton street sought to attract
customers by exhibiting in his window a painting by a great artist. If
memory serves, it was "The Triumph of Charles V." by Hans Makart.
Figures of nude females were in the picture, and Comstockery established in
its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but
true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the
window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante
immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in
the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and—not
ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum
purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not even to be solved by the theory
of change in public sentiment; for it is only a few months ago that the art
censor in chief of Comstockery saw in the window of an art dealer on Fifth
Avenue a landscape in which figured several nude children discreetly
wandering away from the beholder. The picture was ordered out of the
window forthwith. And went. A few blocks below, on Broadway, there were
then and are now exhibited in a window, numerous photographs of nude
children, not all of them discreet as to way of their going. Why? Has the art
censor decided that the photographs are innocuous, or that they are art?
But these instances and the amazing expeditions made by the censor into
the realm of literature are hardly more than ludicrous; and they can and will
correct themselves. But the frightful results of Comstockery, as applied to
life and to real purity, cannot be so lightly passed over. And let it not be
forgotten that an indictment of Comstockery is an indictment of ourselves,
for the prurient, hypocritical, degrading thing can exist not one instant after
we have declared that it shall perish.
It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of society.
It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert impurity into a
basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has legislated knowledge into
a crime; and it seeks its perpetuation in the degradation of an enfeebled
human race. And that these are not over-statements can easily be established
to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind.

The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical
suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said, all is
said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that physician would
be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and powder and
permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows, unwarned even of
the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his life. Nay, worse! What if
the physician should have himself clothed with plenary powers and should
compel the poor wretch to refrain from making his case known after he had
discovered its nature? But this is precisely what Comstockery does.
The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the
symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate the
disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything possible was
done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was done to prevent
anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew anything about it,
from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was ignorance; ignorance of
self, of life, of sex. And not only does Comstockery strive to perpetuate
ignorance, not only does it glorify ignorance and miscall it innocence, not
only does it elevate it into a virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a
crime. The offence of the book it had eliminated was not its vicious
misinformation, but its use of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that
any discussion of sex is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man
of over seventy years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged
woman physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and
right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of
themselves.
It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it better be
called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the standing that it
once had. When it was made generally known that a postoffice official had
said that any discussion of sex was obscene, there followed such a rattling
fire of reprobation and condemnation even from many startled
conventionalists, who could support the thing but could not look it in the
face, that the maker of the now historic phrase was moved to deny that he
had said it officially. In fact, there are many signs, most of them still small,
on the distant horizon, it is true, which indicate that we are becoming alive to
the fact that it is imperative that sex should be discussed.

This is an age of radical ideas. Radicalism in politics, in religion, in ethics
is ripe; which is only another way of saying that we are beginning to dare to
think. Probably the most apparent, if not the most significant, sign of the
general radicalism, is the tendency to exalt the science of life to an even
higher plane than that which it occupied in the days of Hellenic supremacy.
We are beginning to understand that right living is a purely physical matter,
and that morals are only laws of health; and if there are yet but few who dare
take so radical a view of morals as that, still there are quite as few who will
not admit freely that nothing can be immoral which is beneficial to the
human body.
Of course, it is unthinkable, even from the point of view of the most
conventional of orthodox Christians, that there can be any immorality in sex,
for sex in itself is absolutely a work of the deity, hence of the highest
morality, if it can have any such attribute at all. As well might one give
digestion a moral quality. Morality is surely a matter of personal conduct.
One may say that it is immoral to eat so much as to injure one's health, but it
is not a matter of record that any considerable body of persons declares the
stomach to be an immoral organ, or the digestive function to be an immoral
one, or any discussion of digestion immoral. Then why sex or sex functions?
It is true that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not
at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the
word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies
subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior
to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for the "limbs"
of a female; and it does a variety of other absurd things, all going to show
that in some singular fashion it has confounded acts with things; as one
might call all knives immoral because a few knives had been used to do
murder with.
By what extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into
the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be
that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines
by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily
capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of
any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion
was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which
was a virtue, knowledge of which a crime. And then, under those conditions,

if a person, possessed of a little knowledge such as might have crept
stealthily down the ages, were in a fine humanitarian spirit to dare to publish
some of the things he knew in order to help dyspeptic humanity, he would
have been robbed of his worldly goods and clapped forthwith into jail. Fancy
that under such circumstances a man who had lived his three score and ten
years and had learned something from his own suffering and experience,
something from the secretly imparted information of others, might not say a
word to help his fellows. Is it not too absurd to contemplate without both
tears and laughter that that man who should plead with his fellow men to
abstain from habitually living on butter cakes and coffee, should be charged
with obscenity and imprisoned in consequence? And imagine some sapient
postoffice official solemnly declaring that any discussion of digestion is
obscene! Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing
the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats!
Consider, too, trying to cure indigestion and to suppress the orgies of our
children in pies, crullers, fritters and butter cakes by the naïve device of
forbidding all knowledge of the digestive function and making the utterance
of the name of a digestive organ an obscenity punishable by fine and
imprisonment!
Digestion is a matter to be considered in the light of hygiene. So is sex.
Digestion is not in itself either moral or immoral. Neither is sex. But there is
the most hideous immorality in the ascription of obscenity to sex, sex
function or any phase of sex life. And this is the crime of Comstockery. It
has reared an awful idol to which have been sacrificed the best of our youth;
with hypocrisy the high-priest, ignorance the creed, and pruriency the
detective.
Comstockery strikes at the very root of life. It forbids that we shall know
how to live our best; it forbids that we shall know how to save our children
from the perils we have so discreditably passed through; it raises barriers of
false modesty between parents and children by branding the very science of
life an obscenity. Owing to the shocking suggestions of Comstockery all that
relates to life is degraded into the gutter; and that which would be pure and
sweet and wholesome in the home or in the school, becomes filthy
Comstockery on the snickering lips of ignorant play-fellows.
The wonder is that we have endured the nasty thing for so long a time. We
have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our school-

mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are entitled by very
reason of living, but, more than all; because of our need to live right. We all
know the hideous untruths we were told because of Comstockery; we all
know how much we had to unlearn, and how great the suffering mentally,
how great the deterioration physically in the unlearning; we all know our
unfitness for parentage at the time we entered it; every man knows how the
brothels kept open doors and beckoning inmates by the thousand for his
undoing. And yet we endure it—Comstockery.
It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in wherever
it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it touches.
Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see it, but
such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but to cover our
nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but only in man. You
may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked human being. The
summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in New York, and a poor
wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on the top floor of a crowded
tenement was half crazed by the heat and the lack of fresh air, of which there
was absolutely none in the closet in which he was trying to sleep. He ran
down into the street nude at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of
finding a surcease of his distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his
blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next
morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the
reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might
have seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.
Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest
man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more children.
But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear any, if they
are to be continually made more and more unfit for motherhood by the
pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science of life leads them? Because
of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon our throats we may not
instruct the little child in the way of health; or if it be said that there is
nothing to prevent the parent from instructing the child, yet it must be
insisted that the parent has no means of knowing since Comstockery
prescribes ignorance as the only way to innocence; and innocent our girls
must be at any cost. Besides, the average mother, if she will but admit the
truth, is ashamed to talk with her daughter about Comstockery things. We all

know that this is so. Our parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so
treating our children.
The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes,
at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing we most
need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with sex, goes on with
sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus we go on in ignorance
of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be our best expression of the
most vital matter of existence? Life, sex, should be and is when we
recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest subject of discussion; and we
make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell our sons the things we have learned
through bitter experience, because we cannot bear the shame of discussing
sex subjects with them, because of the accursed Comstockery that is within
us; but we will go to the club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked
doors in the select company of our fellows, and there pour out the real
essence of our Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every
man knows this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it
too. As has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be
sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.
Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex discussion and
in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of sweet knowledge on the
subject that will enable us to live well ourselves and fit us to bring into the
world such children as will amaze us with their health of body and purity of
mind. No alteration of the facts of life is necessary, but only a change of
attitude. Why, when Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was
gravely debated whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It
was assumed that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand?
Why any one part of the body more than another? Comstockery!
Comstockery!

DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET
N Peter Kropotkin's Book: "Russian Literature" (published by
McClure, Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from
Turgenieff's works, which shows the Russian poet's genius and
psychological insight in all its wonderful depth. Here it is:
"Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is
ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life itself he values
only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the ideal, for the promotion
of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for his brothers, for opposing the
forces hostile to mankind: the witches, the giants—that is, the oppressors....
Therefore he is fearless, patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food,
the poorest cloth: he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is
great and daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and
egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is an egotist;
but to believe in one' self—even an egotist cannot do that: we can believe
only in something which is outside us and above us.... As he has doubts of
everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself; his intellect is too
developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his
weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force where-from results his
irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor
man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated—
undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the
whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the
innocent from his oppressor falls twice as heavy upon the head of the
innocent himself?... What does it matter that, thinking that he has to deal
with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills?... Nothing of the
sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious,
refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight
with windmills, he does not believe in giants ... but he would not have
attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil
and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism....
But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in
bounds, how to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and

that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? Here it is
that the often-noticed tragical aspect of human life comes in: for action we
require will, and for action we require thought; but thought and will have
parted from each other, and separate every day more and more....

"And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought...."

ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON
By Edwin Bjorkman

HE air was still and full of a gray melancholy light, yet the waters of
the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The
billows rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness
of fear. When they sank back again, they were black—black as despair that
knows of no hope.
Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they touched
the sullen, colorless cloud-banks overhead. Their sides were seamed with
numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the other, from the
river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving along those paths: they
swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I could not see whence they were
coming nor whither they were going. All were pushing and jostling and
scratching and howling and fighting. Every one's object seemed to be to
raise himself to the path above his own and to prevent all others from doing
the same.
Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down,
shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the
press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in
wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the
writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once
more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while its surface of
heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river near by, and a man
would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the paths above. Then each
face would be turned toward him for a breathless moment, at the end of
which the mass glided slowly onward as before.
The crush on the paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but the
fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see them
clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails, distorted
features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers pursued them
from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above. Ninety-nine out of

the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in their rapid descent they
swept others with them. But rising or falling, they all pushed onward,
onward—from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to me. I watched them for
hours, for days, for years—always the same wandering, the same
scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent purpose or result. Then my
blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A scarlet mist floated before my eyes
and my soul swelled within me almost unto bursting.
"Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides
until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the
wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all, turned
toward me. On every face I read astonishment.
"Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above
the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those
staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths near
the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became
contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing into
my face, laughing like demons rather than men.
My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my
clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly
merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.
"Why?"
As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to
darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked, bony
fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow ledges
to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred arms
seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out over the
river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the yawning
waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness in my chest
seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment of
consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing, bell-like
voice that came from within myself. That last word was:
"Why?"

The British Elections and the Labor Parties
By H. Kelly

E are a left-center country; we live by compromise."

The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to
Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to the
truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of political
economy, Adam Smith—for Scotland is included in our generalization—
Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which in the forties stood
almost at the head of the Socialist movement in Europe, which has been the
scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's congresses and has furnished a
refuge for so many distinguished exiles, it is passing strange, to say the least,
that up to the present no one has been elected to Parliament on a purely
Socialist platform; this notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of
forty-three labor members elected nineteen are members of the Independent
Labor Party and one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was
elected to Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union
record and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since
ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a Radical,
and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated. In 1900 he
was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical mining district in
Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and undoubtedly received a large
number of votes on the ground of having been a miner once himself. R. B.
Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest Socialist who has yet sat in the
British Parliament, was elected as a Radical, announcing himself a Socialist
some time after his election.
The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded
compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the
candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social
Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch, editor
of "Justice," the official organ of that party, for more than a decade, and Geo.

Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most respected members, refused to
compromise in the recent election, and paid the inevitable penalty.
Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is a man of exceptional ability,
has devoted himself for twenty-five years to the Socialist and labor
movement, was endorsed by all the labor bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip
Stanhope, recently created a lord and one of the ablest Liberal politicians in
the country, did him the honor of declining to stand against him. Still he was
defeated—while politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir
Hardie, J. R. MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected
on a labor platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a "Labor
Platform!" Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory
legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid members,
one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but not Socialism
and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit another and leaving
untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real Socialism, the right of labor
to the fruits of its toil.
Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that
many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive from
the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly forced the
gilded doors of the "Mother of Parliaments" and about which the guilty
middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H. Broadhurst,
W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but nominal labor men not
having worked at their various trades for years and are middle class by
training and income, that others like Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John
Ward and many more are at best labor politicians so steeped in political
bargaining and compromising that the net results to labor from them will be
very small indeed. It is not necessary nor would it be just to question the
honesty or well-meaning of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove
that a distinct disappointment awaits those who elected them. Past history
foretells the future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the
Dock Strike, who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming
in a few short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as
autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his
assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the "hero of Featherstone," H.
H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot down in real
American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo Imperialists—and the
end is not yet. There are our other friends (?). H. Broadhurst, special favorite

of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner, who so endeared himself to the
coal operators of Wales in his capacity as official of the Miners' Union and
Scale Committee that when his daughter was married several years ago she
received a cheque for £100 from one of the aforesaid operators, and others
whom space forbids mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor
parties now in the House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent
stretch of imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the
forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed masses.
An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of inherent
good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and the
Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the forces
which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the agitation which
preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing desire on the part of
the workers for a larger share of the product of their toil and a part in the
management of industry that we see hope. The form that movement has
taken or the beneficial results from the efforts of the elected are details. It is
scarcely five years since the Labor Representation Committee sprang into
existence, and it says much for the solidarity of labor that over a million
trade unionists, thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party
and eight hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so
short a time.
For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action and
will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of thought and
used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a rigid account of
the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his suffrage. When the
disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real progress may come. The
process of disillusionment does not come with geometrical precision. To
some it comes over night, to others it is a process of years, and to some it is
denied altogether. For years the Anarchists have been scoffed at as
impossible dreamers for advocating the General Strike as the only effective
means of overthrowing the present system. The glorious fight of the Russian
people for freedom has changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening
the German Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw
the franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted
its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the shape of the
unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although temporarily allayed
by the elections, it will blossom forth again.

If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and
Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain
government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade
unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had
previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to take
the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought in. The
Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish Archbishops and
attacking secular education, will be amended and not repealed. The
endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass, Burton and the
rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In
short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character
one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be
expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of
modern pirates.
They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no
illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the superstitions of
the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in what Christians call "the
eternal righteousness of their cause," they meet the future with smiling face;
and far from being downcast over the turn of events in Great Britain, see
hope in the formation of the Labor Parties.

AND YOU?
Bolton Hall

"What would you do," asked the Idealist, "if you were Czar of Russia?"
"I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is fundamental," said the
Reformer, "and then resign. What would you do?"
"I would first resign, and then teach the people to abolish monopoly of
land, the same as now," answered the Idealist. "But what would you do,
Teacher?"
"I would teach the people from the throne that they were oppressed by
their system of monopoly—and by their Czar."

NATIONAL ATAVISM
By Internationalist

HE Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other
cities of America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called
Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot
of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish
population.
The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like
Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised
land, the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they
long for the moment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they will
migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish State, where
Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic peace.
Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a
former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to
the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call
of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view of things
to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious conception
that "the world is my country" to the conception of exclusiveness. They have
abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial.
The Zionism of Max Nordau and his followers never was more than a
sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day
Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race
that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism and Revolution; and
this at a moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most
in need of unity and solidarity. Nothing could be more injurious to the
Russian revolution, nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so
much as the present nationalistic agitation.
The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they
purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and

superstition.
From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of
all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical nationalistic
elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and
hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question:
Will it give us our own territory where we can surround ourselves with walls
and watch-towers? Yes, the very people, who once spoke with a divine fire
of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge
in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home,
and that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and
that he must first obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further.
These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality
than logic.
The Poles have their own territory; still this fact does not hinder Russia
from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children; neither
does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects
and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And of what avail is native
territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian, Turkish and
Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition.
Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on
them, have proven what little protection their territorial independence has
given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small
peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks,
pillage and attempts at annexation. Nothing is left them but to bow before
the superior powers, or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might, in a
measure, temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold, but never end in a complete
overthrow of the powerful enemy.
Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able
to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider
what circumstances have made this possible.
It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of
European powers, who consider her a foreign detective bureau which
watches over, annoys and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements.

Italian, Russian and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting
ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy, as when they can render
constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing
unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to
arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier, where
they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes. A
very enticing national independence, is it not?
Is it possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for
freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar
conditions? Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases
and who would rather follow the broad path of Internationalism, are accused
of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish
race. Rather is it far more likely that those who stand for the establishment
of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment.
Especially the radicals among the Nationalists seem to be altogether lost
in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label "nationalist" because
it stands for so much retrogression, for so many memories of hatred, of
savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to
be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name. And who does not
wish to appear advanced and modern? Therefore the name of Nationalist is
rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the
same thing. True, the territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized
Jewish state; they aim for a free commune. But, if it is certain that small
states are subordinated to great powers and merely endured by them, it is
still more certain that free communes within powerful states, built on
coercion and land robbery, have even less chance for a free existence. Such
cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in
which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on
these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a
nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as
possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social
revolution?
If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some
day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will
appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be
patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least,

not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep
through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life of all peoples is
never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism,
national vanities, everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth
and supremacy.
Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of
the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the
various ranks within the Jewish race?
It is not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of
the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic
agitation. The social and economic motives for concerted action or
separation are of far more vital influence than the national.
The feeling of solidarity of the working-people is bound to prove stronger
than the nationalistic glue. As to the remainder of the adherents of the
nationalistic movement, they are recruited from the ranks of the middle
Jewish class.
The Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian
or Mohammedan banker than to his Jewish factory worker, or tenement
house dweller. Equally so will the Jewish workingman, conscious of the
revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power,
find his brother in a fellow worker, and not in a Jewish banker.
True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold: he is exploited, oppressed and
robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon,
because he is a Jew; but he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for
his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the
maintenance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination,
and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind, as the Christian
employer and owner of wealth.
The Jewish population of the East Side has little in common with the
dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the
workingmen of other nationalities of the country—he has sorrows, struggles,
indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the
social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His
conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers,

through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In
his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic
pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on
the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be
expected to co-operate with them in the building of a Jewish
commonwealth?
Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace and well-being
to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature and not of a nationalistic
one. The former brightens and widens the horizon, the latter stupefies the
reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and
strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and
beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision
was far beyond the Lilliputian sphere of Nationalism. Only that which
contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every
attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy
with the seal of the government attached thereto is bound to fall flat and to
be insignificant.
It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and
victory, with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires.
In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of
Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees, by Maeterlink, the music of
Wagner, Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanore Duse.
I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of
the Jewish people; and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every
effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized
world within a few years. But it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian
government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian Church,
and not the Russian people, that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews.
Jewish Socialists and Anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of
the Nationalists and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental
distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that
country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom
and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They
have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people and
have even blamed the Revolutionists for them, whereas it is an undisputed

fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by
the ruling clique, in the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian
people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said, "we
have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed, let the
Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them."
Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish
brethren were to say, "Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated and
killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union
with the Intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people for
the overthrow of the abominable tyranny; and when we have accomplished
that let us co-operate in the great work of building a social structure upon
which neither the nation nor the race but Humanity can live and grow in
beauty."
Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow
and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment with the
demand for another form of national sentiment means only to lay the
foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were
the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish Nationalists ever to materialize, the
world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by
another.
In one respect the Jews are really a "chosen people." Not chosen by the
grace of God, nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people, as
well as with the Jews, merely prove national narrowness. They are "chosen"
by a necessity, which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity
which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which
have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution
has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews; they have grown big in their
endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their
sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul.
Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing
great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All
governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the
bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind.

Owing to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized
and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True, they have not their
own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the
earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race.
That is certainly a greater, nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty
nationality.
It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as
Gentiles; and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present
nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the
birth of the new era—mankind clasped in universal brotherhood.

Mine Owners' Revenge
By M. B.

Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners,
William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G. A. Pettibone,
former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th.
They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-Governor
of Idaho, Mr. Steunenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple
Creek and Haines, Oregon.
The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities
of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to
kill the Miners' Union. This accord and harmony is so apparent that
thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and
Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of the mine owners against the miners.
Requisition papers and a special train seem to have been prepared in
advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to
Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled
by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest
fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds
upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes
several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone a few moments
sufficed to close the whole proceedings.
Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that
the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor
movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has
caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is
impossible—that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an
awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no
such hope.

The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners
consists largely of one individual, who is supposed to have known and
witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment
when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the District
Attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused. An expert perjurer, it
seems.
The Governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good
character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a
Supreme Being, which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not
know that it has ever been the mission of the Supreme Being to serve as
Impresario to Falsehood and Wretchedness?
The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the
miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of
Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything
was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a
renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working
people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black
Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, á la Powderly,
who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake? Or are they going to
awaken from their lethargy, ere America becomes thoroughly Russified?

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
A painting from the "good old times" represents two peasants wrangling
about a cow. One holds on to the horns of the animal, the other tightly
clutches its tail, a third figure is in a crouched position underneath. It is the
lawyer milking the cow, while the other two are quarreling. Here we have
the beauty of the representative system. While groups are bargaining about
their rights, their official advisers and lawmakers are skimming the cream
off the milk. Not justice, but social injustice is the incentive of these worthy
gentlemen.
Human justice, and legal representation thereof, are two different things.
One who seeks for a representation places his rights in the hands of another.
He does not struggle for them himself, he must wait for a decision
thereupon from such quarters as are never inspired by love for justice, but
by personal gain and profit.
The working people are beginning to recognize this. It is also beginning
to dawn upon them that they will have to be their own liberators. They have
the power to refuse their material support to a society that degrades them
into a state of slavery. This power was already recognized in 1789, when, at
the French National Convention, Mirabeau thundered: "Look out! Do not
enrage the common people, who produce everything, who only need to fold
their arms to terrify you!"
The General Strike is still at the beginning of its activity. It has gone
through the fire in Russia. In Spain and Italy it has helped to demolish the
belief in the sovereignity of Property and the State.
Altogether the General Strike idea, though relatively young, has made a
deeper impression on friend and foe than several million votes of the
working people could have achieved. Indeed, it is no joke for the pillars of
society. What, if the workers, conscious of their economic power, cease to
store up great wealth in the warehouses of the privileged? It was not
difficult to get along with the would-be labor leaders in the legislative
bodies, these worthy ones, experienced through the practice of

manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder, rapidly develop into good
supporters of the existing conditions.
Now, however, the workingmen have entered upon the battlefield
themselves, refusing their labor, which has always been the foundation of
the golden existence of the haute volée. They demand the possibility to so
organize production and distribution as to make it impossible for the
minority to accumulate outrageous wealth, and to guarantee to each
economic well-being.
The expropriateurs are in danger of expropriation. Capitalism has
expropriated the human race, the General Strike aims to expropriate
capitalism.
A new and invigorating breath of life is also felt in this country, through
the formation of the "Industrial Workers of the World." It awakens the hope
of a transformation of the present trade-union methods. In their present
form they serve the money powers more than the working class.

Robert Koch, the world-renowned scientist, who was awarded the Nobel
prize in recognition of his work in the direction of exterminating
tuberculosis, delivered a lecture at Stockholm at the time of receiving the
mark of distinction. In the course of his speech he said: "We may not
conceal the fact, that the struggle against tuberculosis requires considerable
sums of money. It is really only a question of money. The greater the
number of free places for consumptives in well-equipped and well-
conducted hospitals, the better the families of these are supported, so that
the sick are not prevented from going to these hospitals on account of the
care of their relations; and the oftener such places are established, the more
rapidly tuberculosis will cease to be a common disease."
Where are the governments which are supposed to serve as benefactors
of suffering mankind? They have milliards at their disposal, but use most of
it for the maintenance of armies, bureaucracies, police forces. With these
vast sums, which they extort from the people, they increase instead of
diminish suffering.

On the 27th of January it was 150 years since Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart was born. A grandmaster of music, a magician who leads the soul
from the depths of life to its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into
music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions
and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His "Don Juan" liberates,
"Tannhäuser" leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation.
The study of Mozart's biography may be recommended to those who
believe that the artistic individuality has freer scope to-day than it would
have with communism. Mozart was always forced to look about for patrons
of his art, for he lacked the means to put his works before the public.
A biographer says of him: "Mozart's life makes us feel the tragedy of an
artist's life most painfully. In his youth he was fondled and idealized as a
wonder child, but his circumstances deteriorated as he matured in his art
and the more accomplished the works of his fantasy grew. When he died he
left a wife and children behind in great poverty. There was not enough
money on hand to bury him. The corpse was placed in the potters' field.
When his wife, who had been sick at the time of the burial, wanted to look
up the grave, it could not be exactly designated." The genius of the artist,
however, permeates the world on waves of light.

The Czar knows his mission. He addressed a deputation of peasants
from the Province of Kursk thus:
"My brothers, I am most glad to see you. You must know very well that
every right of property is sacred to the State. The owner has the same right
to his land as you peasants have to yours. Communicate this to your fellows
in the villages. In my solicitude for the country I do not forget the peasants,
whose needs are dear to me, and I will look after them continually as did
my late father. The National Assembly will soon assemble and in co-
operation with me discuss the best measures for your relief. Have
confidence in me, I will assist you. But I repeat, remember always that right
of property is holy and inviolable."

The commentaries to this fatherly address are furnished by the czaristic
Cossacks who hasten to the peasants' aid with the knout, sword and
incendiarism.

LITERARY NOTES
"Letters of Henrik Ibsen," published by Fox Duffield & Co.,
New York. Price, $2.50.

These letters do not belong among those of great men which prove to be
disappointments. In reading them one is not inclined to ask as of
Schopenhauer's letters, why a philosophic genius of such depth should be
laden with thousands of philistine trivialities.
Ibsen reaches far beyond his surroundings in his letters. What he writes is
a continual protest against shallowness and mediocrity. The misery of petty
state affairs, of patriotism with a board on the forehead bothered him
greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses, he always
aims at expanding the horizon; as he himself once remarked: the
revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments are European, and he must often
hear that even the wish for combining the Scandinavian countries borders
on treason. Thus he becomes a "solitary soul." He has even nothing in
common with the radicals; he not only hates the state, the enemy of
individuality, but he is averse to all attempts which aim at the drilling of the
masses. He loves Björnson as a poet, but he wants to have nothing to do
with him as a politician. In a letter to Brandes he writes:
"Björnson says: 'The majority is always right.' And as a practical
politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must of
necessity say: 'The minority is always right.' Naturally, I am not thinking of
that minority of stagnationists who are left behind by the great middle party,
but I mean that minority which leads the van, and urges on to points which
the majority has not yet reached. I mean that man is right who has allied
himself most closely with the future."

"Under the Wheel" is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in
which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system
to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession
as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states
in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making
patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author says
with fine irony of the teacher: "It is his duty and vocation, entrusted to him
by the state, to hinder and exterminate the rough forces and passions of
nature in the young people and to put in place of them quiet moderation and
ideals recognized by the state. Many a one who at present is a contented
citizen or an ambitious official, would have become without these
endeavors of the school an unmanageable innovator or a hopeless dreamer.
There was something in him, something wild, lawless, which first had to be
broken, a flame which had to be extinguished. The school must break and
forcibly restrict the natural being; it is its duty to make a useful member of
society out of him, according to principles approved by the state's authority.
The wonderful work is crowned with the careful training in the barracks."

We regret that several of the contributions, while having merits, were not
of the form to be used for a magazine.

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