The Radicals [excerpt]

     A few nights following the death of President McKinley, Anton was attending a meeting of the Union. After the meeting, Anton and several other officers went, as usual, to a saloon. They talked about the assassination, Anton, an enthusiastic Socialist, and a sceptical Scotchman who never committed himself. While they were talking and drinking, a stranger who seemed to be under the influence of [153][154] liquor came up to them and asked a pointed question as to what they felt about the assassination. The Socialist, who was a Swede, said: “Well, I don’t know. I sorry he dead, but I sorry he capitalist.” The stranger then asked the Scotchman, who replied: “My God, I was just going to ask you. What do you think?” Then the stranger put the question to Anton, who “was rather sceptical as to the justification of his butting in.” But he replied: “I would have as much and perhaps more sympathy for my neighbor if he were killed than for McKinley. I should feel sorry for his wife and children.”
     This reply did not suit the stranger, and he cried out that Anton was an anarchist. There was great confusion in the saloon and it looked like a fight, until the Scotchman gave the stranger the signal of the Masonic Order, and then it was all right.
     Anton had become sufficiently known as an anarchist to make Maggie nervous about what might happen to him, in the excitement following McKinley’s assassination. So she burnt up the copies of Free Society, Jean Grave’s book and some Socialistic papers; fearful that her husband might be arrested. [154][155] Anton “was disappointed,” as he expressed it, at this, for at that time, in the first flush of his anarchistic faith, he would have welcomed arrest. At a later time—now—he is much cooler about all theories. Now that he is more of an anarchist, in the sense of being more of a sceptic, he is far less of a propagandist. He is now as sceptical about anarchism as he is about any other system of running the world’s affairs successfully.