[untitled]
Certain classes of newspapers,
in the light of the murder of President McKinley, are denouncing
American freedom of speech. I cannot condemn such an infamous legal
robbery as the selling of American made goods to all foreigners
at half the price exacted by law from the Americans for the same
without exciting the anger of those who profit pecuniarily by the
robbery. Have I exceeded the right of an American citizen? Am I
an Ararchist [sic], a Socialist, or a Communist? and must
I “shut up” at the wills of such men? Just now comes this from the
Pascoag Herald: “Emma Goldman’s remarks on the assassination
of President McKinley and her words of praise for Czolgosz are an
emanation from a mind saturated with murder.” The Herald
gives credit for the words to the St. Louis Democrat. Now
somebody is lying. The Attorney-General of Massachusetts cannot
be called an Anarchist. In a speech Mr. Knowlton used this language:
“What, then, was the cause of the
assassination of President McKinley?” The speaker here cited from
the explanation of it given by Emma Goldman, who attributed it to
despair arising out of ignorance, poverty and bad social conditions—a
blow struck with a thought that, public attention called to existing
wrongs, it might hasten the remedy.
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