Anarchy in New York [excerpt]

     New York is on the war-path. The Anarchists must go, says the law. The Anarchists WONT [sic] go, say the Anarchists. We are here to stay; not only that, we are increasing in number and are carrying on our propaganda with even more vigor than before we were “outlawed” by the wise men at Albany.
     Most of the edition of twenty-five thousand of the pamphlet “Roosevelt, Czolgosz, and Anarchy” has been distributed by a corps of energetic young comrades of both sexes, whom even repeated arrest does not deter. The first arrest was made for violation of a city ordinance prohibiting the distribution of literature, and a fine of three dollars imposed. The next arrest was for the same offense, but the circumstances were different. On the occasion of the Altgeld memorial, when the great western orator and man, C. S. Darrow, addressed a large [1][2] audience in the big Cooper Union, our comrades were very much in evidence with their pamphlet, and hundreds were distributed before two of them were hauled off to the station.
     When the meeting was opened and Henry George was introduced as chairman he came forward with a copy of the pamphlet in his hand and said, “Before this meeting proceeds I wish to state, emphatically, that we repudiate the pamphlet, ‘Roosevelt, Czolgosz, and Anarchy,’ which is being distributed in the hall.” Those who had already received the essay tightened their grips upon it, and those who had not received it reached frantically for it. Then the captain of police stopped the work and hauled up the boys.
     George’s remark proved a splendid advertisement for the book, altho [sic] they were not so intended, and it is safe to say every person who got a copy read it before going to bed that night. Henry George read his copy and hurried to the court room [sic] next morning to defend the boys, telling the court that he agreed with nearly all it contained. The wizen [sic] old judge, however, was not willing to let the case go as a mere petty offense, but thought he saw in it an opportunity of being the first to cage an Anarchist under the new law. He therefore continued the case twice, and finally held the comrades to the grand jury, where he hoped they would be indicted as “criminal” Anarchists. This old fossil of a “justice,” who must hate Anarchy very much, showed the ridiculous extreme to which prejudice will carry a person’s mind, and the expressively damaging influence it has upon our reasoning faculties. Triumphantly he read the passage “McKinley reaped only what he had sown,” interpreting it to mean he got what he deserved. But he clearly showed the intense malice of his narrow, bigoted mind, and took his deepest draught from the cup of scorn, when he read the clause “Anarchy is a conspiracy,” and growled at the prisoners in the dock, “Do you agree with that?” “We accept the book as a whole,” came back the speedy answer.
     To give the readers who have not read the essay an idea of the high sense of justice which dominated the capacious mind of the “Hon. Judge” Pool, I will quote the paragraph in full from which he culled the clause upon which he held the comrades to the grand jury:

     Anarchy springs from a higher conception of human relations awakening in the breast of the mass of mankind as a result of the experience of the ages. Once the dream of the poet and philosopher, it is now upon the lips of the workers in factory, mine, and farm. The enemies of Anarchy—exploiters of labor whose privileges it would destroy—raise the cry of conspiracy against it. As well to charge Evolution with being a conspiracy. If the electric light is a conspiracy against the tallow candle, if the Pullman train is a conspiracy against the stage coach [sic], if the self-binding harvester is a conspiracy against the sickle, if the modern civilized man is a conspiracy against the savage—then Anarchy is a conspiracy against government. Well, if you like, Anarchy is a conspiracy. It is the conspiracy of the future against the past, of the rose against the weed, of love against hate, of humanity against barbarity, of knowledge against ignorance, of progress against retrogression, of reason against belief, of science against superstition, of liberty against slavery, of honesty against hypocrisy, of truth against falsehood, of rationalism against mysticism. This is the conspiracy of Anarchy. Now let the governments of the world proceed to stamp it out.

     The grand jury promptly dismissed the case, and now the “Hon.” Pool must feel a deep contempt for its ignorance of the “meaning and intent of the law.”