“Free Society” and the Outlook

     As we go to press (Wednesday,) all the men connected with “Free Society” are still in jail, held without bail. An attempt is to be made this morning by their attorneys to have them admitted to bail. If this fails, no paper will be issued this week, but if even one one [sic] is released “Free Society” will appear.
     Mrs. Isaak, her daughter, and Miss Mechanic are at home at 515 Carroll Avenue, after their arrest and unwarranted imprisonment by the Chicago police. It has been an unpleasant experience; but it will set many people thinking who have never thought before. Much sympathy has already been aroused by the detention of these women in the horrible cells of a Chicago police station. But what of the thousands of women who are every year thrown into those cells—women who are victims of ignorance, of environment, and of the officers of the law; women of whom, individually, no one ever hears and for whom nobody cares? An investigation of the police blackmailing methods was under way, and every day fresh exposures were being made, when the cry of “Anarchist” was raised; that cry was a “godsend” to the police department.

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     I shall have more to say next week of events transpiring. Just now I will merely state that the published reports of statements I have made are positively unauthorized, with these exceptions: I have never seen the man who shot Mr. McKinley, nor had I ever heard of him before the reports of the shooting. I did not know Miss Goldman’s whereabouts, though the detectives assured me they had “positive information from Buffalo” that I knew where she was. I have heard Miss Goldman’s lecture on “Modern Phases of Anarchy,” and in that lecture she spoke of the futility of violence, and at no time have I heard her advocate violence. I believe that all acts of violence recoil on the party which institutes them. If a society of Anarchists had caused the assassination of Mr. McKinley that act would do more harm to their cause than to the cause of governmentalism. On the other hand, the methods adopted by police and newspapers in manufacturing “evidence” and promulgating lies about their victims will in the end be an injury to their own cause.