Anarchy on the Boulevards

     The following paragraphs are selected from a prominent Chicago daily, showing that sympathy with Anarchy and its teachers is not confined to the saloons and the slums, as is commonly supposed:

     On the subject of anarchy it is worth while [sic] to inquire: How many of the good people of the United States have aided, encouraged, associated with, entertained and exploited the person known as Prince Kropotkin?
     This particular anarchist, or nihilist, was expelled from Russia and later found refuge in France, where, for his connection with a conspiracy involving a dynamite bomb, he was sentenced to prison. Since his liberation he has conducted a dilettante propaganda of anarchism in the parlors and drawing-rooms of such people of wealth and respectability in various enlightened nations as cared to entertain him.
     This prince has been in Chicago. How many people who denounced anarchy and the works of anarchy made much of him? How many deluded themselves and others with the idea that there was some new and reasonable philosophy in his teachings? How many closed eyes and ears and consciousness to the fact that his doctrines were the same as those of Spies and Engel and Fisher? How many were beguiled and befooled because he called himself a prince?
     Prince Kropotkin, who was made so much of in this city by various respectable people, has the same record in Russia and France that any other destructive anarchist has. He is not tolerated there. Why should he have been tolerated here? Unless the people who entertained him are themselves in sympathy with his ideas, there can be no reason unless it be that he is a prince.
     Emma Goldman, John Most and Leon Czolgosz are no more pronounced in their anarchistic creed than is Prince Kropotkin. The people who are proposing to hang everybody who has had conversation or correspondence with these creatures should have a care, for by the same logic they will be compelled to hang a lot of very fine people who have made much of Kropotkin—as bad an egg, anarchistically speaking, as there is in the entire lot.
     Prince Peter Alexievitch Kropotkin, who has been much talked of since the attempted assassination of President McKinley because of the claim that it was his teachings that influenced Leon Czolgosz, the would-be assassin, was an honored guest in this city for several days during the month of April. During his stay he met hundreds of men of wealth and learning and gained entrance into several homes of society, besides meeting its representatives at several functions which were arranged in his honor.
     At the palatial home of Potter Palmer in the Lake Shore drive the Russian exile was the guest at a private dinner given by Mrs. Palmer, and later on he was the guest of Mrs. Emmons Blaine. Among the men of letters and of business who gave the prince a hearty welcome to the city and who listened intently to the words he had to say in private as well as in public were Dr. W. R. Harper of the University of Chicago, Professor O. L. Triggs, L. E. Laflin, Newton A. Partridge, Dr. Henry Wade Rogers, L. E. Sullivan, E. P. Rosenthal and Clarence S. Darrow.

     That some at least of the people named in these paragraphs, knew what they were doing is morally certain. That they fully endorsed the philosophy of Anarchism is not probable but that they were broad-minded enough to hear all sides, and that they could find good in all should shame the men who now go wild with rage against all Anarchists because of the act of one unknown man whose deed shows that he is not an Anarchist. Guiteau was a Chris- [300][301] tian; logically such. He believed that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” To save the nation from its sins he shed the blood of Garfield. Why was there not a crusade against all Christians!