Observations and Comments [excerpt]

IT is twelve years since the rocket of iron—Leon Czolgosz—burst through the air, and flashed through the country the message of the Better Day.
     It was Leon Czolgosz, an American youth of Polish extraction, whose soul rose in rebellion against the indignities and miseries heaped upon the people. He sought to alleviate the great suffering of his fellowmen; he hoped to find relief for them by this means and that. But he met only with indifference, hypocrisy and corruption.
     He registered his final protest by attacking William McKinley. Not the man McKinley, but the chief magistrate of the land, the official head of the inflated and overbearing plutocracy.
     The Nation, incited by the bloodhounds of the capitalistic press, seemed to go mad in a blind fury of hatred and persecution of the Anarchists. Even the radicals, with few exceptions, became to such an extent perverted by the popular madness, that they entirely failed to grasp the wide significance of Leon’s deed.
     The poor boy, misunderstood and forsaken, was quickly set upon by the vultures of the law and was literally devoured without much pretence of even the form of justice.
     Twelve years have passed since. And now even the simplest intelligence is beginning to realize that our whole social structure is based upon the very infamy and rottenness which the act of Czolgosz aimed to point out.
     The dead cannot be brought to life. But it is being increasingly understood that Leon Czolgosz was of that idealist calibre which our perverted society forever nails to the cross. But even if the present is blind, the future will know to honor the Czolgoszes with the martyred pioneers of a freer, nobler humanity.