Emma Goldman and Cartoons

EMMA GOLDMAN, interviewed by the police authorities at Chicago, last Tuesday, said:

     Mark Hanna has been the ruler of this country, not McKinley. McKinley has been the most insignificant ruler that this country has ever had. He has neither wit nor intelligence, but has been a tool in the hands of Mark Hanna. Other Presidents have had a heart, or something, but this poor fellow—God forgive him, since he knows nothing—is a tool in the hands of the wealthy, and it seems very remarkable for Mark Hanna to say that he was notified of a plot for his assassination. I think McKinley too insignificant for such a thing.

     Precisely as Emma Goldman described her infamous idea of President McKinley have the yellow journals described him in their political cartoons day after day, until the predisposed minds and hearts of the anarchistic crew that has found lodgment on American soil—a foul and slimy thing crawling upon the bosom of a fair land—have been so wrought up to belief in the tyranny and unworthiness of the President that lots were drawn for his murder and the lot fell upon Czolgosz.
     There can be no mistaking the source of inspiration of Emma Goldman—and there can be no mistaking the source of inspiration of Czolgosz. That she drew hers from the political cartoon is manifest from her statements to the Chicago police. That Czolgosz drew his from her is manifest by his own admissions at Buffalo. The attempted murder of President McKinley is directly traceable through Emma Goldman and Leon Czolgosz to the incendiary political cartoons, first, in the paper which conceived them, and, second, in the papers which reproduced them.
     Anarchy has no place in America, and neither has the cartoon which incites the anarchist to murder.