Champions Emma Goldman

Milwaukee Friend Says She Could Not Be Implicated with Czolgosz.

     Emma Goldman, anarchist, has been taken in custody at Chicago and will be examined to ascertain whether she was connected with the plot to murder President McKinley. According to a man now in Milwaukee, who knew her intimately after the troubles in New York, she could not possibly have been connected with such a scheme. He says her nature is all gentleness, her intellect cultivated and her motives are kind. Her champian [sic] talked with her for weeks just after she had been incarcerated on Blackwell’s island, New York, after the sweatshop riots of seven years ago, and never heard her utter a bitte [sic] word against the head of any government. She believed conditions could be made perfect not by violence but by constant work for uplifting the benighted workers.
     The man who knew Emma Goldman is W. E. Hughes. At the time he became acquainted with her he was doing newspaper work in New York, and met her professionally day after day, until he was enabled to secure a good insight into her character.
     “Emma Goldman was greatly above her fellow workers,” he said. “She is a Polish Jew, and was a garment worker on the ast [sic] side of New York when the great tailors’ strike was called. They were working the men, women and children of the sweatshops from twelve to sixteen hours a day, seven days in a week, and giving them just enough to exist.
     “The great mass of poor people thronged the streets, gaunt and hungry, and one night at a meeting in Union square Emma Goldman made an address. In the course of her remarks she said ‘Ask them for work; if they do not give it you, ask for bread. If they do not give you bread, take it. Starvation knows no law; necessity knows no law.’
     “These words were made part of the indictment on which she was tried for inciting the strikers to riot. They were read before the court and repeated to her when she was sentenced to twelve months in the Blackwell’s island prison. I heard them uttered. After Emma Goldman returned to New York I met her many times. She always impressed me with the beauty of her thought.
     “All her efforts were toward downing the turbulent spirit which cried violence and murder; she believed in bringing about the ideal of social relations by peaceful means and kindness. She was somewhat under the average height, with intelligent blue eyes, a mass of wavy brown hair and beautiful features. And her life seemed to be one of forgiveness, for I never heard her bitter or harsh toward anyone.”
     Emma Goldman, in her socialistic connections, has been painted anything excepting like this. She said at that time she expected to be misquoted, jeered at and scoffed at; but she considered it all in the path of her work. She accepted her imprisonment at New York with the greatest aplomb, considering it but an incident.