John Most’s Great Scheme

HE’S GOING TO MAKE THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS LEARN
OF ANARCHY, WHETHER THEY WILL OR NO.

     John Most, the high priest of anarchy, made the announcement yesterday that he had discovered a plan to get President Roosevelt and Congress posted as to what anarchist propaganda really were. He had issued a pamphlet on anarchy, and his scheme, he said, was to send copies to the President and the members of Congress in order that they might read them.
     “You will observe,” he said to a Tribune reporter, showing him a copy of the pamphlet, “that it begins in an unusual way for an anarchistic document.” The pamphlet began: “Down with the anarchists!” (which he said was the war cry raised by President Roosevelt and echoed by Congress). “Now then, hear the other side. The anarchists will take the floor. Listen.”
     Quotations are then given from articles and speeches by well known anarchists, and include among others those of John Most, Carlo Cafiero, Enrico Malatesta, Prince Krapotkin and S. Merlina. Most declared that he knew his business when he was getting up the pamphlet.
     “I have started it, as you see,” he continued, “with the words, ‘Down with the anarchists!’ This, of course, will make President Roosevelt and the members of Congress think that the pamphlet is an appeal from people who oppose anarchy, and they will read it. If it were started in any other way they would be likely to throw it aside. Now, they don’t want to know what anarchy is, so I thought I would take this means of letting them know. They think that anarchy means murder and riot, but it does not. Because Czolgosz killed McKinley, they want to run us out of the country. I thought Roosevelt was a man who understood anarchy, but his Message shows that he doesn’t. If John P. Altgeld were President, it would be different. He understands what anarchy means, and knows that it means nothing more than peace, and does not sanction the murder of the heads of governments.”