A Natural Sequence

     The civilized world was shocked last Friday afternoon to learn that President William McKinley had been shot while greeting his fellow citizens in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition. The ruler, the visible embodiment of the greatest nation in the world, was brought low by the hand of a single fanatic. The best beloved of presidents, without a single personal enemy in the world, shot because he represented the best and freest people on earth.
     There is no political or industrial or economic tension or excitement to which we can attribute the act. In the midst of unexampled prosperity financially and an era of good feeling politically, this man in cold blood came to Buffalo to carry out a conviction of duty implanted in his mind by Emma Goldman and other anarchists. No president, no matter what his character, is exempt or free from danger from such persons. No degree of personal purity, devotion to duty or self sacrifice can lift the man whom this nation chooses as its ruler, above the reach of the disciples of blood that are being trained in hatred of all law and government. As long as the state tolerates within itself schools where such doctrines are taught we have no ground for surprise that the doctrines are occasionally put into practice. Nieman was sane enough. His instructors are sane enough. The insanity lays in the public and official indifference to the nihilistic propaganda at work within our borders.
     State legislatures and municipal officials have been at fault. Anarchism is an economic leprosy that seems easily to be communicated. When that nest of vipers at Patterson [sic] was connected with the assassination of King Humbert of Italy and received practically no official attention, it is not to be wondered at that other fanatics should seek notoriety through similar channels. Emma Goldman and Mrs. Parsons and Herr Most have been allowed in the name of “free speech” to undermine the safety and peace of the nation. It is time for an awakening—a cleaner definition of “free speech” and the heavy hand of the federal government to be laid on high treason.