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The Anarchist Periodical Press in the : An Intertextual Study of Prison Blossoms, , and The Demonstrator

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Science

TRENT UNIVERSITY

Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

(c) Copyright by Laura Greenwood 2016

Cultural Studies PhD Graduate Program

September 2016 ABSTRACT

The Anarchist Periodical Press in the United States: An Intertextual Study of Prison Blossoms, Free Society, and The Demonstrator

Laura Greenwood

This dissertation focuses on the English-language anarchist periodical press in the

United States in the and early . Each of the three chapters of this dissertation examines one anarchist paper and its coverage of a specific issue. The first chapter focuses on Prison Blossoms, which was started by , Carl Nold, and

Henry Bauer and written and circulated in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, and its engagement with Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. The second chapter examines Free Society, a weekly edited primarily by , and its contributors' writings on the of President William McKinley by self- described anarchist . Finally, the third chapter focuses on The

Demonstrator, specifically its first volume which was edited by James F. Morton Jr. from the of Home, Washington, and the paper's work in supporting John

Turner, the first anarchist targeted for deportation under the .

Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, this dissertation incorporates examination of the context in which these papers were written (particularly the immediate concerns to which the papers' authors responded), the form and generic conventions of the anarchist press, including the approaches of the papers' respective editors, and the arguments advanced by their authors. It pays particular attention to the intertextuality of

ii the anarchist press -- the ways in which those writing in anarchist papers addressed one another both within and across periodicals, generating anarchist thought through conversation and debate and enacting their anarchist ideals in the practice of publishing.

This dissertation demonstrates that the anarchist periodical press, an element of anarchist history that has received little attention, offers important insights: it details how anarchists immediately responded to important issues of their time, and reveals the ways in which the emergence of was itself a collective effort, emerging from conversation, debate, and disagreement about how best to create radical change and what that change should look like.

Keywords: anarchism, periodicals, intertextuality, critical discourse analysis, propaganda by deed, free speech movement, Alexander Berkman, Leon Czolgosz,

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As this dissertation elaborates with respect to the anarchist periodical press, texts draw on past words, respond to contemporaneous words, and anticipate future words; texts are dialogic, dynamic, engaged in conversation. In writing this dissertation, I have benefited tremendously from the support, friendship, and feedback of many people, whose questions, ideas, suggestions have enhanced my work and my thinking. While I am wholly responsible for any of my dissertation's shortcomings, its strengths certainly reflect the feedback I've received from colleagues and friends who have generously engaged with my writing and offered their insights.

My advisor, Alan O'Connor, has from the beginning encouraged and supported my interest in writing on the anarchist press; his feedback on my writing from the earliest proposal stages to the dissertation's culmination in defence has made me a better scholar and has tremendously enhanced this work. His support has been invaluable over the many years that we have worked together, and I am grateful for the input he has given me on my work. My committee members Elaine Stavro and Jonathan Bordo have both been exceedingly generous with their time and their willingness to meet with me, to read my work at its various stages of completion, and to ask thought-provoking questions and offer their feedback on my writing. My dissertation is stronger for their insights, and their support has been crucial to my completing this work. Bryan Palmer, who served as the internal examiner for my defence, pressed me to think about a number of important issues related to my work which had, prior to our conversations, not received adequate focus in my writing – I am very grateful for his generous engagement with my work, and know

iv that his questions and his suggestions have enhanced my dissertation; they will also significantly enrich the book I hope to develop from the work herein. Jesse Cohn at

Purdue University Northwest, who served as external examiner for my defence, has given me much to think about, as his insights have made me think of my work in new ways; I am very grateful for his participation in my defence and his generous feedback on my writing, which will strengthen both my dissertation and my future work. I have long read and appreciated his writings on anarchism, and feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to discuss my work with him.

I am thankful to David Holdsworth, who served as the chair for my thesis defence, and to Nancy Legate and Catherine O'Brien who, as the administrative assistants of the

Cultural Studies PhD program, have helped me many times over the years. I am also grateful to Julie Herrada, the curator of the , and to everyone at the

Special Collections Reading Room and at the Serials & Microforms Room at the

University of Michigan in Ann Arbor – their guidance was absolutely crucial to my ability to navigate the archive and to conduct the research at the heart of this project. I am thankful to the communities of the Theory, Culture, and Politics MA Program and the

Cultural Studies PhD Program at Trent University, programs which have been my academic home for the duration of my graduate student life. The Cultural Studies faculty have taught me much, and my graduate student colleagues have been very supportive and encouraging throughout the writing of this dissertation. The graduate programs I've been a part of have served as positive environments in which I could pursue interdisciplinary work – I could not imagine having completed this dissertation anywhere else.

v Finally, I offer a deeply heartfelt thanks to my friends and family. They have been generous, patient, and encouraging of my work, and have offered me their constant and unconditional support. My family has always encouraged me to pursue my interests and have supported me throughout my time as a graduate student. My friends have listened to my frustrations, celebrated my successes, encouraged me, and kept me smiling. My cat companions, Darryl and Bandit, have kept me company, even making the trip to Ann

Arbor for three months, and are always generous with love and cuddles. I am very lucky to have such a strong support network, and without them this dissertation would never have come to fruition; I extend all my gratitude to them.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vii List of Figures viii

Introduction 1

Henry Bauer, Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold's Prison Blossoms: Writing Resistance to Isolation, Writing into The Anarchist Movement I. Prison Blossoms: An Introduction 13 II. The Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania 18 III. “Prison Literature” 31 IV. Prison Blossoms, Genre, Addressivity, and Intertextuality 45 V. Radical Communities & The Anarchist Press 57 VI. Propaganda by Deed and The Debate on Berkman's Act 65 VII. Textual Solidarity: Periodical Press Prison Support 84

Book-Anarchists on Bomb-Anarchists: Free Society, the McKinley Assassination, and the Anarchists' Debate on (Propaganda) Tactics VIII. The Assassination, Press Vilification, and the Stamping Out Craze 91 IX. The Responses of the Anarchist Press 108 X. Free Society: Background and Significance 113 XI. The First Issue Post-Assassination 125 XII. Claiming & Reframing Czolgosz 131 XIII. Violent Tactics: Causes and Impacts 141 XIV. Revolutionary Anarchists vs. Philosophical Anarchists 148 XV. Methods of Propaganda: A Paper "Broad Enough to Include Both" 159

The Defense of John Turner: The Demonstrator's Anarchist Case for Free Speech XVI. The Immigration Act of 1903 and the Arrest of John Turner 170 XVII. Free Speech Law: The Context 179 XVIII. United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams 184 XIX. Responses to Turner's Case 196 XX. The Demonstrator: A Newspaper from Home 202 XXI. Turner as a Civil Disobedient: “He Has Committed No Crime” 217 XXII. Freedom as an American Tradition 225 XXIII. The Demonstrator in Conversation: An Intertexual Struggle 232

Conclusion 243

Bibliography 248

vii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure I Heading of leaflet distributed by anarchists at Homestead 14

Figure II Political cartoon entitled "Uncle Sam's Next Contract" 96 published in the Denver Post on 16

Figure III Free Society's original flag 116

Figure IV First appearance of Free Society's later flag art, published 116 16 February 1902

Figure V The Demonstrator's original flag 209

viii 1

Introduction

Many anarchists participated in the publication and circulation of radical periodicals at the turn of the century in the United States; they were editors, printers, authors, or agents, selling the papers at events or organizing socials to help with fundraising to keep the papers running, and helping to spread anarchist ideas by passing copies of the papers they subscribed to along to their friends and neighbours. Hundreds of anarchist newspapers and journals circulated alongside pamphlets, books, circulars and other printed materials. Anarchist papers played many roles in the movement, and anarchists considered them tremendously important; as Kathy Ferguson writes, “anarchist publications were the heart of anarchist communities.”1 These periodicals were sites of the vigorous debate out of which anarchist thought and practice emerged – authors conversed with each other both within and across periodicals, developing ideas collectively. Writing in 1901 about the importance of leaving space for debate and disagreement in radical papers, James F. Morton, Jr. described this tendency as fitting to anarchism, arguing that such lively discussion “naturally results from the fact that

Anarchy is the embodiment of a vital principle, and not a set creed or an arbitrary system of social relationships.”2 In the pages of their periodicals, anarchists of diverse views on a massive range of subjects advanced their arguments, responded to their critics, and, in conversation with one another, elaborated their rich and varied frameworks of political thought while putting their ideals into practice in the very practice of publication.

1 Kathy Ferguson, “Anarchist Printers and Presses: Material Circuits of Politics,” Political Theory 42, no. 4 (2014): 395. 2 James F. Morton, Jr., “Off and On,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 September 1901. 2

This dissertation is about the relationship between words and actions, and the work that words can do; the anarchists who produced the papers I examine certainly thought that the printed word could have real effects, and in anarchists' work in periodical publishing the distinction between words and actions is ever shifting. As Ferguson writes,

"the first thing that an emergent anarchist group did was usually to launch its own journal, rather than join an existing publication."3 This was not because they considered all of the other papers in circulation insufficient, but because they felt the need to make one themselves; the activity of printing a paper was important to anarchists, even if the paper would last for only a single issue. These papers varied widely in terms of editorial approach, tone, topics of focus, length, longevity, and theoretical perspective. With respect to organization, anarchists of the period held diverse views: while some accepted a need to work within tightly organized hierarchical organizational structures, others sought to organize themselves according to the anarchist principles of equality and voluntary association they hoped to bring about. As Goyens notes:

[the] tension between efficiency and autonomy spawned many intragroup disputes and is still relevant today. Rivalries are ... not always a tedious footnote in the historical record but often reveal serious attempts by political dissenters to live a principled and meaningful life outside the capitalist sphere.4

These differences were reflected in anarchists' wide range of views on tactics: while some argued that means and ends must be consistent and that a peaceful, equitable, harmonious anarchist world could never come about through violence, others embraced the idea that

3 Ferguson, "Anarchist Printers and Presses," 406. 4 Tom Goyens, Beer and : The German Anarchist Movement in , 1880-1914 (Urbana: University of Press, 2007): 123. 3 at least some level of violence would be required to combat capitalism and the state.

Propaganda by deed is often taken to refer to acts of violence alone, including both regicides and targeted killings of political or capitalist figures as well as attacks on

"targets of no political significance, such as cafés and restaurants ... intended as acts of propaganda aimed at inspiring mass activity."5 It does, however, have non-violent connotations for anarchists as well: propaganda by deed was a phrase not only used to describe violent acts, but rather acts of all sorts that were committed with the goals of drawing attention to injustices, exposing the weaknesses of the state and capitalism, and illuminating the possibility of living otherwise.6 Anarchists were not limited tactically to a choice between education by violence and education by writing and lecturing; as this latter interpretation of propaganda by deed reveals, a whole range of practices, including bur certainly not limited to periodical publishing, were taken up by anarchists to advance their aims, all of which were conceived of as having educational value.

Anarchist editors and publishers not only used their papers as vehicles through which to circulate their arguments, but carefully considered and adopted editorial practices and textual strategies in accordance with their anarchist principles. Each of the papers I examine worked to find ways to incorporate a diversity of voices and perspectives – in discussions which in some ways parallel today's discussions around diversity of tactics, anarchists around the turn of the century debated how best to propagandize their ideas and to open their publications and their movements to a variety

5 Mitchell Abdor, "Introduction," Death to Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists of the Deed, Ed. and Trans. Mitchell Abdor (Oakland: PM Press, 2016): 1. 6 See, for instance, Ross Winn, “Radical Reflections,” Free Society (, IL), 16 March 1902. 4 of perspectives, textual approaches, and ways for supporters to be involved, while at the same time ensuring their publications retained their distinctly anarchist politics. The outcome was not only a diverse range of papers but also a remarkable heteroglossia; the anarchists' papers were internally diverse, and are best considered as complex sites of discussion rather than as homogeneous entities elaborating consistent singular perspectives. Through publishing, editing, printing, and writing for their periodicals, anarchists experimented with new ways of organizing themselves and cooperating with one another to collectively produce something of tremendous value.

We find traces of anarchists' debates in their periodicals, today housed in archives and special collections. While these papers, as discussed, varied widely in many respects, there are some identifiable commonalities between them which might be considered hallmarks of the anarchist periodical as a recognizable genre during this time period.

Like newspapers more generally, anarchist periodicals bore a flag at the top of their first page which included, minimally, the paper's name, the date of publication, the volume, issue, and/or number, and the place of publication. Some flags were quite plain, with the paper's title in a simple font, while others were highly stylized with artwork. Many anarchist papers also included a subtitle, printed directly below the name in the flag, and several of the longer running papers changed their subtitle several times over the course of their existence. Papers tended to be eight pages or fewer, and featured a masthead around the middle of the paper which listed the name(s) or group responsible for publishing and editing the paper, the address(es) at which they could be contacted, the price of the paper (often both per individual issue and for a subscription), and the 5 frequency of publication; in frequency, the papers ranged from weeklies to monthlies, though the majority appeared with remarkable regularity considering the difficulties often faced by their producers. Some papers changed in frequency or length at various points in order to adapt to changes in the producers' capacities, whether in terms of time or finances. Not only the writing and editing but also the printing of the papers was completed by anarchists.7 The papers featured neat columns of small type, and generally did not include visuals such as cartoons (though these did appear occasionally). The final page of the paper often featured regularly included content, such as lists of books for sale, advertisements, lists of contributions received, or notices of upcoming events.

Anarchist papers marked important events in the movement's history, and their producers put special care into issues released in early November, often dedicating much of the paper to commemorating the execution of the Haymarket martyrs. In 1900, for instance, Free Society, then four pages and which did not include images, solicited extra funds in hopes of financing a special eight page commemorative issue which would feature portraits of "[their Haymarket] comrades."8 The issue came to fruition on 4

November 1900; almost five pages of this enlarged issue were dedicated entirely to

Haymarket and included excerpts of the martyrs' speeches, their last words, reminiscences of November 11th by several contributors, and, as promised, a full page featuring portraits of August Spies, , George Engel, Louis Lingg, and Adolph Fischer, which appeared above the italicized title "Our Martyred Comrades." Indicative of the esteem in

7 Ferguson, "Anarchist Printers and Presses," 406. 8 "Notes," Free Society (Chicago, IL), 30 September 1900. 6 which the martyrs were held, these were the only pictures printed in the paper for that entire year.9

In the minds of both anarchists and their enemies, anarchist papers were dangerous. While anarchists invested significant time and resources in producing papers, believing deeply in the propaganda value of their periodical press, these same papers were considered threatening by the state and, as a result, anarchist writer/editor/publishers were frequently targeted for repression whether for advocating disrespect of law,10 publishing obscene materials,11 or disturbing the peace;12 in the wake of the McKinley assassination, laws prohibiting the publishing and circulation of anarchist literature were passed in several states. Even possession of an anarchist paper could be considered damning evidence, with John Turner's possession of a copy of Free Society at the time of his arrest invoked as a reason to deport him. The Haymarket demonstration, bombing, and subsequent trial and executions of 1886 are important to considering the dangers posed by anarchist writings; of the eight men convicted, five were directly involved in anarchist periodical publishing at the time of their arrests13 and their papers, and

9 Haymarket was commemorated annually not only by anarchists in the United States, but internationally. See James Green, "The Globalization of a Memory: The Enduring Remembrance of the Haymarket Martyrs around the World," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 4 (2005): 11-24. 10 This was the charge that was found guilty of in 1912 after expressing support for local nude bathers over "the prudes" at Home in his anarchist paper The Agitator. 11 The Comstock laws against mailing obscene matter were used against several radical publications, including Lucifer the Lightbearer in 1887, The Firebrand in 1897, and Clothed With The Sun in 1902, 12 , editor of Freiheit, was charged with a broad law prohibiting disturbing the peace or outraging public decency shortly after the McKinley assassination. 13 Albert Parsons edited The Alarm, and August Spies, Michael Schwab, Adolph Fischer, and Oscar Neebe were all involved in the production of the Chicago-based German-language paper the Arbeiter- Zeitung. 7

Arbeiter-Zeitung, were used as evidence against them.14

Given their sheer numbers and the importance anarchists attributed to them, these periodicals are crucial for understanding the movement; however, they have received rather limited attention. This is despite the fact that anarchists themselves felt that their periodicals would prove invaluable to future readers – the development of the Labadie

Collection at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, at which I conducted several months of research into the anarchist periodical press, speaks to anarchists' efforts to preserve their writings for future generations. When anarchist printer Joseph Labadie made the large initial donation of material which created the collection that would bear his name in 1911, he “stipulated that his library be made available for students;”15 in his granddaughter's words, Labadie knew “that making it available to the public would serve to promulgate” the radical publications that had been his life's work.16 While the donated materials initially sat for years in the shipping packaging they had arrived in, Agnes

Inglis, who had been involved in many radical causes and who had known Labadie and sought out his collection, brought the collection to life, remaining in Ann Arbor from the early 1920s onward and working for the rest of her life to bring “the archive to the

14 , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984): 235. For detailed discussion of Haymarket, also see Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011) and Timothy Messer- Kruse, The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012). These volumes provide an extensive discussion of historical approaches to Haymarket and draw on a number of primary sources which have previously remained largely unexplored, but it is important to note that their conclusions are highly contested. 15 Edward C. Weber, “The Labadie Collection in the University of Michigan Library,” Labor History 31, no. 1-2 (1990): 157. 16 Carlotta R. Anderson, All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement (: Wayne State University Press, 1998): 228. 8 forefront of 'labor' libraries … [increasing] its size dramatically.”17 The contents of the collection, particularly Inglis' extensive correspondence, reveals the work that she, with the help of many other anarchists, invested in ensuring that their publications would be made available, speaking to their centrality to understanding the history of the anarchist movement. Carl Nold, who "took an intense interest in building up, within the Labadie

Collection, the German Radical papers and literature,"18 donated his papers as well as writing to many other anarchists encouraging them to do the same. also contributed, and told a student who had expressed interest in writing about anarchism that the library was "very important;"19 she also visited the collection, and, in Inglis' words,

"was happy in her perusal of this most wonderful record of, not only her life's interest

[but] in the record that meant so much to so many, many others."20

In approaching the anarchist periodical press around the turn of the century in the

United States, my work came to be shaped by a few broad guiding questions: How did anarchist newspapers function in the anarchist movement in relation to other aspects of radical organizing? How did these papers relate to each other, and to other printed materials circulating at the time? How and to what extent did anarchist papers interact with more mainstream, capitalist publications? How did authors and editors interact with one another both within and between papers? How did differences in views between

17 Julie Herrada, “Continuing A Legacy: Collecting for a Special Collections Library,” Collection Building 19, no. 4 (2000): 164. 18 Agnes Inglis, "Freiheit," Research and Notes, Agnes Inglis Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 19 Emma Goldman to Eunice Minette Schuster, 18 November 1930, Emma Goldman Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 20 Agnes Inglis, "March 16, 1934 - Friday Afternoon," Research and Notes, Agnes Inglis Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 9 anarchists manifest in the periodicals they produced, in terms of both content and form?

How were the perspectives advanced within anarchist papers reflected in the ways that the papers themselves were produced?

In pursuing these questions, critical discourse analysis emerged as a viable framework through which to engage with the anarchist press. While there is no single approach to critical discourse analysis, in all cases it involves considering power dynamics as well as "the intertextuality and recontextualization of competing discourses in various public spaces and genres."21 For critical discourse analysts, inclusion of an understanding of power in the study of texts is crucial, for while "power does not derive from language, ... language can be used to challenge power, to subvert it, to alter distributions of power in the short and the long term."22 Thus, following well-known critical discourse analyst Norman Fairclough, my approach takes up Bakhtin's notions of genre as well as intertextuality, a concept strongly influenced by Bakhtin; in Fairclough's words, "intertextual analysis draws attention to the dependence of texts upon society and history in the form of the resources made available within the order of discourse (genres, discourses, etc.)."23 I examine the anarchist periodical through the lens of intertexuality, considering the conventions that dinstinguish it and the ways in which different editors and authors take them up. Importantly, intertextual analysis also means consideration of

"how texts may transform ... social and historical resources, how texts may 're-accentuate'

21 Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak, "Introduction: Theory, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Discourse Analysis," Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity, Eds. Gilbert Weiss and Ruth Wodak (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003): 15. 22 Ibid., 15. 23 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman Group, 1995): 188-189. 10 genres, how genres (discourses, narratives, registers) may be mixed in texts," leaving space for the creators of text to innovate.24 Critical discourse analysis thus includes consideration of context and power, and incorporates both texts' forms and their content

(and the relationships between them) into analysis; this approach is well-suited to examining the anarchist press in that it necessitates consideration of the context of the wider anarchist movement, the political climate of the period (including the frequent suppression of papers and arrest of editors), and both how the papers were published

(editorial approaches, style, organization, and so forth) and what was published therein.

The intertextual elements of the anarchist press are central to my study -- I focus on how authors writing therein not only address the more mainstream press but also address one another. Through a close examination of anarchist periodicals, these texts emerge as sites of struggle as authors and editors frequently debated both within and between periodicals, collectively generating arguments and ideas through conversation.

Given the massive number of publications which comprised the anarchist periodical press, it was necessary to impose bounds upon my study. I began with a narrowed geographical scope, limiting my most direct focus to periodicals published in the United States, as well as a narrowed temporal focus to papers published within roughly a ten year period, from 1893 (beginning with Prison Blossoms) to mid-1904 (the date marking the end of the first volume of The Demonstrator). Largely for reasons of my own limited language proficiencies, I have focused on papers published in English

(with the exception of some of the surviving issues of Prison Blossoms, which were

24 Ibid., 189. 11 written in German but have been recently translated25) while incorporating texts originally written and published in other languages as much as possible when translations were available. Finally, to bring unity to three distinct studies, I have adopted a similar approach for each -- a focus on a single paper and, more specifically, its engagement with one particular pressing topic of the time -- examining, in (chronological) order, Prison

Blossoms' discussions of Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick,

Free Society's coverage of the assassination of William McKinley by self-identified anarchist Leon Czolgosz and the subsequent period of intensified repression of anarchist activity, and The Demonstrator's focus on the movement to challenge the deportation of

John Turner under the Immigration Act of 1903, which prohibited anarchists from entering the United States.

I know that I certainly might have demarcated the boundaries and scope of this project differently. As Howell and Prevenier importantly note, "history is not just there, awaiting the researcher's discovery," but rather emerges as historians "choose the events and people that they think constitute the past, and ... decide what about them is important to know."26 While I argue that the anarchist periodical press is centrally important to understanding the history of the anarchist movement and merits study, my particular choices are in no way intended to suggest that the three papers I examine in detail are somehow the three most important anarchist periodicals of the period. The choices that I

25 For more detail on the translation of the German Prison Blossoms texts, see "Note on the Text," Prison Blossoms: from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): ix-xiii. 26 Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001): 1. 12 have made with respect to the focus of this study reflect my desire to strike a balance between a sufficiently narrow focus, facilitating close reading and attention to detail, and an inclusion of a sufficiently wide range of different texts to allow for discussion of the texts' differences as well as the relationships between them. Indeed, there are far more anarchist publications worthy of close attention than a single work could ever truly incorporate and do justice, and my time spent conducting archival research has sparked many ideas for further work in this area and reaffirmed my belief that there is still much to learn from the myriad texts that anarchists of the past so carefully ensured would be preserved for us. 13

Henry Bauer, Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold's Prison Blossoms: Writing Resistance to Isolation, Writing into The Anarchist Movement

Prison Blossoms: An Introduction

In September 1892, Alexander Berkman arrived in the Western Penitentiary of

Pennsylvania (commonly known at the time as Riverside, in Allegheny City on the banks of the Ohio River).27 He had been found guilty of the attempted of Henry Clay

Frick,28 the assault of J. G. Leishman,29 three counts of entering a building with criminal intent, and carrying concealed weapons.30 A few months later, in early 1893, Carl Nold and Henry Bauer also entered the penitentiary after both were convicted of incitement to riot31 and of conspiracy with Berkman32 having helped him distribute leaflets at

Homestead to striking workers which, in the court's findings, were characterized as papers

“advising and recommending” citizens “to resist, obstruct and oppose the operation of the

27 Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012): 96-7. 28 Frick was a manager at Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead who refused to sign a new wage contract with the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers when the previous one expired; the workers went on strike and were locked out. Frick ordered strikebreakers and Pinkertons in to Homestead to disperse the workers. There were several fatalities. Berkman intended to shoot Frick in an attentat, or propaganda of the deed, to further inspire the workers to more radical struggle. 29 J. G. Leishman was an assistant to Frick who was present in the office at the time of the attempted assassination. In the trial, Leishman claimed that Berkman had aimed the gun at him and attempted to shoot but that the gun had failed to fire. This is the only act for which he was legally charged that Berkman vehemently denied having committed. 30 Alexander Berkman, “An American Court Farce,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 57. 31 Henry Bauer, “Two Further Court Farces,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 68. The incitement to riot charges related to Nold's involvement in the publication of a leaflet calling for revolutionary action and Bauer's role in distributing it to the workers at Homestead. 32 Ibid., 73. Berkman met Nold and Bauer only days before his act. He had stayed at Carl Nold's home and socialized with both men between his arrival in Homestead and the day of the act, though in fact Berkman told them nothing of his plans. 14 laws” as well as “to take and appropriate to their own use … the property of divers citizens … and to do, commit and perpetrate divers unlawful, turbulent and riotous acts, to the evil example of all others.”33 Bauer was also sentenced to sixty days in county jail for contempt of court as he “would not reveal the names of the other two comrades who were with [him leafleting] at Homestead.”3435

Figure I: Heading of leaflet distributed by anarchists at Homestead Strike Labadie Collection, University of Michigan

Bauer and Nold were released in 1897; Berkman, though sentenced to twenty-two years, ultimately was incarcerated for fourteen and thus remained in prison until 1906. During the time the three were imprisoned, they “were never actually in one another's presence.

Only once was Alexander Berkman almost near enough to look Carl Nold in the face or to lay his hand upon his sleeve,”36 but Berkman states in his memoir37 that it was in the penitentiary that the men's acquaintance strengthened into friendship.38 Not long after 33 Commonwealth vs. Henry Bauer, et al, Carl Nold Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 34 H. Bauer, “A Correction,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 8 May 1898. 35 In a letter written to the Labadie Collection, to which he donated a copy of the leaflet, anarchist Max Metzkow identifies himself as having distributed it along with Nold and Bauer. (Anarchism – Berkman, Alexander – Ephemera File, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.) 36 Miriam Brody, “Introduction,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): xviii. 37 Berkman's memoir, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, is written in present tense but was actually composed after his release from prison. It was first published in 1912 by Emma Goldman's press, Mother Earth. 38 Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999): 15 their arrival in the prison, they began to learn about the secretive ways that prisoners communicated with one another from a fellow inmate known as Horsethief.39 They initially learned to whisper with prisoners held in the cells directly above or below theirs through empty pipes, and later to pass notes sub rosa40 which were carried between cells by Horsethief in his capacity as rangeman and cleaner.41 As Miriam Brody writes, “the three anarchists forged a friendship as a fragile web of communication enabled them to share anarchist theory and trial anecdotes within the prison walls.”42 The men had “no other way of communicating with each other” beyond these precarious written communications.43

The correspondence between Berkman, Nold, and Bauer, and between these three men and other prisoners, was difficult to maintain due to a very limited supply of paper; in Nold's words, they only had “scraps of paper which [they] sometimes had to procure in the most difficult ways.”44 Later, however, Horsethief further facilitated their correspondence by offering to steal paper for them from the broom shop in which he worked. In his memoir, Berkman writes of how “the pride of sudden wealth [germinated] ambitious projects” and the three decided to turn their correspondence into a

“magazinelet;” thus, Zuchthausblüthen was born.45 Berkman describes the magazinelet as

179. 39 Horsethief's given name was Robert Richards; little is known about him. 40 Literally, 'under the rose' – sent in secrecy. These included letters smuggled between inmates or taken out of the prison by bribed guards. 41 Brody, “Introduction,” xlv. Horsethief, a long-time prisoner, held various odd jobs that allowed him to move between different areas of the prison. 42 Ibid., xlv. 43 C. N., “Echoes from Behind the Bars,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 10 January 1904. 44 Ibid. 45 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 182. 16 follows:

the outward size of the publication is to [be] … three by five inches … each issue to have a different editor, to ensure equality of opportunity; the readers to serve as contributing editors. The appearance of the Blüthen is to be regulated by the time required to complete the circle of readers, whose identity is to be masked … to protect them against discovery.46

As the title suggests, the magazine was initially written in German; however, several factors led the men to eventually transition to writing the paper in English. Firstly, Hugh

F. Dempsey and Robert J. Beatty, two Knights of Labor organizers who wrote and read only English, arrived in the prison;47 given their involvement at Homestead, the men of course wanted to initiate correspondence with them and hoped they would contribute to the project. In addition, Berkman was already exchanging personal correspondence with several English-speaking prisoners about his act and thought that conveying his arguments through their little magazine would be far more efficient than writing back and forth with each interested prisoner individually.48 Most importantly, the three men wanted to be able to circulate their magazine amongst a greater number of prisoners. Thus,

Zuchthausblüthen was suspended and the English magazine, known by the translated title

Prison Blossoms, began in its place.49 Readership grew, and eventually included “not only steelworkers … but also the prison librarian, a former university student, a lawyer, and a writer/novelist, burglars, professional gamblers, and confidence men, all [of

46 Ibid., 182-3. Berkman further explains that he was designated the initial 'M' in reference to his medium build, Bauer 'G' as he was the largest, and Nold 'K' as he was of the slightest stature of the three. 47 Dempsey and Beatty were charged and convicted with the attempt to poison strike breakers at Homestead. Both men denied they had done so. 48 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 184-5. 49 Ibid., 185. 17 whom] ... were also enlisted as contributors.”50

The magazine was initially intended exclusively for readers inside the prison, but the men's ambitions soon extended beyond the prison walls: Henry Bauer suggested that he, Nold, and Berkman turn their writings into “a book about [their] 'adventures' in court and in prison” which he and Nold would then edit for publishing after their release; with concerns about how to smuggle the writings out of prison having been eased by

Horsethief, the men agreed to the plan.51 The book the men intended to publish was also to be named Prison Blossoms.52 Though two pieces from Prison Blossoms were later published elsewhere,5354 the book that the men had envisioned never materialized.55

Berkman's memoir suggests that sixty booklets were completed and sent out of the prison in all; however, most have long since been lost.56 Remaining today are twenty-five issues

(twenty-three of which are unique issues and two of which are the same aside from one being written in English and the other in German) which were in a collection of Emma

Goldman's papers; after her death this collection came into the possession of the

International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.57 The vast majority of these issues

50 Brody, “Introduction,” l. 51 Henry Bauer, “Our Prison Life: Second Half (February 1895—May 1897),” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 103. When he heard about the idea, Horsethief told the men not to worry about how the writing would reach friends on the outside, and promised to find a way to ensure this by the time the writing was ready to be sent. 52 Ibid., 106. 53 One of Bauer's contributions to Prison Blossoms was published as H. Bauer, “A Fateful Leaflet,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 17 April 1898. 54 Parts of Berkman's “Punishment—Its Nature and Effects” were published later as Alexander Berkman, “Prisons and Crime,” Mother Earth (New York, NY), August 1906. 55 Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner, “Note on the Text,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): xi-xii. 56 Ibid., x. 57 Ibid., ix. These issues, as well as other documents pertaining to Berkman's imprisonment, are now 18 were written by either Berkman, Nold, or Bauer, though also included are an issue in which a man identified only as Prisoner A-444 relates his treatment in the prison (written by Bauer and translated by Nold) and two issues detailing brief conversations between other prisoners as recorded by Nold.58 The magazine varied stylistically: the fragments available today include not only first-person accounts of court trials and day to day life in the prison, but also analyses of the origins of the nature and crime, essays on capitalism and on religion, discussions of the prison's administrative organization, debates on revolutionary tactics, discussions of the effects of prison on inmates' health and well- being, detailed descriptions of figures such as the shop-screw59 and the trusted prisoner,60 selections of Carl Nold's poetry, a parable, and an 'orthographical study.' In 2011, these surviving fragments of Prison Blossoms were made available to readers for the first time, published as a collection edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner.

The Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania

During the nineteenth century in the United States, debates regarding how prisons ought to be operated centred around two alternatives known as the Pennsylvania (or

'separate') system and the Auburn (or 'congregate') system; the former operated emphasizing separation, the latter emphasizing silence. The two systems both focused on

viewable online via the Alexander Berkman Papers on the International Institute of Social History's website. 58 Not surprisingly given the need to conceal contributors' identities for their own safety, very little is known of various prisoners contributing to or mentioned in Prison Blossoms. 59 Slang term for the warden in charge of a prison workroom. 60 Here 'trusted prisoner' refers to one who receives extra privileges as a result of being considered a 'model prisoner' by prison authorities, and who is perceived as considering himself superior to the other inmates by virtue of his status. 19 prevent prisoners from communicating with one another, but differed with regards to how this ought be achieved: the Pennsylvania system sought “to provide for the perpetual separation of inmates from each other, [whereas] the Auburn system brought convicts together during the day in workshops and in the messhall, but under enforced and perpetual silence.”61 Despite this difference in emphasis, both systems focused on rehabilitation through labour and both sought to reshape inmates' thoughts and behaviours; Jason Haslam argues that “the rule of silence enforced in both systems in fact places the over arching emphasis on the individual prisoner's own abilities to reconstitute the self into a socially acceptable being.”62 As Foucault points out in Discipline and

Punish, there were many elements at play in the debate between the two models:

“religious (must conversion be the principle element of correction?), medical (does total isolation drive convicts insane?), economic (which method costs less?), architectural and administrative (which form guarantees the best surveillance?).”63 The debate between the two systems lasted for over fifty years.64

The logic underlying the Pennsylvania system maintained that prisoners needed to be constantly separated to prevent them from conspiring together and from compromising one another's reform. Unlike the Auburn system, it extended this separation to “cover every minute of the twenty-four hours.”65 It did, however, allow for contact with visitors 61 Orlando F. Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776-1845 With Special Reference to Early Institutions in the State of New York (Montclair: Patterson Smith, 1967): 119. 62 Jason Haslam, Fitting Sentences: Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Prison Narratives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005): 26. 63 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995): 239. 64 Harry Elmer Barnes and Negley K. Teeters, New Horizons in Criminology, 3rd ed (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1959): 342. 65 Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 119. Italics Lewis'. 20 considered “upright citizens.”66 While this model initially imposed idleness on prisoners, they were later to be permitted, if they so chose, to work; the motivation for this was to position work as relieving boredom such that “work would … be impressed upon the inmate as a greatly desired privilege.”67 The belief that prisoners, in total isolation, would reflect and come to understand the need for their own reform is indicative of the Quaker influence on this system;68 Foucault notes that in Pennsylvania, it had been a Quaker society that had taken “[responsibility for] the organization and administration of penality” from 1780 to 1790.69 The model citizen that prisons operating on this model sought to create was “one who worked compliantly and did not organize with others but instead acted as an isolated individual;” in the context of the rise of industrial capitalism, this type of citizen would certainly be desirable to elites as well.70 The Auburn system similarly sought to prevent communication between prisoners, but allowed for their gathering in workshops to labour in silence, which was enforced by corporal punishment.71 Central features of this model included “marching in lockstep, total silence, congregate work groups, separate cells at night, and frequent resorts to the lash.”72 Elam Lynds, one of the first wardens of Auburn, viewed prison discipline

(including corporal punishment) as necessary to break prisoners' spirits, a process he

66 Mark Colvin, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs: Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth Century America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997): 83. 67 Ibid., 83. 68 Ibid., 83. 69 Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973, Ed. Bernard E. Harcourt, Trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015): 88. 70 Colvin, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs, 88. 71 Ibid., 82. 72 Ibid., 91. 21 considered crucial.73 The goal of the system was to “produce a mental state of complete submission;” whether inmates could be morally reformed once their spirits had been broken was a matter of debate amongst advocates of this model.74 Some argued that processes of moral reform could be successful, but only once a prisoner was rendered fully submissive and compliant. Others, including Lynds, disagreed, and argued that “the system should merely be one of deterrence through terror that simultaneously produced for the state the highest profit possible from the hard labor of inmates.”75

The original Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania was constructed as “a center of solitary confinement” in accordance with the Pennsylvania model, and was designed based on Bentham's Panopticon.76 It began operation in 1827; however, difficulties with the design soon arose. As Lewis explains, “the worst possible results had been achieved.

The prisoners could not work [because the cells were made too small], but they could by conversation mutually contaminate each other” because the prison had not been adequately sound-proofed.77 Due to these construction errors, the new prison was deemed completely unusable; thus, at great expense, the prison was demolished only seven years after its construction and entirely rebuilt.78 The Pennsylvania prison model never really gained traction outside the state, and even within Pennsylvania was

73 Barnes and Teeters, New Horizons in Criminology, 341. 74 Colvin, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs, 91. 75 Ibid., 91. 76 Blake McKelvey, American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions (Montclair: Patterson Smith, 19): 17. Though modelled on the Panopticon, it also included significant modifications to this design: for instance, half the cells faced the inner court as in the Panopticon, but the other half, backing the inner cells, faced the outer wall. 77 Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 120. Italics are the author's. 78 Norman Johnston, “Evolving Function: Early Use of Imprisonment as Punishment,” The Prison Journal 89, no. 1 (2009): 20S. 22

“consistently attacked because of lack of productive labor for prisoners, overcrowding, some cruelty, and expense.”79 As Barnes & Teeters note, several other states attempted to institute the Pennsylvania model but soon afterwards abandoned it.80 This model was, however, taken up in many parts of Europe.81 Throughout the United States, the Auburn system spread as the labour practiced in the workrooms was more profitable than any form of labour inmates could complete in small solitary cells.82 Further, given the realities of rampant overcrowding, the debate between the two systems became “almost irrelevant” anyway.83 Even though Pennsylvania did not formally legally abandon the system until 1913, by then it had long previously done so “in all but name.”84 By 1873, the Auburn model congregate workshop system had been fully implemented at the rebuilt

Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania.85

Brutality, corruption, and harsh punishment were common in the prison during this period. This was to some extent common knowledge given that prison reform movements had been active for decades and the Wines and Dwight Report86 had found that “not one of the state prisons … was seeking the reformation of its inmates as its primary goal or deploying efficient means to pursue reformation.”87 Both Prison

79 Barnes and Teeters, New Horizons in Criminology, 344. 80 Ibid., 344. 81 Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 118. 82 Edgardo Rotman, “The Failure of Reform: United States, 1865-1965,” The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, Eds. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995): 170. Rotman points out that a version of the Pennsylvania system persisted at Cherry Hill penitentiary but most everywhere else utilized the Auburn model. 83 Ibid., 170. 84 Barnes and Teeters, 344. 85 “A Historical Overview of Inmate Labor in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Correctional Industries, accessed 20 January 2013, http://www.pci.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/history_of_pci/17812. 86 This 1867 report was commissioned by the New York Prison Association as a study of prison methods. 87 Rotman, “The Failure of Reform,” 172. 23

Blossoms and Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist illuminate the inner-workings of the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania during the period in which their authors were incarcerated there, and these texts make similar observations to the Wines and Dwight

Report, detailing the brutal violence routinely deployed against prisoners. For instance,

Henry Bauer argues that while spiritual reform may be the stated aim of prisons, “it is obvious that incarceration in prison and mistreatment of the unfortunate prisoner accomplish exactly the opposite. Every prisoner understands that; only so-called prison authorities … can't or won't grasp it.”88 Berkman agrees, arguing that, far from creating model citizens, prisons actually breed “[enemies] of society.”89

In the words of Miriam Brody, at the time the Prison Blossoms' authors were incarcerated, the Western Penitentiary:

was a singularly bleak place for prisoners enduring a lengthy confinement. Its long brick cell blocks, enclosed within a perimeter wall, were set on a large tract of land that lay on the banks of the Ohio River, five miles from the center of Pittsburgh. Breezes from the nearby river only sometimes tempered the noxious climate of the penitentiary. More frequently, when the river flooded its banks, the prison cells became damp and malodorous, the floors infested with rats and insects. Only a few years before the anarchists' arrival, the prison administration, notorious for corruption and cruel treatment of prisoners, had been investigated for malfeasance by a state committee.”90

Berkman describes it as a place of “suffering and ever-present danger” and states that, after three months in the penitentiary, he doubts “the vague terrors pictured by [his]

88 Henry Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and Treatment of Prisoners,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 130-131. 89 Alexander Berkman, “Prisons and Crime: Punishment—Its Nature and Effects,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 159. 90 Brody, “Introduction,” xviii. 24 inexperience were more dreadful than the actuality of prison existence.”91 He describes one of his cells as “bare and cheerless, the large card of ugly-printed rules affording no relief from the irritating whitewash,” and as so narrow that it necessitated turning around every second or third step while walking.92 Bauer points out that although the warden,

Captain E. S. Wright, publicly declared himself opposed to corporal punishment of prisoners in the New York World in 189493 that citing all of the cases of cruel and violent treatment in the prison “would fill up a whole book by itself.”94 In his essay in Prison

Blossoms, a man identified as Prisoner A-444 describes being dragged to the slaughterhouse, “a place that was given its name by the prisoners because they are beaten there,” and describes five guards coming to the dungeon cell to beat him multiple times.95

As previously mentioned, labour in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania during the men's sentences was organized in congregate workshops. Henry Bauer explains that the primary tasks involved producing doormats, hosiery, and brooms, that each room generally accommodated fifty to seventy-five inmates working, and that each man had a required amount of work to complete per day.96 He describes the work, occurring for seven hours per day and one of the only purposes for which prisoners leave their solitary cells, as “light and clean” overall, but points out that work was allocated

91 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 151. 92 Ibid., 214. 93 Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and the Treatment of Prisoners,” 122. 94 Ibid., 127. In this essay, Bauer describes many such instances and also directs readers to another essay in Prison Blossoms, “The Treatment of Prisoner A-444, in His Own Words,” for further evidence. 95 Prisoner A-444, “The Treatment of Prisoner A-444, in His Own Words,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 134-5. 96 Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and the Treatment of Prisoners,” 120. 25 unfairly according to which prisoners were more favoured or more disliked by the guards.97 Prisoners were responsible for all food preparation but they lacked the supervision of a trained cook, so the food quality for inmates was poor.98 A prisoner's skills were not taken into account, so often men with skills suited to one occupation were given tasks with which they were wholly unfamiliar, and inability or failure to complete allotted tasks was harshly punished.99 In accordance with the Auburn model, conversation between prisoners was strictly prohibited and severely punished; Alexander

Berkman explains that men communicated silently through careful gestures and movements and that he even took up chewing tobacco to facilitate this.100

In his memoir, Berkman includes several sections of the Law on Prison Labor and

Wages of Convicts (Act of 1883, June 13th, P.L. 112) and points out that several provisions of the law were violated in Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania.101 This Act introduced the public account system;102 Pennsylvania Correctional Industries, a division of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, describes the 1883 Act as follows:

Employment of the inmates was directed by the state and the products of their labor were sold for the benefit of the state. In fact, provisions were outlined for the compensation of prisoners. Inmates received quarterly wages from which board, lodging, clothing, and the costs of trial were deducted. The remaining balance was paid to their families and dependents. If the inmate had no family or dependents, the money was paid to the inmate upon release.103

97 Ibid., 120. 98 Ibid., 116. 99 Ibid., 121-2. 100 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 159. 101 Ibid., 307-8. 102 The public account system meant that inmates were employed by the state, whereas previously they had been employed by private contractors. 103 “A Historical Overview of Inmate Labor in Pennsylvania.” 26

Under this public account system, which originated in Pennsylvania, the state took on the same profit motive as private interests did in under the contracting system.104 Berkman explains that, despite this legislation requiring otherwise, prisoners received no pay even for overtime work.105 Berkman also addresses the 1897 Muehlbronner Act, which:

prohibited the use of power machinery and forbid the employment of more than thirty-five percent of inmates in any state or county institution in the production of goods for sale. The act ordered that no more than five percent of the total number of inmates could be employed in the manufacture of brooms and brushes and hollow-ware; no more than ten percent could be employed in the manufacture of any other kinds of goods, wares, or articles; and no more than twenty percent could be employed in the manufacture of mats and matting.106

Berkman describes this Act as “one of the rare instances of rational legislation” and as having been met with joy amongst the prisoners, but describes the prison administration as having been “very bitter” because the Act would limit graft opportunities.107 He explains that prison officials found ways to bypass the law's requirements, stating that “in every shop twice as many [were] employed as the statute [allowed]; the 'illegal' [were] carried on the books as men working on 'State account'; that is, as cleaners and clerks, not as producers.”108 The public accounts system eventually failed in Pennsylvania given

“ongoing public antagonism toward convict-made products and the difficulties inherent in putting thousands of prisoners to work on nonmechanized forms of manufacturing.”109

104 Rebecca M. McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 104. 105 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 308. 106 “A Historical Overview of Inmate Labor in Pennsylvania.” 107 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 341. 108 Ibid., 357. 109 McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment, 231. The state eventually shifted toward a state-use system modelled on that of New York. 27

While the debate between the Pennsylvania and Auburn prison systems had been decided by the time Prison Blossoms was written, the underpinnings of the systems remained relevant; both rested on the assumption that “prisoners under no circumstances should communicate with each other.”110 At the time of Berkman, Nold, and Bauer's imprisonment prisons were still, at least outwardly, conceived of as operating toward the goal of the spiritual reform of inmates, and communication between prisoners remained prohibited. As Michael Meranze states, this “regulation of space and time within the prison had a double movement [and] sought to eliminate certain forms of contact and communication to help forge other bonds;” the prevention of communication existed alongside select forms of permitted prisoner speech, such as in the context of religious services.111 Practices surrounding communication, both between prisoners as well as between prisoners and those outside, are important to fully understanding Prison

Blossoms.

Prisoners were permitted some correspondence with those outside the prison, but there were many limitations. According to Berkman, prisoners were not permitted to write letters at all during the first month of their sentences.112 Communication between prisoners and non-prisoners through official channels was closely monitored by prison staff. It was only by including “fictitious, but significant, names, Russian and German words written backward, and similar devices” in her letters that Emma Goldman was able

110 Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 119. Italics are Lewis'. 111 Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996): 185-6. 112 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 133. 28 to keep Berkman updated on developments in the anarchist movement.113 Berkman explains the difficulty of obtaining information and being denied the publications his friends tried to send:

I have persuaded the Chaplain to procure the admission of the ingenious Robert Reitzel's publication.114 All the other periodicals addressed to me are regularly assigned to the waste basket, by orders of the Deputy. The latter refused to make an exception even in regard to the Knights of Labor Journal. 'It is an incendiary Anarchist sheet,' he persisted.115

Prisoners were, however, permitted to subscribe to the daily newspaper.116 Like incoming correspondence, outgoing mail was restricted as well: in an 1894 letter to Fedya,117

Berkman provides a little information on his “prison life” but reveals that prisoners were

“cautioned to refrain from referring to local affairs” in their letters and that he was thus limited in what he could share.118 He describes another letter he wrote to Emma Goldman in which, in a moment of anger, he wrote about the Warden discriminating against him and requested she have a lawyer intervene; it was returned to him by the Chaplain who offered to try to help but refused to send the letter.119 These restrictions did not, however, mean that all correspondence was censored or read by officials – inmates found ways of transmitting letters through unofficial channels that bypassed these measures. In his memoirs, Berkman reproduces several letters he sent in both sanctioned and secretive

113 Ibid., 164. 114 Der Arme Teufel (The Poor Devil), a popular German-language periodical published in Detroit. Berkman describes his joy at following its “ascending revolutionary tendency.” 115 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 164-5. 116 Ibid., 222. 117 Berkman's cousin Modest Aronstam (also known as Modest Stein) – he had lived with Berkman and Goldman and had been present during the planning of Berkman's attempt on Frick's life. 118 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 222. 119 Ibid., 293 29 ways, noting the latter as being sent sub rosa.

Prison policy did allow for prisoners to receive visitors. According to Henry

Bauer, prisoners were permitted one half hour visit every three months, and for each visit a guard would be present and listening.120 Early in Berkman's sentence, prior to the arrival of Nold and Bauer in the prison, Emma Goldman managed to visit; however, she was only able to do so by disguising herself as “Mrs. Niedermann,” his married sister visiting from Russia.121 They were not permitted to converse in Russian, and when

Goldman's identity was later revealed by a guard who recognized her, she was denied the second visit the Inspector had promised “Mrs. Niedermann” in light of her long journey.122 The men's accounts explain that the policy permitting visits was, like other prison policies, unequally and inconsistently applied. Berkman describes being denied a visit without being given a reason; when he finally gets to speak to the Inspector and make a complaint, he is ignored as soon as the Warden tells the Inspector he is being denied “for cause.”123124 Berkman can then only look on as the Inspector, as the Warden assents with a nod, and grants a trusted prisoner an extra visit despite his not being entitled to it according to the visit policy.125

Prisoners were for the most part not permitted to communicate with one another.

120 Bauer, “Our Prison Life,” 104-5. 121 Emma Goldman, (New York: Dover Publications, 1970): 110-1. 122 Ibid., 112-3. 123 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 294-5. 124 In a much later letter to Claus Timmerman, Berkman writes of Max Metzkow being one of the first to visit him during his incarceration “when he was still allowed visits” but then having been denied visits for ten years. See Alexander Berkman to Claus Timmerman, 1930, Max Metzkow Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. Berkman also notes, in a letter to Metzkow, how much this visit meant to him. See Alexander Berkman to Max Metzkow, 14 April 1934, Max Metzkow Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 125 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 295. 30

The primary opportunity for conversing was certainly in the workrooms as it was one of the few occasions when inmates were in one another's presence, and here, as previously explained, prisoners caught speaking to one another were punished. A congregate mess- room was introduced during Berkman's incarceration, and here too communication was prohibited; Berkman explains that “the sight of a thousand men, bend over their food in complete silence, officers flanking each table, [was] by no means appetizing.”126 For some time after the men's arrival, prisoners could speak to those in cells above and below theirs via empty pipes; Berkman explains, however, that prisoners caught doing so would be punished with time in the dungeon127 and that eventually this mode of communication became impossible when new privies were installed.128 If rangemen were caught speaking to fellow inmates as they worked, they were punished;129 while he worked a range job, Berkman relied on others to act as look-outs while he spoke to men in their cells.130

In addition to oral communication through pipes and relayed messages, prisoners found ways of communicating in writing with one another while locked alone in their cells, where they spent the vast majority of their time. Writing of the imprisoned anarchists' German letters, Miriam Brody notes that, were they detected by prison officials, “the reaction would have been harshly punitive: indefinite confinement in the

'hole,' a damp cell below ground level, with a daily diet of water and two ounces of

126 Ibid., 356. The inmates were, despite rules demanding otherwise, prone to cheering and yelling when the warden read the news. 127 Ibid., 248. 128 Ibid., 355. 129 Ibid., 123. 130 Ibid., 262. 31 bread.”131 Despite this ever-present threat, prisoners accepted the risk in order to write to one another. Berkman describes his correspondence with Nold and Bauer fondly: “the secret exchange of notes lends color to the routine. It is like a fresh mountain streamlet joyfully rippling through a stagnant swamp.”132 Because of the danger of being caught, with great reluctance the men were forced to destroy their letters to prevent their discovery when their cells were searched.133 It is within the context of secretive exchange that Prison Blossoms emerged.

“Prison Literature”

Despite formidable barriers against writing that prisons constitute, writings by prisoners and former prisoners hold an important place in the history of literature; as Bob

Gaucher writes, “the cumulative wealth of prisoners' writing over the centuries constitutes a firmly established and highly influential body of work within western literary and intellectual traditions.”134 Ioan Davies notes that many influential works have been written by incarcerated or exiled authors, and that both the Bible and the Platonic dialogues are strongly linked to imprisonment.135 One anthology of prison writings, which its editor Isidore Abramowitz describes as “the first effort of its kind and scope,” includes such notable and diverse figures as St. Paul, Boethius, Marco Polo, Galileo

131 Brody, “Introduction,” xlvi. Brody notes that their writing “would have been rapidly interpreted as plotting insurrection.” 132 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,179. 133 Bauer, “Our Prison Life,” 103. 134 Bob Gaucher, “Inside Looking Out: Writers in Prison,” Writing as Resistance: The Journal of Prisoners on Prison Anthology (1988-2002), Ed. Bob Gaucher (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2002): 33. 135 Ioan Davies, Writers in Prison (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1990): 3. 32

Galilei, Thomas More, Pádraic Pearse, Daniel Defoe, Honoré de Balzac, Napoleon,

Fyodor Dostoevsky, , Oscar Wilde, V. I. Lenin, , Rosa

Luxemburg, Adolf Hitler, and Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti.136 Because “prison culture is everywhere an oral one, and until this century prisoners who could read or write were few,” historically most prison writings were by intellectual or religious authors;137 however, more recently many have been “ordinary criminals who have become literary artists through their prison .”138

Scholars studying texts written in confinement often conceptualize 'prison literature' or 'prison writing' as itself forming a distinct genre with particular characteristics. This approach often speaks to the desire to foreground relationships between the texts and the context of imprisonment and to make connections and comparisons between texts written in different prisons across different places and times.

This approach is evident in the existence of many anthologies of 'prison writing,' some of which link together authors with little in common aside from their having been incarcerated. For instance, Abramowitz explains of his anthology The Great Prisoners:

The First Anthology of Literature Written in Prison that, aside from needing to determine which texts were actually written in prison in some cases, that there is “no unifying principle” linking the selections;139 he does, however, explain that in editing the collection he sought to convey “with every form and content available … the mood and substance of

136 Isidore Abramowitz, “Preface,” The Great Prisoners: The First Anthology of Literature Written in Prison, Ed. Isidore Abramowitz (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1946): xvii. 137 Davies, Writers in Prison, 9. 138 H. Bruce Franklin, “The Literature of the American Prison,” The Review 18, no. 1 (1977): 51. 139 Abramowitz, “Preface,” xx. 33 the nonconformist tradition” which it seems, given the wide range of authors included, can scarcely be called a 'tradition' at all.140 He states that in deciding how many pages to allot each author, he “followed consciously and consistently no general rule of measurement” whatsoever.141 Yet, despite having maintained no clear criteria for selection, Abramowitz maintains that they form a coherent and identifiable whole:

Here is a body of prison literature which speaks for itself in great flashes of introspection. It can surprise no one that on a hundred scattered pages the timeless becomes as topical and recognizable as this morning's news. On these shocks of recognition I rest my case that, from Socrates to our own day, we shall have traced a recognizable tradition: the black flower of prison.142

Thus, Abramowitz claims that the texts included in his anthology, as different as they are from one another, form a tradition despite the fact that the sole “price of admission” he imposed involved determining whether or not a text was actually written in prison.143

Doran Larson argues that the “critical study of prison writing deals with an extant, global genre defined by subject and the relevant experience of its authors.”144 He also elsewhere argues that prison writing is “the one truly global literary genre.”145 In his article “Toward a Prison Poetics,” he argues that:

prison writing bears not only a common subject but recurrent, internal, formal traits, and that these internal, generic traits emerge directly from prison writing's material links to the strategies of power exercised within prisons in general and to the particular conditions of each writer's incarceration.146

140 Ibid., xix. 141 Ibid., xix. 142 Ibid., xix. 143 Ibid., xxv. 144 Doran Larson, “Toward a Prison Poetics,” College Literature 37, no. 3 (2010): 143. 145 Doran Larson, “The Prison Industrial Literary Complex,” Minnesota Review 70 (2008): 29. 146 Larson, “Toward a Prison Poetics,” 143. In this article Larson limits his focus to not only texts written 34

He explains that such conceptions of genre often hinge on solely its authors having been incarcerated, at minimum, or on this combined with presumptions about these texts' subject matter. Specifically, he points out that authors discussing prison writing as a genre often assume the term specifically applies to works “whose subject is the prison itself.”147 Though he operates on this assumption for the purposes of this particular article, he emphasizes that this approach can (and often does) also make the related but problematic assumption that the prison is the only topic about which the prisoner might legitimately write.148 He argues that this expectation raises the concern that “the conservative punishers who have insisted upon 'truth in sentencing' … have been followed by progressives who effectively expect the incarcerated to serve as unpaid journalists and documentarians of the institutional abuses of the right.”149 In arguing that the texts prisoners write about prisons form a cohesive genre and therein he identifies:

two deeply linked tropes that are virtually universal because [they are] directly responsive to the prison writer's confrontation with a penal apparatus at once layered in documentation and deracinated from systems of justice: a dissociative turn of voice that allows the 'I' of the prison text—even when not opened into an explicit 'we'—to represent communities larger than the prison author and other than those insisted upon by the prison; and the concomitant associative gesture whereby the prison writer names the contemporary communities among whom s/he numbers him- or herself, and/or names an ancestry in the history of prison writing.150

For Larson, the advantage of conceptualizing these writings as a genre lies in the ability of this approach to shed light on prison systems all over the world as sharing a “common

in prison, but specifically those which are also about prison. This will be discussed further. 147 Larson, “Toward a Prison Poetics,” 159-60. 148 Ibid., 160. 149 Larson, “The Prison Industrial Literary Complex,” 30-31. 150 Larson, “Toward a Prison Poetics,” 145. 35 structure of conditions.”151 Prison literature as genre can thus expose what is hidden by the prison itself and constitutes a crucial contribution to developing better understandings of the workings of 'justice systems.' This motivation echoes a comment Foucault made in conversation with Deleuze on his work with the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons;152 he argues that prisoners possess “an individual theory of prisons, the penal system, and justice [and that] it is this form of discourse which ultimately matters, a discourse against power, the counter-discourse of prisoners and those we call delinquents.”153

Ioan Davies argues that “it would be simplistic merely to classify the writing that owes something to imprisonment, to provide a natural history of the genres and to argue for the centrality of prison writing as a part of our literature, philosophy and anthropology.”154 He does, however, describe his own approach as “trying to create a comparative framework for the literary philosophy of incarceration.”155 In doing so he, like Larson, “searches for motifs, forms, continuities, metaphors, engagements, [and] displacements which characterize the incarcerated imagination.”156 Whereas Larson confines his argument to writings which take prison as their subject, Davies' work leans

“heavily towards those writers who were incarcerated for writing, or towards intellectuals whose incarceration came about for political or religious reasons” because, he argues, historically these are the only prisoners “who presented a continuous narrative of 151 Ibid., 144. 152 In addition to other activities, the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons (GIP) sought out, edited, and published inmates' accounts of their incarceration in French prisons. 153 Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, “Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze,” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, Ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977): 209. 154 Davies, Writers in Prison, 3. 155 Ibid., 8. 156 Ibid., 7. 36 incarceration.”157 These texts are important for Davies because he argues that this narrative shapes the ways we understand prison as well as the ways in which this manifests in the ways prison is used as a metaphor.158 As Gaucher explains, Davies' work examines the way these texts enter into intellectual, political, literary, and cultural life.159

Davies' conclusion is nuanced, pointing out that “in this century the amount of literature that has emerged … far exceeds that of all previous prison literature, and therefore any attempts to weld the literature into one continuous narrative are doomed to failure;” he maintains, however, that “there are interconnecting narrative themes which provide clues to making a new reading of the literature, which must both be conscious of a very long history of prison writing and also confront both the explosion and the particularity of prison writing in this century.”160 There is a clear political dimension to Davies' emphasis on prison texts: he argues that they challenge us to “rethink our entire sense of human relationships and why incarceration is situated at the centre of our proclivities to find violent solutions to everyday human problems.”161

H. Bruce Franklin agrees with Davies regarding the particularity of contemporary prison writing, especially those texts originating in the United States. He argues that unlike the texts composed by well-known prison writers throughout history, “modern

American prison writings constitute a coherent body of literature with a unique historical significance and cultural influence.”162 For him, these texts are “not just works by

157 Ibid., 3. 158 Ibid., 4 159 Gaucher, “Inside Looking Out,” 33. 160 Davies, Writers in Prison, 232. 161 Ibid., 240. 162 H. Bruce Franklin, “Introduction,” Prison Writing in 20th-Century America,” Ed. H. Bruce Franklin 37 individual criminals and prisoners.”163 He does, however, distinguish what he means by

'coherent body' from a particular understanding of genre when he writes:

I do not mean to suggest that contemporary American prison literature can be considered a literary genre. It consists of novels, plays, poetry, essays, letters, songs, autobiographies, etc. Yet despite the wide range of generic forms, there are certain unifying and predominant formal characteristics, determined not only by the background of the writers but also by their intentions. Though these intentions are by no means all identical and are often, in fact, mutually contradictory, they mostly function in the same arena of struggle.164

Franklin limits the contents of his anthology, Prison Writing in 20th-Century America, to texts that speak directly to prison experience and explains that although this criterion excludes most American prison writings it also importantly serves to focus the collection

“into a vision of America from the bottom … [and] an exploration of the meanings of imprisonment.”165 This is crucial for Franklin as he, similarly to Davies and Foucault, argues that prison literature challenges the domination of the American prison itself by revealing that which is concealed from public view.166 In Prison Literature in America,

Franklin focuses on the work of “people who became creators of literature because of their incarceration.”167 Thus, he explains that the work of prisoners jailed for

“revolutionary political crimes” are outside the main scope of his analysis.168

The argument that the inmate is uniquely poised to offer insights on justice and

(New York: Penguin Books, 1998): 1. 163 Franklin, “The Literature of the American Prison,” 51. 164 H. Bruce Franklin, Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist, 2nd ed. (Westport: Lawrence & Hill Company, 1982): 234-5. 165 Franklin, “Introduction,” 1. 166 H. Bruce Franklin, “The Inside Stories of the Global American Prison,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 50, no. 3 (2008): 241. 167 Franklin, Prison Literature in America, 147. 168 Ibid., 147. 38 law is an argument that parallels those some incarcerated authors, including the authors of

Prison Blossoms, offer about the importance of their own writings. In an 1896 letter to

Emma Goldman, Berkman points out that the public cannot access reliable or complete information about what goes on inside prisons; he argues that even if George Kennan169 were to visit that he would only see what prison officials were willing to make public knowledge and that “if he succeeded in learning even half the truth, he would be forced to revise his views of American penal institutions” because “he would be horrified to witness the brutality that is practiced … as a matter of routine.”170 Henry Bauer further details this secrecy, arguing that Kennan would need to wait at the prison gates for a prisoner to be released in order to be able to converse without the oversight of prison administrators.171 In this sense, the project of smuggling writings out of the prison is one which its authors envisioned as an important contribution to discourses surrounding imprisonment. Bauer underscores that men who have long been imprisoned are much better positioned to analyse the prison system itself when he argues that “the appraisal of an old jail bird is more reliable than the appraisal of a dozen wardens.”172 This parallels

Kropotkin's introduction to his book In Russian and French Prisons, in which he writes that his three years in prison in Clairvaux (1882-1886) allowed him “an opportunity of obtaining a personal insight into the results achieved by detention in this [particular]

169 George Kennan published an influential book, Siberia and the Exile System, in 1891 detailing his observations of the system of forced penal labour utilized in Siberia by Tsarist Russia. 170 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 299. 171 Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and Treatment of Prisoners,” 109. He argues, however, that were Kennan to encounter an “ordinary” prisoner “without much power of observation” that the discussion would be of no use. 172 Ibid., 111. 39 prison.”173 Bauer writes, however, that even though part of his purpose is to familiarize

“the uninitiated” with prison that his work is absolutely not intended to prompt any official investigation because he knows that such a pursuit would be pointless.174 This view was informed by the fact that the men were fully aware that the prison had been investigated recently and that no real changes had come of the findings.175

The view that prison writings constitute a coherent genre is a contested. While D.

Quentin Miller, editor of Prose and Cons: Essays on Prison Literature in the United

States, does discuss prison literature as a “long American tradition” with some identifiable trends during particular points in history, he emphasizes that contemporary prison literature is “anything but predictable” and that “the ways to approach this literature are as diverse as the literature itself.”176 As Rivkah Zim points out, many authors addressing prison writing “describe a wide historical range of literary subjects as discrete creations.”177 She argues that:

it is important to distinguish between the contemporary politics of the prisoner's historical situation (including the motives of those responsible for the transmission of the text) and the politics of prison writing as this term relates to our own critical construct. [She suggests] that a combination of external and internal evidence (or, contexts, genres, and ideas taken together) can help us to describe principles for analyzing prison writing. It is paradigmatic yet particular; constrained by convention yet capable of rising above these constraints; often literary in its strategies yet also historically and politically situated, in a

173 , In Russian and French Prisons (London: Ward and Downey, 1887), http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/prisons/toc.html. 174 Henry Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and Treatment of Prisoners,” 109. 175 Ibid., 109. 176 D. Quentin Miller, “Introduction,” Prose and Cons: Essays on Prison Literature in the United States, Ed. D. Quentin Miller (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2005): 3. 177 Rivkah Zim, “Afterword: Writing Behind Bars: Literary Contexts and the Authority of Carceral Experience,” Huntington Library Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2009): 309. 40

particular prison under specific circumstances.178

Jason Haslam argues that given the massive number of texts written in prison and the diversity of contexts in which they are written, it is impossible to choose a sample of texts “representative of a larger genre of 'prison literature' … [or which,] when studied together, … can tell us the overarching meaning of that larger category.”179 He cites his introduction co-authored by Julia M. Wright180 to their co-edited volume Captivating

Subjects: Writing Confinement, Citizenship, and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century, in which they point out that demarcating a genre for prison writing necessitates “a construction of metaphorical boundaries, walls, and constraints” which opposes the aims of many authors whose work they study.181 Haslam does, argue, however, that while prison writing exists in a wide range of forms, genres, and styles, these texts “do constitute a different type of unitary group.”182 For him, this unity is not a result of

“formal similarities among texts” as Larson and others suggest, but rather “in the situations in and against which the works were composed.”183 He continues:

all prison writings comment … on the oppressive forces of the prison itself, and of the social structures of which the prison is a part. They complicate the ideological frames that the prison both informs and is informed by. Because of this, prison writings do indeed engage in debates that arise from their own particular settings and origins, but similarities can also be found in the means through which they do so.184

178 Ibid., 311. 179 Haslam, Fitting Sentences, 12-13. 180 Jason Haslam and Julia M. Wright, “Introduction,” Captivating Subjects: Writing Confinement, Citizenship, and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century, Eds. Jason Haslam and Julia M. Wright (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005):3-21. 181 Haslam, Fitting Sentences, 13. 182 Ibid., 11. 183 Ibid., 11. 184 Ibid., 11-2. 41

More specifically, in Fitting Sentences Haslam argues that the authors he focuses on “use the prison both as the ground against which they write and as a metaphor within the synecdoche for larger social discussions” and his analysis foregrounds “the manner in which [these] authors reconfigure notions of identity as a means of combatting the oppressive forces arrayed against them.”185

In problematizing the concept of 'prison writing,', Dylan Rodríguez quotes Paul St.

John, a writer imprisoned in New York, who writes:

Subject, genre, specialty—the writer enters it by choice. But prison writing is a matter of status. It comes with the bid and that's that. It must take as subject matter life in prison. Prison writing is literally forced upon the writer, who, incidentally, has been stripped of just about everything else. Now, that's supposed to liberate.186

Following St. John, Rodríguez argues that “to the extent that 'the prison' becomes a homogenizing modifier, designating the institutional location of the writer's labor, the genre equilibrates state captivity with other literary moments and spatial sites in civil society, or the free world.”187 Prison writing is unlike other 'literary genres' in that it is not one that an author chooses the same way that an author might choose, for instance, to write an essay, a particular sort of poem, a magazine article, or a novel, but rather one that is, as St. John writes, imposed on the author by virtue of their being imprisoned at the time of composition. As Rodríguez points out, unlike many other authors “the writer in prison is never simply free to write” as prisons prohibit and punish some forms of writing

185 Ibid., 12. 186 Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006): 83. 187 Ibid., 84. 42 while endorsing or even requiring others.188 He makes an important point regarding the political ramifications of this imposition, arguing that prison writing as a genre is an

“academic and cultural fabrication” which imposes order and coherence on the texts it claims, thereby obscuring and endorsing the “alleged order and coherence of imprisonment [which] is the constant disintegration of the writer's body, psyche, and subjectivity [as the] fundamental logic of punitive incarceration is the institutionalized killing of the subject.”189

Many scholars debating whether prison writing constitutes a genre, or discussing texts written in prison in ways which presume they form a coherent body of literature, do not explicitly define what they mean by 'genre,' and it is clear that scholars weighing in on this question do not employ a shared definition. This is a crucial point – given the myriad ways in which this term is used, it is possible for some conceptualizations of genre to be more beneficial than others for understanding particular texts written in prison and, more specifically, for reading Prison Blossoms. As previously noted, even when it is explicitly noted that prisoners do not write solely about prisons, many scholars focus on those texts which do take the prison as their object; for instance, this is the approach taken by H.

Bruce Franklin in selecting texts for his anthology Prison Writing in 20th-Century

America even though he acknowledges that many texts written in prison do not meet this criterion. Larson employs a different conceptualization of genre, arguing that “prison writing is a genre bound not only by its subject and authors,” as the presumption that

188 Ibid., 85. Italics are Rodríguez's. 189 Ibid., 85. 43 prisoners can only write about prison suggests, “but in its expressive tropes … [which are] at once determined by, actively resistant to, and thus indicative of both global and local conditions of composition.”190 For Larson, conceptualizing of prison writing as a genre need not fall into the trap of presuming that all prison experiences are the same because the similarities that are most crucial to acknowledge are actually the “global likenesses of the structure of conditions” from which these texts emerge; it is on this basis that he argues that a comparative study of texts written in prisons can draw attention to the importance of context and serve to counter the deflection of criticism of particular prison systems “by self-interested claims that [they are] not as bad as others.”191 This understanding of genre is somewhat paralleled by Haslam despite the fact that he disagrees that texts written in prison form a coherent genre because of any shared formal commonalities; he does share with Larson, as outlined above, the argument that these texts address similar situations: he asserts that the authors whose work he analyses

“[respond] to similar penal situations (if not societal ones), [and] construct textual negotiations of identity issues in order to critique and problematize the dominant functions of power in their societies” but does not, by virtue of this similarity, see them as necessarily representative of a broader genre demarcated by formal literary characteristics.192

Certainly there are risks involved in approaching prison writing as a genre.

Presuming all prisoners write about particular subject matter is a common approach but

190 Larson, “Toward a Prison Poetics,” 143. 191 Ibid., 160. 192 Haslam, Fitting Sentences, 13. 44 clearly excludes many, if not most, texts composed in confinement. Even an approach focusing on the common “penal situations,” to use Haslam's language, faced by authors risks problematically underemphasizing specificities of context, institution, and experience. Even beyond the risks of limiting the study of texts written in prison to a single theme or of making broad generalizations about all texts written in prison that gloss over important distinctions, however, approaching prison writing as a literary genre remains troublesome. In his book Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime, Dylan Rodríguez importantly problematizes “the reification of the figurative 'prisoner's' creative agency in the common aestheticization of her or his work into a 'genre' of litarary text.”193 Reading prison texts as comprising a genre risks effacing the important political dimensions of the production, circulation, and content of these works in favour of a focus on aesthetic and literary dimensions that is ultimately problematically depoliticizing. As Barbara Harlow writes, the text written in prison:

is written against those very structures of dominance and of an historical tradition of literature that legislated the isolation and the political neutrality of both literature and literary critic. Prison writing demands a reading that runs counter to the passivity, aesthetic gratification, and the pleasures of consumption traditionally sanctioned by the academic disciplining of literature; it demands an activist approach.194

Prison Blossoms, as an anarchist prison text, requires an activist reading approach: fundamental to this text are not only the anarchist politics espoused in its pages, but also the resistance, grounded in an anti-prison politic, that its illegal and dangerous production

193 Rodríguez, Forced Passages, 82. 194 Barbara Harlow, “Political Detention: Countering the University,” October 53 (1990): 42. 45 and circulation constitutes, as well as its place within a broader radical movements of its time and of which its authors were a part.

Prison Blossoms, Genre, Addressivity, and Intertextuality

In his article “What is Anarchist Literary Theory?” Jesse Cohn argues that the sanctioned forms of reading and literary criticism described by Harlow run counter to anarchist thought. He writes that:

for anarchists, treating literature as 'autonomous' from the social means failing to think autonomy in social terms; ergo, questions of literature must always be situated in a wider social context, with the aim of determining what kind of relationships the text offers to bring about between ourselves and one another, between ourselves and the world.195

With such an approach, Cohn points out, textual meaning is conceived of in relational terms, as stemming from both the relationships between the text and the situation and forces from which it arose and the relationships between the text and its possible effects in the world.196 Thus, as Cohn argues, while a grounding in context is crucial, “the particular text must never be simply reduced to an instance of a context, seen solely as the expression of some larger, fixed structure; there is always the possibility of surprise, of transformation.”197 For anarchists, Cohn states, “the primary critical question … is how a given text can be seen to represent life,” and more specifically, as Colson argues, the question of how a text might foster a stronger, freer life.198

Though approaching Prison Blossoms through the lens of genre might seem

195 Jesse Cohn, “What is Anarchist Literary Theory?” Anarchist Studies 15, no. 2 (2007): 117. 196 Ibid., 120. 197 Ibid., 118. 198 Ibid., 123. 46 counter-intuitive given the aforementioned issues, the concept of genre can yet offer insight. In his essay “The Problem of Speech Genres,” Mikhail Bakhtin advances a conception of genre which emphasizes context, arguing that “to fail to consider the peculiarities of generic subgategories of speech in any area of linguistic study … distorts the historicity of the research, and weakens the link between language and life.”199 He defines speech genres by clarifying that while each utterance200 is individual, specific to its speaker or author, “each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances,”201 and advocates developing a history of speech genres.

For Bakhtin, “utterances and their types, that is, speech genres, are the drive belts from the history of society to the history of language.”202 Explaining the utterance, Bakhtin argues that:

The boundaries of each concrete utterance as a unit of speech communication are determined by a change of speaking subjects, that is, a change of speakers. Any utterance—from a short (single-word) rejoinder in everyday dialogue to the large novel or scientific treatise— has, so to speak, an absolute beginning and an absolute end: its beginning is preceded by the utterances of others, and its end is followed by the responsive utterances of others (or, although it may be silent, others' active responsive understanding, or, finally, a responsive action based on this understanding).203

This is most clearly observed in conversation, though these boundaries of the utterance also appear in secondary genres which “arise in more complex … cultural communication

199 Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Trans. Vern W. McGee, Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press: 1981): 63. 200 For Bakhtin, the term 'utterance' can refer to both the oral and the written. He defines it as the concrete unit of communication. 201 Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” 60. 202 Ibid., 65. 203 Ibid., 71. 47

(primarily written) that is artistic, scientific, sociopolitical, and so on.”204 Bakhtin argues that secondary genres incorporate, and alter, primary ones: the latter “lose their immediate relation to actual reality” and only retain their significance on the plane of the secondary or complex utterance.205 Bakhtin uses the term 'addressivity' to describe the ways in which every utterance responds to prior utterances and addresses particular interlocutors in anticipation of future utterances, and underscores the centrality of examining the addressivity of any utterance one seeks to understand.206 For Bakhtin, “the relational nature of the word … stems from the word's existence within specific social sites, specific social registers and specific moments of utterance and reception.”207

Julia Kristeva was the first to utilize the term 'intertextuality;'208 her thought on the topic is strongly influenced by Bakhtin's notion of addressivity. Simon Dentith explains, however, that despite this influence there are important differences between Kristeva's work on intertextuality and Bakhtin's work from which she draws; he argues that:

Kristeva effectively deracinates the signifying process, tearing it out of the dialogic encounter which is its only imaginable context for Bakhtin. Polysemy thus becomes a property of the writing, not a possible way in which the relationship between writing and reader may be negotiated. As a consequence, the production of meaning happens as a result of purely textual operations independent of historical location; the multiplicity of possible meanings in a text spring from that text and not from the multiplicity of possible occasions in which that text can be read.209

204 Ibid., 62. For Bakhtin, secondary speech genres can be contrasted with primary ones, which are generally found in speech communication. 205 Ibid., 62. Bakhtin explains citing the example of dialogue appearing within the novel. 206 Graham Allen, Intertextuality (London: Routledge, 2000): 20. 207 Ibid., 11. 208 Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, Trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984): 60. 209 Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London: Routledge, 1995): 97. 48

Elaborating on this passage, Graham Allen explains that, for Dentith, a central difference between Kristeva and Bakhtin lies in their respective conceptions of social liberation: for the former, this is liberation from the historical process itself, whereas for the latter struggle necessarily involves “a constant unfinished dialogue within specific social situations.”210

Since its initial elaboration, the term intertextuality has been taken up in a number of ways. As Plett points out, an etymological understanding of intertextuality suggest an intertext is “a text between other texts,”211 and Mai indicates that intertextuality has, broadly, served to point to some form of interconnectedness.212 These general understandings have led to a variety of more specified applications of the concept as scholars working in various traditions and fields incorporate the influence of Bakhtin and

Kristeva into their work. Mai argues, for instance, that a “restricted intertextuality

[which] would refer to all possible textual references within the clearly delimited domain of belles lettres” is widely employed; however, the term is also frequently used to refer, generally, to deconstruction or, even more broadly, post-structuralism – the proliferation of such widely differing uses of the same term complicates its use.213 Mai summarizes this disagreement about intertextuality as one that is fundamentally about “whether

[intertextuality] is to be regarded as a general state of affairs ... or as an inherent quality of

210 Allen, Intertextuality, 58. Italics Allen's. Both Dentith and Allen contextualize these variations on intertextuality and liberation within their respective origins in late 1960s Paris and post-Revolutionary Russia. 211 Heinrich F. Plett, “Intertextualities,” Intertextuality, Ed. Heinrich F. Plett (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991): 5. Italics Plett's. 212 Hans-Peter Mai, “Bypassing Intertextuality: Hermeneutics, Textual Practice, Hypertext,” Intertextuality, Ed. Heinrich F. Plett (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991): 31. 213 Ibid., 31. 49 specific texts.”214

Though Bakhtin does not use the term intertextuality, the roots of the concept are evident in his conceptions of utterance and genre; as Norman Fairclough points out,

Bakhtin's work advocates for intertextual analysis as crucial to linguistic analysis.215 As

Fairclough explains, “intertextual analysis draws attention to the dependence of texts upon society and history in the form of the resources made available within the order of discourse (genres, discourses, etc.).”216 He continues, explaining that:

intertextual analysis ... presupposes accounts of individual genres and types of discourse … but [that] intertextual analysis as it is dynamically and dialectically conceived by Bakhtin also draws attention to how texts may transform these social and historical resources, how texts may 're-accentuate' genres, how genres (discourses, narratives, registers) may be mixed in texts.217

Fairclough is known as one of the most prominent scholars to contribute to the establishment of critical discourse analysis which, as Christina Schäffner points out, is an area in which intertextuality as “explicit or implicit references within one text to another text (of whatever genre)” has received significant attention and which frequently mobilizes Foucault's understanding of discourse as “a communicative practice.”218

Norman Fairclough's conception of critical discourse analysis includes three components: it considers discursive events as components of discursive and social practice, seeks to explain connections between texts and forms of social practice, and

214 Ibid., 31. 215 Norman Fairclough, “Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis Within Discourse Analysis,” Discourse & Society 3, no. 2 (1992): 195. 216 Ibid., 195. 217 Ibid., 195. 218 Christina Schäffner, “Intercultural Intertextuality as a Translation Phenomenon,” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 20, no. 3 (2012): 346. 50 aims to understand these relationships (and changes in these relationships) in socio- historical context.219 Critical discourse analysis is an especially valuable tool because it analyzes texts with an eye to power220 – Fairclough points out that while intertextuality draws attention to the ways that texts can change prior conventions, this productivity is not infinitely available but rather is always constrained by power relations; thus, intertextuality must always be combined with an understanding of power to account for this.221 For Fairclough, intertextual analysis emphasizes the ways in which texts

“selectively draw upon orders of discourse—the particular configurations of conventionalized practices … which are available to text producers and interpreters in particular social circumstances.”222 This does not, however, mean an exclusionary focus on forms at the expense of content; rather, it means that one cannot analyse content without attention to form because “contents are always necessarily realized in forms, and different contents entail different forms and vice versa.”223 As Fairclough points out, texts are a form of social action, and the critical analysis of texts can work against the frequent

'overlooking' of “the social and ideological 'work' that language does in producing, reproducing or transforming social structures, relations and identities.”224

Bakhtin's notions of speech genre, addressivity, and the relational nature of utterances offer tools with which to work towards the kind of anarchistic reading that 219 Norman Fairclough, “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” Linguistics and Education 4, no. 3-4 (1992): 269. 220 Ruth Wodak, “What CDA is About – A Summary of its History, Important Concepts and its Developments,” Methods in Critical Disourse Analysis, Ed. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (London: SAGE Publications, 2001): 2. 221 Fairclough, “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” 270. 222 Fairclough, “Discourse and Text,” 194. 223 Ibid., 194. 224 Ibid., 211. 51

Cohn calls for by emphasizing the ways in which, in Cohn's words:

each text, as an event, must be viewed both in retrospect, as the sequel to other events (other texts, the facts of the author's life, 'what they meant for them, in their time,' the cultural and historical milieu, even the objective referents which it may concern) and in prospect, as the possible cause of further and future events (other occasions, readings, receptions, and responses).”225

The ways in which Bakhtin's work have been taken up within critical discourse analysis utilizing theories of intertextuality are especially fruitful for such a reading given their attention to power – as Fairclough points out, for critical discourse analysts texts are sites through which social dominations are both exercised and enforced as well as negotiated and resisted.226 In addition, the argument that Bakhtin's work might be relevant to, or share parallels with, anarchist approaches is not entirely new; for instance, Robert F.

Barsky has drawn parallels between Baktin's work and that of anarchist , arguing that they share an emphasis on context in understanding texts and that “any effort to separate the utterance from its context is for Rocker a political act, for Bakhtin a senseless one, and for both a threat to the life of language itself.”227

In the case of Prison Blossoms, an intertextual critical analysis taking up Bakhtin's notions of genre and addressivity would not require the most troublesome assumptions that can accompany the notion of prison writing as a genre – examining the composition and circulation of Prison Blossoms within the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania does not mean accepting that the authors' sole, or even primary, interlocutors were other prison

225 Cohn, 121, as indicated in part quoting 's La Révolution (Paris: Éditions Champ Libre, 1974): 50, translation Cohn's. 226 Fairclough, “Discourse and Text,” 212. 227 Robert F. Barsky, “Bakhtin as Anarchist? Language, Law, and Creative Impulses in the Work of Mikhail Bakunin and Rudolf Rocker,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 97, no. 3-4 (1998): 631. 52 authors, nor does it suggest that Prison Blossoms must be read as part of a discernable tradition of texts written by incarcerated authors. Bakhtin's conception of genre as it is taken up in critical discourse analysis requires, rather, that this collection of texts be read as necessarily in conversation with other texts and contexts, particularly in terms of the discursive conventions they they take up (and, possibly, also resist), the prior utterances that shape them, and the future utterances they anticipate.

Prior to undertaking this analysis it is crucial to define, and distinguish between, two key terms as they will be used in this analysis: genre and discourse. In making this distinction I follow Kress and Threadgold, who explain that “it is through/in genres that ... discourses … and dialogic positioning (the text in response to and in anticipation of other texts) – the things that carry ideologies of individuals and communities – are actually transmitted, maintained and potentially changed.”228229 Fairclough further elaborates this distinction, and the way in which discourses operate within genres, in stating that genre indicates “a relatively stable set of conventions that is associated with and partly enacts a socially ratified type of activity”230 whereas a discourse is “a particular way of constructing a subject matter, and … [emphasizes] that contents or subject matters—areas of knowledge—only enter texts in the mediated form of particular constructions of them.”231 It is also crucial to note that, for Fairclough, genre denotes not only a set of conventions but “also particular processes of producing, distributing and consuming

228 Gunther Kress and Terry Threadgold, “Towards a Social Theory of Genre,” Southern Review 21, no. 3 (1988): 216. 229 In his essay “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” Norman Fairclough also takes up Kress & Threadgold's distinction between these terms. 230 Fairclough, “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” 284. 231 Ibid., 286. 53 texts.”232 In beginning this analysis, it is thus necessary to consider the ways in which

Prison Blossoms might be conceived of as an utterance, or series of utterances, as well as to consider which genre(s) Prison Blossoms might constitute.

Bakhtin's distinction between primary and secondary speech genres is helpful in understanding Prison Blossoms, and there are several possible levels at which Prison

Blossoms could be analyzed in terms of utterance. There are many clearly identifiable primary (or 'simple') utterances (which include “rejoinders of daily dialogue”)233 incorporated within it. The clearest appearances of primary utterances within Prison

Blossoms are found in two of Carl Nold's contributions, issues entitled “Dialogue

Between Two Prisoners”234 and “A Morning Conversation Between Dutch and Mike (Two

Prisoners),”235 both of which are presented as transcripts of conversations between inmates framed by Nold's notations of which inmate is speaking and ending with an indication of the month, year, and time each took place. In these works, the change in speaking subjects which begins or ends an utterance is clearly noted with a man's name, for instance: “Dutch: Do you know John Bull? Mike: John Bull? No, who's that?”236

Primary utterances are also clearly indicated in Berkman's “The Sinking Ship: A

Parable,”237 in which he writes dialogue between two fictional characters, and throughout

232 Ibid., 284-5. 233 Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” 61. 234 Carl Nold, “Dialogue Between Two Prisoners,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 145-146. 235 Carl Nold, “A Morning Conversation Between Dutch and Mike (Two Prisoners),” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 147-148. 236 Ibid., 147. 237 Alexander Berkman, “The Sinking Ship: A Parable,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard 54

Prison Blossoms as the men recount conversations from court and prison. Prison

Blossoms also preserves primary utterances in the form of fragments of written conversation between its authors; for instance, some issues preserve the commentary they made on one another's writings. This is clearly observable in the margins of Henry

Bauer's essay “Penitentiary Administration and Treatment of Prisoners,” which was

“testily edited by Berkman;”238 this issue not only includes critical notes by Berkman, but also some of Bauer's responses. The following is just one example: “A. B.: The two of them don't understand each other? You really believe that? They understand only too well. [In Bauer's hand, a retort: Not true.]”239 All of these primary utterances appear in the wider context of Prison Blossoms, which is itself more fruitfully conceived of in terms of the secondary utterance.

Bakhtin's notion of the secondary utterance offers ways of conceptualizing the relationship between each issue of Prison Blossoms and the larger collection they form.

Thinking in terms of addressivity and taking each issue of Prison Blossoms as a secondary utterance, it is important to note that these utterances respond to and anticipate one another, with each preceded by prior issues and anticipating later ones. The authors draw explicit attention to this. For instance, while they did not leave a thorough account as to the order in which the issues were circulated or how they planned to arrange them into book form, some hints are provided by the issues' titles – for instance, Henry Bauer's

University Press, 2011): 204-209. 238 Brody, “Introduction,” xlvii. 239 Bauer, “Penitentiary Administration and Treatment of Prisoners,” 110. Italics and square brackets are Brody and Buettner's – in their “Note on the Text” they indicate that they've incorporated italics for the footnotes written by the Prison Blossoms' authors. In this case, the men are disagreeing about whether prison administrators and prisoners understand one another's feelings and experiences. 55

“Two Further Court Farces” presumably refers to, and follows, Berkman's “An American

Court Farce.” Further, three of Berkman's surviving texts clearly form a group given that they share a title and are distinguished by subtitles: “Prisons and Crime: Punishment—Its

Nature and Effects,” “Prisons and Crime: Influence of Prisons on Morals,” and “Prisons and Crime: Crime and Its Sources.” This draws attention to what Fairclough describes as

“the form or organization of texts—of what one might call … their 'texture.'”240

The texture of Prison Blossoms, the arrangement of its issues, reflects both the context in which it was composed and its addressivity—the audience it addressed and whose responses it anticipated. As Berkman explains, the temporal frequency with which new issues appeared was necessarily determined by the amount of time that it took for previous issue to circulate amongst readers241 because, as Ferguson writes, “in contrast to the persistent regularity of other anarchist publications, the clandestine collective writing of Prison Blossoms struggled forward according to the irregular opportunities of prison time;”242 in this context, weekly or monthly composition and circulation was impossible.

In this sense, this irregularity of prison time, against which the men resisted and took tremendous risks to undermine by communicating with one another at all, is manifested within the very texture of Prison Blossoms itself. The addressivity of each issue of

Prison Blossoms, oriented initially toward inmates and later toward an anticipated outside readership, also accounts for other aspects of its texture as well, including, for instance, the shift in form from writing in German to writing in English in order to allow for an

240 Fairclough, “Discourse and Text,” 194. 241 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 182. 242 Kathy Ferguson, “Anarchist Counterpublics,” New Political Science 32, no. 2 (2010): 210. 56 expanded readership.243

Finally, Prison Blossoms as a whole must also be conceived of as itself a secondary utterance. Though they were never published in book form as the authors intended during their lifetime, the issues were intended to form components to form a larger whole (and, today, the surviving issues do so in the form of Brody and Buettner's edited volume). Such a reading is consistent with Baktin's conception of the utterance, as he argues that “the most complex and ultra-composite work of a secondary genre as a whole (viewed as a whole) is a single integrated real utterance that has a real author and real addressees whom this author perceives and imagines.”244 Thinking of Prison

Blossoms in this way allows for a further analysis with regards to the outside readership it anticipates as well as of the broader textual conventions that both shape it and into which it intervenes. This conception of genre is, in my view, more fruitful when considering

Prison Blossoms than considering it an instance of 'prison writing' as a genre; while the latter conception in a sense isolates Prison Blossoms within the prison in which it was written, the former emphasizes the wider spheres of radical political communication and practice that Prison Blossoms reflects and constitutes.

Bakhtin, writing of complex texts such as those of science and art, argues that an author's individuality manifests in their written work:

This imprint of individuality marking the work … creates special internal boundaries that distinguish this work from other works connected with it in the overall processes of speech communication in [a] particular cultural sphere: from the works of predecessors on whom

243 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 184-5. 244 Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” 98-9. 57

the author relies, from other works of the same school, from the works of opposing schools with which the author is contending, and so on.245

The work's addressivity anticipates the reader's response, a response “which can assume various forms: educational influence on the readers, persuasion of them, critical responses, influence on followers and successors, and so on.”246 While Prison Blossoms, as a radical text whose very composition and circulation constitute acts of resistance taken at great risk to all involved, may seem isolated from other anarchist writings of its time, I argue that it is very much embedded within broader cultures of resistance which existed beyond the prison. Prison Blossoms must be read as existing within the broader sphere of political writing and, more specifically, the sphere of communication, genre, and political practice constituted by the circulation of radical periodicals within anarchist communities and movements at the time, from which its authors drew and to which they respond.

Radical Communities & The Anarchist Press

Bakhtin famously argued that “our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others' words.”247 His work, as well as his influence on the study of intertextuality, call attention to the importance of both a text's content and context; they offer a language with which to analyze the ways that particular spheres of discourse manifest their own genres, which Kress and Threadgold describe as “socially

245 Ibid., 75. 246 Ibid., 75-6. 247 Ibid., 89. 58 ratified text-types in a community.”248 As Kamberelis and Scott explain:

Bakhtin's account of discourse is fundamentally a theory of contexts. The primacy of context over text is guaranteed, he argues, because all texts index other utterances and voices. It is only within specific contexts that texts or any other discursive practices have any effects. Thus, understanding any practice requires theoretically and historically (re)constructing its contexts. Voices or ideological perspectives within texts cannot be understood as creations of unitary and entirely cohesive subjectivities but rather as constructed in a complex interplay, transversion, and disruption of the discursive systems and practices of the self and the social.249

In the case of Prison Blossoms, the penitentiary is not the only relevant context; the authors wrote within the wider contexts of anarchist thought and anarchist periodical publishing which, at the time, were well-established in the United States and with which the authors were very familiar.

The anarchist press was a central component to radical organizing at the turn of the century. Conlin argues that “the radical press is the chief source for understanding the radical experience in America” because it is the primary site that radicals recorded their thoughts and actions,250 and Buchstein identifies the period in which the anarchist press was most active as between 1880 and 1917.251 As Lauren Kessler writes, “American radicals deemed the publication of some sort of periodical so vital to the cause that even splinter groups numbering no more than a few dozen members issued newspapers and

248 Kress and Threadgold, “Towards a Social Theory of Genre,” 216. 249 George Kamberelis and Karla Danette Scott, “Other People's Voices: The Coarticulation of Texts and Subjectivities,” Linguistics and Education 4, no. 3-4 (1992): 365-6. 250 Joseph R. Conlin, “Introduction,” The American Radical Press: 1880-1960, Vol. I, Ed. Joseph R. Conlin (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974): 7. Italics Conlin's. 251 Frederick D. Buchstein, “The Anarchist Press in American Journalism,” Journalism History 1, no. 2 (1974): 43. 59 theoretical journals.”252 In the context of anarchist movements more broadly, the importance invested in these periodicals relates to their ability to serve a wide variety of functions simultaneously. Through their publications, anarchists sought to explain and propagate their ideas, to debate with others inside their movements, to grow support for their movements, and to publicize their activities and events. They also served to inform anarchists in America of news regarding radical movements abroad, a function of particular interest to the many anarchists in the United States who were immigrants and had previously been politically active in other regions.253 These texts served both external and internal functions: some were written for the “unconverted,” while others emphasized communication internal to the anarchist movement, both within smaller anarchist groups and between them. This internal communication included debate and discussion as well as, at times, harsh criticism. These texts also served as a site of self-representation, empowering radicals to counter the general “antiradical sentiment” pervasive in mainstream media254 and, more specifically, the frequent representations of “The

Anarchist” as “a tatty, bearded, sinister, foreign figure grasping a spherical black bomb” frequently depicted in political cartoons especially after the Haymarket protests, trial, and executions of 1886.255

During this period, publications in a wide variety of languages were circulated as

252 Lauren Kessler, The Dissident Press: Alternative Journalism in American History (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984): 111. 253 Ibid., 114. 254 Ibid., 113. 255 Joseph R. Conlin, “Anarchist Publications,” The American Radical Press: 1880-1960, Vol. II, Ed. Joseph R. Conlin (Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1974): 371. Italics Conlin's. 60

“the growth of the various foreign-language journals mirrored immigration patterns.”256

Given that the anarchist movement at the turn of the century included speakers of many different languages, this diversity is reflected in the languages of anarchist texts.

According to Kessler, in 1885, 79% of all non-English language publications in the

United States were written in German.257 Unsurprisingly, there were many German- language anarchist periodicals, the best known of which was Johann Most's Freiheit.

Nelson notes that during the period of 1870 to 1900 there were 52 socialist and anarchist newspapers published in Chicago alone, with “fourteen of them German, eleven Czech, nine English, eight Scandinavian, six Polish, three Lithuanian, and one Italian.”258 Paul

Avrich makes note of twenty Yiddish-language anarchist publications in the United

States, twelve of which began at some point during the first twenty years of the twentieth century.259 While these periodicals did address their specific language communities, many of their authors and editors also sought to built bridges between and beyond them.

Anarchists thought about language use when strategizing ways of broadening their readership: discussing the activism of German-speaking anarchists, Goyens points out that “agitation among English-speaking workers constituted one of the most important items on the anarchists' public agenda, a headline issue at every major anarchist convention in the United States”260 and that the “translation of documents was seen as the 256 Kessler, The Dissident Press, 93. 257 Ibid., 90. Until 1913 German-language publications constituted over half of the non-English press in the United States. 258 Bruce C. Nelson, “Arbeiterpresse und Arbeiterbewegung: Chicago's Socialist and Anarchist Press, 1870-1900,” The German-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850-1940, Eds. Elliott Shore, Ken Fones-Wolf, and James P. Danky (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992): 81. 259 Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988): 191-2. 260 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, 213. 61 key to minimizing language boundaries.”261 In 1893, for instance, the paper Solidarity262 proposed a conference at which this issue (among others) could be discussed; while

Johann Most wrote in opposition to the project, the paper notes that several others wrote in to endorse the undertaking.263 In this context, the decision of Bauer, Berkman, and

Nold to suspend the German-language Zuchthausblüthen in favour of the English- language Prison Blossoms in order to facilitate the inclusion of more prisoners speaks to a much broader struggle of immigrant anarchists to find ways to transmit their work to interested English-speaking workers.264

Radical periodicals not only manifested debates and political arguments in their content, but also their form; the very process of publishing anarchist periodicals was deeply contested and frequently debated. For instance, Johann Most, editor of the prominent German-language periodical Freiheit, was a controversial figure often at the centre of these debates due to his hostility to the emergence of other periodicals and his insistence on complete editorial control over Freiheit's content; this can in part be attributed to “his belief in the need for a degree of uniformity within the anarchist ranks.”265 Goyens points out that Most's attitude with regard to Freiheit did not go unnoticed: “many saw the paper as useful, but its position and the attitude of the editor

261 Ibid., 215. 262 A paper produced by Saverio Merlino and John H. Edelmann in New York from 1892 until 1898. 263 John H. Edelmann, “The Conference,” Solidarity (New York, NY), 9 February 1893. 264 It is worth noting that discussion of how to overcome the language barrriers involved in producing English-language propaganda went on for decades – in 1939, “representatives from various American Italian, Spanish, Russian and Jewish anarchist groups … met … and discussed among other subjects the need for more effective anarchist propaganda in English.” (A. Blecher et. al., “Conference Committee for Anarchist Propaganda in English,” 1 May 1939, Anarchism – Conference Committee for Anarchist Propaganda in English – Ephemera File, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.) 265 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, 117. 62 reeked of monopoly [and thus] some comrades likened Most's position … to that of an autocrat.”266 An instance of this tension occurred when, for instance, Freiheit argued that anarchists should not be continually starting new papers when at least one paper (namely itself) hasn't been put “on a solid foundation” first; in The Rebel, a -based anarchist-communist paper, J. H. Edelmann responded, arguing that he would agree were

Freiheit published in English, but that he would “unhesitatingly choose” to support

English propaganda over German papers if he had to choose one or the other.267 In 1884, a debate about the diversity of the anarchist press organized by the Social-Revolutionary

Club in New York was attended by twenty people; Johann Most was invited but declined.

The attendees argued, regarding Freiheit, that “a labor paper did not need an editor and that everyone should be free to contribute to it.”268 In response, Most “scorned the club and called the attendants 'crazy rowdies' and 'filthy fellows,'” dismissing the event completely.269

These debates, however, did not disappear; in 1886 when Wilhelm Hasselmann launched the Amerikanische Arbeiter-Zeitung in New York City, its functioning as competition to Freiheit was underscored by the statement published by its “United

Publishers” that there would be no editor and that every interested worker could publish relevant articles.270 As Goyens emphasizes:

At the root of these … disagreements lay a fundamental difference of approach as to how and when an anarchist society should exist. One

266 Ibid., 114. 267 J. H. Edelmann, “Notes,” The Rebel (Boston, MA), November 1895. 268 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, 116. 269 Ibid., 116. 270 Ibid., 118. 63

view held that an anarchist society was not possible at this moment, and activists should organize to bring about the conditions that would allow an anarchist lifestyle later. This view implied suspending certain notions of freedom now for the good of the cause, and it was this belief that caused Most to clash with an 'immediatist' approach, which believed that one could live according to anarchist principles in the here and now.271

In other words, disagreements on how periodicals should be produced reflected deeper commitments with regard to whether or not anarchists could, or should, strive to “embody an anarchist society in miniature” by fostering relationships built on anarchist principles.272

These debates constitute an important aspect of the intertexual context of the composition of Prison Blossoms. The ongoing disagreement between collectivists (or

Bakuninist anarchists), including Johann Most, and autonomists (also referred to as anarchist-communists) including Most's primary rival Josef Peukert,273 who favoured the

'immediatist' approach to periodical publishing as well as “total of the movement,”274 sheds light on the discussions between Henry Bauer, Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold regarding their own writing and editing processes. In his memoir,

Berkman describes these processes following the decision to expand circulation beyond four275 recipients: “the number of pages is to be enlarged; each issue to have a different

271 Ibid., 123. 272 Ibid., 123. 273 The two had once been friends, but clashed and a massive rift grew between them. It is far beyond the scope of this paper to discuss, but more can be read on the topic in Goyens, Beer and Revolution, as well as Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980). In addition Carl Nold discusses Peukert's career, the split between Peukert and Most, as well as mentions various sources which detail it, in Carl Nold to Agnes Inglis, 30 October 1931, Agnes Inglis Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 274 Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015): 31. 275 Initially only shared by Bauer, Berkman, and Nold, later a fourth man was included as their first 64 editor, to ensure equality of opportunity; the readers to serve as contributing editors.”276

Berkman also added that himself, Nold, and Bauer:

are to act, in turn, as editor-in-chief, whose province it is to start the Blüthen on its way, each reader contributing to the issue till it is returned to the original editor, to enable him to read and comment upon his fellow-contributors. The publication, its contents growing in transit, is finally to reach the second contributor, upon whom will devolve the editorial management of the following issue.277

The three men's emphasis on the process of producing the periodical speaks to the wider context of anarchist organizing in which periodicals were of central importance and publishing practices were a site of the manifestation of intense political disagreements.

The degree to which these debates over periodical publishing actually captured most anarchists' attention is debatable; Goyens, for instance, argues that “the majority of the men and women in the autonomist anarchist community in New York were not caught up in the personal vendetta between Most and Peukert, although [Alexander] Berkman characterized the Mostians and Peukert's circle as being 'chiefly concerned' with the matter.”278 Berkman himself was well-versed in the matter given that he was one of several who had left the Mostians in favour of .279 His description of the editorial structure of Prison Blossoms bears notable similarity to the autonomist editorial approach exemplified in both the statement on the production of Hasselmann's

Amerikanische Arbeiter-Zeitung and the statement of the attendees of the Social-

subscriber; he is referred to in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist as being called 'D' for Dichter (poet) by the other three because his first contribution was a poem. 276 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 182. 277 Ibid., 183. 278 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, 133. Most blamed Peukert for the criticism he received for his publishing practices. 279 Ibid., 130. 65

Revolutionary Club's event on diversity in the anarchist press. The emphasis on equal opportunity for all of the men involved to have a chance to act as editor is indicative of autonomist commitments to both personal autonomy and to living anarchist principles even in the most hierarchical and oppressive of environments. In the Western

Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, the editorial practices of the writers of Prison Blossoms served to reconfigure the prison as a site of experimentation with the actualization of autonomist relationships. Navigating these relationships in a prison presented particular challenges: Berkman notes, for instance, that “the popularity of joint editorship [was] growing at the cost of unity and tendency” and that this was especially concerning as

Dichter's writing caused the others “grave anxiety” about the limited paper supply.280 It also, however, constituted radical resistance in a space designed to prevent any relationships of or friendship.

Propaganda by Deed and the Debate on Berkman's Act

Long prior to Berkman's attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, a major point of debate within the anarchist movement globally had been on the use of violent tactics in anarchist struggle. Although, as Henry Addis points out in Free Society, “any act … that calls attention to conditions, and starts investigation of our claims, is … propaganda by deed”281 the phrase 'propaganda by deed' was often used to denote violent acts in particular, advancing from the understanding that “self-sacrificing acts of violence

280 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, 183. 281 Henry Addis, “Propaganda By Deed,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 11 July 1897. 66 against members of the ruling class would help spread revolutionary consciousness among the masses and inspire further such actions, ultimately culminating in revolution,”282 a belief to which Berkman and many others subscribed. While the history and details of this debate are far too lengthy and complex to detail here, it is worthwhile to note the positions of a few well-known anarchists on either side. Perhaps one of the most well-known advocates of propaganda by deed, Mikhail Bakunin, had recommended

“the selective killing of individuals as a preliminary to .”283 Elisée

Reclus advocated propaganda by deed as a viable strategy to expose the state's vulnerability to those who might rise up against it.284 Kathy Ferguson notes that:

during the 1880s, luminaries of international anarchism including Peter Kropotkin, , , and three of the Haymarket martyrs (Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer) at least temporarily advocated both armed insurrection and individual political assassination.285

Carlo Cafiero argued in an 1880 article published in Le Révolté286 that radical tactics must include, along with various non-violent actions, rebellion “by dagger, by gun, [and] by dynamite,”287 and he and Malatesta emerged as the “missionaries of Propaganda by Deed, carrying it as a new gospel [from Italy] to the rest of the international anarchist

282 Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State, 31. 283 Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A (London: Harper Perennial, 2008): 285. 284 Ibid., 343. 285 Kathy Ferguson, Political Thinking in the Streets (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011): 41. For a chronological list of the most recognized acts of propaganda by deed around the world spanning 1878-1926, refer to p. 41-43. Far more acts of propaganda by deed were committed in Europe than were ever attempted in the United States. 286 An anarchist-communist journal started by Kropotkin. 287 Carlo Cafiero, “Action (1880),” Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vol. I, Ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005): 152. 67 movement.”288 In 1881, anarchists held the London Congress (which both Kropotkin and

Malatesta attended) and the attendees “officially adopted the policy of 'propaganda by deed', a policy of illegal acts.”289

Other prominent anarchists argued against violent propaganda by deed. Leo

Tolstoy, for instance, rejected anarchists' claims that an anarchist society could be brought about by revolution and “completely repudiated the use of physical force,” arguing that violence could not bring about a more peaceful order.290 He also argued against assassination on strategic grounds: he saw such acts as ultimately strengthening the state by serving as justification for the intensification of political repression.291 Gustav

Landauer did not oppose revolution; however, as Marshall notes, he did “[insist] on the identity of means and ends and the necessity of moral action in the present. He was totally opposed to [both] violent revolution and individual acts of terrorism.”292 On the tactic of propaganda by deed, Landauer admits that he once believed that a non-violent world could be attained through such means, an idea he refers to as “the basic fallacy of the revolutionary anarchists,” but came to believe that “any kind of violence is dictatorial, unless it is borne voluntarily ... But this is not the case in the anarchist , which are a matter of authoritarian violence. All violence is either despotism or authority.”293 Instead, he advocated making the state “obsolete by forming new 288 George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (: The World Publishing Company: 1962): 337. Capitalization is Woodcock's. 289 Richard Bach Jensen, “Daggers, Rifles and Dynamite: Anarchist Terrorism in Nineteenth Century Europe,” Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 1 (2004): 125. Italics Jensen's. 290 Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 377. 291 Ibid., 377. 292 Ibid., 412. 293 Gustav Landauer, “Anarchic Thoughts on Anarchism,” Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, Ed. and Trans. Gabriel Kuhn (Oakland: PM Press, 2010): 86. 68 relationships and institutions.”294 Kropotkin also shifted away from his early support of propaganda of the deed and “toward [a belief in] education as the vehicle for social change;”295 however, as Marshall notes, even after this change in perspective Kropotkin refused to condemn the individual persons who committed acts of revolutionary violence.296

The issue of propaganda by deed was frequently debated in the anarchist periodical press in the United States at the turn of the century. A number of anarchist papers openly endorsed violent tactics at one time or another, or printed articles that were written by authors who did. Kessler notes, for instance, that Johann Most's Freiheit:

carried articles on manufacturing bombs and nitroglycerine explosives. Albert Parsons … edited Alarm, an anarchist journal that railed against the injustices suffered by workers and included articles on incendiary devices. Truth,297 a third 'propaganda by deed' publication, carried the motto: 'Truth is five cents a copy and dynamite is forty cents a pound.'298

In addition to his writings in Freiheit, Most also wrote and circulated Revolutionäre

Kriegswissenschaft, an instruction manual for manufacturing explosives.299 Similarly,

Luigi Galleani, an anarchist from Italy who edited the periodical Cronaca Sovversiva, published a pamphlet entitled La Salute è in voi!, “a cheap and simple 'how to' for bomb making,” and “urged his sympathizers to smash the existing system with the utmost force and to brook no compromise with those both inside and outside of the movement.”300 The

294 Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 658. 295 Ferguson, Emma Goldman, 41. 296 Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 658. 297 Truth was edited by Burnette Haskell. 298 Kessler, The Dissident Press, 122. 299 Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 416. 300 Christopher Wellbrook, “Seething with the Ideal: Galleanisti and Class Struggle in Late Nineteenth- 69

Yiddish anarchist paper Fraye Arbeter Shtime, edited by Saul Yanovsky, “firmly renounced propaganda by the deed.”301 As will be discussed later, Free Society published extensive debate on the use of assassination as a tactic in the wake of the killing of

William McKinley in 1901, but violence was also a topic of discussion in the paper prior to this; for instance, in 1898 A. L. Ballou argued that “forceful authority is wrong, forceful resistance is right, however inexpedient it may be”302 and acts such as the 1897 assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo were debated in the paper. A few other English-language anarchist periodicals that Ernesto Longa notes as having published articles addressing the issue in the 1890s include The Beacon,303

Freedom,304 and Solidarity.305

Alexander Berkman's act of propaganda by deed against Henry Clay Frick was both lauded and disparaged in the pages of anarchist periodicals, and many articles weighed in on the debate on violent tactics by discussing this specific case. In The

Firebrand, Kate Austin argued against another author who, in another paper, had called

Berkman's act cowardly; she argued that Berkman “knew that if he succeeded his life would pay the forfeit, and he walked boldly where his star led him. We will have plenty need yet of such men as Berkman, as Louis Lingg and Engel and Fischer.”306 In

Solidarity, an interview with Berkman conducted shortly after his arrest with the Century and Early Twentieth-Century USA,” WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society 12, no. 3 (2009): 403. 301 Zimmer, Immigrants Against The State, 34. 302 A. L. Ballou, “Propaganda by Deed,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 23 January 1898. 303 A paper edited by Sigismund Danielewicz and Clara Dixon Davidson, 1890-1891. 304 A paper edited by Lucy E. Parsons in Chicago, 1890-1892. 305 Ernesto A. Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States (1833-1955): An Annotated Guide (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010). 306 Kate Austin, “Kind Words for Berkman and Eich,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 4 October 1896. 70

Philadelphia Record was reprinted on the front page, with commentary which, in part, read:

In these passages the motives of comrade Berkman … are put in the clearest light. Whoever reads them and has not permitted his judgment to be fooled by the hypocritical cries of the capitalist press, must recognize in Berkman one of those men who live up to a cause and die for it. A cause which may enlist such men is sure to win.307

Additionally, the paper criticized the multiplication of charges against Berkman which resulted in his tremendously long jail sentence, reminded workers that Berkman had sacrificed for them and was their friend, and argued that Berkman's harsh sentence demonstrated that “the Capitalists [were] frightened” because “a voice raising from the grave of our hanged and from the dungeon of our imprisoned warns them that Justice is approaching, majestic, irresistible and will sweep them from the face of the earth.”308

Falk, Pateman, and Moran, editors of the multi-volume collection Emma Goldman: A

Documentary History of the American Years, note in their directory of anarchist periodicals that articles expressing support for Berkman's act were also published in Der

Anarchist,309 Der arme Teufel,310 Die Brandfackel,311 and Solidarity, while periodicals that published texts criticizing his act, which will be discussed in further detail, included

Freiheit312 and .313

307 “A Few Words,” Solidarity (New York, NY), 30 July 1892. 308 “Sentenced!” Solidarity (New York, NY), 8 October 1892. 309 Autonomist newspaper first edited by Claus Timmerman; this paper was conceived of as following the paper that had once been published by Engel and Fischer in Chicago under the same name. 310 Edited by Robert Reitzel; as previously mentioned, this was the only radical publication Berkman was permitted to read in prison. 311 Another paper edited by Claus Timmerman which appeared from 1893 until 1895. 312 Falk, Pateman, and Moran note that Freiheit did, despite opposing the act, publish the appeals of the Berkman Defense Association. 313 Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran, Eds, Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Made for America, 1890-1901, Vol. I (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003): 71

Berkman, Nold, and Bauer were aware of the ongoing debates surrounding their actions and imprisonment. This is clear given that Prison Blossoms contains indicators of what Fairclough refers to as manifest intertextuality, in which “individual other texts are explicitly present in the text under analysis—they are 'manifestly' marked or cued by features on the surface of the text” perhaps by tools such as quotation marks or perhaps more subtly in, for instance, the ways that an author might “respond to another text in the way [they word their] own text.”314 Within Prison Blossoms, the authors address and engage with several articles that were published in anarchist newspapers during the time between Berkman's attempt on Frick's life and the men's sentencing and ultimate imprisonment. The issues of Prison Blossoms which most directly address the attempted assassination of Frick are Berkman's own “A Few Words as to My Deed” and Nold and

Bauer's co-authored “The Red Bugbear.” These articles make explicit references to not only particular individuals and their perspectives on the matter but also to the anarchist periodical press as a site of its contestation. Berkman, for instance, describes how “the

Anarchist camp divided itself into two factions: the one whose mouthpiece was Most and the New York Freiheit, against [him] and [his] deed, the other, with comrades S. Merlino

[editor of Solidarity] and E. Goldman in the lead, whose sympathies were with him.”315

He not only names periodicals as representing the views of particular individual

563-568. Additional information on newspapers (both anarchist and otherwise) which covered the Homestead Strike and/or Berkman's attempted assassination of Frick can be found in the research notes of Agnes Inglis, first curator of the Labadie Collection. See “Homestead 1892,” Agnes Inglis Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 314 Fairclough, “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” 271. 315 Alexander Berkman, “A Few Words as to My Deed,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 86. 72 anarchists, but also goes on to characterize the very debate itself as fundamentally “a newspaper controversy … between the leaders of the two factions.”316

Similar instances of manifest intertextuality appear in Nold and Bauer's article

“The Red Bugbear.” They too name Johann Most and several other anarchists as participants in the debate, even precisely identifying Most's article “Attentats-

Reflexionen,” which was published in Freiheit on 24 August 1892, by name.317 Further, they similarly characterize the debate as enacted specifically within the anarchist periodicals; they write that:

the views of those who seconded Most and his opinions, to which number the anarchists of Pittsburgh and Allegheny belonged, were against Berkman as shown in [the aforementioned article]; while those who took the part of Berkman, with Emma Goldman in the lead, used the then in New York printed paper The Anarchist as their mouthpiece and tried all the means in their power to exploit the deed of A. B. for the benefit of anarchistic propaganda.318

Both Berkman's article and the article written by Nold and Bauer blame Johann Most, who had previously advocated the use of violent tactics in Freiheit but who very harshly criticized Berkman's act, for the emergence of this heated debate; Berkman describes it as occurring “in consequence of the … attitude with Most with regard to [the] case”319 while

Nold and Bauer similarly describe the division of the movement over the act “as a

316 Ibid., 86. 317 Carl Nold and Henry Bauer, “The Red Bugbear,” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past, Eds. Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 93. Nold and Bauer explain that the reason this article appeared so long after the act occurred is that Most had initially submitted it to a New York anarchist group and failed to gain their approval; he then sent it to anarchists in Pittsburgh and Allegheny who did approve it at a meeting, at which time Most published it. Nold and Bauer here also indicate their intention to include excerpts of the article with the words “(Here follows the article in English)” but, as Brody and Buettner indicate, this intended translation does not actually appear in the surviving manuscript. 318 Ibid., 93-4. 319 Berkman, “A Few Words as to My Deed,” 86. 73 consequence of this stand on the part of John (sic) Most.”320

The conversation on Berkman's attempted attentat is an important sphere into which Prison Blossoms is written. With respect to “A Few Words as My Deed” and “The

Red Bugbear” it is especially clear that the works emerge in the context of a broader conversation that goes beyond their pages alone. Focusing on these texts' addressivity and their intertextual relations with other texts means that “looking at the text in isolation is distorting [and that] the notion of an individual, discrete, univocal, pristine text becomes increasingly undermined and untenable”321 even in the case of Prison Blossoms, a collection of texts written in an extremely isolating environment. In her article

“Anarchist Counterpublics,” Kathy Ferguson describes the ways in which the anarchist movement fostered the establishment of counterpublics, including textual ones, through its extraordinarily extensive circulation of texts; she explains that particularly relevant to the anarchist movement are the following distinct aspects of counterpublics: they “are multiple, temporal sites of struggle, anchored in concrete material spaces, and capable of enhancing the lives of their participants through the world-making practices of political struggle.”322 Discussing Prison Blossoms, Ferguson points out that these texts created worlds even within a decidedly “harsh and degrading” space and that they constitute an example of the very resistance that Alexander Berkman advocates.323 Importantly, however, these texts also extend beyond the prison in which they were composed: while

320 Nold and Bauer, “The Red Bugbear,” 93. 321 Douglas K. Hartman, “Intertextuality and Reading: The Text, the Reader, the Author, and the Context,” Linguistics and Education 4, no. 3-4 (1992): 297. 322 Ferguson, “Anarchist Counterpublics,” 198. 323 Ibid., 212. 74 making worlds within prison and serving as a site through which men in the prison come together despite being largely unable to communicate with one another in person, they also intervene in the counterpublic sphere described by Ferguson as constituted by the proliferation of anarchist publications in that they are directed into this sphere as responses to texts previously published therein. Joy James argues that it is true that:

the general or mainstream public constitutes a mostly hostile or indifferent readership and respondent [for the incarcerated author]. Yet, there are multiple 'publics' and varied 'civil societies'; the 'public sphere' is shaped, to varying degrees, by whoever enters as engagees. The intent of imprisoned intellectuals to influence 'the public' in its multiple formations is a complicated proposition but a real endeavor.324

In the case of Prison Blossoms, the authors' entering into the wider sphere of anarchist publishing is especially clear given intertextual relationships which critical discourse analysis taking up Bakhtin's notions of genre and addressivity make evident.

The article most clearly referenced by both Berkman's article and Nold and

Bauer's article is Johann Most's highly controversial essay “Attentats-Reflexionen,” which appeared in his paper Freiheit on 27 August 1892.325 Most's article was especially jarring for anarchists to read at the time because, as Goyens notes, it was “to the astonishment of all [that] Johann Most, who had made a career as a propagator of revolutionary violence, condemned Berkman's act (and Goldman's defense of Berkman) as reckless and proceeded to dismiss such violence altogether;” further, Most went so far as to suggest that Berkman's aim had actually been fostering sympathy for Frick.326 In

324 Joy James, “Introduction,” Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion, Ed. Joy James (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003): 7. 325 Falk, Pateman, and Moran, Eds., Emma Goldman, 119, n. 1. 326 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, 131. This final accusation especially enraged Goldman, who later confronted Johann Most and struck him with a horsewhip as he stood giving a lecture. 75

Goldman's words regarding the impact of Most's article, “the blow was staggering to us.”327 In their edited volume on Emma Goldman, Falk, Pateman, and Moran include a footnote which provides excerpts of this important essay translated into English. In this text, Most acknowledges that Berkman is deserving of respect for his bravery both in his act itself and in prison afterward, but makes several distinct arguments against his deed.

He acknowledges that the death of Frick ought not be cause for mourning, but argues that the fact that it was Berkman specifically who attempted to kill him is a reason for concern:

If some stranger had said to us that he wanted to shoot Frick, we probably would have said to him that that was his business. And in our hearts would have stirred something like joy, for haters of tyrants such as we can surely have no sympathy for a monstrous bloodsucker such as Frick. A Berkmann would surely have been the last person whom we would have instructed to commit such a deed, for he has … no less than all of the characteristics328 which would stimulate the most idiotic prejudices of idiotic Americans and thereby awaken a general antipathy for the act and make easier the inevitable campaign against Anarchists.329

In this passage, Most does not explicitly argue against propaganda by deed as such, but rather argues that Berkman taking on the task was a bad decision strategically; not only would a man such as Berkman negatively impact the propagandistic value of the deed (as using the deed to embolden workers against their oppressors would be even more difficult if they were already prejudiced against the attempted assassin) but such an act could also, given these prejudices, be more easily used as justification for intensifying repression.330

327 Emma Goldman, “Johann Most,” American Mercury (June 1926): 165. 328 Most refers here to his own remarks earlier in this same article that Berkman was bound to rouse prejudices given that he was Russian, Jewish, without regular employment, and an anarchist. 329 Falk, Pateman, and Moran, Eds., Emma Goldman, 119, n. 1. Italics Most's. 330 In her memoirs, Helene Minkin, who was Most's wife, recounts Most expressing similar concerns to 76

He also makes a second strategic argument against Berkman's act, stating that “in a country where [anarchists] are so poorly represented and so little understood as in

America, we simply cannot afford the luxury of assassination.”331 This suggests that, for

Most, undertaking an act of propaganda by deed in the United States would be a poor strategic decision on the part of any anarchist, not just for Berkman.

Most's arguments against Berkman's act were not, however, solely grounded in strategic concerns: one of the reasons that his article provoked such anger in Alexander

Berkman and Emma Goldman was that he veered into the terrain of personal attack. For instance, Most's article includes an account of his attitude toward Berkman before his attempt on Frick's life:

We were always somewhat uneasy about Berkmann because we considered him to be eccentric; we became thoroughly his enemy when he joined the New York Autonomist clique whose entire doings consisted already for years in rolling obstacles in the way of a reasonable and systematic anarchist agitation, in ripping apart that which we had built up etc., and when he behaved among those people in a particularly fanatical and poisonous manner toward us.332

Here Most clearly references Berkman's departure from his circle in favour of the autonomism with bitterness – he describes the autonomists not as dedicated radicals possessing an alternative approach to anarchist organizing (and, notably, to periodical editorship) but rather as a 'clique' standing in the way of 'reasonable' anarchist action

(which Most appears to consider only himself and his supporters as having been

her in conversation at the time, as well as anger that he as “an old veteran in the movement” hadn't been consulted before the attack on Frick was made. See Helene Minkin, Storm in My Heart: Memories from the Widow of Johann Most, Ed. Tom Goyens, Trans. Alisa Braun (Oakland: AK Press, 2015): 69- 70. 331 Falk, Pateman, and Moran, Eds., Emma Goldman, 119, n. 1. 332 Ibid., 119, n. 1. 77 advancing) and bent on disrupting Most's decidedly superior approach (including, certainly, their questioning of Most's editorial control of Freiheit which he saw as crucial to building a unified movement). In doing so, he yet again weighs in on, and thus continues, the debate between the two factions which had for years been unfolding in various anarchist periodicals.

Berkman, Nold, and Bauer all respond in Prison Blossoms to Most's article.

Berkman accuses Most not only of unjustifiably criticizing him and his act but also of attempting to undermine others' work supporting him and attempting to use his attack against Frick for propaganda purposes; he explains that the crux of the problem was that

Most:

expressed himself in the Freiheit in a way as to make it appear as if he doubted the sincerity of my attempt; he refused to recognize the genuineness of my deed by invariably using the words Attentat and Attentäter enclosed with the marks of quotation, when their usage had reference to my deed; [and] even attempted to insinuate the existence of some personal motives.333

He also argues that the real reasons that Most disavowed his deed were his “ill will since the rupture of [their] friendship on account of [Berkman's] sympathy with the

Autonomists” as well as self-interested cowardice: he suggests that Most feared being accused of involvement in the act so distanced himself “officially and publicly” from it to attempt to maintain his own safety.334 Berkman notes that even if Most did truly come to reject the use of assassination as a tactic, he still ought not have criticized him the way he did, writing: “there was nothing to hinder Most from exploiting my deed in an agitatorical

333 Berkman, “A Few Words As To My Deed,” 87. 334 Ibid., 88. 78 way, no matter whether he concurred with me in regard to matters of tactics or not; yet

Most never even attempted anything of the kind.”335 While Nold and Bauer are more willing than Berkman to accept the possibility that Most may truly have changed his views on violence, they still reject his decision to publicly reject Berkman's act, contextualizing “Attentats-Reflexionen” as part of a broader pattern in Freiheit, writing:

Concerning the stand of Freiheit, i.e. of John (sic) Most, we believe that his words against propaganda by deed concerning America especially constituted his sincere opinion; however his personal criticism of Berkman we find unjustified. Moreover we must say that we could never befriend the tactics which the Freiheit has for years pursued with regard to all those (anarchists and revolutionists) whose ideas are more or less at variance—in principle or tactics—with those championed and propagated by the Freiheit. To throw all those who do not absolutely concur with us into the waste-basket, so to speak, is bad policy, to say the least.336

Here, Nold and Bauer point out the relationship between Most's rejection of Berkman's choice of tactics and his well-known tendency to reject the writings of those who disagreed with him and insist on a tightly unified voice for his paper.

“Attentats-Reflexionen” is not the only article in which Most elaborated his views on Berkman's act. He also conducted an interview on the topic which appeared earlier in the New York World on 27 July 1892.337 Goldman readily responded to this interview in a letter to Der Anarchist, an autonomist periodical, which the paper published in its 30 July

1892 issue; in this letter she makes her views on Most known from her opening line: “for many years one man [Johann Most] has succeeded in portraying himself as a hero and martyr, perpetuating the greatest roguery, slandering, and thus undermining the best 335 Ibid., 87. 336 Nold and Bauer, “The Red Bugbear,” 94-95. 337 Falk, Pateman, and Moran, Eds., Emma Goldman, 119, n. 1. 79 forces.”338 In an instance of manifest intertextuality, Goldman indicates Most's interview as the text her own addresses by remarking to readers that they “will find the interview that M. had with a reporter translated in another place.”339 She goes on to refer to his behaviour as “petty and base” and his reasons for denouncing Berkman's act as “simply ugly personal hatred, envy, and fear.”340 She retaliates against Most by dedicating the first half of her letter to harsh personal attacks of her own, arguing that his supposed “heroic accomplishments” were in fact self-interested and motivated by ambition rather than by anarchist principles, that he has really done nothing for the movement and only spent a few easy years in prison, and that he has proven himself “cowardly and miserable” by failing to fulfil obligations whenever he was being relied upon by others to do so.341 In

Goldman's letter, too, the division between Most's group and the autonomists associated with Peukert over periodical editorship is invoked as an underlying reason behind Most's denouncing Berkman's act; she asserts that Most is hostile “because B. told M. his honest opinion to his face, because he said that he was anything but an Anarchist, because B. uncovered the corruption and filth in Freiheit.”342 Goldman, referencing Most's unilateral control over the newspaper, calls on her readers to stop working to empower him and elevate his status; she ultimately argues that “as long as [anarchists] cultivate such demagogues, who through [them] and [their] pennies become 'great men,' the movement 338 Emma Goldman, “To Der Anarchist,” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Made fro America, 1890-1901, Eds. Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003): 119. 339 Ibid., 120. This interview was translated to English in New York World but also was reprinted in the same issue of Der Anarchist in which this letter by Goldman appears, the 30 July 1892 issue, in German. 340 Ibid., 120. 341 Ibid., 120. 342 Ibid., 121. Here, of course, 'B.' is Berkman and 'M.' Most. 80 will be hampered and the ruling class will triumph.”343 In making this argument,

Goldman clearly positions herself on the autonomists' side of the division regarding the need for anarchists to organize in accordance to non-hierarchical principles rather than permitting their movements to centralize around a few leader-like figures such as Johann

Most.

The debate amongst anarchists regarding both Berkman's deed and Most's analysis has thusfar been discussed as occurring between Prison Blossoms and Freiheit, as well as spilling over into Der Anarchist with Goldman's contribution; however, this debate, and the sphere of discourse into which Berkman, Nold, and Bauer intervene with Prison

Blossoms, extends beyond these few papers. In “A Few Words as to My Deed,” Berkman makes the claim that “even the individualistic Anarchists, those by principle enemies of all force, treated [his] case with more integrity than Most did.”344 As Miriam Brody and

Bonnie Buettner point out in a footnote to this remark by Berkman, the “most prominent

[individualist anarchist] disavowal of Berkman's deed was the libertarian anarchist

Benjamin Tucker's in the pages of his [English-language] anarchist journal Liberty” which was published on 30 July 1892.345 The article the editors refer to is entitled “Save

Labor From Its Friends,” and in this short text Tucker concludes with a declaration made in no uncertain terms: “no pity for Frick, no praise for Berkman,—such is the attitude of

Liberty in the present crisis.”346

343 Ibid., 121. 344 Berkman, “A Few Words as to My Deed,” 87. 345 Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner, Eds, Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011): 240, note 8. 346 , “Save Labor From Its Friends,” Liberty (New York, NY), 30 July 1892. 81

Unlike the texts written by Most, Goldman, and Berkman, Tucker's contribution to the discussion is utterly devoid of personal attacks; as an individualist anarchist, he can be positioned on neither side of the divide between the Mostian and autonomist factions and the whole matter would have been largely irrelevant to Tucker's attitude toward

Berkman's act. Rather, Tucker offers only a tactical and principled evaluation of the attempted assassination and, in doing so, reveals both continuities and disconnects between his own individualist position and that of Berkman and his supporters. Tucker very clearly states that he is not investing his energy in hoping for Frick's recovery:

Does [Frick] aspire, as I do, to live in a society of mutually helpful equals? On the contrary, it is his determination to live in luxury produced by the toil and suffering of men whose necks are under his heel. He has deliberately chosen to live on terms of hostility with the greater part of the human race. When such a man falls, my tears refuse to flow. I am scarcely sorry that he is suffering; I shall be still less sorry if he dies.347

It is clear that Tucker, like the anarchists supporting Berkman, sees men such as Frick as enemies who perpetuate and profit from injustice and the suffering of others. He also explains that while he does not actually know Berkman personally, he imagines that he would have much more in common with him than he would with Frick; in describing the

“slanders in the newspapers,” he distinguishes himself from other commentators as having no reason to presume Berkman was not motivated by the best and most noble of intentions.348 Despite his decidedly hostile attitude toward men such as Frick and his view that Berkman, like himself, would most likely “like to live in terms of equality with

347 Ibid. 348 Ibid. 82 his fellows,” Tucker ultimately states that he is “very, very sorry that [Frick] has been shot.”349 His reasons for this, however, are not rooted in personal dislike toward Berkman but rather in principled views against anarchists using propaganda by deed as a tactic:

The strength of the Fricks rests on violence; now it is to violence that the Berkmans appeal. The peril of the Fricks lies in the spreading of the light; violence is the power of darkness. If the revolution comes by violence and in advance of light, the old struggle will have to be begun anew. The hope of humanity lies in the avoidance of that revolution by force which the Berkmans are trying to precipitate.350

Thus, his denouncing of Berkman's deed is not personal, nor does it echo Johann Most's arguments about the particular nature of the American context or Berkman's likelihood to provoke the prejudices of the public; rather, regardless of which individual might undertake such an act and regardless of the political climate in which it might take place, for Tucker the use of violence necessarily harms the anarchist cause even when it is committed with the most revolutionary of intentions. Despite certainly disagreeing on this point, and despite Tucker writing publicly against Berkman's deed, Berkman does not question Tucker's integrity or suggest that Tucker offers his dissenting perspective out of any ulterior motive.

While Berkman, Nold, and Bauer responded to critics Most and Tucker from inside the penitentiary through their magazinelet Prison Blossoms, elaborating their views on Berkman's deed to their fellow prisoners as well as, hopefully, to an outside readership later, other anarchists on the outside also responded to the criticisms, expressing support for the imprisoned men and furthering the debate on Berkman's act in the anarchist press,

349 Ibid. 350 Ibid. 83

“[using] their best efforts to propagandistically exploit [his] deed.”351 Solidarity, for instance, published responses to both Tucker and Most. Saverio Merlino, the paper's editor, criticized Tucker for his arguments against Berkman:

I know ... men who are fond of being called 'philosophical' anarchists, and act the whole day as business men, but at evening attend some Anarchist well-to-do drawing-room, write a chosen, fine, literary language, with much hair-splitting and sophistry, keep afar from prison and never risk a hair of their head, yet are content to preach non- resistance to the workmen, except in cases of actual aggression, provided there is no doubt about the necessity and the successfulness of the defense, and sitting in judgment between capitalist and workmen take the sufficiently acrobatic attitude indicated by the sentence: 'no pity for Frick, no praise for Berkman.'352

The paper also reprinted the opinion of the Paris paper Le Révolté, identifying them as a direct response to Most's criticisms in Freiheit; the paper argues that Most was wrong to attack Berkman because “in no case is it right to attack a man who has felt his blood boiling … and has shown to the workmen that all the evil does not come from the

Pinkertons, but that the responsibility is higher.”353 Further, Le Révolté lauds Berkman as having done “more for the propaganda of our principles among the masses which do not read our papers, than all the writings we publish.”354 While Berkman, Nold, and Bauer's writings took up generic conventions of the anarchist periodical press to do the work of advancing support for propaganda by deed to the prisoners who read them, papers such as

Solidarity did similar, crucial work outside the prison, mitigating the worry expressed by

Berkman in Prison Blossoms that because he was in prison and unable to directly respond

351 Berkman, “A Few Words as to My Deed,” 87. 352 S. M., “'Amateurs' v. 'Professional' Anarchists,” Solidarity (New York, NY), 13 August 1892. 353 “Opinion of the 'Révolte' on Berkman and His Deeds,” Solidarity (New York, NY), 8 October 1892. 354 Ibid. 84 to the “journalistic attacks” against him publicly, that “the propagandistic effect of [his] deed [would], to a large extent, be wasted owing to the unsympathetic position taken by

… the Freiheit, and the sequent indifference of the great mass of Anarchists.”355

Textual Solidarity: Periodical Press Prison Support

During their time in the penitentiary, Prison Blossoms served many functions for its author/editor/readers – it allowed them respite from the boredom and monotony of sitting alone in their cells, it advanced first-hand knowledge on the injustices and violence of the penitentiary, it served as a site of relationship-building and mutual support in a context designed to inhibit communication, it gave Berkman, Nold, and Bauer the opportunity to speak to the events that put them in prison and articulate their anarchist ideals to their fellow prisoners, and it actively resisted and undermined the imposed isolation of the penitentiary system. In doing so, Prison Blossoms fulfilled for its author/readership many of the roles the anarchist periodical press filled outside the prison

– information-sharing, the exposure of injustices, political debate, analysis, and argument in favour of anarchism. Meanwhile, outside the prison, periodical editors and authors used the resources, freedoms, and access to audience they had to bolster support for their jailed comrades.

While Berkman, Nold, and Bauer could not access anarchist periodicals during their imprisonment and certainly could not write for them, Solidarity facilitated their access to a broader readership by publishing their prison letters. In 1893, the paper

355 Berkman, “A Few Words As To My Deed,” 88-9. 85 published letters written from prison by both Alexander Berkman and Carl Nold. The former wrote to the “comrades of Solidarity” on the occasion of the new year;356 he called on readers to continue the struggle for a better world in discussing the nature of happiness and a 'happy new year' as one in which there are none oppressed and suffering, writing:

in order to make ourselves happy … I speak of a happiness which consists in the sight and consciousness of the happiness of our fellow creatures, a happiness that cannot be disturbed by the sight of the unhappiness of others or by the consciousness of its existence, in order to bring about this happiness, we should exert in the new coming year more of our energies than in the past old one in behalf of the great fraternal festivity (the union of peoples), in short we should do all in our power to help the present system, which finds itself in a delicate state, to its birth.357

In prefacing this letter, the paper notes that even though there are disagreements about tactics, any reader should see that the writer is clearly one who has sacrificed for a strongly held principle. Carl Nold's later letter was not, like Berkman's, addressed to the paper, but rather to individuals who then provided it to the paper. Therein, Nold writes that he can bear life in prison and knows he is “not the first or last victim of the struggle between capital and labor;” he sends his greetings “to all” and shares his optimistic belief that “in the next five years the international labor movement will make more progress than it has during the past ten years.”358 In publishing these letters, Solidarity lives up to its name by facilitating the jailed anarchists' ability to address the public which the prison system sought to deny them.

Publishing these letters, and thereby creating a way for the Prison Blossoms

356 Berkman's letter is dated 5 January 1893 bur does not appear in the paper until the 9 February 1893 issue. 357 Alexander Berkman, “Alexander Berkman,” Solidarity (New York, NY), 9 February 1893. 358 Carl Nold, Solidarity (New York, NY), 29 July 1893. 86 authors to participate in the anarchist press outside the prison, was far from the only way that the periodical press was used to concretely support them during their incarceration.

Solidarity, The Firebrand, and Free Society all contributed to attempts to assist them, including through fundraising. Solidarity notified readers how to contribute to a defense fund for Nold and Bauer, and received money from a comrade to forward to Berkman to use to meet his needs while in prison.359 The Firebrand published a letter from Emma

Goldman in which she calls upon readers to contribute financially toward Berkman's petitioning for a reduced sentence and provides details of how to do so.360 Editor Henry

Addis amplified her call, writing to his readers that he “cannot urge … comrades too much to do all in their power to secure the commutation” of Berkman's sentence; he too noted where contributions as well as letters to the judge overseeing the appeal could be sent, and made suggestions to readers of the many ways they might help:

If you do not live in Pennsylvania you can send in what money you can spare, to help pay the expenses incurred, while, if you do live in Pennsylvania, you can circulate a petition, collect money, and write to the Governor of the state, and the Judge that sentenced him, pointing out the injustice he has done Berkman, and the excellent opportunity he has to use his influence in getting Berkman's sentence reduced.361

Years later, The Firebrand also repeatedly ran a call for funds to be donated toward taking

Berkman's case to the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, with the then-released Nold and

Bauer both listed as members of the committee managing the appeal.362 Free Society published statements from the Berkman Defense Association detailing the funds they had

359 Solidarity (New York, NY), 19 November 1982. 360 Emma Goldman, “Correspondence,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 21 July 1895. 361 H. A., “A. Berkmann,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 28 July 1895. 362 The Committee, “To All Friends of Justice!” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 4 July 1897. 87 received through individual contributions, donations from unions and other groups, and money raised through events including a concert and ball and a picnic;363 the paper also publicized that a picture of Berkman had been taken and was available for twenty-five cents from Henry Bauer, with proceeds to be used “to the benefit of our imprisoned comrade.”364 While Berkman, Nold, and Bauer supported one another through Prison

Blossoms, lifting one another's spirits, anarchists outside the prison sought to use their periodicals to support them as well.

After they departed the penitentiary in 1897, Nold notes that while they were warmly welcomed by comrades upon their release, “[their] joy was not perfect, for [they] had to leave behind” their friend Berkman.365 Their departure also, of course, meant leaving Prison Blossoms behind. They were, however, both quick to take up supporting

Berkman in the anarchist press outside the prison. As mentioned, both joined the committee working for an appeal for Berkman to the Board of Pardons. Nold advocated for the appeal in The Firebrand, sharing that Berkman was not treated well in prison and that he was losing his eyesight; he called on readers to provide both moral and financial support, for instance by “inducing local and national Union and workmen's organization[s] to pass resolutions favouring the release of Berkman, and also by arranging picnic's [sic] and festivals for his benefit.”366 Similarly, Bauer wrote for the

Home, Washington based anarchist paper Discontent on a final 1901 attempt to free

Berkman through a habeus corpus proceeding, enumerating the costs involved and

363 The Berkman Defense Association, “Statement,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 13 February 1898. 364 “Alexander Berkman,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 18 December 1898. 365 Carl Nold, “Communication from Allegheny,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 27 June 1897. 366 Ibid. 88 contributions received for the purpose and extending Berkman's thanks for the solidarity of those helping with the case.367

While several articles in Prison Blossoms reveal the intertextual, conversational connections between that magazinelet and the anarchist periodical press outside the prison as Berkman, Nold, and Bauer addressed criticisms of Berkman's act made in other papers, Carl Nold's article “A Reminiscence of Alexander Berkman,” published in The

Firebrand shortly after his release, serves to concretize this connection as he writes insights first developed and articulated in Prison Blossoms into a paper available to an outside anarchist readership. Nold writes that, with this article, he seeks to rectify the fact that Berkman's imprisonment has left him in a position of inability to publicly address his critics, opening his article as follows: “much has been said, from diverse quarters, regarding Alexander Berkman and his deed, yet he himself, for obvious reasons, has not been heard. In the following I venture to give his sentiments concerning his action, as he gave them to me in the first year of our prison life.”368 He gave these sentiments to Nold through Prison Blossoms, so following this introduction virtually the entirety of Nold's article is an almost exact reproduction of the bulk of Alexander Berkman's “A Few Words as to My Deed” with pronouns altered (with, for instance, “It was my aim...” in

Berkman's text becoming “It was Berkman's aim...” in Nold's reproduction).

There are a few other relatively minor edits and alternations to Berkman's words, and Nold opts to omit Berkman's discussion of the assassination of Emperor Alexander II

367 H. Bauer, “Berkman's Case,” Discontent (Home, WA), 26 June 1901. 368 Carl Nold, “A Reminiscence of Alexander Berkman,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 25 July 1897. 89 and the bombing of the French Chamber of Deputies by Vaillant, which Berkman presents as examples which demonstrate the purpose of propaganda by deed, as well as the ending of Berkman's text which focuses on his disappointment with Most's reaction to his act.

Here Nold not only relays Berkman's words to an audience he could not reach from prison, but to some extent reshapes them for that audience. Having shared for the first time with a wider readership Berkman's own reasoning regarding his attempt on Frick's life, and his views on propaganda by deed more broadly, Nold calls upon The Firebrand's readership to support Berkman as he endures his imprisonment: “He was willing to aid the cause of Labor, now the time has come for Labor to come to his aid.”369 Here, Nold, finally out of prison, is able to convey Berkman's own account to the readers of the anarchist periodical press, including those to whom intertextual analysis demonstrates

Prison Blossoms was, in part, addressed to. Thus, although the book that Henry Bauer,

Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold had intended to produce from their Prison Blossoms never came to fruition in the form that they had imagined, the periodical press did facilitate their reaching an outside audience.

The author-editors of Prison Blossoms confronted state repression not only in the courts, but in the circulation of their clandestine prison magazine, which was undertaken at great risk to not only themselves but their collaborators as well as those involved in the process of liberating the texts from the penitentiary. In composing Prison Blossoms, the authors draw on not only their own positions as prisoners to observe and analyze the conditions of the 'justice' system, but also drew on the generic and discursive resources of

369 Ibid. 90 the anarchist periodical press. The dialogic positioning of their work as drawing on anarchist publications outside the prison while taking the readers and producers of this genre as an important part of their audience is clear given the strong intertextual relationships that Prison Blossoms shares with the writings and editing practices of other anarchists; an intertextual critical discourse analysis illuminates the ways Prison

Blossoms, in both form and content, speaks to ongoing conversations within the movement. Henry Bauer, Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold contest the authority of their captors through the act of writing and the relationships they forged in the process as well as in the content of their work itself – Prison Blossoms, drawing on and addressing the anarchist periodical press, allows them to speak in defence of Berkman's act of propaganda by deed, support one another through their incarceration, forge new relationships, and offer a scathing indictment of the system which imprisoned them. 91

Book-Anarchists on Bomb-Anarchists: Free Society, the McKinley Assassination, and the Anarchists' Debate on (Propaganda) Tactics

The Assassination, Press Vilification, and the Stamping Out Craze

Leon Czolgosz was born in Michigan to Polish parents; he is thought to have been born in 1873 in either Detroit or Alpena.370 He grew up during a period of successive economic depressions and his work on his family's farm as well as “in a bottle works factory as a wire thresher, and in a glass factory” was punctuated by illnesses.371 He eventually adopted the alias of Fred Nieman. He rose to national notoriety when, at the age of twenty eight, the self-proclaimed anarchist approached American president

William McKinley as he greeted members of the public on 6 September 1901 at the Pan-

American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, holding a revolver hidden in a handkerchief.

He fired his gun twice, with one bullet striking McKinley “near the upper part of the sternum, [and] the other in the left hypochondriac region.”372 Czolgosz was immediately arrested by police stationed nearby. After having surgery and at times showing strong signs of recovery, McKinley ultimately died eight days later on 14 September 1901.373

When asked the reason for his act during interrogation, Czolgosz stated that he was an anarchist and that this is why he assassinated the president. Although he always maintained that he acted alone and named no accomplices or co-conspirators even when

370 Cary Federman, “The Life of an Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz and the Death of William McKinley,” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies 14, no. 2 (2010): 85. 371 Ibid., 85. 372 L. Vernon Briggs, The Manner of Man that Kills: Spencer—Czolgosz—Richeson (Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1921): 238. 373 James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897-1909 (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1965): 170. 92 tortured for information, Czolgosz did claim that he had found inspiration in the anarchist movement. His accounts about the degree to which he was involved with anarchists, however, are “confusing and contradictory”374 and it is possible that “the District Attorney edited the confessions to fit the image of what an anarchist assassin should say.”375

According to a report dated 28 September 1901 by the prosecution medical experts, Drs.

Fowler, Putnam, and Crego, Czolgosz told them:

I don't believe in the republican form of government and I don't believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them. I had that idea when I shot the President, and that is why I was there. I planned killing the President three or four days ago, after I came to Buffalo. Something I read in the Free Society suggested the idea. I thought it would be a good thing for the country to kill the President.376

In addition to citing the well-known and longest-running English language anarchist newspaper Free Society as having given him the idea for the act, Czolgosz went on to describe having been moved to action by the powerful words of the movement's public speakers:

I knew other men who believe what I do, that it would be a good thing to kill the President and to have no rulers. I have heard that at the meetings in public halls. I heard quite a lot of people talk like that. Emma Goldman was the last one I heard. She said she did not believe in government nor in rulers.377

Czolgosz concluded this interview by stating: “I want to say to be published—'I killed

374 Richard Bach Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 242. 375 Cary Federman, “Between Structure and Agency: Assassination, Social Forces, and the Production of the Criminal Subject,” History of the Human Sciences 24, no. 5 (2011):74. 376 Briggs, The Manner of Man that Kills, 242-3. Italics added. 377 Ibid., 243. This confession is noted in may books and articles; however, it may not be wholly accurate – Jensen notes that the alleged source of the notion that Czolgosz had implicated Goldman's lecture later denied the confession occurred, and this claim does not appear in trial records or eyewitness accounts. 93

President McKinley because I done my duty.' I don't believe in one man having so much service and another man having none.”378

From this and other prison interrogations, which very likely included torture, about his act as well as “the history of his life as it came from him,” the prosecution experts concluded that Czolgosz was legally sane at the time of his act (though this finding was,379 and continues to be,380 contested) and that his “opinions were formed gradually under the influence of Anarchistic leaders and propagandists.”381 Doctors examining Czolgosz as experts for the defence independently reached the same conclusion.382 One of these doctors, Carlos F. MacDonald, later wrote in the Journal of

Mental Pathology that while Czolgosz showed no signs of “mental disease or defect … everything in his history as shown by his conduct and declarations, [pointed] to the existence in him of the social disease, , of which he was a victim.”383 The characterization of anarchism as a political illness was, during this period, far from confined to the medical establishment; rather, it was a prevalent anti-radical discourse which frequently appeared in mainstream texts. As Ziv Eisenberg explains, imagery and terminology drawn from germ theory were often deployed to conceptualize in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which “Americans

378 Briggs, The Manner of Man that Kills, 243. 379 Sidney Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” The American Historical Review 60, no. 4 (1955): 780. 380 Federman, “The Life of an Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz and the Death of William McKinley,” 86. 381 Briggs, The Manner of Man that Kills, 245. Some italics removed. 382 Carlos F. MacDonald, “The Trial, Execution, and Mental Status of Leon F. Czolgosz, Alias Fred Nieman, the Assassin of President McKinley,” The Journal of Mental Pathology 1, nos. 4-5 (1901- 1902): 188. 383 Ibid., 189. 94 believed that they were facing constant danger that came in different shapes and forms, from lethal germs to chemical explosives” and in which they “conflated their health and political anxieties.”384

Having been found fit to face the court, Czolgosz ultimately went to trial; as Don

Sneed details, the trial was a farce which lasted, in its entirety, for only eight hours and twenty-six minutes and which even included an emotional eulogy to McKinley given by one of Czolgosz's own appointed defense lawyers.385 Further, potential jurors who acknowledged having already formed opinions were accepted while those who professed having not yet developed an opinion on the case were dismissed (with jurors chosen in record time); when Czolgosz was, unsurprisingly, found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to execution by electrocution “no appeal [was] filed [and] no stays of execution were requested.”386 Czolgosz was killed on 29 . Following his death, post- mortem examiner Edward Anthony Spitzka echoed the findings of the other experts, concluding his detailed report with the claim that “taking all in all, the verdict must be,

'socially diseased and perverted, but not mentally diseased.'”387

Long prior to the assassination of President William McKinley, a deep fear of radicalism permeated the United States – “fears of radicalism, and especially foreign radicalism, had been endemic … at least since the Alien and Sedition hysteria of 1798”388 384 Ziv Eisenberg, “Red All Over: Protecting the American Body Politic from Infection in the Early Twentieth Century,” Endeavour 36, no. 3 (2012): 110. 385 Don Sneed, “Newspapers Call for Swift Justice: A Study of the McKinley Assassination,” Journalism Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1988): 366. 386 Ibid., 367 387 Edward Anthony Spitzka, “The Post-Mortem Examination of Leon F. Czolgosz,” The Journal of Mental Pathology 1, nos. 4-5 (1901-1902): 207. Carlos F. MacDonald also supervised the autopsy. 388 The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in a context of fear brought about by the French Revolution and the perceived threat of radical activity posed by immigrants in the United States; they made 95 and these anxieties only grew with the Paris of 1871.389 More recently, “the

1880s and 1890s had brought anarchist violence to the forefront of public attention with the in 1886, … Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate Henry Clay

Frick in 1892, and a slew of anarchist assassinations in Europe.”390 Following Czolgosz's act, however, the paranoia about anarchist conspiracies reached new heights and the

United States truly “entered the 'War on Anarchy'” already being waged internationally.391

As Richard Bach Jensen writes, “the print media's relentless tendency to oversimplify and to exploit dominant stereotypes about anarchist violence provided the essential glue that bound together and transformed disparate incidents392 into a formidable edifice of terrorism.”393

Paradigmatic of the capitalist press' discourse at the time, on 16 September 1901 the Denver Post published a cartoon above the caption “Uncle Sam's Next Contract” – the image depicts a large boot-clad foot forcefully stomping down on three stumbling, fleeing figures representative of popular conceptions of anarchists: to the left, a caricature of

Emma Goldman holding a black flag reading 'anarchy' in capital letters in one hand and a large dagger in the other, at center a bearded man with a flaming torch and a smoking

naturalization more difficult and deportation easier and restricted freedom of speech. 389 Robert J. Goldstein, “The Anarchist Scare of 1908: A Sign of Tensions in the ,” American Studies 15, no. 2 (1974): 56. 390 Julia Rose Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism: The Origins of Ideological Deportation and the Suppression of Expression,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 19, no. 1 (2012): 173. 391 Ibid., 171. 392 These incidents include Czolgosz's attack on McKinley as well as the assassinations of by in 1900, of Empress Elisabeth of Austria by Luigi Lucheni in 1898, of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo by Michele Angiolillo Lombardi in 1897, and of French President Carnot by Sante Geronimo Caserio in 1894. 393 Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism, 52. 96 pistol, and to the right a man in a bowler hat clinging to a spherical black bomb.394

Figure II: Political Cartoon entitled “Uncle Sam's Next Contract” Denver Post, 16 September 1901 Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.

Even for the few decades prior to the assassination, anarchism was constructed in the mainstream periodical press as dangerous to American society. As Nathaniel Hong writes, it was:

depicted as threatening by religious writers because of its secular, anti- authoritarian moral universe, by 'scientific' writers as a genetic tragedy of evolution, and by nativists as an immigrant-based foreign influence. Each of these attacks made its point, and together they formed a composite picture of anarchism as something antithetical to the best

394 “Uncle Sam's New Contract,” Denver Post (Denver, CO), 16 September 1901. 97

instincts of humanity, as morally adrift, intellectually illogical, religiously unacceptable, medically anomalous, and dangerously unpatriotic.395

While anarchism certainly received negative press attention previously, the McKinley assassination did more than amplify preexisting attitudes: as Kraut explains, it shattered the illusion that the United States was somehow “immune from the litany of anarchist assassinations of European leaders and monarchs in the 1890s” as the tendency to conceptualize anarchism as a 'foreign problem' had allowed many to believe.396

As Sneed writes, “the reaction of the press was as swift as was Czolgosz's conviction for murder, a conviction which came less than a week after McKinley's burial.”397 In his study of three major newspapers, the Buffalo Morning Express, the New

York Times, and the Washington Post, he notes, for instance, that all three papers consistently referred to Czolgosz as “the assassin, the murderer, or the anarchist” rather than as the defendant.398 He concludes that the mainstream press “showed no inclination toward vigilance but instead succumbed to the public outcry against anarchy and anarchists.”399 Anarchist Jay Fox400, describing the vilification of anarchism in the mainstream press shortly after the assassination, writes that “Anarchy has been in the

395 Nathaniel Hong, “Constructing the Anarchist Beast in American Periodical Literature, 1880-1903,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9, no. 1 (1992): 112-3. 396 Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism,” 171. 397 Sneed, “Newspapers Call for Swift Justice,” 362. 398 Ibid., 363. 399 Ibid., 367. 400 Jay Fox was then involved in the publication of Free Society. Fox is perhaps best known for having been sentenced to jail in 1912 for having encouraged “disrespect for law” in writing an editorial in which he sided with those arguing for the right to bathe nude in Puget Sound at the Home Colony, against the objections of those he called the “prudes.” Fox contributed to editing The Demonstrator (1903-1908) and The Agitator (1910-1912) and contributed to many periodicals as an author. For more about Jay Fox, see Wadland as well as Mary M. Carr, “Jay Fox: Anarchist of Home,” Columbia Magazine 4, no. 1 (1990): 3-10. 98 hands of its bitterest enemies, has been venomously misrepresented, maligned, and every species of crime laid against its door, those knowing the least about it howling the loudest against it.”401 It was following the McKinley assassination that the United States entered into an international conversation, one which had already long begun in Europe but which the United States had been at most a peripheral participant, regarding how best to combat the threat to the state that anarchism presented; the press was one important site of this ongoing conversation.

With the dangers posed by anarchism more salient than ever, many Americans bemoaned the fact that there was no federal law against anarchism that might have prevented the assassination from occurring in the first place; to this end, many made a suggestions in their local newspapers for not only the creation of such a law but also for the various punishments that might be inflicted on those found guilty of violating it. For instance, in the Denver Post just one week after the shooting (and thus still prior to

McKinley's death), F. E. Wheeler, the former mayor of Springfield, Illinois, is quoted as anticipating that “Congress will be obliged to enact a statute that shall make a conviction of holding anarchistic principles punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary;” he also explains that, if such a law is not enacted, the state of Illinois (which he identifies as having “had the hardest history in connection with anarchists of any of the states,” certainly referencing Haymarket) will itself “make the possession of anarchistic literature a felony” as well as create provisions for punishing those who hold public meetings

401 Jay Fox, Roosevelt, Czolgosz and Anarchy (New York: The New York Anarchists, n. d.): 2. While this pamphlet does not bear a date, the 18 May 1902 issue of Free Society notes the arrest of some radicals for distributing it; it was thus necessarily published sometime between the assassination and that date. 99 advocating anarchism.402 He predicts that Czolgosz's act “will be the clock stroke that knells anarchy's approaching end.”403

Other suggestions for solutions to the anarchist problem went beyond Wheeler's vision of mass imprisonment. For instance, in the same newspaper a few days after

McKinley's death, John W. Mackay advocates driving anarchists out of America (and turning away any newly arriving on ships) as well as immediately hanging those who are caught guilty of crime; he also states that those anarchists living in Europe should be

“promptly exterminated” there.404 He sees a combination of law, public opinion, and community vigilance as capable of eliminating anarchism entirely. Similarly, the Western

Society of the Army of the Potomac passed a resolution in favour of suppressing the

“alien doctrine” of anarchism and forever banishing all of its supporters from the country.405 As these responses demonstrate, although Czolgosz was an American citizen by birth the attribution of anarchism to foreign sources continued as “the dominant image of [him] that emerged … was of a weak-minded, emotionally misguided, lazy immigrant who had been inflamed by the rhetoric of anarchists;”406 thus, many of the proposed measures to deal with anarchists included mention of immigration restriction and new provisions for deportation.407 In a July 1902 issue of Free Society Abe Isaak Jr. mentions reading a proposal in a newspaper that suggested dropping all anarchists into the Mount 402 “Treatment for Treason,” Denver Post (Denver, CO), 13 September 1901. 403 Ibid. 404 “Problem of Anarchists Will Be Solved Here,” Denver Post (Denver, CO), 16 September 1901. 405 “Comrades in Arms Demand Stricter Laws,” Denver Post (Denver, CO), 18 September 1901. 406 Jay P. Childers, “The Democratic Balance: President McKinley's Assassination as Domestic Trauma,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2013): 167. 407 A bill to facilitate the exclusion and deportation of anarchists known as the “Hill Bill” had actually been proposed by New York senator David B. Hill years prior to the assassination, but it had failed to pass into law. 100

Pelée volcanic crater.408 There was even one well-known proposal by Massachusetts senator George F. Hoar to deport anarchists not to their countries of origin but rather to some uninhabited island.

Some critics even implicated the United States' legal freedoms of speech and the press for permitting the types of anarchist propaganda that Czolgosz cited as inspiration to go on spoken, published, and circulated; they therefore demanded limitations to such freedoms in order to prevent their being 'abused' by such anti-government agitators.409

Isaak Jr. even notes in Free Society that some papers, taking an entirely different approach to eliminating anarchism than those aforementioned, were “offering the suggestion that efforts be made to raise the economic conditions of the poorer classes of people, and that there [would] then be fewer anarchists.”410 In this way, the American government and social organization itself was blamed by some critics for having failed to enact the laws needed to provide adequate protection against anarchists or, alternately, for failing to foster a political and economic environment that could prevent an anarchist movement from flourishing in the United States.

Given the tense political climate, it is unsurprising that Czolgosz was not the only self-professed anarchist arrested in the wake of the McKinley assassination. Just a few short hours after the shooting, Chicago police raided 515 Carroll Street, home of the Isaak family.411 They arrested Abe Isaak, the publisher of the paper Free Society, as well as his

408 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 July 1902. 409 Childers, “The Democratic Balance,” 168. 410 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 October 1901. 411 Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012):158. 101 son Abe Isaak Jr. and fellow anarchists , Clemens Pfeutzner, Alfred

Schneider, and Enrico Travaglio.412413 Later, Julie Mechanic, who lived in the Isaak home and was also connected with the paper, as well as the elder Abe Isaak's wife Mary and daughter Mary were all detained and interrogated overnight. As a result of their arrests, the paper, normally appearing consistently as a weekly, failed to appear between 8

September and 6 October 1901.414 Isaak Jr. details the arrests in his article “The Outrage at Chicago” in the first issue following their release; as he writes, “a regular 'Anarchist hunt' was inaugurated, all active comrades being hounded or arrested by the police,” and he and the men arrested with him were charged with conspiracy against the life of the president.415 As George Pyburn later wrote in a pamphlet, the Chicago anarchists and their friends had been arrested “upon the mere suspicion of probable complicity.”416 Their home was ransacked multiple times without warrant, their publishing equipment tampered with, their personal correspondence shared with the press, and various personal items were stolen, but no evidence incriminating them in the president's assassination ever existed. Ultimately, the charges against the men were dismissed.417

Further arrests took place at the anarchist colony of Home, Washington, which

412 Abe Isaak Jr., “The Outrage at Chicago,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. Pfeutzner, Schneider, and Havel, though present in the home, were not directly involved with the publication of the paper, though they did at times contribute articles. 413 Travaglio, who had worked on L'Aurora with Ciancabilla previously, apprenticed as a typesetter with Free Society. (Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015): 92.) 414 The 8 September issue contains nothing on McKinley's assassination, having gone to print prior to its occurrence. The 6 October issue does include other topics, but is very predominantly focused on the assassination and ensuing repression of anarchists. 415 Isaak Jr., “The Outrage at Chicago.” 416 George Pyburn, The Conspiracy Against Free Speech and Free Press (New York: Edwin C. Walker, 1902): 10. Italics here are Pyburn's. 417 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 162. 102 was then the place of publication of another prominent English-language anarchist newspaper, Discontent. In this case, in late September three colony residents, James

Larkin, Charles Govan, and James Adams were arrested and charged with “writing, publishing, and mailing certain lewd, obscene, and lascivious material” for an article written by Adams in Discontent criticizing monogamy and advocating entitled

“A Healthy Comparison.”418 Though the charges did not explicitly link the men to

Czolgosz's act, it was clear to many who wrote for Discontent and other anarchist papers that the strong anti-anarchist sentiment following McKinley's death had motivated the arrests, especially given that the article in question had been published 30 January 1901, nearly a full eight months prior. For instance, contributor Sadie A. Magoon shared a personal letter from a friend through the paper which quotes the unnamed friend's husband as arguing that “the assassination of McKinley furnished the opportunity, in accordance with the determination to exterminate the Anarchists, to hunt a plausible pretext for suppressing Discontent.”419

Various other anarchists around the country were also taken into police custody; as

Jensen notes, “anarchists were arrested simply because they were anarchists.”420

According to Isaak Jr.'s account, police learned of another anarchist address by searching through the papers at the Isaak house and finding a small card sent to Free Society by subscribers requesting a change of address – he writes that “the police went [to the new

418 Justin Wadland, Trying Home: The Rise and Fall of an Anarchist on Puget Sound (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2014): 39. Wadland notes that James F. Morton Jr. was then editor of the paper at this time and was unclear on why he was not also arrested, but that the article in question was published prior to his arrival at Home. 419 Sadie A. Magoon, “A Letter,” Discontent (Home, WA), 13 November 1901. 420 Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism, 247. 103 address], surrounded the house, and arrested Jay Fox, Martin Raznick and Michael Roz, the latter being a visitor. The police rifled the papers in this house also.”421 These three men went to court with those arrested at the Isaaks' and were also ultimately released without having been found guilty of any crime. In his memoir, anarchist Chaim Leib

Weinberg422 mentions that he was approached by police at a Philadelphia meeting protesting the repression of anarchists but managed to evade arrest by lying and pretending he hadn't been one of the speakers.423 As reported in the Denver Post, anarchists Carl Nold and Harry Gordon were also arrested in Pittsburgh on 10 September

1901.424 The paper notes that “a thorough search of the abode of Gordon and Nold failed to reveal anything criminating, further than a lot of anarchist literature. A number of letters were seized, but none had any bearing on the crime of Czolgosz.”425 Repression of anarchists even reached the prisons as Alexander Berkman was briefly locked up in solitary confinement following the assassination.426 All the while, the mainstream press fanned the flames of fear – as an article reprinted in Free Society from the Lancaster,

Wisconsin weekly newspaper The Teller explains, “a stranger who had no other source of information would [have thought] from the newspapers that he [read] that half the people in the United States [were] Anarchists.”427

Emma Goldman, having been named as an influence by the shooter was, aside

421 Isaak Jr., “The Outrage at Chicago.” 422 Chaim Weinberg was an anarchist active in Philadelphia who gave lectures in Yiddish. 423 Chaim Leib Weinberg, Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist, Ed. Robert P. Helms, Trans. Naomi Cohen (Duluth: Litwin Books, LLC, 2001): 108. 424 “Emma Goldman, The Anarchist in Police Custody,” Denver Post (Denver, CO), 10 September 1901. 425 Ibid. 426 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 163. 427 “Voices in the Wilderness,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 October 1901. 104 from Czolgosz himself, the immediate primary interest of police – “New York alone employed 200 detectives and spent $30,000 in its determination to link her with the murder.”428 In her autobiography, Goldman gives a detailed account of her 10 September arrest and lengthy interrogation; while detained police threatened her with torture and provided her letters from concerned citizens, most unsigned, which too contained graphic threats of violence against her – of these letters she writes: “the description by some of the anonymous writers of what they would do to me sexually offered studies in perversion that would have astounded authorities on the subject. The authors of the letters nevertheless seemed to me less contemptible than the police officials.”429 She, along with a few others, was severely beaten during transfer to the county jail.430 She was ultimately set free as no evidence existed to link her to McKinley's assassination, but she remained inextricably connected to the act in the minds of much of the public – after her release she was forced to adopt a pseudonym in order to secure work and lodging, and she struggled to access rented halls to give lectures as their owners were threatened with various reprisals if they chose to host anarchists.431 Further, Goldman's unwillingness to wholly repudiate Czolgosz only augmented sentiments against her, even among some of her fellow radicals.

Johann Most was also arrested in the period of repression following the assassination. In the 7 September issue of his German-language anarchist periodical

428 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 158-159. 429 Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Dover Publications, 1970): 301. Realizing they were an attempt to break her spirit, Goldman eventually tore up and threw one such letter at one of her captors, refusing to accept any more. 430 Ibid., 307. 431 Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism, 247. 105

Freiheit, which he had actually prepared prior to the shooting, he included excerpts from an article by German radical Karl Heinzen; in this article, first published in 1849, Heinzen advocated the killing of despots and tyrants.432 Upon learning of the shooting of

McKinley, Most anticipated trouble and tried to withdraw the issue from circulation; however, he was unsuccessful – a copy had already been sold to a policeman, the very man who ended up arresting Most.433 He was “charged with the violation of Section 675 of New York's penal code, a catch-all section which made it a misdemeanor to commit an act which 'seriously' disturbed 'the public peace' or 'openly' outraged 'public decency' and for which no other punishment was provided in the code.”434 Anarchists led Most's defence and well-known socialist Morris Hillquit435 served as Most's attorney; however, unlike the other anarchists apprehended during this period, Most was in fact found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison despite the fact that the essay in question had been printed in American texts several times before without any legal consequences.436 The judge presiding ultimately made the argument that the advocacy of crime was in itself criminal under this legislation, and thus it was legally irrelevant that Most's publication could not be connected to Czolgosz's act in any way.437 This was to be Most's last prison term and was “arguably his toughest.”438

432 Sidney Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 783. 433 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 164. 434 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 783-4. 435 In addition to his work as a labour lawyer, Hillquit was one of the founders of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in . 436 Linda Cobb-Reiley, “Aliens and Alien Ideas: The Suppression of Anarchists and the Anarchist Press in America, 1901-1914,” Journalism History 15, no. 2-3 (1988): 53. 437 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 784. 438 Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007): 191. 106

In addition to legal repression, there were also several cases of concerned

Americans taking matters into their own hands and attempting to eliminate anarchism themselves – unsurprisingly, police “looked the other way when mobs drove anarchists and their families out of several towns and attacked and wrecked their publishing offices.”439 In his memoir, Weinberg explains how those known or suspected to be anarchists were targeted; he writes that “wherever someone was found to be an anarchist, the law enforcement officers ran right over and threw the suspect in jail. And if the law enforcement neglected to do that, 'patriotic citizens' turned up.”440 He describes a mob of a few hundred people coming to attack Harry Gordon in Pittsburgh while his girlfriend was in labour and threatening to burn down the home when they couldn't find him; he ultimately revealed himself, and the mob only backed down when they saw he wore a union badge.441 Isaak Jr. notes in the 20 October 1901 issue of Free Society that various organizations passed resolutions against 'anarchy,' that several workers lost their jobs for being anarchists, and that in Pittsburgh a house was destroyed because its occupants were suspected to be anarchists.442 In the case of the Home colony, the intentional community where the anarchist paper Discontent was published, it did not take long for residents of nearby Tacoma to target the anarchists despite editor James F. Morton Jr.443 consistently expressing publicly his own disagreement with Czolgosz's act and his belief that the assassination was ultimately incompatible with anarchism. Local members of the Grand

Army of the Republic soon formed the Loyal League with the aim of exterminating

439 Richard Bach Jensen, “The Pre-1914 Anarchist 'Lone Wolf' Terrorist and Government Responses,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014): 90. 107 anarchism in the area.444 As Justin Wadland writes, there have been many accounts of the aborted Loyal League raid on Home, all of which contain both “a crowd of enraged, armed men—often described as three hundred strong—bent on wiping out the anarchist colony” as well as “a clutch of brave, nonviolent colonists” but which vary on precisely how it was that the impending crisis was ultimately averted.445 In her memoir, Helene

Minkin, the wife of Johann Most, describes how Most's prosecution following the assassination also led to the ostracizing of their family – they were forced to leave

Brooklyn and assume an alternate surname because they were “hounded … as soon as

[they] showed [themselves] on the street;” people threw stones and called them names, and their sons were beaten by older classmates.446

Though very intense, the period of the most severe state repression of anarchists following Czolgosz's assassination of McKinley was relatively short-lived. While capitalist newspapers continued to construct anarchists as dangerous, anarchist organizing was criminalized at the state level in many parts of the country, and public opinion remained generally hostile to radicals, for the next several years proposals for federal anti-anarchist legislation ultimately failed to come to fruition; indeed, just a few months

440 Weinberg, Forty Years in the Struggle, 108. 441 Ibid., 108. 442 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 October 1901. 443 There is some discrepancy among sources about when Morton Jr. assumed editorial responsibilities, but Longa dates his editorship of Discontent to mid-1901 when his editorial column began appearing. See Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States, 52. 444 Charles Pierce LeWarne, “The Anarchist Colony at Home, Washington, 1901-1902,” Arizona and the West 14, no. 2 (1972): 160. 445 Wadland, Trying Home, 37. 446 Minkin, Storm in My Heart: Memories from the Widow of Johann Most, Ed. Tom Goyens, Trans. Alisa Braun (Oakland: AK Press, 2015): 112. 108 after the assassination occurred, C. L. James447 surveyed the state of current “outside literature” on the topic of anarchism and found that, though it was certainly rife with the expected misrepresentations, caricatures, and inaccuracies, it also suggested that

“condemnation of the stamping-out craze [was by then] almost unanimous.”448 This is, of course, not to say that state suppression of anarchist activities ended. As editor and writer

James F. Morton Jr. of the Home Colony wrote of this 'stamping-out craze' the following year, “the immediate excitement [was] past; but the grim purpose of the foes of freedom

[remained].”449

The Responses of the Anarchist Press

It is perhaps unsurprising that following the shooting, many radical editors and organizers sought to put as much distance as possible between their own political work and Czolgosz's act given that “there was a general disposition among [the] public … to hold anarchism itself responsible for the death of the President.”450 Those who had opposed violent tactics prior to the assassination, including self-identified 'philosophical anarchists,' argued that Czolgosz, by virtue of his having embraced violence, could not be an anarchist and, using the same logic, that his deed could in no way be attributed to

447 C. L. James was a prolific author who wrote on a wide range of topics for many anarchist periodicals. Little is known of his life as he was quite reclusive but James F. Morton Jr. wrote in an obituary for him that he was rightly “held to be the most profound scholar among American Anarchists.” See James F. Morton Jr., “C. L. James,” Mother Earth (New York, NY), August 1911. 448 C. L. James, “Our Friends, The Enemy,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 24 November 1901. 449 James F. Morton Jr., “Do You Want Free Speech? Sixth Paper,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 22 April 1903. The works entitled “Do You Want Free Speech?” by Morton Jr. appeared as a series across multiple issues in The Demonstrator; they were later collected together and published as a pamphlet, in which this segment is given the subtitle “Persecution of Anarchists” – see Morton Jr., James F. Do You Want Free Speech? Home: James F. Morton Jr., 1903. 450 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 780. 109 anarchism. J. William Lloyd, individualist anarchist and editor of the paper The Free

Comrade,451 described his own position on Czolgosz as follows:

Accepting the Anarchist philosophy and ideal, I have for the last sixteen or seventeen years steadfastly opposed all 'propaganda by deed' of violence—bomb, pistol, dagger or torch—as criminal and abhorrent, and especially as defeating its own objects. Finally, a few years back, I announced my preference for the term Free Socialist, so that I might be clearly distinguished on the one hand from those anarchists who advocated violence, and on the other from those other anarchists who found basis for human right only in contract.452

While identifying himself as having believed in anarchism for many years, Lloyd here simultaneously declares his refusal to use the term to describe himself out of a desire to distinguish himself from those with differing tactical views. In the same article, he describes the assassination as “terrible folly” that would undoubtedly “strengthen the plutocracy” and asserts that both Czolgosz and McKinley appear to be well-intentioned people who had aimed to do good but who were ultimately “mistaken” in their public actions.453 He insisted that any killing of a person was “murder and crime” with the sole exception being desperate moments of defence of life against an immediate threat.454

Editors James F. Morton Jr. of Discontent and Moses Harman of Lucifer the Light Bearer both expressed similar sentiments in their papers with Morton, for instance, writing in the

18 September 1901 issue of his paper that “if [he] thought that Anarchy led to

451 The Free Comrade began as a subsection in the periodical I, which was edited 1898-1900 by Clarence Lee Swartz. 452 J. William Lloyd, “The Free Comrade,” The Free Comrade (Wellesley, MA), November 1901. Free Comrade featured a note that all content not otherwise identified was written by Lloyd; in many issues, including this one, a large segment or even entire issue would be entirely by Lloyd and appeared without article titles. 453 Ibid. 454 Ibid. 110 assassination, [he] would not be an Anarchist.”455

Much more surprising than the disavowals of Czolgosz by long-time pacifist anarchists are comments offered by anarchists who had not similarly long held such commitments. Certainly not all drew the same strong line against all violence as Lloyd, but many anarchists rejected Czolgosz's act nonetheless. As Anderson notes, even Johann

Most and ultimately “condemned the assassination.”456 Emma Goldman was deeply angered by the widespread rejection of Czolgosz by anarchists; in her autobiography, she laments that while many American anarchists were willing to vocally oppose her own arrest and poor treatment by police, they would have nothing to do with

Czolgosz's case and argued that he “was not an anarchist [and that] his deed had done the movement an irreparable injury.”457 Most heartbreaking for Goldman by far was a letter discussing the assassination which she received sub rosa from Alexander Berkman in

December 1901 while he remained imprisoned for his own attempt on the life of Henry

Clay Frick years earlier. While Berkman agreed with her that such acts are the products of noble and strong souls unable to tolerate “evil conditions,” he disagreed with her that the act had any real political value. He wrote:

Now, I do not believe that this deed was terroristic; and I doubt whether it was educational, because the social necessity for its performance was not manifest … as an expression of personal revolt it was inevitable, and in itself an indictment of existing conditions. But the background of social necessity was lacking, and therefore the value of the act was to a great extent nullified.458

455 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 165. 456 Carlotta R. Anderson, All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998): 202. 457 Goldman, Living My Life, 316. 458 Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999): 111

Ironically echoing some critics of his own earlier attempted attentat, he argues that such a deed would have been valuable in Russia “where political oppression is popularly felt” but that in America, where “the scheme of political subjection is more subtle,” the president “could not be considered in the light of a direct and immediate enemy of the people.”459

While the majority of English-language anarchist papers expressed zero support for Czolgosz's act, the non-English language anarchist press was much more varied in the attitudes toward Czolgosz represented therein. Goldman does note that even most of the

Jewish anarchists argued against his act and that Saul Yanovsky, editor of Yiddish- language anarchist periodical Freie Arbeiter Stimme (the offices of which had been attacked by a mob following the assassination460 at which time Yanovsky was trapped and beaten in a nearby restaurant461) not only actively campaigned against Czolgosz but also attacked Goldman for defending him.462 She writes that “the only ones who had not lost their heads were ... the Italian, Spanish, and French anarchists” who “wrote sympathetically of Leon [Czolgosz], interpreting his act as a direct result of the increasing imperialism and reaction in [the United States].”463 A case in point is the Italian language anarchist periodical L'Aurora, which was edited by Giuseppe Ciancabilla, who was “the first theorist of anti-organizational anarchism among Italians, opposing all forms of

423. 459 Ibid. 460 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 786. 461 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 162. 462 Goldman, Living My Life, 316. 463 Ibid. 112 institutionalized power and calling for direct and, if necessary, violent action.”464 The paper had previously covered Bresci's assassination of Umberto I, attacking fellow Italian radicals who condemned his act.465 The 14 September 1901 issue of L'Aurora proclaims that if Czolgosz was an anarchist, “we admit it – even though it may cost us a brutal caress from the already shrieking reaction – we admit it and we are glad of it. Our salute goes to the courageous and sound Buffalo rebel.”466 defended Leon

Czolgosz's act in his Italian-language anarchist newspapers as well.467 Goldman was certainly disappointed that these groups, given language barriers that were difficult to overcome, “could not reach [much of] the American public” in the same ways as the

English-language periodicals that so often lacked similar analyses and arguments.468

As Goldman's comments regarding other anarchists' attitudes toward Czolgosz indicate, she was one of very few who defended him in the English-language anarchist press; no one was willing to participate in a meeting discussing his act that she attempted to organize and “every day brought more disappointment and heart-ache” as she attempted to “rally some public-spirited Americans to express ordinary human sympathy for Leon Czolgosz even if they felt they must repudiate his act.”469 In addition to further outraging the general public against her, her sympathy for Czolgosz isolated her even

464 Marcella Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940 (New York: New York University Press, 2011): 15. 465 Dirk Hoerder, ed., The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s, vol. 2, Migrants from Southern and Western Europe (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987): 40. 466 Giuseppe Ciancabilla and others, Fired by the Ideal: Italian-American Anarchist Responses to Czolgosz's Killing of McKinley, Ed. Mario Mapelli, Trans. Paul Sharkey (London: , 2002): 6. 467 Steve J. Shone, American Anarchism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014): 200. 468 Goldman, Living My Life, 316. 469 Ibid. 113 from most self-professed anarchists, including many of her long-time allies and friends.

The anarchists comprising the circle surrounding Free Society, however, were notable exceptions in the English-language anarchist press.

Free Society: Background and Significance

Historian of anarchism Paul Avrich describes Free Society as having been “the foremost revolutionary anarchist paper in America around the turn of the century.”470 The paper was edited by Abraham Isaak, who was born in “the Mennonite village of

Rosenthal of the Chortitza colony (Ukraine)” in 1856.471 His wife, Mary, was born in

1862 and also from Rosenthal.472 The Isaaks had three children, Peter (b. 1881), Abe Jr.

(b. 1883) and Mary (b. 1885).473 Isaak arrived in the United States in 1889 via Rio de

Janeiro having fled immanent arrest by the Tsarist police for his anti-Tsarist activities, with his eldest son Peter having been sent to America a few years prior and his wife and younger two children joining him shortly afterwards; they ultimately settled in

Portland.474 As Zimmer notes, the Isaaks were “unlikely revolutionaries,” having adopted anarchism sometime after immigrating;475 Smith suggests that Isaak might have become an anarchist during his time in Portland after the expulsion of anarchists from the

470 Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: The Life of (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978): 79-80. 471 Steven Kent Smith, “Further Notes on Abraham Isaak, Mennonite Anarchist,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 80, no. 1 (2006): 84. 472 Ibid., 84. 473 Steven Kent Smith, “Abraham Isaak: The History of a Mennonite Radical,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 65, no. 4 (1991): 450. 474 Smith, “Further Notes on Abraham Isaak, Mennonite Anarchist,” 85. 475 Kenyon Zimmer, “Revolutionaries by the Bay: Immigrant Anarchists in San Francisco, 1880s-1930s,” Journal of the West 53, no. 3 (2014): 26. 114

Socialist Labor Party during the First International.476

Free Society came into existence with its first issue on 14 November 1897 as the successor to the comparatively short-lived Portland, Oregon based The Firebrand, which ended with the arrest of its editors. Abe Isaak, Henry Addis, and Abner J. Pope were charged with the mailing of obscene materials; specific content raised during the trial included “several selections on free love” as well as a reprint of the poem “A Woman

Waits for Me” from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.477 The elderly Pope served four months in prison; Addis and Isaak were also convicted but had their charges dropped on appeal.478 Addis and Pope ultimately ended up at the Home colony in Washington; Isaak went to San Francisco and continued the paper under the new title Free Society and

“gradually became a luminary in the American anarchist movement.”479

The entire Isaak family, including Abe's wife Mary as well as their three children, contributed in various ways to producing the paper;480 Abe Isaak Jr.'s writing regularly appears therein. Zimmer notes Free Society as having a circulation of 3115 copies in its first year, 1897.481 By January 1898, Free Society itself notes that nearly one thousand copies of each issue were being mailed in bundles for distribution alone.482 It is difficult to estimate the readership of the paper, however, especially given that copies were not

476 Smith, “Further Notes on Abraham Isaak, Mennonite Anarchist,” 86. 477 Carlos A. Schwantes, “Free Love and Free Speech on the Pacific Northwest Frontier: Proper Victorians vs. Portland's 'Filthy Firebrand,'” Oregon Historical Society 82, no. 3 (1981): 286. In large part, Pope went to prison because of his refusal to participate in any way in the trial or appeal process. 478 Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005): 483. 479 Schwantes, 289. 480 Smith, “Abraham Isaak,” 449. 481 Kenyon Zimmer, “American Anarchist Periodicals Circulation Data, 1880-1940,” 2014, https://www.academia.edu/7715169/American_Anarchist_Periodical_Circulation_Data_1880-1940. 482 Free Society Group, “New Year Suggestion,” Free Society (San Francisco, CA), 2 January 1898. 115 only sold but given away freely and that readers were encouraged to share their copies with friends. Free Society remained in San Francisco until the end of 1900. In early

1901, the Isaaks moved to Chicago where the paper was published for much of its lifetime; Eva Brandes, whom as a child knew and visited the Isaaks, describes the family and their paper as being “at the center of the English speaking [anarchist] group” there.483

They remained in Chicago until early 1904 when they decided to move the paper to New

York. Free Society ceased publication less than one year after the move, having struggled along without sufficient funding and accumulating $160 in debt.484 In the final issue of

Free Society, Isaak laments that:

a few devoted comrades have done all they possibly could to keep the paper afloat, but the inertness of the comrades at large make the task too hard for these few to keep it up, altho (sic) it is important to have an Anarchist weekly, especially in these times of political reaction and capitalistic arrogance.485

He also notes here that he is not ready to give up, and would be interested in publishing an English-language monthly if there is sufficient support for it. Ultimately, however, he and his family ended up moving back to California and working on the establishment of the Aurora Colony.486487

Over the course of its lifetime, Free Society underwent several changes in its overall design. At the time of its first appearance, the paper's title was printed in relatively plain capital letters carried the subtitle “An Advocate of Communal Life and

483 Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 275. 484 Smith, “Further Notes on Abraham Isaak, Mennonite Anarchist,” 89. 485 A. Isaak, “Attention, Comrades!” Free Society (New York, NY), 20 November 1904. 486 Aurora was a short-lived anarchist intentional community near Lincoln, California. 487 Smith, “Further Notes on Abraham Isaak,” 89. 116

Individual Sovereignty.” Inside the paper, the masthead lists the annual subscription price at fifty cents and names Free Society Publishing Co. as issuing the paper. Also included in the masthead is a definition of Anarchy from Century Dictionary: “A social theory which regards the union of order with the absence of all direct government of man by man as the political idea; absolute individual liberty.”

Figure III: Free Society's original flag Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.

Over time, many of these details changed, some multiple times. For instance, beginning in February 1902 Free Society adopted a much more artistically stylized flag, with Free

Society appearing on a scroll amid celebrated words such as 'peace', 'knowledge',

'humanity', and 'liberty', sitting atop (and defeating) such enemy concepts as 'privilege' and 'law'.

Figure IV: First appearance of Free Society's later flag, 16 February 1902 Labadie Collection, University of Michigan 117

The subtitle of the paper changed several times throughout its life. Following the last appearance of the first subtitle, “An Advocate of Communal Life and Individual

Sovereignty,” on 13 February 1898, there were two later subtitles: “An Exponent of

Anarchist-: Holding that Equality of Opportunity Alone Constitutes Liberty;

That in the Absence of Monopoly Price and Competition Cannot Exist and That

Communism Is an Inevitable Consequence,” which was the longest running subtitle and appeared from 20 February 1898 until 29 December 1901, and finally the succinct “A

Periodical of Anarchist Work, Thought, and Literature” from 5 January 1902 until the final issue of 21 February 1904.488

The price of Free Society listed in the masthead increased from fifty cents to one dollar per year beginning 24 February 1901. A note regarding this increase was published at the time, offering as justification that “the size [of the paper] is now doubled [to eight pages as opposed to the original four], the quality of the paper is much better than before, and other expenses have increased proportionately;” further, the increase was advocated as fairest to those who work the hardest to keep the paper afloat as it results in a more equal distribution of the costs of its production.489 The masthead included multiple listings for publisher over the years: Free Society Publishing Co. was listed from the paper's inception until 12 January 1902, Isaak named individually as publisher from 19

January 1902 until 10 January 1904, Free Society Group briefly from 17 January to 21

February 1904, and finally Free Society Publishing from 28 February 1904 onward.

488 Ernesto A. Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States (1833-1955): An Annotated Guide (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010): 80. 489 “Notes,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 24 February 1901. 118

Longa notes that “although Free Society only lists Abe Isaak as its editor [from 14

February until 20 November 1904], Isaak is widely known as the editor of Free

Society.”490 Century Dictionary's definition of anarchy is a constant presence throughout the life of the paper.

Free Society included a wide variety of genres of written work by many authors.

Contributions ranged in length from serials published over the course of several months, such as “Vindication of Anarchism” and “History of the French Revolution” by C. L.

James, to notes and observations of only a few lines. The paper included historical material, reports and commentary on current events and political developments in both the United States and abroad, and argumentative essays (which frequently developed into ongoing debates) on various topics of interest to anarchists. Also included were appeals to various support and relief funds, notices of upcoming meetings and other events, and announcements of newly published books, pamphlets, and papers (including lists of texts available for sale through the Free Society office). Though a few contributors to the paper wrote under pseudonyms (such as Wat Tyler, Americus, and Interloper), most material is attributed to an author's real name or, occasionally, initials or a short form

(such as 'Jr.' for the younger Abe Isaak). The paper included reprints of well-known authors including Kropotkin, Malatesta, Grave, and Tolstoy,491 and contributions written by anarchists and other radicals from across the United States and beyond. In addition to anarchist women being involved in the publishing of the paper, such as Mary Isaak and

490 Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States, 91-2. Italics Longa's. 491 Ibid., 81. 119

Julie Mechanic, Free Society included writings contributed by many women as well, including Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre, Viroqua Daniels, Sadie

Magoon, Kate Austin, Myra Pepper, Mary Hansen, Lois Waisbrooker, Lizzie Holmes, and

Celia B. Whitehead. In his annotated guide entry for Free Society, Ernesto A. Longa list of the paper's main features and subjects include such issues as free speech, the sex question, free thought, secularism, the suppression of anarchism, and, of course, the assassination of President McKinley by Leon Czolgosz.

In mid-1901, Goldman had stayed for almost two months with Abe and Mary

Isaak at their Chicago home;492 she also stayed with the Isaak family after the charges against all of them were dismissed and they were released from prison.493 Goldman and the Isaaks were some of the very few anarchists who had briefly met Czolgosz494 prior to the assassination; Czolgosz had attended a lecture by Goldman, and he later chatted with her, as well as with Abe and Mary Isaak, on their way to the Chicago train station.

Despite his “odd demeanor” and his suspiciously asking Isaak about joining anarchist

“secret societies,” Isaak also offered to help him around Chicago though Czolgosz did not show up when invited to his home for dinner.495 Goldman and Isaak briefly diverged in their willingness to engage with Czolgosz when Isaak published a warning in Free

Society including a physical description of Czolgosz and the accusation that he seemed to be a spy; he wrote of Czolgosz that “his demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be

492 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 153. 493 Ibid., 162. 494 In this meeting Czolgosz introduced himself with the alias Nieman ('Nobody'); when news first broke of Czolgosz shooting McKinley they did not initially realize that it was the same man that they had met earlier. 495 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 153. 120 greatly interested in the cause, asking for names, or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere, the comrades are warned in advance, and can act accordingly.”496 Goldman was outraged and Isaak

“eventually … agreed to print a retraction.”497 Their having met Czolgosz, and his having admitted as much during interrogations, certainly contributed to Goldman and the Free

Society group being some of the first targeted for arrest for suspicion of having been part of a conspiracy with him.

While many anarchist periodicals made mention of the McKinley assassination,

Czolgosz's trial, and the wave of suppression of anarchists occurring throughout the country, Free Society is unparalleled by its contemporaries in both the immense proportion of pages allotted to these topics over the course of the following year and the wide array of perspectives represented therein. The editors of the paper, despite having been arrested under suspicion of involvement in the assassination, did not shy away from seriously engaging critically with the assassination's relationship to anarchism and admitting to their own prior knowledge, limited as it was, of Czolgosz. As Steven Kent

Smith notes, editor Abe Isaak had taken similar positions in The Firebrand, the paper he worked on previously – therein, “the Mennonite-bred Isaak took sides with apologists of violence” in debates with contributors and “nowhere in the The Firebrand did [he] seem to soften his position on the use of force to bring about change in society.”498 Overall, while a wide variety of opinions of the assassin ranging from sympathetic to ambivalent

496 Abe Isaak, “Attention,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 1 September 1901. 497 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 155. 498 Smith, “Abraham Isaak,” 452. 121 to hostile are included in Free Society after the McKinley assassination, the paper was distinct in its frequent inclusion of more sympathetic or positive responses and its much more intensive and thorough engagement with the full range of debates and issues surrounding the assassination as compared to other English language anarchist periodicals in the United States at the time. In the pages of Free Society, anarchists and their allies employed a variety of strategies to turn widespread anti-anarchist discourses back on themselves and offer their own understandings of Czolgosz's deed to counter those circulating in the mainstream press.

Throughout this time period, the anarchist press was central to the movement and can be conceptualized as a site of both repression and resistance – given the crucial role that the press played in organizing, anarchist newspapers and their editors were both the first and primary targets of state repression as well as the main channel through which anarchists mobilized against it. In the case of the specific period of the state targeting of anarchists following the assassination of McKinley, the core site of contestation was undoubtedly the pages of Free Society – in the period following the assassination its pages were overwhelmed with discussion of the act, the subsequent intensification of hostilities toward radicals, and the best current and future strategies for anarchist agitation in America. While, as Federman explains regarding Czolgosz, “the construction of an individual figure of harm out of hints, allegations, and faulty historical narratives [has allowed] for generalizations that overlook contradictions, in an effort to say something significant about the manner of the man that kills,”499 Free Society offered an alternative

499 Federman, “The Life of an Unknown Assassin,” 85. 122 construction of Czolgosz and his act. While several authors have provided accounts of the repression of anarchist activity in the wake of the assassination of McKinley as well as the anti-anarchist rhetoric taken up by politicians, law enforcement, and the mainstream press, comparatively little attention has been paid to the strategies employed by anarchist authors and editors in their own periodicals to challenge this rhetoric, shift discourses on anarchism, the state, capitalism, and violence, and continue to strengthen the anarchist movement during this tumultuous period.

Examining the ways in which Free Society functioned as a site of radical resistance to state repression reveals not only the strategies that anarchists favoured for furthering their movements, but draws attention to some of these movements' strengths.

The anarchist movements of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in the United States are often considered to have been comparatively small and unsuccessful and, as Beverly

Gage writes:

both acts of radical violence and the response to them [have] seemed like little more than intertwined political delusions: for those who supported such acts, a woeful misjudgement of the Americans' paltry revolutionary potential; for those who opposed them, a 'hysterical' overreaction to a nonexistent radical threat.500

Even later historians “who prided themselves on the rediscovery of conflict and violence more generally” did not focus on “the bombings and assassinations that had been so much a part of the public image of radical movements” in this period; most have continued to marginalize radical violence as an unusual and atypical occurrence in

500 Beverly Gage, “Why Violence Matters: Radicalism, Politics, and in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 1, no. 1 (2007): 102. 123

American history.501 This is problematic, however, in that, as Gage argues, “it was precisely because hostility … to industrial capitalism was not limited to radical circles that the problem of violence seemed so acute, and potentially so disastrous” to people living through this time.502 The frequency with which the anarchist press was a target of the state and the resilience with which anarchist papers survived periods of the most aggressive and intensified repression suggest that these texts held more influence and were (at least perceived as) more of a threat to the established order than they are often thought to have been. As Hong writes, the period was one of “intense social conflict” and in this context the anarchist “was constructed to evoke associations that fostered dependency on authority, freezing political perceptions and conceptions within an acceptable framework.”503 While today this is often conceived of as having been a paranoid response to what was ultimately a rather non-threatening movement, “acts of radical violence invariably provoked widespread debate over the nature and fate of industrial capitalism”504 which extended far beyond the bounds of anarchist and other radical movements. Such widespread debate, which anarchists sought to participate in and radicalize through their periodicals and other propaganda, certainly had the potential to pose a significant threat to the status quo.

Engagement with the strategies employed by anarchists demonstrates the effectiveness with which they countered their characterization in the mainstream press and continued to organize even through the severest 'stamping-out' without, especially in

501 Ibid., 103. 502 Ibid., 107. 503 Hong, “Constructing the Anarchist Beast in American Periodical Literature, 1880-1903,” 111. 504 Gage, “Why Violence Matters,” 107. 124 the case of Free Society, abandoning their scathing criticisms of the prevailing social order. The ways in which the anarchists working in Free Society sought to reshape these crucial conversations are important in that they illuminate the ways in which “discourse as a political practice is not only a site of power struggle, but also a stake in power struggle: discursive practice draws upon conventions which naturalize particular power relations and ideologies, and these conventions themselves, and the ways in which they are articulated are a focus of struggle.”505 While Free Society and its editors were far from the only organizers targeted by raids and arrests in the wake of the McKinley assassination, the paper can be distinguished from most of its contemporaries by its response to these attacks and the ways in which this paper served as a focal point for the construction of counter-discourses on Czolgosz and his act and the staging of intense debates on violence as a strategy for creating radical change. I argue that Free Society effectively turned prevalent anti-anarchist discourses against themselves by taking advantage of the increased interest in anarchism they generated, especially by humanizing and valuing Leon Czolgosz, elaborating an anarchist framework for understanding the causes and impacts of violence as a radical political tactic, and debating the role violence ought to have in radical social movement struggles. I will argue that Free Society advances, in both its content and its publication style, a commitment to an openness to diverse methods of propaganda.

505 Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992): 67. 125

The First Issue Post-Assassination

The first issue of Free Society published after the incident, released after almost a month's delay caused by the editors' arrests, exemplifies the extent to which discussion of

Czolgosz and his act became a main focus for contributors. Of this first issue, approximately half of the paper is comprised of articles which directly reference the incident and its aftermath. The 6 October 1901 issue's first and second pages feature

Emma Goldman's article on Czolgosz and the assassination. Goldman begins by asking why “the mighty and powerful [were] thrown into such consternation” by the shooting and locates the vicious reaction to Czolgosz, including the widespread assumption that

Czolgosz could not possibly be American, in the shattering of the illusion that the United

States was immune to anti-authoritarian violence; she writes that “now that the impossible has happened, that even America has given birth to the man who struck down the king of the republic, they have lost their heads, and are shouting vengeance upon those who for years have shown that the conditions here were beginning to be alarming.”506 She argues that such an act can be reduced to neither social conditions nor the individual assassin's nature, but necessarily results from both of these combined with the person's

“susceptibility to the world around him” given that while many will suffer under and

“loath tyranny, but one will strike down a tyrant;” thus, that which leads a person to attack an oppressor is “an abundance of love and an overflow of pain and sympathy with the pain and sorrow around us.”507 Goldman not only addresses ongoing discussions about

506 Emma Goldman, “The Tragedy at Buffalo,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 507 Ibid. 126 the source of Czolgosz's act and what kind of person he was, but also turns especially to fellow anarchists who “have hastily said that Czolgosz's act was foolish and will check the growth of progress” – she deems such people “wrong” and their arguments “absurd,” countering that regardless of what results his act produces that “he has wounded government in its most vital spot.”508 She concludes sending her heart out to Czolgosz in his cell as well as “to all those victims of a system of inequality, and the many who will die the forunners (sic) of a better, nobler, grander life.”509

While it is precisely the inclusion of this kind of content that sets Free Society apart from the responses of other English-language anarchist publications to Czolgosz's act, appearance of Goldman's article was apparently not uncontentious even among the

Free Society publishers. In her autobiography Goldman describes this article as having been the cause of a rift between herself and Abe Isaak – she describes discovering his having added a paragraph without her permission in order “to tone down the article … in order to save Free Society,” and only agreeing to print the article as she had written it after a long conversation in which others in the group, including his son Abe Isaak Jr. as well as Hippolyte Havel, sided with Goldman.510 Goldman describes Isaak as having

“declared that he renounced all responsibility in the matter” and her faith in him having been shaken by the disagreement.511

This issue of Free Society also includes reprints of two letters sent to Emma

Goldman after the shooting, one signed 'An American' and the other 'Nemesis,' under the

508 Ibid. 509 Ibid. 510 Goldman, Living My Life, 313. 511 Ibid. 127 article title “Law and Order.” The first letter threatens to bomb the Isaak house, tear Abe

Isaak's young daughter Mary “limb from limb,” and kill Goldman, while the second curses Goldman, her mother, and any who might ever come to her assistance.512 The editors of the paper describe the letters as “samples of what the lovers of the law are given to vent to” and as utterly dissimilar to any sentiments found anywhere in anarchist papers; they also note that there are far worse letters they cannot print because they would render the paper unmailable. The paper contextualizes these letters squarely in the middle of the 'stamping out craze' calling for the repression of anarchists, noting that “the press and pulpit, senators and congressmen, with a few exceptions, have not manifested much more nobility and intelligence [than the authors of the letters] … although their language was more refined.”513

This first issue also provided readers with explanations of recent events related to the assassination in which the editors were involved. The third page of the paper included an article written by Abe Isaak detailing why it was that they had suspected Czolgosz of being a spy.514 He details his first encounter with Czolgosz and the suspicion he felt when asked about joining anarchist secret societies, and explains that he invited Czolgosz to his home for dinner but that he never turned up. He published the warning after checking in with fellow anarchists in Cleveland who had similar suspicions “owing to [Czolgosz's] strange conduct and contradicting statements.”515 Over the fourth and fifth pages, Abe

Isaak Jr. details the arrests of anarchists at the Isaak home and elsewhere in the article

512 “Law and Order,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 513 Ibid. 514 Abe Isaak, “Why We Considered Czolgosz a Spy,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 515 Ibid. 128

“The Outrage at Chicago;” he notes that during their interrogations that “no attempt was made … to conceal the fact that probably Czolgosz had been in Chicago” though some could not identify him with certainty.516

It was very common for anarchist papers to reprint articles that originally appeared in other sources. Sometimes material diametrically opposed to the paper's political framework is included with critical (and often sarcastic or humorous) commentary, and anarchist editors frequently referenced other radical periodicals with which they were more in agreement. This issue of Free Society includes an article entitled

“Unconditionally Released,” credited as initially appearing in Lucifer, which explains the dismissal of charges against the Chicago anarchists. The article angrily points out the immense amounts of money and time spent on the arrests and prosecution as well as the abuses the anarchists experienced at the hands of both the mainstream press and the police; the author, here identified as L. H.,517 concludes sarcastically: “and thus are the

Anarchists taught the erroneousness of their views; thus are they taught respect for the administration of the law; thus are they given a practical illustration of the defense it provides the weak against the strong!”518 Also republished is an article entitled “Why

Blame the Oppressed?” cited as taken from the Italian-language paper L'Aurora (here appearing in English) which expresses its author's lack of surprise at the assassination.

The author states that McKinley is responsible for his own assassination and explains that, for anarchists, “the individual which stands highest in the social scale and

516 Isaak Jr., “The Outrage at Chicago.” 517 The initials presumably refer to Lillian Harman, the daughter of Lucifer editor Moses Harman and a frequent contributor to radical periodicals. 518 L. H., “Unconditionally Released,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 129 impersonates the political and economic oppression under which the people are suffering so horribly, is naturally most exposed to attacks by the oppressed and disinherited,” referring to the death of the president as a result of his profession, a “labor accident;” the author maintains that “if McKinley had been simple Mr. McKinley he would certainly have escaped the assault of Czolgosz.”519 Given the publication of such scathing remarks in the context of the heightened anti-anarchist climate following the assassination, it is perhaps unsurprising that Abe Isaak Jr. also notes in this issue of Free Society that

Ciancabilla, the editor of L'Aurora, was arrested and that “the real reason … is that he is an Anarchist, and his utterances have displeased the rulers.”520 Kenyon Zimmer describes

Ciancabilla as having been arrested for “praising Leon Czolgosz.”521

The remainder of the issue is almost entirely taken up by regularly included material (in this case, advertisements for available books and pamphlets, the list of agents selling newspaper subscriptions, notes of monetary contributions received, information on upcoming meetings, and the twenty-third installment of the lengthy serial “History of the

French Revolution” by C. L. James). The paper continues for months after this initial issue to allot significant space to discussion of the assassination as well as the various repressive measures adopted against anarchists in its wake. The paper's focus on these themes certainly springs, at least in part, from the fact that the the vilification of anarchists in the mainstream press actually increased the public's interest in anarchism despite the political climate being overwhelmingly hostile towards anarchists. In the 13

519 “Why Blame the Oppressed?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 520 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 October 1901. 521 Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State, 67. 130

October issue of Free Society, the second issue following the paper's month long hiatus, an author writing under the name Interloper reproduces this excerpt of a conversation with editor Abe Isaak:

“Well, how does the stamping-out craze effect your subscription list?” I asked the publishers of Free Society. “We received more new subscribers and requests for sample copies during the last three or four weeks, than during the whole year previous to the newspaper attacks,” replied Comrade Isaak.522

They also reproduce a letter written to the paper requesting a new subscription; therein, the correspondent mentions wanting to learn more about anarchism after seeing a few sentences of Free Society excerpted in another paper, stating that the excerpt demonstrates that the various methods of persecution of anarchists “are rather poor arguments” when compared to those of anarchism.523 Interloper also notes in the following issue that “not only speakers of literary and ethical societies, students of universities, but even those of the Young Men's Christian Associations write for literature and information”524 about anarchism.

Contextualizing this interest in broader patterns, in a mid-November issue C. L.

James notes that well-known instances of radical violence tend to increase people's interests in learning about radical philosophies and movements; he writes that “attempts at suppressing the Anarchist with a book have fallen [into sudden unpopularity]” and that

“since the rash act of Czolgosz, the periodicals, as caterers to a public demand, have been unable to avoid giving their patrons facts about anarchism, as well as declamation.”525

522 Interloper, “By the Wayside,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 October 1901. 523 Ibid. 524 Interloper, “By the Wayside,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 October 1901. 525 C. L. James, “The Day We Celebrate,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 17 November 1901. 131

Further, he explains that a similar pattern has occurred following Czolgosz' act as happened after Haymarket: “every outbreak of the bomb-Anarchist is immediately followed by a general resurgence of the book-Anarchist,” with the latter actually being the more “dangerous to institutions.”526 As Fairclough argues, the “proliferation of discursive practices and generative processes in which they are creatively re-articulated

… [are] limited by hegemonic relations and structures, and [are] a terrain of hegemonic struggle.”527 Anarchists drew on and reconfigured discourses surrounding the assassination of McKinley and utilized their papers to struggle against the increasing criminalization of their activities, especially the writing and publishing activities that were so central to their movement organizing. Examining the commentary in Free

Society reveals that anarchists cleverly utilized the paper to take advantage of increased interest in their politics by intervening in dominant discourses surrounding Czolgosz and the assassination and thereby contesting the rationales offered to support new anti- anarchist measures emerging at the state and federal levels.

Claiming & Reframing Czolgosz

As Hong notes, in the mainstream American periodical press “anarchism was condemned as a frightening world of wanton criminality and menacing insanity.”528 At the center of this characterization were the depictions of Czolgosz himself. In the search for an explanation as to why McKinley was shot, Czolgosz was alternately and

526 Ibid. 527 Fairclough, “Political Discourse in the Media: An Analytic Framework,” Approaches to Media Discourse, Eds. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998): 145. 528 Hong, “Constructing the Anarchist Beast in American Periodical Literature, 1880-1903,” 116. 132 simultaneously characterized as the product of the distinctly foreign influence of

“European anarchism and hereditary taints,”529 as an amoral monster who personified violent danger, and as a weak pawn of a secretive but “thoroughly organized body of professed enemies of society.”530 Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination,

Leon Czolgosz was so maligned that the image that emerges of him is barely human at all

– he became “a slate upon which every evil of the Gilded Age could find a platform, except the discourse of insanity itself.”531 Deemed unworthy of even the most minimal of dignities after his death, Czolgosz body was burned with acid and left in an unmarked grave. Indeed, Kate Austin532 later wrote that she felt that there had never before been “a case … in the history of [the United States] where a prisoner went through the formality of a trial, who was so utterly forsaken as Czolgosz.”533 It is unsurprising that few were willing to offer anything resembling a kind word about Leon Czolgosz in print. In this respect again, Free Society stands out as an exception among the English-language anarchist newspapers in the frequency with which it mentions him positively (or, at the very least, with some degree of understanding rather than pure condemnation). Some of the authors of Free Society took note of this exception in that they criticized those anarchists and other radicals who scrambled to distance themselves from Czolgosz and, in

529 Federman, “The Life of an Unknown Assassin, 86. 530 “An Appalling Menace,” Gunton's Magazine (New York, NY), October 1901. 531 Federman, “The Life of an Unknown Assassin, 86. 532 Kate Austin (1864-1902) spent most of her life living and working on a farm in Missouri. She contributed articles to Free Society, Firebrand, Lucifer, Discontent, and others, as well as carrying on much correspondence. William Holmes describes Austin as uncompromising in her principles, noting that she “was more or less familiar with every shade of radical thought, but subjects pertaining to sexual reform and to the economic status of the world's workers claimed her closest attention.” (Wm. Holmes, “Kate Austin,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 30 November 1902). 533 Kate Austin, “Why Not Be Logical?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 8 December 1901. 133 doing so, joined in the vilification of him by more mainstream papers; Austin, a few months after the assassination, calls for anarchists to recognize that “we were cowards, that we thought more of the reputation of the cause than … of principles we dishonored when we deserted a rebel and brother in his last extremity.”534 Free Society is notable in its refusal to participate in the condemnation, rejection, and abandonment of Czolgosz from the very beginning.

Isaak Jr.'s follow-up to the previously published warning about Czolgosz alleging him to be a spy, for instance, is especially remarkable given how soon after the shooting it appears – therein, he acknowledges that the warning, though an expression of genuine concern at the time (as explained by Abe Isaak (Sr.) in the previous issue), was nevertheless erroneous. Isaak Jr. writes that “no matter what opinion one may have of

Czolgosz, it will be admitted that he was not a spy. For that note, I offer to Leon F.

Czolgosz, hated and despised as he is by all the world, an apology.”535 Taking up

Czolgosz as a person worthy of an apology for a wrong committed against him was a decidedly radical gesture given the climate of widespread calls for his speedy execution and, generally speaking, an unwillingness to extend him sympathy even among many anarchists. While it is certainly a drastic oversimplification, it is this sort of content that explains why, in a letter to individualist anarchist Henry Bool536 written shortly after the assassination, Edwin C. Walker537 described Free Society as “through and through … a

534 Austin, “Why Not Be Logical?” 535 Abe Isaak Jr., “Leon F. Czolgosz,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 October 1901. 536 Bool was a businessman and individualist anarchist who supported numerous periodicals, including Lucifer the Light Bearer and Liberty. 537 Walker worked as an editor with the periodicals Fair Play and Lucifer the Light Bearer and wrote contributions for many other papers. 134 scarcely-veiled apology for the killing of McKinley and glorification of his murderer.”538

Engaging Czolgosz in this way necessarily meant responding to the ways he was characterized in the mainstream press. Though not a major theme in Free Society, a few regular contributors did engage with ongoing conversations regarding Czolgosz's

(in)sanity; as was often the case in Free Society, the paper published articles by authors espousing divergent views on this question, and these authors addressed not only dominant discourses in the mainstream press but one another as well. In an early 1902 issue, an article by a regular contributor using the pen-name Wat Tyler entitled “Was

Czolgosz Insane?” appears, answering its titular question in the affirmative. Tyler makes reference to the work of two doctors, L. V. Briggs and Walter Channing, both of whom conducted more extensive examinations of Czolgosz's life prior to the assassination than the experts who had deemed Czolgosz competent to stand trial (though it is important to note that Briggs and Channing did not converse with Czolgosz himself).539 They came to the opposite conclusion; Briggs characterized Czolgosz as “a diseased man, a man who had been suffering from some form of mental disease for years” who was “not medically responsible”540 and Channing concurred, writing that “from a study of all the facts that

[had] come to [his] attention, insanity [appeared] ... the most reasonable and logical explanation” for his act.541 Tyler accepts these findings, taking them as proof that “the crime of Czolgosz was primarily of psychological interest rather than of political

538 Edwin C. Walker to Henry Bool, 15 December 1901, Henry Bool Correspondence, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 539 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 780. 540 Briggs, The Manner of Man That Kills, 14. 541 Walter Channing, “The Mental Status of Czolgosz, the Assassin of President McKinley,” American Journal of Insanity 59, no. 2 (1902): 278 135 significance, the outcome of purely personal idiosyncrasy and not of any doctrine or propaganda.”542 In doing so, Tyler asserts that Czolgosz's act bears no real relation to anarchism and has no political value; he even argues that those anarchists who argue otherwise have done so based on their “[tacit acceptance of] Czolgosz at his own estimate,” which was, given this new medical evidence, “uncalled for.”543 Tyler's conclusion is that evidence of Czolgosz's insanity should ultimately put an end to the development of anti-Anarchist legislation in response to his act. A very similar article

(which appears to be a slight reworking of Tyler's article) appeared just one month later in the second last issue of Discontent, listed there as written by Joshua T. Small.544545

In the same issue, Free Society includes an article by Ross Winn546 giving the opposite view; Winn writes unequivocally that “Czolgosz was not insane” and showed no signs of being so, and that nothing is really known of “the psychology of his act” given that Czolgosz did not explain his act publicly during trial.547 Winn states that he does not approve of violence, but that Czolgosz ought not be considered a criminal because “it was not the ideal of Anarchy that pulled the pistol's trigger, but the misery and wrong and

542 Wat Tyler, “Was Czolgosz Insane?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 16 February 1902. 543 Ibid. 544 Joshua T. Small, “Czolgosz Was Insane,” Discontent (Home, WA), 19 March 1902. 545 Small's work also occasionally appears in Free Society. He was active in the Anarchist Letter-Writing Corps started by Stephen T. Byington around Benjamin Tucker's paper Liberty (Morgan Edwards, “Neither Bombs nor Ballots: Liberty and the Strategy of Anarchism,” Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology, Eds. Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (St. Paul: Michael E. Coughlin and Mark Sullivan, 1987): 65-91.) 546 Ross Winn, an anarchist born in Texas, was a prolific writer who contributed to many radical periodicals and edited several of his own, including The Coming Era, Winn's Firebrand, and The Advance. Emma Goldman writes of him that despite constant struggles with poverty and illness, “always his one supreme passion was a paper, to arouse, inspire, and educate the people to a higher conception of human worth.” See Emma Goldman, “Ross Winn,” Mother Earth (New York, NY), September 1912. 547 R. W. “Leon Czolgosz,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 16 February 1902. 136 crime of the existing order, of which McKinley was the representative;” for Winn, government is inherently violent and “like is the creator of like” so this ultimate cause of

Czolgosz's act is truly to blame.548 It is worth noting that Winn maintained this outlook long after the assassination occurred, writing to in 1910 that while he (still) disapproves of such violent acts, he cannot condemn Czolgosz because “as an Anarchist,

[he] cannot sit in judgement on another man's motive;” further, he refuses to consider

Czolgosz cowardly (as Labadie suggests he was) because doing so would be to “do injustice to the doer” even though the deed is one he believes anarchists should reject.549

Free Society did very often include articles from divergent perspectives, such as those of Tyler and Winn; in such cases, the responses they generated contribute to shaping the overall tone of the paper; frequently articles of different views would develop into debates between contributors played out in the pages of the paper. In this case, while

Winn's article generated little in the way of direct response, Tyler's rejection of Czolgosz as insane was immediately met with the condemnation of two regular contributors, Abe

Isaak Jr. and Kate Austin, just two issues later. Isaak Jr. makes his view of Tyler's claims clear in the title of his response, “Excommunication Rejected;” he writes that he considers

Czolgosz's act, like those of other anarchist before him, to be of political significance and that the evidence for suggesting otherwise on the basis of insanity is questionable at best. As for Tyler's “attempt to excommunicate Leon Czolgosz,” Isaak Jr. declares that he “[rejects] it utterly and entirely.”550 Austin goes further than questioning

548 Ibid. 549 Ross Winn to Joseph Labadie, 9 January 1910, Joseph Antoine Labadie Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 550 Abe Isaak Jr., “Excommunication Rejected,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 9 March 1902. 137 the results of the doctors' investigation, calling into question the very act of conducting such research in the first place; she states unequivocally that she:

shall regard with contempt their scientific (?) researches that demonstrate, by their very onesidedness, what fools, knaves, and hypocrites these searchers are. Had Messrs. Spitzka, McDonald, Channing and Briggs, held a post mortem over the industrial condition of this country and the crimes of those in power instead of dissecting the remains of Leon Czolgosz and a lot of gossip, they might have demonstrated a few facts that would prove those conditions responsible for human explosions like that at Buffalo.551

Though she states that she agrees with Tyler that anarchists who “accepted Czolgosz at his own estimate” were mistaken in doing so, she takes this view for a very different reason – that a worker such as Czolgosz, willing to die to take the life of “a worthless hulk of a ruler,” must have “a very modest estimate of his own value,” an estimate that she would not make of herself.552 She, like Isaak Jr., focuses on what she considers to be the true cause of his act, the social conditions that medical examiners ignore, and

“[recognizes] and [accepts] the act as the supreme protest of a brave and generous heart against 'the curse of government.'”553 In her rejection of attempts to devalue Czolgosz's act on the basis of alleged insanity, Austin does not simply declare him sane, but reconfigures the debate entirely, shifting the focus from the psychology of Czolgosz as an individual to the violence of the state and aligning herself with anyone who, through any such act, seeks to contest it.

Kate Austin is one of the constant defenders of Czolgosz in Free Society, and her interjection into the debate on (the relevance of) his possible insanity was neither the first 551 Kate Austin, “The Experts and their 'Facts,'” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 9 March 1902. 552 Ibid. 553 Ibid. 138 nor the last article in which she sought to redirect conversation away from rejecting him and toward acknowledgement of broader social dynamics at play in the assassination.

Appearing in the same issue as Isaak Jr.'s apology, Austin's article “Who are the Guilty?” problematizes the tendency of papers to ignore the deaths of working class people (even when they are violently killed in large numbers and their families are left destitute, such as in the Lattimer massacre four years prior),554 while responding to the McKinley assassination with “the flood-gates of wrath.”555 Austin humanizes Czolgosz as she repositions his impending execution as the murder of a person no less than the shooting of

McKinley was, noting that the assassination “involves but the death of one man, or of two rather, for the second is the same as dead, namely Wm. McKinley and Leon Czolgosz.”556

At the same time, she argues that those who call for Czolgosz's death in the press in fact lack “the very quality which most embellishes the human character, viz. reason and sympathy.”557 In doing so, she also turns the discourse of criminalization around by criminalizing Czolgosz's murderer – the state itself – calling for an end to “legal executions” and “legal [permits] to shoot down workingmen in the name of law and order” and declaring that “no law is powerful enough to close the mouths of those who recognize the real character of government, and that those who aid and abet it in any way become a party to its crimes.”558

554 In 1897, twenty unarmed striking coal miners were killed, all shot in the back, by Sheriff James Martin's deputies. An unknown number of strikers were injured. Sheriff Martin and his deputies were tried and acquitted. 555 Kate Austin, “Who are the Guilty?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 October 1901. 556 Ibid. 557 Ibid. 558 Ibid. 139

Following the assassination, many attempted to distance Czolgosz from anarchism; while Free Society did publish a diversity of opinions regarding whether

Czolgosz was or was not truly an anarchist, their paper did not wholly reject Czolgosz as many other radical papers did. In fact, Free Society did precisely the opposite when the paper honoured Czolgosz by placing his name amongst those of the anarchist martyrs executed following the Haymarket bombing, men remembered and loved deeply as heroes of the anarchist movement, especially in their annual commemorative issues of the paper.559 For instance, in his 'Splinters' section of the 10 November 1901 issue editor Abe

Isaak Jr. follows a note on the immense influence of Haymarket and the “grand courage and great victory for human emancipation” of the fallen anarchists with a note about

Czolgosz's execution; therein, he states that although it is “the fate of the Monster-Slayer

… to die in isolation, to be despised, and forgotten” that “nevertheless the deed lives on, and the future will heed its lessons.”560 Further, one year following Czolgosz' execution,

Free Society featured an article in memory of him, one of the last articles ever written by

Kate Austin, on the front page, much in the style of the annual Haymarket memorial issues. Entitled “An Anniversary,” the article begins by emphasizing the importance of commemorating the date of Czolgosz's death as “silence would shame the great cause.”561

559 The Haymarket incident took place on 4 May 1886. Though it was known at the time that none of them had thrown the bomb, eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy. Several anarchist papers, including Free Society, would dedicate all or a large portion of an issue to the Haymarket anarchists on or around 11 November, the date when, in 1887, four of the men – George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies – were hanged (and the date following the prison suicide of a fifth, Louis Lingg). It was also common for the lives of the men to be celebrated on 11 November with memorial meetings, speeches, music, and processions. Accounts of these memorial days can often be found in the newspaper an issue or two later. 560 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 10 November 1901. 561 Kate Austin, “An Anniversary,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 26 October 1902. 140

Austin celebrates his strength and bravery, writing that:

in Czolgosz the rebel, we see incarnated the vital forces of our movement, viz., hatred of oppression and the courage to do. Men cannot hate oppression unless they possess sympathy and intelligence in a high degree. These qualities were not lacking in him, who was born in a so-called free republic.562

Austin recalls Czolgosz as a man who experienced disillusionment as he grew up and learned that his country was not the land of liberty as he had been taught it was and that the state “was founded upon violence and existed by violence,” leading him to strike out against it, ensuring “the head of a great republic reaped as he had sown.”563 She calls upon fellow workers and radicals to never let the memory of Czolgosz die:

All hail the memory of Leon Czolgosz, sublime in his boyish candor and simplicity, magnificent in his high moral courage and iron will. With pride we lift our heads to greet the rebel who on the threshold of death uttered these sublime words: 'I am not sorry I killed the president. I did it for the working people—the good working people.'564

When a reader, Helen Tufts, wrote an article for Free Society a few issues later in order to criticize the publication of Austin's article and the inclusion of “eulogies on the act of a lunatic” so near to the annual time of commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs,565 the remarks of frequent contributor William Holmes, defending Austin, were printed directly following her article – he insisted that “if [Tufts harboured] the belief that the Chicago martyrs, or any of them, would have unreservedly condemned Czolgosz on account of his deed, I am sure she is in error.”566 Free Society not only affirmed Czolgosz's humanity,

562 Ibid. 563 Ibid. 564 Ibid. 565 Helen Tufts, “The Chicago Martyrs—And After,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 21 December 1902. 566 William Holmes, “Comment,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 21 December 1902. 141 but at times allotted him a place of deep respect in the context of anarchism's history.

Violent Tactics: Causes and Impacts

Although many of the authors of Free Society accepted Czolgosz's self- identification as an anarchist and his deed as a politically significant anarchistic act, they also emphasized that anarchism was not in itself a philosophy of violence, particularly by contesting the depiction of anarchists as murderous bomb-throwers which had only become more commonplace following the assassination of McKinley. For the most part, they rejected all of the common explanations for his act that were, at various times, suggested in the press – that he was demonstrably mentally ill, that he was part of some anarchist conspiracy, that he was the product of foreign radical traditions 'alien' to the

United States, that anarchist doctrine itself was somehow responsible for his act. This does not mean, however, that anarchists were not discussing the causes of the assassination. Their desire to refrain from condemning Czolgosz and to accept his deed as an anarchist act did not combine easily with their need to combat the ongoing vilification of all anarchists by the press and lawmakers. This necessitated developing their own explanations regarding what led Leon Czolgosz to assassinate McKinley and, more generally, the role that violent tactics might play in radical political struggle.

The understanding of the causes of radical acts of violence that emerges from the discussion in Free Society attributes the assassination to a combination of environmental factors and individual ones – to both the political and social realities of the United States at the time as well as to the psychology and personality traits of Czolgosz himself. Emma 142

Goldman's “The Tragedy at Buffalo” elaborates this understanding of Czolgosz's act; responding to those criticizing Czolgosz's act as cowardly, foolish, or ineffective, she writes:

What absurdity! As if an act of this kind can be measured by its usefulness, expediency, or practicability. We might as well ask ourselves of the usefulness of a cyclone, tornado, a violent thunderstorm, or the ceaseless fall of the Niagara waters. All these forces are the natural results of natural causes, which we may not yet have been able to explain, but which are nevertheless a part of nature, just as all force is natural and part of man and beast, developed or checked, according to the pressure of conditions and man's understanding. An act of violence is therefore not only the result of conditions, but also of man's psychical and physical nature, and his susceptibility to the world surrounding him.567

For Goldman, Czolgosz's act is a result of both prevailing conditions and his own sensitivity to them, and his act is an instance of a broader pattern which can be found throughout the world – “resistance against force is a fact all through nature.”568 She thus sees such acts of radical violence as inevitable so long as oppression and inequality continue to shape people's lives and particularly sensitive people like Czolgosz “feel

[wrong] more keenly and with greater intensity than others,” making them more likely to lash out against oppressors.569

Isaak Jr. articulates the same view with regard to the reasons for the McKinley assassination, contextualizing Czolgosz's act as one of war, arguing that:

So long as men are victims of misery and oppression, those in high places are bound to suffer, as well as those in low places. So long as our whole life is a continuous war, victims will fall on both sides. The difference is only that those on the one side are numerous and 567 Goldman, “The Tragedy at Buffalo.” 568 Ibid. 569 Ibid. 143

unknown, and those on the other side few and conspicuous.570

He thus differentiates Czolgosz's act from “partisan” assassinations like that of President

Garfield571 and, like Goldman, argues against those who repudiate Czolgosz that what is most crucial is to gain a full understanding of the causes of his act through a study of “the psychology and temperament of the assassin, combined with the most open criticism of societary (sic) conditions.”572 Isaak Jr., in explaining his own view of the causes of such acts, concurs with Goldman; he argues that “so long as we have rulers in the world, who crush out the life and aspirations of mankind, there will be men who will feel the pain of the iron heel, until the pressure becomes so great in their hearts that they must rebel.

They will strike at what represents their oppression.”573 Reporting on a debate entitled

“ vs. Anarchism” held between his father, Abe Isaak, and A. M. Simons for the socialists, Isaak Jr. suggests that his father not only shared the view that those committing radical acts such as Czolgosz were more sensitive to the oppression around them, but that he considered this a positive trait; during the debate, Abe Isaak said of Czolgosz:

He was a better man than I. I see and pass misery all around me; go home and write a note about it, and think I am doing much. But Czolgosz could not endure to see this misery, without striking at the personification of what he thought was the cause of it. Whether his judgment was right or wrong is another question.574

Writing a full year later, Isaak Jr. offers this perspective as an explanation to those surprised that such an assassination could occur in the United States despite many similar

570 Abe Isaak Jr., “The Price of Empire,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 October 1901. 571 Garfield's assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, had supported Garfield's election, but was later angered as he was repeatedly rejected when he sought governmental positions. 572 Isaak Jr., “The Price of Empire.” 573 Ibid. 574 Jr., “Simons-Isaak Debate,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 15 December 1901. 144 incidents in Europe – he argues that Czolgosz's act was “the logical climax of a series of events during many years,” including growing American imperialism, capitalism of “the most hideous proportions,” massive strikes and universal “rebellious discontent,” creating an “atmosphere [that] was ripe for radicalism and revolution.”575 In this context, he argues that “McKinley came to serve and reap honor from the oppressors; and Czolgosz came in his wake to vindicate the people and die for his deed. Without McKinley,

Czolgosz could not have been; and without Czolgosz history would be incomplete.”576

Contributor L. S. Oliver577 agrees with Goldman and Isaak Jr., on their diagnosis of the root causes of the assassination, attributing responsibility to the system rather than

Czolgosz personally, writing:

If the people would do away with the Czolgoszes of the future, they must also do away with the pernicious systems of the past and present. Czolgosz, like McKinley, was but the reflection of something that had gone before. In the meeting of the two extremes a social clash was inevitable. One represents the commercial system of spoliation, assuming the right of command; the other represents the industrial aggressor who refuses to accept the edict. The two are inseparable companions. Each depends upon the other for existence. Anarchism is the growth of the two extremes. It can neither check results nor sanction the systems that create them, and therefore feels in no way responsible for the conflict which must naturally follow in their wake.578

Oliver's article reveals a clear tension inherent in this explanation for political violence.

On the one hand, Oliver attributes Czolgosz's act and others like it to long-standing

“[refusal] to accept the edict” of command assumed by the state, contextualizing it in a

575 Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 12 October 1902. 576 Ibid. 577 Writing by Oliver also appeared in Discontent. 578 L. S. Oliver, “A Chat with the Press and Legislators,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 10 November 1901. 145 long history of resistance against coercive authority (one which is celebrated, and contributed to, by anarchists); on the other hand, however, he states that he can “neither applaud nor shed tears over the inevitable,” suggesting that one cannot simply applaud

Czolgosz for his brave act of resistance.579

Even Free Society contributors who themselves took care to state their personal opposition to violence offered similar explanations for its causes as those suggested by

Goldman, Isaak Jr, and Oliver. Harry M. Tichenor writes of a friend he once knew, a wandering labourer by the name of Harrison, who struggled in poverty and desperation before eventually committing suicide; he sees individual character as the only difference between his friend and Czolgosz, asking: “I only ask you if you are so blind that you do not see that it would have taken but a little of sterner stuff to have changed the suicide

Harrison into the regicide Czolgosz?”580 Tichenor thus shares the other contributors' emphasis on the combination of social realities and individual traits in causing the assassination. He notes, several times, that he does not believe in assassination and instead advocates “non-resistance;” yet, despite this opposition, he must “admit that a desperation of which [he], fortunately, [has] not been forced to taste, can create a Harrison

—or a Czolgosz” and that “Jesus, and Harrison, and poor Czolgosz” were all martyrs who

“will be glorified” when all rulers are finally gone.581 Ross Winn, who, as previously noted, opposed the use of violence as a radical tactic, similarly shared the view that “the crimes of government are alone responsible for the individual assassin” and that if rulers

579 Ibid. 580 Harry M. Tichenor, “Suicides and Martyrs,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 15 June 1902. 581 Ibid. 146

“[ceased] their crimes against humanity, [ceased] murdering the millions in the name of law,” there would be no such deeds.582 Having been accused by fellow contributor

Interloper of inconsistency, however, he does not deny the complexity of his views on the matter; he writes:

I believe in the sacredness of human life, and because I do so believe I wish to destroy that order that is founded upon violence and which makes murder a mere pastime. And believing that the overthrow of this sword and bayonet-propped social order is impossible thru (sic) peaceful means, I am an insurrectionist, an apostle of physical force. And I admit that I am inconsistent.583

Thus, though Winn cannot endorse violent tactics as a rule, he is also unable to condemn

Czolgosz, or any other anarchist using violence as a means of resistance, personally.

C. L. James, who shares the understanding of the deployment of violent tactics as resulting from experiences of oppression and inequality, suggests that this explanation reveals that anarchists who advocate and commit acts such as assassination are not so different in their principles from those who don't. He argues that “the 'philosophic' and

'revolutionary' Anarchists ... are not conflicting schools but products of unlike environment.”584 More specifically, he argues that while all anarchists prioritize education as a strategy for political change, few people (anarchists included) will sit by peacefully when they are met with violent repression; thus it follows that “the difference between the Anarchist with a bomb and the Anarchist with a book, is merely the difference between the Anarchist persecuted and not persecuted so much.”585 This, for

582 R. W., “Current Comment,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 11 May 1902. 583 Ross Winn, “Current Comment,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 18 May 1902. 584 C. L. James, “The Day We Celebrate,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 17 November 1901. 585 Ibid. 147

James, explains the reason that England and Switzerland, which he considered “the only countries in which Anarchists [enjoyed] almost absolute toleration” at the time, had never been sites of anarchist violence like that occurring elsewhere in Europe and, since

Berkman and Czolgosz, the United States as well.586

The understanding of the root causes of radical violence elaborated in Free

Society leaves the authors in a complicated position with regards to whether one ought to advocate the use of violent tactics in the pursuit of social justice. On the one hand, most see such acts as the result of the combination of various societal conditions as well as the agency of the individuals committing them, and therefore to a certain extent inevitable.

They thus cannot condemn those individuals who commit them given that they see them, in significant part, as products of their environments. This view similarly complicates celebrating assassins' actions, particularly as universalizable ideals to replicate across different socio-political contexts, for the same reasons, as presumably not all social contexts serve as equally fertile grounds for such acts. On the other hand, however, as political organizers and members of social movements they must consider which tactics best further their goals and strategize their activities accordingly. The contributors to

Free Society thus not only developed explanations for Czolgosz's act (and why assassinations and other forms of political violence occur more generally), but also engaged in extensive conversation and debate about what types of tactics anarchists ought to use in pursuit of their goals.

586 Ibid. 148

Revolutionary Anarchists vs. Philosophical Anarchists

The debates in Free Society regarding which tactics the anarchist movement should use (and, in particular, whether violent tactics might be used to anarchist ends) involved multiple levels of addressivity, with contributors writing not only to one another and the paper's readership, but authors writing in other papers as well. Much of the conversation turned on the distinction between 'philosophic' or 'philosophical' anarchists on the one hand and 'red' or 'revolutionary' anarchists on the other, the former referring to those who opposed the use of violent tactics and the latter referring to those more open to violent tactics. According to Brooks, the former term emerged around Haymarket “and was a favourite insult of the collectivist anarchists [to direct at the individualists], who meant to characterize [Benjamin Tucker's paper] Liberty's adherents as do-nothing, armchair anarchists, whose class origins belied their alleged sympathies with the working class.”587 This was undoubtedly informed by the fact that Benjamin Tucker “criticized

Communist Anarchists in general and [the Haymarket arrestees] in particular for having advocated the use of force to achieve political ends.”588 Though 'philosophic' was often used as an insult, it is important to note that anarchists also used this terminology to describe themselves.589 It is also worth noting that while it was commonplace to characterize as “the philosophy of the thinker” and more

587 Frank H. Brooks, “Introduction: Putting Liberty in Context,” The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881-1908), Ed. Frank H. Brooks (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994): 8-9. 588 Wendy McElroy, The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individualist Anarchism, 1881-1908 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003): 39. 589 Ibid., 40. 149 communistic anarchisms as advancing “through the influence of terrorism”590 that in reality the combination of social, economic, and tactical perspectives was far more diverse than this apparent dichotomy suggests. The possibility and desirability of distinguishing a 'philosophic' anarchism emerged as a frequent topic of discussion following Czolgosz's assassination of McKinley as anarchists sought to clarify their perspectives on violence.

The writings of James F. Morton Jr. were central to the debates on tactics playing out Free Society. Though he was not a regular contributor to the paper at the time, he had worked on Free Society alongside Abe Isaak (listed as editor, with Isaak as publisher) from 15 July to 23 December 1900; by 1901 Morton Jr. was editor of Discontent, a paper based in the anarchist colony of Home, in Washington. As previously mentioned, Morton

Jr. consistently voiced his disapproval of Czolgosz's act and his view that anarchists ought not engage in violence. According to historian Charles Pierce LeWarne, Morton called the killing of McKinley “wanton and useless;” further, he “denied that anarchists would be sympathetic” to Czolgosz and called for anarchists to “prove to [their] calumniators the magnitude of [the] error” of considering the assassination a “logical outcome of

Anarchist teaching.”591592 In his column “Off and On” in Discontent, he addresses the distinction between types of anarchists, pointing out that many “well-meaning friends”

590 Marshall Everett, Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination (United States: Published By The Author, 1901): 90. 591 Charles Pierce LeWarne, on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975): 180. 592 As Justin Wadland notes, it is difficult to piece together the reactions of the residents of the Home Colony to the McKinley assassination, including those expressed in Morton Jr.'s earliest writings on the subject in Discontent – the microfilms he examined, as well as those examined by Longa and myself, all skip from 11 September 1901 to 13 November 1901. 150 have employed it hoping to shield anarchists from persecution but that the idea that there are two types of anarchists “is not quite accurate” as “there are many kinds of Anarchists, with wide diversities of opinion on many points” and “any man (sic) who would like to see the disappearance of human government is an Anarchist.”593 His rejection of the dichotomy is not, however, simply an acknowledgement of the diversity of anarchist thought – he also writes that “the philosophic Anarchist is simply the Anarchist who reasons, and who becomes an Anarchist through reasoning” who “has no desire to overturn by violence any existing customs or institutions;” by contrast, discussing those who employ violent tactics, he argues that:

if some Anarchists have, as individuals, comported themselves ill, or even criminally, it is easy to deal with them as with other offenders. But their doctrine, being essentially one of noninvasion … contains in itself no criminal tendency. The better it is understood, the less it will be connected with terrorist methods, by either friends or enemies of Anarchism.594

In other words, Morton Jr., rejects the distinction between philosophic anarchists and

'reds,' but in doing so he asserts that only those who reject violence are truly acting in accordance with anarchist principles. For him, anarchists who reject violent tactics do so via the political reasoning that leads them to embrace anarchism, whereas those who do advocate or make use of violence are simply criminals whose words or acts do not stem from their political commitments (because a true understanding of anarchist 'doctrine' would mead them to behave differently).

Morton Jr.'s stance on violent tactics prompted a barrage of criticism from many

593 James F. Morton, Jr., “Off and On,” Discontent (Home, WA), 15 January 1902. 594 Ibid. 151 of Free Society's regular contributors, and set off a lengthy discussion amongst them regarding the role violence ought to have in radical struggle. Several who objected to the

'philosophical' distinction refer back to Tucker's use of the term after Haymarket and again take up the practice of using it as an insult, this time against Morton Jr. Ross Winn jokes that “James [Morton Jr.] ought to know, if he doesn't, that B. R. Tucker has a copyright on that term, which he took out about the time of the hanging of the Chicago martyrs, for reasons very similar to those which probably influenced Morton to try the same dodge”595 and J. M. Clarke596 writes that Morton Jr., in his writings on the topic,

“out-Tuckers Tucker himself.”597 After Morton Jr. suggesting in Discontent that Winn had called him a coward, Winn later clarifies that he has no such intent but does “suspect that he is playing to the gallery for effect [when using 'philosophic' to qualify 'anarchy'], which, for a genuine philosopher, is decidedly grotesque.”598 Some other Free Society contributors did attribute the acceptance of the 'philosophic' designation (both after

Haymarket and after the McKinley assassination) to a cowardly desire on the part of some anarchists to appear less threatening. Interloper sums up this argument in writing that

“since the 'Buffalo tragedy' the anxiety of many Anarchists to be classified among the goody-goody people has become quite a fad ... and the term 'philosophic' seems to be a convenient substitute for timidity.”599

Morton Jr. not only suggested a non-violent anarchism was the only 'true'

595 Ross Winn, “Current Comment,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 April 1902. 596 Free Society ran advertisements noting Clarke as offering lessons in various topics—language, literature, business, and arithmetic—and living in Chicago. 597 J. M. Clarke, “Who are the Philosophers?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 4 May 1902. 598 Ross Winn, “Current Comment,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 18 May 1902. 599 Interloper, “By the Wayside,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 April 1902. 152 anarchism, but also that adhering to philosophic anarchism effectively meant total non- resistance – in Discontent he wrote that “there are multitudes of honest believers in government, who are worthy of the utmost liking and respect” and that anarchists and governmentalists ought to end their “discordant and undesirable” relationship in favour of peaceful coexistence.600 According to Interloper, Morton Jr. also commended fellow

Discontent contributor Sadie Magoon, who favoured obeying emerging anti-anarchist laws for as long as they were to exist, as having expressed “the correct position of the philosophic Anarchist.”601 Even anarchists who expressed opposition to violent tactics in

Free Society couldn't accept this view – Ross Winn, for instance, had taken care to clarify that he “would not have Anarchists be non-resistants” despite his opposition to the use of

“aggressive violence.”602 Interloper's reaction to Morton Jr.'s view was to argue that it is in fact only the breaking and defiance of laws that ever leads to change, and that not even famously pacifist Tolstoy encouraged obedience to all laws (but rather encouraged the refusal to obey unethical ones). He adds that the logic of non-resistance in a context of the legal suppression of anarchist activities means that “comrades may soon have to quit the propaganda, live in baloons (sic) or emigrate, and wait patiently until all the people of the State have embraced the idea of Anarchism, which the 'Anarchy bill' forbids to be advocated,” which would obviously accomplish nothing, whereas collective resistance to laws criminalizing anarchism might lead to positive political change.603 Abe Isaak Jr.'s response to Morton Jr. is even more scathing; attacking his respect for his political

600 James F. Morton, Jr., “Off and On,” Discontent (Home, WA), 29 January 1902. 601 Interloper, “By the Wayside,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 April 1902. 602 Ross Winn, “Radical Reflections,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 16 March 1902. 603 Interloper, “By the Wayside,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 April 1902. 153 opponents in no uncertain terms, Isaak Jr. writes:

James F. Morton, Jr., of Discontent, is a good example of what may be termed the 'intolerance of toleration.' He hardly ever tells us anything without first exhorting us to receive it in a tolerant spirit, and saying that he will be as tolerant as he can (which qualification seems eminently necessary), and that we all should be intolerably tolerant by intolerant tolerableness. He reaches the climax in Discontent of April 2. Here he tells us to have 'courtesy and respect' for 'honest' lawyers, legislators, marshals, judges, and jurymen. Altho (sic) he has as yet omitted the hangman, a marshal is sometimes quite synonymous with that gentleman, so that the chain is quite complete. And all this in the name of 'courtesy.' Disgusting flunkeyism could go no further. Because a hangman believes he is doing his 'official duty,' is that reason for us to respect and 'tolerate' him? Or because a lawyer, judge, or juryman takes the first steps of the way, at the end of which the hangman logically stands, for the same reason, do we owe him respect and toleration?604

Isaak Jr. ends his address to Morton Jr. with the hope that their respective papers will address this question, and their disagreement on it, differently, writing that while he knows that “Free Society is not free from sins, either of 'comission (sic) or omission,' [he hopes] it may be spared from such 'tolerance.'”605

While numerous authors contributing to Free Society were quick and uncompromising in their responses to Morton Jr. invoking so-called philosophic anarchism, their response was not to wholeheartedly advocate violent tactics as the most effective strategy for change, as one might expect of 'red' or 'revolutionary' anarchism given the term's connotations at the time. Beyond rejecting Morton Jr.'s (and Tucker's) articulations of philosophic anarchism, most writing on the topic in Free Society reject the revolutionary/philosophic distinction altogether, for a number of reasons. Many argue

604 Abe Isaak Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 April 1902. 605 Ibid. 154 that the distinction was insulting in that it implicitly suggested some anarchists were, by virtue of their views on tactics, necessarily 'unphilosophical' – J. M. Clarke, Interloper, J.

C. Barnes,606 and Kate Austin all raise this objection. Others object that drawing such a distinction is simply not strategically beneficial for anarchists – C. L. James argues that

“the two kinds of Anarchists may have been good stuff to talk when most people supposed Anarchists to be the members of a secret society which met in lager beer saloons and selected individuals to kill persons alloted for the purpose” but that this view has been largely disproven and is thus “not worth guarding against,”607 and J. C. Barnes argues that “it is a concession to [anarchists' enemies] to admit a good and a bad class of

Anarchists.”608 Kate Austin takes a similar view, arguing that “without doubt it is a great damage to the cause that the disreputable ideal known the world over as Anarchy should be so promiscuously herded with 'philosophical Anarchy'” and asking: “is the immortal word Anarchy, consecrated as it is by the blood of the innocent, the noble and true, so devoid of meaning that we must add the prefix 'philosophic'?”609

Finally, many Free Society contributors argued that one's tactical preferences are simply not what determines whether one is an anarchist, and that disagreements on the matter need not necessitate dividing anarchists into categories. J. M. Clarke argues that

“there are Anarchists and Anarchists; that some do believe in assassinating tyrants, some in non-resistance, some in self-defense, some in collective effort, some in purely

606 Dr. Barnes' work also appears in The Firebrand, Clothed With The Sun, Discontent, and Winn's Firebrand. 607 C. L. James, “'Philosophic' Anarchism,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 25 May 1902. 608 J. C. Barnes, “Objects to Classification,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 July 1902. 609 Kate Austin, “An Open Letter to James F. Morton, Jr.” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 15 June 1902. Italics Austin's. 155 individual effort; but all in absolute individual liberty, believing that results will be the best guide to a normal use of the same.”610 James critically responds to Clarke's point, arguing that the difference in tactical views is actually one “without a difference” because it only really exists abstractly – he does agree that the distinction between types of anarchists doesn't really exist, but for a different reason. He suggests that this difference actually disappears when made concrete:

Ask ['philosophical' anarchists] with which they sympathize as between Bresci and Humbert, Caserio and Carnot, Angiolillo and Canovas, etc., and you would quickly find them take the same view as other Anarchists. Contrariwise, if you ask any Anarchist whether he approves of assassination or rebellion, he will be apt, not only to answer in the negative, but to give reasons for disapproving.611

Similarly to Clarke, Austin emphasizes anarchism as a goal rather than a predetermined set of tactics, asking why anarchists ought to “add to the general confusion by drawing distinctions between those who have a common ideal, especially as no ground seems to exist for such distinction,”612 and J. C. Barnes considers those who have taken up the revolutionary/philosophical distinction as having “fallen into the error of classifying

Anarchists, for no sufficient reason” when agreement on what anarchism is and how it is defined (he offers a definition previously given by Austin, as well as that of the Century

Dictionary which appears in Free Society's masthead, as examples) ought be sufficient to unite them.613 Barnes later adds that he believes that “a person may rejoice at the acts of a

Bresci, a Czolgosz, a Guiteau, a Booth or any assassin and be an Anarchist or not an

610 J. M. Clarke, “Who are the Philosophers?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 4 May 1902. Italics Clarke's. 611 C. L. James, “'Philosophic' Anarchism,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 25 May 1902. 612 Kate Austin, “An Open Letter to James F. Morton, Jr.” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 15 June 1902. 613 J. C. Barnes, “Objects to Classification,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 July 1902. 156

Anarchist. A person may deplore and denounce their acts as brutal, dastardly or insane and be an Anarchist or not an Anarchist.”614 He clarifies that he does not believe in violence, thinks that the acts of assassins like Bresci and Czolgosz have “retarded the dissemination of Anarchistic truth” and so should be “deplored by Anarchists” given that such acts are used as reasons for persecution, and that anarchy as a philosophy does not lead to violence so “the sooner all coercion and violence are disassociated with Anarchy the better;” however, despite his own fervent opposition to violence being used by anarchists to further their struggles he still maintains that both those who believe in violent acts and those who reject them can, to equal degree, be anarchists.615 William

Holmes, who argues that “anarchy, as a school of philosophy, has nothing to do with revolutionary actions,” similarly points out that the difference between the

“revolutionary” and “peace” anarchists lies “not in their acceptance of the theories and principles of Anarchism but in their views as to what are the best tactics to be employed to hasten the downfall of the capitalistic system.”616

While the response of Free Society to James F. Morton Jr.'s articulation of philosophic anarchism was thus not a wholesale defense of violent tactics as the most effective way of bringing about social change, as the designation 'revolutionary' (as being somehow 'opposite' to philosophical) might have one expect. Arguing against the view that 'violent' tactics ought never be used by anarchists need not, of course, mean defending their use in all cases, their use exclusively, or their superiority to other tactics,

614 J. C. Barnes, “What Constitutes an Anarchist?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 July 1902. Italics Barnes'. 615 Ibid. 616 William Holmes, “Expediency vs. Morality,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 July 1902. 157 but rather means an openness to them in at least some circumstances or, minimally, a willingness to accept that some may choose them and that such decisions do not themselves somehow constitute departures from anarchism. It is for this reason that, as

Peter Gelderloos points out in his discussion of more contemporary movements, it is misleading to phrase such tactical disagreements as “nonviolence versus violence” when, in fact, those opposed to the imposition of an expectation of exclusively pacifist approaches across an entire movement do not expect those opposed to violence to engage in it; they actually advocate not violence per se but rather “a diversity of tactics, meaning effective combinations drawn from a full range of tactics” with the view that “tactics should be chosen to fit the particular situation, not drawn from a preconceived moral code.”617

Along these lines, some contributors did argue that violence could play a role in radical struggle, and discussed some of the ways in which one might determine whether they were appropriate to a given situation. Holmes, for instance, acknowledges that despite believing “that Anarchists are justified in using any and all means to put an end to capitalist plundering, even the taking of human life” that he had at first condemned

Czolgosz's act, but argues (it seems, against his own quick rejection of Czolgosz) that one must consider all likely and possible consequences of every act carefully rather than giving in to one's first instinct that such an act might be “rash, foolish and productive of more harm than good.”618 Holmes argues that anarchists may correctly know that

617 Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State (Cambridge: South End Press, 2007): 2-3. 618 William Holmes, “Expediency vs. Morality,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 27 July 1902. 158

“violence begets violence” but also may consider other criteria for the use of violent tactics, including expediency, timing, “the effect on the general movement,” and “a dozen other questions … any one of which or all combined may nerve [an anarchist's] arm to do a bold deed or cause him to hesitate or abstain;” he calls for judging acts based on all of their results.619 As for himself, he writes that he favours peace “as long as the highest expediency seems to demand soft methods” but that “when the time seems to have come for sterner measures” he hopes that he “may be found worthy to fight, if need be to die, for the Social Revolution.”620 J. M. Clarke offers a similar emphasis on circumstances, arguing that he is “a believer in such action as shall in the light of [his] own reason, aided by [his] own instinctive expression, seem the truly advisable in the conditioning of the hour. One cannot say one method or another is best independently of circumstances of the case.”621 Responding to Barnes, who had claimed to know of no anarchist who favoured acts such as assassination,622 Abe Isaak Jr. directs him to the pages of Free

Society to demonstrate that many anarchists admire those who employ violent tactics and in doing so “have sacrificed their lives in the social revolution;” he also expresses his willingness to accept the title of 'revolutionary anarchist' (as opposed to 'philosophical') insofar as it “is to be used to distinguish a warm-blooded being who can comprehend and understand human passions, which find vent occasionally in a violent, desperate deed, from an atom of brain which philosophically sits back in a chair and demonstrates that a

619 Ibid. 620 Ibid. 621 J. M. Clarke, “Who are the Philosophers?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 4 May 1902 622 J. C. Barnes, “Objects to Classification,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 July 1902. 159 human life is sacred.”623

Methods of Propaganda: A Paper "Broad Enough to Include Both"

In elaborating radical alternatives to hegemonic understandings of Czolgosz's assassination of McKinley, as well of political violence more generally, the anarchists writing for Free Society addressed one another, readers interested in (or already identifying with) anarchism, and the dominant discourses of the time which, as Hong writes, “isolated anarchists and their ideas well outside of popular conceptions of what was normal in physical, intellectual, and moral life and characterized them as alien and dangerous to American life.”624 In creating a space to elaborate their own counter- discourse, they contested the concerted efforts of the state and mainstream press to marginalize anarchism and thereby silence its critiques. Free Society, in a context of both heightened state repression of and increased interest in anarchism, entered into conversation on the assassination, responded to the dehumanization and vilification of

Czolgosz and the condemnation of acts against the state, thereby contesting the attempts of the state and mainstream press to monopolize the ability to truthfully make claims about the assassination and about anarchists. In doing so, Free Society advances a diversity of tactics of resistance for radical movements.

As Bakhtin writes, words are directed toward future answers, in anticipation; the various discourses, state sanctioned and otherwise, which surround Czolgosz's act,

623 Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 13 July 1902. 624 Nathaniel Hong, “Constructing the Anarchist Beast in American Periodical Literature, 1880-1903,” 126. 160 constitute not distinct and isolated frames but an ongoing conversation. While such dialogism is natural to language for Bakhtin, it is “subject to various attempts on the part of authoritarian institutions like governments to control its functioning” given that “this dynamic, never-fixed status of language threatens authority.”625 He argues that in such contexts, dialogism is “also an ideal which is only fully articulated in certain limited genres (such as the dialogic novel),” which incorporate diverse speech genres, voices, and perspectives in interaction.626 Free Society exemplifies this polyvocality, countering not only the particular arguments of the state, but also, importantly, the centripetal force of its attempts to impose singular, authoritative understandings by creating space for and fostering interaction of a wide variety of voices and perspectives within its pages. Free

Society's call for a diversity of tactics is not a matter of its authors' arguments exclusively; rather, the form of the newspaper itself models the very tactical diversity it advocates.

Though consistently working on the publication of Free Society, Abraham Isaak did not impose his own perspective on the paper or require that contributions reflect a single view. This editorial approach is a continuation of that which the paper that he and others edited previously, The Firebrand, employed; they described their approach in one of the earlier paper's first issues:

The publication of The Firebrand is undertaken by a voluntary association of a number of persons of radical ideas … In this association are no constitution, rules, officers, privileges, duties or dues. It is a free association. The Firebrand has not even an editor, in the ordinary sense. No person is vested with the power to exclude those ideas which do not agree with his own. We do not believe in 625 Robert F. Barsky, “Bakhtin as Anarchist? Language, Law, and Creative Impulses in the Work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Rudolf Rocker,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 97, no. 3-4 (1998): 629. 626 Ibid., 630. 161

censorship. We have aimed to establish an untrammelled press.627

As previously noted, Free Society, like The Firebrand, did not even name a single editor or publisher in its masthead for much of its existence, but rather named a group. And, in the case of the later paper, despite being known as the paper's editor, many others contributed to the production of the paper and Isaak was never the most prolific contributor of articles. Not only did the paper not take a single hard editorial line, but, as evidenced by the wide variety of viewpoints on Czolgosz and his assassination of

McKinley, Free Society regularly included divergent viewpoints, often publishing articles with opposing arguments within a single issue and allowing debates between contributors to unfold across issues.

The inclusion of many voices and perspectives in Free Society meant not only a wide variety of (sometimes conflicting) arguments, but also a range of genres and styles – though often serious in tone, anarchist papers such as Free Society were not comprised solely of sober analyses of particular political issues. In discussing Czolgosz, the assassination, and the wave of repression that followed, contributors used a variety of discursive strategies. An article written by Isaak Jr. closely following the assassination is demonstrative of this diversity – Isaak Jr. offers not only a description of the facts surrounding the arrests of himself and the others at the Free Society house, but employs scare quotes (“On Monday morning we had a 'hearing.' The 'justice' simply recorded what the prosecutor asked, which he called his 'decisions'”), comparisons (“the police have as profound a contempt for the law as the Anarchist, and at the same time are much

627 The Committee, “Special Announcement,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 3 February 1895. 162 more violent. No Anarchist would dream of ransacking a neighbour's house”), sarcasm

(“the newspapers … are to be praised chiefly for their diabolical ability to misrepresent and tell lies”), mocking (“Great are the Chicago police; and they are the butt of the whole country”), and irony (complimenting the “wonderful courage of [the] police officer” who struck Emma Goldman's face during her arrest).628 Other authors published in Free

Society similarly utilise a variety of strategies, and contributions appeared in a wide variety of formats, including lengthy articles, brief comments, letters to the editor, jokes, appeals, lists (ex. of suggested reading), notices (ex. of upcoming events), translations and reprints from other sources, and so forth; further, these contributions serve a variety of functions including theorizing, educating, relationship-building, fundraising, and more.

In referring to the words of their enemies (whether Roosevelt, mainstream papers, politicians, or other public figures), they not only argue against them, but also make fun of them, compare them to others (ex. drawing parallels between proposed anti-anarchist laws and similar legislation in other states), expose their inconsistencies and hypocrisies, and quite frequently remark how truly useful their opponents words are for the purposes of anarchist propaganda.629

Much in the way that the authors of Free Society debated regarding which tactics anarchist movements ought to use in reference to assassination and violence, they similarly debated regarding the best strategies for propaganda – which textual tactics would best advance anarchism. A series of articles in mid-1902, published amid the

628 Isaak Jr., “The Outrage at Chicago.” 629 See, for instance, Jr., “Splinters,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 7 September 1902. 163 ongoing debates on the McKinley assassination and 'philosophical' and 'revolutionary' anarchism, reveals some of the salient points in these discussions. The exchange began with an article titled “Criticisms on the Propaganda” written by Jay Fox in the hopes of

“[stimulating] an improvement” in anarchist writing.630 He is careful to state that he writes kindly, hopes not to offend anyone, knows his own work is not flawless, and doesn't intend to criticize any particular anarchist with his comments, but that he “must question the efficacy of certain methods of propaganda, especially the propaganda of denunciation.”631 Fox contrasts “elements of hate” such as jealousy and revenge, which he sees as having no place in anarchism and as inherently governmentalist, with

“elements of love” such as “comradeship [and] tolerance;” for Fox it is the latter that must inform anarchist propaganda because “if men are converted to Anarchism thru (sic) preaching the doctrine of hate, they are yet the same men, having changed only their creed” given that “the man who hates is yet a governmentalist.632 In describing how anarchists should propagandize through writing, Fox argues:

What is wanted to be preached is a basic knowledge of the cause of our discontent, and a presentation of the ideal of Anarchy. This can best be done by cool, not unfeeling, argument, rather than by fiery denunciation; for denunciation is never argument and can only be used where argument is wanting. The object of our propaganda must be to arouse men to think and reason by first overcoming their old prejudices. Damnation talk will never accomplish that end.633

While Fox is clear that he does not seek to exclude anyone from producing anarchist propaganda, he does express the hope that youth will study the philosophy of anarchism

630 Jay Fox, “Criticisms on the Propaganda,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 25 May 1902. 631 Ibid. 632 Ibid. 633 Ibid. 164 as well as the language in which they write, and argues that those who “write and speak in

[anarchism's] name [must] befit [themselves] better for the task before entering upon

[their] work of love.”634

While some of Free Society's content might meet Fox's criteria as cool, rational argument, other content decidedly would not; it is unsurprising that Fox's comments, so carefully worded to anticipate objections, instigated several responses, developing into a conversation on propaganda tactics. S. Mints addresses Fox's comments two issues later, remarking that “Comrade Fox may, if he is not more careful in the future, be labelled as a

'philosophic Anarchist;'” while Mints notes that “the tight shoe which [Fox] has thrown

… will fit many comrades,” Mints argues that Fox was obviously “aiming at Comrade

MacQueen, editor of Liberty”635 and that “he was just” in doing so.636 Mints sees

MacQueen's paper as using “the method of propaganda [which] is least and last conducive towards the successful promulgation of [anarchist] ideas.”637 Rather than taking up Fox's language of loving and hateful elements, Mints distinguishes between intellectual and emotional elements of writing and speech, clearly suggesting that

MacQueen's work is dominated by the latter; Mints argues that:

the dramatic force of man needs must (sic) enter in all his work. But this force must go hand in hand with the intellectual force. The dramatic force by itself evaporates too soon. The dramatic and intellectual force when coupled together form an everlasting creation of thought. The intellect is the greatest factor; the great conceiver and

634 Ibid. 635 Mints here refers to William MacQueen, who edited the relatively shortlived periodical Liberty (1902- 1903) based in New York (not to be confused with Benjamin Tucker's individualist anarchist paper of the same name). MacQueen's Liberty was a self-described revolutionary and anti-capitalist paper. 636 S. Mints, “Intellectual and Emotional Propaganda,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 8 June 1902. 637 Ibid. 165

iconoclast of what is and what should be.638

Mints celebrates the movement's dramatic and emotionally moving speakers, noting

Sébastien Faure and Errico Malatesta among them, but emphasizes that strong intellectual understandings ground their passion and that “they never resort … to 'coarse, silly vulgar things,' combined with denunciation which never educates nor accomplishes anything.”639

Based on Mints' experience, those who are more emotionally than intellectually invested in anarchism tend to fall out of the movement whereas those guided primarily by intellect may, over time, join it despite previously having opposed it; ultimately, in addition to calling for intellect-driven anarchist texts, Mints argues that anarchists must use “the most simple, plain, and convincing” writing in order to be most effective at spreading their ideas.640

Finally, Alfred Schneider weighs in, also addressing Fox. Schneider argues that arguing one particular propaganda tactic is best “is just as ridiculous as if [he] would say that [his own] is the best.”641 He also sees Fox as having been criticizing MacQueen but, instead of offering comments on what he thinks of MacQueen's methods, simply notes that “if Comrade MacQueen delivered a 'harangue' instead of a philosophical criticism of government, [it's] MacQueen's business.”642 For Schneider, the real concern is not the need to identify which types of propaganda are most effective for spreading anarchism, but rather the worry that if one anarchist is targeted for repression due to the propaganda

638 Ibid. 639 Ibid. 640 Ibid. 641 Alfred Schneider, “Observations,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 22 June 1902. 642 Ibid. 166 tactics s/he has chosen, all other anarchists will be “classed with” them (regardless of tactical agreement or disagreement) because “government doesn't care a damn how you propagate your idea.”643 This argument mirrors comments made about so-called

'philosophical' anarchists being cowardly for attempting to distance themselves from the

'revolutionaries' so as not to incur the wrath of the state – a few months prior, Schneider revealed his own impatience with this approach in arguing that the philosophical anarchists should “publish a paper for themselves, and not tire the non-'philosophicals,' the 'bomb-Anarchists' with their word-quibbling. … [T]hey would not be classed among the bomb-Anarchists, and avoid all the troubles of the latter by pointing to their official organ.”644 Schneider offers his own proposition of how to deal with these issues, writing:

We are all fighting for liberty, one this way, the other that way; our philosophy is broad enough to include both; and since we have taken up the battle, it is true as Comrade Isaak says, we must take the consequences of that battle. If my comrade gets into trouble thru (sic) his method of propaganda, altho (sic) I may not agree with him, it follows that I must accept the bad deeds (to my conception) as well as the good, without questioning the good or bad of his method of propaganda. Or else we put up a standard of morality, which can mean everything else but liberty.645

In other words, Schneider argues for a diversity of tactics specifically with regards to the many ways one might approach propaganda – a diversity of textual tactics.

This diversity of propagandistic tactics – diversity in arguments & perspectives as well as in style & approach – articulated most clearly in this argument by Schneider, was effectively fostered by the very form of Free Society itself. In addition to Abe Isaak

643 Ibid. 644 Alfred Schneider, “Observations,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 2 March 1902. 645 Schneider, “Observations,” 22 June 1902. 167 opting not to impose his own views on his contributors, thereby allowing diverse perspectives to appear alongside one another, those producing Free Society also took measures to actually foster the coexistence of a variety of views. In December 1901, mere months after the assassination of McKinley, Isaak notes that the likelihood of increased legal repression “has had the effect of arousing great interest in Anarchism, and the time is therefore auspicious for educational work of immense value.”646 He calls on readers to participate in disseminating anarchist ideas through the paper; he acknowledges that ways of doing so vary widely and that “each comrade must decide for himself the amount and sphere of his activity,” and offers some suggestions.647 In listing many ways supporters might choose to get involved, he includes fundraising for those who have been arrested (including by responding to appeals for funds that appear in the paper), hosting public meetings (including through “a semi-secret propaganda” that has emerged in cities where the prospect of holding public meetings is limited), contributing to “the literary appearance of the paper, by putting forth a little special effort” for those who are able to write, ordering extra copies of literature to share with “liberal-minded persons” (with books available at a discount when ordered in bulk), use of circulars and pamphlets in the event that papers are excluded from the mails, submitting friends' addresses to be sent sample copies, and paying up subscriptions if in arrears.648 While not everyone might be best suited to writing articles for the paper, Isaak identifies ways that all can contribute to its work. A few issues later, Free Society also began to include a brief disclaimer below

646 “To the Comrades,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 15 December 1901. 647 Ibid. 648 Ibid. 168 its masthead, reading in full: “The publishers as such are not responsible for any opinions expressed by the contributors.”649 While undoubtedly at least in part aimed at decentralizing legal responsibility in case of the paper being repressed or deemed unmailable, this disclaimer also serves the additional function of reminding anyone reading it that their contributions to the paper need not reflect predetermined lines of argument already appearing therein and that articles will not be refused on the grounds that they are insufficiently aligned with the paper's philosophy or overall tone. In doing so, Free Society calls attention to its own polyphony, defined by Graham Allen as

“[demonstrating] and [celebrating] the dialogic nature of society by presenting a vision of human society dominated by the dialogue and play between voices and utterances.”650

While generally associated with violence, and assassination in particular, the anarchist notion of propaganda by deed is valuable for bringing together anarchists' understandings of diversity of tactics with reference to both violent tactics and textual ones. Propaganda by deed is defined by Free Society contributor Ross Winn as follows:

“something is done, individually or collectively, that is not in harmony with conventional conduct, by the doing of which attention is directed either to the evil we wish to abolish, or to the good we desire to establish. This deed may be destructive or it may be constructive in character.”651 Winn notes propaganda by deed might be violent, such as a bombing or assassination, or what he calls “passive,” a refusal to participate in an oppressive institution by, for instance, declining to vote in state elections. A central

649 Free Society (Chicago, IL), 5 January 1902. 650 Graham Allen, Intertextuality (London: Routledge, 2000): 216. 651 Ross Winn, “Radical Reflections,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 16 March 1902. 169 component to the theory of propaganda by deed was an understanding of the necessity of experimentation and openness – in Jay Fox's words:

the Anarchist has no elaborate programme by which to issue in the 'reign of anarchy;' … he knows the world does not move according to programmes; that programmes soon become crystallized codes, which, instead of facilitating progress, obstruct its path. A programme or platform is good only for to-day; to-morrow we shall need a different one.652

Propaganda by deed thus involved experimenting with various ways of carrying out anarchist ideals and demonstrating their viability to others – for example, by exposing the vulnerability of the state to resistance by assassinating a leader, or affirming the possibility of harmonious, voluntary, consensual living through the creation of intentional communities – all with an understanding that putting anarchist ideas into action would happen differently from one group or community to the next, thus translating into a diversity of strategies and tactics. For the anarchists of Free Society, this meant creating space for debate and disagreement on the role that tactics such as assassination might play in radical struggle, and advancing an anarchism with room for both those in favour and those opposed to Czolgosz's act to participate in the generation of discourses on political violence that countered that of the state. It also meant producing a paper which is itself exemplary of propaganda by deed, which utilized a diversity of textual tactics to create space for radicals of varying perspectives to theorize collectively and to transmit counter- narratives to all who sought to read and engage with them.

652 Fox, Roosevelt, Czolgosz and Anarchy, 13. 170

The Defense of John Turner: The Demonstrator's Anarchist Case for Free Speech

The Immigration Act of 1903 and the Arrest of John Turner

As Robert Justin Goldstein notes, while the anti-anarchist scare immediately following the McKinley association did die down relatively quickly, it “left behind a lasting and dangerous legacy in the passage of federal and state laws that for the first time since the Alien and Sedition laws penalized persons solely on the basis of opinions, affiliations and advocacy, rather than on the commission of what would normally be considered a crime.”653 Soon after entering office following the assassination, incoming president urged Congress that “it should take into consideration the coming to this country of anarchists or persons professing principles hostile to all government and justifying the murder of those placed in authority,” arguing that anarchists should be kept out of the United States and “promptly deported” if found within it; Roosevelt identified dealing with anarchists as the most urgent matter for

Congress to address and declared that anarchists' political organizing should be criminalized as “anarchistic speeches, writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and treasonable.”654 Many states passed anti-anarchist legislation in the wake of the

McKinley assassination, the first being New York in 1902 which punished the advocacy of anarchy in speech or writing, or belonging to a group that advocated anarchy, with “a

653 Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to the Present (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1978): 67. 654 Theodore Roosevelt, “ Message Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of the Fifty-Seventh Congress,” Addresses and Presidential Messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904): 289-90. 171 felony conviction carrying a prison term of up to ten years and a fine of $5,000;” the law also outlined a prison term and fine for anyone “allowing a group advocating to assemble in a building that [they] owned.”655 While attempts to develop such laws at the federal level had been made several times before, always failing to pass, the assassination provided new impetus for the development of such legislation and it was not long before Roosevelt got his wish.

Immigration law had historically been the domain in which federal bills against anarchists had been attempted, and while many suggestions were made for dealing with anarchists “exclude was heard oftenest.”656 Several times bills were written that would have categorized anarchists as an inadmissible group under immigration law – the first bill attempting to bar anarchists from immigrating was tabled in 1888, with “other unsuccessful bills … introduced in 1891, 1893, 1894, 1895, and 1897.”657 There were several reasons that these bills failed to pass into law – among these, Nathaniel Hong identifies difficulties with defining 'anarchism' for the purposes of legislating against it, discomfort with breaking from the United States' tradition of largely unrestricted immigration and perceived role as a safe haven for those persecuted for unpopular political views, concern with legalizing exclusion based on one's beliefs rather than one's behaviour, and anticipation of difficulties enforcing the law, among others.658 Even after

655 Margaret A. Blanchard, Revolutionary Sparks: Freedom of Expression in Modern America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992): 41. 656 Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980): 215. 657 Nathaniel Hong, “The Origin of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs, and its Initial Review by the Courts,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 18, no. 2 (1990): 6. 658 Ibid. 172

McKinley was assassinated by an American-born man, the widespread view that anarchism was essentially an 'imported' problem remained prevalent – Michigan Senator

J. C. Burrows wrote a few months after the assassination that while Leon Czolgosz of course could never have been arrested under the proposed anti-anarchist exclusion laws, the existence of such laws still would have prevented the assassination because “he [had been] a peaceable, law-abiding citizen until his mind was poisoned by the teachings of

Emma Goldman and other imported anarchists.”659

The Immigration Act of 1903, signed into law by Roosevelt on 3 March of that year, was the outcome of this long-standing push for federal level anti-anarchist legislation, given new strength after the assassination – the Act added anarchists to the list of groups660 considered 'excludable' who could not lawfully enter the United States.661

The portions of text of the Act relating directly to anarchists read, in part, as follows:

Sec. 38. That no person who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining and teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government, or who advocates or teaches the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers, either of specific individuals or of officers generally, of the Government of the United States or of any other organized government, because of his or their official character, shall be permitted to enter the United States or any Territory or place subject to the jurisdiction thereof. This section shall be enforced by the Secretary of the Treasury under such rules and regulations as he shall prescribe. … 659 J. C. Burrows, “The Need of National Legislation Against Anarchism,” The North American Review 173, no. 541 (1901): 733. 660 Laws had relatively recently been passed banning from entry, and allowing for the deportation of, people from China; these had been held up in court multiple times. These Chinese Exclusion cases ultimately acted as precedents for the challenge to the 1903 act. The 1903 act codified prior immigration laws and, in addition to anarchists, also classified several additional groups inadmissible, including people involved in prostitution and people with epilepsy. 661 E. P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy 1798-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981): 423. 173

Sec. 39. That no person who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining and teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government, or who advocates or teaches the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers, either of specific individuals or of officers generally, of the Government of the United States or of any other organized government, because of his or their official character, or who has violated any of the provisions of this Act, shall be naturalized or be made a citizen of the United States.662

The Act also included a fine of not more than five thousand dollars and/or a sentence of one to ten years in prison for anyone aiding, assisting, or advising anarchists with regard to entry or naturalization into the country.663 As Higham notes, “by forbidding the admission and authorizing the deportation of foreign proponents of anarchism, the law penalized newcomers for their opinions for the first time since [the Alien and Sedition

Acts of] 1798.”664 It was not long before the new law was enforced; the first use of the new anti-anarchist provisions occurred with the arrest of English anarchist John Turner.

John Turner was born 24 August 1864 in Essex, and as a young man apprenticed with a grocer. He joined the Socialist League in 1885, “where he received his education as a political agitator and organizer,” eventually taking on roles including Financial

Secretary and membership on the group's Council.665 Around 1886, he settled in

London.666 He went on to involvement with the United Shop Assistants Union, which later amalgamated with the National Union to form the National Amalgamated Union of

662 An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens Into the United States, Pub. L. No. 162, 57th Cong. § 38- 39 (1903). 663 Ibid. 664 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1966): 112. 665 Heiner Becker, “John Turner, 1864-1934,” Freedom 47, no. 9 (1986): 12. 666 Hermia Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London (London: Croom Helm, 1983): 53. 174

Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks of Great Britain.667 Known as “an excellent public speaker,”668 he was predominantly involved in the movement, including as the first National Organizer669 and secretary-treasurer of the aforementioned union, a position he held for thirty years of his life.670 In 1896, Turner was involved with a committee seeking “a fair deal for anarchists at the … London congress” of that year.671

He spoke at a wide variety of events, participated in “always popular” debates (such as with Henry Burrows on the topic of “Anarchy Versus ” in 1899),672 and at large demonstrations such as the Jewish labour demonstration held in Hyde Park in

June 1903 which drew at least 25,000 attendees and was at that time “the biggest manifestation of Jewish workers that London had ever seen.”673

Emma Goldman describes Turner as having been a very effective organizer, whose skilled leadership contributed to augmenting his Union's power and significantly improving the working conditions of its members.674 In addition to his prolific public speaking and union work, he also wrote for several English papers, including Grocery, a trade paper, and Kropotkin's anarchist paper Freedom.675 In fact, Turner cited Kropotkin as having influenced him, as well as others he knew, who had been slowly shifting toward

667 Becker, “John Turner,” 12. 668 Hong, “The Origin of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs,” 10. 669 Becker, “John Turner,” 12. 670 “John Turner,” Man! (Oakland, CA), Sept-Oct 1934. 671 Oliver, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London, 128. 672 William R. McKercher, Freedom and Authority (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989): 187. 673 Rudolf Rocker, The London Years (London: Robert Anscombe & Co., 1956): 164. 674 Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Dover Publications, 1970): 346. 675 Hong, “The Origin of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs,” 11. 175 identification with anarchism.676 Paul Avrich notes Turner as one of many anarchists who

“converted” to anarchism in the wake of Haymarket677 and Free Society describes Turner as having taken “an active part in the agitation for the pardon of the Chicago men in 1887, speaking at as many as eighteen meetings in a week.”678 As a member and one of the founders679 of the Freedom group, Turner served as publisher for the paper from May

1895 until 1907 (a period including his brief time in the United States).680 Turner's perspective was that of “an anarcho-syndicalist who believed in the and the necessity for labour to overthrow capitalism, but he did not advocate assassination.”681

John Quail describes Turner as having sought to “adapt French to orthodox

English trade unionism”682 and Rocker characterizes Turner as an “anti-Marxist” who appreciated Revisionism for challenging dogma and “freeing Socialism from the fatalistic conceptions with which Marx shackled it.”683 Turner's disbelief in violent tactics was fairly representative of English anarchism at the time – “violent action was not central to the tradition of the English libertarians” and England was “virtually untouched” by the acts of violence committed by radicals in many other countries (including the United

States) during this period.684

676 Becker, “John Turner,” 12. 677 Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978): 106. 678 D., “Biographical Notes of John Turner,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 25 October 1903. 679 Rocker, The London Years, 182. 680 McKercher, Freedom and Authority, 176. 681 Candace Falk, “Raising Her Voices: An Introduction,” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909, Vol. II, eds. Candance Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005): 19. 682 John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British Anarchists (London: Granada Publishing, 1978): 251. 683 Rocker, The London Years, 182. 684 McKircher, Freedom and Authority, 177. 176

It was not uncommon for anarchists based in Britain to visit the United States

(and for American anarchists to visit Britain) during this period, given that passage was inexpensive and there were few restrictions on such travel, with the result being “an interchange of personalities and a cross-fertilization of ideas that gave the anarchist movement a rich transatlantic dimension.”685 It was not John Turner's first visit to the

United States – in 1896, he had given a series of lectures in cities including Newark,

Paterson, and New York in what Henry Addis then described as a “vigorous propaganda campaign” amongst the American workers.686 During this visit, he gave over one hundred lectures687 and he engaged with several prominent activists – he became close friends with

Voltairine de Cleyre (meeting her during his visit to speak in Philadelphia), was received by Charles Wilfred Mowbray and in Boston, and debated Henry Cohen in

Denver.688 In an interview he gave at the time, Turner explained that he was much impressed to find anarchist sentiments so strong in America, sometimes even among those who would never refer to themselves as anarchists, and mentions his speeches being so well received that at times “in the places where [he spoke] … [he was] invited to deliver a second speech before returning to England.”689

Turner returned to the United States in October 1903 in hopes of conducting another speaking tour, which had been planned in advance of his arrival.690 He gave his

685 Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988): 156. 686 H. A., “Comrade Turner in America,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 26 April 1896. 687 D., “Biographical Notes of John Turner.” 688 Avrich, An American Anarchist, 106. 689 “Turner Interviewed,” The Firebrand (Portland, OR), 24 May 1896. 690 A Grand International Picnic was organized for mid-September to benefit his upcoming tour and the paper Free Society, with an admission price of twenty-five cents. “Important for New York,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 30 August 1903. 177 first lecture at the Murray Hill Lyceum in New York on 23 October.691 The theme of his talk was “Trade Unionism and the General Strike,” and Emma Goldman introduced him to a large audience that, in her words, “filled [the venue] to the doors with people from every walk of life.”692 His speaking tour was cut short when he was arrested by immigration officials immediately following this first lecture. When he was arrested and searched, he was found to be carrying a copy of the anarchist newspaper Free Society, a card advertising a meeting at which he would speak the following month which included the information that Turner had previously “refused to accept ... candidacy to parliament because of his anarchistic principles and his disinclination to participate in the aggression of government,” and a pamphlet entitled “Down with the Anarchists” presenting anarchists' arguments against Roosevelt's calls for their repression; a copy of Kropotkin's book Modern Science and Anarchism was also found at the meeting.693 These, combined with excerpted passages of his speech, were considered sufficiently incriminating to deem

Turner an anarchist who ought be excluded from the United States. Goldman writes that

“when [she] announced to the audience [at that first and only lecture] that John Turner had been arrested and would be deported, the meeting unanimously resolved that if [their] friend had to go, it should not be without a fight.”694

The warrant for his arrest had been issued on 19 October 1903, before Turner had given any of his planned lectures; the warrant “was number 41,324, and directed to certain inspectors at New York, commanding them to arrest John Turner and deport him

691 “For New York,” Free Society, (Chicago, IL), 18 October 1903. 692 Goldman, Living My Life, 346-347. 693 Brief and Argument of Appellant, United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904): 5-6. 694 Goldman, Living My Life, 347. 178 to the country from whence he came.”695 After his arrest, Turner's case followed the process outlined in the Immigration Act for potential deportees. As explained by Fiss:

a hearing was held … before an administrative body called the Board of [Special] Inquiry, and the United States secretary of commerce and labor, who sat over the board, reviewed and affirmed the deportation decision. Turner then sought a writ of habeas corpus from a federal circuit court, demanding his release. There was an argument before the circuit court on his habeas corpus decision, but no evidentiary hearing, nor any consideration of his constitutional claims. The circuit court deemed the decision of the secretary as 'final' and dismissed Turner's habeas petition.696

Notably, all of the evidence used against Turner in his first immigration hearing was in fact procured after the warrant for his arrest had already been issued – in other words, no evidence provided at the hearing could be considered as having justified the issuing of the warrant in the first place. While Turner never disclosed how he managed to enter the

United States, “it was conceded by all” that he had been present in the country for ten or more days prior to his arrest.697 When asked about his arrival in the United States before the Board of Special Inquiry, Turner gave ten days as the length of time he had been in the country but refused to reveal the point at which he entered, only stating that he “did not come through New York.”698 In upholding the deportation decision of the Board of

Special Inquiry, Circuit Judge Lacombe not only dismissed Turner's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, but also specifically stated that this decision would apply even in the case of a Supreme Court appeal, writing that “should [such an appeal be made] the present

695 Brief and Argument of Appellant, 4. 696 Owen M. Fiss, Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888-1910, vol. VIII, History of the Supreme Court of the United States (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1993): 332. 697 Ibid., 335. 698 Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904): 8. 179 custody of the prisoner [that is, in detention on Ellis Island] will not be disturbed pending such an appeal.”699 Turner ultimately did appeal the case to the Supreme Court of the

United States, putting the new anti-anarchist act to judicial test less than one year after it became law and contesting its validity from the very first deportation order authorized under it.

Free Speech Law: The Context

As the title of David M. Rabban's book Free Speech in its Forgotten Years: 1870-

1920 suggests, the time period during which John Turner challenged the state's exclusion of non-citizens based on their political views was not a time of strong legal protections for free speech and press in the United States; rather, “a pervasive judicial hostility to virtually all free speech claims contrasted sharply with a comprehensive defense by libertarian radicals of broad protection for almost every expression.”700 Rabban identifies this period as one which is often overlooked by scholars who tend to treat the courts' engagement with free speech as beginning with Schenck v. United States in 1919.701

While it is problematic to overlook the period prior to this as somehow irrelevant to the history of free speech in the United States, it is certainly the case that, as David Kairys

699 Ibid., 14. 700 David M. Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 2. 701 Ibid., 1. In Schenck, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ruled against Schenck, a member of the Socialist Party who had, along with others, circulated a leaflet urging men not to comply with the draft. Schenck and his co-accused were found to have violated the . The importance of Schenck lies in the introduction of the “clear and present danger” test as a measure of whether particular words are afforded legal protection – this new standard meant that only words which could be found to pose a “clear and present danger” ought be criminalized. Holmes' decision specified that free speech could be more restricted during wartime than during times of peace – in other words, that words such as Schenck's might be protected otherwise but posed a clear danger during war. 180 explains, “no right to free speech as we know it existed, either in law or practice” until shifts in legal thinking that began around 1919.702 This does not mean that free speech claims were not made earlier, and Rabban reveals that a diverse array of cases dealt with a variety of free speech issues prior to this, including John Turner's. However, he also points out that “most dramatically, no group of Americans was more hostile to free speech claims before World War I than the judiciary, and no judges were more hostile than the justices on the United States Supreme Court.”703

As Russomanno notes, the rulings of the courts on First Amendment issues prior to World War I reflect an assumption that “speech causes behavioural change.”704 Rulings against anarchists as early as Haymarket in 1886 clearly demonstrate this view – in the

Haymarket case, the eight men who stood trial were not charged with having actually built or thrown the bomb themselves, nor even with having instructed someone else to bring the bomb to the rally that day, but rather with having incited the entire incident through their prior speeches and writings:

the judge in effect told the jury that the defendants could be held responsible for the bombing if it could be shown that they had advocated the commission of murder, even without reference to time, place or manner, and that murder had subsequently taken place as a result of this advice, even though the murderer could not be identified!705

It was thus assumed that the bomb was thrown as a result of anarchist agitation and that anarchist writers and speakers could be held responsible for it because, in Russomanno's

702 David Kairys, With Liberty and Justice for Some: A Critique of the Conservative Supreme Court (New York: The New Press, 1993): 41. 703 Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 15. 704 Joseph Russomanno, “Cause and Effect: The Free Speech Transformation as Scientific Revolution,” Communication Law and Policy 20, no. 3 (2015): 220. 705 Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America, 39-40. 181 words, “it was part of the received paradigm that bad speech leads to bad behaviour, thus justifying the regulation of bad speech.”706 The measure of whether particular words, spoken or written, posed a threat to the existing social order was then known as the bad tendency test, according to which prior restraints on speech and publication were not justified but subsequent punishments could be if a person's words were found to tend towards threatening public welfare.707

While courts tended to either ignore free speech claims or respond negatively to them during this period, free speech awareness was increasing and nascent free speech movements were emerging. Exemplary of these attitudes was the Free Speech League, which was “involved with virtually every major free-speech controversy of the

Progressive Era.”708 The formation of the League was galvanized by the increased repression following the McKinley assassination through both new anti-anarchist legislation and the pre-existing Comstock law.709 The League included a diverse assortment of prominent members including individualist anarchist publisher and organizer Edwin C. Walker, physician and birth control advocate Edward Bond Foote

(whose father, Edward Bliss Foote, also a doctor, had been convicted under the Comstock

706 Russomano, “Cause and Effect,” 220. 707 Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 132-133. 708 Bill Lynskey, “'I Shall Speak in Philadelphia': Emma Goldman and the Free Speech League,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 133, no. 2 (2009): 170. 709 Ibid. The Comstock law, known by the name of Anthony Comstock, its main advocate and enforcer, criminalized the sending of “obscene” materials through the mail. Included under the law as “obscene” were publications of a sexual nature, including not only erotica and pornography but sex education materials and information on contraceptives as well. In Nelson's words, “Comstockery” or “Comstockism” came to refer to “a bundle of attitudes that include prudery, fear of sex, shame, and the inclination to suppress” (Harold L. Nelson, Ed., Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to the Warren Court (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967): 279-80.) Many anarchists periodicals were targeted using this law, including Firebrand, Discontent, and Lucifer the Lightbearer, to name a few. 182 law for mailing birth control information), modern school movement organizer Leonard

Abbott, lawyers Gilbert E. Roe, Bolton Hall,710 and Theodore Schroeder,711712 journalists

Lincoln Steffens and Hutchins Hapgood,713 anarchists Emma Goldman and Benjamin R.

Tucker, and “many others well known in progressive circles.”714 The League was committed to fighting for freedom of speech and press for people of all viewpoints and

Schroeder, who was the “driving force” behind the League's operations and “the first

American thinker who devoted himself almost exclusively to the liberty of discussion,” argued vehemently against the bad tendency test as it was taken up by courts at the time.715 The Free Speech League contributed in may ways to supporting John Turner's

Supreme Court challenge, notably by fundraising to enlist attorneys Clarence Darrow and

Edgar Lee Masters to represent him.

In some respects, Turner's Supreme Court case was an unlikely one. According to an article written by Emma Goldman, which includes a lengthy quotation from a letter she received from Turner, he never really believed that he would be successful in challenging his deportation; rather, he only hoped that Clarence Darrow would be able to

710 In Living My Life, Emma Goldman described Hall as “an unconditional libertarian and single-taxer.” Hall was born in Ireland in 1854 and received his LL.B. from Columbia in 1888. (Who Was Who in America Volume 1, 1897-1942: A Component Volume of Who's Who in American History. Chicago: Marquis Publications, 1966: 504.) 711 David M. Rabban, “The Free Speech League, the ACLU, and Changing Conceptions of Free Speech in American History,” Stanford Law Review 45, no. 1 (1992): 73. 712 Schroeder was “probably the most prolific champion of free speech and press in American history” and his writings spanned “philosophical, psychological, sociological, anthropological, cultural, and legal aspects of control of expression.” (Nelson, Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to the Warren Court, 279-80.) 713 Lynskey, “'I Shall Speak in Philadelphia,'” 171. 714 Goldman, Living My Life, 348. 715 Mark A. Graber, Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991): 54-55. 183

“show the utter absurdity of the law so clearly, that an amendment may follow as a result.”716 In addition, Turner did not mount the appeal in the hopes of remaining in the

United States for a lengthy period of time or of eventually becoming an American citizen; when interrogated before the Board of Special Inquiry, Turner asserted that he “[did] not consider [himself] an immigrant” and was planning to stay in the country “probably for a few months.”717 Finally, engaging in this fight, which Turner was hardly optimistic about from the outset, required him to consent to living in the harsh conditions of detention on

Ellis Island for an undetermined (but certainly lengthy) period of time given that his petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the circuit court had been rejected. He was held in a steel cage under the constant supervision of two guards, “forbidden to receive visitors or speak to strangers,” and denied the ability to speak to his counsel without the supervision of jailers; in short, as Ernest Crosby718 wrote, remaining in the country to challenge his deportation meant agreeing to being “treated like a convicted felon.”719 In his affidavit submitted with motions to be admitted to bail and to advance cause, Turner notes that while he was given credit for purchasing food at Ellis Island by the government, it was far from adequate and he was thus “compelled to depend upon contributions of money from sympathizers in order to obtain sufficient food.”720 These conditions not only meant hardship for Turner himself, but impacted his family as well, given that his work was the

716 Emma Goldman, “To the Readers of Free Society,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 22 November 1903. 717 Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, 8. 718 A lawyer and reformer who wrote on Tolstoy, Carpenter, Garrison, and others. 719 Ernest Crosby, “How the United States Curtails Freedom of Thought,” The North American Review 178, no. 569 (1904): 605. 720 Motion of Appellant to Advance Cause, United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904): 20. 184 sole source of financial support for his wife and their three children, who were then aged six to fourteen.721 Despite these difficult circumstances, Turner consented to mount the appeal. Pentecost722 & Campbell, the attorneys who had represented Turner throughout the habeas corpus proceedings and up until this point, wrote the petition for an appeal to the Supreme Court on Turner's behalf; therein, they noted their doubts about the constitutionality of the dismissal of Turner's habeas corpus petition and asserted that

Turner desired “in good faith to submit the constitutional questions and other questions involved to the Supreme Court for their determination.”723 The petition for appeal was successful and John Turner's case against the laws providing for his deportation was argued in the Supreme Court in early April 1904.

United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams

Appellant Arguments

Clarence Darrow and Edgar Lee Masters' defence of John Turner is outlined in the

Brief and Argument of the Appellant for the case, which was written by Masters.724 The brief begins with a statement of fact explaining the case thusfar; Masters then includes a chronological account of immigration laws up to and including the Immigration Act of

1903, emphasizing that the scope of the laws had enlarged over time and had grown

721 Ibid., 16. 722 This was Hugh O. Pentecost, radical lawyer, minister, and public speaker; he embraced many political perspectives over the course of his life, including anarchism, and edited the paper Twentieth Century (1888-1892). 723 Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, 17. 724 Edgar Lee Masters, Across Spoon River: An Autobiography (New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1936): 275. This brief was later sold in New York as a pamphlet. 185 substantially more restrictive, all the while increasing the degree to which the

Immigration Department had assumed judicial power. The brief then elaborates arguments in favour of Turner; Darrow and Masters' case challenged the constitutionality of the Immigration Act of 1903 – particularly as it pertained to non-citizen anarchists – on four distinct grounds. Firstly, they argued that Section 38 of the Act “abridges the freedom of speech and of the press” by excluding those who do not believe in organized government, and that it is therefore unconstitutional and void due to its contravention of

“the First Amendment of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting the establishing of religion or prohibit a free expression thereof, or abridge the freedom of speech or the press.'”725 They establish that “belief” and “advocacy,” the grounds for exclusion in the Act, necessarily also involve speech, as “there is no X-ray process for arriving at the convictions of the human mind, these convictions can only be ascertained by the utterance of the belief, to condemn the belief is really to condemn its utterance and can be nothing else.”726 They emphasize that the Act seems to exclude anarchists regardless of whether they advocate the use of violence or not, and thus that great figures such as Tolstoy could be refused entry to the country, and that the Act contravenes not only the Constitution but the Declaration of Independence, the preamble of which includes the right of people to alter or abolish a government to which they no longer consent (which assumes the right to discussion on the topic). They clarify that if the Act in fact violates freedoms of speech and press that it is “unimportant” that the Act

725 Brief and Argument of Appellant, 26. 726 Ibid., 48. 186 solely impacts non-cititzens, arguing that “if a certain class … cannot be excluded … except by prohibiting the free exercise of religion or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, then they cannot be excluded at all.”727 They also point out that allowing such legislation sets an ominous precedent given that “if one class can be singled out by the party in power, another class can be singled out at another time by a different party in power,” ultimately functioning as a “scheme” by which those with power can more easily perpetuate their own dominance.728

Secondly, the defence argued that several sections of the Act were unconstitutional and void on the grounds that they “transfer judicial power to the executive branch of the

Federal Government” in contravention of Section 1 of Article III of the Constitution which “declares that 'the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one

Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.'”729 In making this argument, they emphasize the division of powers of government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches as intended to preserve liberty and as a “fundamental principle of the American system” recognized by courts.730

Referring to several groups impacted by recent Immigration Acts, they argue that

“whether an alien is a polygamist or an anarchist, or whether, if a Chinaman, he is a citizen or one to whom the law does not apply is strictly a judicial question,” not a question that can be justly (or, for that matter, even competently) decided by the executive

727 Ibid., 38. 728 Ibid., 52-53. 729 Ibid., 55. 730 Ibid., 65. 187 branch, as the procedure of the Board of Special Inquiry mandates.731 Problematizing the implications of these executive actions in Turner's case in particular, they explain that

“the Secretary of Labor caused a labor organizer to be arrested after an address upon the subject of labor and for his private opinion upon an abstract theory of government,” which they characterize as glaringly abusive and unjust.732

Thirdly, Darrow and Masters argued that the same sections of the Act identified in their second argument were unconstitutional and thus void:

upon the additional grounds that they are repugnant to those provisions of the Constitution which declare that 'No person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law;' that 'In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a trial by an impartial jury to be informed of the nature of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, to have the assistance of counsel for his defense;' and that 'No warrant shall issue but upon proper cause supported by oath or affirmation;' and that 'No one in any criminal case shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.'733

They assert that the Act not only unjustly gives the executive powers which are properly judicial, but that in doing so it attributes them “an undue discretion and an almost boundless power in the method” of enforcing it, which renders the Act particularly prone to abuse.734 To strengthen this claim, they describe several prior immigration cases in which detainees were manipulated, coerced, and denied the ability to seek legal advice on their proceedings. They argue that the Immigration Act cannot be considered the rule of law – in Turner's case, it resulted in him being arrested, searched, put before a board

“composed of his jailers, his prosecutors and the witnesses against him … tried in secret

731 Ibid., 67. 732 Ibid., 69. 733 Ibid., 83-84. 734 Ibid., 84. 188

… [and] subjected to an inquisition” in which he was told he was required to answer all questions; Masters writes that “if this is due process of law, any sort of an examination is due process of law. For nothing more repugnant to the right of due process of law can be conceived.”735 They point out that according to the Constitution, no one may be subjected to a secret trial, denied the right to call witnesses on their behalf, and denied legal counsel, all the while never having been presented with an indictment, though this is precisely what has happened to John Turner and what the Immigration Act dictates, thereby opening it to every objection made by James Madison to the Alien and Sedition laws just over one hundred years prior.736

Fourthly and finally, the defence used the Constitution to challenge the very right of the federal government to restrict the admission of non-citizens into the country at all, arguing that

no power whatever is delegated by The Constitution to the General Government over alien friends with reference to their admission into the United States or otherwise, or over the beliefs of citizens, denizens, sojourners or aliens, or over the freedom of speech, or of the press, whilst the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution expressly declares that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.737

This was, as Hong points out, clearly the weakest argument of the four, given that accepting it would require the Court to “broadly strike down the federal government's authority over immigration”738 (though it is worth noting that this authority was actually a

735 Ibid., 96. 736 Ibid., 99. Masters here includes James Madison's commentary on the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. 737 Ibid., 108. Italics added. 738 Hong, “The Origin of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs,” 13. 189 relatively recent development – prior to 1875, individual states had been responsible for immigration regulation).739 Nevertheless, Darrow and Masters argued that the

Constitution was developed in the context of the states' desire to restrain the federal government, and that immigration was not a domain over which they had allowed federal jurisdiction; they point out that the Alien and Sedition Acts had been criticized by

Jefferson, Madison, and others as infringing on the Constitution for precisely this reason, citing Jefferson as having written that “alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are,” not that of the federal government.740

They problematize prior arguments offered in the courts regarding other immigration laws addressing this issue – they argue that neither reliance on the Commerce clause741 nor the appeal to the sovereignty of the state, the two rationales invoked in prior deportation cases, are sufficient to give the federal government jurisdiction over aliens and their exclusion. They conclude by asserting that anarchists ought be free to share their views but that ideally the “beneficient example of [the American] system shall convince them that free government is preferable to anarchy;” they argue that the true danger now confronting Americans is not “from without” but rather “the aggression of government” and “the disregard of the fundamental law” of “free institutions.”742

739 Mary S. Barton, “The Global War on Anarchism: The United States and International Anarchist Terrorism, 1898-1904,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 2 (2015): 321. 740 Brief and Argument of Appellant, 116. 741 As its name suggests, this portion of the Constitution gives the federal government the ability to regulate commerce. Masters locates the derivation of authority over immigration from this clause with the case Gibbons v. Ogden, in which the federal government was found to have authority over interstate commerce and navigation. He argues that subsequent cases have incorrectly invoked this decision as a precedent pertaining to immigration. 742 Brief and Argument of Appellant, 186. 190

Appellee Arguments

The arguments of the government against Turner's appeal were advanced in the

Brief for Appellee, submitted by Assistant Attorney-General J. C. McReynolds. This brief begins with a statement recounting some of the circumstances of the case; it characterizes Turner as “a man of intelligence” who declined to exercise his rights (such as the right to counsel and the right to bring witnesses on his behalf) at previous junctures in the case and who does not deny that “he is an anarchist and an alien.”743 Whereas the claims advanced on behalf of Turner amount to a constitutional challenge and thereby rely largely on the Constitution's original Frame of Government in addition to the First,

Fifth, and Tenth Amendments, the appellee's arguments rely predominantly on precedents set in cases that had unsuccessfully challenged various immigration laws passed prior to that of 1903. The government's brief includes two arguments against Turner's appeal – firstly, that it should be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, and, secondly, that the circuit court was correct in dismissing Turner's writ of habeas corpus and that its decision should therefore be upheld.

McReynolds argues, firstly, that “the appeal should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.”744 To make this argument, he draws primarily on the decision in Kaoru

Yamataya v. Fisher, commonly referred to as the Japanese Immigrant Case, 189 U.S. 86

(1903). In this case, the appellant, a teenage girl, unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the Immigration Act of 1891, which excluded anyone deemed likely

743 Brief for Appellee, United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904): 5. 744 Ibid., 6. 191 to become a public charge. In the decision for the case, Justice Harlan wrote:

The constitutionality of the legislation in question, in its general aspects, is no longer open to discussion in this Court. That Congress may exclude aliens of a particular race from the United States, prescribe the terms and conditions upon which certain classes of aliens may come to this country, establish regulations for sending out of the country such aliens as come here in violation of law, and commit the enforcement of such provisions, conditions, and regulations exclusively to executive officers, without judicial intervention -- are principles firmly established by the decisions of this Court.745

On the basis of this decision, McReynolds' appellee's brief argues that the Turner case does not in fact pertain to the Constitution and therefore that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to reverse the order for Turner's deportation.

McReynolds' second argument, that “the judgment of the circuit court dismissing the writ of habeas corpus is correct,” is similar and invokes many of the same precedents.746 Noting an 1894 Act of Congress as well as the decisions in cases such as the aforementioned Japanese Immigrant Case, McReynolds argues that the Supreme

Court “has no right to review the findings and action of the executive officers when an alien has been excluded or ordered to be deported” and thus that the prior judgement on the writ of habeas corpus “is to be taken as unquestioned.”747 The brief characterizes the

Turner case as effectively repeating arguments that have previously been made and rejected; the only argument considered a novel one is the claim that the exclusion of anarchists violates first amendment rights to freedom of religion, speech, and press, and to this contention the appellee's brief responds that it is wholly “incomprehensible.”748

745 Ibid., 6-7. 746 Ibid., 9. 747 Ibid. 748 Ibid., 21. 192

Addressing Turner's claims specifically, the Brief for Appellee argues that:

An awful experience forced [American] lawmakers to conclude that the presence of alien anarchists in the United States would be contrary to the public good, and in that opinion the vast majority of law-abiding, enlightened American citizens undoubtedly concur. [The Supreme Court] enforces valid laws passed by Congress … and arguments based upon the supposed 'stupidity of the law' are appropriate only in some other forum.749

The brief characterizes the exclusion of anarchists as “a rather mild precaution against men who seek the destruction of what all true Americans hold essential” and argues that

Turner “appears from the finding of the immigration officers to be much less desirable than many others to whom admission is denied.”750 McReynolds concludes with the assertion that “anarchy is manifestly opposed to both civilization and liberty, and neither would be endangered by its extinction.”751

The Decision

For a short time prior to the Supreme Court rendering its decision, John Turner was released on $5,000 bail752 having spent nineteen weeks incarcerated.753 A dinner was immediately arranged for him by the Free Speech League.754 In The Demonstrator, anarchist editor James F. Morton Jr. attributed the granting of bail to successful organizing by Turner's supporters, writing that Turner had been incarcerated “until

749 Ibid., 25. 750 Ibid., 26. 751 Ibid., 27. 752 “The Turner Case,” Free Society, (Chicago, IL), 13 March 1904. 753 Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012): 174. 754 “For New York,” Free Society, (Chicago, IL), 13 March 1904. 193 publicity [shamed] the officials into a change of policy.”755 Once freed, Turner continued his lecture tour, with Free Society noting a March meeting at Cooper Union “under the auspices of the Free Speech League” with Turner as the speaker, with all proceeds going toward defraying legal expenses associated with the Supreme Court case.756 After delivering “a number of lectures,” Turner opted to “[return] voluntarily to England before the decision ordering his deportation was handed down.”757 He departed on 30 April

1904.758 After his return, Turner lambasted the United States' government in the English anarchist paper Freedom, writing that “politically the United States is beneath contempt; one can only mingle laughter with the cynicism the situation creates,” but also expressed his gratefulness, arguing that “no one man … could have done as much to make

Anarchism popular in twenty years as the United States government did by keeping [him] a prisoner on Ellis Island just less than twenty weeks.”759

The decision on Turner's case, upholding the Immigration Act of 1903 and the legality of his deportation, was returned by the court in mid-May 1904, just over one month after it had been argued. Writing for the court, Mr. Chief Justice Fuller dismissed the argument that the Act was unconstitutional, noting that:

Whether rested on the accepted principle of international law, that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, 755 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 March 1904. 756 “For New York,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 March 1904. In a later issue, Free Society published the text of Turner's speech, entitled “Signs of the Times.” 757 William D. P. Bliss and Rudolph M. Binder, eds. The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, Including All Social-Reform Movements and Activities, and the Economic, Industrial, and Sociological Facts and Statistics of All Countries and All Social Subjects (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1908): 50. 758 Avrich and Avrich, Sasha and Emma, 174. 759 John Turner in Freedom, “John Turner and the U.S. Government,” Free Society (New York, NY): 10 July 1904. 194

or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe; or on the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, which includes the entrance of ships, the importation of goods, and the bringing of persons into the ports of the United States, the act … is not open to constitutional objection.760

The court dismissed the notion that the Act could in any way be considered related to freedoms of speech and press, arguing that while it is true that anyone excluded or expelled from the United States is “cut off from worshipping or speaking or publishing or petitioning in the country … that is merely because of his exclusion therefrom. He does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter, forbidden by law. ”761

In the decision, Fuller characterizes Turner's claim as really coming down to the question of whether one can or ought be excluded from the country on the grounds of being an anarchist (and, more specifically, an anarchist who has never voiced support for the violent overthrow of governments). In response, the court cited Turner's call to universal strike, his comments on Haymarket, and his having addressed meetings alongside Johann Most, arguing that “even if Turner, though he did not so state to the board, only regarded the absence of government as a political ideal … we cannot say that the inference was unjustifiable either that he contemplated the ultimate realization of his ideal by the use of force, or that his speeches were incitements to that end.”762 Fuller further notes that the word 'anarchists' in the Act being taken to include those “political philosophers, innocent of evil intent,” means that Congress considers “the tendency of the

760 United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279 (1904). 761 Ibid. 762 Ibid. 195 general exploitation of such views is so dangerous to the public weal that aliens who hold and advocate them would be undesirable additions to our population,” and thus that even their exclusion cannot be considered constitutional.763 Fuller concludes by characterizing the decision in the Turner case as affirming the power of states to self-preservation.

In a separate but concurring opinion, Justice Brewer made three additions to the ruling. Firstly, he underscored the point that courts “may and must, when properly called upon by petition in habeas corpus examine and determine the right of any individual restrained of his personal liberty to be discharged from such restraint” and that Congress may not eliminate this responsibility of the courts.764 Secondly, he argues that too little attention has been given to the 10th Amendment and emphasizes that Congress' powers do not extend to all matters. Finally, Brewer notes that the evidence the court had access to was limited and that, from that evidence (from the report of the Board of Special Inquiry), it was reasonable to deduce that Turner supported the forceful overthrow of government; he argues that Turner should have introduced evidence otherwise were that not the case, and that, since he hadn't done so, it is unnecessary “to consider what rights he would have if he were only what is called, by way of differentiation, a philosophical anarchist,—one who simply entertains and expresses the opinion that all government is a mistake, and that society would be better off without any.”765

763 Ibid. 764 Ibid. 765 Ibid. 196

Responses to Turner's Case

John Turner's case “aroused considerable popular interest.”766 Anti-anarchist sentiments persisted and many undoubtedly supported the enforcement of the 1903 Act.

The coverage of the arrest and case in mainstream papers was decidedly mixed – the individualist anarchist paper Liberty included some commentary on more mainstream papers' coverage of the issue, noting that the New York Evening Post condemned Turner's arrest and impending deportation but that The New York Times “printed an absolutely false account of the meeting at which Turner spoke” and ended up having to print a letter written in correcting their errors, but did not apologize or offer an explanation.767

According to William G. Lightbourn, who was present at Turner's speech and wrote the correction letter to The New York Times, the editor wasn't particularly interested in correcting the paper's errors and didn't consider anarchists “entitled to fairness” given that they are “everybody's enemies.”768 Conversely, the New York World allowed Turner to speak for himself, publishing an article entitled “Anarchist Turner Writes from Cell to

Explain Just What Anarchy Means.”769

While some did call enthusiastically for the new immigration law's enforcement against Turner, a sizeable and diverse movement emerged that supported him; among those speaking up for him were many prominent individuals who were not anarchists.

The driving organization behind this free speech fight was the newly formed Free Speech

766 James Wilford Garner, “Record of Political Events,” Political Science Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1904): 347. 767 “The Absurd Anti-Anarchist Act,” Liberty (New York, NY), November 1903. 768 Wm. G. Lightbourn, “New York News-Factories,” Liberty (New York, NY), December 1903. 769 John Turner, “Anarchist Turner Writes from Cell to Explain Just What Anarchy Means,” New York World (New York, NY), 31 January 1904. 197

League which was founded in 1902 by “anarchists, socialists, and liberals … to counter increased repression especially against anarchist and papers”770 and which, as previously mentioned, included many well-known members and was responsible for enlisting Darrow and Masters for Turner's defense. The League fundraised to pay for

Turner's defense and organized meetings to raise awareness and build support for him, appointing Emma Goldman its agent for these tasks.771 The League also defended Turner in writing, issuing a pamphlet entitled “The Imprisonment of John Turner: Free Speech and the New Alien Law,” which included an overview of Turner's case, warned of its possible consequences, and clarified the League's involvement in it as follows: “the sole question at issue is: Shall the Federal Government be a judge of beliefs and disbeliefs?

Because of the gravity of this question the Free Speech League has taken charge of

Turner's case in order that the constitutionality of the law may be properly tested.”772

Central League member Theodore Schroeder, an attorney whom Hal D. Sears describes as the channel for much of the League's work and as “a sort of one-man A.C.L.U.”773 also included a section of quotations relevant to Turner's case in his book Free Press

Anthology, which he published (long after the case was over) through the Free Speech

League.774

On 3 December 1903, just over one month after Turner's arrest, a protest meeting

770 Falk, “Raising Her Voices,” 20. 771 Lynskey, “'I Shall Speak in Philadelphia,'” 172. 772 Free Speech League, The Imprisonment of John Turner: Free Speech and the New Alien Law (New York: Free Speech League, 1903): 4. 773 Hal D. Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1977): 201. 774 Theodore Schroeder, ed, Free Press Anthology (New York: The Free Speech League and The Truth Seeker Publishing Company, 1909): 229. 198 was held under the auspices of the Free Speech League at Cooper Union in New York

City; as Hong notes, it was “presided over by many well-known and respected citizens, including Henry George, Jr., Felix Adler (professor of social and political at

Columbia University), William Baldwin, Jr. (Roger Baldwin's775 uncle and President of the Long Island Railroad) and John DeWitt Warner,” a former Congressperson.776 In addition, “letters approving the purpose of the meeting protesting against exclusion of persons for disbelief” were read out from several prominent people.777 In her autobiography, Emma Goldman recounts playing a central role in organizing the meeting

(including fundraising, publicity, and “[pestering] people until they promised their support”), but having remained in the background, hiding her involvement for fear of scaring away some of the “respectable liberals.”778 She describes the meeting as successful and the speakers as “representing all shades of political opinion;” while she notes that “some were apologetic for having come to plead in behalf of an anarchist,” others, including Bolton Hall and Ernest Crosby, were “more daring.”779 Sidney Fine argues that the meeting is clear evidence that “the anarchists were beginning to win a measure of outside support by playing up the free-speech angle of the Turner case.”780 At the meeting, a number of resolutions calling for freedom of speech and thought for all, the repeal of the Immigration Act provision permitting exclusion on the bases of political 775 Roger Baldwin, a friend to Emma Goldman, was influenced by the Free Speech League when he went on to found the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920 (Kraut, “Global Anti-Anarchism," 191.) 776 Hong, “The Origin of American Legislation to Exclude and Deport Aliens for their Political Beliefs,” 12. 777 Schroeder, Free Press Anthology, 236. 778 Goldman, Living My Life, 348-9. 779 Ibid., 349. 780 Sidney Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” The American Historical Review 60, no. 4 (1955): 797. 199 views, and an end to “arbitrary imprisonments” such as Turner's were unanimously adopted.781 In addition to this meeting, Linda Cobb-Reiley notes that Turner's arrest

“brought forth an outpouring of criticism and opposition to the federal law in the opinion magazines of the day,” including an article by Crosby in a literary magazine, The North

American Review.782 Other more mainstream newspapers and magazines which included arguments against exclusion of anarchists from the United States on the basis of their political views included “the New York Evening Post, the New York Daily News, the New

York World, the Springfield Republican, the Independent, and the Outlook.”783

The anarchist response to the Immigration Act of 1903, and the Turner case challenging it, was complicated given anarchists' views on the judicial system. While anarchists obviously opposed the Act as well as John Turner's deportation, few were optimistic about the possibility of Turner winning his case and some questioned whether a legal challenge should even be attempted. For instance, in a letter to Goldman written from England, Kropotkin expressed uncertainty about writing a letter in support of the agitation around the Turner case; while he was clear that he didn't think anarchists should hinder the effort and respectfully acknowledged Turner's willingness to make personal sacrifices for the sake of challenging the law, he argued that “the agitation against the anti-Anarchist law must be carried on by the Trade Unions & the American Radicals, who believe in political liberties under the present State … as to repealing these laws, it is not our [anarchists'] business to ask it. Let those who believe in legislation & 'honest laws' do

781 For a full list of these resolutions see Schroeder, Free Press Anthology, 236-7. 782 Linda Cobb-Reiley, “Aliens and Alien Ideas: The Suppression of Anarchists and the Anarchist Press in America, 1901-1914,” Journalism History 15, no. 2-3 (1988): 54. 783 Fine, “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley,” 797. 200 it.”784 Kropotkin felt that the state was doing precisely what anarchists would expect it to do in “[throwing] its hypocritical liberties over-board, [tearing] them to pieces” as soon as people use those liberties to challenge the status quo.785 Similarly, B. Sachatoff argued in

Free Society that “those Anarchists who participate in legal proceedings against the anti-

Anarchist law are violating the very principle for which they have suffered so long, and in upholding which so many lives have been sacrificed.”786

In a letter to Goldman, Alexander Berkman offered the following comments on these anarchist arguments against participating in courts:

It seems that many of our dear Genossen787 are not over-enthusiastic over the handling-methods in the T. case. 'The money thus spent could be used to better advantage'; 'it is not consistent with 'pure' An.' and one corresp. Even tells me that 'it is in their, the Am., constit., let 'them' fight for it, it does not concern 'us'.' Oh, the stupidity, the mental apathy & the idiotic self-sufficiency of these consistent imbeciles. I have no patience with their arguments, & when I receive such a letter from the Chi. crowd I go around looking for trouble to let out my accumulated bile.788

Berkman's reference to Chicago suggests that Sachatoff was likely not the only anarchist involved with Free Society who rejected the appeal to the Supreme Court, though it is important to note that this in no way represented an official stance on the part of the paper; as it did with other issues, Free Society published a variety of viewpoints on the

784 Peter Kropotkin, “From Peter Kropotkin, Cambridge, England, 16 December 1903,” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909, Vol. II, eds. Candance Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005): 127. 785 Ibid., 128. 786 B. Sachatoff, “Are We Consistent?” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 December 1903. 787 Comrades. 788 Alexander Berkman, “From Alexander Berkman, Western Penitentiary, Allegheny City, Pa., 28 January 1904,” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Making Speech Free, 1902- 1909, Vol. II, eds. Candance Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005): 132-3. 201 topic, including several direct rebuttals of Sachatoff's letter,789 letters from Turner himself,790 and appeals for support from those leading Turner's defence with the Free

Speech League.791

In addition to Free Society, many other anarchist newspapers published articles supporting Turner. In his paper Liberty, Benjamin Tucker expressed the hope that

Turner's case would be presented well in court and argued that his defense ought to focus on the fact that the settlers who framed the American Constitution “came … from foreign shores in search of freedom to speak” and certainly didn't intend for the Constitution to prevent future visitors to the Unites States from doing the same.792 He doubted that

Turner would win his case, but considered the only hope of success to be the argument that the Immigration Act of 1903 was “in conflict with the spirit of the constitution.”793

Lucifer the Light Bearer, then edited and published by Moses Harman, reproduced several statements in support of Turner that had been published elsewhere794 as well as calls for contributions to his defense.795 In his anarchist paper Winn's Firebrand, Ross Winn, like

Tucker, invoked the Declaration of Independence, arguing that Turner “is trying to educate the masses along the lines Jefferson would have approved;” he also harshly criticized the American Federation of Labor for failing to speak up against the anti-

789 For example, see Bertha Leib, “Turner's Case and Consistency,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 December 1903. 790 For example, see John Turner, “Letter from John Turner,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 December 1903. 791 The Defense Committee, “Appeal to all Friends of Liberty!” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 20 December 1903. 792 Benjamin Tucker, “On Picket Duty,” Liberty (New York, NY), December 1903. 793 Ibid. Italics Tucker's. 794 “Comments on the Turner Case,” Lucifer, the Light-Bearer (Chicago, IL),19 November 1903 795 Edwin C. Walker, “The John Turner Outrage,” Lucifer, the Light-Bearer (Chicago, IL), 26 November 1903. 202 anarchist law now targeting Turner, whom he described as “a representative of English trades unionism.”796

Of all of the anarchist papers, The Demonstrator was the most overtly concerned with the issue of freedom of speech. In the first issue, editor James F. Morton Jr. dedicated the paper to free speech (and press), issues which he considered inadequately represented in the radical press at the time:

Nearly ever cause has its special representative. Every sect, every party, every reform, every hobby, has its organ or organs. Among them all, however, there is scarcely one which does not treat the issue of free speech as a subsidiary question, worthy of only slight and occasional attention. Most of the Socialist papers ignore it altogether. The Anarchist, and some of the Single Tax and Freethought papers, sound a true note on the subject, but devote far less space to its consideration than to other phases of the cause they represent. This is said without complaint or criticism. These papers have a work to do; and, on the whole, they perform it well. There is, however, need of a publication with which this momentous question shall be much more than a side issue.797

In line with this mandate, The Demonstrator consistently called for support for Turner; the paper articulated a philosophical anarchist position on free speech and the press and in defence of Turner's Supreme Court challenge that was clearly grounded in the principles of the anarchist colony, Home, from whence it was published.

The Demonstrator: A Newspaper from Home

Home was founded in 1897 by Oliver A. Verity, George H. Allen, and B. F. Odell after the collapse of Glennis, a socialist intentional community in which they had lived.798

796 Ross Winn, “The Case of John Turner,” Winn's Firebrand (Mount Juliet, TN), December 1903. 797 James F. Morton, Jr., “Freedom of Expression,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 798 Charles Pierce LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975): 168. 203

Home was located on Von Geldern Cove, commonly known as Joe's Bay,799 in the Puget

Sound region of western Washington, an area home to several “communitarian experiments” at the time.800 Glennis had been strongly influenced by Edward Bellamy's

Looking Backward, 2000-1887 and “had shown [Home's founders] what they did not want.”801 As Wadland writes, “the members of Glennis tasted firsthand the tyranny hidden like a clot in the heart of Bellamy's socialist idea” and sought to impose few limits on Home given their wariness of “excessive rulemaking.”802 For some time Home involved no formal organization whatsoever, and when the Mutual Home Association was founded in 1898 it was, as Stewart Holbrook explains, “as near pure anarchism as the laws of the land would permit.”803 According to its Articles of Incorporation, the

Association's purpose was “to assist its members in obtaining and building homes for themselves and to aid in establishing better social and moral conditions;”804 it existed solely to purchase and facilitate the use of land, which it parcelled out to its members while retaining collective ownership, but members individually owned any improvements built thereon. The founders “determined that Home would not be a communal colony but rather a community of individuals” and sought to put their beliefs in individual liberty and voluntary cooperation into practice in the colony's structure and operations.805 To this

799 Joe's Bay is likely named after the first permanent European settler to the area but was possibly named after “a drunken fisherman … who fell from his boat to drown in the waters derisively called by his name thereafter.” Ibid., 169. 800 Ibid., 3. 801 Justin Wadland, Trying Home: The Rise and Fall of an Anarchist Utopia on Puget Sound (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2014): 4. 802 Ibid., 5. 803 Stewart Holbrook, “Anarchists at Home,” The American Scholar (Autumn 1946): 427. 804 “Articles of Incorporation and Agreement of the Mutual Home Association,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 8 April 1903. 805 Brigitte Koenig, “Law and Disorder at Home: Free Love, Free Speech, and the Search for an Anarchist 204 end, the Association's role was minimal, and the colony “imposed on its members no religious or ethical rules of conduct, leaving each settler free to live his [or her] own life.”806 As Koenig writes, “Home attracted radicals, liberals, and some who simply sought a place where they would be left alone;”807 the community included residents with many diverse perspectives, pastimes, spiritual practices, and family and relationship structures. As previously discussed with reference to the closely averted attack on the community following the McKinley assassination, “Home suffered considerable persecution from neighbours scared of anarchism.”808

It is perhaps unsurprising that The Demonstrator, as a free speech oriented paper, emerged in the anarchist community of Home, Washington; as Nathaniel Hong writes, “a critical mass [had] formed at Home around the free press-free speech issue” in part due to the experiences of authors and editors living there.809 Every paper published at Home prior to and including The Demonstrator had been targeted for suppression in some way, and the papers were “closely scrutinized for anarchist content and sexual content as well.”810 The first paper published at the colony, The New Era, ran several issues in 1897 with Oliver A. Verity, one of Home's founders, as its editor; it ceased publication after only a few issues as it was “denied use of the U.S. mails.”811 The second paper published

Utopia,” Labor History 45, no. 2 (2004): 201. 806 Lucy Robins Lang, Tomorrow is Beautiful (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948): 48. 807 Koenig, “Law and Disorder at Home,” 203. 808 Timothy Miller, American 1860-1960: A Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990): 175. 809 Nathaniel Hong, “Free Speech Without an 'If' or a 'But': The Defense of Free Expression in the Radical Periodicals of Home, Washington, 1897-1912,” American Journalism 11, no. 2 (1994): 144. 810 Janice Ruth Wood, The Struggle for Free Speech in the United States, 1872-1915: Edward Bliss Foote, Edward Bond Foote, and Anti-Comstock Operations (New York: Routledge, 2008): 97. 811 Hong, “Free Speech Without an 'If' or a 'But,'” 141. 205 at Home, Discontent, ran from 1898 to 1902 with Verity, Charles L. Govan, George H.

Allen, and James F. Morton Jr. serving, at different but overlapping times, as editors.812

As previously mentioned, colony residents Govan, James Larkin, and James Adams were arrested and charged with obscenity shortly after the McKinley assassination; though the judge did not consider the article in question obscene and the men were found not guilty, the paper continued to face interference as copies were mysteriously withheld in Tacoma instead of mailed to subscribers.813 Clothed With The Sun, a paper advocating anarchism and free love edited by Lois Waisbrooker first based in California and later moved to

Home,814 was the subject of an indictment around the same time and Waisbrooker, along with local postmistress Mattie D. Penhallow, faced similar charges; after a trial in July

1902 the latter was acquitted while Waisbrooker, then seventy-five, was found guilty and fined.815 In the same year, prior to the Clothed With The Sun trial, a grand jury had recommended the closure of Home's post office following the investigation conducted by

Postal Inspector Wayland when Govan, Larkin, and Adams of Discontent were arrested; the grand jury advocated the closure “as a punitive action against the 'settlement of avowed anarchists and free lovers, the members of which society on numerous instances, with the apparent sanction of the entire community, have abused the privilege of the post office establishment and department'” by “repeatedly [mailing] non-mailable matter.”816

In April 1902, the post office was permanently closed, “the final blow of a tumultuous

812 Ernesto A. Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States (1833-1955): An Annotated Guide (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010): 48. 813 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 184. 814 Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States, 39. 815 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 184. 816 Sears, The Sex Radicals, 234. 206 year,” and Discontent ceased publication.817 The Demonstrator regularly reported on the struggles of Home residents (and others) against the suppression of their papers; as

LeWarne writes, “to radicals elsewhere, the incidents at Home constituted minor additional evidence of government persecution, and the stories were repeated in various publications.”818 The Home prosecutions even “factored into the establishment of the

Free Speech League in 1902 by proving the need for legal assistance.”819

The Demonstrator, which was Discontent's successor beginning with its first issue in March 1903, was necessarily mailed from the post office at nearby Lakebay since

Home lacked a post office of its own. Its first editor, James F. Morton Jr., first visited

Home in April 1900, relocating there in 1901 and contributing to Discontent,820 which he was involved in defending to its final days. The cause of free speech was thus one that

Morton Jr. was consistently involved in prior to and from the outset of The Demonstrator, having written on Discontent's case as well as various other instances of 'Comstockism,' as well as having given lectures on the topic.821 Like Discontent and other Home papers before it, The Demonstrator too was targeted for suppression. As Hong writes, it was

“immediately harassed by the post office authorities using the issue of second class mailing privileges. This had become one of the ways federal authorities tried to disrupt radical publications because second class postage rates, at 1 cent per pound, made

817 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 184-5. 818 Charles Pierce LeWarne, “The Anarchist Colony at Home, Washington, 1901-1902,” Arizona and the West 14, no. 2 (1972): 166. 819 Wood, The Struggle for Free Speech in the United States, 1872-1915, 97. 820 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 176-7. 821 “Gives Lecture on Free Speech,” Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, IL), 11 December 1899. 207 publishing activity economically viable.”822 After several months, Morton Jr. notes in

July 1903 that The Demonstrator was ultimately “admitted to the mails as second class matter.”823

Morton Jr. had come to Home to work on Discontent specifically, as well as to live there. He was born James Ferdinand Morton Jr. in 1870 in Massachusetts as the son of a

Baptist minister; he held two degrees from Harvard and had “developed an interest in social questions” as a student.824 Having worked his way through university in various jobs including newsboy, bootblack, organ blower, and jelly factory worker,825 he “was largely responsible for the establishment of inter-collegiate debate;”826 at Harvard, he was a classmate of journalist Hutchins Hapgood and a friend of W. E. B. DuBois, and he later became an “early member” of the NAACP, which DuBois co-founded.827 Morton Jr. had previously worked on Free Society and had heard of Home when he was in San

Francisco, perhaps from Charles Govan.828 Throughout his time at Home, Morton Jr. not only worked on Discontent and later begun The Demonstrator, but also lectured “with greater frequency [and] diversity” than any other resident and taught at Home's school

(which shared a building with the newspaper print shop); he for a time served as

822 Hong, “Free Speech Without an 'If' or a 'But,'” 144. 823 James F. Morton, Jr., “To Our Friends,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 15 July 1903. 824 Robert S. Fogarty, Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980): 78. 825 “Dangers of Race Prejudice: J. F. Morton, Jr., Fears It Will Undo This Country,” New York Times (New York, NY), 22 January 1906. 826 O. Ivan Lee, “Memorial of James F. Morton,” American Mineralogist 27, no. 3 (1942): 200. 827 Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2006): 77. 828 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 176. 208 principal829 though he had “little previous knowledge of pedagogical technique.”830 One of his students, Macie Pope (daughter of Home co-founder Oliver Verity) described him as “a learned man and a good teacher, quite strict,”831 while another acknowledged him as intelligent but characterized him as “a kind of crackpot.”832 Justin Wadland suggests that the school's proximity to The Demonstrator office served to distract Morton Jr. from teaching, noting that “the children did not listen to his lectures with the same polite attentiveness as adults.”833 Further, he “was the chief spokesman for Home at picnics, celebrations, excursions to other communities, or whenever a speaker was needed.”834

With his long-standing interest in radical periodical publishing, it is unsurprising that

Morton Jr. was centrally involved in ensuring Home had a new paper after Discontent's suppression.

When The Demonstrator appeared, it carried a simple title design with the subtitle

“A Weekly Periodical of Fact, Thought and Comment” and ran four pages in length. The masthead, appearing on the second page, listed the subscription price as fifty cents per year and described the paper as “Published Weekly at Home, Wash., by the Demonstrator

Group.”835

829 Charles Govan to Joseph Labadie, 4 October 1902, Joseph Antoine Labadie Papers, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 830 Avrich, The Modern School Movement, 52. 831 Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005): 291. 832 Ibid., 293. 833 Wadland, Trying Home, 106. 834 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 197. 835 The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 209

Figure V: The Demonstrator's Original Flag Labadie Collection, University of Michigan

The title design remained unillustrated for the duration of The Demonstrator's life, though the font changed at the beginning of the fourth issue in June 1906. In 1904 the subtitle was altered slightly to read “A Semi-Monthly Periodical of Fact, Thought, and Comment” to indicate its shift in frequency to fortnightly rather than weekly. The publishing of The

Demonstrator was, for the entirety of its existence, always credited to the Demonstrator

Group. James F. Morton Jr. served as editor from the beginning of the paper until

November 1905, when he passed editorship to his friend Jay Fox,836 who had been contributing to the paper for some time.837 Fox edited the paper until the beginning of its fifth volume in July 1907, when it merged with another paper, The Emancipator, and its editor Lawrence Cass took over; the final issue of The Demonstrator was published 19

February 1908.

The Demonstrator positioned itself as the clear successor to Discontent, pledging to fill any unexpired subscriptions to the former paper838 and greeting its readers with the

836 Mary M. Carr, “Jay Fox: Anarchist of Home,” Columbia Magazine 4, no. 1 (1990): 5. Fox would later become yet another Home, WA based editor targetted with obscenity charges – in 1911, his paper The Agitator was challenged on the basis of an article entitled “The Nudes and the Prudes,” which addressed a disagreement over nude bathing in the bay at Home; he was charged with encouraging or advocating disrespect of law for siding with those who felt nude bathing should be permitted, and he was found guilty. 837 Fox had planned to move to Home at this time, but was delayed and didn't end up there until 1910, long after Demonstrator had passed from his editorship and ceased publication. See LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 206. 838 “Notice,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 8 April 1903. 210 hopes of being “something more than a simple rebirth of Discontent” marking “a step forward in method, if not in principle” and “[striving] to call out the best thought, and to appeal to the unprejudiced reason of men and women.”839 According to Stewart

Holbrook, The Demonstrator was not so different from its predecessor – he writes that

“when Discontent was denied the mails, Editor Morton simply changed the masthead, calling it the Demonstrator” and that “the editorial policy changed not one whit.”840

There were certainly similarities between the papers given that it was “printed on the same press by the same people,” including both Morton Jr. and Charles Govan;841 however, there was roughly a year's time, and some substantial political and stylistic differences, between the two papers despite their overlap in editorship. The ways that

Morton Jr.'s introduction of the Demonstrator in its first issue differs from the ways

Discontent was introduced by its producers almost five years prior are telling.

Notably, Discontent announced itself as advocating “Anarchist Communism;” the editors explained that anarchism means individual sovereignty and freedom, the practice of communism “is but a recognition of the economic law which makes associated effort far more productive with the same expenditure of energy than isolated efforts can possibly be,” and that the paper's Anarchist Communism seeks to unite these for the best economic and political results.842 By contrast, in the first “Demonstrative” published in the first issue of The Demonstrator, Morton Jr. makes no mention of the term

'communism' or of any specific economic position. He names the standpoint of those

839 James F. Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 840 Stewart H. Holbrook, “Brook Farm, Wild West Style,” American Mercury, August 1943, 220. 841 Murray Morgan, The Last Wilderness (New York: The Viking Press, 1955): 110. 842 Discontent, “Greeting,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 May 1898. 211 producing the paper as “philosophic Anarchy” and explains:

There are those who claim that all Anarchy is philosophic, and those who declare that Anarchy is in its nature essentially unphilosophic—or worse. Avoiding both these extremes, we shall endeavor to demonstrate the possibility of an orderly society, based on individual liberty and reliance on self-government. We do not pin ourselves to the creed of any individual or class. Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Burroughs, Carpenter, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Kropotkin, Hubbard, and many others, are sources of inspiration to us.843

Here Morton Jr. is staking the paper's position in ongoing debates about the desirability and viability of violent tactics, with this understanding of “philosophic” denoting opposition to them. On the paper's stance on tactics, he writes: “we are evolutionists, with no schemes of physical revolution or political intrigue. Our one fundamental aim is that of education. . . . We are opposed to personal violence, and to the cultivation of a sentiment of hate toward individuals.”844 Indeed, anarchist C. L. James described the tone of The Demonstrator toward “revolutionary measures” as “rather Tolstoyish.”845 Despite this very important difference, there were certainly overlaps in orientation between the two papers; for instance, Discontent pledged to “battle for the freedom of the human race from tyranny and superstitions of all kinds and sorts”846 much as The Demonstrator declared itself opposed to “undemonstrated dogmatism” and identified ignorance as humankind's “most mortal foe.”847

In their “Greeting” introducing the paper, the editors of the earlier Discontent said little regarding what the contents of the paper would be beyond that it would be an

843 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 844 Ibid. 845 C. L. James, The English Anarchist Press in America, n.d., Single Manuscripts, The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan. 846 Discontent, “Greeting,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 May 1898. 847 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 212 anarchist paper first and foremost and that while they “aim to make of [their] columns an open forum of liberal views” that they “especially invite Anarchist writers to contribute to the work of spreading the Anarchist propaganda into every quarter of the world.”848 Its successor took a very different approach, in several respects. The Demonstrator placed much stronger emphasis on its rootedness in Home, WA. In introducing the latter paper,

Morton Jr. writes that it will aim to “furnish the news of [the] community, and give voice to the ideals of its members” and that “the doings at Home will be recorded for the benefit of the many who are interested in the growth of a community founded on the broad lines of liberty.”849 To this end, “Home News” became a regular department of the paper, with the first issue carrying a brief overview of the community and pledging “future issues

[detailing] the weekly happenings, large and small, as they occur.”850 True to its word, the paper's future “Home News” columns did include minor happenings, with the second issue, for instance, noting the names of various visitors to Home, the sighting of two bald eagles attracting “considerable attention,” the establishment of a singing class under the leadership of George H. Allen, and the successful holding of a meeting in which “the subject of diet was discussed from every conceivable standpoint.”851

Morton Jr. describes the paper as oriented not only to those outside Home interested in learning about it but also simultaneously addressed to those living at Home; he notes that the paper will be “of local interest” given its inclusion of news of neighbouring communities, and that it will also publish information about the unique

848 Discontent, “Greeting,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 May 1898. 849 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 850 “Home News,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 851 “Home News,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 18 March 1903. 213 characteristics of the Puget Sound region of interest to any reader.852 Like Discontent,

Morton Jr. noted that The Demonstrator would aim to be “a forum for the expression of all shades of progressive thought” however, unlike Discontent which especially invited anarchists' contributions, The Demonstrator's first issue extended “a special invitation … to those who differ most widely from [its producers'] point of view.”853 Morton Jr. had long emphasized the importance of diversity of opinion and debate within radical papers, having written in one of the later issues of Discontent that while a limited number of pages means any given paper must carve out its own area of focus, any paper that is “shy with reference to the admittance of antagonistic opinions shows but little confidence in the opinions it professes to espouse.”854

From the outset, the editors of both papers felt the need to address when, if ever, contributions might be rejected. The producers of Discontent simply note that “the only restrictions placed upon the appearance of contributions … will be those governed by space and the literary merit of the articles. They must be to the point and tolerably well written.”855 Morton Jr. is far more specific in his description of which types of articles are

(and are not) wanted for The Demonstrator:

While the limitations of space will render it necessary to confine our columns mainly to the discussion of social questions and of ethical and philosophical issues closely related thereto, exceptions will occasionally be made in the case of matter of unusual interest. Lengthy articles are not, as a rule, desired, although they are by no means barred where warranted by the importance of the argument. We shall expect propriety of language and courtesy in debate from all who use these columns. Side issues will not be

852 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 853 Ibid. 854 James F. Morton Jr., “Off and On,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 September 1901. 855 Discontent, “Greeting,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 May 1898. 214

refused attention; but the main space of the paper cannot be monopolized by 'weary, stale, flat and unprofitable' repetitions of the stock arguments for and against vaccination, vivisection, vegetarianism, Spiritualism, and similar themes, to the exclusion of topics which interest more vitally the large body of our readers. It is not that these subjects lack importance, but that other matters are more directly within our purview.856

He attributes the limiting of discussion of “side issues” to the paper's limited space, noting that he hopes that the paper will eventually be able to be lengthened, thereby allowing a broader scope. In setting out these guidelines, Morton Jr. is undoubtedly addressing the residents of Home in particular; many were Spiritualists and issues such as diet were popular lecture and discussion topics at Home.857

While The Demonstrator certainly focused on its community, Home, WA, it is important to note that The Demonstrator (like Discontent) never claimed to be “the official organ of Home or of the Mutual Home Association.”858 While its Articles of

Incorporation were printed in The Demonstrator and Home residents contributed to the paper, it was in no sense a collective venture on the part of the community as a whole. As

LeWarne notes, “Home anarchists were mostly of the individualist school … they sought to remove themselves from restrictions erected by government, institutions, and society in general”859 and, beyond the Mutual Home Association, the scope of which was limited to landholding, there were only “a few other [formal] practices” including a co- operative store while “other cooperation [such as working together on building construction] was voluntary.”860 The production of The Demonstrator, and the other

856 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 857 LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 190. 858 Ibid., 174. 859 Ibid., 187. 860 Ibid., 191. 215

Home papers, were instances of such voluntary combination of individual efforts. In fact, while many authors contributed to the paper, Morton Jr. acknowledges that “the editorial side of the work [was] entirely trusted to [him]” as an individual, though others served as printers;861 additionally, Morton Jr. was responsible, during his time as editor, for much of the original content published therein, writing a great many articles as well as maintaining several regularly appearing columns.

As a paper produced by individuals, The Demonstrator strongly reflected the inclinations of its editors. Although its pages were welcoming of diverse perspectives and, like many other anarchist papers, at times included contributions from authors of varying opinions (which occasionally developed into debates spanning multiple issues), which topics received the most attention and were most prominently featured tended to reflect the priorities of the editor at the time. So, while later issues published after the paper's editorship passed to Jay Fox contained a dedicated “I.W.W. Department” and featured international labour news as a regularly appearing section of the paper, the free speech focus of the The Demonstrator in its earlier years can be attributed to Morton Jr., who considered freedom of expression (and its frequent violation) the most pressing issue of the day and who asserted in 1903 that the “supreme principle [of free speech] was never so shamefully nullified as at the present time.”862

When John Turner was the first person arrested for violation of the Immigration

Act of 1903, Morton Jr. leapt into action, declaring the arrest an “indefensible outrage”

861 James F. Morton, Jr., “Valedictory,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 1 November 1905. 862 James F. Morton, Jr., Do You Want Free Speech? (Home: Published by the Author, 1903): 3. 216 and affront to free speech.863 He considered the case so crucial to The Demonstrator's free speech mandate that he expressed his hope that readers and contributors would not mind that “the paramount importance of the Turner case … compels [the paper] to hold back much good and timely matter” in order to give it sufficient attention.864 The majority of original articles appearing in The Demonstrator on the Turner case from his arrest to the conclusion of his Supreme Court challenge are written by Morton Jr. himself, though a great many articles excerpted from other (non-anarchist) papers are included as well.

Through The Demonstrator, James F. Morton, Jr. advances an absolutest position on freedom of expression; however, the paper's coverage of the John Turner deportation case reveals that this position's relation to anarchism is ambiguous in several important respects; specifically, The Demonstrator's defence of John Turner constructs him as deserving of the rights of speech and press on the basis of his apparently anti-violent perspective and appeals to the problematic notion that the United States was founded on the basis of freedom, contextualizing philosophic anarchism in a well-established

American libertarian tradition. I argue that while The Demonstrator importantly locates the arrest of John Turner and the suppression of anarchist speech and writing in a broader context of government suppression of progressive and radical agitation and advocates unity among radicals and reformers of diverse perspectives in battling for freedom of expression, the paper at times departs from its own professed absolutist free speech position and anarchist philosophy in hopes of fostering broad support for free speech and

863 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 November 1903. 864 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 16 December 1903. 217 press by making similar arguments to those advanced by Darrow and Masters in front of the Supreme Court, and seeking to construct, particularly through Morton Jr.'s writings and citational practices, a politically diverse free speech movement.

Turner as a Civil Disobedient: “He Has Committed No Crime”

Shortly before John Turner's arrest, James F. Morton, Jr. advanced his arguments in favour of absolute free speech in a pamphlet entitled “Do You Want Free Speech?”865

The pamphlet is a revised and expanded version of a series of articles bearing the same name that he published in The Demonstrator beginning in March 1903.866 As Hong notes, the case that Morton Jr. makes for free speech includes “ideas about the value and function of free speech that only decades later began to find their way into American legal doctrine” – Morton Jr. arguments for free expression include:

the marketplace of ideas in which truth is vindicated and falsehood defeated by more exposure, rather than less; workers and their organizations were being gagged by injunction; defining obscenity is inherently ambiguous; and making exceptions to free expression protection tended to subvert the general principle itself.867

Morton Jr. argues that “every censor is, consciously or unconsciously, an enemy of humanity” and that all people “are entitled to the full and free expression of their ideas of truth, and should be protected in it.”868 He addresses the issues he considers most

865 Morton, Jr., Do You Want Free Speech? The pamphlet is undated but the 12 August 1903 issue of The Demonstrator announces his plans for the pamphlet and the 7 October 1903 issue of The Demonstrator announces that the pamphlet has been printed and is available, so it can be dated as published in that year. 866 “Special Notice,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA): 7 October 1903. 867 Hong, “Free Speech Without an 'If' or a 'But,'” 145. 868 Morton, Jr., Do You Want Free Speech?, 1-3. 218 threatening to freedom of expression, including Comstockism and Maddenism,869 discusses the persecution of anarchists in particular, and names American imperialism as

“a deadly enemy of free speech” both internationally and domestically (as critics of

American military actions who, for instance, sought to “expose the outrages committed by the army in the Phillippine Islands” were suppressed).870 He problematizes the accusation of abusing free speech as only made by “those who have not the honesty and courage to admit openly that what they are really attacking is all freedom of expression that does not accord with their own views”871 and notes that “such phrases as 'liberty, not license,' and 'the abuse of free speech,' serve often as cloaks for repeated infringements of human rights.”872 In no uncertain terms, Morton Jr. declares that “no conceivable abuse of free speech can be so great as to justify the application of gag law” and that “free speech without an 'if' or a 'but' is the only kind worth having.”873

When advancing the case for speech with reference to John Turner's case, however, The Demonstrator seemingly departs from this absolutist view in that John

Turner as an individual is framed as deserving of free speech protection not simply because all speech should be free, but because of the nature of his views, his words, and his personality. In the first comment on Turner's case included in the paper, published a

869 Maddenism, a term frequently deployed in radical papers, refers to Edwin C. Madden who, in his role as Third Assistant Postmaster General, was involved in the denial of affordable mailing privileges to many progressive (including some anarchist) papers. Morton Jr. argued that the only difference between Anthony Comstock and Edwin C. Madden was that the former was transparent about his goal of suppressing certain forms of writing, while the latter denied he had any such aims and cited “postal economy” as the reason he suppressed progressive periodicals. 870 Morton, Jr., Do You Want Free Speech?, 8. 871 Ibid., 9. 872 Ibid., 4 873 Ibid., 10. 219 few weeks after his arrest, Morton Jr. identifies the case as indicative of the death of free speech in America. Of the speech on “Trade Unionism and the General Strike” that

Turner gave just prior to his arrest, Morton Jr. writes:

there is no hint of any appeal to violence in it; and indeed the subject negatives the idea. Besides, it is well known that Turner is a philosophical speaker, and has never been an apostle of force. There was no disorder during the address, absolutely absolutely nothing to form the faintest excuse for such an arrest.874

He even notes that “the press report, never coloured to favour an Anarchist, contains not one syllable to Turner's discredit.”875 Similarly, in early December Morton Jr. notes that

“Turner cannot even be classed as a dangerous Anarchist. … He is, and always has been, a peaceful and philosophical thinker whose main activity has been along the lines of the ordinary work of trade unionism.”876 These descriptions raise the question of whether

Morton Jr. would have defended Turner as vigorously had his speech supported violence or contributed to “disorder” during the event; invoking the non-violent nature of Turner's position as an argument against his arrest under the Anti-Anarchist legislation implies that the arrest of a different anarchist, particularly one who gave a speech advocating assassination or other violent acts, might be justifiable. Such a position is incompatible with the total and complete freedom of speech and press advocated by Morton Jr. in The

Demonstrator, yet John Turner's political views are repeatedly invoked as evidence that his arrest and deportation are unwarranted and unjust.

Morton Jr.'s writings on the Turner case are not alone in appealing to the latter's

874 Morton Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA): 11 November 1903. 875 Ibid. 876 James F. Morton Jr., “The Turner Outrage,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA): 1 December 1903. 220 peaceful position as a reason to support his case. The Demonstrator also printed articles excerpted from many other papers, most of which are not anarchist in orientation, about the Turner case, and several of these, written by authors and for audiences not necessarily sympathetic to anarchism, similarly emphasize Turner's political leanings. One article excerpted from The Public,877 for instance, notes that “Turner is an Anarchist; but that does not mean that he advocates violence,”878 and a second that “Turner's speeches have always been of a kind of make for peace and order.”879 Some of the papers The

Demonstrator cites as defending Turner also overtly state that they would not similarly defend the freedoms of speech or press of an anarchist who believed in the use of violence. An article from The Springfield Republican, for instance, tellingly claims that no one demands “protection for the Anarchist who preaches violence and assassination of rulers” but asserts that “Mr. Turner, like Tolstoi and Kropotkin, never in his life suggested or advocated violence or assassination,”880 and an excerpt from the New York Post argues that “Turner has made no incendiary utterance in this country … when he preaches the gospel of Anarchy among us it would be time to deport him.”881 The Demonstrator even published a letter from George F. Hoar, the same senator who, following McKinley's

877 The Public was edited by Louis Freeland Post, a single-taxer who is best known for his later work as Assistant Secretary of Labor from 1913 until 1921. The paper's details could be found on its last page; at the time of the publication of this editorial, The Public described itself as follows: “though it abstains from mingling editorial opinions with its news accounts, it has opinions of a pronounced character, based upon the principles of radical democracy, which, in the columns reserved for editorial comment, it expresses fully and freely.” “The Public,” The Public (Chicago, IL): 14 November 1903. 878 The Public (Chicago: IL), 14 November 1903, quoted as The Public, “The Turner Case,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 December 1903. 879 The Public (Chicago, IL), 23 April 1904, quoted in “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 25 May 1904. 880 Springfield Republican, “Propagating Anarchy by Law,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 13 January 1904. 881 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 18 November 1903. 221 assassination, had advocated deporting anarchists to an otherwise uninhabited island; in the letter, which was originally written to A. C. Pleydell,882 Hoar explains that he would

“not approve any law or any construction of any law that excluded persons from the country merely because they disbelieved in all organized government, unless they also favored forcible resistance to all organized government.”883 In the context of the paper's campaign in support of Turner, Hoar's argument, like those of the aforementioned articles, further contributes to the notion that Turner deserves free speech and press only by virtue of his past words not having called for violence.

In centering Turner's peacefulness as a reason to oppose the enforcement of the

Immigration Act of 1903 against him, articles in The Demonstrator frequently drew parallels between Turner and other figures, some of whom were self-described anarchists but several of whom were not, who either espoused similar views to Turner's or who could imaginably be excluded from the United States under the same provisions invoked to arrest and deport him. Some of these figures, such as Tolstoi and Kropotkin (who, as previously mentioned, were named in a Springfield Republican article as having never advocated assassinations) were notable anarchists.884 These two figures were also mentioned in another article excerpted from the same paper, which notes that Turner

“holds the opinions of [these] and other distinguished thinkers, that perfection in social

882 A. C. Pleydell was secretary of the Free Speech League. Bliss and Binder, eds, The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, 511. 883 George F. Hoar, “Hoar's Opinion,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 13 January 1904. 884 As Marshall notes, “Tolstoy did not like to call himself an anarchist;” however, he is widely acknowledged an anarchist thinker and profoundly influenced the development of pacifist and Christian anarchisms in particular. See the chapter on Tolstoy in Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: Harper Perennial, 2008): 362-383. 222 organization requires freedom rather than restriction.”885 The Public, too, mentions them, in addition to French anarchist Élisée Reclus, arguing that if Turner is deemed ineligible to enter the United States then “Tolstoy, greatest of Russians and foremost among nonresistants, could not visit … Neither could Kropotkin, the famous literary man to whom England affords an asylum against Russian persecution; nor Reclus, the geographer of world-wide fame.”886

Another figure invoked multiple times (and by multiple authors) in comparison to

Turner was Herbert Spencer, who had just recently died in early December 1903. Peter

Marshall argues that although Spencer “took up the defence of individuality and severely restricted the legitimate limits of the state” to a degree which impressed both Kropotkin and Goldman, he was not an anarchist because he did not call for the state to be abolished; rather, Spencer “ultimately remains a spokesman for early industrial capitalism rather than modern anarchism.”887 Nontheless, in a brief tribute to Spencer written shortly after his death, Morton Jr. wrote in The Demonstrator that “it is well known that Spencer was nearly, if not quite, an upholder of Anarchist ideals as the most perfect condition of the highest society;” he thus remarks that had Spencer travelled to America late in life,

“some passages in his works would have afforded Cortelyou888 with ample pretext to imprison him and send him back to England, along with John Turner.”889 Along similar

885 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 13 April 1904. 886 The Public, “The Turner Case,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 December 1903. 887 Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 165-8. 888 Here Morton Jr., refers to George B. Cortelyou, who at the time was the first Secretary of Commerce and Labor. In this newly created position, Cortelyou oversaw the Board of Special Inquiry which interrogated Turner and affirmed the warrant to deport him. 889 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 30 December 1903. 223 lines, The Demonstrator includes an article from the New Bedford Evening Standard, which notes that the author “should have hardly liked to see [Spencer's] admission to [the

United States] made dependent on the interpretation of some of his writings by a board of immigration inspectors, alert to find evidences of anarchistic leanings.”890 Morton Jr. also includes an article excerpted from The Springfield Republican which drew this same parallel. In this article, the author asserts that if Turner can be justly deported, the same law would provide for the deportation of Spencer because the latter “was an intense individualist, and doubtless regarded theoretical Anarchy as the final ideal state, to which the cosmic process of evolution is slowly taking us;” again emphasizing that both were non-violent, the author adds that Spencer “was of course no revolutionist; but neither is

John Turner, so far as any one can prove.”891

Finally, in emphasizing Turner's apparent peacefulness as a reason to oppose his deportation, some articles published in The Demonstrator even made connections between Turner and several religious figures and communities known for their principled rejections of violence. Arguments regarding the anti-anarchist law's applicability against

Tolstoi have already been discussed. In addition, an article criticizing the new law excluding anarchists from the country that was excerpted from The Truth Seeker, a paper founded “to carry the message of atheism, free-thought and 'liberalism,'”892 argued that

“the philosophic Anarchists are veritable , their code of ethics forbidding them to

890 New Bedford Evening Standard, “Deporting an Anarchist,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 20 January 1904. 891 Springfield Republican, “The Right to Free Thought,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 30 December 1903. 892 Sidney Warren, American Freethought, 1860-1914 (New York: Gordian Press, 1966): 187. 224 encroach upon the rights of others.”893 Additionally, a March 1904 issue of The

Demonstrator features the text of a speech made by Reverend L. M. Powers of the

Church of the Messiah (described as being Universalist in denomination) at a meeting protesting Turner's deportation that was held in Buffalo on 28 January 1904 and which featured a number of speakers. In his speech, Powers argues that:

if the words of Jesus are correctly reported, he did not believe in government by force. Quakers and Shakers, Mennonites and non-resistant Christians of many kinds, have all believed that they could not be consistent followers of Jesus while participating in a government founded and supported by force. Without religious, or, at least, a Christian basis, John Turner believes precisely as these do.894

Following this logic, Powers concludes that “if Turner is an Anarchist, then Quakers are

Anarchists, and any law that would exclude Quakers is a stupid law.”895 Though he takes care to clarify he himself is not an anarchist and that he does believe in imprisoning “as a lunatic” any individual who advocates violence, Powers argues that even if belief in anarchy is a “folly,” it is ultimately a harmless one.896 The articulation of these comparisons between Turner and various others known for their non-violence and, more broadly, the frequent foregrounding the non-violent nature of Turner's utterances and past actions, combine to construct a particular image of a civil disobedient as deserving of freedom of speech and press on the basis of his failing to pose a particular sort of threat to public well-being; in doing so, Morton Jr.'s editorship of The Demonstrator (in both the

893 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 18 November 1903). An understanding of the distinction 'philosophic' as used by anarchists to describe themselves is lacking in this article – the author also describes Goldman and Most as philosophic anarchists who have not committed crimes, but both would certainly reject this label. 894 “Safety Lies in Freedom of Speech,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 March 1904. 895 Ibid. 896 Ibid. 225 articles he features from other sources as well as his own writings) seems to depart from the paper's professed commitment to absolute freedom of speech and press in that it suggests that those who diverge from this image, particularly those who might speak or write in favour of violent tactics, are not similarly entitled to express themselves freely or at least that the paper might not similarly defend them.

Freedom as an American Tradition

In addition to emphasizing the lack of violence in John Turner's past words and actions, The Demonstrator frequently invoked the notion that freedom of speech and press are central components to the United States' identity and history and thus that deportation on the basis of political beliefs would contravene the American value of liberty. Employing strategies that can seem out of place in the context of a paper overtly professing an anarchist perspective, the articles in The Demonstrator favourably call upon documents such as the Declaration of Independence to oppose anti-anarchist legislation and construct an image of America as urgently at risk of losing the freedom that has served to distinguish it from other states deemed more repressive in order to call upon

American readers to support Turner's Supreme Court challenge. In doing so, the paper again de-emphasizes Turner's anarchism while at the same time suggesting that the

American state, ostensibly founded on principles of freedom and non-interference in its citizens' lives, ought not to interfere with anarchists' speaking and publishing at all. These discourses, which parallel the Constitutional claims advanced by Darrow and Masters in their legal brief on Turner's behalf, are, in large part, advanced via articles cited from 226 other (non-anarchist) papers, though they are also attributable to editor James F. Morton,

Jr.; here the paper's pledge to include articles from diverse perspectives combined with a strong reliance on material from other papers combines to seemingly obscure the paper's self-professed anarchist standpoint in some of the discussions of Turner's case, particularly those drawing on notions of the exceptionalism of American rights and freedoms.

Articles excerpted in The Demonstrator frequently criticize the law barring the entry of anarchists into the country, and John Turner's prosecution under it, on the basis that they are inconsistent with American freedoms and liberties. For instance, in an article originally appearing in the New York Post, the author writes that:

the first attempt at enforcing the anti-Anarchist act, passed after the assassination of President McKinley, is not only ridiculous, but alarming to all who hold to American ideals of personal liberty ... To proscribe him because he may have written or talked elsewhere against constituted authority may be legal; it certainly is repugnant to American ideals.897

In the same issue of the regular column “Worth Repeating,” which features (and, given its title, endorses) articles originally appearing in other papers, an article reprinted from

Truth Seeker argues that “[Turner's] arrest was an outrage, [and that] his deportation

[would] be a denial of the fundamental principles upon which this republic [the United

States] was founded.”898 Finally, in a later issue an article from The Independent argues that “it has been supposed that the American was born to a heritage of freedom of belief ... That the national government could proscribe any class of philosophical

897 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 18 November 1903. 898 Ibid. 227 opinions, however reprehensible in themselves, would not have been believed in this country a generation ago.”899

In advancing this line of thought, authors frequently make favourable references to the United States' founding documents and note the country's apparent uniqueness by comparing it to other states of which repressive laws ought be more expected. Writing shortly after Turner's arrest, Morton Jr. begins his front page article “The Turner Outrage” with a series of questions:

Does the government of the United States wish to render itself hated and loathed by every real American? Does it wish to give point and validity to the Anarchist claim that officialism inevitably begets tyranny? Is it ready to publish to the world its unqualified repudiation of all the principles of liberty and democracy contained in the Declaration of Independence? Has the bill of rights in the constitution of the United States lost all force?900

Here Morton Jr. suggests that “real Americans” are those whose dedication to liberty would mean opposing state-imposed limitations on speech and press, including the targeting of anarchists for their professed political views. The reference to the

Constitution was a common one among critics of the Immigration Act of 1903; in Free

Society, Americus observed that “Americans who remain faithful to the traditions of their forefathers … are loud in their protests … they realize that freedom of speech is basic; coming before constitutions, and are fighting the deportation act side by side with

Anarchists”901 and noted that “throughout the country journals [were] noticing the Turner affair, tho [sic] they but guardedly express a doubt of the constitutionality of the

899 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 13 January 1904. 900 Morton, Jr., “The Turner Outrage.” 901 Americus, “Parry and Thrust,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 8 November 1903. 228 procedure.”902 Morton Jr. raises the issue again in a later issue of the paper, advancing his argument in a manner rather inconsistent with anarchism's opposition to government in all its forms and instead seemingly accepting the notion that a government might be founded on liberty and freedom. He states that the Declaration of Independence establishes that

“the rights of the people come first. If the government cannot protect itself without infringing on these rights, it ceases to represent the people, and forfeits all claim to their allegiance. Its duty is then to abdicate, if its existence and the fundamental rights of the people cannot coexist.”903 Morton Jr. argues that this logic “remains irrefutable” but that

America's “latter-day imperialists hate or ignore that document.”904

In arguing that the deportation of John Turner was contrary to American principles, many papers (including both The Demonstrator's original and republished articles) made comparisons between the United States and other countries, suggesting that such repression of free speech and press might reasonably be expected elsewhere but should not be permissible in America. By far the most popular reference made was to

Russia, then under the rule of Tsar Nicholas II. At the time, writes Sarah Badcock,

“Russia was an autocracy in principle and in fact” and “Nicholas [II] adopted the popular myths of tsarism wholeheartedly in his attitudes towards autocratic power and his relationship with his subjects.”905 Anarchist historian Paul Avrich describes Nicholas II as

902 Americus, “Parry and Thrust,” Free Society (Chicago, IL), 6 December 1903. 903 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 13 January 1904. 904 Ibid. 905 Sarah Badcock, “Autocracy in Crisis: Nicholas the Last,” Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects, ed. Ian D. Thatcher (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005): 10, 12. For the many acts of violence perpetrated by his regime, Nicholas II is sometimes referred to as “Nicholas the Bloody.” 229

“thwarting all efforts by enlightened members of Russian society to reform the autocracy and alleviate social and economic distress, [driving] his opponents to seek redress in a frenzy of terrorism and violence” with widespread uprisings emerging later, in 1905.906

Articles in The Demonstrator frequently made comparisons between the American government's treatment of John Turner and the character of Nicholas II's rule. For instance, Morton Jr. refers to Turner's arrest as indicative of the United States “[choosing] to pattern after Russian tyranny”907 and argues that the enforcement of the anti-anarchist law against Turner “means the open imitation of Russian methods, and a long plunge backwards towards the horrors of the Dark Ages,” positioning the United States, at least up until its most recent incursions against free speech and press, as having been comparatively more 'forward-thinking.'908 Similarly, The Demonstrator included an article originally published in The Public which noted of the Turner case that “it is doubtful if even in Turkey, much less in Russia, the material for a story so significant of absolutism could be gathered,”909 and one from the Toronto, Ontario paper Secular

Thought which remarked:

And this is what 'American freedom' is coming to—that a great nation of nearly one hundred millions of 'free' men are afraid to allow a solitary Englishman to enter their country because he advocates liberty and cooperation for the common good! No wonder Mr. Turner wishes to get back to England. He had better stay there till congress is compelled to repeal its Russian restrictions on freedom.910

These discourses position the restriction of speech and press on the basis of one's beliefs

906 Paul Avrich, (Edinburgh: AK Press, 20015): 4. 907 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 November 1903. 908 James F. Morton, Jr., “Will It Stop Here?” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 December 1903. 909 The Public, “A Menace to Liberty,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 16 December 1903. 910 “Worth Repeating,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 23 December 1903. 230 as inherently tyrannical and, therefore, as more naturally at home in Tsarist Russia than in the democratic United States. In the words of the Springfield Republican, reproduced in

The Demonstrator:

Are aliens who ... 'disbelieve in government,' and who are guilty of nothing save an opinion, to be outlawed when they reach the shores of this republic? If so, then the United States has begun a reactionary warfare upon freedom of thought, which was supposed to be more secure in America than in any other part of the world.911

As this passage demonstrates clearly, the comparisons drawn in The Demonstrator between the United States and other countries accept the notion that the United States is rooted in freedom in a way that other states are not, and thus that the deportation of John

Turner by the United States government in fact violates the state's own founding principles and is particularly objectionable on this basis.

In constructing liberty as American and America as a site of freedom, The

Demonstrator seeks to rouse its readers to action in defense of freedom of speech and press, both for John Turner and more broadly. In doing so, they simultaneously downplay

Turner's anarchism and appeal to what David DeLeon refers to as an anarchistic tradition in American political thought. In asking what distinguishes American radicalism from other political traditions, such as “Scandinavian social democracy” or “Soviet communism,” DeLeon argues that unlike these, American “critiques of the existing order have been pervaded by suspicion, if not hostility, toward any centralized discipline. The essence of this heritage—which has been expressed in both individualist and communal

911 Springfield Republican, “The Right to Free Thought,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 30 December 1903. 231 forms—could be named 'antistatism,' 'libertarianism,' or more provocatively,

'anarchism.'”912 While acknowledging that few Americans identified with anarchism,

DeLeon rightly notes that “implicit anarchism … was another question” and that “forms of left libertarianism could be attractive to many Americans who feared the word anarchism.”913 DeLeon connects diverse, even conflicting radical traditions spanning the entirety of the political spectrum in arguing that “each contains an element of anarchism” though they do not all call for the complete elimination of the state; he argues that

American radicals:

from both the individualist right and the communal left have often counterposed society against the state, or even the individual against the structures of society. Some rebels have always gone beyond implicit resistance to institutional authority to explicit rejections of such authority. [American] radicals have concentrated on emancipation … rather than on planning any reconstruction … they generally presume that the freed spirit will require little or no guidance.914

In framing the deportation of John Turner as an instance of the violation or erosion of

American freedoms and calling upon readers of all political affiliations to come to

Turner's defence, The Demonstrator appeals to the very sentiments described by DeLeon, appealing to readers' hostility toward restrictions of liberty enacted and enforced by a strong centralized state and calling for broad participation in a struggle for freedoms of speech and press. In doing so, the paper's call for support for Turner, entitled

“Remember!” reminded readers that the case wasn't ultimately about John Turner himself, nor even about anarchism, but rather freedom as such; it read, in part: “Whether you

912 David DeLeon, The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978): 4. 913 Ibid., 89. 914 Ibid., 4 232 agree with Turner's opinions or not, help to rebuke the tyranny which would destroy free speech in America, and would inaugurate a system of persecution for opinion's sake. The liberties of all are involved in this.”915

The Demonstrator in Conversation: An Intertexual Struggle

In some ways, the discursive strategies employed by Morton Jr. through The

Demonstrator in support of John Turner's Supreme Court case are surprising for an anarchist paper – as previously discussed, the paper frequently emphasized the fact that

Turner did not advocate violent resistance as a reason to support his right to speak and write freely, thereby suggesting those anarchists who did argue in favour of the use of force might not merit the same defense, and asserted that the United States government, unique among states in its commitment to liberty, ought not infringe on freedom of speech and press; additionally, the paper frequently cited articles from other papers but very seldom were these sourced from anarchist publications. This approach was not without critics, with Charles Govan telling Joseph Labadie that he felt that Free Society was more popular among anarchists than The Demonstrator because Morton Jr., in editing the latter, did not pay enough attention to “the happenings in the movement;” Govan claims to have tried to convince Morton Jr. to change this approach without success, and characterizes

Morton Jr. as “a brilliant young man, but a very poor editor, indeed, from any standpoint.”916 The strategies employed in The Demonstrator make far more sense,

915 “Remember!” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 16 December 1903. This call also included the contact information of the treasurer of Turner's defence committee, Dr. E. B. Foote, and called for funds to be sent to him. It ran repeatedly in The Demonstrator from 16 December 1903 throughout Turner's case. 916 Charles Govan to Joseph Labadie, 17 September 1905, Joseph Antoine Labadie Papers, The Labadie 233 however, with attention to the paper's addressivity – the words its articles respond to and anticipate – and the intertextual relationships between The Demonstrator and other texts which also commented on John Turner's case. Norman Fairclough cites Kristeva, who argued that intertextuality “implies the insertion of history (society) into a text and of this text into history.”917 Fairclough further elaborates as follows:

the insertion of history into a text, in the sense that the text absorbs and is built out of texts from the past (texts being the major artefacts that constitute history); the insertion of the text into history, in the sense that the text responds to, reaccentuates, reworks past texts, and in so doing helps to make history and contributes to wider processes of change (also … anticipating and trying to shape subsequent texts).918

Such an analysis of The Demonstrator's coverage of the John Turner case means situating the paper within a wider nascent free speech movement which included members of a wide variety of political positions and which sought broad popular support for its causes rather than support within the anarchist movement in particular.

While the Turner case was ongoing and James F. Morton Jr. was editor of The

Demonstrator, his significant influence over the paper is readily apparent within its pages.

While other authors' names certainly appeared under original articles in the paper during this period, including Flora W. Fox,919 J. Allen Evans,920 C. L. Penhallow,921 Sadie

Collection, University of Michigan. 917 Julia Kristeva, “Word, Dialogue and Novel,” The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, trans. Alice Jardine, Thomas Gora, and Léon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986): 39. 918 Norman Fairclough, “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis,” Linguistics and Education 4, no. 3-4 (1992): 270. 919 “Flora W. Fox” was a pseudonym sometimes used by anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre. See Kathy Ferguson, “Emma Goldman's Women.” Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets Companion Website, http://www.politicalscience.hawaii.edu/emmagoldman/. 920 J. Allen Evans, “The Military at Cripple Creek Vs. The Labor Unions,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 18 November 1903. 921 Charles Penhallow also contributed to Discontent. 234

Magoon,922 C. L. James, Image Breaker,923 Olivia Freelove Shepard,924 Kinghorn-Jones,925 and several others, and the paper included some letters from readers as well as some regular sections with no author's name attached (such as the regular “Items of Interest” and “Home News” columns), Morton Jr.'s name appears below a remarkable percentage of the paper's original content. He consistently wrote both the “Demonstrative,” which regularly comprised a full page of the short paper, as well as the “Literature” review column, and frequently wrote other articles in the paper as well, several of which appear on the front page and/or span multiple columns. The majority of the remaining content of

The Demonstrator during this time was comprised of articles reprinted from other papers

(appearing above the name of the paper in which they originally appeared, generally without an individual author's name); thus, original contributions written by authors other than Morton Jr. actually accounted for very little of the paper. Though the majority of

The Demonstrator's content during this period was either written or selected by Morton

Jr.,926 it is important not to simply think of the paper as simply his own personal mouthpiece or as a cohesive, consistent representation of his own fully formed,

922 Sadie Magoon was a resident of Home, WA at this time, and she contributed to other anarchist papers as well. 923 Image Breaker was the pseudonym of James Beeson, who also contributed to Discontent (Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States, 48). 924 Ferguson writes of Shepard: “dress reformer, spiritualist, she worked with Benjamin Tucker to form the American Free Dress League and contributed to The Word” (Ferguson, “Emma Goldman's Women.”) 925 J. Alfred Kinghorn-Jones also contributed to Clothed With the Sun, Discontent, and Free Society (Longa, Anarchist Periodicals in English Published in the United States) 926 This did change very near the end of the Turner case – Morton Jr. announced that he would be departing in mid-May 1904 to go on a speaking tour (James F. Morton Jr., “Important Notice,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 4 May 1904. When he later announced that he was passing editorship to Jay Fox, he clarified that since his departure, his own writing hadn't been up to his standards and that “the task of editorial selection [had] fallen on the shoulders of the already overburdened printers.” (James F. Morton, Jr., “Valedictory,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 1 November 1905). 235 unchanging views. As intertextual studies of the author suggest, “the author shares a striking resemblance to that of the reader who borrows, adapts, appropriates, and transforms textual resources that come to him secondhand and stylized, already imbued with the utterances of others.”927 While The Demonstrator did not contain the same degree of internal debate between contributors as some other anarchist papers such as

Free Society did, it remains the case that, in Hartman's words, “the status of the intertextual author proclaims that while he is but one person, he is a plurality of others' social voices that dialogically speak through him.”928 Attention to the citational practices of The Demonstrator, as well as its relationship to free speech organizing more broadly and the politico-legal context in which it arose, demonstrates the ways in which the paper served as “a multidimensional space through which the utterances of others [spoke]” and through which a variety of texts merged into a philosophical anarchist defense of free speech not only for John Turner, but for those persecuted prior to him as well as for radicals to come.929

As previously mentioned, The Demonstrator's call for support for John Turner and for action in defense of free speech is consistently addressed to a broad audience; the paper does not particularly emphasize the importance of the issue for anarchists, but rather for everyone. Morton Jr. consistently characterizes free speech and press as “the cause which concerns us all”930 and calls for “the formation of a public sentiment which

927 Douglas K. Hartman, “Intertextuality and Reading: The Text, the Reader, the Author, and the Context,” Linguistics and Education 4, no. 3-4 (1992): 300. 928 Ibid., 301. 929 Ibid., 300. 930 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (11 November 1903). 236 will not merely prevent the consummation of [Turner's deportation], but will make such outrages impossible in future.”931 The paper's focus on free speech and press issues proceeds from the view that most people are not sufficiently committed to their defence and that a publication that serves to raise awareness and advocate action is needed. In this respect, anarchists were in a sense not the paper's target audience – as Morton Jr. noted in the paper's first issue, he did not assume that anarchists were uncommitted to or ill-informed on free speech issues; rather, he saw anarchist papers (as well as some single tax and freethought publications) as “[sounding] a true note on the subject” but wanted to establish a paper that treated the issue as its central focus.932 The frequent inclusion of articles from non-radical papers' coverage of the Turner case, as well as from other political periodicals that were not anarchist in orientation, serves to potentially enhance the appeal of the paper to a wider audience.

The paper's commitment to education stems directly from its professed position as representing philosophic anarchism. In describing the paper's position, Morton Jr. notes that as a philosophic anarchist paper, “its weapons are those of reason and education.”933

Although at times some of the strategies employed by the paper – the emphasis on

Turner's peacefulness as a reason to support his Supreme Court case, the appeals to

Americans' value of liberty and the state's founding, and the high proportion of articles excerpted from non-anarchist publications – and even the emphasis on freedom of speech itself, which effectively involved critiquing laws that proscribed speech and advocating

931 Morton, Jr., “The Turner Outrage.” 932 James F. Morton, Jr., “Freedom of Expression,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 11 March 1903. 933 James F. Morton, Jr., “Our Position,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 17 June 1903. 237 for those facing criminal charges, both of which are tactics that many anarchists problematize – might be read as obscuring or working against the paper's commitment to anarchism. On the contrary, however, the paper's philosophic anarchist position, free speech focus, and strategies of argumentation are all intimately related. Responding to criticisms of anarchism as inherently violent and deserving of suppression that were published in a socialist paper, The Vanguard, James F. Morton Jr. wrote:

The policy of The Demonstrator, in devoting its columns largely to the issue of free speech, as well as to the broader aspects of human solidarity, was not adopted in order to disguise its firm adhesion to the principles of philosophic Anarchy. On the contrary, it is our conviction that the true means of advancing those principles is to work along the lines of aspiration toward the highest individual and social ideals. The philosophic Anarchists … favor an entire reliance on educative, rather than revolutionary, methods. … They regard tyranny, like all other forms of crime, as having its root in ignorance; and, without malice toward the individual, they set themselves to dispel this ignorance.934

The Demonstrator's advocacy for free speech and press in the Turner case (and more generally) is thus putting into practice the philosophic anarchist ideal of freedom by seeking to educate the American reading public about threats posed to it, including the threat of the Immigration Act of 1903 as enforced against John Turner. For those producing The Demonstrator, freedom of speech was considered “the gateway to all other forms of freedom” and thus this cause, and the Turner case more specifically, was seen as meriting special attention.935

The paper addresses its heartfelt appeal for action in support of free speech to those who have not been politically active on the issue. Morton Jr. believed that those

934 James F. Morton, Jr., “Misrepresenters of Anarchy,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 20 May 1903. 935 Morton, Jr., “Our Position.” 238 who hadn't themselves been personally impacted by suppression of free speech were most in need of rousing to action, arguing that “those who allowed … previous wrongs [ie. the

Comstock prosecutions] to go on, simply because they happened to take no particular interest in the sex question” for instance, bear some blame for “the Turner outrage” because, had every encroachment on free speech been vigorously opposed all along, later cases would not have arisen.936 This addressivity certainly pertains to the paper's frequent inclusion of articles from more mainstream, non-radical papers (such as the New York

Post, the New York Daily News, and the New Bedford Evening Standard, for instance) as well as progressive but non-anarchist papers (such as the previously mentioned single-tax paper The Public and free-thought paper The Truth Seeker) within a self-described anarchist periodical – the bringing together of critical coverage from such a diverse array of papers in the pages of The Demonstrator manifested precisely the type of free speech defence the paper itself sought to foster: a politically diverse force capable of meeting any and all threats to freedoms of expression. While these excerpted articles are of course neither consistent with one another nor with Morton Jr.'s original articles in terms of political perspective or arguments – some included articles even include outright rejections of anarchism, for instance – they all argue for freedom of expression for John

Turner.

From the beginning, The Demonstrator pledged to open its pages to diverse perspectives and welcome the ideas of those with whom its producers disagreed; in doing so, the paper advocated for John Turner from a number of (sometimes conflictual, and

936 Morton, Jr., “Will it Stop Here?” 239 certainly not always strictly anarchist) perspectives, but it also concretely manifested its own professed commitment to free speech and press for all viewpoints. In doing so, The

Demonstrator did, as discussed, include articles from non-anarchist perspectives in support of free speech with which anarchists would certainly disagree (particularly the notion that the founding of a government could truly be based on freedom, or that a government could be expected to uphold the freedom of individuals and groups within it); at the same time, the paper also injected more radical arguments into the discussion of

Turner's case, pushing the nascent free speech movement to engage with anarchist ideas.

For instance, while many commentators criticized the law allowing for the deportation of anarchists as problematic, unconstitutional, unhelpful, or simply poor legislation passed in haste in the wake of the shock of the McKinley assassination, James F. Morton, Jr. consistently characterized Turner's arrest as simply the latest manifestation of a sustained assault on freedom of expression which constituted “an insidious conspiracy against free speech … [that had] already progressed far on the road of destroying freedom of expression.”937 Noting that the Turner case is not inherently “more infamous” than prior cases of free speech suppression, Morton Jr. argues that it rather “follows naturally from them, as one of the successive steps of the now undeniable conspiracy of an unscrupulous oligarchy to plant an imperial throne on the ruins of American freedom.”938 He spoke of the fight against this conspiracy in the language of war, calling on readers to “arouse the sentiment which would bring the would-be destroyers of freedom to their knees,” and

937 Morton Jr., “The Turner Outrage.” 938 Morton Jr., “Will It Stop Here?” 240 named the state as the enemy in the fight for free speech, arguing that the ordering of

John Turner's deportation constitutes “the open avowal of the purpose of the element in power to use their official position to oppress the people, and perpetuate their own rule.”939 Similarly, Morton Jr. also points out the significance of the Turner arrest being made under the auspices of the recently created Department of Commerce and Labor, arguing that the department approving the deportation of a trade unionist “is an excellent indication of the real motive for establishing [it]. It is simply a subtle scheme for invoking federal power to harass the labor movement” which will more seriously interfere with labour organizing going forward.940

By interspersing this analysis in among a host of other perspectives in the pages of

The Demonstrator, the paper made space within the free speech movement for distinctly anarchist critiques, calling for an end to the violation of free speech by the state while simultaneously critiquing the very state itself. This approach speaks directly to the paper's commitment to creating space for all viewpoints, no matter how divergent, and to education as the means to creating positive political change. As has been discussed, for

The Demonstrator free speech was the issue which needed attention and to which the paper dedicated itself; freedom of expression was also unique, for Morton Jr., in that it was the singular cause for which he thought a truly all-encompassing movement was both possible and necessary. He writes:

Of course, it is well meant, but impracticable, counsel which urges reformers of all schools to pool their issues. They simply cannot do it.

939 Morton Jr., “The Turner Outrage.” 940 James F. Morton, Jr., “Demonstrative,” The Demonstrator (Home, WA), 1 December 1903. 241

Their opinions are too hopelessly diverse, as to both ideals and tactics. ... The needs of men, and their gradually evolving intelligence, will impel them to test the most promising remedies, and to hold fast to that which ultimately secures the best results. Of course, this is a slow process; but it is the only sure one; and the office of propaganda is to cooperate with and expedite it, by stimulating the dormant intelligence of the people ... There is, however, one line along which reformers can, and ought to, unite, which does not involve pooling their issues, sacrificing their principles, abandoning their preferred line of tactics, or in the minutest degree enfeebling their own particular propaganda. The advantages of the alliance referred to are instantly obvious to any eye save the jaundiced orb of narrow partisan or sectarian fanaticism. It is not only practicable, but imperative, for the safety of all, to form a close union for defence of the right to free expression.941

The Demonstrator forges this close union within its very pages, appealing to less politically active readers to get involved, publicizing the Free Speech League and its need for financial support, acting as a venue through which freedom of expression for John

Turner could be advocated for from multiple perspectives simultaneously.

The Demonstrator, emerging from the anarchist community of Home and taking freedom of expression as its main issue of concern, consistently advocated for English anarchist John Turner during his Supreme Court challenge to the Immigration Act of

1903's exclusion of anarchists from the United States. Indeed, the paper itself was ultimately punctuated by the Turner case, with the first volume of the paper ending after fifty-two issues with the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the law and, with it, the deportation. Throughout this first volume the paper, including its coverage and commentary on the Turner case, is characterized by the strong presence of its editor,

James F. Morton, Jr. as well as its frequent inclusion of articles excerpted from a variety

941 Morton Jr., “Will It Stop Here?” 242 of other papers, many of which were not particularly radical publications. In some respects, the paper seems to diverge from its own self-professed philosophic anarchist standpoint, frequently including arguments against Turner's deportation that suggest that a reason Turner should be able to speak freely is because he doesn't advocate violence or that the United States government can be relied upon to uphold freedom of expression given its Constitution and its history. However, the inclusion of a diversity of perspectives and arguments in favour of free expression actually manifests the paper's philosophic anarchist viewpoint and its commitment to fostering a broad, inclusive mass movement for freedom of speech and press. By inserting anarchist arguments into ongoing conversations about free speech and advocacy work for Turner as well as amplifying others' arguments for free speech by republishing them, The Demonstrator creates the very movement it argues is so necessary – its pages constitute a space in which many voices coexist, all contributing to education and advocacy work around the John

Turner case and, more broadly, the future of freedom of expression in the United States. 243

Conclusion

I set off to the Labadie Collection in summer 2014 with a series of broad questions about the newspapers and other periodicals published by anarchists at the turn of the century in the United States. I soon discovered that all of my questions necessarily had multiple answers – the sheer number of papers (not to mention number of authors and editors involved in their production) and their diversity in content, format, perspective(s), editorial style, and function within broader radical organizing means that it is difficult to make overarching statements about the anarchist periodical press (other than that anarchists viewed it as centrally important to their political activity at the time). In immersing myself in these texts, however, I did come to the understanding that anarchist newspapers are not only important to understanding the anarchist movement of the period in which they were written, but that in addition they, as distinct from other texts written by anarchists during the same time period, offer a number of specific and valuable contributions to understanding anarchism's history.

One distinguishing feature of the anarchist periodical press is that it reveals the ways in which anarchists conceived of and discussed themselves, their positions, and their political work. Of course, the ways that anarchists thought of their own positions and movement were very different than the images painted of anarchists in the mainstream press of the time. As Hong notes, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

"anarchism received extensive and consistently bad press;" anarchists generally did not have access to popular press that vilified them and so these negative portrayals could 244 proliferate unchallenged therein.942 Anarchists' newspapers, however, offer a different view into the movement, one in which anarchists spoke for themselves. Further, unlike other accounts of the anarchist movement written by anarchists themselves, such as those found in memoirs like Goldman's Living My Life, written years after many of the events she describes occurred, or historical and biographical studies such as the work of Max

Nettlau, anarchist periodicals, many of which appeared frequently and with remarkable regularity, reveal their authors' most immediate views and analyses of events as they were occurring and offer insight into how these perspectives shifted over time and in response to new political developments.

The anarchist periodical press also offers a wealth of information on the ways that anarchists' approaches to publishing and editing reflected their political commitments.

While most anarchists' books do not delve deeply into the editing and publishing processes embarked upon by their authors, many anarchist periodicals go into tremendous detail about how and why their editorial decisions were made. The anarchist press was deeply reflexive – editors carefully considered their approaches to producing papers, and this consideration is revealed in the papers themselves. As I have discussed with reference to several papers, anarchist periodicals varied widely in this respect. While some papers were edited by a single individual, others consistently noted that they were edited and published by collectives. Some editors prized uniformity of perspective, exercising greater control over the arguments that appeared in their papers, whereas others preferred to leave the pages of their periodicals open to different perspectives and

942 Hong, "Constructing the Anarchist Beast in American Periodical Literature, 1880-1903," 112. 245 allowed for debates to develop therein. Some papers engaged with the mainstream press more than others, and some focused primarily on local or regional matters while others foregrounded international news. Not only did most editors explicitly address their own editorial approaches in their papers, sharing with their readers how the papers came to be and were produced, but the periodical press further reveals the degree to which editorial approaches were themselves contested – as I note with reference to debates about Most's editorship of Freiheit as well as conversation in Free Society about which styles of propaganda are most effective, different approaches to editing and publishing tended to reflect much deeper political differences amongst anarchists.

Finally, the anarchist periodical press is a particularly fruitful site for examining the intertextual relationships between the writings of anarchists as well as between their political discourses and other discourses, such as those of criminality, state and political violence, and law, into and against which they wrote. Anarchist periodicals addressed one another as well as other non-anarchist texts both explicitly – through translating, reviewing, and republishing other sources, citation, and directly addressing other authors

– and implicitly – through taking up language and terminology as they were used by others and alluding to others without naming them. While other anarchists texts, such as books, are also certainly intertextual as every utterance participates "in living heterglossia" and "cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads" and "to become an active participant in social dialogue,"943 the immediacy of the anarchist

943 Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, "From M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination," The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov, Ed. Pam Morris (London: Arnold Publishers, 2003): 75-6. 246 press, with some papers appearing as frequently as weekly, is particularly revealing of the debates and struggles that anarchists engaged in, how they responded to their ever- changing political landscape and how their arguments unfolded over time. While private correspondence is similarly a source of insight into anarchists' conversations about the issues they considered important, the number of interlocutors in letters is necessarily more limited than those involved in published papers that reached numerous readers.

Reading anarchists' periodicals as in conversation with one another reveals insight into the ways in which anarchists' analyses emerged out of not only their observation of, experience with, and critique of political and economic realities, but from lively conversation, including disagreement, amongst themselves about these realities and how best to work to change them for the better.

In its most canonical terms, the development of anarchist thought is often conceived of in terms of successions of individual authors (generally including Proudhon,

Bakunin, and Kropotkin, and a few others), who together constitute the development of traditions of anarchist political thought over time as earlier authors influenced later ones.

This canonical approach has been rightly criticized by many, and for a number of reasons, including its reduction of long, complex, diverse traditions to a few 'representative' thinkers as well as its Eurocentrism and its frequent exclusion of women; however,

Matthew S. Adams is right to point out that the relatively small presence of historical scholarship within contemporary anarchist studies has contributed to the continuing

"solidity of the canon" despite these critiques and ongoing attempts to approach 247 anarchism otherwise.944 I agree with Adams that our understandings of anarchism would be enriched by a greater emphasis on historical context and that, in his words,

"historically grounded writing on anarchism should be more sensitive to the social, cultural, and intellectual contexts in which these ideas grew, thinking ... about the particular problems to which anarchist writers were responding."945

It is my contention that the anarchist periodical press is a fruitful site to conduct such historical study. Not only have anarchist newspapers received little sustained attention, but most of the authors who contributed to them are wholly absent from canonical approaches to the history of anarchism. Intertextual approaches to anarchist periodical publishing allow for simultaneous attention to anarchists' writings, the generic forms through which they wrote them and their approaches to the publishing process, and the wider contexts into which they most immediately wrote. This approach draws attention to overlooked figures and thereby serves to decenter canonical approaches to anarchist history, and reveals the extent to which anarchism's emergence, theorization, and praxis was a collective effort at every step as its authors went to great lengths to keep papers alive, through which they responded directly to one another and to the changing political landscape they inhabited.

944 Matthew S. Adams, "The Possibilities of Anarchist History: Rethinking the Canon and Writing History," Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies no. 1 (2013): 51. 945 Ibid., 55. 248

Bibliography

Bibliographic Note The following list of resources cited within this dissertation have been separated into primary and secondary source lists. Primary sources include all texts, both published and unpublished, written during the time period of focus by those observing the events detailed herein first-hand. They thus include a diverse array of formats such as books, newspapers, pamphlets, and personal letters. Some of the citations for these sources include more contemporary dates; in these cases, the primary source has been (re)published, sometimes in a new translation, at the later date. In such cases in which a more recently written introduction or other contribution is the portion of the item cited, it is specified and listed as a secondary source. Secondary sources include all texts composed significantly outside the time period of focus by authors who were not present to observe the events which comprise the focus of this dissertation; these sources summarize, interpret, and analyze primary texts, or are themselves primary texts but of substantially later time periods, and are for the most part scholarly articles and books. In keeping with citation conventions, this bibliography lists the details of manuscript collections and periodicals but does not include a citation for each individual article, letter, or item of ephemera – this more detailed information can be found in the footnotes. For undated items, 'n.d.' is used in the bibliography to indicate 'no date'; if a date can be reasonably determined for an undated item, this is explained in the relevant footnote.

Primary Sources

Manuscript Collections

The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Agnes Inglis Papers, 1909-1952. Carl Nold Papers, 1883-1934. Emma Goldman Papers, 1909-1940. Ephemera (Subject Vertical Files). Henry Bool Correspondence, 1895-1921. Joseph Antoine Labadie Papers, 1880-1931. Max Metzkow Papers, 1881-1934. Single Manuscripts.

Newspapers and Magazines

Chicago Daily Tribune. Chicago, IL, 1847-. The Demonstrator. Home, WA, 1903-1908. Denver Post. Denver, CO, 1901-. Discontent. Home, WA, 1898-1902. 249

The Firebrand. Portland, OR, 1895-1897. The Free Comrade. Wellesley, MA, 1900-1902, 1910-1912. Free Society. San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, and New York, NY, 1897-1904. Gunton's Magazine. New York, NY, 1898-1904. Liberty. Boston, MA and New York, NY, 1881-1908. Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. Valley Falls, KS, Topeka, KS, and Chicago, IL, 1883-1907. Man! Oakland, CA, San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA, 1933-1940. Mother Earth. New York, NY, 1906-1917. New York Times. New York, NY, 1851-. New York World. New York, NY, 1860-1931. The Public. Chicago, IL and New York, NY, 1898-1919. The Rebel. Boston, MA, 1895-1896. Solidarity. New York, NY, 1892-1898. Winn's Firebrand. Mount Juliet, TN and Sweden, TX, 1902-1903, 1909-1910.

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Berkman, Alexander. “A Few Words as to My Deed.” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 79-89.

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–-. “From Alexander Berkman, Western Penitentiary, Allegheny City, Pa., 28 January 1904.” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909. Volume II. Edited by Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 132-134.

---. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. New York: New York Review of Books, 1999.

---. “Prisons and Crime: Punishment—Its Nature and Effects.” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 155- 163.

---. “The Sinking Ship: A Parable.” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 204-209.

Bliss, William D. P. and Rudolph M. Binder, eds. The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, Including All Social-Reform Movements and Activities, and the Economic, Industrial, and Sociological Facts and Statistics of All Countries and All Social Subjects. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1908.

Briggs, L. Vernon. The Manner of Man that Kills: Spencer—Czolgosz—Richeson. Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1921.

Burrows, J. C. “The Need of National Legislation Against Anarchism.” The North American Review 173, no. 541 (1901): 727-745.

Cafiero, Carlo. “Action (1880).” Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume I. Edited by Robert Graham. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005. 152-153.

Channing, Walter. “The Mental Status of Czolgosz, the Assassin of President McKinley.” American Journal of Insanity 59, no. 2 (1902): 233-278.

Ciancabilla, Giuseppe, and others. Fired by the Ideal: Italian-American Anarchist Responses to Czolgosz's Killing of McKinley. Edited by Mario Mapelli. Translated by Paul Sharkey. London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2002.

Crosby, Ernest. “How the United States Curtails Freedom of Thought.” The North American Review 178, no. 569 (1904): 605-616.

Everett, Marshall. Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination. United States: Published by The Author, 1901. 251

Free Speech League. The Imprisonment of John Turner: Free Speech and the New Alien Law. New York: Free Speech League, 1903.

Fox, Jay. Roosevelt, Czolgosz and Anarchy and Henry Addis. Communism. New York: The New York Anarchists, n. d.

Garner, James Wilford. “Record of Political Events.” Political Science Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1904): 331- 368.

Goldman, Emma. “Johann Most.” American Mercury, June 1926, 158-166.

---. Living My Life. New York: Dover Publications, 1970.

---. “To Der Anarchist.” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Made for America, 1890-1901. Edited by Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 119-121.

Kropotkin, Peter. “From Peter Kropotkin, Cambridge, England, 16 December 1903.” Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909. Volume II. Edited by Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 127-128.

---. In Russian and French Prisons. London: Ward and Downey, 1887. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/prisons/toc.html

Landauer, Gustav. “Anarchic Thoughts on Anarchism.” Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader. Edited and Translated by Gabriel Kuhn. Oakland: PM Press, 2010. 84-91.

Lang, Lucy Robins. Tomorrow is Beautiful. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Lee, O. Ivan. “Memorial of James F. Morton.” American Mineralogist 27, no. 3 (1942): 200-202.

MacDonald, Carlos F. “The Trial, Execution, Autopsy and Mental Status of Leon F. Czolgosz, Alias Fred Nieman, the Assassin of President McKinley.” The Journal of Mental Pathology 1, nos. 4-5 (1901-1902): 179-194.

Masters, Edgar Lee. Across Spoon River: An Autobiography. New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1936.

Minkin, Helene. Storm in My Heart: Memories from the Widow of Johann Most. Edited by Tom Goyens. Translated by Alisa Braun. Oakland: AK Press, 2015. 252

Morton Jr., James F. Do You Want Free Speech? Home: James F. Morton Jr., 1903.

Nold, Carl. “A Morning Conversation Between Dutch and Mike (Two Prisoners).” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 147-148.

---. “Dialogue Between Two Prisoners.”Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 145-146.

Nold, Carl and Henry Bauer. “The Red Bugbear.” Prison Blossoms: Anarchist Voices from the American Past. Edited by Miriam Brody and Bonnie Buettner. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 90-95.

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