CHAPTER XV.
A description of Herr Most’s sanctum. A den where anarchy was begotten. The anarchist chief’s museum of weapons and infernal machines. Easy lessons in the art of assassination.
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1887.
Since Johann Most’s release I had often resolved to visit his editorial sanctum and see some of his surroundings, but I never had the opportunity until a few days ago, when I sought William street and paused a moment before 167. This is the place where undiluted anarchy presents itself through the medium of the Freiheit, which has succeeded so well that it has been enlarged to double its former size. On the ground floor a lager-beer saloon is doing a thriving business, and the old saying that Teutonic journalism always manifests an inclination to take up its abode in proximity to a place where honors are paid to King Gambrinus is borne out in this instance, even when the journalists wage war on all other monarchs.
Entering the hallway you will notice, as soon as your eyes are able to penetrate the darkness, a large red banner on the wall bearing the inscription, “Vive la Commune.” A cast-iron letter-box, marked “John Most,” attracts one’s attention for a moment, and then we ascend two flights of narrow, creaky stairs, and step into a large, dilapidated room, extending over the entire top floor of the building. Here the Freiheit is written, put into type, and, after being printed elsewhere, mailed to subscribers. There is hardly a country on the globe which has not the honor of giving shelter to some anarchist subscriber. A perfect deluge of revolutionary pamphlets issues from this forlorn-looking loft.
About a dozen men were engaged in folding and wrapping the latest number of the Freiheit. In order to keep up their spirits at this hard work a goodly quantity of the favorite German beverage is consumed, cigars and short pipes emit big clouds of smoke, and a noisy debate is carried on all the time. Every one of these savage-looking specimens of humanity strives to assume an air that suggests his merely waiting for a favorable opportunity to slaughter all monarchs and capitalists on the face of the earth. There are Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Bohemians, and a Dane in the group. Regular employment is a notion too conservative and utterly foreign to their minds. They are here folding papers to serve the revolutionary cause, and receive no other recompense than the consciousness of having performed their duty.