OVERAWING THE VISITORS.
One of the heroes, who evidently desires to overawe us, takes a small quantity of gun cotton out of his pocket, another produces a sample of dynamite, and each asserts that the stuff he carries is an excellent agent to further the grand idea of universal anarchy. All join in a dispute concerning the most effective methods for blowing up public institutions, and the folding business is meanwhile neglected. The anarchist chief, Herr Most, has been conversing with a good-looking young female anarchist, who came over for the purpose of paying her respects to the great dynamiter; but now his attention is directed to his hot-headed disciples.
“Get through your work,” he shouts; “you may babble all you want afterward.”
The admonition is heeded only for a few moments. The folders have a theme demanding urgent action. The sentence of the Chicago anarchists has excited the wrath and of every anarchist and frenzied cries of threatened vengeance burst forth from all sides. Herr Most again commands silence, and his announcement that a mass-meeting would be held on Sunday, at which both English and German speakers would be present, is hailed with tumultuous applause. The presence of strangers seems to be totally ignored for the moment. The anarchists fully understand that they are at liberty here to run the revolutionary machine at their own sweet pleasure, so long as the struggle is confined to the tongue. I conclude to invest 5 cents, and a copy of the Freiheit is handed to me. The editor reflects upon the propriety of a national thanksgiving. His language is not choice, but rather painfully harsh. Here is a goodly specimen:
“Our army of the unemployed, probably, will give thanks that the capitalists are so very prosperous. Poor, haggard women will give thanks over their weak tea and dry baker’s bread that they have been allowed to lay up wealth for their employers. Factory children, who never see anything but the grim shop walls by daylight, will give thanks that they have been brought into this beautiful world, and hard-working day laborers lucky enough to have any kind of a job will give thanks that the cormorants of society have not taken the last mouthful away from them.”
Another article deals with the anti-Chinese movement on the Pacific coast, and urges the white working men to expel every greedy monopolist instead of persecuting the poor celestial.