Contrary to the general impression of the character of these people, in which bombs play a large part, the Anarchists of the Ghetto are a gentle and idealistic body of men. The abnormal activity of the Russian Jews in this country is expressed by the Socialists rather than the Anarchists. The latter are largely theorists and aim rather at the education of the people by a journalistic exploitation of their general principles than by a warlike attitude towards specific events of the time. Their attitude is not so partisan as that of the Socialists. They quarrel less among themselves, and are characterized by dreamy eyes and an unpractical scheme of things. They believe in non-resistance and the power of abstract right, and are trying to work out a peaceful revolution, maintaining that the violence often accompanying the movement in Europe is due to the fact that many Anarchists are passionate individuals who in their indignation do not live up to their essentially gentle principles. The Socialists aim at a more strictly centralized government, even than any one existing, since they desire the whole machinery of production and distribution to be in the hands of the community; the Anarchists desire no government whatever, believing that law works against the native dignity of the individual, and trusting to man's natural goodness to maintain order under free conditions. A man's own conscience only can punish him sufficiently, they think. The Socialists go in vividly for politics, while the Anarchists have nothing to do with them. The point on which these two parties agree is the common hatred of private property.
S. JANOWSKY
The weekly Anarchistic paper, the Freie Arbeiter-stimme, prints about 7,000 copies. Out of this circulation, with the assistance of balls, entertainments, and benefits at the theatres, the paper is able to exist. It pays a salary to only one man, the editor, S. Janowsky, who receives the sum of $13 a week. He is a little dark-haired man, with beautiful eyes, and soft, persuasive voice. He thinks that government is so corrupt that the Anarchists need do little to achieve their ends; that silent forces are at work which will bring about the great day of Anarchistic communism. In his newspaper he tries to educate the common people in the principles of anarchy. The aim is popular, and the more intelligent exploitation of the cause is left to the monthly. The Freigesellschaft, with the same principles as the Freie Arbeiter-stimme, has a higher literary and philosophical character. The editors and contributors are men of culture and education, and work without any pay. It is still gentler and more pacific in its character than the weekly, of whose comparatively contemporaneous and agitatory method it disapproves calmly; believing, as the editors of the monthly do, that a weekly paper cannot exist without giving the people something other than the ideally best. With reference to the ideally best, a number of serious, contemplative men gather in a basement opposite the Hebrew Institute, the headquarters of the monthly, and there talk about the subjects often discussed within its pages, such as Slavery and Freedom, Darwinism and Communism, Man and Government, the Purpose of Education, etc.,—any broad economic subject admitting of abstract treatment.
KATZ
The talk of these Anarchists is distinguished by a high idealism, and the unpractical and devoted attitude. One of the foremost among them (they say they have no leaders, as that would be against individual liberty) is Katz, literary editor of the Vorwärts, a contributor to the Anarchistic monthly, a former editor of the Anarchistic weekly, and a recently successful playwright in the Ghetto. His play, the Yiddish Don Quixote, was produced at the Thalia Theatre on the Bowery. Not since Gordin's Siberia has a play aroused such intelligent interest. The hero is a Quixotic Jew, full of kindness, devotion, and love for his race and for humankind.
SOME PICTURESQUE CONTRIBUTORS
There are many other picturesque and interesting men connected with these Yiddish journals, either as editors or contributors. Morris Rosenfeld, the sweat-shop poet, writes articles and occasionally poems for the Socialistic papers; Abraham Wald, the vigorous and stormy young poet, contributes literary and Socialistic articles three times a week to Vorwärts; the editor of one of the conservative papers, distinguished for his logic and his clever business management, is interesting because of the facility with which he adapts his principles to the commercial needs of the moment. At one time he was a Socialist, then became a Christian, then a Jew again simply, and now is a conservative Jew. Another editor remarked that he was a man of sense and logic. One of the Jews who writes for the Ghetto papers is A. Frumkin, who has the rare distinction of having been born and educated in Jerusalem. There he lived until he was eighteen, when he went to Constantinople and studied Turkish law; afterwards he journeyed to Paris, where he married, and then to New York, where he writes many articles in Yiddish about Jerusalem and Palestine, which are published largely in the Vorwärts. He is a young man of about thirty, with a fresh, rosy look and a buoyant manner. He is an Anarchist, and his energetic bearing is in strong contrast to the pale cast of thought that marks his fellows, the intellectuals among the Anarchists of New York. Other occasional or constant writers are the Hebrew poet Dolitzki, who is characterized in another chapter; and the poets Morris Winchevsky and Abraham Sharkansky.
