The “Arbeiter Bildungs-Verein” of the North Side held a meeting December 3d, and adopted the following: A presentation of Christmas presents and a lottery for the children of the Sunday school will be held at 58 Clybourn Avenue on Christmas day. Every one is invited who has an interest in taking from the clergy the power over our little ones, and who will help us to educate our children to become useful persons—also parents, their friends and business people who are willing to contribute a small sum of money for the benefit of this noble cause. Leave your contributions for the presentation of Christmas presents or for the dressing of the Christmas tree for the dear little ones until Saturday, December 22, with the committee, No. 58 Clybourn Avenue.
Receipts for presents will be published in the Arbeiter-Zeitung.
Arbeiter Bildungs-Verein.
Dr. E. G. Kleinoldt, who lives at 591 Sedgwick Street, is one of the chief teachers. He is an enthusiast in instructing innocent children that there is no God and no hereafter. He tells his small charges that priests, and ministers alike are swindlers, and there are in this city fathers who bring their children to the rear of a beer saloon on Sundays to be taught such doctrine by a drunkard.
On Saturday night, December 1, 1888, a dance was in progress in Yondorf’s Hall. Officer Lorch, of my command, called in to see what kind of a gathering it was. Entering the hall, he saw Kleinoldt with three young men, talking very busily. The officer approached near enough to hear that Kleinoldt was talking about dynamite, and finally heard him tell the young men how to make bombs, explaining the process in the same manner as Engel had done. He also suggested that if his hearers would make bombs and put them under “the leafers of policemen,” it would make the “bloodhounds” jump. The officer approached Kleinoldt and said:
“This is not an Anarchist meeting. Stop your talk, or I will put you out.”
Kleinoldt made some insulting remarks, and the officer took him by the back of the neck and pushed him out of the hall. This was the last of him there for that night, but the young men he had been talking to were not Anarchists. One of the three followed him out on the sidewalk and there met a friend whom he told what Kleinoldt had advised. The newcomer, who happened to carry a large turkey, was a little under the influence of liquor himself, but was sober enough to oppose Anarchy. He followed Kleinoldt, struck him with the turkey, knocked him down and broke his eye-glasses, apparently for the purpose of demonstrating to the worthy pedagogue that all people who drink too much beer are not necessarily Anarchists.
This man Kleinoldt was interviewed a short time ago by a reporter of the Chicago Herald. While other Anarchist pedagogues are loth to communicate their plans and doings, Kleinoldt talked readily, and what he said seems to me sufficiently interesting to repeat here.
“We do not teach Socialism or Anarchism in our Sunday-schools, and the newspapers do us an injustice when they say so,” said Dr. Kleinoldt. “The object of our Sunday schools is to keep the children away from the influence of the Jesuits, who teach the Bible, religious songs, and church doctrine, subjects that are very distasteful to us who are Socialists. I was one of the prime movers in the project to organize schools to be held on Sundays all over the city, which shall be open to children of all parents who are opposed to the hurtful influences of church instruction. While it is possibly true that most of those in attendance are the offspring of Socialists and Anarchists, still it is by no means restricted to them, for in one school, at 58 Clybourn Avenue, as well as others, you will find those whose fathers have no sympathy with our advanced ideas on sociology.”
“What do you teach at these schools?” asked the reporter.