On March 29, 1883, the carpenters' union of Paris called the unemployed to a meeting to be held on the Esplanade des Invalides. Two groups of anarchists formed. One started toward the Élysée and was scattered on its way by the police. The second went toward the suburb of Saint-Antoine. On the march many bakeries were robbed by the manifestants. Arrived at Place Maubert, they clashed with a large force of police. As a result, many arrests were made. Accused of inciting to pillage, Louise Michel and Émile Pouget were condemned to several years' imprisonment. The same month, at Monceau-les-Mines and in Paris, great demonstrations of the "unemployed" took place in the streets, combined with robbery and dynamite outrages, while in July there were sanguinary encounters with the armed forces in Roubaix and elsewhere. Again and again the populace was incited to rise against the bourgeoisie, "who (it was said) were indulging in festivities while they had condemned Louise Michel, the champion of the proletariat, to a cruel imprisonment." [(15)]
These are but a few instances of the activity of the anarchists at the end of the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties. They are perhaps sufficient to show that the Propaganda of the Deed was making headway in Western Europe. Certainly in Germany and Austria its course was soon run, but in France, Italy, Spain, and even in Belgium every strike was attended with violence. Insurrections, dynamite outrages, assassinations—all played their part. At the same time the governments carried on a ferocious persecution, and the chief anarchists were driven from place to place and hunted as wild animals. Police spies and agents provocateurs swarmed over the labor, socialist, and anarchist movements, and at the slightest sign of an uprising the soldiers were brought out to shoot down the people. Hardly a month went by without some "anarchist trouble," and many harmless strikes resulted in dreadful massacres. It was a tragic period, that reminds one again of the picture in Dante in which the two bitter enemies inflict upon each other cruel wounds in a fight that on both sides was inspired by the deepest hatred.
CHAPTER IV
JOHANN MOST IN AMERICA
While the above events were transpiring in the Latin countries, the Bakouninists were keeping a sharp eye on America as a land of hopeful possibilities. As early as 1874 Bakounin himself considered the matter of coming here, while Kropotkin and Guillaume followed with interest the labor disturbances that were at that time so numerous and so violent in this country. The panic of 1873 had caused widespread suffering among the working classes. For several years afterward hordes of unemployed tramped the country. The masses were driven to desperation and, in their hunger, to frequent outbreaks of violence. When later a measure of prosperity returned, both the trade-union and the socialist movements began to attract multitudes of the discontented. The news of two important events in the labor world of America reached the anarchists of the Jura and filled them, Guillaume says, "with a lively emotion." In June, 1877, Kropotkin called attention to the act of the Supreme Court of the United States in declaring unconstitutional the eight-hour law on Government work. He was especially pleased with an article in the Labor Standard of New York, which declared: "This will teach the workers not to put their confidence in Congress and to trust only in their own efforts. No law of Congress could be of any use to the worker if he is not so organized that he can enforce it. And, if the workers are strong enough to do that, if they succeed in solidly forming the federation of their trade organizations, then they will be able, not only to force the legislators to make efficacious laws on the hours of work, on inspection, etc., but they will also be able to make the law themselves, deciding that henceforth no worker in the country shall work more than eight hours a day." "It is the good, practical sense of an American which says that," [(1)] comments Kropotkin. This act of the Supreme Court and this statement of the Labor Standard were very welcome news to the anarchists. They were convinced that the Americans had abandoned political action and were turning to what they had already begun to call "direct action."
Another event, a month later, added to this conviction. In its issue of July 29 the Bulletin published this article: "'Following a strike of the machinists of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a popular insurrection has burst forth in the states of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If at Martinsburg (West Virginia) the workmen have been conquered by the militia, at Baltimore (Maryland), a city of 300,000 inhabitants, they have been victorious. They have taken possession of the station and have burned it, together with all the wagons of petroleum which were there. At Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a city of 100,000 inhabitants, the workers are at the present time masters of the city, after having seized guns and cannon.... The strike is extending to the near-by railroads and is gaining in the direction of the Pacific. Great agitation reigns in New York. It is announced that the troops will concentrate, that Sheridan has been named commander, and that the Western States have offered their help.' In the following number, a detailed article, written by Kropotkin, recounted the dénouement of the crisis, the recovery of Pittsburgh, where two thousand wagons loaded with merchandise had been burned, the repression and the disarray of the strikers following the treachery of the miserable false brothers, and the final miscarriage of the movement. But if there had been, in this attempt of popular insurrection, weak sides that had brought about the failure, Kropotkin rightly praised the qualities of which the American working people had just given proof: 'This movement will have certainly impressed profoundly the proletariat of Europe and excited its admiration. Its spontaneity, its simultaneousness at so many distant points communicating only by telegraph, the aid given by the workers of different trades, the resolute character of the uprising from the beginning, call forth all our sympathies, excite our admiration, and awaken our hopes.... But the blood of our brothers of America shall not have flowed in vain. Their energy, their union in action, their courage will serve as an example to the proletariat of Europe. But would that this flowing of noble blood prove once again the blindness of those who amuse the people with the plaything of parliamentarism when the powder magazine is ready to take fire, unknown to them, at the fall of the least spark.'" [(2)]
The news of industrial troubles, such as the above, convinced the anarchist elements of Europe that America was ripe for direct action and the revolution. And it was indeed this period of profound industrial unrest that gave a forward impulse to all radical movements in the late seventies. Socialist newspapers sprang up in all parts of the country, and both socialist and trade-union organizations took on an immense development. Riots, minor insurrections, and strikes were symptoms of an all-pervading discontent. Simultaneously with this, many revolutionists, upon being expelled from Germany, were injected into the ferment. With many other refugees, the Germans then began to form revolutionary clubs, and, in 1882, Johann Most appeared in the United States scattering broadcast the terrorist ideas of Bakounin and Nechayeff.
Most was perhaps the most fiery personality that appeared in the ranks of the anarchists after the death of Bakounin. A cruel stepmother, a pitiless employer, a long sickness, and an operation which left his face deformed forever are some of the incidents of his unhappy childhood. He received a poor education, but read extensively, and as a bookbinder worked at his trade in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. He became attached to the labor movement toward the end of the sixties, and was elected to the German Reichstag in 1874. Forced to leave Germany as a result of the anti-socialist law, he went to London, where he established Die Freiheit, at first a social-democratic paper, which was smuggled into Germany. He became, however, more and more violent, and in 1880, at a secret gathering of the German socialists at Wyden in Switzerland, he and his friend Hasselmann were expelled from the Germany party. After this he no longer attempted to conceal his anarchist sympathies, and in the Freiheit, on the platform, and on every possible occasion he preached principles almost identical with those of Nechayeff and Bakounin. In a pamphlet on the scientific art of revolutionary warfare and of dynamiters he prescribes in detail where bombs should be placed in churches, palaces, and ball-rooms.[I] He advises wholly individual action, in order that the groups may suffer as little harm as possible. His pamphlet also contains a dictionary of poisons which may be usefully employed against politicians, traitors, and spies. "Extirpate the miserable brood!" he writes in Die Freiheit; "extirpate the wretches! Thus runs the refrain of a revolutionary song of the working classes, and this will be the exclamation of the executive of a victorious proletariat army when the battle has been won. For at the critical moment the executioner's block must ever be before the eyes of the revolutionist. Either he is cutting off the heads of his enemies or his own is being cut off. Science gives us means which make it possible to accomplish the wholesale destruction of these beasts quietly and deliberately." Elsewhere he says, "Those of the reptile brood who are not put to the sword remain as a thorn in the flesh of the new society; hence it would be both foolish and criminal not to annihilate utterly this race of parasites." [(3)]
