Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and PatriotEverett, Marshall
History
Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and Patriot
All these leaders and many other theorists, German philosophers,
Englishmen and Americans as well, have published books showing why they
believe anarchy to be the ideal condition of the human race. None of
them believes it possible. It is only the less brilliant followers who
attempt to carry out their teachings and thus bring bloodshed. How this
is done the psychologists, the students of criminology explain.
“Anarchism is a pathological phenomenon,” says Cæsar Lombroso, the
Italian criminologist. “Unhealthy and criminal persons adopt anarchism.
In every city, in nearly every factory, there are men with active minds
but little education. These men stand, day after day, before a machine
handling a tool, doing some mechanical action. Their minds must work.
They have little to work upon. They are starved for proper food and air
and for the mental food which is necessary to a proper understanding of
society and of the duties of men. Into the hands of these fall the
writings of the anarchists with subtly-worded arguments. Conditions
which are apparent everywhere are shown forth, the evils of the city and
of industrial conditions are set forth plainly, so that the reader gets
an idea that the writer is truthful and impartial. Then the writer sets
forth how anarchism can remedy these things. Later on comes the
suggestion of violence. Then ‘strike down the rulers.’
“The workman may not be moved in the least by the first perusal. He may
even be amused. But later, little by little, as he stands at his work,
they come back to him, and he broods over them again and again until
they become part of his mind and his belief, and sooner or later he
becomes a violent anarchist. For such men Johann Most and his followers
form little groups which can hold secret meetings, and through them
deeds of violence are plotted and accomplished.”
In connection with the philosophy of anarchy, it may be interesting to
examine the causes which various leaders in the movement have given for
espousing the doctrine. August Spies, one of the men executed in Chicago
for complicity in the Haymarket conspiracy, replied, when asked what
made him an anarchist:
“I became an anarchist on that very day that a policeman seized me by
the collar and flung me from a sidewalk into the gutter.”
“Probably,” wrote this questioner, “the whole history of anarchy could
be traced to these petty causes. The sore develops violent action in the
uncouth; the finer and thriftier spirits are moved to ventilate their
wrongs in print.”
There is a suggestion in the point which has been voiced by anarchists
everywhere. When Emma Goldman was arrested she complained bitterly that
it was the police department of Chicago rather than her teachings which
was making anarchists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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