The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in ChicagoMcLean, George N.
History
The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in Chicago
McLean, George N.
Anarchists -- United States; Haymarket Square Riot, Chicago, Ill., 1886
BIOGRAPHY OF HERR MOST. HIS PAST CAREER AND EARLY TRAINING.
HIS IMPRISONMENT IN THE BASTILLE AND RED TOWER FOR PREACHING
HIS GOSPEL OF BLOOD. EXTRACTS FROM HIS INFLAMMATORY
UTTERANCES. WHET YOUR DAGGERS. LET EVERY PRINCE FIND A BRUTUS
BY HIS THRONE.
THE PAST CAREER OF HERR MOST.
That practice has now become obsolete of predicting the future of a
child by consulting the aspect of the planet under which it was born at
the day and hour of birth. At the advent of Herr Most upon this mundane
sphere, who, looking through the horroscope of his future, but could in
the interests of humanity, have wished that the feeble spark of life in
the frail tenement might have become extinguished, or that it had never
existed.
In the city of Augsburg on the River Lech, which is a tributary of the
blue rolling Danube in Bavaria in Germany, in the year 1846, and on the
5th day of February Herr Most first saw the light of day. A long period
of sickness while yet an infant served to render his features hideous
by some malignant disease eating away a portion of his cheek, but his
record goes to prove conclusively that he still retained enough to
render himself obnoxious to every lover of law and order.
Endowed by nature with proclivities to resist all rule and law,
gained from an unloving stepmother much harsh treatment. He became
apprenticed to a book-binder when a mere lad, and the cruel treatment
received at the hands of his employer failed to change the bent of his
inclinations. He had a passion for the stage which he gratified by
striking an attitude and reciting in tragic style with dramatic effect
any occurrence which attracted his attention to the infinite amusement
of boys, and pedestrians on the street would stop to listen to his
native eloquence and behold his crude dramatic gestures. We find him
in Switzerland in 1867, endeavoring to establish anarchy with a zeal
worthy of a better cause. We next find him in Vienna where in one of
his scathing speeches he characterized Liberalism as a swindle; the
priests as deceivers. For this speech he received a jail sentence of
four weeks. Shortly after his release, he was again sentenced to five
years' imprisonment for high treason. However, after having served six
months of the term, through some ministerial change, he was released.
A half an hour later he was again on the platform firing hot shot
and shell into the ranks of the government with all the force of his
burning invective. His ability to sway the masses alarmed the new
government, and they took measures to have him banished. He went to
Chemnitz where he became popular as an agitator, and successful in
establishing his doctrine of anarchy as the gospel of blood, for which
he was incarcerated temporarily in the red tower, a very unpopular
jail. September 3, 1872, while returning from Mayence, where he had
attended a socialistic congress, he was again arrested, and a few
days later was sentenced to eight months in prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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