By 1914 the membership of the circle was nearly 600. A cosmopolitan lot: Italians, Russians, Russian Jews, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards and Americans, of both sexes. The leaders were agitators whose speaking ability had lifted them out of the ranks and who found an easier living by their wits than by their hands. The Bomb Squad knew something of their activities and habits, for the past history of anarchist cases linked up certain names in a pointed way. We knew their fondness for bombs, and the records of the police department contain many instances of anarchists inspired to violence by the inflammatory speeches of such agitators, as their idol, Francisco Ferrer, had preached violence in Spain. The outbreak of war in Europe, from which so many of the group had migrated to America, and the promise of social confusion which it held for them had stirred the Brescia Circle more than a little. The active members met regularly in the basement of a building at 301 East 106th Street, a shabby house in a shabby district east of the New York Central tracks. These meetings, which occurred usually on a Sunday, as many of the members were working during the week, were addressed by such notorious anarchists as Emma Goldman, Becky Edelson, Frank Mandese, Carlo Tresca and Pietro Allegra--names probably unfamiliar to the general public, but names with which the Police Department had “auld acquaintance.” Occasionally an editor of an anarchist newspaper in Lynn, Massachusetts, Gagliani by name, came to speak in the cellar, and Plunkett, Harry Kelly, and Alexander Berkman were usually to be found in the group. The winter of 1913–1914 was one of industrial depression. Many of the radical labor element rallied to the I. W. W. and the unemployed readily joined them. The methods of the anarchists and I. W. W.’s were similar, and the advocates of unrest were enlisted under both standards. In the late winter demonstrations began and multiplied until in March a youth named Frank Tannenbaum, to whom Emma Goldman later took a fancy, led a mob of I. W. W.’s into St. Alphonsus’ Church demanding food. The police waited until they had passed inside, then locked the doors, and arrested the whole lot. This was but one instance of a number which promised more trouble. Whatever nice distinctions of creed separated the Industrial Workers from the anarchists were paper distinctions; the performances of both bodies made it fairly plain that if you scratched an anarchist you found an I. W. W. underneath.