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- Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906, by Various
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
- with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
- Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906
- Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
- Author: Various
- Editor: Emma Goldman
- Release Date: November 1, 2008 [EBook #27118]
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER EARTH, APRIL 1906 ***
- Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online
- Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
- +-------------------------------------------------+
- |Transcriber's note: |
- | |
- |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected |
- +-------------------------------------------------+
- MOTHER EARTH
- [Illustration]
- P. O. Box 217 EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher 10c. a Copy
- Madison Sq. Station, N. Y. Office: 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK CITY
- CONTENTS.
- PAGE
- "To the Generation Knocking at the Door" JOHN DAVIDSON 1
- Observations and Comments 2
- The Child and Its Enemies EMMA GOLDMAN 7
- Hope and Fear L. I. PERETZ 14
- John Most M. B. 17
- Civilization in Africa 21
- Our Purpose MARY HANSEN 22
- Marriage and the Home JOHN R. CORYELL 23
- The Modern Newspaper 31
- A Visit to Sing Sing 32
- The Old and the New Drama MAX BAGINSKI 36
- A Sentimental Journey.--Police Protection 43
- The Moral Demand OTTO ERICH HARTLEBEN 46
- Advertisements 62
- 10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR
- MOTHER EARTH
- Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
- Published Every 15th of the Month
- EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station,
- New York, N. Y.
- Vol. I APRIL, 1906 No. 2
- "TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR."
- By JOHN DAVIDSON.
- _Break--break it open; let the knocker rust;
- Consider no "shalt not," nor no man's "must";
- And, being entered, promptly take the lead,
- Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;
- Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;
- Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream;
- Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;
- High hearts and you are destiny enough.
- The mystery and the power enshrined in you
- Are old as time and as the moment new;
- And none but you can tell what part you play,
- Nor can you tell until you make assay,
- For this alone, this always, will succeed,
- The miracle and magic of the deed._
- [Illustration]
- OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
- Whoever severs himself from Mother Earth and her flowing sources of life
- goes into exile. A vast part of civilization has ceased to feel the deep
- relation with our mother. How they hasten and fall over one another, the
- many thousands of the great cities; how they swallow their food,
- everlastingly counting the minutes with cold hard faces; how they dwell
- packed together, close to one another, above and beneath, in dark gloomy
- stuffed holes, with dull hearts and insensitive heads, from the lack of
- space and air! Economic necessity causes such hateful pressure. Economic
- necessity? Why not economic stupidity? This seems a more appropriate
- name for it. Were it not for lack of understanding and knowledge, the
- necessity of escaping from the agony of an endless search for profit
- would make itself felt more keenly.
- Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large,
- luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in
- the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the
- poisonous air? Neither unconquerable external nor internal necessity
- forces the human race to such life; that which keeps it in such
- condition are ignorance and indifference.
- [Illustration]
- Since Turgenieff wrote his "Fathers and Sons" and the "New Generation,"
- the appearance of the Revolutionary army in Russia has changed features.
- At that time only the intellectuals and college youths, a small coterie
- of idealists, who knew no distinction between class and caste, took part
- in the tremendous work of reconstruction. The revolutionist of those
- days had delicate white hands, lots of learning, æstheticism and a good
- portion of nervousness. He attempted to go among the people, but the
- people understood him not, for he did not speak the people's tongue. It
- was a great effort for most of those brave ones to overcome their
- disgust at the dirt and dense ignorance they met among the peasants, who
- absolutely lacked comprehension of new ideas; therefore, there could be
- no understanding between the intellectuals, who wanted to help, and the
- sufferers, who needed help. These two elements were brought in closer
- touch through industrialism. The Russian peasant, robbed of the means to
- remain on his soil, was driven into the large industrial centres, and
- there he learned to know those brave and heroic men and women who gave
- up their comfort and career in their efforts for the liberation of their
- people.
- These ideas that have undergone such great changes in Russia within the
- last decade should serve as good material for study for those who claim
- the Russian Revolution is dead.
- Nicholas Tchaykovsky, one of Russia's foremost workers in the
- revolutionary movement, and one who, through beauty of character,
- simplicity of soul and great strategical ability, has been the idol of
- the Russian revolutionary youth for many years, is here as the delegate
- of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party, to raise funds for a new
- uprising. He was right when he said, at the meeting in Grand Central
- Palace, "The Russian Revolution will live until the decayed and cowardly
- regime of tyranny in Russia is rooted out of existence."
- [Illustration]
- The French have a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallières. The
- father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian
- dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career
- like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to
- know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his
- sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a
- crowd when he cries out to them: "My opponents express the suspicion
- that I am a numskull. I do not care to argue the point with them, but
- this I will say by the way of explanation, fellow citizens, that I am a
- thoroughly honest man to the very roots of my hair." By this method one
- can attain the presidency of a republic.
- As Secretary of the Interior, Fallières caused the arrest of the
- Socialist poet, Clovis Hugues. At another time he declared: "As long as
- I am in office, I will not tolerate the red flag on the open street."
- The French bourgeois have found in Fallières their fitting man of straw
- for seven years.
- [Illustration]
- The only genuine Democrat of these times is Death. He does not admit of
- any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field
- with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should
- be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich
- to the poor--for good pay, of course.
- [Illustration]
- Whosoever believes that the law is infallible and can bring about order
- in the chaotic social conditions, knows the curative effect of law to
- the minutest detail. The question how things might be improved is met
- with this reply: "All criminals should be caught in a net like fish and
- put away for safe keeping, so that society remains in the care of the
- righteous." Hallelujah!
- People with a capacity to judge for themselves think differently. Mr.
- Charlton T. Lewis, President of the National Prison Association,
- maintains:
- "Our county jails everywhere are the schools and colleges of crime. In
- the light of social science it were better for the world if every one of
- them were destroyed than that this work should be continued. Experience
- shows that the system of imprisonment of minor offenders for short terms
- is but a gigantic measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not
- confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under
- which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency....
- Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement
- tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to
- weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the
- foundations of character and unfit him for independent life. To consign
- a man to prison is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class.... With
- all the solemnity and emphasis of which I am capable, I utter the
- profound conviction, after twenty years of constant study of our prison
- population, that more than nine-tenths of them ought never to have been
- confined."
- Government and authority are responsible for the conditions in the
- western mining districts.
- Is not the existence of government considered as a necessity on the
- grounds that it is here to maintain peace, law and order? This is an
- oft-repeated song.
- Let us see how the government of Colorado has lived up to its calling
- within the last few years. It has permitted that the labor protective
- laws that have passed the legislature should be broken and trampled upon
- by the mine owners.
- The money powers care little for the eight-hour law, and when the mine
- workers insisted upon keeping that law, the authorities of Colorado
- immediately went to the rescue of the exploiters. Not only were police
- and soldiers let loose upon the Western Federation of Miners; but the
- government of Colorado permitted the mine owners to recruit an army to
- fight the labor organizations. Hirelings were formed into a so-called
- citizens' committee, that inaugurated a reign of terror. These legal
- lawbreakers invaded peaceful homes during the day and night, and those
- that were in the least suspected of belonging to or sympathizing with
- the Western Federation of Miners were torn out of bed, arrested and
- dragged off to the bull pen, or transported into the desert, without
- food or shelter, many miles from other living beings. Some of these
- victims were crippled for life and died as a result thereof.
- When it became known that the W. F. M. continued to stand erect,
- regardless of brutal attacks, it was decided to strike the last violent
- blow against it.
- Orchard, the man of honor, confessed, and the lawbreakers appealed to
- the law against Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone.
- This time the government did not hesitate. The eight-hour and protective
- labor law was too insignificant to enforce, but to bring the officers of
- the W. F. M. to account, that, of course, is the duty and the function
- of the State.
- There is not the slightest hope that the authorities who, for a number
- of years, have permitted the violation of the law, will be put on
- trial, but the crime they have perpetrated is a weighty argument in
- favor of those who maintain that the State is not an independent
- institution, but a tool of the possessing class.
- [Illustration]
- Many radicals entertain the queer notion that they cannot arrange their
- own lives, according to their own ideas, but that they have to adapt
- themselves to the conditions they hate, and which they fight in theory
- with fire and sword.
- Anything rather than arouse too much public condemnation! The lives they
- lead are dependent upon the opinion of the Philistines. They are
- revolutionists in theory, reactionists in practice.
- [Illustration]
- The words of Louis XIV, "I am the State," have been taken up as a motto
- by the American policeman. One of the New York papers contains the
- following account:
- "In discharging some seventy prisoners in the Jefferson Market Police
- Court yesterday morning, the Magistrate said to the police in charge of
- the cases: 'I am amazed that you men should bring these prisoners before
- me without a shred of evidence on which they can be held.'"
- Such is the blessing of this republic. We are not confronted by one czar
- of the size of an elephant, but by a hundred thousand czars, as small as
- mosquitoes, but equally disagreeable and annoying.
- [Illustration]
- Friends of MOTHER EARTH in various Western cities have proposed a
- lecture tour in behalf of the magazine. So far I have heard from
- Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago. Those of other cities who
- wish to have me lecture there, will please communicate with me as to
- dates at once. The tour is to begin May 12th and last for a month or six
- weeks.
- EMMA GOLDMAN,
- Box 217, Madison Square Station.
- THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES.
- By EMMA GOLDMAN.
- Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be
- moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems
- to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and
- educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all
- that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light
- of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external
- forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question.
- The longing of the best and noblest of our times makes for the strongest
- individualities. Every sensitive being abhors the idea of being treated
- as a mere machine or as a mere parrot of conventionality and
- respectability, the human being craves recognition of his kind.
- It must be borne in mind that it is through the channel of the child
- that the development of the mature man must go, and that the present
- ideas of the educating or training of the latter in the school and the
- family--even the family of the liberal or radical--are such as to stifle
- the natural growth of the child.
- Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes,
- sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly
- enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and
- originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its
- earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one
- pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work
- slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous
- moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by
- the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or
- educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of
- official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as
- an unusual event, since the obstacles placed in the way of growth and
- development of character are so numerous that it must be considered a
- miracle if it retains its strength and beauty and survives the various
- attempts at crippling that which is most essential to it.
- Indeed, he who has freed himself from the fetters of the
- thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand
- without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion--private
- laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it--may well intone a high and
- voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to
- it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin at the
- most delicate age.
- The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its
- questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to
- struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought
- and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with
- its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its
- questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly
- based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it
- wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock
- the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse
- atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.
- Zola, in his novel "Fecundity," maintains that large sections of people
- have declared death to the child, have conspired against the birth of
- the child,--a very horrible picture indeed, yet the conspiracy entered
- into by civilization against the growth and making of character seems to
- me far more terrible and disastrous, because of the slow and gradual
- destruction of its latent qualities and traits and the stupefying and
- crippling effect thereof upon its social well-being.
- Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward
- making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity
- produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting
- antagonism with each other.
- The ideal of the average pedagogist is not a complete, well-rounded,
- original being; rather does he seek that the result of his art of
- pedagogy shall be automatons of flesh and blood, to best fit into the
- treadmill of society and the emptiness and dulness of our lives. Every
- home, school, college and university stands for dry, cold
- utilitarianism, overflooding the brain of the pupil with a tremendous
- amount of ideas, handed down from generations past. "Facts and data,"
- as they are called, constitute a lot of information, well enough perhaps
- to maintain every form of authority and to create much awe for the
- importance of possession, but only a great handicap to a true
- understanding of the human soul and its place in the world.
- Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its
- people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers,
- are being hammered into the heads of our young generation. Eternal
- change, thousandfold variations, continual innovation are the essence of
- life. Professional pedagogy knows nothing of it, the systems of
- education are being arranged into files, classified and numbered. They
- lack the strong fertile seed which, falling on rich soil, enables them
- to grow to great heights, they are worn and incapable of awakening
- spontaneity of character. Instructors and teachers, with dead souls,
- operate with dead values. Quantity is forced to take the place of
- quality. The consequences thereof are inevitable.
- In whatever direction one turns, eagerly searching for human beings who
- do not measure ideas and emotions with the yardstick of expediency, one
- is confronted with the products, the herdlike drilling instead of the
- result of spontaneous and innate characteristics working themselves out
- in freedom.
- "No traces now I see
- Whatever of a spirit's agency.
- 'Tis drilling, nothing more."
- These words of Faust fit our methods of pedagogy perfectly. Take, for
- instance, the way history is being taught in our schools. See how the
- events of the world become like a cheap puppet show, where a few
- wire-pullers are supposed to have directed the course of development of
- the entire human race.
- And the history of _our own_ nation! Was it not chosen by Providence to
- become the leading nation on earth? And does it not tower mountain high
- over other nations? Is it not the gem of the ocean? Is it not
- incomparably virtuous, ideal and brave? The result of such ridiculous
- teaching is a dull, shallow patriotism, blind to its own limitations,
- with bull-like stubbornness, utterly incapable of judging of the
- capacities of other nations. This is the way the spirit of youth is
- emasculated, deadened through an over-estimation of one's own value. No
- wonder public opinion can be so easily manufactured.
- "Predigested food" should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a
- warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their
- original sense of judgment, who, instead, would be content with a large
- amount of empty and shallow shells. This may suffice as a recognition of
- the manifold hindrances placed in the way of an independent mental
- development of the child.
- Equally numerous, and not less important, are the difficulties that
- confront the emotional life of the young. Must not one suppose that
- parents should be united to children by the most tender and delicate
- chords? One should suppose it; yet, sad as it may be, it is,
- nevertheless, true, that parents are the first to destroy the inner
- riches of their children.
- The Scriptures tell us that God created Man in His own image, which has
- by no means proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their
- heavenly master; they use every effort to shape and mould the child
- according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the
- child is merely part of themselves--an idea as false as it is injurious,
- and which only increases the misunderstanding of the soul of the child,
- of the necessary consequences of enslavement and subordination thereof.
- As soon as the first rays of consciousness illuminate the mind and heart
- of the child, it instinctively begins to compare its own personality
- with the personality of those about it. How many hard and cold stone
- cliffs meet its large wondering gaze? Soon enough it is confronted with
- the painful reality that it is here only to serve as inanimate matter
- for parents and guardians, whose authority alone gives it shape and
- form.
- The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political,
- social and moral conventions owes its origin to the family, where the
- child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use
- of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is
- right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent
- rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon
- its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long established and
- hard notions of thoughts and emotions. Yet the latent qualities and
- instincts seek to assert their own peculiar methods of seeking the
- foundation of things, of distinguishing between what is commonly called
- wrong, true or false. It is bent upon going its own way, since it is
- composed of the same nerves, muscles and blood, even as those who assume
- to direct its destiny. I fail to understand how parents hope that their
- children will ever grow up into independent, self-reliant spirits, when
- they strain every effort to abridge and curtail the various activities
- of their children, the plus in quality and character, which
- differentiates their offspring from themselves, and by the virtue of
- which they are eminently equipped carriers of new, invigorating ideas. A
- young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in
- order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic
- height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.
- When the child reaches adolescence, it meets, added to the home and
- school restrictions, with a vast amount of hard traditions of social
- morality. The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance
- by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and
- improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and
- fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the
- young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the
- stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful
- is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a
- great sin, that dares not face the light.
- What is more astonishing is the fact that parents will strip themselves
- of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of
- their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some
- physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and
- indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul
- cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing
- to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition.
- On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a
- new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean
- finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the
- silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of
- the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth
- living.
- And yet these parents imagine that they mean best for the child, and for
- aught I know, some really do; but their best means absolute death and
- decay to the bud in the making. After all, they are but imitating their
- own masters in State, commercial, social and moral affairs, by forcibly
- suppressing every independent attempt to analyze the ills of society and
- every sincere effort toward the abolition of these ills; never able to
- grasp the eternal truth that every method they employ serves as the
- greatest impetus to bring forth a greater longing for freedom and a
- deeper zeal to fight for it.
- That compulsion is bound to awaken resistance, every parent and teacher
- ought to know. Great surprise is being expressed over the fact that the
- majority of children of radical parents are either altogether opposed to
- the ideas of the latter, many of them moving along the old antiquated
- paths, or that they are indifferent to the new thoughts and teachings of
- social regeneration. And yet there is nothing unusual in that. Radical
- parents, though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human
- soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and
- that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they
- set out to mould and form the child according to their own conception of
- what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same
- vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses. And, with the latter,
- they hold out the necessity before the young "to do as I tell you and
- not as I do." But the impressionable mind of the child realizes early
- enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas
- they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on
- Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord's commands the rest of the week,
- the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government,
- domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he
- abhors. Just so, the Freethought parent can proudly boast that his son
- of four will recognize the picture of Thomas Paine or Ingersoll, or that
- he knows that the idea of God is stupid. Or that the Social Democratic
- father can point to his little girl of six and say, "Who wrote the
- Capital, dearie?" "Karl Marx, pa!" Or that the Anarchistic mother can
- make it known that her daughter's name is Louise Michel, Sophia
- Perovskaya, or that she can recite the revolutionary poems of Herwegh,
- Freiligrath, or Shelley, and that she will point out the faces of
- Spencer, Bakunin or Moses Harmon almost anywhere.
- These are by no means exaggerations; they are sad facts that I have met
- with in my experience with radical parents. What are the results of such
- methods of biasing the mind? The following is the consequence, and not
- very infrequent, either. The child, being fed on one-sided, set and
- fixed ideas, soon grows weary of re-hashing the beliefs of its parents,
- and it sets out in quest of new sensations, no matter how inferior and
- shallow the new experience may be, the human mind cannot endure sameness
- and monotony. So it happens that that boy or girl, over-fed on Thomas
- Paine, will land in the arms of the Church, or they will vote for
- imperialism only to escape the drag of economic determinism and
- scientific socialism, or that they open a shirt-waist factory and cling
- to their right of accumulating property, only to find relief from the
- old-fashioned communism of their father. Or that the girl will marry the
- next best man, provided he can make a living, only to run away from the
- everlasting talk on variety.
- Such a condition of affairs may be very painful to the parents who wish
- their children to follow in their path, yet I look upon them as very
- refreshing and encouraging psychological forces. They are the greatest
- guarantee that the independent mind, at least, will always resist every
- external and foreign force exercised over the human heart and head.
- Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes,
- but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that
- education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and
- training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must
- insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and
- tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free
- individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make
- interference and coercion of human growth impossible.
- [Illustration]
- HOPE AND FEAR.[A]
- (Translated from the Jewish of L. I. PERETZ.)
- ...My heart is with you.
- My eye does not get weary looking at your flaming banner; my ear does
- not get tired listening to your powerful song....
- My heart is with you; man's hunger must be appeased, and he must have
- light; he must be free, and he must be his own master, master over
- himself and his work.
- And when you snap at the fist which is trying to strangle you, your
- voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard--I
- rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are
- marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is
- with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my
- heart and intoxicates me like old wine....
- And yet....
- And yet you frighten me.
- I am afraid of the bridled who conquer, for they are apt to become the
- oppressors, and every oppressor transgresses against the human soul....
- Do you not talk among yourselves of how humanity is to march, like an
- army in line, and you are going to sound for it the march on the road?
- And yet humanity is not an army.
- The strong are going forward, the magnanimous feel more deeply, the
- proud rise higher, and yet will you not lay down the cedar in order that
- it may not outgrow the grass?
- Or will you not spread your wings over mediocrity, or will you not
- shield indifference, and protect the gray and uniformly fleeced herd?
- * * *
- You frighten me.
- As conquerors you might become the bureaucracy: to dole out to everybody
- his morsel, as is the usage in the poor-house; to arrange work for
- everybody as it is done in the galleys. And you will thus crush the
- creator of new worlds--the free human will, and fill up with earth the
- purest spring of human happiness--human initiative, the power which
- braves one against thousands, against peoples, and against generations?
- And you will systematize life and bid it to remain on the level of the
- crowd.
- And will you not be occupied with regulations: registrating, recording,
- estimating--or will you not prescribe how fast and how often the human
- pulse must beat, how far the human eye may look ahead, how much the ear
- may perceive, and what kinds of dreams the languishing heart may
- entertain?
- * * *
- With joy in my heart I look at you when you tear down the gates of
- Sodom, but my heart trembles at the same time, fearing that you might
- erect on its ruins new ones--more chilling and darker ones.
- There will be no houses without windows; but fog will envelop the
- souls....
- There will be no empty stomachs, but souls will starve. No ear will hear
- cries of woe, but the eagle--the human intellect--will stand at the
- trough with clipped wings together with the cow and the ox.
- And justice, which has accompanied you on the thorny and bloody path to
- victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for
- conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate.
- And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not feel the quagmire
- under your feet.... Every tyrant thinks he stands on firm ground so long
- as he has not been vanquished.
- And you will build prisons for those who dare to stretch out their
- hands, pointing to the abyss into which you sink; you will tear out the
- tongues of the mouths that warn you against those who come after you, to
- destroy you and your injustice....
- Cruelly will you defend the equality of rights of the herd to use the
- grass under its feet and the salt in the ground,--and your enemies will
- be the free individuals, the overmen, the ingenious inventors, the
- prophets, the saviors, the poets and artists.
- * * *
- Everything that comes to pass occurs in space and time.... The present
- is the existing: the stable, the firm, and therefore the rigid and
- frozen--the to-day, which will and must perish....
- Time is change--it varies and develops; it is the eternally sprouting,
- the blossoming, the eternal morning....
- And as your "morning," to which you aspire, will become the "to-day,"
- you will become the upholders of the "yesterday," of that which is
- lifeless--dead. You will trample the sproutings of to-morrow and destroy
- its blossoms, and pour streams of cold water upon the heads that nestle
- your prophecies, your dreams, and your new hopes.
- The to-day is unwilling to die, bloody is every sunset....
- I yearn and hope for your victory, but I fear and tremble for your
- victory.
- You are my hope, and you are my fear.
- [Illustration]
- Nietzsche--Zarathustra spake thus: "He who wishes to say something
- should be silent a long while." If the makers of public opinion would
- only carry out this hint for about a lifetime!
- [Illustration]
- According to the latest researches, it has been brought to light that
- the grim angel who drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise was named
- Comstock.
- [Illustration]
- As long as there are women who must fear to become mothers on account of
- economic difficulties or moral prejudices, the emancipation of woman is
- only a phrase.
- FOOTNOTE:
- [A] This sketch the writer had addressed to Jewish Social Democrats.
- JOHN MOST.
- By M. B.
- John Most suddenly died in Cincinnati, March 17. He was on an agitation
- trip, and when he reached Cincinnati he took sick with erysipelas and
- died within a few days, surrounded by his comrades.
- Shortly before that he had the fortune to taste of the kindness and good
- breeding of the police once more. Some friends in Philadelphia arranged
- a meeting to celebrate Most's sixtieth birthday. He was one of the
- speakers; but the police of that city interpreted the American
- Constitution, which speaks of the right to free speech and assembly, as
- giving the right to forcibly disperse the meeting.
- Conscious misrepresentation and ignorance, the twin angels that hover
- over the throne of the newspaper kingdom of this country, have made John
- Most a scarecrow. Organized police authorities and police justices that
- can neither be accused of a surplus of intelligence nor even of the
- shadow of love of fairness, made him their target whenever they felt the
- great calling to save their country from disaster. Naturally the mob of
- law-abiding citizens must be assured from time to time that their
- masters have a sacred duty to perform, that they earn the right of
- graft.
- Most was born at Augsburg, Bavaria, February 5, 1846. According to his
- memoirs, he early found it necessary to resist the tyranny of a
- stepmother and the miserable treatment of his master. As a bookbinder
- apprentice, at a very early age, he took to his heels and went on the
- road of the world, where he soon came in contact with revolutionary
- ideas in the labor movement that greatly inspired him and urged him to
- read and study. It might be more appropriately said that he developed a
- ravenous appetite for knowledge and research of all the works of human
- science.
- At that time socialistic ideas had just begun to exercise great
- influence upon the thinking mind of the European continents. The zeal
- and craving for knowledge displayed by the working people of those days
- can hardly be properly estimated, especially by the proletariat of this
- country, whose literature and source of knowledge chiefly consists of
- the daily papers. Workingmen, who worked ten and twelve hours in
- factories and shops, spent their evenings in study and reading of
- economic, political and philosophic works--Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl
- Marx, Engels, Bakunin and, later, Kropotkin; also Henry George's
- "Progress and Poverty." Added to these were the works of the
- materialistic-natural science schools, such as Darwin, Huxley,
- Molleschot, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Buechner, Haeckel, that constituted the
- mental diet of a large number of workingmen of that period. Just as the
- revolutionary economists were hailed as the liberators of physical
- slavery, so were the materialistic, naturalistic sciences accepted as
- the saviors from mental narrowness and darkness.
- Most was untiring in his work of popularizing these ideas, and as he
- could quickly grasp things he was tremendously successful in simplifying
- scientific books into pamphlets and essays, accessible to the ordinary
- intelligence of the working people. He possessed a marvelous memory, and
- once he got hold of an amount of data he could easily avail himself of
- it at any moment. This was particularly true in the domain of history,
- with its compilation of bloodcurdling events, from which he drew his
- conclusions of how the human race ought _not to live_.
- Together with his journalistic activity, he combined oral propaganda.
- His power of delivery was marvelous, and those who heard him in his
- early days will understand why the powers of the world stood in awe
- before him. He not only had a very convincing way, but he succeeded in
- keeping his audiences spellbound or to bring them up to the highest
- pitch of enthusiasm.
- The scene of his first great activity was in Vienna, where he was soon
- met with many indictments and persecutions from the authorities, who
- mercilessly pursued him for the rest of his life. After a term of
- imprisonment in several American prisons, he went to Germany, where he
- became the editor of the "Free Press" in Berlin, but his original and
- biting criticism of bureaucracy again brought him in conflict with the
- powers that be. The Berlin prison, Ploetzensee, soon closed its doors on
- the culprit. Even to-day those who visit that famous institution of
- civilization are still shown Most's cell.
- At that time Bismarck carried an unsuccessful battle against the power
- of the Catholic Church, eager to subordinate her to the State authority.
- It happened that the famous leader of the Catholic party, Majunke, was
- sent for a term of imprisonment to Ploetzensee. When the prisoners were
- led out for their daily walk, the leader of the Reds, John Most, met the
- leader of the Blacks, Majunke. The situation was comical enough to cause
- amusement to both; both being brilliant, they found enough interesting
- material for conversation, which helped them over the dreariness and
- monotony of prison life.
- Several years later Bismarck succeeded in enacting the muzzle law
- against Social Democracy, which destroyed the freedom of the press and
- assembly. The question arose then what could be done.
- Most had been elected to the Reichstag, representing the famous factory
- town Chemnitz, but his experience in Parliament only served him to
- despise the representative system and professional lawmaking more than
- ever.
- When leaders of Social Democracy, like Bebel and Liebknecht, thought it
- more expedient to adapt themselves to conditions, Most went to London,
- where he continued his revolutionary literary crusade in the "Freiheit."
- He came in contact with Karl Marx, Engels and various other refugees who
- lived in England. Marx assured Most that his sharp pen in the "Freiheit"
- was not likely to cause him any trouble in England so long as the
- Conservative party was in power, but that nothing good was to be
- expected of a Liberal government. Marx was right. Shortly after Most's
- arrival in London his paper was seized and he was arrested on the
- indictment for inciting to murder because he paid a glowing tribute to
- the revolutionists of Russia, who, on the first of March, 1881, executed
- Alexander II. He was tried and sentenced to eighteen months'
- imprisonment to one of the barbarous English prisons.
- Most gradually developed into an Anarchist, representing Communist
- Anarchism, the organization of production and consummation, based on
- free industrial groups, and which would exclude State and bureaucratic
- interference. His ideas were related to those of Kropotkin and Elisée
- Reclus. He often assured me that he considered Kropotkin his teacher,
- and that he owed much of his mental development to him.
- The next aim of the hounded man was America, but it does not appear that
- he was followed across the ocean by his lucky star. He soon was made to
- feel that free speech and free press in this great republic was but a
- myth. Time and again he was arrested, brutally treated by the police,
- and sentenced to serve time in the penitentiary. Added to this came the
- fearful attacks and misrepresentations of Most and his ideas by the
- press, many of the articles making him appear as a wild beast ever
- plotting destruction. The last sentence inflicted upon him was after the
- Czolgosz act. He was arrested for an article by the Radical Karl
- Heinzen, that had been written many years ago and the author of which
- had been dead a long time. The article had not the slightest relation to
- the act, did not contain a single reference to the conditions of this
- country, and treated altogether of European conditions of fifty years
- ago. In the face of this sentence one cannot but help think of Tolstoi's
- "Power of Darkness." Only the Power of Darkness in the minds of the
- judges before whom Most was tried and the newspaper men, who helped in
- arousing public opinion against him, were responsible for the sentence
- inflicted upon him.
- Taking Most's life superficially, it would appear that his road was hard
- and thorny, but looking at it from a thorough view point, one will
- realize that all his hardships and injustices had made of him a
- relentless, uncompromising rebel, who continued to wage war against the
- enemies of the people.
- [Illustration]
- With but few exceptions the American journalists censure the immoral
- profession of "Mrs. Warren." Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed
- the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers?
- Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle
- the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental
- prostitution.
- CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA.
- A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth,
- knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa.
- "Who are you and what do you want?" said a voice from the inside.
- "In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for
- you and fill you full of lead."
- "But what do you want here?"
- "My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black
- brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a
- reasonable human being out of you if it is possible."
- "What are you going to do?"
- "In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a
- shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear
- underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of
- yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates."
- "What shall I do with them?"
- "Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The
- first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes."
- "But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them.
- I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?"
- "Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of
- being a martyr to civilization."
- "How kind!"
- "Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?"
- "When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel
- like it."
- "What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my
- friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant."
- "If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house.
- I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and
- there."
- "Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I
- thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty
- dollars."
- "What for?"
- "As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the
- blessings of civilization for nothing?"
- "But I have no money."
- "That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you
- don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of
- your life."
- "What is jail?"
- "Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some
- sacrifices for civilization, you know."
- "What a great and glorious thing is civilization."
- "You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I
- get through with you, my fine fellow."
- The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen
- since--_Waverly Magazine_.
- [Illustration]
- OUR PURPOSE.
- By MARY HANSEN.
- _I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,
- To herald the birth of a king;
- I come, not with traditional story,
- The life of a savior to sing;
- I come, not with jests for the silly,
- I come, not to worship the strong,
- But to question the powers that govern,
- To point out a world-old wrong._
- _To kiss from the starved lips of childhood
- The lies that are sapping its breath,
- And brighten the brief cheerless valley
- That leads to the darkness of death;
- With reason and sympathy blended,
- And a hope that all mankind shall see,
- Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom--
- The attainable goal of the Free._
- MARRIAGE AND THE HOME.
- By JOHN R. CORYELL.
- You remember _Punch's_ advice to the young man about to be
- married--don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever
- fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of
- mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage,
- as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a
- terrible failure?
- We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the
- institution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before
- that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know
- what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed
- before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will
- be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly
- scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish
- of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and
- causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard
- of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.
- Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of
- marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of
- evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that
- exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime,
- disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of
- this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of
- things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the
- nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of
- sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is
- because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her.
- Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is
- interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to
- give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth,
- marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the
- social body. It is a device of man at his worst--a mixture of slavery,
- savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated by nothing in the
- physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a
- contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which
- cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness
- be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be
- abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind.
- Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not
- caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of
- a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological
- conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social
- advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more
- commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn;
- but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other
- for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into
- either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held
- to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already
- married to each other.
- The constituents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated
- sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by
- the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught
- her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and
- virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman
- and the savage, exulting, unrelenting passion of the man are produced
- children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to
- believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a
- race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the
- best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and
- quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which
- tend to produce the best individuals.
- Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told,
- that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of
- ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the
- beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest
- facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately
- endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is
- the meaning of that solemn formula, which most of us have been taught,
- that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and
- blush that go to any reference to sex, sign or manifestation of sex? Is
- it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman
- come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain
- the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by
- the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of
- life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of
- misconceptions, sex-superstitions, immoral dogmas and probably physical
- disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son,
- fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful
- phenomena of sex-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I
- asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer
- was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the
- attitude of the average parent: "Talked to him about that? Not I. Let
- him learn as I did. No one ever told me." But some one had told him, as
- his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by
- ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books,
- whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous
- ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things,
- but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a glass
- of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of sex
- manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange
- stories based on sex relation with any stranger with whom he might ride
- for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within
- bounds.
- And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of
- misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the
- sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the
- nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined
- life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has
- gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On
- the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous
- practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into
- that awful life of legalized prostitution which is called marriage.
- Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function
- which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous
- for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear
- children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a
- woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And
- yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our
- hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say,
- Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very
- identity into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children;
- you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your
- respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers
- her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of
- motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely?
- And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer
- thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It
- is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of
- the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women
- to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a
- woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man,
- whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over
- her and her master.
- Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women,
- dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise
- to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they
- absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey--the only
- thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them
- do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the
- conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down,
- down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition,
- their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand
- times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave.
- And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the
- poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel!
- Nevertheless, she is the power behind the throne. And if the man
- possess her, does she not equally possess him? Is not monogamy the
- mainstay of our morals? Is not God to be thanked that he has given us
- light to see the horrors of polygamy? Oh, that shocking thing, polygamy!
- How the husbands of the land rise up to defend their firesides from it!
- No Smoots shall get into our Senate. That virtuous Senate!
- Why if every practising polygamist went home from the Congress there
- would not be a quorum left to do business. Monogamy! Why it is the most
- shocking phase of the hypocrisy due to marriage. There is no such
- condition known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases
- of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this
- country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for
- adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men
- indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association
- which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the
- half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe the fable of
- monogamy?
- What has monogamy or polygamy or polyandry to do with this matter? I
- assume that it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest
- function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the
- exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer
- than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish?
- And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father
- for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have
- one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be
- asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be
- safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man
- provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the
- wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the
- mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in
- widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take
- care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course,
- should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex
- free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have many or few
- or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the
- opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make
- the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity
- if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural;
- avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the
- hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the
- important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a
- child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the
- constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can
- be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as
- few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper
- relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not
- only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is
- discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he
- loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private
- by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave,
- giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and
- becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it
- children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can
- be given them; and which cannot be given them under the prevailing
- system. It is only when a woman is free to choose the father of her
- child that the child can hope for even a partial payment of the debt
- that was due it from its parents from the moment they took the
- responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This
- doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is
- comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The
- old and current notion is that the child is a chattel.
- Abraham never offers an apology for making little Isaac carry wood and
- then mount the sacrificial pile. Indeed we are asked to marvel at the
- heroism of the father. Then we are told that God so loved the world that
- he gave his only begotten son. As if the child were the property of the
- parent. And yet there must always have been naughty children asking
- pointed questions, for it was long ago found necessary to try to scare
- them by a divine fulmination. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy
- days may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid
- they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the
- pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his
- child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making
- rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself;
- stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and
- most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth and ignorance; wilfully
- robbing him of his birthright of individuality by forcing him to conform
- to methods of thought and conduct which his own experience tells him no
- man can or does conform to from the moment he wins his freedom or learns
- the hideous lesson of that hypocrisy which he is sure in the end to
- discover that his father practices. What right has any father to make a
- sacrifice of his child? What is his title to the love or gratitude or
- self-abnegation of his child? Is it that the child is the unconsidered
- consequence of the legal rape of some poor woman who has been unfitted
- for the office forced upon her, by a life mentally dwarfed, morally
- twisted and physically mutilated? Is it that the child is haled out of
- nothingness to be inoculated, perhaps, with germs of disease in the
- first instance and then half nourished for nine months in a body which
- has been robbed of its vitality by the mutilation and torture to which
- it has been subjected at the behest of fashion?
- The highest duty of a parent is to so treat his child that it will enter
- upon the struggle of life prepared to obtain the utmost happiness from
- it.
- If anyone fancies I have been too severe in my strictures I would ask
- him to read what Mrs. Gilman has to say on the subject of home. It is
- true that she does not come to the same conclusion that I do. She would
- have women economically independent, and she would have children taken
- care of by those especially fitted for the task, leaving mothers and
- fathers free to go their separate ways. But how could there be separate
- ways so long as the slavery of marriage remained? Woman must be not only
- economically free, but altogether free. As I have said, motherhood is
- not an affair of morals; it is a function. Marriage, on the other hand,
- is a matter of morals; and hideously immoral it is, too. Then why not
- have motherhood without its immoral, artificial adjunct, marriage?
- You see I do not ask for easy divorce as a solution of the problem of
- marriage. I set my face sternly against divorce. I am one with the
- church in that. I only demand that there shall be no marriage at all,
- that there shall be no fastening of life-long slavery on woman. Let
- woman mother children or not, as she will. Let her say who shall be the
- father of her child and of each child. Let motherhood be deemed not even
- honorable, but only natural.
- Can anyone believe that if men and women were free to decide whether or
- not they would be parents, they would not in the end, seeing their duty
- in the light of their knowledge, fit themselves for parenthood before
- taking upon themselves its responsibilities?
- I would like to say that I have no fear of the odium of the designation
- of iconoclast. Nor do I quake lest some one triumphantly ask me what I
- will put in the place of marriage and the home. As well might one demand
- what I would give in the place of smallpox if I were able to eradicate
- it. I am not concerned to find a substitute for such perversion of sex
- activity. If men and women choose to live together in freedom, fathering
- and mothering their children according to a rule grown out of freedom,
- and directed by expediency, I fancy they would be, at least, as happy as
- they can be now, tied together by a hard, unpleasant knot. And if an
- economically free woman chose to have six children by six different
- fathers, as a wise woman might well do, I believe she could be trusted
- to secure those children from want quite as well as the mother-slave of
- to-day, who bears her children at the will of an irresponsible man, and
- then, often enough, has to take care of them and him too.
- [Illustration]
- "Wealth protects and animates art and literature, as the dew enlivens
- the fields."
- Nonsense! Wealth animates art and literature, as the whistle of the
- master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail.
- THE MODERN NEWSPAPER.
- Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.
- Figure first, then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed,
- building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number
- of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile
- swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active
- with nimble fingers--they were always speeding up the printers--ply
- their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a
- sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly
- lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of
- telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of
- messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and
- copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going
- faster and faster, and whizzing and banging. Engineers, who have never
- had time to wash since their birth, fly about with oil cans, while paper
- runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must
- suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor car, leaping out before
- the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his
- hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting wonderfully in
- everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are
- waiting get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with
- collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the parts of this
- complex, lunatic machine working hysterically toward a crescendo of
- haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last, the only things
- that seem to travel slowly in those tearing, vibrating premises, are the
- hands of the clock.
- Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those
- stresses. Then, in the small hours, in the now dark and deserted streets
- comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every
- door; bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung
- about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter
- east, west, north and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from
- the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the
- roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows
- manufacture, and we follow the bundles.
- Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling
- into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their
- way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy
- out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of
- these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing
- parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great
- running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings
- of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few
- hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling
- papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men
- and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study
- fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters
- waiting for father to finish--a million scattered people are
- reading--reading headlong--or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if
- some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface
- of the land.
- Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable
- excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying nothing.
- --From H. G. Wells "In the Days of the Comet."
- [Illustration]
- A VISIT TO SING SING.
- By A MORALIST.
- I was ennuyé; the everlasting decency and respectability of my
- surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people
- doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of
- reasons. And they were uninteresting.
- "Oh," said I to myself, "these are the people of the ruts; they go that
- way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be
- some persons who do not conform. Where are they?"
- Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that
- monument of our civilization on the Hudson River, and why finally I
- made up my mind to visit it.
- I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human
- interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me
- entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district,
- who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls
- of the building, and I exchanged with him a five-dollar bill for an
- order to admit me.
- "I suppose," I said to the attendant who did the honors of the place for
- me, "that these persons who are garbed alike and who affect the same
- tonsorial effect are those who have been unskillful in their
- non-conformity."
- "They are prisoners," he replied. I bit my lip and looked as smug as I
- remembered one should who as yet has the right of egress as well as
- ingress in an institution of that character.
- At that moment my eyes fell on a face that seemed familiar to me, and as
- I studied it I saw with surprise that I had come upon a man who had once
- been a schoolmate of mine.
- Now I had always believed that if a person had done wrong, he would be
- conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to
- appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working;
- for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow,
- met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess
- that such a blow to my theory filled me with indignation.
- I stepped toward him, all my moral superiority betraying itself in the
- self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with
- the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in his relations
- with others.
- "Why are you here?" I asked him.
- "Are you not a little impertinent?" he asked. "I do not inquire of you
- why you are here."
- "That is obvious, to say the least," I answered loftily.
- "Obvious from your pharisaical expression, perhaps," he said
- good-naturedly. "But never mind! We look at the matter from different
- points of view. To me it is a greater indiscretion to annoy a helpless
- prisoner with 'holier-than-thou' questions than it would be to attend
- the Charity Ball in pajamas. But of course you do not see it in the same
- light."
- "Pardon me if I annoyed you," I said stiffly.
- "Don't mention it," he replied, with the humorous twinkle still playing
- in his eyes. "And to prove that I bear no hard feeling, I will ask you
- some questions."
- Naturally I was embarrassed at such an exhibition of hardihood in one in
- his situation, but I said I would be pleased to answer him to the best
- of my ability.
- "It is some time since I was away from this retreat on a vacation," he
- said, with an easy assurance that was indescribably shocking to one of
- correct principles, "and I would like to know if all the rascals have
- yet been put in prison."
- I pushed my insurance policy a little deeper into my pocket and replied,
- with conviction:
- "Certainly not; but you must not forget that no man is guilty until he
- has been proven so."
- "Ah, yes," he said; "and that a man may pride himself on his honesty on
- the secure ground that he has not yet reached the penitentiary. Yes, of
- course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor
- which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christians _pro
- tem_, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us
- in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise
- our bill of fare?"
- "Oh," I answered vaguely, "there are still reformers of all sorts in the
- world."
- "Reformers!" he cried, his face lighting up with a new interest. "Ah!
- you mean those profound thinkers who seek to cure every disease of the
- social body by means of legislation. Yes, yes! tell me about them!
- Society still believes in them?"
- "Believes in them!" I cried indignantly. "Surely it does. Why, the great
- political parties are responding to the cry of the downtrodden masses,
- and--"
- "Oh," he said dreamily, "they are still responding?"
- "What do you mean by still responding?" I demanded curtly.
- "Why, I remember that in my time, too, the people always responded. The
- party leaders would say to them that they were in a bad way and needed
- help. The people would cry out in joy to think their leaders had
- discovered this. Then the leaders would wink at each other and jump upon
- the platforms and explain to the people that what was needed was a new
- law of some sort. The people would weep for happiness at such wisdom and
- would beg their leaders to get together and make the law. And the law
- that the leaders would make when they got together was one that would
- put the people still more in their power. So that is still going on?"
- I recognized that he was ironical, but I answered with a sneer:
- "The people get what they deserve, and what they wish. They have only to
- demand through the ballot box, you know."
- "Ah, yes," he murmured with a grin, "I had forgotten the ballot box.
- Dear me! how could I have forgotten the ballot box?"
- Providentially the keeper came to notify me that my time was up, and I
- turned away.
- "One thing more," cried the prisoner; "is it still the case that the
- American people enjoy their freedom best when they are enslaved in some
- way?"
- "You are outrageous," I exclaimed; "the American people are not enslaved
- in any way. It is true they are restricted for their own good by those
- more capable of judging than they. That must always be the case."
- "I don't know about must," he sighed, "but I am sure it will always be
- the case as long as a man's idea of freedom is his ability to impose
- some slavish notion on his brother."
- "Good-bye," I said, with a recurrence to my smirk of pharisaical pity,
- "I am sorry to see you here."
- "Oh, don't be troubled on my account," he answered; "on the whole, I am
- satisfied."
- "Satisfied! Impossible!" I cried.
- "Why impossible? Consider that I shall never again be compelled to
- associate with decent, honest folk. Oh, I have cause to be satisfied; I
- am here on a life sentence."
- THE OLD AND THE NEW DRAMA.
- By MAX BAGINSKI.
- The inscription over the Drama in olden times used to be, "Man, look
- into this mirror of life; your soul will be gripped in its innermost
- depths, anguish and dread will take possession of you in the face of
- this rage of human desire and passion. Go ye, atone and make good."
- Even Schiller entertained this view when he called the Stage a moral
- institution. It was also from this standpoint that the Drama was
- expected to show the terrible consequences of uncontrolled human
- passion, and that these consequences should teach man to overcome
- himself. "To conquer oneself is man's greatest triumph."
- This ascetic tendency, incidentally part of chastisement and acquired
- resignation, one can trace in every investigation of the value and
- meaning of the Drama, though in different forms. The avenging Nemesis,
- always at the heels of the sinner, may be placated by means of rigid
- self-control and self-denial. This, too, was Schopenhauer's idea of the
- Drama. In it, his eye perceived with horror that human relation became
- disastrously interwoven; that guilt and atonement made light of the
- human race, which merely served as a target for the principles of good
- and evil. Guilt and atonement reign because the blind force of life will
- not resign itself, but, on the contrary, is ever ready to yield itself
- to the struggle of the passions. Mountains of guilt pile themselves on
- the top of each other, while purifying fires ever flame up into the
- heavens.
- In the idea that Life in itself is a great guilt, Schopenhauer coincides
- with the teachings of Christ, though otherwise he has little regard for
- them. With Christ, he recognized in the chastisement of the body a
- purification of the mind; the inner man, who thus escapes from close
- physical intimacy, as if from bad company. The spiritual man appears
- before the physical as a saint and a Pharisee. In reality, he is the
- intellectual cause of the so-called bad deeds of the human body, its
- path indicator and teacher. But, once the mischief is accomplished, he
- puts on a pious air and denies all responsibility for the deed.
- Wherever the idea of guilt, the fear of sin prevails, the mind becomes
- traitor to the body: "I know him not and will have nothing to do with
- him." Whenever man entertains the belief in good and evil, he is bound
- to pretend the good and do the evil. And yet the understanding of all
- human occurrences begins, as with the Zarathustra philosopher, beyond
- good and evil.
- The modern drama is, in its profoundest depths, an attempt to ignore
- good and evil in its analysis of human manifestations. It aims to get at
- a complete whole, out of each strong, healthy emotion, out of each
- absorbing mood that carries and urges one forward from the beginning to
- the end. It represents the World as it reflects itself in each passion,
- in each quivering life; not trying to confine and to judge, to condemn
- or to praise; not acting merely in the capacity of a cold observer; but
- striving to grow in oneness with Life; to become color, tone and light;
- to absorb universal sorrow as one's own; universal joy as one's own; to
- feel every emotion as it manifests itself in a natural way; to be one's
- self, yet oblivious of self.
- The modern dramatist tries to understand and to explain. Goodness is no
- longer entitled to a reward, like a pupil who knows his lesson; nor is
- evil condemned to an eternal Hell. Both belong together in the sphere of
- all that is human. Often enough it is seen that evil triumphs over good,
- while virtue, ever highly praised in words, is rarely practiced. It is
- set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some
- opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as
- a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and
- above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is
- to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so
- fondly cherished by our grandfathers.
- To-day we no longer look for the force of fate outside of human
- activity. It lives and weaves its own tragedies and comedies with us and
- within us. It has its roots in our social, political and economic
- surroundings, in our physical, mental and psychic capacities. (Did not
- the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac lie in his gigantic nose?) With others,
- fate lies in their vocation in life, in their mental and emotional
- tendencies, which either submerge them into the hurry and rush of a
- commonplace existence, or bring them into the most annoying conflicts
- with the _dicta_ of society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human
- being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish
- a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life.
- Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing
- reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels
- inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete
- assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every
- step, he must inevitably become a Revolutionist. And, again, his life
- may become tragic in the struggle with our powerful institutions and
- traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him
- soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it
- sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves
- his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the
- storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the
- deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious
- formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of
- the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity and
- admit his right to direct his own world.
- The old conception of the drama paid little or no attention to the
- importance of the influences of social conditions. It was the individual
- alone who had to carry the weight of all responsibility. But is not the
- tragedy greater, the suffering of the individual increased, by
- influences he cannot control, the existing social and moral conditions?
- And is it not true that the very best and most beautiful in the human
- breast cannot and will not bow down to the commands of the commonplace
- and everyday conditions? Out of the anachronisms of society and its
- relation to the individual grow the strongest motives of the modern
- drama. Pure personal conflicts are no longer considered important enough
- to bring about a dramatic climax. A play must contain the beating of the
- waves, the deep breath of life; and its strong invigorating breeze can
- never fail in bringing about a dramatic effect upon our emotions. The
- new drama means reproduction of nature in all its phases, the social and
- psychological included. It embraces, analyzes and enriches all life. It
- goes hand in hand with the longing for materially and mentally
- harmonious institutions. It rehabilitates the human body, establishes it
- in its proper place and dignity, and brings about the long deferred
- reconciliation between the mind and the body.
- Full of enthusiasm, with the pulse of time throbbing in his veins, the
- modern dramatist compiles mountains of material for the better
- understanding of Man, and the influences that mould and form him. He no
- longer presents capital acts, extraordinary events, or melodramatic
- expressions. It is life in all its complexity, that is being unfolded
- before us, and so we come closer to the source of the forces that
- destroy and build up again, the forces that make for individual
- character and direct the world at large. Life, as a whole, is being
- dealt with, and not mere particles. Formerly our eyes were dazzled by a
- display of costumes and scenery, while the heart remained unmoved. This
- no longer satisfies. One must feel the warmth of life, in order to
- respond, to be gripped.
- The sphere of the drama has widened most marvellously in all directions,
- and only ends where human limitations begin. Together with this, a
- marked deepening of the inner world has taken place. Still there are
- those who have much to say about the vulgarity contained in the modern
- drama, and how its inaugurators and following present the ugly and
- untruthful. Untrue and ugly, indeed, for those who are buried under a
- mass of inherited views and prejudices. The growth of the scope of the
- drama has increased the number of the participants therein. Formerly it
- was assumed that the fate of the ordinary man, the man of the masses,
- was altogether too obscure, too indifferent to serve as material for
- anything tragic; since those who had never dwelt in the heights of
- material splendor could not go down to the darkest and lowest abyss.
- Because of that assumption, the low and humble never gained access to
- the center of the stage; they were only utilized to represent mobs.
- Those that were of importance were persons of high position and
- standing, persons who represented wealth and power with superiority and
- dignity, yet with shallow and superficial airs. The ensemble was but a
- mechanism and not an organism; and each participant was stiff and
- lifeless; each movement was forced and strained. The old fate and hero
- drama did not spring from within Man and the things about him; it was
- merely manufactured. Most remarkable incidents, unheard of situations
- had to be invented, if only to produce, externally, an appearance of
- coinciding cause and effect; and not a single plot could be without
- secret doors and vaults, terrible oaths and perjury. If Ibsen, Gorky,
- Hauptmann, Gabrielle D'Annunzio and others had brought us nothing else
- but liberation from such grotesque ballast, from such impossibilities as
- destroy every illusion as to the life import of a play, they would still
- be entitled to our gratitude and the gratitude of posterity. But they
- have done more. Out of the confusion of trap doors, secret passages,
- folding screens, they have led us into the light of day, of undisguised
- events, with their simple distinct outlines. In this light, the man of
- the heap gains in life force, importance and depth. The stage no longer
- offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the
- hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero,
- on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce
- life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience
- between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one
- cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the "Man of
- Destiny," by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he presents the legend-hero,
- Napoleon, as a petty intriguer, with all the inner fear and uneasiness
- of a plotter. In these days of concerted energy, of the co-operation of
- numerous hands and brains; in the days when the most far-reaching effect
- can only be accomplished through the summons of a manifold physical and
- mental endeavor, the existence of these loud heroes is circumscribed
- within rather limited lines.
- Previous generations could never have grasped the deep tragedy in that
- famous painting of Millet that inspired Edwin Markham to write his "Man
- with the Hoe." Our generation, however, is thrilled by it. And is there
- not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who
- pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building
- the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be
- compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which,
- according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and
- the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and
- disinterestedly, pass them by.
- The new drama has unveiled this kind of tragedy. It has done away with
- the lie that sought to produce a violent dramatic effect through a
- plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand
- Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," wherein but those of the lowest strata
- appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in
- comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money
- troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed.
- That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from
- heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The
- terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the
- social misery of dull necessity, produces greater soul sensations in the
- spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a
- performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele" and fail to be stirred by
- the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty
- poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the "Wizard of
- Oz." And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in
- Zola's "Germinal" as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of
- our age even as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's warriors were to his
- contemporaries?
- The world stage ever represents a change of participants. The one who
- played the part of leading man in one century, may become a clown in
- another. Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first
- parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as
- figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers
- would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to
- appear. Once anything lies buried under the bulk of social changes, it
- can affect coming generations only so far as the excavated skeleton
- affects the geologist. This must be borne in mind by sincere stage art,
- if it is not to remain in the stifling atmosphere of tradition, if it
- does not wish to degrade a noble method, that helps to recognize and
- disclose all that is rich and deep in the human into a commonplace,
- hypocritical and stupid method. If the artist's creation is to have any
- effect, it must contain elements of real life, and must turn its gaze
- toward the dawn of the morn of a more beautiful and joyous world, with a
- new and healthy generation, that feels deeply its relationship with all
- human beings over the universe.
- [Illustration]
- In a report of the Russian government, it is stated that the conduct of
- the soldiers in the struggles of the streets was such, that in no
- instance did they transgress the limit which is prescribed to them in
- their oath as soldiers. This is true. The soldier's oath prescribes
- murder and cruelty as their patriotic duty.
- [Illustration]
- If government, were it even an ideal Revolutionary government, creates
- no new force and is of no use whatever in the work of demolition which
- we have to accomplish, still less can we count on it for the work of
- reorganization which must follow that of demolition. The economic change
- which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so
- profound, it must so change all the relations based to-day on property
- and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to
- elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the
- society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be
- made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense
- variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private
- property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective
- suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it
- will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must
- be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.
- Kropotkine.
- [Illustration]
- A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.--POLICE PROTECTION.
- Chicago's pride are the stockyards, the Standard Oil University, and
- Miss Jane Addams. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that the
- sensibility of such a city would suffer as soon as it became known that
- an obscure person, by the common name of E. G. Smith, was none other
- than the awful Emma Goldman, and that she had not even presented herself
- to Mayor Dunne, the platonic lover of Municipal Ownership. However, not
- much harm came of it.
- The Chicago newspapers, who cherish the truth like a costly jewel, made
- the discovery that the shrewd Miss Smith compromised a number of
- Chicago's aristocracy and excellencies, among others also Baron von
- Schlippenbach, consul of the Russian Empire. We consider it our duty to
- defend this gentleman against such an awful accusation. Miss Smith never
- visited the house of the Baron, nor did she attend any of his banquets.
- We know her well and feel confident that she never would put her foot on
- the threshold of a representative of a government that crushes every
- free breath, every free word; that sends her very best and noblest sons
- and daughters to prison or the gallows; that has the children of the
- soil, the peasants, publicly flogged; and that is responsible for the
- barbarous slaughter of thousands of Jews.
- Miss Jane Addams, too, is quite safe from Miss Smith. True, she invited
- her to be present at a reception, but, knowing the weak knees of the
- soup kitchen philanthropy from past experience, Miss Smith called her up
- on the 'phone and told her that E. G. S. was the dreaded Emma Goldman.
- It must have been quite a shock to the lady; after all, one cannot
- afford to hurt the sensibilities of society, so long as one has
- political and public aspirations. Miss E. G. Smith, being a strong
- believer in the prevention of cruelty, preferred to leave the purity of
- the Hull House untouched. After her return to New York, E. G. Smith sent
- Smith about its business, and started on a lecture tour in her own
- right, as Emma Goldman.
- CLEVELAND. Dear old friends and co-workers: The work you accomplished
- was splendid, also the comradely spirit of the young. But why spoil it
- by bad example of applying for protection from the city authorities? It
- does not behoove us, who neither believe in their right to prohibit free
- assembly, nor to permit it, to appeal to them. If the authorities choose
- to do either, they merely prove their autocracy. Those who love freedom
- must understand that it is even more distasteful to speak under police
- protection than it is to suffer under their persecution. However, the
- meetings were very encouraging and the feeling of solidarity sweet and
- refreshing.
- BUFFALO. The shadow of September 6 still haunts the police of that city.
- Their only vision of an Anarchist is one who is forever lying in wait
- for human life, which is, of course, very stupid; but stupidity and
- authority always join forces. Capt. Ward, who, with a squad of police,
- came to save the innocent citizens of Buffalo, asked if we knew the law,
- and was quite surprised that that was not our trade; that we had not
- been employed to disentangle the chaos of the law,--that it was his
- affair to know the law. However, the Captain showed himself absolutely
- ignorant of the provisions of the American Constitution. Of course, his
- superiors knew what they were about when they set the Constitution
- aside, as old and antiquated, and, instead, enacted a law which gives
- the average officer a right to invade the head and heart of a man, as to
- what he thinks and feels. Capt. Ward added an amendment to the
- anti-Anarchist law. He declared any other language than English a
- felony, and, since Max Baginski could only avail himself of the German
- language, he was not permitted to speak. How is that for our law-abiding
- citizens? A man is brutally prevented from speaking, because he does not
- know the refined English language of the police force.
- Emma Goldman delivered her address in English. It is not likely that
- Capt. Ward understood enough of that language. However, the audience
- did, and if the police of this country were not so barefaced, the
- saviour of Buffalo would have wished himself anywhere rather than to
- stand exposed as a clown before a large gathering of men and women.
- The meeting the following evening was forcibly dispersed before the
- speakers had arrived. Ignorance is always brutal when it is backed by
- power.
- TORONTO. King Edward Hotel, Queen Victoria Manicuring Parlor. It was
- only when we read these signs that we realized that we were on the soil
- of the British Empire.
- However, the monarchical authorities of Canada were more hospitable and
- much freer than those of our free Republic. Not a sign of an officer at
- any of the meetings.
- The city? A gray sky, rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one
- of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German
- university town. "Dogs on the street," Heine writes, "implore strangers
- to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony
- and dulness."
- ROCHESTER. The neighborly influence of the Buffalo police seems to have
- had a bad effect upon the mental development of the Rochester
- authorities. The hall was packed with officers at both meetings. The
- government of Rochester, however, was not saved--the police kept
- themselves in good order. Some of them seem to have benefited by the
- lectures. That accounts for the familiarity of one of Rochester's
- "finest," who wanted to shake Emma Goldman's hand. E. G. had to decline.
- Baron von Schlippenbach or an American representative of law and
- disorder,--where is the difference?
- SYRACUSE. The city where the trains run through the streets. With
- Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one
- sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the
- atmosphere with soft coal smoke.
- What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers
- reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible
- calamity.
- Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting,
- attended largely by "genuine" Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps,
- was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid
- impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some
- foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded,
- would turn to his hearers and ask, "Gentlemen, have I committed some
- folly?"
- Au revoir.
- E. G. and M. B.
- THE MORAL DEMAND.
- A COMEDY, IN ONE ACT, BY OTTO ERICH HARTLEBEN.
- Translated from the German for "Mother Earth."
- CAST.
- RITA REVERA, concert singer.
- FRIEDRICH STIERWALD, owner of firm of "C. W. Stierwald Sons" in
- Rudolstadt.
- BERTHA, Rita's maid.
- _Time._--End of the nineteenth century.
- _Place._--A large German fashionable bathing resort.
- * * * * *
- Scene.--_Rita's boudoir. Small room elegantly furnished in Louis XVI.
- style. In the background, a broad open door, with draperies, which leads
- into an antechamber. To the right, a piano, in front of which stands a
- large, comfortable stool._
- * * * * *
- RITA (_enters the antechamber attired in an elaborate ball toilette. She
- wears a gray silk cloak, a lace fichu, and a parasol. Gaily tripping
- toward the front, she sings_): "Les envoyées du paradis sont les
- mascottes, mes amis...." (_She lays the parasol on the table and takes
- off her long white gloves, all the while singing the melody. She
- interrupts herself and calls aloud_) Bertha! Bertha! (_Sings_) O
- Bertholina, O Bertholina!
- BERTHA (_walks through the middle_): My lady, your pleasure?
- (_Rita has taken off her cloak and stands in front of the mirror. She is
- still humming the melody absentmindedly_).
- (_Bertha takes off Rita's wraps._)
- RITA (_turns around merrily_): Tell me, Bertha, why does not the
- electric bell ring? I must always sing first, must always squander all
- my flute notes first ere I can entice you to come. What do you suppose
- that costs? With that I can immediately arrange another charity matinée.
- Terrible thing, isn't it?
- BERTHA: Yes. The man has not yet repaired it.
- RITA: O, Bertholina, _why_ has the man not yet repaired it?
- BERTHA: Yes. The man intended to come early in the morning.
- RITA: The man has often wanted to do so. He does not seem to possess a
- strong character. (_She points to her cloak_) Dust it well before
- placing it in the wardrobe. The dust is simply terrible in this place
- ... and this they call a fresh-air resort. Has anybody called?
- BERTHA: Yes, my lady, the Count. He has----
- RITA: Well, yes; I mean anyone else?
- BERTHA: No. No one.
- RITA: Hm! Let me have my dressing gown.
- (_Bertha goes to the sleeping chamber to the left._)
- RITA (_steps in front of the mirror, singing softly_): "Les envoyées du
- paradis...." (_Suddenly raising her voice, she asks Bertha_) How long
- did he wait?
- BERTHA: What?
- RITA: I would like to know how long he waited.
- BERTHA: An hour.
- RITA (_to herself_): He does not love me any more. (_Loudly_) But during
- that time he might have at least repaired the bell. He is of no use
- whatever. (_She laughs._)
- BERTHA: The Count came directly from the matinée and asked me where your
- ladyship had gone to dine. Naturally I did not know.
- RITA: Did he ask--anything else?
- BERTHA: No, he looked at the photographs.
- RITA (_in the door_): Well? And does he expect to come again to-day?
- BERTHA: Yes, certainly. At four o'clock.
- RITA (_looks at the clock_): Oh, but that's boring. Now it is already
- half-past three. One cannot even drink coffee in peace. Hurry, Bertha,
- prepare the coffee.
- (_Bertha leaves the room, carrying the articles of attire._)
- (_Rita, after a pause, singing a melancholy melody._)
- (_Friedrich Stierwald, a man very carefully dressed in black, about
- thirty years of age, with a black crêpe around his stiff hat, enters
- from the rear into the antechamber, followed by Bertha._)
- BERTHA: But the lady is not well.
- FRIEDRICH: Please tell the lady that I am passing through here, and that
- I must speak with her about a very pressing matter. It is absolutely
- necessary. Please! (_He gives her money and his card._)
- BERTHA: Yes, I shall take your card, but I fear she will not receive
- you.
- FRIEDRICH: Why not? O, yes! Just go----
- BERTHA: This morning she sang at a charity matinée and so----
- FRIEDRICH: I know, I know. Listen! (_Rita's singing has grown louder_)
- Don't you hear how she sings? Oh, do go!
- BERTHA (_shaking her head_): Well, then--wait a moment. (_She passes
- through the room to the half-opened door of the sleeping apartment,
- knocks_) Dear lady!
- RITA (_from within_): Well? What's the matter?
- BERTHA (_at the door_): Oh, this gentleman here--he wishes to see you
- very much. He is passing through here.
- RITA (_within; laughs_): Come in.
- (_Bertha disappears._)
- (_Friedrich has walked up to the middle door, where he remains
- standing._)
- RITA: Well. Who is it? Friedrich---- Hmm---- I shall come immediately.
- BERTHA (_comes out and looks at Friedrich in surprise_): My lady wishes
- you to await her. (_She walks away, after having taken another glance at
- Friedrich._)
- (_Friedrich looks about embarrassed and shyly._)
- (_Rita enters attired in a tasteful dressing gown, but remains standing
- in the door._)
- FRIEDRICH (_bows; softly_): Good day.
- (_Rita looks at him with an ironical smile and remains silent._)
- FRIEDRICH: You remember me? Don't you?
- RITA (_quietly_): Strange. You--come to see me? What has become of your
- good training? (_Laughs._) Have you lost all sense of shame?
- FRIEDRICH (_stretches out his hand, as if imploring_): Oh, I beg of you,
- I beg of you; not this tone! I really came to explain everything to you,
- everything. And possibly to set things aright.
- RITA: You--with me! (_She shakes her head._) Incredible! But, please,
- since you are here, sit down. With what can you serve me?
- FRIEDRICH (_seriously_): Miss Hattenbach, I really should----
- RITA (_lightly_): Pardon me, my name is Revera. Rita Revera.
- FRIEDRICH: I know that you call yourself by that name now. But you won't
- expect me, an old friend of your family, to make use of this romantic,
- theatrical name. For me you are now, as heretofore, the daughter of the
- esteemed house of Hattenbach, with which I----
- RITA (_quickly and sharply_): With which your father transacts business,
- I know.
- FRIEDRICH (_with emphasis_): With which I now am myself associated.
- RITA: Is it possible? And your father?
- FRIEDRICH (_seriously_): If I had the slightest inkling of your address,
- yes, even your present name, I should not have missed to announce to you
- the sudden death of my father.
- RITA (_after pause_): Oh, he is dead. I see you still wear mourning. How
- long ago is it?
- FRIEDRICH: Half a year. Since then I am looking for you, and I hope you
- will not forbid me to address you now, as of yore, with that name, which
- is so highly esteemed in our native city.
- RITA (_smiling friendly_): Your solemnity--is delightful. Golden! But
- sit down.
- FRIEDRICH (_remains standing; he is hurt_): I must confess, Miss
- Hattenbach, that I was not prepared for such a reception from you. I
- hoped that I might expect, after these four or five years, that you
- would receive me differently than with this--with this--how shall I say?
- RITA: Toleration.
- FRIEDRICH: No, with this arrogance.
- RITA: How?
- FRIEDRICH (_controlling himself_): I beg your pardon. I am sorry to have
- said that.
- RITA (_after a pause, hostile_): You wish to be taken seriously? (_She
- sits down, with a gesture of the hand_) Please, what have you to say to
- me?
- FRIEDRICH: Much. Oh, very much. (_He also sits down._) But--you are not
- well to-day?
- RITA: Not well? What makes you say so?
- FRIEDRICH: Yes, the maid told me so.
- RITA: The maid--she is a useful person. That makes me think. You
- certainly expect to stay here some time, do you not?
- FRIEDRICH: With your permission. I have much to tell you.
- RITA: I thought so. (_Calling loudly_) Bertha! Bertha! Do you suppose
- one could get an electric bell repaired here? Impossible.
- BERTHA (_enters_): My lady?
- RITA: Bertha, when the Count comes--now I am really sick.
- BERTHA (_nods_): Very well. (_She leaves._)
- RITA (_calls after her_): And where is the coffee? I shall famish.
- BERTHA (_outside_): Immediately.
- FRIEDRICH: The--the Count--did you say?
- RITA: Yes, quite a fine fellow otherwise, but--would not fit in now. I
- wanted to say: I am passionately fond of electric bells. You know they
- have a fabulous charm for me. One only needs to touch them softly, ever
- so softly, with the small finger, and still cause a terrible noise.
- Fine--is it not? You wanted to talk about serious matters. It seems so
- to me.
- FRIEDRICH: Yes. And I beg of you, Miss Erna----
- RITA: Erna?
- FRIEDRICH: Erna!
- RITA: Oh, well!
- FRIEDRICH (_continuing_): I beg of you; be really and truly serious.
- Yes? Listen to what I have to say to you. Be assured that it comes from
- an honest, warm heart. During the years in which I have not seen you, I
- have grown to be a serious man--perhaps, too serious for my age--but my
- feelings for you have remained young, quite young. Do you hear me, Erna?
- RITA (_leaning back in the rocking chair, with a sigh_): I hear.
- FRIEDRICH: And you know, Erna, how I have always loved you from my
- earliest youth, yes, even sooner than I myself suspected. You know that,
- yes?
- (_Rita is silent and does not look at him_.)
- FRIEDRICH: When I was still a foolish schoolboy I already called you my
- betrothed, and I could not but think otherwise than that I would some
- day call you my wife. You certainly know that, don't you?
- RITA (_reserved_): Yes, I know it.
- FRIEDRICH: Well, then you ought to be able to understand what dreadful
- feelings overcame me when I discovered, sooner than you or the world,
- the affection of my father for you. That was--no, you cannot grasp it.
- RITA (_looks at him searchingly_): Sooner than I and all the world?
- FRIEDRICH: Oh, a great deal sooner ... that was.... That time was the
- beginning of the hardest innermost struggles for me. What was I to do?
- (_He sighs deeply_.) Ah, Miss Erna, we people are really----
- RITA: Yes, yes.
- FRIEDRICH: We are dreadfully shallow-minded. How seldom one of us can
- really live as he would like to. Must we not always and forever consider
- others--and our surroundings?
- RITA: Must?
- FRIEDRICH: Well, yes, we do so, at least. And when it is our own father!
- For, look here, Erna, I never would have been able to oppose my father!
- I was used, as you well know, from childhood to always look up to my
- father with the greatest respect. He used to be severe, my father, proud
- and inaccessible, but--if I may be permitted to say so, he was an
- excellent man.
- RITA: Well?
- FRIEDRICH (_eagerly_): Yes, indeed! You must remember that it was he
- alone who established our business by means of his powerful energy and
- untiring diligence. Only now I myself have undertaken the management of
- the establishment. I am able to see what an immense work he has
- accomplished.
- RITA (_simply_): Yes, he was an able business man.
- FRIEDRICH: In every respect! Ability personified, and he had grown to be
- fifty-two years of age and was still, still--how shall I say?
- RITA: Still able.
- FRIEDRICH: Well, yes; I mean a vigorous man in his best years. For
- fifteen years he had been a widower, he had worked, worked unceasingly,
- and then--the house was well established--he could think of placing some
- of the work upon younger shoulders. He could think of enjoying his life
- once more.
- RITA (_softly_): That is----
- FRIEDRICH (_continuing_): And he thought he had found, in you, the one
- who would bring back to him youth and the joy of life.
- RITA (_irritated_): Yes, but then you ought to--(_Breaks off._) Oh, it
- is not worth while.
- FRIEDRICH: How? I should have been man enough to say: No, I forbid it;
- that is a folly of age. I, your son, forbid it. I demand her for myself.
- The young fortune is meant for me--not for you?----No, Erna, I could
- not do that. I could not do that.
- RITA: No.
- FRIEDRICH: I, the young clerk, with no future before me!
- RITA: No!
- FRIEDRICH: My entire training and my conceptions urged me to consider it
- my duty to simply stand aside and stifle my affection, as I did--as I
- already told you even before any other person had an idea of the
- intentions of my father. I gradually grew away from you.
- RITA (_amused_): Gradually--yes, I recollect. You suddenly became
- formal. Indeed, very nice!
- FRIEDRICH: I thought----
- (_Bertha comes with the coffee and serves._)
- RITA: Will you take a cup with me?
- FRIEDRICH (_thoughtlessly_): I thought----(_Correcting himself_) pardon
- me! I thank you!
- RITA: I hope it will not disturb you if I drink my coffee while you
- continue.
- FRIEDRICH: Please (_embarrassed_). I thought it a proper thing. I hoped
- that my cold and distant attitude would check a possible existing
- affection for me.
- RITA: Possible existing affection! Fie! Now you are beginning to lie!
- (_She jumps up and walks nervously through the room._) As though you had
- not positively known that! (_Stepping in front of him_) Or what did you
- take me for when I kissed you?
- FRIEDRICH (_very much frightened, also rises_): O, Erna, I always----
- RITA (_laughs_): You are delightful! Delightful! Still the same bashful
- boy--who does not dare--(_she laughs and sits down again_.) Delightful.
- FRIEDRICH (_after a silence, hesitatingly_): Well, are you going to
- allow me to call you Erna again, as of yore?
- RITA: As of yore. (_She sighs, then gaily_) If you care to.
- FRIEDRICH (_happy_): Yes? May I?
- RITA (_heartily_): O, yes, Fritz. That's better, isn't it? It sounds
- more natural, eh?
- FRIEDRICH (_presses her hand and sighs_): Yes, really. You take a heavy
- load from me. Everything that I want to say to you can be done so much
- better in the familiar tone.
- RITA: Oh! Have you still so much to say to me?
- FRIEDRICH: Well--but now tell me first: how was it possible for you to
- undertake such a step. What prompted you to leave so suddenly? Erna,
- Erna, how could you do that?
- RITA (_proudly_): How I could? Can you ask me that? Do you really not
- know it?
- FRIEDRICH (_softly_): Oh, yes; I do know it, but--it takes so much to do
- that.
- RITA: Not more than was in me.
- FRIEDRICH: One thing I must confess to you, although it was really bad
- of me. But I knew no way out of it. I felt relieved after you had gone.
- RITA: Well, then, that was _your_ heroism.
- FRIEDRICH: Do not misunderstand me. I knew my father had----
- RITA: Yes, yes--but do not talk about it any more.
- FRIEDRICH: You are right. It was boyish of me. It did not last long, and
- then I mourned for you--not less than your parents. Oh, Erna! If you
- would see your parents now. They have aged terribly. Your father has
- lost his humor altogether, and is giving full vent to his old passion
- for red wine. Your mother is always ailing, hardly ever leaves the
- house, and both, even though they never lose a word about it, cannot
- reconcile themselves to the thought that their only child left them.
- RITA (_after a pause, awakens from her meditation, harshly_): Perhaps
- you were sent by my father?
- FRIEDRICH: No--why?
- RITA: Then I would show you the door.
- FRIEDRICH: Erna!
- RITA: A man, who ventured to pay his debts with me----
- FRIEDRICH: How so; what do you mean?
- RITA: Oh--let's drop that. Times were bad. But to-day the house of
- Hattenbach enjoys its good old standing, as you say, and has overcome
- the crisis. Then your father must have had some consideration--without
- me. Well, then.----And Rudolstadt still stands--on the old spot. That's
- the main thing. But now let us talk about something else, I beg of you.
- FRIEDRICH: No, no, Erna. What you allude to, that----do you really
- believe my father had----
- RITA: Your father had grown used to buy and attain everything in life
- through money. Why not buy me also? And he had already received the
- promise--not from me, but from my father. But I am free! I ran away and
- am my own mistress! (_With haughtiness._) A young girl, all alone! Down
- with the gang!
- (_Friedrich is silent and holds his head._)
- RITA (_steps up to him and touches his shoulder, in a friendly manner_):
- Don't be sad. At that time your father was the stronger, and----Life is
- not otherwise. After all, one must assert oneself.
- FRIEDRICH: But he robbed you of your happiness.
- RITA (_jovially_): Who knows? It is just as well.
- FRIEDRICH (_surprised_): Is that possible? Do you call that happiness,
- this being alone?
- RITA: Yes. That is MY happiness--my freedom, and I love it with
- jealousy, for I fought for it myself.
- FRIEDRICH (_bitterly_): A great happiness! Outside of family ties,
- outside the ranks of respectable society.
- RITA (_laughs aloud, but without bitterness_): Respectable society! Yes.
- I fled from that--thank Heaven. (_harshly_) But if you do not come in
- the name of my father, what do you want here? Why do you come? For what
- purpose? What do you want of me?
- FRIEDRICH: Erna, you ask that in a strange manner.
- RITA: Well, yes. I have a suspicion that you--begrudge me my liberty.
- How did you find me, anyway?
- FRIEDRICH: Yes, that was hard enough.
- RITA: Rita Revera is not so unknown.
- FRIEDRICH: Rita Revera! Oh, no! How often I have read that name these
- last years--in the newspapers in Berlin, on various placards, in large
- letters. But how could I ever have thought that you were meant by it?
- RITA (_laughs_): Why did you not go to the "Winter Garden" when you were
- in Berlin?
- FRIEDRICH: I never frequent such places.
- RITA: Pardon me! Oh, I always forget the old customs.
- FRIEDRICH: Oh, please, please, dear Erna; not in this tone of voice!
- RITA: Which tone?
- FRIEDRICH: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I
- had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a
- long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at
- first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up
- everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived
- in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the
- other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to
- the world in which I live--that we could hardly understand each other.
- RITA: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal--how you would have liked
- to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during
- the four years, had lived in hunger and need--but respectably, that is
- the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and
- the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you
- deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it?
- FRIEDRICH (_looks at her calmly_): Well, is there anything wrong about
- it?
- RITA: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this
- disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me?
- FRIEDRICH: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear,
- silvery, childlike laughter. Right in the midst of my petty scruples it
- resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do
- you still remember that time, Erna?
- (_Rita is silent._)
- BERTHA (_enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses_): My
- lady--from the Count.
- RITA (_jumps up, nervously excited_): Roses! My dark roses! Give them to
- me! Ah! (_She holds them toward Friedrich and asks_) Did he say
- anything?
- BERTHA: No, said nothing, but----
- FRIEDRICH (_shoves the bouquet, which she holds up closely to his face,
- aside_): I thank you.
- RITA (_without noticing him, to Bertha_): Well?
- BERTHA (_pointing to the bouquet_): The Count has written something on a
- card.
- RITA: His card? Where? (_She searches among the flowers_) Oh, here!
- (_She reads; then softly to Bertha_) It is all right.
- (_Bertha leaves_.)
- RITA (_reads again_): "Pour prendre congé." (_With an easy sigh_) Yes,
- yes.
- FRIEDRICH: What is the matter?
- RITA: Sad! His education was hardly half finished and he already
- forsakes me.
- FRIEDRICH: What do you mean? I do not understand you at all.
- RITA (_her mind is occupied_): Too bad. Now he'll grow entirely stupid.
- FRIEDRICH (_rises importantly_): Erna, answer me. What relationship
- existed between you and the Count?
- RITA (_laughs_): What business is that of yours?
- FRIEDRICH (_solemnly_): Erna! Whatever it might have been, this will not
- do any longer.
- RITA (_gaily_): No, no; you see it is already ended.
- FRIEDRICH: No, Erna, that must all be ended. You must get out of all
- this--entirely--and forever.
- RITA (_looks at him surprised and inquiringly_): Hm! Strange person.
- FRIEDRICH (_grows more eager and walks up and down in the room_): Such a
- life is immoral. You must recognize it. Yes, and I forbid you to live on
- in this fashion. I have the right to demand it of you.
- RITA (_interrupts him sharply_): Demand? You demand something of me?
- FRIEDRICH: Yes, indeed, demand! Not for me--no--in the name of morals.
- That which I ask of you is simply a moral demand, do you understand, a
- moral demand, which must be expected of every woman.
- RITA: "Must!" And why?
- FRIEDRICH: Because--because--because--well, dear me--because--otherwise
- everything will stop!
- RITA: What will stop? Life?
- FRIEDRICH: No, but morals.
- RITA: Ah, I thank you. Now I understand you. One must be moral
- because--otherwise morality will stop.
- FRIEDRICH: Why, yes. That is very simple.
- RITA: Yes--now, please, what would I have to do in order to fulfill your
- demand? I am curious like a child now, and shall listen obediently.
- (_She sits down again._)
- FRIEDRICH (_also sits down and grasps her hand, warmly_): Well, see, my
- dear Erna, everything can still be undone. In Rudolstadt everybody
- believes you are in England with relatives. Even if you have never been
- there----
- RITA: Often enough. My best engagements.
- FRIEDRICH: So much the better. Then you certainly speak English?
- RITA: Of course.
- FRIEDRICH: And you are acquainted with English customs. Excellent. Oh,
- Erna. Your father will be pleased, he once confessed to me, when he had
- a little too much wine. You know him: he grows sentimental then.
- RITA (_to herself_): They are all that way.
- FRIEDRICH: How?
- RITA: Oh, nothing. Please continue. Well--I could come back?
- FRIEDRICH: Certainly! Fortunately, during these last years, since you
- have grown so famous, nobody has----
- RITA: I have grown notorious only within a year.
- FRIEDRICH: Well, most likely nobody in Rudolstadt has ever seen you on
- the boards. In one word, you _must_ return.
- RITA: From England?
- FRIEDRICH: Yes, nothing lies in the way. And your mother will be
- overjoyed.
- RITA: Nay, nay.
- FRIEDRICH: How well that you have taken a different name.
- RITA: Ah, that is it. Yes, I believe that. Then they know that I am Rita
- Revera.
- FRIEDRICH: I wrote them. They will receive you with open arms. Erna! I
- beg of you! I entreat you; come with me! It is still time. To-day. You
- cannot know, but anybody from Rudolstadt who knows might come to the
- theatre and----
- RITA (_decidedly_): No one from Rudolstadt will do that. They are too
- well trained for that. You see it by your own person. But go on! If I
- would care to, if I really would return--what then?
- FRIEDRICH: Then? Well, then, you would be in the midst of the family and
- society again--and then----
- RITA: And then?
- FRIEDRICH: Then, after some time has elapsed and you feel at home and
- when all is forgotten, as though nothing had ever happened----
- RITA: But a great deal has happened.
- FRIEDRICH: Erna, you must not take me for such a Philistine that I would
- mind that. At heart I am unprejudiced. No, really, I know (_softly_) my
- own fault, and I know Life. I know very well, and I cannot ask it of
- you, that you, in a career like yours, you----
- RITA: Hm?
- FRIEDRICH: Well, that you should have remained entirely faultless. And I
- do not ask it of you either.
- RITA: You do well at that.
- FRIEDRICH: I mean, whatever has happened within these four years--lies
- beyond us, does not concern me--but shall not concern you any longer
- either. Rita Revera has ceased to be--Erna Hattenbach returns to her
- family.
- RITA: Lovely, very lovely. Hm!--but then, what then? Shall I start a
- cooking school?
- FRIEDRICH (_with a gentle reproach_): But, Erna! Don't you understand
- me? Could you think of anything else than---- Of course, I shall marry
- you then.
- (_Rita looks at him puzzled._)
- FRIEDRICH: But that is self-evident. Why should I have looked you up
- otherwise? Why should I be here? But, dear Erna, don't look so stunned.
- RITA (_still stares at him_): "Simply--marry." Strange. (_She turns
- around towards the open piano, plays and sings softly_) Farilon, farila,
- farilette.
- FRIEDRICH (_has risen_): Erna! Do not torment me!
- RITA: Torment? No. That would not be right. You are a good fellow. Give
- me a kiss. (_She rises._)
- FRIEDRICH (_embraces and kisses her_): My Erna! Oh, you have grown so
- much prettier! So much prettier!
- (_Rita leans her head on his shoulder._)
- FRIEDRICH: But now come. Let us not lose one moment.
- (_Rita does not move_.)
- FRIEDRICH: If possible let everything be.... Come! (_He pushes her with
- gentle force_) You cry?
- RITA (_hastily wipes the tears from her eyes, controls herself_): O,
- nonsense. Rita Revera does not cry--she laughs. (_Laughs forcedly._)
- FRIEDRICH: Erna, do not use that name. I do not care to hear it again!
- RITA: Oh--you do not want to hear it any more. You would like to command
- me. You come here and assume that that which life and hard times have
- made of me you can wipe out in a half hour! No! You do not know life and
- know nothing of me. (_Harshly_) My name is Revera, and I shall not marry
- a merchant from Rudolstadt.
- FRIEDRICH: How is that? You still hesitate?
- RITA: Do I look as though I hesitated? (_She steps up closer to him._)
- Do you know, Fred, that during the years after my escape I often went
- hungry, brutally hungry? Do you know that I ran about in the most
- frightful dives, with rattling plate, collecting pennies and insults? Do
- you know what it means to humiliate oneself for dry bread? You see; that
- has been my school. Do you understand that I had to become an entirely
- different person or go to ruin? One who owes everything to himself, who
- is proud of himself, but who no longer respects anything, above all, no
- conventional measures and weights? And do you understand, Fred, that it
- would be base on my part were I to follow you to the Philistine?
- FRIEDRICH (_after a pause, sadly_): No, I do not understand that.
- RITA (_again gaily_): I thought so. Shall I dread there every suspicion
- and tremble before every fool, whereas I can breathe free air, enjoy
- sunshine and the best conscience. You know that pretty part in the
- Walküre? (_She sings_):
- "Greet Rudolstadt for me,
- Greet my father and mother
- And all the heroes....
- I shall not follow you to them!"
- Now you know. (_She sits down at the piano again._)
- FRIEDRICH (_after silence_): Even if you have lived through hard times,
- that still does not give you the right to disregard the duties of morals
- and customs.
- RITA (_plays and sings_): "Farilon, farila, farilette--"
- FRIEDRICH: I cannot understand how you can refuse me, when I offer you
- the opportunity of returning to ordered circumstances.
- RITA: I do not love the "ordered" circumstances. On the contrary, I must
- have something to train.
- FRIEDRICH: And I? I shall never be anything to you any more? You thrust
- me also aside in your stubbornness.
- RITA: But not at all. Why?
- FRIEDRICH: How so? Did you not state just now that you would never marry
- a merchant from Rudolstadt.
- RITA: Certainly----
- FRIEDRICH: Do you see? You cannot be so cold and heartless towards me?
- (_Flattering_) Why did you kiss me before? I know you also yearn in your
- innermost heart for those times in which we secretly saw and found each
- other. You also, and, even if you deny it, I felt it before when you
- cried. (_Softly_) Erna! Come along, come along with me! Come! Become my
- dear wife!
- RITA (_looks at him quietly_): No, I shall not do such a thing.
- FRIEDRICH (_starts nervously; after a pause_): Erna! Is that your last
- word?
- RITA: Yes.
- FRIEDRICH: Consider well what you say!
- RITA: I know what I am about.
- FRIEDRICH: Erna! You want--to remain what you are?
- RITA: Yes. That's just what I want.
- FRIEDRICH (_remains for some time struggling, then grasps his hat_):
- Then--adieu! (_He hurries toward the left into the bedroom._)
- RITA (_calls smiling_): Halt! Not there.
- FRIEDRICH (_returns, confused_): Pardon me, I----
- RITA: Poor Fred, did you stray into my bedroom? There is the door.
- (_Long pause. Several times he tries to speak. She laughs gently. Then
- she sings and plays the song from "Mamselle Nitouche"_):
- A minuit, après la fête,
- Rev'naient Babet et Cadet;
- Cristi! la nuit est complète,
- Faut nous dépêcher, Babet.
- Tâche d'en profiter, grosse bête!
- Farilon, farila, farilette.
- J'ai trop peur, disait Cadet--
- J'ai pas peur, disait Babet--
- Larirette, larire,
- Larirette, larire.-- -- --
- (_Friedrich at first listens against his will, even makes a step toward
- the door. By and by he becomes fascinated and finally is charmed. When
- she finishes, he puts his stiff hat on the table and walks toward her
- with a blissful smile._)
- RITA: Now? You even smile? Did I impress you?
- FRIEDRICH (_drops down on his knees in front of her_): Oh, Erna, you are
- the most charming woman on earth. (_He kisses her hands wildly._)
- RITA (_stoops down to him, softly and merrily_): Why run away? Why? If
- you still love me, can you run off--you mule?
- FRIEDRICH: Oh, I'll remain--I remain with you.
- RITA: It was well that you missed the door.
- FRIEDRICH: Oh, Erna----
- RITA: But now you'll call me Rita--do you understand? Well? Are you
- going to--are you going to be good?
- FRIEDRICH: Rita! Rita! Everything you wish.
- RITA: Everything I wish. (_She kisses him._) And now tell me about your
- moral demand. Yes? You are delightful when you talk about it. So
- delightful.
- * * * * *
- Benj. R. Tucker
- Publisher and Bookseller
- has opened a Book Store at
- 225 Fourth Ave., Room 13, New York City
- Here will be carried, ultimately, the most complete line of advanced
- literature to be found anywhere in the world. More than one thousand
- titles in the English language already in stock. A still larger stock,
- in foreign languages, will be put in gradually. A full catalogue will be
- ready soon of the greatest interest to all those in search of the
- literature.
- Which, in morals, leads away from superstition,
- Which, in politics, leads away from government, and
- Which, in art, leads away from Tradition.
- * * * * *
- "LIBERTY"
- BENJ. R. TUCKER, Editor
- An Anarchistic journal, expounding the doctrine that in Equal Liberty is
- to be found the most satisfactory solution of social questions, and that
- majority rule, or democracy, equally with monarchical rule, is a denial
- of Equal Liberty.
- * * * * *
- APPRECIATIONS
- G. BERNARD SHAW, author of "Man and Superman": "'Liberty' is a
- lively paper, in which the usual proportions of a half-pennyworth of
- discussion to an intolerable deal of balderdash are reversed."
- WILLIAM DOUGLAS O'CONNOR, author of "The Good Gray Poet": "The
- editor of 'Liberty' would be the Gavroche of the Revolution, If he
- were not its Enjolras."
- FRANK STEPHENS, well-known Single-Tax champion, Philadelphia:
- "'Liberty' is a paper which reforms reformers."
- BOLTON HALL, author of "Even As You and I": "'Liberty' shows us the
- profit of Anarchy, and is the prophet of Anarchy."
- ALLEN KELLY, formerly chief editorial writer on the Philadelphia
- "North American": "'Liberty' is my philosophical Polaris. I
- ascertain the variations of my economic compass by taking a sight at
- her whenever she is visible."
- SAMUEL W. COOPER, counsellor at law, Philadelphia: "'Liberty' is a
- journal that Thomas Jefferson would have loved."
- EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN, Judge of the Illinois Circuit Court: "I have
- seen much in 'Liberty' that I agreed with, and much that I disagreed
- with, but I never saw any cant, hypocrisy, or insincerity in it,
- which makes it an almost unique publication."
- * * * * *
- Published Bimonthly. Twelve Issues, $1.00
- Single Copies, 10 Cents
- Address: R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, New York City
- * * * * *
- M. N. Maisel's
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- 194 E. Broadway
- New York
- Special Sale
- +Herbert Spencer.+ The Authorized Copyright Works. (Appleton's edition.)
- First Principles, 1 vol.; Principles of Biology, 2 vols.; Principles of
- Psychology, 2 vols.; Principles of Sociology, 3 vols.; Principles of
- Ethics, 2 vols. 8vo. 10 vols., cloth, new Published at $20.00. My Price
- $9.50
- +Charles Darwin.+ The Authorized Copyright Works. Descent of Man, 1 vol.;
- Origin of Species, 2 vols.; Emotional Expressions, 1 vol.; Animals and
- Plants under Domestication, 2 vols.; Insectivorous Plants, 1 vol.;
- Vegetable Mould, 1 vol.; Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. 10
- vols., cloth, new Published at $25.00. My Price, $9.00
- I have only a few series of these sets and will not be able to supply at
- these prices after stock is gone.
- * * * * *
- +More than 15,000 volumes always on hand.+
- * * * * *
- Fine Sets; Reference Works; General Literature; Scientific,
- Philosophical, Liberal, Progressive and Reform Books.
- * * * * *
- Most of the Books in stock, new or second-hand, are sold at from 25 to
- 75 per cent discount from Publishers price.
- * * * * *
- +Weekly Importations from Germany, Russia, France and England.+
- * * * * *
- MEETINGS
- _Progressive Library_ 706 Forsyth Street. Meeting every Sunday evening.
- * * * * *
- _Hugh O. Pentecost_ lectures every Sunday, 11 A. M., at Lyric Hall, Sixth
- avenue (near Forty-second street.)
- * * * * *
- _Brooklyn Philosophical Association._ Meets every Sunday, 3 P. M., at Long
- Island Business College, 143 So. 8th street.
- * * * * *
- _Sunrise Club._ Meets every other Monday for dinner and after discussion
- at some place designated by the President.
- * * * * *
- _Manhattan Liberal Club._ Meets every Friday, 8 P. M., at German Masonic
- Hall, 220 East Fifteenth street.
- * * * * *
- _Harlem Liberal Alliance._ Every Friday, 8 P. M., in Madison Hall, 1666
- Madison avenue.
- * * * * *
- _Liberal Art Society._ Meets every Friday, 8.30 P. M., at Terrace Lyceum,
- 206 East Broadway.
- * * * * *
- "Mother Earth"
- For Sale at all the above-mentioned places.
- +10 Cents a Copy+
- +One Dollar a Year+
- * * * * *
- +THE BOOKS OF ERNEST CROSBY+
- +Garrison the Non-Resistant.+ 16mo, cloth, 144 pages, with photogravure
- portrait, 50c.; by mail +55c.+
- +Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable.+ A collection of chants in the cause of
- justice and brotherhood. 12mo, cloth, 188 pages, $1.50; by mail, $1.62.
- Paper, 40c.; by mail +44c.+
- +Captain Jinks, Hero.+ A keen satire on our recent wars, in which the
- parallel between savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. Profusely
- illustrated by Dan Beard. 12mo, cloth, 400 pages, postpaid +$1.50+
- +Swords and Plowshares.+ A collection of poems filled with the hatred of
- war and the love of nature. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 12mo,
- cloth, 126 pages, $1.20; by mail +$1.29+
- +Tolstoy and His Message.+ "A concise and sympathetic account of the life,
- character and philosophy of the great Russian."--_New York Press_. "A
- genuinely illuminative interpretation of the great philosopher's being
- and purpose."--_Philadelphia Item_. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.)
- 16mo, cloth, 93 pages, 50c.; by mail +54c.+
- +Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster.+ An essay on education and punishment with
- Tolstoy's curious experiments in teaching as a text. 16mo, cloth, 94
- pages, 50c.; by mail +53c.+
- +Broad-Cast.+ New chants and songs of labor, life and freedom. This latest
- volume of poems by the author of "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable" and
- "Swords and Plowshares" conveys the same message delivered with equal
- power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail +54c.+
- +Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet.+ An illuminative essay, with
- selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with
- portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid +20c.+
- +THE BOOKS OF BOLTON HALL+
- +Free America.+ 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 75c.; by mail +80c.+
- +The Game of Life.+ A new volume of 111 fables. Most of them have been
- published from time to time in _Life_, _Collier's_, _The Outlook_, _The
- Century_, _The Independent_, _The Ram's Horn_, _The Pilgrim_, _The
- Christian Endeavor World_, _The Rubric_, _The New Voice_, _The
- Philistine_ and other papers and magazines. 16mo, cloth, ornamental,
- postpaid +$1.00+
- +Even as You and I.+ This is a presentation, by means of popular and
- simple allegories, of the doctrine of Henry George and the principle
- which underlies it. A part of the volume is an account of Tolstoy's
- philosophy, drawn largely from the Russian's difficult work, "Of Life."
- This section is called "True Life," and follows a series of thirty-three
- clever parables. Count Tolstoy wrote to Mr. Hall: "I have received your
- book, and have read it. I think it is very good, and renders in a
- concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book." 16mo, cloth,
- ornamental, gilt top, 50 c.; by mail +54c.+
- * * * * *
- +Books to be had through Mother Earth+
- +Work and Wages.+ By Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers. Shows that the real wages
- of the laborer, as measured by his standard of living, are actually
- lower now than in the fifteenth century. Cloth +$1.00+
- +Civilization, Its Cause and Cure.+ By Edward Carpenter. Cloth +$1.00+
- +England's Ideal, and Other Papers on Social Subjects.+ By Edward
- Carpenter. Edward Carpenter is at once a profound student of social
- problems, an essayist with a most charming style, and a writer of true
- poetic insight. Everything he writes is worth reading. Cloth +$1.00+
- +The Social Revolution.+ By Karl Kautsky. Translated by A. M. and May Wood
- Simons. Cloth +50c.+
- +The Origin and Growth of Village Communities in India.+ By B. H.
- Baden-Powell. A scientific study of a remarkable survival of a phase of
- primitive communism in the British dominions to-day. Cloth +$1.00+
- +American Communities.+ By William Alfred Hinds. Mr. Hinds was for many
- years a resident of one of these colonies and has visited, personally,
- scores of others, which particularly fits him for the task. Cloth, 433
- pages, with 17 full-page illustrations +$1.00+
- +The Sale of an Appetite.+ By Paul Lafargue. This book by one of the
- foremost socialists of Europe is a notable work of art considered merely
- as a story and at the same time it is one of the most stirring
- indictments of the capitalist system ever written. Cloth, illustrated
- +50c.+
- +The Triumph of Life.+ By Wilhelm Boelsche. The German critics of this
- book all agree that it is more interesting than his previous work on
- "The Evolution of Man," and those who have read the former work will
- realize what this means. The book is the story of the victory of life
- over the planet earth and is told in a marvelously vivid and picturesque
- manner. Cloth +50c.+
- +Poems of Walt Whitman.+ We have secured a reprint of Whitman's famous
- "Leaves of Grass" for the benefit of those who, having read Mrs.
- Maynard's charming introduction, may desire to read the poet. Nearly all
- of Whitman's poems are contained therein, and John Burroughs has written
- a biographical introduction.
- TO YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE.
- I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
- None have understood you, but I understand you,
- None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to
- yourself.
- Cloth, 341 pages +75c.+
- +Crime and Criminals.+ By Clarence S. Darrow. This is an address delivered
- to the prisoners at the county jail in Chicago. It shows the real cause
- of what is called crime and the real way to put an end to it. Paper +10c.+
- +Katharine Breshkovsky--"For Russia's Freedom."+ By Ernest Poole. This is
- the true story of a Russian woman revolutionist who has been addressing
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- twenty-three years in Siberia; and now a heroic old woman of sixty-one,
- she has plunged again into the dangerous struggle for freedom." Paper
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- End of Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906, by Various
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