recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own
flesh. Why, why these foul murders?
The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his
hundred dollars. His comrades begged, implored him to give them a respite. The paper would go down if they
were to return him his loan. But Bresci insisted on its return.
How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost the good will, the confidence of his comrades.
They would have nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals.
On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo. The young Italian weaver of Paterson,
Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good King.
Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the
act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could
equal the force of those slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken word,
ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from
those dying forms. The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those whose social kinship is
the greatest living force need no appeal to respond—even as does steel to the magnet—to the wrongs and horrors
of society.
If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political violence, how are we to account for the recent violent
outbreaks in India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old philosophy, Hindu teachings
have exalted passive resistance, the drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet the social unrest
in India is daily growing, and has only recently resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon
Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra.
If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually permeated for centuries with the spirit of
passivity, can one question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character exerted by great social
iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the justice of these words:
"Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords of the
government of the alien domination in India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods. The
tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India. They think that by the strength of the sword they
will keep down India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a
helpless and unarmed people, the more terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and foreign
to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed,
but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought
to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the tyrant."[4]
Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity is not the sole factor moulding human character.
Climate, food, occupation; nay, color, light, and sound must be considered in the study of human psychology.
If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must influence different
minds and temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of
Anarchism, or certain exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of political violence.
Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy
in this fundamental truth: if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society
should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that
Anarchism teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering, all misery, all ills, result from the
evil of submission?
Has not some American ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God? And he
was not an Anarchist even. I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So long as tyranny exists,
in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the
ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and
unbearable social iniquities.
High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a
desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who feel the agonized cry
understand its harmony; they hear in it the fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature.
Such is the psychology of political violence.
[1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence.
[2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
[3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London.
[4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN.
PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE
In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the following story of THE PRIEST AND
THE DEVIL:
"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest. 'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What
tortures of hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the tortures of hell in their earthly lives?
Don't you know that you and the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is you that make them
suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'
"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron
foundry. He saw the workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the scorching heat. Very soon
the thick, heavy air and the heat are too much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the devil: 'Let me
go! Let me leave this hell!'
"'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil gets hold of him again and drags him off to a
farm. There he sees workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The overseer carries a knout,
and unmercifully beats anyone who falls to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger.
"Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same workers live with their families—dirty, cold, smoky, ill-
smelling holes. The devil grins. He points out the poverty and hardships which are at home here.
"'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seems as if even he, the devil, pities the people. The pious servant of
God can hardly bear it. With uplifted hands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes, yes! This is hell on earth!'
"'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell. You torment them, torture them to death mentally
when they are already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more hell—one more, the very
worst.'
"He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air and the many human forms, robbed of all
health and energy, lying on the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked, emaciated
bodies.
"'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put on your ankles heavy chains such as these
unfortunates wear; lie down on the cold and filthy floor—and then talk to them about a hell that still awaits them!'
"'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away
from here!'
"'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this. Did you not know it? Did you not know that these men
and women whom you are frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter—did you not know that they are in hell
right here, before they die?'"
This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall of one of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny
that the same applies with equal force to the present time, even to American prisons?
With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to
be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected"
from the phantoms of its own making.
Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can be
promoted by a widespread contagion.
After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE
BALLAD OF READING GOAL:
The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there.
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
Society goes on perpetuating this poisonous air, not realizing that out of it can come naught but the most
poisonous results.
We are spending at the present $3,500,000 per day, $1,000,095,000 per year, to maintain prison institutions, and
that in a democratic country,—a sum almost as large as the combined output of wheat, valued at $750,000,000,
and the output of coal, valued at $350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington, D.C., estimates the cost of
prisons at $6,000,000,000 annually, and Dr. G. Frank Lydston, an eminent American writer on crime, gives
$5,000,000,000 annually as a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of maintaining vast
armies of human beings caged up like wild beasts![1]
Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in America there are four and a half times as many crimes to
every million population today as there were twenty years ago.
The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is murder, not robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the South.
London is five times as large as Chicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteen murders annually in the latter
city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the list,
which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition
of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from its prisons.
The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution,
maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to
question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is
"ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.
The widespread prison investigations, agitation, and education during the last few years are conclusive proof that
men are learning to dig deep into the very bottom of society, down to the causes of the terrible discrepancy
between social and individual life.
Why, then, are prisons a social crime and a failure? To answer this vital question it behooves us to seek the nature
and cause of crimes, the methods employed in coping with them, and the effects these methods produce in ridding
society of the curse and horror of crimes.
First, as to the NATURE of crime:
Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases, the political, the passional, the insane, and the occasional. He says
that the political criminal is the victim of an attempt of a more or less despotic government to preserve its own
stability. He is not necessarily guilty of an unsocial offense; he simply tries to overturn a certain political order
which may itself be anti-social. This truth is recognized all over the world, except in America where the foolish
notion still prevails that in a Democracy there is no place for political criminals. Yet John Brown was a political
criminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is every striker. Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, the political
criminal of our time or place may be the hero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso calls the political criminal the
true precursor of the progressive movement of humanity.
"The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome birth and honest life, who under the stress of some great,
unmerited wrong has wrought justice for himself."[2]
Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in THE MENACE OF THE POLICE, cites the case of Jim Flaherty, a criminal by passion,
who, instead of being saved by society, is turned into a drunkard and a recidivist, with a ruined and poverty-
stricken family as the result.
A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand Whitlock's novel, THE TURN OF THE BALANCE, the
greatest American expose of crime in the making. Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and death
by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law.
Archie and Flaherty are but the types of many thousands, demonstrating how the legal aspects of crime, and the
methods of dealing with it, help to create the disease which is undermining our entire social life.
"The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally in the same
condition as an infant or an animal."[3]
The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit's wealth
permits the luxury of criminal insanity. It has become quite fashionable to be the victim of paranoia. But on the
whole the "sovereignty of justice" still continues to punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its power.
Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing that in Germany, one hundred and six madmen, out of
one hundred and forty-four criminal insane, were condemned to severe punishment.
The occasional criminal "represents by far the largest class of our prison population, hence is the greatest menace
to social well-being." What is the cause that compels a vast army of the human family to take to crime, to prefer the
hideous life within prison walls to the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron master, who leaves its
victims no avenue of escape, for the most depraved human being loves liberty.
This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and economic arrangement. I do not mean to deny the biologic,
physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not
concede that the social and economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of crime.
Granted even that there are innate criminal tendencies, it is none the less true that these tendencies find rich
nutrition in our social environment.
There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against the person and the price of alcohol, between
crimes against property and the price of wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the former looking upon
society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that "the social
environment is the cultivation medium of criminality; that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only
becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY SOCIETY HAS THE
CRIMINALS IT DESERVES."[4]
The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the worker to earn enough to keep up health and
vigor. And as prosperity is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are constantly added to the host
of the unemployed. From East to West, from South to North, this vast army tramps in search of work or food, and
all they find is the workhouse or the slums. Those who have a spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance,
prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty.
Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes consist in some violation of property rights; but
that is too low a figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly
or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery. There is
no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible fact, though he may not be able to account for it.
A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso, and other eminent men have compiled,
shows that the criminal feels only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A Milanese thief said to
Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants
rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open
assault on a rich man would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud." Another wrote: "I am
imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs. Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated
convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to
power and calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and chances. Why should they
punish me for taking by somewhat similar means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The
same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for
which the well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it, while the laws of
the land, in restraining natural desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our beings. Compared
with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."[5]
Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy than in all the law-and-moral books of society.
The economic, political, moral, and physical factors being the microbes of crime, how does society meet the
situation?
The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In
practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge. It has also adopted
the theologic idea; namely, punishment; while the legal and "civilized" methods consist of deterrence or terror, and
reform. We shall presently see that all four modes have failed utterly, and that we are today no nearer a solution
than in the dark ages.
The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized
man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in
the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do. The
majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher"
nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, which proclaims punishment as a means of purification, or
the vicarious atonement of sin. But legally and socially the statute exercises punishment, not merely as an infliction
of pain upon the offender, but also for its terrifying effect upon others.
What is the real basis of punishment, however? The notion of a free will, the idea that man is at all times a free
agent for good or evil; if he chooses the latter, he must be made to pay the price. Although this theory has long
been exploded, and thrown upon the dustheap, it continues to be applied daily by the entire machinery of
government, turning it into the most cruel and brutal tormentor of human life. The only reason for its continuance
is the still more cruel notion that the greater the terror punishment spreads, the more certain its preventative effect.
Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with the social offender. Why do they not deter? Although in
America a man is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the instruments of law, the police, carry
on a reign of terror, making indiscriminate arrests, beating, clubbing, bullying people, using the barbarous method
of the "third degree," subjecting their unfortunate victims to the foul air of the station house, and the still fouler
language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and society is paying the price. On the other hand, it
is an open secret that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of the law, and for the sake of
safety is hidden in the worst of hells, his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being, degraded to
a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes
through a process of dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge was mere child's play.
There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United States where men are not tortured "to be made
good," by means of the blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming bird" (an electrical
contrivance run along the human body), the solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions his will
is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio,
Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become so flagrant as to reach the outside
world, while in most other prisons the same Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls rarely allow the
agonized shrieks of the victims to escape—prison walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might with greater
immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to hope for protection from these twentieth century chambers of horrors.
Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew
of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted.
With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only
possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing to find men and women who have spent half their lives—
nay, almost their entire existence—in prison. I know a woman on Blackwell's Island, who had been in and out
thirty-eight times; and through a friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and cared for
in the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known the meaning of liberty. From the reformatory to the penitentiary had
been the path of this boy's life, until, broken in body, he died a victim of social revenge. These personal
experiences are substantiated by extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of prisons as a
means of deterrence or reform.
Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the prison question,—reclamation, to restore once
more to the prisoner the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I fear it is impossible to
hope for good results from pouring good wine into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of
society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the dull edge of our social conscience would be
sharpened, the penal institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first step to be taken is the
renovation of the social consciousness, which is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be
awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less,
according to our mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual criminal is merely a reflex of the
tendencies of the aggregate.
With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may learn to refuse the "honor" of being the
bloodhound of the law. He may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender, and give him a
chance to live and breathe among his fellows. Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold,
impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness quickened, it might be possible to free the prison
victims from the brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion is a powerful weapon; keepers
of human prey, even, are afraid of it. They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that their jobs
depend upon it.
But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right to work while in prison, with some monetary
recompense that would enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the beginning of a new life.
It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society when we consider that workingmen, wage slaves
themselves, object to convict labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely consider the
impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition so far raised by organized labor has been directed against
windmills. Prisoners have always worked; only the State has been their exploiter, even as the individual employer
has been the robber of organized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for the government, or they
have farmed convict labor to private individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The Federal
government and seventeen States