Living My Life - Emma Goldman [101]
CHAPTER XIX
[...] It was not until I reached Chicago that I began to make my efforts count. As on my preceding tour, I was invited to speak by many labour organizations, including the conservative Woodworkers’ Union, which had never before allowed an anarchist within its sacred portals. A number of lectures were also arranged for me by American anarchists. It was strenuous work and I should probably not have been able to carry it through but for the exhilarating companionship of Max Baginski. [ ... ]
The Paris Exposition, which was being planned for 1900, suggested the idea to our European comrades of holding an anarchist congress at about the same time. There would be reduced fares, and many of our friends would be able to come from different countries. I had received an invitation; I spoke to Max about it and asked him to come with me. A trip to Europe together—the very thought of it transported us with ecstasy. My tour would last till August; then we could carry out our new plan. We might journey to England first; I was sure the comrades would want me to lecture there. Then to Paris. “Think of it, dearest—Paris!” “Wonderful, glorious!” he cried. “But the fare—have you thought of that, my romantic Emma?” “That’s nothing. I will rob a church or a synagogue—I’ll get the money somehow! We must go anyhow. We must go in quest of the moon!” “Two babes in the woods,” Max commented; “two sane romantics in a crazy world!”
On my way to Denver I made a side trip to Caplinger Mills, an agricultural district in south-western Missouri. My only previous contact with farm life in the United States had been years before when I had canvassed Massachusetts farmers for orders to enlarge the pictures of their worthy ancestors. I had found them so dull, so rooted in old social traditions, that I did not even care to tell them what I stood for. I was sure they would think me possessed of the devil. It very much surprised me, therefore, to receive an invitation from Caplinger Mills to lecture there. The comrade who wrote that she had arranged my meetings was Kate Austen,I whose articles I had read in Free Society and other radical publications. Her writings showed her to be a logical thinker, well-informed, and of revolutionary fibre, while her letters to me indicated an affectionate, sensitive being.
At the station I was met by Sam Austen, Kate’s husband, who announced that Caplinger Mills was twenty-two miles distant from the railroad. “The roads are very bad,” he said; “I’m afraid I’ll have to tie you to the seat of my wagon, else you may be shaken out.” I soon found he had not been exaggerating. We had hardly covered half the way when there came a violent jolt and the cracking of wheels. Sam landed in a ditch, and when I attempted to get up, I felt sore all over. He lifted me out of the wagon and set me down by the wayside. Waiting and rubbing my aching joints, I tried to smile to encourage Sam. [ ... ]
At last we arrived in Caplinger Mills at the Austen farm. “Put her to bed right away and give her a hot drink,” Sam directed, “else she’ll hate us for the rest of her life for having taken her over that road.” After a hot bath and a good massage I felt much refreshed, though still aching in every joint.
My week with the Austens showed me new angles of the small American farmer’s life. It made me see that we had been wrong to regard the farmer in the States as belonging to