Living My Life - Emma Goldman [125]
One evening, while engrossed in a book, I was surprised by several detectives and reporters. “The President has just died,” they announced. “How do you feel about it? Aren’t you sorry?” “Is it possible,” I asked, “that in the entire United States only the President passed away on this day? Surely many others have also died at the same time, perhaps in poverty and destitution, leaving helpless dependents behind. Why do you expect me to feel more regret over the death of McKinley than of the rest?”
The pencils went flying. “My compassion has always been with the living,” I continued; “the dead no longer need it. No doubt that is the reason why you all feel so sympathetic to the dead. You know that you’ll never be called upon to make good your protestations.” “Damned good copy,” a young reporter exclaimed, “but I think you’re crazy.”
I was glad when they left. My thoughts were with the boy in Buffalo, whose fate was now sealed. What tortures of mind and body were still to be his before he would be allowed to breathe his last! How would he meet the supreme moment? There was something strong and determined about his eyes, emphasized by his very sensitive face. I had been struck by his eyes on first seeing him at my lecture in Cleveland. Was the idea of his act already with him then or had some particular thing happened since that compelled his deed? What could it have been? “I did it for the people,” he had said. I paced my cell trying to analyse the probable motives that had decided the youth in his purpose.
Suddenly a thought flitted through my mind—that notice by Isaak in Free Society!—the charge of “spy” against Nieman because he had “asked suspicious questions and tried to get into the anarchist ranks.” I had written Isaak at the time, demanding proofs for the outrageous accusation. As a result of my protest Free Society had contained a retraction to the effect that a mistake had been made. It had relieved me and I had given the matter no further thought. Now the whole situation appeared in a new light, clear and terrible. Czolgosz must have read the charge; it must have hurt him to the quick to be so cruelly misjudged by the very people to whom he had come for inspiration. I recalled his eagerness to secure the right kind of books. It was apparent that he had sought in anarchism a solution of the wrongs he saw everywhere about him. No doubt it was that which had induced him to call on me and later on the Isaaks. Instead of finding help the poor youth saw himself attacked. Was it that experience, fearfully wounding his spirit, that had led to his act? There must also have been other causes, but perhaps his great urge had been to prove that he was sincere, that he felt with the oppressed, that he was no spy.
But why had he chosen the President rather than some more direct representative of the system of economic oppression and misery? Was it because he saw in McKinley the willing tool of Wall Street and of the new American imperialism that flowered under his administration? One of its first steps had been the annexation of the Philippines, an act of treachery to the people whom America had pledged to set free during the Spanish War. McKinley also typified a hostile and reactionary attitude to labour: he had repeatedly sided with the masters by sending troops into strike regions. All these circumstances, I felt, must have exerted a decisive influence upon the impressionable Leon, finally crystallizing in his act of violence.
Throughout the night thoughts of the unfortunate boy kept crowding in my mind. In vain I sought to divest myself of the harassing reflections by reading. The dawning day still found me pacing my cell, Leon’s beautiful face, pale and haunted, before me.
Again I was taken to court for a hearing and again the Buffalo authorities failed to produce evidence to connect me with Czolgosz’s act. The Buffalo representative and the Chicago judge sitting on the case kept up a verbal fight for two hours, at the end of which Buffalo