Living My Life - Emma Goldman [163]
CHAPTER XXXV
I needed a rest badly, but, our tour this time having brought us more glory than cash, I could not afford to take it. In fact, we were so short of funds that we were compelled to reduce the size of Mother Earth from sixty-four to thirty-two pages. Our financial condition made it necessary for me to start lecturing again. Ben joined me in New York in the latter part of March, and by the 15th of April he had succeeded in organizing for me a series of lectures on the drama. All went well at first, but May proved to be a record-breaker. During that month I was stopped by the police in eleven different places. [ ... ]
In September I went with Ben on a short tour through Massachusetts and Vermont. We were stopped, stopped, and stopped, either by direct police interference or by the intimidation of the hall-owners. [ ... ]
The most important event of our Worcester visit was an address given by Sigmund Freud on the twentieth anniversary of Clark University. I was deeply impressed by the lucidity of his mind and the simplicity of his delivery. Among the array of professors, looking stiff and important in their university caps and gowns, Sigmund Freud, in ordinary attire, unassuming, almost shrinking, stood out like a giant among pygmies. He had aged somewhat since I had heard him in Vienna in 1896. He had been reviled then as a Jew and irresponsible innovator; now he was a world figure; but neither obloquy nor fame had influenced the great man. [ ... ]
CHAPTER XXXVI
In the latter part of 1909 New York again experienced a vice crusade. The reformers had discovered the white-slave traffic! They got busy, though they were without the slightest notion regarding the sources of the evil they were trying to eradicate. [ ... ]
I prepared a lecture on the white-slave traffic, dealing with its causes, effects, and possible elimination. It became the strongest drawing card in my new course and also aroused the most heated criticism and discussion. The lecture was published in the January issue of Mother Earth and subsequently in pamphlet form.
Shortly afterwards Ben and I went on our annual tour. Everywhere we met with complaints from our subscribers that they had not received the January number of the magazine. I wired Sasha about it and he went after the postal authorities. He was informed that some copies had been held up on the complaint of Anthony Comstock. While we felt flattered that we were at last given a place among other victims of Comstockery, we nevertheless demanded to know the reason for the unexpected honour.
After several calls Sasha succeeded in getting into the august presence of the keeper of American morals. Comstock admitted that Mother Earth had been held up, but denied that it had been done on his complaint.
“The matter is now in my hands,” he told Sasha; “the reason for it is Miss Goldman’s article on the white-slave traffic.” At Comstock’s request Sasha accompanied him to the office of the District Attorney, where St. Anthony held a secret conference lasting two hours. After that came a prolonged consultation with the Chief Post Office Inspector. Finally the censor declared that nothing objectionable had been found in the article.
The next day the New York Times contained an interview with Comstock in which he entirely denied the whole matter. It was “a scheme of Emma Goldman to attract attention to her publication,” he stated. He had made no complaint against the magazine, he said, nor had it been held up by the Post Office. It required another week