Living My Life - Emma Goldman [179]
Still young was the new year when the country began to echo with new outrages against labour. The horrors in West Virginia were followed by cruelties in the hop-fields of Wheatfield, California, in the mines of Trinidad, Colorado, and in Calumet, Michigan. The police, the militia, and gangs of armed citizens were carrying on a reign of despotism. [ ... ]
The latest victim of these American Black Hundreds was Mother Jones, a famous native agitator.2 In truly tsarist manner she was deported from Trinidad at the order of General Chase, who threatened to imprison her incommunicado if she dared to return. [ ... ]
My relation with Ben, which had grown more strained, finally became unbearable. Ben was no less unhappy than I. He decided to return with his mother to Chicago and take up the practice of medicine again. I did not try to detain him.
For the first time I was to give a full course of lectures on “The Social Significance of the Modern Drama” in New York, both in English and in Yiddish. The Berkeley Theatre on Forty-fourth Street was rented for the purpose. It was disheartening to start out on an important venture without Ben, for the first time in six years. [ ... ] No man I had loved had ever so paralysed my will before. I fought against it with all my strength, but my heart wildly called for Ben.
I could see from his letters that he was going through the same purgatory as I, and that he also could not free himself. He yearned to return to me. [ ... ]
His letters were like a narcotic. They put my brain to sleep, but they made my heart beat faster. I clung to the assurance of his love.
Again, in the winter, the country was in the throes of unemployment. Over a quarter of a million persons were out of work in New York, and other cities were stricken in no lesser degree. The suffering was augmented by the extraordinarily severe weather. The papers minimized the appalling state of affairs; the politicians and reformers remained lukewarm. A few palliatives and the threadbare suggestion of an investigation were all they could offer to meet the widespread misery.
The militant elements resolved upon action. The anarchists and the I.W.W.’s organized the unemployed and secured considerable relief for them. At my Berkeley Theatre lectures and other meetings appeals for the jobless met with generous response. But it was a mere drop in the ocean of need. [ ... ] ]
The Socialist Party and some prominent I.W.W. leaders tried to paralyse the activities of the jobless. This only helped to increase the zeal of the Conference of the Unemployed, which consisted of various labour and radical organizations. A mass meeting at Union Square was decided upon and the date fixed for March 21. Neither the Socialists nor the I.W.W.’s would participate. It was Sasha who was the active spirit of the movement. He had a double share to perform, as I was hard at work finishing my manuscript, lecturing frequently, and supervising our office.
The mass meeting was large and spirited; it reminded me of a similar event in the same place and for the same purpose, the demonstration of August 1893. Apparently nothing had changed since then. Now as then capitalism was relentless, the State crushing every individual and social right, and the Church in league with them. Now as then those daring to give voice to the suffering of the dumb multitude were persecuted and jailed, and the masses too seemed to have remained as ever in their submissive helplessness. The thought was depressing and made me want to run away from the square. But I stayed. I stayed because deep down in me there was the certainty that there is no sameness in nature. Eternal change, I knew, is for ever at work, life always is in flux, new currents flowing from the dried-up springs of the old. I stayed, and I spoke to the huge crowd as I could speak only when really lifted out of myself.
I left the square after my speech, while Sasha remained at the meeting. When he came home, I learned that the demonstration had ended in a parade up Fifth