Living My Life - Emma Goldman [182]
When I arrived in New York I was confronted with a serious financial situation. Sasha’s activities among the unemployed, together with the anti-militarist and Ludlow campaigns, had swallowed up most of the funds I had sent to our office from my tour. We could not meet the obligations of Mother Earth, much less the expense of the house, which in my absence had been turned into a free-for-all lodging- and feeding-place. We were in debt to our printer and to the mailing-house, and money was owed to every store-keeper in the neighbourhood. The strain of the agitation he had carried on, the danger and the responsibility he had faced, had left Sasha in a high-strung and irritable state. He was sensitive to my criticism, and hurt that I should even mention money matters. I had hoped for rest, harmony, and peace after six months of constant lecturing and the struggle involved in my tour. Instead I was swamped with new cares.
I was dazed by the situation and I felt very indignant with Sasha. Entirely absorbed in his own propaganda, he had given me no thought. He was the revolutionist of old, with the same fanatical belief in the Cause. His sole concern was the movement, and I was to him but a means for it. He was nothing more to himself than that; how could I expect to be any more to him?
Sasha did not understand my resentment. He grew impatient at my mentioning money matters. He had spent our funds for the movement; the latter was more important than my drama lectures, he said. I spoke bitterly to him, telling him that without my drama lectures he would have had no means to finance his activities. The clash made us both unhappy. Sasha withdrew into himself.
The only ones I could turn to in my misery were my dear nephew Saxe and my old friend Max.4 Both were very understanding, but neither of them was worldly enough to be of much assistance to me. I should have to face the situation alone.
I decided to give up our house and to declare myself bankrupt. My friend Gilbert E. Roe, to whom I confided my troubles, laughed at my strange notion. “Bankruptcy is resorted to by those who want to get out of paying debts,” he said; “it will involve you in year-long litigation, and your creditors will attach every penny you make to the end of your days.” He offered to lend me money, but I could not accept his generosity.
Then a new idea struck me. I would tell the printer exactly how I stood. The frank and open way is always the best, I decided. My creditors proved to be very accommodating. They lost no sleep over the money I owed them, they said; I could be depended on to make good. It was finally arranged that I pay my indebtedness in monthly instalments. Our mailing-house even declined my promissory notes. “Pay what you can and when you can,” the manager said; “your word is good enough for us.”
I resolved to start from the bottom up again; to rent a small place—one room for an office, the other for my living-quarters-and to accept every lecture engagement I could secure, and practise the strictest economy in order to keep up Mother Earth and my work. I wired Ben dates for my dramatic course in Chicago, and then I went out to look for a new home. It was a discouraging task; the Lexington Avenue explosion and the publicity given to Sasha’s activities were fresh in the public mind, and the landlords were timid. But at last I found a two-room loft on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and I set to work to make it fit for my use.
Sasha and Fitzi came to help me get my new place in order, but our relations were strained. Yet Sasha was too deeply rooted in my being to permit me to remain angry with him very long. There was also something else to change my resentful attitude. The realization had come to me that it was not Sasha, but I who was at fault. Not only since my return from the last tour, but all through the eight years since his release from prison, it was I who had been responsible for the breaks that came between us. I had committed a great wrong against him. Instead of giving him a chance to find his way back to life,