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By Root 2458 0

in every European country. America alone failed to open her prison doors. Instead, official raids and arrests increased. There was hardly a city where workers known as Russians or suspected of sympathy with radical ideas were not being picked up, taken at their work-benches or on the street. Behind these raids stood Attorney General Mitchell Palmer,2 panicky at the thought of radicals. Many of the arrests were accompanied by brutal manhandling of the victims. New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Seattle, and other industrial centres had their detention houses and jails filled with these “criminals.” I was besieged by requests for lectures. The Federal deportation mania3 was terrorizing the foreign workers of the country, and there were many calls upon me to speak on the matter and enlighten the people on the subject. [ ... ]

From New York to Detroit and thence to Chicago we made a whirlwind tour, our movements watched by local and Federal agents, every utterance noted down and attempts made to silence us. Unperturbed we continued. It was our last supreme effort and we felt our die had been cast. [...]

During the farewell dinner given us by our friends in Chicago, on December 2, reporters dashed in with the news of Henry Clay Frick’s death. We had not heard of it before, but the newspaper men suspected that the banquet was to celebrate the event. “Mr. Frick has just died,” a blustering young reporter addressed Sasha. “What have you got to say?” “Deported by God,” Sasha answered dryly. I added that Mr. Frick had collected his debt in full from Alexander Berkman, but he had died without making good his own obligations. “What do you mean?” the reporters demanded. “Just this: Henry Clay Frick was a man of the passing hour. Neither in life nor in death would he have been remembered long. It was Alexander Berkman who made him known, and Frick will live only in connexion with Berkman’s name. His entire fortune could not pay for such glory.”

The next morning brought a telegram from Harry Weinberger informing us that the Federal Department of Labor had ordered our deportation, and that we must surrender on December 5. We had two more days of freedom and another lecture on hand. There was much to attend to in New York, and Sasha left to arrange our affairs there. I remained for the last meeting. However the storm might rage and the waves mount high, I was determined to face it to the end. [...]

At the Grand Central terminal in New York friends awaited us, including Sasha, Fitzi, Stella, Harry, and other intimates. There was no time left even to go to my apartment to bid my dear Helena good-bye. We piled into taxis and drove straight to Ellis Island. There Sasha and I surrendered, while Harry Weinberger prepared to demand the return of the thirty thousand dollars deposited as our bond.

“That is the end, Emma Goldman, isn’t it?” a reporter remarked. “It may only be the beginning,” I flashed back.

CHAPTER LI

The room I was assigned to on the island already contained two occupants, Ethel Bernstein and Dora Lipkin, who had been rounded up at the raid of the Union of Russian Workers. The documents discovered there consisted of English grammars and text-books on arithmetic. The raiders had beaten up and arrested those found on the premises for possessing such inflammatory literature. [...]

Sasha and I had long before decided to write a pamphlet on deportation. We knew that the Ellis Island authorities would confiscate such a manuscript, and it therefore became necessary to prepare and send it out secretly. We wrote at night, our room-mates keeping watch. In the morning, during our joint walks, we would discuss what we had written and exchange suggestions. Sasha made the final revision and gave it to friends to smuggle out.

Each day brought scores of new candidates for deportation. From various States they came, most of them without clothes or money. They had been kept in jails for months and were then shipped to New York just as they were at the time of their unexpected arrest. In that condition they were facing a long voyage