Living My Life - Emma Goldman [92]
From various parts of the country came requests for a series of lectures. I was very eager to go, but I lacked the courage to broach the matter to Ed. I knew he would not consent, and his refusal would most likely bring us nearer to a violent separation. My physicians had strongly advised a rest and change of scene, and now Ed surprised me by insisting that I ought to go away. [ ... ]
I had spoken in Providence a number of times without the least trouble. Rhode Island was still one of the few States to maintain the old tradition of unabridged freedom of speech. Two of our open-air gatherings, attended by thousands, went off well. But the police had evidently decided to suppress our last meeting. Arriving with several friends at the square where the assembly was to take place, we found a member of the Socialist Labor Party talking, and, not wishing to interfere with him, we set up our box farther away. My good comrade John H. Cook, a very active worker, opened the meeting, and I began to speak. Just then a policeman came running towards us, shouting: “Stop your jabbering! Stop it this minute or I’ll pull you off the box!” I went on talking. Someone called out: “Don’t mind the bully—go right on!” The policeman came up, puffing heavily. When he got his breath he snarled, “Say, you, are you deaf? Didn’t I tell you to stop? What d’you mean not obeying the law?” “Are you the law?” I retorted; “I thought it is your duty to maintain the law, not to break it. Don’t you know the law in this State gives me the right of free speech?” “The hell it does,” he replied, “I’m the law.” The audience began hooting and jeering. The officer started to pull me off the improvised platform. The crowd looked threatening and began closing in on him. He blew his whistle. A patrol wagon dashed up to the square, and several policemen broke through the crowd with their clubs swinging. The officer, still holding on to me, shouted: “Drive those damn anarchists back so I can get this woman. She’s under arrest.” I was led to the patrol wagon and literally thrown into it.
At the police station I demanded to know by what right I had been interfered with. “Because you’re Emma Goldman,” the sergeant at the desk replied. “Anarchists have no rights in this community, see?” He ordered me locked up for the night.
It was the first time since 1893 that I had been arrested, but, constantly expecting to fall into the clutches of the law, I had made it a practice to carry a book with me when going to meetings. I wrapped my skirts around me, climbed up on the board placed for a bed in my cell, pressed close to the barred door, through which shimmered a light, and started to read. [ . . . ]
The next morning I was taken, together with my neighbour and other unfortunates, before a magistrate. I was held over under bond, and as the amount could not be raised immediately I was returned to the station-house. At one o’clock in the afternoon I was again called for, this time to see the Mayor. That individual, no less bulky and bloated than the policeman, informed me that if I would promise under oath never to return to Providence he would let me go. “That’s nice of you, Mayor,” I replied; “but inasmuch as you have no case against me, your offer isn’t quite so generous as it appears, is it?” I told him that I would make no promises