Berkman, Alexander (1912) Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Mother Earth Press. 17 THE "BASKET" CELL FOUR WEEKS OF "Pennsylvania diet" have reduced me almost to a skeleton. A slice of wheat bread with a cup of unsweetened black coffee is my sole meal, with twice a week dinner of vegetable soup, from which every trace of meat has been removed. Every Saturday I am conducted to the office, to be examined by the physician and weighed. The whole week I look forward to the brief respite from the terrible "basket" cell. The sight of the striped men scouring the floor, the friendly smile on a stealthily raised face as I pass through the hall, the strange blue of the sky, the sweet-scented aroma of the April morning-how quickly it is all over! But the seven deep breaths I slowly inhale on the way to the office, and the eager ten on my return, set my blood aglow with renewed life. For an instant my brain reels with the sudden ru...
Published Essays and Pamphlets
Sacco and Vanzettiby Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman[Published in The Road to Freedom
(New York), Vol. 5, Aug. 1929.]
THE names of the "good shoe-maker and
poor fish-peddler" have ceased to represent merely two Italian
workingmen. Throughout the civilized world Sacco and Vanzetti
have become a symbol, the shibboleth of Justice crushed by Might.
That is the great historic significance of this twentieth century
crucifixion, and truly prophetic, were the words of Vanzetti when
he declared, "The last moment belongs to us--that agony is
our triumph."
We hear a great deal of progress and by
that people usually mean improvements of various kinds, mostly
life-saving discoveries and labor-savi... (From : Anarchy Archives.)