Jefferson City, MO, 29 June 1919,
Darling, mine.
There is so much, so much I want to write you. I scarcely know where to begin & where to let off. I will have to content myselfs with the most essential & leave the other when we meet - just three months from to day. My birth-day - like last year I spent it in bed. Not quite so ill, but in pain & discomfiture. The same thing I had 2 weeks ago & which I will probably have to endure during most of the Summer. As a result of my laying off a very funny thing happened. Funny only because I have so short a time in here. Other wise it would have been the beginning of a serious & bitter struggle. I have repeatedly written you how very decent Dr Mc Nearney has always been to me.... (From : University of Berkeley.)
Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander BerkmanEmma Goldman, 1917
Gentlemen of the Jury:
As in the case of my codefendant, Alexander Berkman, this is also the first time in my life I have ever addressed a jury. I once had occasion to speak to three judges.
On the day after our arrest it was given out by the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney's office that the "big fish" of the No Conscription activities had been caught, and that there would be no more trouble-makers and disturbers to interfere with the highly democratic effort of the Government to conscript its young manhood for the European slaughter. What a pity that the faithful servants of the Government, personified in the U.S. Marshal and the District Attor... (From : WikiSource.)
Published Essays and Pamphlets
Alexander Berkman's Last Daysby Emma Goldman[Published in The Vanguard
(New York), Aug.-Sept. 1936.]
St. Tropez July 12th, 1936
It is only two weeks since our beloved comrade
Alexander Berkman passed away. Yet it seems an eternity to me.
The blow his untimely death has struck me has left me completely
shattered. I find it difficult to collect my thoughts. But I feel
sure you will want to know all about Sasha's end. For have you
not loved him all through the years?
Sasha left a note which we found after we
returned from his last resting place. It reads: "I don't
want to live a sick man. Dependent. Forgive me Emmie darling.
And you too Emma. Love to All. Help Emmie." signed, Sasha.
I hav... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
This pamphlet, written by Max Nettlau, appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of IISH.
An Anarchist
Manifesto
Issued By the London
Anarchist Communist Alliance
London:
Printed and published at the Metropolitan Printing Works, 127, Ossulston Street, Euston Road, N.W.
1895.
Price One Halfpenny
Fellow Workers, We come before you as Anarchist Communists to explain our principles. We are aware that the minds of many of you have been poisoned by the lies which all parties have diligently spread about us. But surely the persecutions to which we have been and are subjected by the governing classes of all countries should open the eyes ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Note For "Anarchist Morality" This study of the origin and function of what we call "morality" was written for pamphlet publication as a result of an amusing situation. An anarchist who ran a store in England found that his comrades in the movement regarded it as perfectly right to take his goods without paying for them. "To each according to his need" seemed to them to justify letting those who were best able foot the bills. Kropotkin was appealed to, with the result that he not only condemned such doctrine, but was moved to write the comrades this sermon. Its conception of morality is based on the ideas set forth in Mutual Aid and later developed in his Ethics. Here they are given special application to "right and wrong" in the business of social living. The job is done with fine feeling and with acute shafts at the shams of current morality. Kropotkin sees the source of all so-called moral ideas in primitive superstitions. The r...
(Originally published in the Contemporary Review, and then reprinted as a pamphlet by Benjamin R. Tucker, 1884)
An Anarchist on Anarchy
by Elisée Reclus
“It is a pity that such men as Elisée Reclus cannot be promptly shot.” – Providence Press
To most Englishmen, the word Anarchy is so evil-sounding that ordinary readers of the Contemporary Review will probably turn from these pages with aversion, wondering how anybody could have the audacity to write them. With the crowd of commonplace chatterers we are already past praying for; no reproach is too bitter for us, no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjec... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
From The Alarm, Sunday, September 27, 1896, p. 3.
Anarchy and the Sex Question.
By EMMA GOLDMAN
(Reprinted from the "New York World.")
The workingman, whose strength and muscles are so admired by the pale, puny off-springs of the rich, yet whose labor barely brings him enough to keep the wolf of starvation from the door, marries only to have a wife and house-keeper, who must slave from morning till night, who must make every effort to keep down expenses. Her nerves are so tired by the continual effort to make the pitiful wages of her husband support both of them that she grows irritable and no longer is successful in concealing her want of affection for her lord and master, who, alas! soon comes to the c... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Chapter 32 The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess’s call, and with desperate joy shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to her, he hung on her neck. "I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess. "I knew!" And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced almost physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naïve questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent him, and tol...
The Resurrection CHAPTER II. The history of the prisoner Maslova was a very common one. Maslova was the daughter of an unmarried menial who lived with her mother, a cowherd, on the estate of two spinsters. This unmarried woman gave birth to a child every year, and, as is the custom in the villages, baptized them; then neglected the troublesome newcomers, and they finally starved to death. Thus five children died. Every one of these was baptized, then it starved and finally died. The sixth child, begotten of a passing gypsy, was a girl, who would have shared the same fate, but it happened that one of the two old maidens entered the cow-shed to reprimand the milkmaids for carelessness in skimming the cream, and there saw the mother with the healthy and beautiful child. The old maiden chided them for the cream and for permitting the woman to lie in the cow-shed, and was on the point of departing, but noticing the child, was moved to pity, and afterwards c...
The Awakening Starvelings
by Alexander Berkman
Ideas are true liberators. Ideas as distinguished from so-called reason. For in our work-a-day world there is much reason and too little thought. It is given only to the seer and poet to conceive liberating ideas - impractical, wild thoughts that ultimately light the way of practical, blind man to better and higher endeavor.
To "practical" minds the regeneration of the world is an empty dream. To transform the cold winter of our age into the warmth of a beautiful summer day, to change our valley of tears and misery into a luxurious garden of joy is a vain fantasy lacking reason and sanity. But a William Morris sees in his mind's eye a world of comradeship and brotherhood re... (From : Anarchy Archives.)