Michael Schwab

“ If Anarchy were the thing the State’s attorney makes it out to be, how could it be that such eminent scholars as Prince Kropotkin and the greatest living geographer, Elisee Reclus, were avowed Anarchists, even editors of Anarchistic newspapers? Anarchy is a dream, but only in the present. It will be realized. Reason will grow in spite of all obstacles. Who is the man that has the cheek to tell us that human development has already reached its culminating point? ”

“ As soon as the word is applied to us and our doctrine, it carries with it the meaning which we, the Anarchists, saw fit to give to it. "Anarchy" is Greek, and means, verbatim: without rulership; not being ruled. According to our vocabulary, Anarchy is a state of society, in which the only government is reason; a state of society in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it is right, and hate wrong because it is wrong. In such a society, no laws, no compulsion will be necessary. The attorney for the State was wrong when he said: "Anarchy is dead." ”

“ Anarchy, up to the present day, has existed only as a doctrine, and Mr. Grinnell has not the power to kill any doctrine whatever. You may call Anarchy, as defined by us, an idle dream, but that dream was dreamed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, one of the three great German poets and the most celebrated German critic of the last century. ”

“ Some say, it is un-American! Well, then, is it American to let people starve and die in ignorance? Is exploitation and robbery of the poor, American? What have the great political parties done for the poor? ”

“ When I came to the United States, I found that there were classes of workingmen who were better paid than the European workmen, but I perceived that the state of things in a great number of industries were even worse, and that the so-called better paid skilled laborers were degenerating rapidly into mere automatic parts of machinery. ”

“ What these common laborers are today, the skilled laborers will be tomorrow. Improved machinery that ought to be a blessing for the work in man, under the existing conditions becomes for him a curse. Machinery multiplies the army of unskilled laborers, makes the laborer more dependent upon the men who own the land and machines. ”

“ There are more Socialists of American birth in this country than foreigners, and that is much, if we consider that more than half of all industrial workingmen are native Americans. There are Socialistic papers in a great many states edited by Americans for Americans. The capitalistic newspapers conceal that fact very carefully.
Socialism, as we understand it, means that land and machinery shall be held in common by the people. The production of goods shall be carried on by productive groups which shall supply the demands of the people. ”

“ The dilapidated houses in which this class of laborers live need repairs very badly, but the greedy landlord waits in most cases till lie is compelled by the city to have them done. Is it a wonder that diseases of all kinds kill men women and children in such places by wholesale, especially children? ”

“ Under such a system every human being would have an opportunity to do useful work, and no doubt would work. Some hours' work every day would suffice to produce all, according to statistics, that is necessary for a comfortable living. ”

“ The president of the Citizens' Association, Edwin Lee Brown, after the last election of Mayor Harrison, made a speech in North Side Turner Hall, in which he called on all good citizens to take possession of the court house by force, even if they had to wade in blood. It seems to me that the most violent speakers are not to be found in the ranks of the Anarchists. ”

“ And how do they live? From the ash barrels they rather half-rotten vegetables; in the butcher shops they buy for a few cents offal of meat, and these precious morsels they carry home to prepare from them their meals. ”

“ Thousands of laborers in the city of Chicago live in rooms without sufficient protection from the weather, without proper ventilation, in which never a stream of sunlight flows. There are hovels where two, three and four families live in one room. ”