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The white terror on the part of the Republican upstarts was answered by the red terror of our French comrades. With feverish anxiety the Anarchists throughout the world followed this social struggle. Propaganda by deed found its reverberating echo in almost all countries. In order to better familiarize herself with conditions in the old world, Emma Goldman left for Europe, in the year 1895.
Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person prominent in the public eye. The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so long been enveloped is gradually beginning to dissipate.
Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June, 1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy.
The bourgeoisie, which for decades had exalted and eulogized tyrannicide, now was filled with terrible rage. The capitalist press organized a systematic campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against Anarchists. The police exerted every effort to involve Emma Goldman in the act of Alexander Berkman. The feared agitator was to be silenced by all means.
It was also at this time that Emma Goldman met Robert Reitzel, the German-American Heine, who exerted a great influence on her development. Through him she became acquainted with the best writers of modern literature, and the friendship thus begun lasted till Reitzel's death, in 1898.
Abe and Morris took the stairs leading to the upper floor three at a jump, and arrived breathlessly in the workroom just as fifty-odd employees were putting on their coats preparatory to leaving. "What's the matter?" Abe gasped. "Strike," Goldman, the foreman, replied. "A strike!" Morris cried. "What for a strike?" Goldman shrugged his shoulders.
Indeed not; but let him go to a meeting where he can hear Emma Goldman speak, or let him read Jean Grave, or Bakunin, or some other writer of 'crude' pamphlets, and he might become interested, he might be able to understand.
Emma Goldman found on this occasion the opportunity of again meeting various English comrades and interesting personalities like Tom Mann and the sisters Rossetti, the gifted daughters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then publishers of the Anarchist review, the TORCH. One of her life-long hopes found here its fulfillment: she came in close and friendly touch with Peter Kropotkin, Enrico Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov, and Louise Michel.
Emma Goldman soon obtained work in the clothing establishment of the Garson Co. The wages amounted to two and a half dollars a week. At that time the factories were not provided with motor power, and the poor sewing girls had to drive the wheels by foot, from early morning till late at night.
The anarchist is, as Emma Goldman says, "high strung." His ear is tuned to hear unintermittently the agonized cry. To follow the imagery of Shelley, he seems to be living in a "mind's hell," wherein hate, scorn, pity, remorse, and despair seem to be tearing out the nerves by their bleeding roots.
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