Chapter 1

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Vol. I. JUNE, 1906 No. 4

MOTHER EARTH

CONTENTS

PAGE

Mrs. Grundy VIROQUA DANIELS 1

A Greeting ALEXANDER BERKMAN 3

Henrik Ibsen M. B. 6

Observations and Comments 8

A Letter EMMA GOLDMAN 13

Libertarian Instruction EMILE JANVION 14

The Antichrist FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 15

Brain Work and Manual Work PETER KROPOTKIN 21

Motherhood and Marriage HENRIETTE FUERTH 30

Object Lesson for Advocates of Governmental Control ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M. 33

The Genius of War JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 36

Dignity Speaks 36

Paternalistic Government (CONTINUATION) THEODORE SCHROEDER 38

Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement MAX BAGINSKI 44

Refined Cruelty ANNA MERCY 50

"The Jungle" VERITAS 53

The Game is Up SADAKICHI HARTMANN 57

10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR

MOTHER EARTH

Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Published Every 15th of the Month

EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station, New York, N. Y.

Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Vol. I JUNE, 1906 No. 4

MRS. GRUNDY.

By VIROQUA DANIELS.

_Her will is law. She holds despotic sway. Her wont has been to show the narrow way Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave, From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave._

_"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands The high, the low, in great or little lands. She folds us all within her ample gown. A forward act is met with angry frown._

_The lisping babes are taught her local speech; Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech. They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,-- In everything the little tots obey._

_The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims. They play her games. They sing her holy hymns. They question not; accept both truth and fiction,_ _(The_ OLD _is right, within her jurisdiction!)._

_Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow. She with contempt or ridicule may cow. They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate, At variance with the program on her slate._

_Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown, Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone. With great ado, they publicly conform-- Vain, cowards, vain; revolt_ MUST _raise a storm!_

_The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight, Attempt to live as they consider "right." Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"_

_In tyranny the Mistress is supreme. "Obedience," that is her endless theme. Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen, Her aid is sought by bosses over men._

_Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised. From Ignorance, her bulky body's sized. When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury. But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury._

_Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know. So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing. Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring._

A GREETING.

By ALEXANDER BERKMAN.

Dear Friends:--

I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of fourteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;--'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx--and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't--but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians.

It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning--my first breath of freedom in fourteen years--it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!" It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.

I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I _was_ retired from the world--that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century--at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that is different now--I thought as I left the prison--for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother wouldn't know it again." And that thought made me _doubly_ happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellow-men.

Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils--automobiles you call them--and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads--talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps--and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any ground at all.

These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face _only_. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings, down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dais of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.

With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet....

No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rational, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization.

But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization?

Simply this:--a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie--the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater nations of the ancient world.

It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways.

And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood.

HENRIK IBSEN.

M. B.

I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the _sole_ Truth," "the _only_ true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life.

A seer has died.

He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society--he found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social foundations--its pillars shook: they were rotten.

The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust, and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their ideals.

In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule. Doctor Stockmann--that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.

"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"--living pictures revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions," "our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing them of the joy of life.

The moralists howled long and loud.

"Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?"

Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.

But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves was a nightmare.

His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.

The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is that of the most unprejudiced judge.

What is the result?

We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down. Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.

A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress--for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.

Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes--which, by the way, is the real field of activity of the journalistic profession.

We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy" exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company against the slugging system of the reporters.

Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street--there the reporters made some miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons, of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of the Reds.

"Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked.

One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in three days."

This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They fled in terror.

Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th. He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the battle of freedom, in your young days?"

"Yes," said Carl.

"If the reports of my men are correct--and I am confident my men are more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet--you were even a Revolutionist?"

Carl Schurz nodded.

"And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?"

"There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily.

The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000 tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary sinner."

No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?

If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they would soon behold this trinity--the thief, the liar, and the hangman.

Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest force--love--must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire father-in-law for marrying his daughter.

Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of their capital!

Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the importance of those that give.

Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!

Again, philanthropy as a money mania--in one instance it feeds the clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.

Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries, maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding sea horses.

Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity, pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it all.

The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:

"Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.

The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the same voice called:

"Down with America! Up with Anarchy!"

There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.

The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out.

Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however, with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave, and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to Havel, said:

"That's all right, father."

Ben Bansig saved Chicago,--there can be no dispute about that. As to Sercombe, the editor of _To-Morrow_, he deserves recognition. I suggest that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.

Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter--who, as I can authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel--can console themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.