Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/28

CHAPTER 2. ANTI-WAR AGITATION 15 meantime get along the best you can. Good luck.

A note from Alexander Berkman, the great Anarchist! I read it over and over again and then destroyed it, per the first rule in prison: don't keep any unnecessary contraband. For the first time in my life when I had read a book I had sat down at once and written to the author. This was in Warren, Ohio, in 1916, when I had read Berkman's Memoirs. I did not get an answer, and now I was to meet him personally. Hundreds of workers had been killed by the Pinkertons at Homestead, Pa. by the order of Frick, manager of Carnegie Steel. Berkman, then a young Anarchist, had stabbed and shot Frick, and had done 14 years and ten months actual time in the terrible Allegheny prison, 3 1/2 years of this in a dark hole. He had been in prison before I was born and here he was again with a fighting spirit that jails could not kill. I had read his paper THE BLAST. The only thing that had saved him from being framed with Mooney and Billings was that he was in New York City when they were accused of dropping the bomb on the Preparedness parade, in San Francisco in 1916.

I had but a faint idea of the word pervert; and I wondered how and why I could talk to Berkman in a Catholic chapel. I remembered in 1915 at Ohio State University when an intelligent sociology professor had assigned me to debate in class against Socialism, and asked the daughter of conservative parents to speak for Socialism. I surprised myself and the class by giving the argument that the trouble with Socialism was that it was not radical enough, and I gave anarchism as the ideal. As an illustration I gave the story of the wind which sought to compel by force to blow the coat from the back of the traveler. The sun shone gentle rays which made the traveler voluntarily doff the garment. Anarchism was thus the gentle way. However, I said that I was not an anarchist because they stood no chance of winning, and it would not be long until the Socialists had gained the revolution. Now I was to meet the only living anarchist, other than Emma Goldman, Malatesta and Kropotkin, whom I wished to know.

The sun shone brightly that afternoon on the packed ground of the prison yard. In the shadow along one prison wall Blackie had pointed out Berkman to me. I hastened to meet him. His kindly smile made me feel that I had a friend. He told me of a means of getting out letters, sub rosa, and explained how to talk in your throat without moving your lips. He said that on rainy Saturdays, when we could not meet, we could see each other at the Catholic chapel, as the chaplain was an ex-prizefighter who was sympathetic to workers and did not mind those who came to visit each other. He gave me four things to remember. "(1) Don't tell a lie. (2) Don't tell on another prisoner; it's the job of the screws to find out what is going on, not yours. (3) Draw your line to what you will do and will not do and don't budge, for if you begin to weaken they will beat you. (4) Don't curse the guards. They will try to get you to strike them and then they will have the excuse to beat you up; and if one can't, two can; and if two can't, ten can. They are no good or they wouldn't take such a job. Just smile. Obey them in unimportant details but never budge an inch on principle.