It was also revealed that these people had been under government surveillance for many years. Soon after taking office, a government list of 62 people believed to hold "dangerous, destructive and anarchistic sentiments" was leaked to the press. Thomas Mooney, a local trade union leader was falsely convicted of the offence but spent the next twenty-three years in prison before being released. The authorities suspected that the bomb had been planted by anti-war campaigners and Berkman was arrested but later released. When five months later a bomb went off killing six people in the city. They also organized anti-militarist rallies in New York City and went on several lecture tours in an attempt to "arouse public opinion against the growing war hysteria".īerkman moved to San Francisco and in January, 1916, started a new anarchist journal, Blast. On the outbreak of the First World War both Berkman and Emma Goldman became involved in the campaign to keep the United States out of the conflict. They also helped organize the Ferrer School in New York City and industrial disputes such as the Lawrence Textile Strike. They published the radical journal, Mother Earth and books such as Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) and Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912). He wrote that "I feel like one recovering from a long illness: very weak, but with a touch of joy in life."Īfter the death of Johann Most, Berkman and Emma Goldman became the leaders of the anarchist movement in the United States. Found guilty of attempted murder, Berkman was sent to Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania in Allegheny City.Īfter ten years in prison, Berkman wrote to Emma Goldman: "My youthful ideal of a free humanity in tile vague future, has become clarified and crystallized into the living truth of Anarchy, as the sustaining elemental force of my everyday existence." Berkman was released in 1906. However, Frick survived the attack and made a full-recovery. After gaining entry into his office, Berkman shot Henry Frick three times and stabbed him twice. Ten men were killed and 60 wounded before the governor obtained order by placing Homestead under martial law.īerkman was appalled by Frick's behaviour and decided to make a dramatic gesture against capitalism. The strikers were waiting for them and a day long battle took place. The men were brought in on armed barges down the Monongahela River. Frick took the controversial decision to employ 300 strikebreakers from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Later that year Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers Union called out its members at the Steel Homestead plant owned by Henry Frick and Andrew Carnegie. In 1892 Berkman and Goldman started a small business in Worcester, Massachusetts, providing lunches for local workers. They were also influenced by the anarchist writings of Johann Most. Berkman and Goldman both became involved in the campaign to free the men convicted of the Haymarket Bombing. Soon afterwards he began living with Emma Goldman, a Russian immigrant who was working in a clothing factory in Rochester. On his arrival in New York City Berkman joined the principal Jewish anarchist group, Pioneers of Liberty. In 1887 his mother died and the following year he decided to move to the United States. At the age of fifteen he was already reading revolutionary literature and was expelled from school for "precocious godlessness, dangerous tendencies, and insubordination."īerkman also became aware of the racism in Russia for when his father died, the family was deprived of the right to live in the capital and were forced to live in Kovno, a town in the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Berkman was later to write that Natanson was "my ideal of a noble and great man". His mother's brother, Mark Natanson, was a close friend of Peter Kropotkin, and was also involved in revolutionary activity. He was inspired by their idealism and courage, and from that time forward their example lingered in his thoughts." As the author of Anarchist Portraits (1995), has pointed out, Berkman "was deeply moved by the martyrdom of the populists, five of whom were hanged for their part in the assassination. That evening, his older brother, who sympathized with the revolutionists, told him that he had been killed by the People's Will. The bomb blast shattered the windows of his classroom. On 1st March, 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. He attended a gymnasium reserved for the privileged elements of society. Berkman grew up in comfortable surroundings, that including servants and a summer house. On this day in 1870, Alexander Berkman, the son of a Jewish businessman was born in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
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