Old Missoula

Emma Goldman in Missoula – “I am dangerous to ignorance and stupidity.”

Queen of the Anarchists Expresses Views In Newspaper Interview

Characterized though she may have been as “dangerous” by governmental authority, and shadowed by police of many cities, nevertheless Emma Goldman looked humanely inoffensive last evening as she sat in the sleeper “Bozeman” in the Missoula yards of the Northern Pacific and talked of her life, her experiences, her ideals and her intentions. Miss Goldman, known everywhere as the disciple of anarchy and the queen of those striving against authority, arrived in Missoula yesterday afternoon from Clinton, the train on which she was a passenger having been taken from Clinton, where it had been stranded for several days, to Turah, where the passengers were transferred and brought to this city. Miss Goldman expressed her determination of getting through to Butte, where she was to have spoken on Wednesday evening of this week. She also stated that she might give a lecture in Missoula, providing that the train were delayed here for several days. “I suppose,” said Miss Goldman, “that I will be compelled to return to Spokane and go to Butte from that place. Judging from what has been told me, I may have to remain in Missoula for three or four days.”

Program Disarranged.

Miss Goldman said that her program had been seriously disarranged by the “most serious situation of 18 years of travel.” “I was to have spoken at Minneapolis on June 10, 11, 12 and 13, but these dates have been called off and I expect to spend all of next week in Butte. Then I will go to Minneapolis to speak and from there I will start for my headquarters in New York city.”

Criticizes Butte Papers.

Miss Goldman was bitter in her denunciation of the treatment accorded her by the Butte papers, in connection with the discussion of the invitation extended to her by a minister of the Smoky city to deliver an anarchistic address from his pulpit. “I was very much surprised,” said Mrs. Goldman, “to read of the criticism to which Rev. Lewis J. Duncan was subjected by the papers of Butte for his courtesy to me. The Unitarian church stands for freedom of thought and I cannot see why any member of it should be willing to bar me from its pulpit. I think it very brave of Mr. Duncan to have stood by his invitation to me and I wired him from Spokane complimenting him on his true American spirit. Personally I do not know Mr. Duncan, nor does he know me, but he does know that my ideas have often been misrepresented and he was willing to give me an opportunity to explain them. The Butte papers, especially the Miner, made themselves ridiculous in their attack upon the Unitarian minister. The Miner said, in attempting to reply to a communication addressed to the paper by Mr. Duncan, that I had been adjudged as dangerous by all of the authorities of the United States and that, therefore, I must be dangerous. Such logic,” concluded Miss Goldman, with a shrug of the shoulders that finished her sentence more expressively than words could have done.

Is Dangerous to Ignorance.

“But do you consider yourself as dangerous, Miss Goldman?” asked the newspaper man.

“Indeed I do,” was the reply, “to some things. I am dangerous to ignorance and stupidity. Thought and reason are ever the strongest and most effective weapons against such things. To them I am dangerous. Do you know that the incidents of the past few days have brought it more forcibly than ever to my mind that people who live in comfort and luxury never know how much they depend upon the man who works. Had it not been for men who labor we all would have been down at that horrid town yet and nobody knows how long we would have been there.”

Gives Life’s Story.

“Miss Goldman,” said the reporter, “I do not believe that many really know much about your past life, about the career that has kept you in the public eye for so many years. To the average person you flash out from semi-obscurity, deliver an address, lead a parade, head a demonstration, assail the government in fiery invective – and return again. Where you came from, what you stand for, for what purpose you are working, these things the average citizen does not understand. Will you give me a brief history of your life?” In responding the anarchists’ queen gave the following sketch of her life:

“I am a Russian. I was born in St. Petersburg, the capital of that country, in 1869. When I was very young I left the country, moving with my parents to Germany. There I lived until I was about 13 years of age and then I returned to Russia. In 1885 I came to America, my family settling in Rochester, N. Y., which is really still our home. There I stayed for two years until the excitement incidental to the anarchistic outbreak in Chicago turned my mind to the study of anarchy. The Haymarket riot May 4, 1886, and the execution of those chiefly implicated in it on November 11, 1887, attracted and held my attention and I took up the work of spreading the propaganda and anarchy. I studied Huxley, Spencer and other great economists, but did not begin my public career until 1890, when I led the great strike of the cloak workers in New York. At that time 40,000 people were on strike and the incidents and circumstances of the scenes that followed have long ago become history. Since then I have been in the public eye the greater part of the time.”

In Appearance Mild.

Emma Goldman, who has wrought to fever heat the emotions of the thousands that crowded auditoriums to hear her and who has twisted the will of great mass meetings to suit her fiery taste, is small in stature, mild in appearance, intelligent in conversation, quiet in demeanor. She is a plain-looking woman, one who would attract absolutely no attention in a crowd, were her identity concealed. All who have heard her speak know how her eyes can flash and how she can literally talk blood and death, but in repose Emma Goldman is a great deal like anybody else – just human.

With “King of Hoboes.”

With Miss Goldman, as her manager, is Dr. Ben Reitman, known as the “King of the Hoboes.” Dr. Reitman comes closer to the common ideal of a typical anarchist than does Miss Goldman. Tall, dark, foreign-looking, he is in appearance the nihilist of the novelist and the bomb-thrower of the artist. In reality he is a man of education, a physician graduated from the college of Physician and Surgeons in Chicago, a writer of books. For 18 years he tramped throughout the United States and Europe. His experiences he crystalized into a book, wherein he gave a comparative classification of tramps of the United States and Europe. A few weeks ago Dr. Reitman led the parade of the unemployed in Chicago and was arrested while at the head of the long line of discontented. He has long been known as one of the leaders of the underworld of anarchy. It is probable that Missoula will never again at one time harbor two such prominent followers of the red flag as Emma Goldman and Dr. Reitman.

 

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on June 6, 1908.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349238160/

 

Emma Goldman’s visit to Missoula coincided with the 1908 flood of the Missoula River. The impact of the flood was horrendous in many ways; knocking out bridges, telephone and telegraph communications, and rail road transportation. An article in The Daily Missoulian appearing the same day as the above article had some interesting comments regarding the experience of passengers riding the train out of Clinton:

“Among the passengers who came in from Clinton by work train and walking and a local yesterday afternoon, were Dr. Franz and Mrs. Franz of Baltimore. They had been at Drummond and Clinton since Sunday, but they were as good-natured as the rest of the party. “It was not a bad experience,” said Dr. Franz last night. “The railway people were kind to us and we found many congenial companions. There was one incident that created a little excitement for a time. The man who is the manager of Emma Goldman offended some ladies in the observation car one afternoon. He was called down vigorously by Dr. Buckley of your city and the doctor compelled him to respect the requests that the ladies had made regarding his smoking in the observation car. The members of the Tacoma baseball team were also instrumental in forcing this man to be decent, and it would not have taken much to have induced some of the younger men in the party to duck the offender in the convenient river.”

 

Emma Goldman was a national figure by the time she visited Missoula. Her story eventually encompassed many of the most notable events of her lifetime (1869 – 1940), including the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. Vehemently against W. W. 1, she was convicted of conspiracy under the Espionage Act in 1917 and sent to prison in Missouri. She was later deported to Russia in 1919 and met Lenin there in 1920. He reportedly told her, “There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period.” Discouraged, she left Russia in 1921, spent several years in Europe, and went to Canada in 1927. Over the following years she wrote extensively, including an autobiography, and was briefly allowed back in the U. S. in 1934 to lecture and teach. In 1936 she became involved in activities related to the Spanish Civil War where she met George Orwell who chronicled this period in what he called his best book, “Homage To Catalonia.” Prior to her death in Toronto in 1940, she expressed her opposition to WW 2, believing that war was fought only to support capitalism. She is buried in Chicago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman