Haymarket Affair Digital Collection

Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial evidence book. People's Exhibit 21.
The Alarm (Newspaper) article, "The Anarchists," 1884 Oct. 18

2 p.
Introduced Vol. K p. 156, 1886 July 26.
Transcript of article.


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[Image, People's Exhibit 21, Page 1]

THE ALARM, Oct. 18, 1884.

THE ANARCHISTS.

The Daily Inter-Ocean in a lengthy article on this subject, closes with the following remarks: There are anarchists in Germany, France, England and American whose views--or rather whose rabies, for it is not a theory, but an incapacity to theorize, a sort of verbal foaming at the mouth, which shows that both reason and affection are burned--are like those of the Russian Nihilists% Indeed, there are secret societies in the heart of China and India which propogate it. "Thugism" is the outcome of it in India.

There is nothing Republican or Socialistic in it. Indeed, the Socialists proper run into precisely the opposite notion of so extending the powers of the State as to make it the universal owner of all property and the employer of all labor.

While we write, it is announced that the parliament buildings at Quebec have been blown up by dynamite. This is one of the first successful manifestations of anarchic nihilism on this continent. The recent incendiary fires at Cleveland have some evidences of being traceable to analogous causes.

One point will probably be discovered by these Anarchists as their efforts grow formidable. As an American militia is


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far more prompt and merciless than an imperial army in the suppression of riots, so if the American people become alarmed at the movements of Anarchism will their action be infinitely more condign and vengeful, sharp and decisive. The tone of American opinion has heretofore been that these ebullitions of social lunacy if allowed to effervesce, will work their gas off harmlessly. Let this hope be widely dispelled, and the public mind made certain that Anarchism means malicious and deadly force, endangering the useful, and innocent, and the helpless, and these Anarchists will find that Russian despotism will be less effective for their suppression than American law--such as would be evoked by such an occasion

The Inter-Ocean man has overlooked the fact that one man armed with a dynamite bomb is equal to one regiment of militia, when it is used at the right time and place. Anarchists are of the opinion that the bayonet and gattling gun will cut but a sorry part in the social revolution. The whole method of warfare has been revolutionized by the latter-day discoveries of science, and the American people will avail themselves of its advantages in the conflict with the upstarts and contemptible braggarts who expect to continue their rascality under the plea of preserving "law and order."


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