radical agitation of every kind as obstruction of the war effort, and therefore anti-American, and increased its surveillance of anarchists and other militants. “Their uncompromising opposition to the war brought down on them the full panoply of government repression,” Avrich wrote. “Throughout the country, anarchist offices were raided, equipment was smashed, and publications were suppressed.” Law enforcement efforts reached a peak on June 15, 1917, when three of the leading anarchist leaders in America were arrested.
In New York, federal agents broke into the offices of the radical publication
Mother Earth
, and charged Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman with conspiracy to interfere with the draft. Longtime comrades and reportedly lovers, Goldman and Berkman were well known among anarchists and law enforcement officials. They had both emigrated from Russia in the 1880s, became involved with radical Jewish labor groups, and, following the Chicago Haymarket riots in 1886, both became active anarchists. Berkman and Goldman had conspired to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, chairman of Carnegie Steel, after the violent Homestead labor strike of 1892. Berkman, who actually shot and stabbed Frick, was convicted of attempted murder and served fourteen years in prison. He and Goldman founded and edited
Mother Earth
after his release, and in the intervening years, preached against capitalism, Big Business, worker oppression, and militarism. When the United States entered the war in April, they ardently opposed a forced draft. After their arrest on June 15, 1917, they were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
The other prominent anarchist arrested on the same day was Luigi Galleani in Massachusetts. The Justice Department considered him “the leading anarchist in the United States,” and described his radical newspaper,
Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle)
, as “the most rabid, seditious and anarchistic sheet ever published in this country.” On June 15, following an editorial critical of draft registration, federal agents raided
Cronaca’
s offices in Lynn, Massachusetts, and arrested Galleani at his home in Wrentham, Massachusetts, where he lived with his wife and five children. He was charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft, entered a plea of guilty, and was ordered to pay a fine of $300.
Galleani’s arrest led to police actions against other Italian anarchists, in Boston and elsewhere. Some were arrested and threatened with deportation for starting a defense fund for Galleani and his colleagues. Others found themselves tossed in jail for insulting the American flag or failing to register for the draft. Still others, including Boston’s Sacco and Vanzetti, fled to Mexico, where for several months during 1917, they conspired to retaliate against what they saw as repression in the United States through the use of bombings and other violence. A Justice Department agent later speculated that this group had gone to Mexico to receive instruction in the use of explosives.
By the fall of 1917, most of these comrades had returned to the United States. For the next three years they would live an underground existence and employ bombs as their primary weapon against government authority.
They would, as the title of a previously published Galleani collection of articles suggested, go
Faccia a faccia col nemico
—“face to face with the enemy.”
France, January 1918
With a flourish, Major Hugh Walker Ogden finished penning the letter to his friend, Horace Lippincott, secretary of the General Alumni Association of the University of Pennsylvania. Ogden had signed with his familiar “HWO,” rather than the “H.W. Ogden” or “Hugh W. Ogden” that he reserved for more formal correspondence. His note to Lippincott served as a cover letter to the Penn Alumni Society’s request for information about the war records of its graduates now serving in the military. Half a world away, sitting in war-torn
In New York, federal agents broke into the offices of the radical publication
Mother Earth
, and charged Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman with conspiracy to interfere with the draft. Longtime comrades and reportedly lovers, Goldman and Berkman were well known among anarchists and law enforcement officials. They had both emigrated from Russia in the 1880s, became involved with radical Jewish labor groups, and, following the Chicago Haymarket riots in 1886, both became active anarchists. Berkman and Goldman had conspired to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, chairman of Carnegie Steel, after the violent Homestead labor strike of 1892. Berkman, who actually shot and stabbed Frick, was convicted of attempted murder and served fourteen years in prison. He and Goldman founded and edited
Mother Earth
after his release, and in the intervening years, preached against capitalism, Big Business, worker oppression, and militarism. When the United States entered the war in April, they ardently opposed a forced draft. After their arrest on June 15, 1917, they were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.
The other prominent anarchist arrested on the same day was Luigi Galleani in Massachusetts. The Justice Department considered him “the leading anarchist in the United States,” and described his radical newspaper,
Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle)
, as “the most rabid, seditious and anarchistic sheet ever published in this country.” On June 15, following an editorial critical of draft registration, federal agents raided
Cronaca’
s offices in Lynn, Massachusetts, and arrested Galleani at his home in Wrentham, Massachusetts, where he lived with his wife and five children. He was charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft, entered a plea of guilty, and was ordered to pay a fine of $300.
Galleani’s arrest led to police actions against other Italian anarchists, in Boston and elsewhere. Some were arrested and threatened with deportation for starting a defense fund for Galleani and his colleagues. Others found themselves tossed in jail for insulting the American flag or failing to register for the draft. Still others, including Boston’s Sacco and Vanzetti, fled to Mexico, where for several months during 1917, they conspired to retaliate against what they saw as repression in the United States through the use of bombings and other violence. A Justice Department agent later speculated that this group had gone to Mexico to receive instruction in the use of explosives.
By the fall of 1917, most of these comrades had returned to the United States. For the next three years they would live an underground existence and employ bombs as their primary weapon against government authority.
They would, as the title of a previously published Galleani collection of articles suggested, go
Faccia a faccia col nemico
—“face to face with the enemy.”
France, January 1918
With a flourish, Major Hugh Walker Ogden finished penning the letter to his friend, Horace Lippincott, secretary of the General Alumni Association of the University of Pennsylvania. Ogden had signed with his familiar “HWO,” rather than the “H.W. Ogden” or “Hugh W. Ogden” that he reserved for more formal correspondence. His note to Lippincott served as a cover letter to the Penn Alumni Society’s request for information about the war records of its graduates now serving in the military. Half a world away, sitting in war-torn
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