[The following paper by F. H. Nichols appeared in "The Outlook" (New York) for August 10th, 1901. Ju view of the tra death of President McKinley a month ind four days later, this article possesses a special and men choly interest. Tt also A state of things that few suspected The murder of Humbert, King of Italy, on July 29th, 1900, the anniversary of week made the occasion of and addresses caists in' Paterson, was the fourth of a series of Anarchist. assassinations of the teer of nat! h have startled the world four yea) four cases ut Carnot. of Minister of Spa press of Aust of mon who wer was himself the Gactano Bresei, Humbert's a-sasin, who recently took his own life im his cell in San Stefano prison, came from Paterson, N.J., where his American wife survives him. Since Brosci's suicide, foreign dispatches tell of frustrated plots by Italian Anareliists to kill the Kaiser of Germany and King of Spain. The starting point of both murderers was said to be the United States. This country is without doubt the centre and headquarters of the Italian Anarchy, which is far more dangerous than any of the forms which have preceded.
In theory Anarchy has progressed not a particle beyond the universal system of government destruction which was founded by Bakunin, bu' both in spirit and application it is different. The Italian Anareliist does not cherish that blind personal hatred of individuals and institutions th: characterised the cart-tail oratory preceding the Haymarke® riot in Chicago (in 1896). He has little to say about his own hard lot or starvation wages. Almost without exception the Italian Anarchists are regularly employed in some trade at fair Some have comfortable savings To understand them we must understand the Italian character and its capabilities for devotion to a purely theoretical liberty. These Italians have the spirit which found utterance in the liberty fervour of Mazzini 48, whose contagion started revolutions.
On Mazzini's banner were the four words, "God and the people." For the Italian Anarchist the first obligation is of course eliminated, but the second is an al~ tar on which he considers his life "small sacrifice, and for him the voice of his people says only, " Kill."
Tatts Anarchists seldom preach or agitate for their faith. Publicly they seldom speaks of it. By individual persuasion they try to make proselytes to their cause, but never in the open. They labour with A prospective convert as a missionary might with one soul he was trying to save, They are sure that he enrolls under the red flag with his eyes open, and that. he slices he hatred, persecution, and possibly even death that awaits his devotion to anarchy. They are more like a sect of political heretics apart, studying to per-fact themselves in their life religion. None of the four great recent Anarchist. assassmations las been accomplished by any of the melodramatic scenery or effects that one is apt to expect of an Anarchist man-
Xo palaces were undermined with dynamite. No bombs were thrown into roy al processions. In every case the Anarst killed his victim with a simple weapon as calmly and as stoically as a premeditated suicide might walk off a Battery Park pier with a policeman looking on.
In nearly all the Continental nations to be even suspected of being an Anarchist is equivalent to being a criminal punishable with imprisonment of exile. For a man who has been known to actually advocate law-destruction there is really but one cape, and that is Amerien. The consequence is that the men and women Anareliists who have come to this country during the last seven or eight years have all been graduates of Anarchist antecedents in Italy. The era of doubt and questi ing with them is over. They have reached a it where they are out-and-out Anareliists, else they would not have been obliged to leave their native Jand. The Italian Anarchist in America is a veteran, not a cadet. Ninety per cent of the Anarchists in Italy are found in the northern provinces of Lombardy and Piedmont, the section of the country where education is most general. Silk weaving in the mills is one of the chief industries of that part of the country. When the first of the States they naturally drifted to Paterson, present Italian group came to the United whose enormous silk industry afforded them an opportunity of continuing the trade they had learned in Italy. For the others who followed there was the addi-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.