Between Jails – Emma Goldman (1917)

From ‘Mother Earth’, August, 1917, New York City

By Emma Goldman

Since the great world upheaval has torn the very vitals of Europe and is now pulling at the very soul of America, the usual approximate security of life for the individual, as well as for the mass, has been destroyed. Like a panorama, events follow one another in rapid succession. One can no longer hold to one’s values, or dare to hope that the next day will bring aught but a new cataclysm which will uproot life.

Alexander Berkman was released from one of America’s worst bastiles, the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, on May 18th, 1906. He had spent 14 years of his youth and manhood because he dared strike at the foe of labor. He immediately resumed his work in the revolutionary movement where he had left off in 1892. With greater knowledge and deeper understanding, he has worked incessantly ever since in behalf of every important issue, always undaunted and uncompromising. It was inevitable that Alexander Berkman should often collide with the powers that be. Yet, while he was arrested on several occasions, and though during his unemployed and anti-military activities he barely escaped the trap laid for him, the life and work of our friend moved comparatively without much violent interruption from the law.

As to myself, in all my public career of twenty-seven years I have confronted only one serious trouble — my imprisonment in Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary, in 1893. Allegedly I was guilty of inciting to riot, but in reality my offense consisted of quoting Cardinal Manning to the effect that “the hungry man has a right to take bread.” On all the other occasions my arrests — and they were numerous — ended in dismissal, except the fifteen days for Birth Control activities in 1916. My life, too, moved smoothly as far as the Government is concerned. Certainly I never had occasion to call upon the law for protection, and when the law needed protection from me, it went no further than an arrest or a little vacation in Queens County Jail

It was left to the United States Government to use a sledge hammer to strike with one fell blow. It was not content with giving us the maximum sentence of two years, $10,000 fine and deportation at the end, — it also attempted to crush all that we have painfully built up through years of effort and struggle. When the job of the United States Government was completed, Mother Earth and The Blast found themselves robbed of their offices, most of our books and papers confiscated, $700.00 in bank accounts appropriated, and the publishers, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, securely tucked away in living graves. The job was complete, and the United States safe to go ahead undisturbed in its mission to give democracy to the world.

Since then the scene has again shifted. Thanks to the ingenuity and the strenuousness of our devoted friend, Harry Weinberger, and the spirit of fair play of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, our stay in the Atlanta and Jefferson prisons was cut short. I have again been thrown upon the sea of life. Our Comrades Berkman, Kramer and Becker, while still in the Tombs prison, will soon be with us again. Mother Earth has picked up the broken threads left behind by the American invaders on June 15th; the work goes on with greater zeal than ever, — a feat which is nothing short of a miracle,

No ordinary business concern, no matter how great its facilities, could so speedily have recuperated from the blow struck at Mother Earth by the United States Government. But Mother Earth is not a business concern: it is a voice, — it calls for something which no government can silence. It articulates the thoughts and the emotions of people who have remained firm in their opposition to the hypocritical boast that this war, unlike other wars, is imbued with a high purpose and a noble aim. These people have come forward from East and West, from North and South, with words of cheer and tokens of love. They have demonstrated how truly futile and foolish it is for governments to strike at an ideal or to gag a truth.

Of course, we may yet have to serve our sentences. Appeals in labor cases and in cases of free speech and press, have almost never resulted in a reversal of the decision of the lower courts. Meanwhile, however, our appeal will make history, since its purpose is not only to decide the fate of four human beings, but the fate of millions. After all, the question involved in our appeal is whether the American Constitution is a mere scrap of paper, a shadow of the past, or if it still has a spark of vitality to save the people from compulsory military servitude. If in the end we shall have to take up our residence in Atlanta and Jefferson, it will only add fuel to the fires which our arrest, conviction and sentence have kindled.

* * *

Jefferson has no terror for me, especially now that I am somewhat acquainted with its regime. The attacks directed against the horrors of American prisons have not been in vain. A few changes have taken place everywhere, and Jefferson Prison has not escaped them. But there are still many evils which need to be remedied.

First of all, there is the reception accorded the new comer. Instead of encouragement and sympathy, to which the worst criminal should be entitled, he is met with the kindly query, “Got a disease?” He is then warned that the prison has severe punishment, and that he had better make up his mind to obey the rules without a murmur.

I was curious to know whether any other method had ever been tried, — that of kindliness, for instance. But I met with a blank look. The idea of kindliness to convicts! “Why do they want to get into trouble! If they must do wrong, they have only themselves to blame.” Naturally, people who have exercised discipline for years become hardened; their brains and hearts become solidified and do not permit of a new thought or emotion. How can they understand the black despair and bitter hatred of the offender against the world which first drives him to crime, and then sends him to a living grave.

Prison authorities have it in their power to relieve, to some extent, the bitter agony and resentment accumulated in the soul of the prisoner by the long wait for the trial, the cruel atmosphere of the court-room, the final shock of conviction and sentence. They could, if they would, help the convict over the awful years confronting him or her. They might send him back regenerated to society; but somehow it is not given to them to reach the soul of those whom misfortune and social indifference have placed in their hands.

After a weary trip of forty hours, cooped up in a compartment with a deputy marshal and his wife, I was locked in a cell and left to myself for several hours, the thought never occurring to those who received me whether I had need of food or drink. It almost seemed as though I had been forgotten; but finally the matron arrived and I was made to go through the ordinary procedure of all the other victims who must leave their identity behind and become mere automatons when prison doors close upon them.

Then the silly discipline of absolute silence, long abolished in many penal institutions. Twenty-four years ago, when I was sent to Blackwell’s Island, I was struck by this utterly foolish, unnecessarily cruel method of compelling human beings to move about like shadows in gravelike silence. Even the exchange of thoughts in a whisper was severely punished. The fact that this regime still exists shows how slowly progress moves. Thus from six o’clock in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon, but for the loud noise of the machines in the shops and the hard voices of keepers, the prisoners pass in silence. Only during the hour of recreation are the pent-up feelings and thoughts permitted to break loose.

Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he spoke of life as the eternal recurrence. Life indeed is nothing else. Thirty-two years ago, when I came to America with exultation in my heart about liberty and opportunity, I was given a taste of both in a large clothing factory, making coats ten hours a day at $2.50 per week. In Jefferson Prison, the very morning after a suffocating journey, I tasted the blessings of democracy making coats, with this difference: my lucrative wage of thirty-two years ago was reduced to three meals a day and a cell. Progress moves imperceptibly indeed.

On the whole, however, there are many improvements in Jefferson Prison. I do not wish our friends to understand that I have any personal complaint of the treatment accorded me. I quote from a letter I had written to the Warden in the institution, and which, by the way, he did not see fit to answer:

“I understand that contract labor has been abolished in Missouri. Why, then, the necessity of imposing the task system upon prisoners? To compel women to make eighteen dozen suspenders or fifty coats a day, only tends to undermine their health.

“I have watched them at work and I can assure you they run along half-way smoothly in the morning, but by the afternoon they are so exhausted that they simply can not complete their task. To punish them for such a thing by keeping them on bread and water seems barbarous. Besides, it is futile, since the punishment leaves their physical condition below par and disables them from doing their task the following day.

“It seems to me that if the women were made to feel an interest in the work, they would turn out the required quantity and be in better spirits than they are now. No one drove me, and yet I did my work and even enjoyed it, knowing as I did that no parasite would wear the coats I was making, After all, it can not be the purpose of prisons to so unfit the inmates as to make them hardened and brutalized and return them to the world with deeper resentment and hatred for society. In other words, the old system of punishment has been proven a complete failure. More and more, the best minds are realizing that a humane method accomplishes greater results.

“I have no personal complaints to make. In fact, I think that many things you have in Jefferson Prison are an improvement over other prisons. For instance, the buying of food once a week, ice water and the recreation. But there are many things which need to be remedied, and which I desire to place before you for consideration.”

As I said before, Jefferson has no terrors for me. In fact, in our war-drunk age, with the patriotic frothing of the press, the brutality of the vigilantes and the general confusion of our life, Jefferson may yet prove a preferable retreat. From what our friend, Alexander Berkman, relates of Atlanta, it does not seem quite so alluring, but I know that Berkman would not exchange his place in the Federal Prison for that of the high seat now held by Charles Edward Russell, Mr. Spargo, Mr. Gompers and the other erstwhile revolutionists in the Labor Alliance. In Jefferson and Atlanta one can still retain one’s integrity. One can not do so by joining the forces which crush labor’s rights and annihilate freedom.

Our friends must not think we are eager for Atlanta and Jefferson. We are simply not deceived in the possible outcome of the appeal. But we want to fight until death and fight hard. We know we can count on our friends. What better inspiration does the rebel want? Unfortunately, the struggle involved in the appeal is now complicated by the San Francisco indictment of Alexander Berkman. The details of that our readers will find in another article.

The status of our own case is as follows. The appeal will be heard sometime in October, the decision rendered probably in December. Between now and October, a strenuous campaign of publicity must be carried on, That alone may affect the result. Nothing else will. We do not have the press at our disposal, and as most of the radical publications have been suppressed, it is more difficult than ever to reach the public at large. We can only hope to do so through Mother Earth while it lasts, and by the widest possible circulation of our Speeches in the Federal Court during our trial. The book is now off the press. You can help by ordering copies for sale or distribution, as it will represent our only revenue to carry on the fight. Send your contributions and orders for literature payable to M. E. Fitzgerald, 226 Fafayette Street, New York.

Friends, I am not unmindful of the difficulties and dangers confronting us all. If the madness of war will continue, it is bound to bring in its wake greater brutalities and outrages than have already been committed by our patriots. The more reason to save the ship of liberty from the storm of violence, destruction and confusion. In the end, the things which you and I fight for now will be recognized as the only sane and vital things in the world upheaval. Whether we may or may not live to realize our dreams, they contain the most living and glorious reality. So if I ask you to make a special effort to continue your generous support of our fight, it is not because I wish to burden you, but because I know that the fight is worth while and must not relax.