More Powerful Than Dynamite
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Next came Rebecca Edelsohn. “She, too, was young and spectacular,” the Collier’s man wrote. “Becky spoke through a black scowl of indignation. She was vituperative, direct, defiant.” And she also was “a rebel in retirement.” Whereas Marie had regaled the reporter with tales of her redemption, Becky refused to be interviewed. Since her release from Blackwell’s Island, she had married and divorced Charles Plunkett, one of the anarchists who had been arrested in Tarrytown with her and Caron. In 1919 they had a son, Robert. It was the height of the Red Scare, and Becky worried about her security. As a notorious radical who had never bothered to apply for citizenship, she was excruciatingly vulnerable to the whims of Attorney General Palmer and his associates. Deportation loomed as a distinct threat, and she was determined to escape her fame. On her son’s birth certificate she had given her name as “Rebecca Edwards.”
In 1961, Becky Edelsohn Crawford was living with her second husband in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Whether she feared exposure or her ideas had changed, the woman whom the press had formerly called “one of the nicest girls that ever rode in a patrol wagon” was finished with agitation. She was attracted to artistic circles, serving in the 1920s as business manager for the Provincetown Players and having a brief affair with the playwright Eugene O’Neill. After marrying her second husband, John Crawford, a copy editor for the New York Times, she made a living selling stocks over the telephone. Believing her own pitch, she became an investor herself and lost everything in the 1929 crash. When her husband was fired they moved around, eventually ending up in California. For them it was hard to get money. She sold lightbulbs, stockings—anything—over the phones, smoking heavily while she made her calls. She was warm and generous, usually surrounded by friends. And everyone always referred to her as Becky. But she rarely talked politics, nor did she tell her son about her youthful exploits. The image of her on a soapbox in Union Square, urging on twenty thousand ragged anarchists to acts of revolutionary violence, was a picture out of another lifetime.
Professor Frank Tannenbaum.
Her smoking led to emphysema. Rebecca Edelsohn Plunkett Crawford died in Los Angeles in August 1971.
None of the former rebels had transformed themselves so dramatically as Frank Tannenbaum. “I have broadened considerably since then,” he reported. “I have added many things to my intellectual make-up. In 1914 I was convinced I had the key to heaven and that no one else’s key would fit the lock. Now I know that others will.” After his first difficult semesters at Columbia, he had learned to master academic life. At graduation, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa with honors in history and economics. His first book, The Labor Movement, had appeared in 1921, and he was in the midst of researching a dissertation on the economic structures of Mexico. Over the next four decades he would establish himself as a prominent historian, writing important studies on Latin America, labor politics, and slavery. When he died in 1969 at the age of seventy-six, his obituary in the New York Times devoted two full columns to his scholarly work while making only one general reference to his involvement with “the Industrial Workers of the World movement.”
ALEXANDER BERKMAN’S EUPHORIA upon arriving in Russia lasted about as long as any of his other fleeting spells of optimism. At first he had suspended judgment of the Bolsheviki’s methods, seeing the harsh strictures of proletarian dictatorship as the necessary consequences of civil strife and foreign aggression. But gratuitous injustices soon became apparent. He and Goldman met with Lenin and were treated as dignitaries, while most of the people they saw were starving. Everywhere, they came upon the same disparity of conditions between party favorites and common workers. As anarchists, they were quicker than most foreign guests to recognize the Soviet regime for what it was—and Goldman proved more adroit in this than Berkman. Lincoln Steffens had visited in 1919, returning home famously to pronounce, “I have seen the future, and it works.” John Reed and Big Bill Haywood both died while serving the Soviet Union, and their remains were given honorary interment within the Kremlin walls.
It took only a few months for Berkman to see his fondest hopes for Russia disappointed. But it was the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion that broke his heart. In the winter of 1921, sailors and workers in the port near Petrograd, including many anarchists, demanded that the Bolsheviks honor their promises to create a people’s democracy. Instead Red Army soldiers, led by Leon Trotsky, besieged the town and pitilessly crushed the uprising. The reprisals crested on March 18, 1921, the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Paris Commune. For Berkman, it was another doleful prediction confirmed. He had spent a lifetime denouncing the inherent brutality of state power, and here it was again, unmistakable, despite its revolutionary trappings.
After two years in Russia, Berkman and Goldman escaped to the West in January 1922. A permanent exile now, living without papers and under scrutiny—first in Sweden, then in Germany, and finally in France—he publicized his critique of the Soviet Union and found a new cause to fight for in the murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists facing execution by the state of Massachusetts. When global appeals failed to save the two men, it was another dismaying loss. Nevertheless he worked on, publishing his last book, What Is Communist Anarchism?, in 1928. Intended to speak to uneducated readers, the treatise was clear and direct in its answer. “It is not bombs, disorder or chaos,” Berkman wrote. “It is not robbery and murder. It is not a war of each against all. It is not a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man.” Anarchism, he asserted after a lifetime lived by its tenets, was “the finest and biggest thing man has ever thought of.”
With no citizenship, his final decade was plagued by bureaucratic annoyances. Long years in prison had ruined his health; he suffered from stomach ulcers and kidney disease. After two failed prostate operations had left him in unceasing pain, Alexander Berkman decided to commit suicide. On the morning of June 28, 1936, he fired a pistol at his heart. For the second crucial time in his life, he missed his aim. The bullet shredded his lung and lodged in his stomach. It took several excruciating hours before he died. He was sixty-five years old.
* * *
ARTHUR CARON HAD emerged from obscurity in March 1914; for a few short months he had become a figure of notoriety and speculation, an icon of rebelliousness and anger, and then, in July, he was gone. As far as those who knew him were concerned, he was best forgotten. Twice a failure, he had conceived of a grievous deed and had then botched its execution. Upton Sinclair and his wife distanced themselves from any association with him. The Industrial Workers of the World repudiated his actions. Emma Goldman thought he was little better than a criminal. And Berkman, too, had soon moved on to other causes, discovering new martyrs.
The tenement at 1626 Lexington Avenue was hastily repaired. Today few residents know the story of the most shocking day in the building’s history, but they all realize that something is not quite right there. Floors are buckled and creaky; windows and doors don’t close properly. Otherwise, things are much as they were. Families still overcrowd the small apartments, throwing mattresses on the floor when there is not enough space in the bedrooms. And early in the morning each Fourth of July, they come down to the street toting loaded picnics to celebrate the holiday.
Arthur Caron’s son, Reeves—the boy who had been born in 1912 and whose mother had died shortly after childbirth—also seems to have never known the truth about his father. He had been sent to live with his in-laws as a newborn, and when the notorious Arthur had died two years later, his keepers had presumably seen no reason to tell him the truth about his parentage. Reeves moved to San Francisco and worked for the post office. He died in 1978. If he had ever learned that there were anarchists in the family, it was a story he did not share with his daughter, Nancy, who knew only that her ancestry was clouded in silence and mystery.
The urn holding Caron’s remains, shaped like a pyramid and topped with a clenched fist, resided briefly in the offices of Mother Earth. Wh
en police raids and arrests rendered the city uninhabitable, comrades held a short ceremony and scattered the ashes in an open field. The emptied vessel made the trip from Harlem to New Jersey when the Ferrer Center was forced to relocate. There, for years, it served “the peaceful function of a bell to call children to school and adults to meetings.”
Acknowledgments
I presented Anna Ghosh, my agent, with a proposal about an intimate history involving marginal politics and populated by obscure characters; she took a deep breath, helped me broaden its scope, and then worked untiringly to connect the project to the right people. At Walker & Co., Margaret Maloney was a diligent and enthusiastic editor; she adopted this book as her own and consistently pushed to make it better and more ambitious. Lea Beresford, Michelle Blankenship, and Mike O’Connor always made me feel that my work was their top professional priority, offering a commitment to this project that went far beyond my expectations. The latter stages of my research would have been impossible but for a generous grant from the National Institute of Social Sciences.
Committed archivists are essential to any work of nonfiction, and I was fortunate to benefit from the assistance of great researchers at numerous libraries. I would like to thank Eric Wakin and Susan Hamson at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Lea Osborne at the New York Public Library, Candace Falk at the Emma Goldman Papers Project, James Folts at the New York State Archives, Fernanda Perrone at Rutgers University Special Collections, Kathryn Kulpa at the Fall River Public Library, Bonnie Coles at the Library of Congress, Sara Mascia at the Sleepy Hollow Historical Society, and Patti Fink at the National Personnel Records Center. I was also aided by librarians at the UCLA Special Collections library, the Western Reserve Historical Society Library, and the International Institute of Social History, in Amsterdam. I thank Robert Plunkett and Thomas Krieg for their willingness to confide their family histories to me. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the generous assistance given to my research by the late Kenneth Rose at the Rockefeller Archive Center.
Important sections of this book were developed in Columbia University seminars conducted by Professors Elizabeth Blackmar, Kenneth T. Jackson, Alice Kessler-Harris, Sarah Phillips, and Simon Schama. Chelsea Szendi Schieder read the manuscript as it was being written, and then reread the whole after its completion. Her perspective was always sharp and inspiring, and she made the work seem fun. My fellow doctoral candidates in Columbia’s Department of History have provided guidance and solicitude in equal measure. Jessica Adler, Melissa Borja, Victoria Geduld, Elizabeth Hinton, Sarah Kirshen, Justin Jackson, Ben Lyons, Tamara Mann, Yuki Oda, Nick Osborne, Matt Spooner, Mason Williams, Mike Woodsworth—thank you all—and now get back to work!
A book on anarchism would be mere chaos without constructive feedback from critical readers. Zayd Dohrn, Rachel DeWoskin, Chesa Boudin, Jonah Hoyle, and Nick Miroff read parts of the manuscript and offered useful suggestions. Samuel G. Freedman, mentor and role model, read and edited the entire proposal—seemingly overnight—and his notes were keen and learned, as always. Billy Herbert and the profoundly missed Margaret Black Mirabelli were insightful and enthusiastic supporters. Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, and David Gilbert provided their political acumen and experience in ways that fundamentally shaped my understanding of the street demonstrations and prison conditions of the past. Sean and Hudson Jacke provided expert technological assistance. Harry Kellerman, Tom Meredith, Aisha Ayers, Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, Carole Armel, Jane Hirschmann, Richard Levy, Michael Ratner, and Karen Ranucci all graciously offered their homes as places for me to write, research, and revise.
Finally, the people who have contributed the most to this effort: Eleanor Stein, my mother, whose erudition continually amazes me, and Jeff Jones, my father, a political thinker without peer, offered loving support and priceless encouragement at all times. My brother, Arthur Bluejay, not only had to read each and every word, but was often forced to read them out loud. More Powerful Than Dynamite never could have been written without him.
Sources and Notes
Abbreviations
LOC: Library of Congress
OMR: Office of Messrs. Rockefeller
RAC: Rockefeller Archives Center
RBML: Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library
December 31, 1913
1 “wildest”: “Multitude Dins Welcome to 1914,” New York Tribune (Jan. 1, 1914); “‘Happy New Year!’ Shouts Broadway,” New York Tribune (Jan. 1, 1914); “Quieter Throngs See 1914 Come In,” New York Times (Jan. 1, 1914). The Times’s assessment that this was a quiet New Year’s Eve is contradicted everywhere else.
1 the city air popped: “Multitude Dins Welcome to 1914”; Singer Tower: O.F. Semsch, The History of the Singer Building: Its Progress from Foundation to Flag Pole (New York: Shumway & Beattie, 1908);
1 clothing: “The Well Dressed Man,” Vanity Fair (Dec. 1913); cherub: “Cigar Clad Man a New Year Emblem,” New York Tribune (Jan. 1, 1914).
1 “Safe and Sane”: “Horns and Hymns, Texts and Trots, Are 1914’s Ushers,” the World (Jan. 1, 1914); “1914 Dances Into Favor as Chimes Tinkle 12 and Populace Shouts Welcome,” New York Herald (Jan. 1, 1914); “Carnival as City Greets New Year,” the Sun (Jan. 1, 1914).
2 “raspy throated tin horns”: “Multitude Dins Welcome to 1914.”
2–3 Rector’s: George Rector, The Girl from Rector’s (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927), 114; “It was dance-dance-dance”: “Horns and Hymns”; waltz craze: Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009); Couples spun: “‘Happy New Year!’ Shouts Broadway”; “Champagne Yields to Dance in New Year’s Eve Festivities,” New York Herald (Jan. 1, 1914); “Broadway’s Automatic Merrymaking,” Evening Post (Dec. 31, 1913); “New Year Trots In as Old Tangoes Out,” the Sun (Jan. 1, 1914).
3 The toughest reservation in town: “Champagne Yields”; “Quieter Throngs.”
3–4 a man of authority: William B. Ellison, “A Young Man of New York,” Hearst’s Magazine (April 1913); “infectious kind”: Raymond B. Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (New York: Harper, 1958), 82; “a young knight”: Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd (1949), Columbia University Oral History Collection, 43.
4 pocket watch: Henry N. Hall, “The Young Mayor of the Greatest American City; What He Thinks of the Office and Its Opportunities; Responsibility and Danger; Still Favors Free Speech,” the World (April 26, 1914).
4–5 “probably near the north pole”: “Carnival as City Greets New Year”; “blaze of glory”: “Multitude Dins Welcome to 1914.”
5 “kick out the old”: Emma Goldman to Theodore Dreiser, Dec. 27, 1913, The Emma Goldman Papers Project Web site.
5–6 procession of friends: Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Volume II (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 521; scores of women: Bob Brown, “Greenwich Village Gallops,” American Mercury (Jan. 1934); “Tin cans”: Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 309.
6 “a rubber of whist”: “Cities of Westchester and Her County Seat,” New York Times (May 3, 1903).
6–7 “a noisy, happy time”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Dec. 26, 1913, box 4, folder 43, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller (OMR), Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Archives Center (RAC); “as happy as their parents”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Jan. 7, 1914, box 4, folder 44, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.
7 “I am so glad”: Quoted in Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), 188; handkerchiefs … queer I am about presents”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Dec. 23, 1913, box 4, folder 43, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2
, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.
7–8 “You can never forget”: Quoted in Chernow, Titan, 357; “a very poor opinion”: Quoted in Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., A Portrait (New York; Harper, 1956), 191; “They can prove”: Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 87.
8–9 “a busy life”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to W.H.P. Faunce, Dec. 26, 1913, box 60, folder 448, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Friends and Services series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; “cares should sit lightly”: W.H.P. Faunce to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 24, 1913, box 60, folder 448, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Friends and Services series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC. Safe and Sane: Jacob A. Riis to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 11, 1912, box 4, folder 41, Cultural Interests series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; “rowdyism”: “Sane New Year’s Eve Plans,” New York Times (Dec. 24. 1912).
9 “no social diversions”: “President Wilson Spends Happy Day,” New York Times (Dec. 26, 1913); “life just as easy”: “President 57 Today,” Washington Post (Dec. 28, 1913); Wilson’s journey: “President Off for a Rest,” New York Times (Dec. 24, 1913); “Flock to See Wilson,” Washington Post (Dec. 25, 1913).
9 “ruddy glow”: “President 57 Today”; “Life in Pass Christian,” Washington Post (Dec. 22, 1913); life in Mississippi: “Extra Guards for President Wilson,” New York Tribune (Dec. 30, 1913).
10 Kaiser Wilhelm: “Mystery in Lind’s Visit,” New York Times (Jan. 1, 1914).
10 snowdrifts stood shoulder-high: “Snow Piled Four Feet on Streets of Denver,” Los Angeles Times (Dec. 6, 1913); “Slip! Slip! Everybody’s Slipping on Sidewalks,” Denver Post (Dec. 30, 1913); “The Weather,” Colorado Springs Gazette (Jan. 1, 1914); “Coal Production in U.S. for 1913 Record Breaker,” Denver Post (Dec. 29, 1913); “Important Coal Notice!” Denver Post (Dec. 30, 1913).