Alexander Berkman Freed - Emma Goldman in Pearls

A small blurb in the New York Times from 100 years ago today caught my eye, it read "Enemy of Frick Freed." I remembered who Frick was, though I'd forgotten the name of his would-be assassin, Alexander Berkman. The belief that that best path to changing the world is through instant gratification tends to reside in the terminally young and armchair intellectuals. The article is reproduced below:

Man Who Attempted Assassination Arrested on Another Charge

PITTSBURGH, July 19 - Alexander Berkman, who attempted to kill H. C. frick, the millionaire steel manufacturer, during the great Homestead strike of 1892, was released from the Western Penitentiary today. He was immediately arrested on a commitment to the Allegheny Count Workhouse to serve one year for carrying concealed weapons.

Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in the penitentiary, but good behavior earned for him a commutation of nine years. During his long imprisonment, Berkman devoted his leisure time to study and writing.

As he left for the workhouse he said to Deputy Sheriff Haggerty: "I hope there won't be any notoriety about me. I want to do my little bit and then be a good man and live at peace with the world."

The trip from the penitentiary to the workhouse was without incident.

If I remember accounts of the strike, the strikers actually stood a reasonable chance of winning until Berkman came along and destroyed all sympathy for their cause with his botched murder attempt. Berkman is also known as the lifelong companion of Emma Goldman, a woman who was sufficiently vain in her beliefs to preach free love and violent revolution at the same time. Her essay on the former is a truly amusing read for adults who may know nothing of love but have seen plenty of life. I doubt I would have remembered either Berkman or Goldman but for a young woman who attended a local seminar at a private college. She reminded me greatly of a picture of a young Emma I'd recently seen in a documentary, and she had the habit of wearing a T-shirt and pearls. I thought it was charming.