Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~170,000 words · 795 passages
Cite this work
- APAAlexander Berkman. (n.d.). Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexander-berkman/prison-memoirs-of-an-anarchist
- MLAAlexander Berkman. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexander-berkman/prison-memoirs-of-an-anarchist.
- ChicagoAlexander Berkman. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexander-berkman/prison-memoirs-of-an-anarchist.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Berkman's account of the fourteen years he served for attempting to kill the manager of the Homestead steel works in 1892.
Context and history
The attempt was a response to the killing of striking workers by Pinkerton detectives. Berkman survived his own act, and the book, published in 1912, is mostly about what happened afterwards: the discipline, the isolation, the madness around him, and the slow change in how he thought. What makes it remarkable is not the politics but the honesty: Berkman describes how the convinced young man who entered prison gradually stopped believing that an act like his served any purpose — and describes it without withdrawing his sympathy for what he himself had been. It is one of the best documents we have on the nineteenth-century American prison, and Emma Goldman, who was his companion, is also in the corpus.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The great battle has been fought. Never before, in all its history, has American labor won such a signal victory. By force of arms the workers of Homestead have compelled three hundred Pinkerton invaders to surrender, to surrender most humbly, ignominiously. What humiliating defeat for the powers that be! Does not the Pinkerton janizary represent organized authority, forever crushing the toiler in the interest of the exploiters? Well may the enemies of the People be terrified at the unexpected awakening. But the People, the workers of America, have joyously acclaimed the rebellious manhood of Homestead. The steel-workers were not the aggressors. Resignedly they had toiled and suffered. Out of their flesh and bone grew the great steel industry; on their blood fattened the powerful Carnegie Company. Yet patiently they had waited for the promised greater share of the wealth they were creating. Like a bolt from a clear sky came the blow: wages were to be reduced! Peremptorily the steel magnates refused to continue the sliding scale previously agreed upon as a guarantee of peace. The Carnegie firm challenged the Amalgamated Association by the submission of conditions which it knew the workers could not accept. Foreseeing refusal, it flaunted warlike preparations to crush the union under the iron heel. Perfidious Carnegie shrank from the task, having recently proclaimed the gospel of good will and harmony. "I would lay it down as a maxim," he had declared, "that there is no excuse for a strike or a lockout until arbitration of differences has been offered by one party and refused by the other. The right of the workingmen to combine and to form trades-unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into association and conference with his fellows, and it must sooner or later be conceded. Manufacturers should meet their men _more than half-way_."