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CHAPTER III
THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED
The insurrections in France and Spain were on the
whole spontaneous uprisings, but those disturbances in
Italy in which the anarchists played a part were largely
the result of agitation. Of course, adverse political and
economic conditions were the chief causes of that general
spirit of unrest which was prevalent in the early
seventies in all the Latin countries, but after 1874 the
numerous riots in which the anarchists were active were
almost entirely the work of enthusiasts who believed they
could make revolutions. The results of the previous uprisings
had a terribly depressing effect upon nearly all the
older men, but there were four youths attached to Bakounin's
insurrectionary ideas whose spirits were not
bowed down by what had occurred. Carlo Cafiero, Enrico
Malatesta, Paul Brousse, and Prince Kropotkin
were at the period of life when action was a joyous thing,
and they undertook to make history. Cafiero we know as
Malatesta "had
a young Italian of very wealthy parents.
left the medical profession and also his fortune for the
sake of the revolution." (1) Paul Brousse was of
French parentage, and had already distinguished himself
in medicine, but he cast it aside in his early devotion to
anarchism. He had rushed to Spain when the revolution
broke out there, and he was always ready to go whereever
an opportunity offered itself for revolutionary activ-
The Russian prince, Kropotkin, the fourth member
ity.
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