Untitled

JOHANN MOST IN AMERICA 65
revolutionists, upon being expelled from Germany, were
injected into the ferment. With many other refugees,
the Germans then began to form revolutionary clubs, and,
in 1882, Johann Most appeared in the United States
scattering broadcast the terrorist ideas of Bakounin and
Nechayeff.
Most was perhaps the most fiery personality that appeared
in the ranks of the anarchists after the death of
Bakounin. A cruel stepmother, a pitiless employer, a long
sickness, and an operation which left his face deformed
forever are some of the incidents of his unhappy childhood.
He received a poor education, but read extensively,
and as a bookbinder worked at his trade in Germany,
Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. He became attached
to the labor movement toward the end of the sixties,
and was elected to the German Reichstag in 1874.
Forced to leave Germany as a result of the anti-socialist
law, he went to London, where he established Die Freiheit,
at first a social-democratic paper, which was smuggled
into Germany. He became, however, more and
more violent, and in 1880, at a secret gathering of the
German socialists at Wyden in Switzerland, he and his
friend Hasselmann were expelled from the Germany
party. After this he no longer attempted to conceal his
anarchist sympathies, and in the Freiheit, on the platform,
and on every possible occasion he preached principles
almost identical with those of Nechayeff and
Bakounin. In a pamphlet on the scientific art of revolutionary
warfare and of dynamiters he prescribes in detail
where bombs should be placed in churches, palaces,
and ball-rooms.* He advises wholly individual action,
in order that the groups may suffer as little harm as possible.
His pamphlet also contains a dictionary of poisons
* See Revolntion'dre Kriegswissenschaft.