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JOHANN MOST IN AMERICA
75
him and many others from the country. Had he remained
under the influence of the men who were able to
guide him and restrain his passionate temper, the party
would have possessed in him a most zealous, self-sacrificing,
and indefatigable fighter." (12) Most, then, was
one of the victims of Bismarck's savage policies, as were
also nearly all the other Germans who took part in the
sordid crimes related by Tucker. And Haymarket—
the
the greatest of all American tragedies
— leads directly
back to the Iron Chancellor and his ferocious inquisition.
A few minor incidents of anarchist activity may
be recorded
for the following years, but the only acts
of importance
were the shooting of President McKinley by
Czolgosz and the shooting of Henry C. Frick by Alexander
Berkman. In the "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,"
Berkman has now told us that as a youth he became
a disciple of Bakounin and a fiery member of the
Nihilist group. It was after the Homestead strike that
Berkman saw a chance to propagate his gospel by a deed.
Leaving his home in New York, he went to Pittsburgh
for the purpose of killing Henry C. Frick, then head of
the Carnegie Steel Company. Berkman made his way
into Frick's office, shot at and slightly wounded him. In
explanation of this act he says : "In truth, murder and
attentat (that is, political assassination) are to me opposite
terms. To remove a tyrant
is an act of liberation,
the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people."
(13) For this attempt on the life of Frick, Berkman
was condemned to a term of imprisonment of
twenty-two years. Despite a few isolated outbreaks, it
may be said, therefore, that the seeds of anarchism have
never taken root in America, just as they have never