May 10, 1914
WOMEN IN TWO KINDS OF REVOLUTIONS
In a Revolt Against Established Authority Young Women of the Fiery Becky Edelson Type Take Their Share as Agitators in the Labor Strife.
It is little more than a month since the newspapers began printing the sayings and exploits of one Becky Edelson. Besides being an agitator, who and what is this person who, bursting out of obscurity, has caused more editorial comment for and against than any woman since Emma Goldman? Where does she come from? What conditions have thrown her into the fight as their spawn? What has this young girl endured to make her ready to outface street rowdies, to criticise the government and laugh in the face of recognized authority?
As she tells her story there is little in the background of her life on the East Side to differ from the upbringing of the ordinary child in that section of the city.she, in her expression of the restlessness that pervades all womankind, gives one a concrete idea of what we must recognize as the spirit of a large class of young women and men--first generation Americans--in who is combined the traditional oppression of their fathers in Europe and the breath of freedom of the new world. They have taken the word freedom in its almost catholic sense. Should Becky give way, there are many ready to take her place to fight the fight of "labor against capital" unto the death.
Works on Anarchist Magazine
Becky--her full name is Rebecca--is anarchist. She was nurtured in the faith of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and now works on their publication, "Mother Earth. The blood of Russian revolutionist is in her veins, heated by the experiences of a life on the East Side and by the fire in her own heart.
Doubtless the melting pot will give us more burning "Beckies" before all the fires which have been smoldering in the hearts of the oppressed of Europe for generations shall have burned themselves out or before there is nothing in American life to make food for these flames. As a portent of the East Side woman of the future, then, Becky becomes a candidate for analytical attention.
In what she has actually said in her speeches in Printing House Square or elsewhere there is nothing more alarmingly radical than the utterances of eminent women in public meeting in regard to the Colorado and Mexican wars. Yet hers have been the opinions which have been greeted by the majority of men and women with alarm, anger and contempt. And that is because she generates, without saying it, a bitter hatred of all institutions and situations which the majority of us view with complacency, if not glorifying satisfaction.
Becky ls Short and Stocky.She is a strong-faced girl, with a good forehead and deep, keen brown eyes, not at all the melting brown eyes of the poet or the soft, passionate brown eyes of the south of Europe. Becky's eyes were built to flash, not to weep. Add to the eyes strong, regular features and a skin which is a healthy brown and red and you have the type, short, stocky "built for service."
Listen to the explanation of her lift the life that is like that of thousands of young women and remember that this is a young woman of twenty-one or twenty-two only, roughly speaking, a young woman the product of a neighborhood house--the Ferrer School--but a neighborhood house which sews seeds of revolt instead of those whose blossoms earn the commendation of society.
Upbraids Teacher.
Becky did not hear anarchistic talk as a child, but she began to practise it in her own life from the days when she wouldn't go to bed just because it was time to and when she ran away from home just because she was told not to. When she was twelve she had her first clash with "authority." It was a case of the child who was too smart in school. Becky got a different answer from that the teacher had in a problem which dealt with quarts and gallons.
"I knew mine was right." her version of it runs, "so I told that teacher she had forgotten to change the quarts to gallons. She had, too. She was much annoyed at my heresy. She was one of those old-fashioned school m'arms who thought her word was law, you know. I was kept out of school for three days, but then they found out I wasn't going to apologize and they let me come back.
"My next encounter with established authority was when I was fourteen. The Russian revolution had just broken out then and there was a protest meeting held at the Manhattan Lyceum. The police came with clubs to break it up. They were brutal in their behavior to the people, not giving them an opportunity to leave the hall, even when they were trying to do so.
Arrested When a Child.
"One policeman tried to push me downstairs. I resisted him just because he was so officious. He arrested me. I was then, remember, a little girl with short skirts and hair down my back. I was put in the same cell in the 57th street court with thirty street women, who were sodden with drugs. The place was full of vermin. We had no beds to sleep on, only wooden benches. I was kept there three days until our friends could get us out on bail. I was the only woman arrested at that time, but there were a large number of men.
"When the case eventually came to trial I was accused of "assault" upon that 250-pound policeman. The case was dismissed at once. I was, however, so impressed with the unfairness of the authorities that I became more and more in sympathy with the revolutionary party here.
Could Not Stand Discipline
"I went one year to High School, and another to the Nurses' Training School, but I couldn't stand the iron discipline of either. Since then I have worked at various things, in offices and as secretary of the Cloak Makers' Union."
Becky is bitter with the bitterness of the Industrial Worker of the World for all things capitalistic. There is a whole generation of bitterness between her and Emma Goldman.
"There can be no understanding is this class war," she said.
"I think settlements and those other near-charities are a menace to the working class, because they obscure the issue. They make the poor think they are getting something, when, as a matter of fact, all that the rich have to give is the wealth that the poor have earned and are by right entitled to, any way.
"These rich women who come down to the factories when there is a strike and dole out coffee, dressed in thousands of dollars' worth of furs, are ridiculous. They cannot understand. The rich never can understand. The sooner every one understands this is a war, and not a fit of the sulks, the better it will be for all.
Suffrage Won't Help.
"Woman suffrage won't help the laboring classes any, either. As soon as the women get the vote they will start making laws, while the trouble with this country today is that we have too many laws already. I don't see what women want to make laws for. I'd rather break them."
And that is Becky's philosophy--philosophy to which she becomes more attached and which she goes out to Colorado to preach to the striking miners--untaught, unreasoning foreigners. What is her kind, a promise or a menace?
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