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The assassination attempt.

Story of a terrorist

By ART SHIELDS

TT is the story of a youth who
_ tried to win an historic strike for
the steel workers in Homestead, Pa.
But he acted without consulting the
strikers themselves. His method was
individual terror. He tried to kill a big
boss, but helped to kill a strike instead.

The terrorist, Alexander Berkman,
expected to die for his deed. His cour-
age cannot be questioned. But he hurt
the men he tried to help. And I think
of Berkman when some folks try to
change the world. by individual acts of
violence.

Berkman didn’t understand the men
he wanted to help. He came to the
United States from a house full of ser-
vants in Tsarist Russia. He tells in his
autobiography of his parents’, ‘‘well-
appointed country place in a fashiog-
able suburb of St Petersburg.”’

He was inspired by the nihilists of
old Russia. They were opposed to all
exploitation—and to all authority as
well. He wanted a nihilist revolution,

and joined the ‘Pioneers of Freedom” :
in New York. This was a tiny group of

rebels, who called themselves ‘‘Anar-
chists.”” They were against any kind of
government. And they hoped to inspire
the masses to rise by committing deeds
of violence against the powers that be.

This was in 1892—a bloody year for
Labor. In Idaho, Big Business was
killing miners in the Coeur. d’Alene
strike. In Homestead, Andrew Carnegie.
the steel king, left orders to smash the
union, then sailed for Scotland, leaving
Henry Frick, his chairman, behind to
do the killing.

Frick, was a hardened killer. His
gunmen came from the Pinkerton De-
tective Agency, a murderous outfit.
They. had butchered dozens of strikers
in the coking coal fields ‘below Pitts-

burgh in the last decade. And on July .

6, 1892, 300 ‘‘Pinks,’’ armed with 16-
shot Winchesters, came to Homestead
in river boats before dawn. The battle
‘raged all day. There were Civil War
veterans among the defenders. And by
nightfall nine workers and seven fun-
men were -dead or mortally wounded.
The surviving enemies surrendered, and
the battle was won.

But the strike wasn’t over. State
troops were coming. Frick boasted that
he intended to wipe out the Amalga-
mated: Association of Iron and Steel
Workers. And Berkman told his anar-
chist- comrades that the brutal boss
must die. He foolishly thought that Car-

American Past

negie would have to settle with the
union when Frick was buried. And the
death of the ‘‘tyrant’’ would make good
“anarchist propaganda,’’ he felt sure.
He gives this view in his book.

The death mission needed money,
and Berkman had almost none. A rich
family was no longer behind him. But
“Sasha,’’ as his friends called him,
finally acquired: a rusty pistol with the
help of his sweetheart, Emma Gold-
man, and other members of the anar-
chist circles. And he arrived in the iron
city at a critical point in the strike.
State troops were patrolling Homestead
now, but strike morale was high. Money
was coming from trade unions in many
cities. And the strike was spreading.
Carnegie’s men in Pittsburgh and Bea-
ver Falls had walked out a few days
before Berkman arrived. And best of
all the big Duquesne plant was shut
down. Its men joined the strike on
July 23, a few days before Berkman
pulled the trigger.

Frick’s prestige was sinking at the
same time. His blood-letting had shock-
ed the country. Nor was it winning the
strike. Republican Party leaders were
urging Carnegie to settle with the men.
New York’s Senator, Chauncey Deway,
admitted this later:

*. .. The Homestead strike was one

of the most important factors in the
’ Presidential contest . . . and injured us
irremediably. . . The Republican lead-
ers attempted early in the campaign
to have the strike settled.”
~ And the anarchist was blind to what
was happening around him. “‘I feel the
strength of a great undertaking,” he
said to himself. And he gained admit-
tance to Frick’s office by pretending
that he headed a scabherding agency.

Berkman’s first two shots struck
Frick’s neck. Another man_ grappled
with Berkman and threw him down,.
and the pistol only clicked when the
trigger was pressed again. Berkman
managed to stab Frick with a home-
made knife that was once a file, as
the steel boss lay on the floor. When
a carpenter hit the would-be assassin’s
head with a hammer, and Berkman
went to jail.

Frick’s wounds were not serious.
The boss was back at his strikebreak-
ing job in 13 days. Many middle-class
people still condemned the Pinkerton
atrocities, but the union was falsely
linked with anarchist assassins by the

. “PAGIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST, 7) 1970—Page 6

let |

lying press. The company got more
support. The militia. grew tougher.
Troops crushed the Duquesne strike
with violence soon after Frick returned
to his desk. And Hugh O’Donnell, the
strike leader, declared that Berkman
had fired a bullet ‘‘into the heart of the
strike.” i

But the anarchist never understood
the harm he did. He blamed the work-
ers for not supporting him, instead. And
he was crushed with disappointment at
his attitude of a striker who was im-
prisoned with him. Jack Tinford, the
striker, had been accused of throwing
dynamite at the Pinkertons during the
battle. He was a hero in the anar-
chist’s eyes. But when Berkman ap-
proached him and said, ‘Jack, it was
for you, for your people that I—,” the
steel worker angrily interrypted him.
Such ‘‘gab’’ will only harm the strikers,

he said.

‘Bitterness and- anger against the
Homestead striker filled my heart,”
Berkman later wrote. He thought of

‘Tinford as a ‘‘Judas.’’ He began to de-

spair of the working class. The worker
is just a “dullard,’’ he thought. And he
wondered, ‘‘When will he open his
eyes?”’

®

Berkman’s hopes were crushed again
at his trial. He had expected to ex-

plain the role of an anarchist revolu-

tionist in his speech to the jury. He
wrote a 40-page address in German be-
cause his English was insufficient. But
the Pittsburgh judge gave him a blind
interpreter. who stumbled so badly that
the judge cut him off rather quickly.
And Berkman, who rejected the serv-
ices of ‘‘a capitalist’’ attorney, got a 22

BERKMAN

.

a e
year sentence — three times what th

law provided. He served 14 years.
.In Homestead, the mills were as
ning full blast again after five mont
The best union men were blacklist
Wages were cut in half. The eight hr
day was replaced by a 12-hour si
and the seven-day week. This contin
until the Great Steel Strike, led nt
William Z. Foster in 1919, broue
eight hours back. And still Berkm4
didn’t know the harm he had done. — , 1d
His later years were tragic. My °
friend, Pat Cush, the former presidet
of the biggest union lodge in Hom
stead,-told of attending a pitiful ne
ing that Berkman addressed in Hon
stead. after his reléase. Less than
men attended, and most of them we!
detectives or company stoolpigeons. ~

Berkman opposed the imperialis
world war in 1917. That was to
credit. And in 1919, after his release
from prison he was deported to Sovié
Russia with Emma Goldman. The 5”
viet Union accepted them, gave them
medical care, courtesy and good jon
But they turned against the socialis
government nonetheless. They were
against every kind of government. Ane
they couldn’t understand why the oy
viet people had to curb the undergrou”
anarchist opposition when the Sovié
Union was fighting for its life agains
intervention, White Guard rebellio?
sabotage and famine. aes

The two anarchists left the Soviet
Union as enemies at last. In Franc®
where Berkman found refuge, the work:

‘ rul-

ers were turning to the Communists:

while the anarchists withered away:
In 1936, Berkman shot himself in de>
pair.” ;