nce of her auditors, and
always she spoke with clarity and enthusiasm.

Throughout her years of agitation she exercised extraordinary tact and
exceptional physical courage. No other woman in America ever had to
suffer such persistent persecution. She was arrested innumerable times,
beaten more than once, refused admission to halls where she was to
speak. Often the police dispersed her audience. Intimidated owners
frequently refused to rent her meeting places or cancelled contracts at
the last minute. On various occasions she was met at the train and
compelled by sheer force to proceed to the next stopping place. In 1912
she and Ben Reitman, at that time her manager and lover, were driven
from San Diego and the latter was tarred and tortured.

It must be said that the lawbreakers and defilers of liberty were not
Emma Goldman and her harassed followers but the sworn guardians of the
law and leading local citizens. The latter and not the anarchists were
guilty of violating the rights of free speech and free assembly, of
beating their victims without cause and of jailing them without warrant.
It was after one such instance of unprovoked brutality that Emma wrote:

In no country, Russia not exempt, would the police dare to
exercise such brutal power over the lives of men and women. In
no country would the people stand for such beastliness and
vulgarity. Nor do I know of any people who have so little
regard for their own manhood and self-respect as the average
American citizen, with all his boasted independence.

The newspapers abetted the police in the lawless treatment of Emma and
her fellow rebels. They sometimes perverted a grain of truth into
columns of muck and made "Red Emma" a symbol of all that was dangerous
and despicable. The rank injustice of this abuse caused the staid New
York _Sun_ to protest on September 30, 1909: "The popular belief is that
she preaches bombs and murder, but she certainly does nothing of the
kind. Bombs are very definite things, and one of the peculiarities of
her doctrine is its vagueness. The wonder is that with a doctrine so
vague she managed to strike terror into the stout hearts of the police."

Nor were the police and the press the only perpetrators of this modern
witch hunt. President Theodore Roosevelt expressed the attitude of many
persons of privilege and respectability when he blustered: "The
Anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all man