tional, Most
sailed for New York. Some of his ideas had preceded him, and when he
arrived he was met and greeted by masses of German workingmen. Miss Emma
Goldman, in "Anarchism and Other Essays," tells us of the impression he
made upon her. "Some twenty-one years ago," she says, "I heard the first
great anarchist speaker--the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then,
and for many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the
masses with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could
never be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all
the multitudes who flocked to Most's meetings escape his prophetic
voice!"[5] At the time of Most's arrival the American socialist movement
was hopelessly divided over questions of methods and tactics. Already
there had been bitter quarrels between those in the movement who had
formed secret drilling organizations which were preparing for a violent
revolution, and those others who sought by education, organization, and
political action to achieve their demands. In the year 1880 a number of
New York members had left the socialist organization and formed a
revolutionary group, and in October of the following year a convention
was held to organize the various revolutionary groups into a national
organization. Everything was favorable for Most, and when he arrived it
was not long, with his magnetic personality and fiery agitation, until
he had swept out of existence the older socialist organizations. In 1883
representatives from twenty-six cities met in Pittsburgh to form the
revolutionary socialist and anarchist groups into one body, called the
"International Working People's Association." The same year a dismal
socialist convention was held in Baltimore with only sixteen delegates
attending. They attempted to stem the tide to terrorism by declaring:
"We do not share the folly of the men who consider dynamite bombs as the
best means of agitation. We know full well that a revolution must take
place in the heads and in the industrial life of men before the working
class can achieve lasting success."[6]

The tide, however, was not stayed. The advocates of direct action
continued headlong toward the bitter climax at the Haymarket in Chicago
in 1886. Just previous to that fatal catastrophe, a series of great
strikes had occurred in and about that city. At the McCormick Reaper
Works a crowd of men was being addressed by Spies, an anarchist, when
the "scabs