members of the Bohemian Group and are now serving life sentences in
prison. Another of the fires was started in a six-story tenement house,
endangering the lives of hundreds, but fortunately injuring no one but
the incendiary. In one case in 1886 the firemen have saved two women
whom they found clinging to their bed posts in a half-suffocated
condition. In another a man, woman, and baby lost their lives. Three
members of the gang are now in jail awaiting trial for murdering and
robbing an old woman in Jersey City. Two others are in jail under heavy
bail and awaiting trial for carrying concealed weapons and assaulting an
officer. They were walking arsenals, and were found under circumstances
which lead to the suspicion that they were about to perpetrate a
robbery, if not a murder.

"The profits accruing from this 'propagandism by deed' are not even used
for the benefit of the movement to which the criminals belong, but go to
fill their own empty pockets, and are often spent in reckless, riotous
living. The guilty parties are growing bolder and bolder, and,
anticipating detection ultimately, a dozen or so of them have agreed to
commit perjury in order to involve the innocent as accomplices in their
crimes. It is their boast that the active anarchists shall all go to the
gallows together."

The history of terrorist tactics in America largely centers about the
career of Johann Most. In August Bebel's story of his life he speaks in
high terms of the unselfish devotion and sterling character of Most in
his early days. "If later on," says Bebel, "under the anti-socialist
laws, he went astray and became an anarchist and an advocate of direct
action, and finally, although he had been a model of abstinence, ended
in the United States as a drunkard, it was all due to the anti-socialist
laws, laws which drove 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 the Haymarket--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