ity. The fire of
enthusiasm swept her toward the public platform. Encouraged by her
friends, she began to participate as a German and Yiddish speaker at
Anarchist meetings. Soon followed a brief tour of agitation taking
her as far as Cleveland. With the whole strength and earnestness of
her soul she now threw herself into the propaganda of Anarchist
ideas. The passionate period of her life had begun. Through
constantly toiling in sweat shops, the fiery young orator was at the
same time very active as an agitator and participated in various
labor struggles, notably in the great cloakmakers' strike, in 1889,
led by Professor Garsyde and Joseph Barondess.

A year later Emma Goldman was a delegate to an Anarchist conference
in New York. She was elected to the Executive Committee, but later
withdrew because of differences of opinion regarding tactical
matters. The ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that
time not yet become clarified. Some still believed in parliamentary
methods, the great majority being adherents of strong centralism.
These differences of opinion in regard to tactics led in 1891 to a
breach with John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and other
comrades joined the group AUTONOMY, in which Joseph Peukert, Otto
Rinke, and Claus Timmermann played an active part. The bitter
controversies which followed this secession terminated only with the
death of Most, in 1906.

A great source of inspiration to Emma Goldman proved the Russian
revolutionists who were associated in the group ZNAMYA. Goldenberg,
Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt, Ivan von
Schewitsch, husband of Helene von Racowitza and editor of the
VOLKSZEITUNG, and numerous other Russian exiles, some of whom are
still living, were members of this group. It was also at this time
that Emma Goldman met Robert Reitzel, the German-American Heine, who
exerted a great influence on her development. Through him she became
acquainted with the best writers of modern literature, and the
friendship thus begun lasted till Reitzel's death, in 1898.

The labor movement of America had not been drowned in the Chicago
massacre; the murder of the Anarchists had failed to bring peace to
the profit-greedy capitalist. The struggle for the eight-hour day
continued. In 1892 broke out the great strike in Pittsburg. The
Homestead fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the
militia, the suppression of the strike