Chapter Six

186During the time when I was in Europe, Jacob Gordin came to New York. In the very same issue in which my first correspondence from Brussels was printed, there was printed a feuilleton with the title "The Roundup," from his pen. This was on the fourth of September, 1891. I saw the article in London, before my departure for home.

Who this Jacob Gordin was, I had no idea. I recalled a certain Jacob Gordin about whom there had been some stir for a while in the Russian-Jewish press before I left Russia. After the pogrom, he had founded in Yelisavetgrad a "Biblical Brotherhood," an organization of Jews who do not recognize the Talmud and hold only to the Bible. The "Russky Yevrei," the "Razsvyet," and the "Voskhod" had criticized the movement. On the other side, that Gordin had a large and ardent following. While I was in Velizh (or perhaps it was during the three weeks I spent in Brody), I read in the "Russky Yevrei"187an article about him. In criticizing the "Biblical Brotherhood," the writer expressed the thought that Jews must hold together; that now, when they are being persecuted and their blood is being shed, one must certainly not separate oneself from the Jewish people, as the Karaites have separated themselves. In New York, a short time after I immigrated, in 1882, I was present at a discussion of this matter between a Gordinist and another immigrant. The Gordinist argued that the Talmud keeps the Jews in the darkness of the Middle Ages, and that the aim of the "Biblical Brotherhood" was to bring them closer to modern civilization. I remember that Gordinist because he spoke with fire and with a peculiar pronunciation. As for the anti-Gordinist, however, and his speech, no impression of it has remained in my memory.

That is all I knew about that Jacob Gordin. That he was a writer, I had not heard.

When I came back from England to New York, it turned out that this was the same Jacob Gordin from Yelisavetgrad. We became acquainted. He was a good deal older than I — a striking man, tall, with a great black beard, with a proud bearing.

In Yelisavetgrad he had been a private tutor. At the same time he used to write feuilletons in the Odessa newspaper "Odessky Listok" and also in the Petersburg weekly "Nedelya." Beneath the feuilletons in "Odessky Listok" he used to sign himself "Ivan Kolyuchi" (Ivan the Prickly).

He began to write in the "Arbeiter Zeitung," but the "Arbeiter Zeitung" could barely afford to pay. And Gordin had a family. So Philip Krantz gave him the idea that he should write a play for the188Yiddish stage. Jacob Gordin accepted the idea, and the result was a drama to which he gave the name "Sibir."

The contents consisted of the following: a Jew had been exiled to Siberia for a crime, and had escaped from there. Under a false name he now lives in a Jewish town. He has a good business and keeps up a fine establishment, with a handsome respectable home, with fine friends, with tutors for the children. He is now an honest man and lives an honest, agreeable life. Another fellow, a competitor of his, learns of his secret and informs on him. They come to arrest him. The unfortunate man bids farewell to his family and to his friends. They lead him back to Siberia.

The play was bought by Jacob P. Adler, and he produced it.

Adler had come to New York from Chicago some time before. In New York he had then, together with Mogulesco and other actors, rented "Poole's Theater," which stood on Fourth Avenue, corner of Eighth Street (where the huge second building of Wanamaker's store was later put up).

With this play there began a new chapter in the history of the Yiddish stage.

In the previous volume we saw on what a low rung the Yiddish theater stood in that period. It was the "Professor-Horowitz era," the reign of disgusting buffoonery under the title of "historical opera." The same sort of plays, though with less charlatanry, used also to be written by Joseph Lateiner.

Horowitz knew German, and he was even well-read in German literature. But his taste was189drawn to the cheapest and wildest trash scenes. Lateiner too knew German. He was a quieter man than Horowitz. His literary tastes, however, stood on the same level.

Jacob Gordin belonged to an entirely different type. He was an intelligent Russian Jew and, as I have already explained in the second volume, literature in Russia played a far more important role and was taken there far more seriously than in other countries. In England, in America, and even in France and in Germany, educated people could find delight in cheap melodrama. In Russia this was almost impossible.

Besides that: in Russia literature was bound up with the progressive movements, with the struggle for progress in the noblest sense of the word. In other countries one had more or less freedom of speech, and one could serve a noble movement freely through what one wrote, or by agitating from the platform, or in parliament. In Russia there was no sign of a free press and of a free platform. Therefore the best aspirations of the intelligentsia sought to find expression in belles-lettres, where, in the form of a novel, one portrayed the true life.

Gordin came to America with this spirit. It made itself felt in his writing. Incidentally, he had a great deal more talent than Horowitz or Lateiner. Not to be compared at all.

If his "Sibir" were staged today, the play would unanimously be declared a melodrama and a quite weak thing, although dramatically it is very strong. But back then such a play on the Yiddish stage was a190novelty. Weak as it is, it still stands incomparably higher than the "historical operas" of those years.

After the first performance of "Sibir," I wrote in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" a criticism of it and a survey of the Yiddish theater in general. The drama was Gordin's first play, and the criticism in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" was my first theater criticism.

I compared "Sibir" to a Jew who is not observant and who finds himself among gentiles. Among Jews he would not be considered a Jew. Among Christians, however, he is a Jew. If one were to measure "Sibir" by the same standard as the important works of the world stage, it would have no significance; but if one compares it with the plays of the Yiddish stage, it is literature and one ought to welcome it.

The article was printed in number 42 and number 43 of the second year of the "Arbeiter Zeitung." When I now reread it, preparing myself for these "Pages," I was satisfied with it. When it was written, I was thirty-five years younger, thirty-five years less developed. Today I would have more to say about the play. And what I said in that article I would perhaps have expressed in a different manner. On the whole, however, I can subscribe to it today as well. And what I say there about dramas and about acting in general also agrees with my present convictions.

The main point really applies not only to dramatic works, but to literature in general.

The whole article takes up six columns, and I191believe that it is rich in content and remarkably clear. I will bring a few lines from it, to show the direction in which my thought ran at that time with regard to the stage and to art in general.

I write there:

"People say to me: 'You want the actor to play exactly as in life? Then what do we need him for? Life we already have at home or in the street.' I answer them: 'Why do you demand of a painted picture that it be true to nature? You have nature all around you, after all. Why is it, then, that the more lifelike a picture is, the dearer you pay for it?'"

Another passage in the same article contains the following:

"Woe and alas to the comedian who must resort to a joke so that the joke will make the audience merry for him. One must pity the dramatist who must wear out the nerves of his listeners in order to win sympathy for the depth that he presents. To bring forth laughter with a joke, or to call forth an expression of horror or anger with a strange cry — for that one needs no Mogulesco and no Adler."

I demonstrate that the impression must be made through the situation that is presented and through the acting. If not, then it is not a talented drama and not talented acting.

Making a comparison between Gordin and dramatists of the Horowitz type, I say that Gordin's faults are "nicks on a steel sword," whereas in the plays of the other Jewish writers "one cannot look for faults as one cannot look for nicks on a wooden toy-sword." I say that Gordin gave Adler192and Madame Dina an opportunity to act. He gave them roles.

"For the first time since we have seen Mr. Adler and Madame Dina on the stage, there burst from us enthusiastic exclamations that Adler is a rare artist." And about Madame Dina I remark: "I had not known at all before what kind of talent she has."

Further it is said:

"And yet Adler spoke mother-tongue without a crumb of German, and Mrs. Dina did not make the outcries that one hears from her in other plays. And the public, about which people want to convince us that it demands clamor and bluster on the stage, wiped away its tears and laughed merrily, and watched the play through with interest, although there was no 'blood and thunder' business. Only let one give the true life, only let one speak the language of living people, only let one portray true sorrows, and the presented situation will itself touch the most delicate strings of the Jew's soul. The uneducated Jew will understand. It will speak to his heart with mightier words than the most violent false scenes with the most violent 'declaiming.'"

As a smaller example I bring Feinman in the unimportant role of a house tutor: "He has little to say, yet he played better than in all the plays where he has leading roles. And Mogulesco (also in a small role) showed, almost without a joke, without any tricks, such an easy talent that every time he had to leave the stage, one wished to hold him back."

I point out the faults in the play and I point out the faults in the acting. About Adler, for example, I say: "In a few places there creep in193the old nicks, and he begins to speak with the tone of 'Othello,' as if by notes."

The article speaks of how the artist deceives the imaginative faculty of the reader or spectator. It is in accord with my English article "Realism," which had been printed in the "Workmen's Advocate" a couple of years earlier.

Artistic truthfulness is a source of pleasure. When you recognize the thing in the painter's portrait, or in the writer's tale, when the picture agrees with what you know about it, that provides you an aesthetic enjoyment. That is the fundamental thought, and with regard to this thought my conviction has not changed in the thirty-odd years. The pleasure of recognition is the essence of the pleasure that we receive from a work of art — that is my opinion today as well. This means, however, that the painted person or tree must have life in itself. If not, the picture does not contain the truth, and then there can be no pleasure of recognition. Even in a fantastical fantasy this essential principle also plays an important role. The matter is a great deal more delicate than one might think. One would first of all have to determine what — in an artistic sense — is called life, and this is not the place to occupy oneself with that.

The Yiddish theater was then far from being so "well off" as it became in later times. The Jewish population was still relatively small, and for a large part of our public the theater was a luxury. Our worker lived poorer than today. And at the time when Gordin came, masses of people were going about without work; those who did have employment,194lived here, in comparison with their life in the old home, like householders of means. But the worker had not yet become able to spend much on the theater.

"Sibir" had an artistic success, but not a financial one. And Gordin received quite little from the play. His name, however, was at once established. And his personality began to be strongly felt. The other dramatists were a part of the actors' world. He stood quite apart, and with his proud, respect-demanding nature, he kept the actors at a distance, and even in fear.

In the winter of 1924 I spent many evenings in the Jewish section of the New York Library, reading the first several years of the "Arbeiter Zeitung." The paper is already yellow and pulpy, and it breaks like splinters. The leaves crumble between one's fingers. Every time I would lift myself up from my work, I would be strewn over as if with snow. A few more years, and of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" there will remain no trace.

At the same time, you can today read a newspaper that was printed in Washington's day and hardly notice that it is old. The paper is whole and pliant and strong, and the print is clear. Since one has begun to make paper from wood, it has had little substance. All the newspapers that are printed today are condemned to destruction, unless one resorts to a special (and costly) means to secure the existence of one or two copies of each issue.195Some thirty-odd years are either a trifle or an eternity. It depends on what sort of eye you look upon the past with. It depends, too, on the mood you happen to find yourself in. In any case, reading the articles I wrote in 1890, 1891, and 1892, I felt as though the man who had written them were an entirely different person. He is well known to me, but he is someone else.

Much of my writing from that time now strikes me as strange or comical. With some passages I am even uncomfortable. But many of the articles satisfy me; and a few — satisfy me completely.

In the "sedres" I find a great deal that is unpolished, raw, cheap, naive. But many of the "sedres" contain interesting conceits. Here and there, an original thought, a fine feeling, a bit of poetry. Today one would have to edit them through and through.

In my serious articles the tone is better, and the language is almost entirely free of unworthy expressions. There are a fair number of agitation articles of mine that are written in a high socialist mood. In them the language is in many places beautiful, full of color and signs of imaginative power, and the whole bearing of the language is of a higher and finer sort. Many of the articles or feuilletons I could, with small changes, reprint today. In the very same issues where my articles with cheap jokes are to be found, there are also articles of mine with passages full of dignity, full of power, often of beauty. In their time they had success not only with the masses, but also with our intelligentsia, and they are pleasant for me to read even today.

Besides that: in English I was at the same time writing, in the "New York Sun" or in the "Workmen's Advo-196cate," in an entirely different manner than I wrote certain parts of the "sedres." There, in English, my language was a polished one — the English of educated people.

In the articles and feuilletons that I printed in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" during those two years there are, then, two entirely different sorts. Between them lies an abyss.

In order to understand how we wrote and why we wrote as we did, one must first of all bear in mind the general condition of the printed Yiddish word at that time.

The literary forms of our language were then little developed. Yiddish literature, in reality, did not yet exist.

Mendele Mokher Sforim had already published most of the works for which he became famous, and Sholem Aleichem had already printed a few novels. Usually one begins the history of Yiddish literature with Mendele Mokher Sforim. My opinion is a different one. I believe that Mendele's works belong to the pre-historic (prehistoric) period, and the same goes for the novels that Sholem Aleichem wrote in those years. Yiddish literature, in my conviction, began only later. The true beginning was made by Peretz, by Sholem Aleichem as a writer of humorous things, and by the young group that Peretz recommended to the world: Sholem Asch, Reisen, Nomberg. I have already on several occasions expressed the opinion that Mendele's significance for the history of Yiddish literature consists only in this — that he was perhaps the first to take up the polishing of the language and to adapt it to literary manners. As for the true worth of his works, however, I believe that from a197correct appraisal one has held back out of respect and gratitude toward him, and also out of nationalist feeling. I believe that his "The Travels of Benjamin the Third" and even "Fishke the Lame" would today rest beneath the dignity of any more-or-less recognized writer.

As for Sholem Aleichem, he first began to show a real talent in the shorter stories, and not in such novels as his "Yosele Solovey" and "Stempenyu," which he wrote earlier.

Mendele, then, was the first to begin cultivating the Yiddish language as a literary language. But truly only to begin. Yiddish was then written in quite a raw form, and that goes even for Mendele's language too. He deserves much credit for his achievements in working over the Yiddish tongue, in polishing it and making it capable of being an instrument for literature. Some of his descriptions of nature are beautiful in his work, but today such descriptions are far more beautiful, with much more originality and with a richer choice of words. And one more thing: with all the relative beauties of his descriptions, his language sounds artificial, and many of his literary graces are quite naive. In this respect Sholem Aleichem's Yiddish has always been more pleasant to me, for it is more natural. Mendele the Litvak put together, by artificial means, a literary Volhynian Yiddish, whereas Sholem Aleichem is himself a Volhynian, and he wrote in a natural manner in his mother tongue.

I have here underlined the words "some descriptions of nature," because a fine Yiddish, and a neat style above all, you find even in Mendele only in a few places. Usually in his language there are no198particular virtues. Very often he is quite "unliterary," and in places the very opposite of beautiful.

We are speaking here chiefly of the language, but the language goes hand in hand with the literary level.

Every language changes. Read an English work that was written seventy or eighty years ago, and its style will very often sound strange to you. Today, then, what can one already expect of a Yiddish that was written before a Yiddish literature had begun to develop? Writing in Yiddish was then an entirely new, little-developed undertaking. The language was poor. The number of words and expressions was smaller than today, and those that one had, one used in a limited, and often a helpless, manner.

A second important point consists in the following:

We wrote for the masses, and our masses were then much rawer than today. A Jewish craftsman was a craftsman in the old-time sense of the word. He spoke a craftsman's tongue, and hardly understood any other. A large part of our worker public could barely read without vowel-points. Not only did we have to teach them, with our writing, to think — we also had to teach them to read our writing.

The first Russian revolutionaries "went to the people." They learned to speak with the language of ignorant people, in order to reach their minds and hearts. I regarded my work in our Jewish movement chiefly as a "going to the people," and in that I made no mistake.199I cannot leave the subject of our Yiddish of that time before I say a few words about the German, non-Yiddish, words that used to be employed then. In the second volume we saw that Jewish socialists in America found themselves under a strong influence of the German socialists, and they took over from them many words and expressions, chiefly such as pertain to the movement. The musical language of the whole world makes use of Italian expressions; the language of seafaring folk is full of English expressions. That is because the first developed in Italy and the second in England. In a similar way our movement language was full of German words, for the organized socialist movement and the socialist literature were born in Germany, and the socialist movement that we found in America was in German hands.

But not only we, socialists and trade-unionists, used many German words; Orthodox Jews used even more German in their papers than we did. Since in writing a more refined language is required, people then thought that in order to be refined one had to speak German; a Jewish doctor was always "breaking" his speech into German; otherwise people would have had no respect for him.

When I compare my articles, however, with those that were written in those years by others, I find that I used far less German than all of them. With other writers I recall, for example, such words as: "dazu," "unterdessen," "es gibt," "so," "war," "Errungenschaften," "Ereignisse." At every step you meet in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" a phrase like, for example: "In the previous issue there was [war] a warning," or "He did this200although he did not want to." In my articles these words are never to be found.

It often fell to me to create new words in order to express my thoughts in Yiddish. Because I wanted to write with folk-words, and in our folk-language there were no cultural expressions. I used to have to forge my own. Instead of the word "Errungenschaften," for example, I used to use my own word "oyftuungen" [achievements], and instead of "Ereignisse," I then introduced the word "pasirungen" [occurrences]. Instead of the word "Palliative" I used to write "babske refues" [old wives' remedies]. Some of these words other writers took over, and so they have remained, like "pasirung," for example (since then the word "gesheenish" [happening] has been created in Yiddish literature).

I believe that the worst thing I have ever set down on paper is an agitation song. This was some three years before the "Arbeiter Zeitung" appeared. The song was specially fitted for singing at the sewing-machine and to the spiritual condition of the Jewish craftsman of the old type.

Eliakum Zunser has a song with the name "Di Sokhe" [The Plow], in which he sings the praises of Jewish work on the soil; so I, in the same manner, with the same rhythm, only in the spirit of the socialist propaganda of that time among our immigrants, "knocked together" a few verses about the operator. Above, beneath the title, was a line: "To be sung to the melody of 'Di Sokhe.'" Jewish publishers (my countrymen Feigenson and Katzenelenbogen201of 35 Ludlow Street) printed it, and peddlers sold it on the streets. The song was for a good while very popular. People sang it in all the shops. Now some of our comrades advised me to print it in the "Arbeiter Zeitung," and I did not make them beg.

Here are the first two verses:

"The operator, His whole life he sews, Bent double over his machine; His hands stretched out, His neck bowed down, It takes out his eyes, Thin as a shaving he grows. His brain aches, He lays down his strength For the rich man, for the murderer, Like a fly by a spider.

In a room like a burrow They sweat, no evil eye, Two scores of people in heat and in filth From 6 to 10 o'clock, A coat after a coat, A clock after a clock, And what is his profit? Not a cent in his pocket, Barefoot and naked, Strolling in the "pig market," That is all his goods."

One of the journalistic habits I had, when I used to write for the "Arbeiter202Zeitung," and which among us has long been a thing of the past, consisted in cramming in socialist propaganda, whether it fit or not. When I read such passages today, they strike me as worse than naive.

For example: in a certain article, where I ought to say "the United States," I say: "the dollar-grabbing United States." Here and there one finds a phrase in which the revolutionariness is expressed in a similarly vulgar manner.

In one place I say: "The socialists do not sleep and the capitalists tremble." I was not the only one who used to talk that way. We knew well that the capitalists were not trembling before us. But that was how it suited our agitator's "racket" of those days.

Sometimes we used to employ such words partly in a light, half-joking sense. But usually it was said quite seriously — with more venom than sincerity.

A few years later our Socialist Labor Party acquired a leader (we shall become acquainted with him in the proper place), who brought this revolutionary coquetry to the highest and most ridiculous degree.

I say that such habits are "among us already long a thing of the past." Unfortunately, not yet entirely. Today, however, we socialists sin in this respect far less and more rarely than today's communists. They employ the insincere, coquettishly-revolutionary tone in even far worse forms than we used to do thirty-odd years ago^*.203In writing the "sedres" I always had in mind the quiet sense of humor of the same craftsman for whom I had set down "The Song of the Operator," and their very great success was proof that I understood our masses and knew how to reach them.

In my serious articles the tone was more dignified, but the language was always folksy and simple. I always had in mind the undeveloped craftsman. And the success of those articles in which I used to popularize science, sometimes a profound subject, showed that the means I employed in this sort of work were correct and productive.

I felt happy at this work.

I noted above that even in the sedres I find today not a little good material. In places I meet in them a well-turned humor of a better sort; in places an interesting conceit or a poetic little picture.

Since our struggle with the anarchists penetrated almost every department of the movement, it is often reflected in a "sedre." In the week when, among Jews, the "tokhokhe" [reproof] was read, I used to transform it into a satire on the anarchists with their "tremendous talk and no deeds."

Here are the first lines of a sedre of this sort: "This week's sedre is angry! Hear how it rages and scolds and gnashes its teeth! It will 'command'204a terror, she will send a wasting disease that will ruin the eyes." In short, she will, and she will, and she will... What worth can the empty threats of a sedrah have? A few little leaves of the Pentateuch have hidden themselves between two boards, and there, in their hiding-place, they manufacture bombs of curses and gnashing of teeth. Well, fine reproof — would it not be better, for God and for people, if you scolded less and did more? Come now, take my advice, my dear, crawl out from between your dusty boards, air yourself out a little, throw away your empty curses and start to do something in the world!

"But how does reproof come by sense... No, reproof, it is not worthwhile to deal out blows one at a time. Wait until you have gathered up as many as are needed, and then deal out the blows without sparing." (This meant that, instead of the anarchists talking about throwing single bombs, they should rather take part in the socialist agitation and help prepare the people for a true revolution.)

This sedrah was written right after Bismarck had resigned as prime minister and the young Kaiser Wilhelm had accepted his resignation. That was the great world-news of that week. And so I present how Bismarck had led all the politicians of the world by the nose. He had held each of them on a little string that was tied to his nose. And so they had grown so accustomed to it that now they finger their noses and wonder where the little string has disappeared to.

In the same sedrah there is also an allusion to the agreement between America and Russia to extradite Russian criminals. This agreement had aroused great excitement in the Russian colony; and a "Russian League" was founded to combat it.205In this sedrah there is a childish play on words. Instead of "Alexander," I call the Russian czar "Alex-flayer."

When it says in the Pentateuch that Moses our Teacher lived to lead the Jews into the Land of Israel, and that he himself saw the Holy Land only from afar, the proletarian preacher says:

"But like a true friend of the people, Moses himself accepted it with love and bade the Jews fight against the hostile nations who stand in their way and hinder them from reaching their goal... So is the fate of almost all great friends of the people. How many freedom-fighters must content themselves with a distant glimpse, with only a mental image of their realized ideal! How many will have to die in a Jordan of blood that lies between the desolate capitalist world and the paradise of socialism!"

When the Torah speaks of seven serpents, the "proletarian" interprets it to mean the throne, the manufacturer, the landlord, the banker, the railroad magnate, the merchant, and the "reverend."

To this sedrah a haftorah is appended. Fitting the Scripture's words to our agitation, the proletarian writes:

"Let us say with Isaiah the prophet: nakhamu, nakhamu ami! Comfort, comfort the enslaved people! Speak to the hearts of the wretched. Call out to them and say that their troubles are at an end. The voice of freedom calls in the factories and in the mines! Make a way! Fill in the valleys of misery, cast down the fortresses, hurl down the gallows, destroy the tenements, break the crowns! Tear apart the chains! Make a ware for the bright time, for the time of freedom, equality, and brotherhood!

"And the voice says: call, call! And I ask: what206shall I call? And it says to me: call out to the working people and tell them to take up the half-starved and uproot them like grass.

"Go upon the platforms and preach! Go upon the mountaintops and cry out to the workers that freedom is theirs! Let them know that the great day is coming, that it brings punishment for the oppressors in one hand and happiness for the downtrodden in the other. Uva la-proletarishak goyel — the proletarian preacher."

Here, where the Pentateuch tells how Moses slew the Egyptian who had struck a Jew at his work, I call Moses our Teacher "Comrade Moses." I recount how he took up the cause of a Jewish worker; "and when he saw one Jew striking another, he said to him: 'Why do you strike your brother?' For Moses held with our opinion, that workers ought not to quarrel but to live like brothers; to be united in the unions and together to combat the capitalist Pharaohs."

This sort of "sedrah" used to be very popular.

[טאָפּיק] Feuilletons. — The first bakers' strike. — A Thanksgiving feuilleton. — Patti and propaganda. — Circulation. — Themes.

At times I would write a feuilleton about an event in our movement or about American life in general. One such feuilleton I prepared in honor of the first great bakers' strike. The bakers' union had introduced a label that was pasted onto every challah baked by union hands. Because of this label, interesting scenes took place. For207example: a Jewish housewife, the wife of a socialist or of some union man, comes into a grocery store, picks out various things, and at the end asks for a challah. But the challah she is given has no label. The woman puts everything aside: she will buy nothing here. The grocery man pleads with her to take the other articles; but she answers that she is afraid to come home with butter or kerosene from a store that does not have the union label on its baked goods.

In this way we won the strike. And it was about this label that I wrote the feuilleton. It was in the form of a debate between a challah and a slaughtered chicken.

I present a grocery store that stands next door to a butcher shop. On a little table beside the grocery store lie challahs with union labels, and at the door of the butcher shop hang slaughtered chickens with a lead seal^*. A challah proudly points to the "union badge" she wears on her breast, and the chicken answers her. The chicken boasts of her "lead medal."

The label is presented as the badge of justice and light, and the lead seal as the badge of darkness.

In the week of Thanksgiving Day, in 1891, I printed a feuilleton about the souls of the turkeys that had been slaughtered in honor of the day of thanksgiving. I present how the souls arrive in the other world.

In the introduction I tell how pleasant it was for me208to hear the clatter of hundreds of fork-knives at the turkey dinners that rich Americans put on that day for poor orphans: "The lovely sound echoed in my ears like the music of paradise. From the sweetness my body fell asleep. My spirit floated in a world of beautiful tones. Floating, it bore itself higher and higher, until it came to the highest heaven. There I saw how the Master of the Universe sits with his angels at a great table.

The soul of a slaughtered turkey comes in.

— Who are you? — asks an angel.

— Turkey is my name and Vanderbilt is my master — she answers — my body I left downstairs on a plate with cranberry sauce. My master thanks you, Master of the Universe, for the millions you have sent him this year; for the lawsuit he won against the widows of the workers who lost their lives on his railroad.

— Good girl! — cried out the holy chairman — lead the soul straight into paradise!

Then the soul of a worker's turkey comes in. They ask her why she gives thanks, and she answers that she gives thanks because the cloak-makers were not docked more than two dollars a week from their wages.

One soul comes from the turkey of a newsboy. They ask her why she gives thanks. She says she gives thanks for the nickels the boy earns selling at night. They ask who the boy is; she answers that he is an orphan; that his father was one of the workers who was killed on Vanderbilt's railroad. To this soul they say that she has too much impudence. They condemn her to be reincarnated in the body of a kapore-hen on Yom Kippur.209At the beginning of the first volume of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" I find my impressions of the world-famous singer Patti, in the opera "Lucia." The description of Patti's singing is rich in color and drew many compliments. It is not, however, a review of the opera, but part of a feuilleton under the title "Two Worlds in the World"; that is to say — again propaganda. Before I begin to describe Patti's singing, I present the luxury of the opera and the rich dresses of the ladies who sat in the boxes. As a contrast to this and to Patti's song, I present how a beggar-woman sings in a yard.

"Her broken tones had in them a kind of childlike sound — I say — and at times she would tremble with a heart-rending trill that made a deeper impression than Patti's coloraturas... I spoke with the unfortunate woman, and she told me that her husband had lost his life working in a coal-pit; that she has three children and that the coal company had dismissed her with a few dollars"...

Today even a seventeen-year-old socialist would understand that one may write about the opera and not lump it together with the song of a beggar-woman, for propaganda purposes.

When I look through the various articles I wrote in the first two volumes of the "Arbeiter Zeitung," I notice that the subject is almost always of the sort that can interest a large public. And the "headline" is composed with the same aim — to interest a large public; to draw attention to the interesting quality of the article. This applies to my popular-scientific articles as well as to210others. One article, for example, is on the theme: "Where did the various nations come from?" Another bears the heading: "How do plants multiply; their males and females. — How the fruit is born." Sometimes I come across a translation of mine of a well-known writer, and the content is again of the sort that ought to interest the public. For example, a translation of Victor Hugo's depiction of how "a man drowned in sand."

In the first eighty-ninety numbers of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" are to be found also the first sproutings of my work as a belletrist. A very weak beginning; yet one can already discern the direction in which my interest had begun to develop.

In a sedrah printed in number 5 of the second volume, a Jewish melamed is portrayed, and this description contains a sketch of a sympathetic Jewish type. This striving is seen even more clearly in the 23rd number of the same volume. Under the title "Instead of a Sedrah" I give a tale with the heading "Motke Arbel." It ran in several numbers. When I read this tale now, it strikes me as childish. The artistic interest it shows is a raw one. But it is, after all, an artistic interest.

In the 52nd number of the second volume there is a translation of mine of Turgenev's sketch "Hang211him!" This I prepared because the content and the heading are of the sort that must interest the broad public; but partly because the tale makes a strong impression as a literary thing. I regarded it as a good means of acquainting our public with the sort of pleasure one gets from a literary work.

Earlier, my love of literature had been the love of an intelligent Russian reader, and not of one who ventures himself to write tales. The Russian critics I esteemed highly. But that was almost a part of Russian culture. Every educated or studying young man from Russia idolized the Russian critics.

My wife in those years had more interest in literature than I. About Turgenev and Pushkin she always spoke with enthusiasm, and she often made interesting remarks about them. And about Tolstoy as a psychological artist she would express admiration as far back as four or five years earlier. Around the time of the blizzard, in 1888, I remember, while reading a work of Tolstoy's, she pointed out passages in which one could see the depth of his vision, the accuracy and brightness with which he depicts human nature.

In me a serious literary feeling developed somewhat later, and indeed through my collaboration on the "Arbeiter Zeitung." Writing the sedrahs and other feuilletons, I gradually felt a desire to portray scenes and types, the course of human thoughts and feelings. And this sort of interest already brings with it a new interest in the people you see around you.212I would often catch a compliment, that I am a connoisseur of people. If that is true, I made little use of this connoisseurship earlier in my writing. My observations were a sideline thing. But now the interest in people and their relations among themselves began to grow in me.

When one begins to thirst to create something belletristic, one begins to look at every person with a special curiosity. One observes him with a wholly different sort of attentiveness. That same Moses or Charles becomes for you quite another person. You penetrate his smile, you read in his eyes a new language. You hold ever to studying the world.

But I still had no definite literary plans then. My ambition as a writer had altogether a bearing on a scientific matter, and it had developed in me through the lectures I used to hold and through the popular articles I used to write. I believed that I had an original thought, out of which an important work could come.

Part of the plan consisted in explaining, with scientific thoroughness and with a mass of scientific proofs, the matter I have already mentioned once before, the connection between socialism and Darwinism.

There was at that time a German brochure on the question; but I thought little of it. I was convinced that my argument was far deeper and broader, and that it was fully convincing. The question demanded much time for reading and research work.

I took up Darwinism. I thoroughly213read not only Darwin's chief works, "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man"; I also studied through the famous works of Alfred Wallace and a whole series of other books that have a direct or indirect bearing on Darwinism.

At the same time I began to study the life of man when he was still half-wild, and of the peoples who are still in a half-wild state in our own time. This subject was closely bound up with my argument about socialism and Darwinism. The communist mode of life by which half-wild tribes used to conduct themselves in prehistoric times, and the traces of it that have survived down to the present day — this was one of the most important points.

With my last few cents I bought all the works of the English investigator and thinker Maine on this subject; also all the works of the English scholar Tylor on the same science, and Morgan's "Ancient Society." I also drew up a list of other works (mostly by travelers) about the life of half-wild peoples in Africa, South America, and Australia, which I found in the catalogue of the Astor Library and in the catalogues of the newest works that were being put out by American and English publishers.

An important work for my purpose was Herbert Spencer's Sociology (in two thick volumes) and his great sociological tables. But I ranked Morgan's book higher. In Spencer one finds far more facts; but Morgan gives a key to the whole question, a central idea, which Friedrich Engels took up into scientific socialism. With the chief idea of Morgan's explanation, in Engels's illumination,214I became acquainted through Engels's work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." I did, however, read Morgan's book itself. It is a dry work. But I studied it through with diligence.

The main idea of my argument I used to express in lectures in English and Yiddish, and they had success everywhere. But it was only the main point that I used to put before an audience. Many of the details were still not clear to me myself. On some points I lacked proofs; about others I had doubts. Various questions stood in my way.

Certain books I could not find in the Astor Library. The Boston library was then larger and richer; so I made up my mind to spend a certain amount of time there, with the aim of going through that library's catalogue and studying the works in which I was interested and which that library contained.

From time to time I read about political economy. For example: it is accepted that the foundation of Karl Marx's "world theory" lies in the work of the English economist, the Jew, Ricardo; so I thoroughly studied Ricardo's writings (the book had been sent to me by the Jewish comrades of London as a gift).

That spring (1892) I read Karl Marx's debate with the father of French anarchism, Proudhon, also Marx's work "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" and other famous pamphlets of his (all in a Russian translation that Plekhanov's Russian Social-Democratic group had put out in Switzerland).

215In those two years and in the next two I found myself at the highest rung of my activity as an orator. Various reports and correspondence in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" remind me of masses of details of this activity — of the agitation speeches and lectures that I used to give, and of the debates in which I used to take part. As for the impressions — favorable and unfavorable — that my speeches used to make, my present notion of them is grounded on the opinions of friend and foe at that time, on what people remember and on what I myself remember, and on certain notes and letters that have remained with me.

I have never been an orator. Orators speak almost throughout in an elevated tone and with calculated, polished sentences, and a speech of theirs is so put together that it should rise from calm feelings to higher rungs of inspiration, until the highest point is reached. Everything is reckoned out so that the inspiration of the listeners should likewise rise from rung to rung, and finally, at the highest point, should break out in a storm of applause. Most often an orator comes to the platform with a prepared speech, and he remembers it from beginning to end. And if not, it gets organized for him on the platform itself in this very manner.

For that sort of speaking I have never had any capacity. For that one must be a calmer person than I am; one must be better able to control oneself. I tried twice to deliver a prepared speech, and both times216I suffered a defeat. I had to recall the words that I was supposed to use. That fettered my whole "I." The result was that I got tangled up like a boy who has learned his lesson by heart and does not remember it well. My thoughts, feelings, and power of imagination must be free. When I have to recall points or words, I become confused. My best speeches were always the ones I delivered "extempore," without any preparation at all. The strongest passages and points used to tear themselves out on the spot. Often I would repeat the same speech in several places. But only its general content, the chief ideas with the parables perhaps, but not the words and phrases, not the outer form. And even in the content, great changes would come out each time.

The power of imagination is the source of my virtue as an orator, but also of my greatest fault. Very often, speaking from the platform, I picture a scene to myself so vividly that the details disturb my attention to the main subject. They often drag me off to one side. I let myself in too deeply into a scene that has no important bearing on the subject, and I lose the proportion, or I forget the main point. This, together with my hot-tempered nature, makes a composed speech impossible for me.

Parts of my speeches, however, used to be highly oratorical, in the best sense of the expression; full of spirit, rich in color, beautiful, strong, impressive. They used to come out so of themselves. I used to speak with sincere inspiration, with a fire that flamed out of my heart. Passion and the power of imagination never failed me. And this made itself felt in me on217the platform — not only in my agitation speeches or festival speeches, but also in my lectures.

I have a clear enunciation, and a high, ringing voice. I could be heard in every corner of the largest hall, and when I used to speak under the open sky, my words rang out with clarity far around.

Everywhere a great crowd used to come, and they used to sit or stand as if in suspense.

In my speeches I used to paint pictures. I saw everything as if before my eyes, and I pictured every thing to myself so vividly that the listeners too saw it as if before their eyes. And there used to tear themselves out vivid, bright portrayals, forceful expressions, often a piece of humor or a joke, which used to call forth an outburst of laughter.

But there were also enough cheap passages, even curses.

I was not content with words. Involuntarily, I used to add strokes to the picture with grimaces and with movements of the hands. For example: in a speech against the sweating system I picture how a worker spends the night in a sweatshop, because he works until late at night and must come back to work again the next day at daybreak. In doing so I show how he lies on the bundles; with a facial expression I convey how filthy the shop is, how out of the filth and crowding diseases arise, how the worker coughs, how consumption develops in him.

Or, explaining the basic ideas of the evolutionary theory, I take as an example a giraffe and explain how the long neck and high front legs are necessary to it in order to reach the leaves of trees, on which it feeds, and how through this there came out a kind of218creature that has a very long neck with very high front legs. And so, when I used to explain all this, my hands and head would involuntarily rise, and with a few movements I would show how a giraffe reaches the leaves of a tree.

I gave dozens of different speeches on different themes with different ideas, pictures, parables, witticisms. I will give here the gist of a few of the speeches that used to have a great success at the time.

I picture how a stranger comes to New York who has no notion of a republic. I tell him that the United States is a republic. He asks me what such a thing is; and I explain to him that it is a country without an emperor; everyone is an equal citizen; they elect a president for a certain time and afterward elect another. The whole people is the master over the government. About everything one's opinion is asked. I lead the guest through the city.

— This is our police building — I say to him, pointing to the police headquarters.

Then I lead him up to another building and say: "This is our town hall, our 'city hall.'" And then to a third house, which I present to him as "our post office."

We go on. The guest sees a very large, beautiful store.

— And what is that? — he asks.

— Wanamaker's store, — I say.

— Who is this Wanamaker?

— One of our citizens. It's his business.

The stranger asks: "About those buildings you219said 'our' all the time, and about this one you say 'his.' Why?"

I explain to him that those are public buildings, and these are not. Those belong to the republic; this one, again, is a private building; the whole business is a private one — Mr. Wanamaker's.

We stroll on. I show him a great machine factory and tell him that it belongs to Mr. Jones. Then we pass by a bank; I call out the name of Mr. McElwee, and say that he is the master of it.

We go on and on. We stop at a great railway station and I say that the railroad is Mr. Vanderbilt's. When we catch sight of a telegraph office, I tell him that the master is called Mr. Gould.

— Are these businesses republics? — asks the stranger — I mean the machine factory, the store, the railway station, the telegraph, the bank. Are they all republics? Does one elect a president for them for a certain time? Is the whole people a master over them? Is one's opinion asked about how to run all this?

— No, — I answer — these are all private things. Each business belongs to one citizen or to a group of citizens, whom one calls a company. They are the masters. They can do with it what they want. No one else can interfere.

The guest is a Jew who likes to ask questions, and he asks:

— Does it mean, then, that Mr. Jones is an emperor over the factory that you showed me?

I must admit that yes.

— Does it mean, then, — he asks further — that the factory is not a republic, but a monarchy?

I have no choice; I must say "yes."220— And Mr. Wanamaker is an emperor over that store? — he asks further — and Mr. McElwee is an emperor over the bank, and Mr. Vanderbilt is an emperor over the railroad?

I keep nodding my head and saying "yes." I hope that the question-asker will finally grow tired of asking. But I am mistaken. He has another question again, a brand-new one:

— You say that the post office belongs to your republic, and the factory to Mr. Jones. Let us see: how much time does a citizen of yours spend at the post office? Perhaps a few minutes in a month. He rushes in to send off a letter or to buy stamps. And in your town hall he spends presumably even less. But in Mr. Jones's factory the workers spend a whole day. And it is the same with the clerks who work at Mr. Wanamaker's in the store. Isn't it true?

— True, but what do you mean to prove by it?

— I mean to prove that the worker finds himself a whole day in a monarchy, he is a subject under an emperor, and only a few minutes does he have to do with the republic, where he is a citizen and has a voice.

— But after all one does not always work, — I answer him to his argument, — when one comes home from the factory, one lives after all in a republic.

— True, — the question-Jew must concede, — but for seven hours one sleeps, after all, and then it makes no difference whether one dreams of a republic or a monarchy. And when there is no work, there is also no difference whether one starves under a president or under a czar. When one does have work, and there is no night-work, there remains, then, only some three or four hours when one lives in a republic, compared with the ten hours when one is under a czar. The221greatest part of life, the most important hours, the worker spends, then, without any citizen's rights. So why do you say that your America is a republic?

The conclusion is that a true republic will only be had then, when the worker will be a citizen in the factory or in the mine, on the railroad or on the ship; when the factories, the railroads, the mines, the ships will belong not to this one or that one, but to everyone, just as the post office is today.

In connection with this I used to pose the question: the water of the city belongs to the whole community. The coal mines, however, are private property. Why should there be such a difference? Do we not, after all, need fire just as much as water? And what about bread? If one can send your letter through a communal — that is to say, through a socialist — post office, and if one can supply you with water in a socialist manner, then why should one not supply you with all other necessary things in the same manner? And if the post-office official is appointed by the community, not by an emperor, why should the same not be the case with all workers?

This is only the main idea. I used to develop the theme with details, with pictures.

In another speech I used to portray how a hundred years ago someone foretells the telephone. He prophesies that a time will come when a man who is in New York and a man who is in Chicago will converse with each other as if they were sitting at one table. I also used to portray how a hundred years ago someone likewise foretold the phonograph. He says that a time will come when a man's speech will be able to be preserved as one preserves money or papers,222and later, in a month or in a year, or even a hundred years later, one will be able to take them out and hear them again; the same words from the same person will resound, just as if he himself had spoken them, although he is perhaps long dead ^*.

Had someone foretold such a thing in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, he would have been called a dreamer and laughed at. People were then convinced that this was impossible. It is against the nature of the world, and the world cannot be remade, they would have explained.

But today people speak from New York to Chicago exactly as though sitting at one table; and today we have such a thing in which one can preserve a person's voice and his words, and afterward one can hear them again, even though he is not there at all, or though he is long dead.

It means, then, that with regard to these two things the world has indeed been remade.

And what do the socialists predict? That a time will come when everyone will be secure in his bread and in his lodging, when no one will be forced to work for another; when those who create all good things will not live in want, and all good things will not belong to those who create nothing at all.

Compared with the invention that makes it possible to speak across hundreds of miles, or to hear a person's voice after his death, this is surely a trifle. Yet we are told that what we predict cannot be realized; that the world cannot be remade.

Here I used to explain how the world used to conduct itself223once and how it conducts itself now; how formerly the squires were the rulers and today it is the capitalists. And my conclusion was: not only can the world be remade, but it is being remade.

In this way I used to give my listeners to understand the essence of the Marxist philosophy.

— So, the world will be remade, — I used to conclude, — the capitalists will come down from their throne, just as the squires came down. The worker will become the ruler. All will be workers, each in his own trade, and all will be masters, all together.

I never failed to explain that socialism will not come of itself; that it can be attained only through struggle, through the economic and political class-struggle of the workers against the capitalists. I also used to explain that the parable is no more than a parable; that the economic and political arrangements of mankind cannot be changed by an invention; that the change comes from circumstances, from development. From development, but not without struggle.

My speech was bound up with the question of happiness and with the question of religious feelings. I first held it in English and then in Yiddish. It consisted of the following thoughts:

Private property corrupts human nature. When a society is founded on "mine" and "thine," it develops egoism and ruins friendship. When one of two friends becomes rich and the other remains poor, a wall grows up between them. Even two brothers are estranged by such a cause.

Through private property there develops in a person a224desire to take away, to rob, to have much more than the other.

The rich man takes pleasure not only in his luxury, but also in the awareness that it is a rare thing. He has enjoyment not only from his good food and from his warm furs, but also from the fact that others do not have and he does; from the fact that while he eats tasty dishes and wears fine warm clothes, thousands of other people go about hungry and naked.

Does private property bring true happiness? No! Happiness is found in friendship, not in egoism. If not, why is a lonely person wretched? Why does he long for a comrade? And true friendship is impossible in a "mine-and-thine" society. Everyone pulls toward himself. There is no loyalty. People are bitter, false. So there is no happiness.

Because there is no happiness on earth, people seek it in heaven! We see how people who do not believe in God go to church. Many do it for the sake of business or because going to church is a "respectable" thing. But not all. There are such as go to church because their heart seeks a rest from the coarse egoism that fills their everyday life. They do not believe in God; they merely picture Him to themselves, the way a poet pictures an image. They strive to depict a lofty, noble spirit, and they spend a couple of hours in an honest, non-egoistic relation with Him. They do no business with Him. They feel no covetousness toward Him. They have no fear of Him. They like to be comrades with Him. They must seek a comrade in heaven, because they cannot find Him on earth. They must seek happy minutes with God, because they cannot find them among people.

But socialism shows them how to be happy on earth. Let the "mine and thine," the hired225labor and the competition be abolished; let the foundation of society be equality and brotherhood, and instead of covetousness and robbery, friendship will develop; and that is happiness.

When I reached the point about the egoism of "mine" and "thine," I used to present a picture of two people sitting, each with a loaf of bread pressed to his heart. On each one's face lies an expression of suspicion, of malice. "It is mine! Don't you dare touch it!" That is a picture of separateness, of hatred; it smells of the beasts of the forest...

Socialism, on the other hand, I presented in the form of two comrades eating from the same loaf of bread. They share the morsel between them. On their faces shines an expression of trust, of mutual hospitality, of true human love.

From the first picture a coldness goes forth. The second warms the heart.

Before the elections we used to have occasion to speak against those who sell their vote for a couple of dollars. This I presented in several cities in the following manner:

In Russia the Jews have no civil rights. Imagine that in Berdichev, Warsaw, or Vilna it is said that the Jews are to be given civil rights. Once a year elections will take place. The inhabitants will be citizens, and the Jew will have the same "rights" as the Christian; all the Jews will vote on questions of government; they will be asked an opinion on how the state should be run. Tell our brothers in the old home that such a time will soon come, and they will listen to you with an eager look in their eyes. How does one live to see this already?—226they will say with a sigh. Equal human rights are regarded there as a treasure. The right to vote is held as something sacred.

And we? We come here to America, and that which is there a longing, a precious dream, is with us a reality. We have the same rights as everyone, we have the right to vote. Now imagine that there, in our old home, people ask: "How do our brothers in America conduct themselves? What do they do with their right to vote?"

Imagine that they are told:

"Our countrymen there in America sell their right to vote for a couple of dollars."

I used to picture what a terrible impression this would make: the holiest thing is sold for a pot of lentils!

Almost all the parables that I used to give against anarchism used to come to me on the spot, in the very flame of an answer to an argument that an anarchist would put forth against me in the free discussion, after my lecture.

As a sample I will bring here the following case:

I am debating at a meeting in Philadelphia with Gordon, one of the most important orators among the anarchists. With burning words he portrays what a disgrace it is for workers' representatives to sit in one parliament with the representatives of capitalist robbers. In my answer I explain that socialist deputies go into parliament with the aim of exposing the robbery of capital — that every speech by a socialist deputy lets the public know that the worker is being robbed and oppressed.

"Our deputies go into parliament to shout 'Stop, thief!'" — I say — "we shout this in our speeches227before the elections, and our elected ones do it in the speeches they hold in parliament. And you anarchists? You say that one must not agitate before the elections, because that is called politics, and politics is unclean. And you do not want to go into parliament to catch the thieves, because it does not suit you to sit under one roof with the politicians. You get off with words about revolution."

Here I began to depict a scene in which, in the middle of the night, a wife wakes her husband and tells him that there is a thief in the house. But the husband is too lazy to get up.

"Leave me in peace — he says half-asleep — it does not suit me to have any dealings with a thief."

This called forth a storm of laughter.

I depicted the scene just like a scene in a comedy. I gave the half-asleep man a name — "Zalman." The wife wakes him and says into his ear: "Zalman! Zalman! There is a thief in the house." But Zalman is too lazy to get up.

The words: "Zalman, there is a thief in the house," and Zalman's answer: "It does not befit me to have dealings with thieves," were afterward heard everywhere our comrades "ribbed" anarchists.

Right at the platform, propping himself against it with both hands, sat a young anarchist. His eyes looked up toward my face. When the crowd burst out laughing aloud, and I stood with a smile and waited until the din would pass, he cried out to me with a wild rage: "Mogulesco! Mogulesco!" (meaning that I was no debater, but a comedian).

When I was in a fighting mood, or when I would warm up while explaining a thought, a stream of flaming, often interesting words, vivid pictures, warm exclamations would burst out of me. On the contrary, when I228was not in the mood, nothing helped and the speech used to be of no account.

When I would talk myself into a fervor about the time when socialism would be realized, or when Russia would cast off its tyrants, my fantasy would run riot. With elevated language, with colorful scenes, I would then paint "the bright time." In one such speech, in New Irving Hall, on the corner of Broome and Essex Street, I depicted how the coming generations would celebrate an annual festival in memory of all the freedom-martyrs: a vast banquet hall, adorned with the statues of the fallen fighters, feeling-filled speeches, choirs, orchestras, red banners, flowers, tens of thousands of inspired faces — the most honest and holiest holiday that mankind had ever celebrated.

The crowd was carried into such enthusiasm that all rose to their feet, applauding in honor of the great joy of the future.

Philip Krantz went off to Chicago, and I became the editor of the "Arbeiter Zeitung." Afterward Krantz came back and he took up the study of chemistry. He took part in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" little by little. And when I would go away from New York, he used to take my place.

We founded the monthly journal "Tsukunft," and Krantz was the editor.229Morris Hillkowitz finished studying law and, changing his name to Hillquit, began to practice. He married and withdrew from the Jewish movement. Afterward he took an active part in the American section of our movement, and, as we shall see, he quickly attained a high place in it.

Louis Miller remained active both with the spoken word and with the written; he played a great role both in the "Arbeiter Zeitung" and in the movement with which it was connected. In the paper he used to contribute serious political reflections, and he distinguished himself chiefly with biting political articles. He also had great success on the platform. He could control himself better than I, keeping to the points and sentences he had thought out in advance. Brilliant ideas he had enough of, and temperament he did not lack either. He was a brilliant orator. We belonged to two quite different types of agitators.

This was also the highest time of Zametkin's successes as an orator. And he already belonged to an entirely different type. He wrote little.

In the "Arbeiter Zeitung" in those few years there also worked Getsil Selikovitch. He was never a socialist. But he used to write feuilletons for us.

In the time that I was in London, B. Feigenbaum arrived in New York from London. We brought him over as a permanent collaborator of the "Arbeiter Zeitung." He is a Warsaw man. He grew up on the Gemara in a Hasidic world.230Later he settled in Antwerp, where he lived for a certain time. There he became acquainted with the socialist ideas. Afterward he came to London and became a collaborator on the "Arbeiter Fraynd." Now, then, he came down from there to us, and became an important force of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" and also of our platform.

He was an excellent orator, and since he was a man with brilliant abilities — with a good memory and a sharp head — he immediately became an important force among us. He always had something to say, always an interesting notion, and he used to bring out his thoughts with parables too. The Gemara-spirit was strongly felt in his speeches, and also in his writing.

In that time the poet Morris Rosenfeld wrote for the "Arbeiter Zeitung." When I leaf through the first two volumes, I find many poems of his there.