The Sex Question

I HAVE read, in the last issue of Mother Earth, Bolton Hall’s opinion on the mixed blessing of discussion after meetings with interest, and—disagreement; mixed also. I agree that a meeting of fifty with a good discussion is better than one of two hundred and fifty with none; but with a bad discussion—nine times in ten it is a bad discussion—meeting of two hundred and fifty and silence is preferable. For I do not agree that “almost anything is better than silence”; sometimes silence is better than almost anything; particularly the silence of a “buffoon.” Nor do I consider newspaper […]

THE MEXICAN REVOLT BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. AT last we see a genuine awakening of a people, not to political demands alone, but to economic ones,—fundamentally economic ones. And in the brief period of a few months, some millions of human beings have sprung to a full consciousness of a system of wrong, beginning where all slaveries begin, in the sources of life. They have struck for Land And Liberty. And even if their revolt shall be crushed by the mailed hand of the United States Government (for I do not believe the present nondescript thing calling itself a government, […]

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION A lecture delivered in Chicago October 29, 1911. By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. THAT a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed, alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be so, is inexcusable. It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you, […]

NOTE. So far the following dates have been engaged for lectures: New York October 7—8 Albany October 9 Rochester October 12 Buffalo October 13—16 Cleveland October 20—23 Toledo October 26 Detroit October 30 Chicago November 11 VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. Voltairine de Cleyre, “Note,” Mother Earth 5, no. 8 (October 1910): 272.  

NOTE About October 15th I intend starting on a lecture tour which will extend as far as Chicago, or perhaps farther west. Organizations and Comrades wishing to arrange lectures should kindly communicate with me at once. VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE 531 N. Marshall Street Philadelphia, Pa. Voltairine de Cleyre, “Note,” Mother Earth 5, no. 6 (August 1910): 191.

On everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea — an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying bodies-living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent […]

A “CONDITION” is always more interesting than a “theory.” The general strike of organized labor in Philadelphia has been the most interesting and instructive phenomenon in the economic struggle which any American city has offered since Chicago in 1885-6. It has revealed many things, both to its friends and its enemies, which no amount of theorizing could have foreseen. Its direct consequences, while considerable, have been insignificant compared with indirect results. As I wrote in my last month’s article, it was called some ten days later than it should have been; it was fixed for Saturday morning, March 5th,—Saturday being […]

THE PHILADELPHIA STRIKE BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. EVER since the trolley strike of last June, when the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company was forced into the semblance of an agreement with its men, it has made systematic efforts to undermine, crush, and utterly destroy their union. The ink was scarcely dry before it began violating this agreement, and at last, feeling that it had acquired sufficient strength through the introduction of a rival union, an organization of scabs, it began forcing the situation, by discharging its old men, men who had been in the service from ten to twenty years, “for […]

OUR POLICE CENSORSHIP Address delivered October 8, 1909, in Philadelphia, at a public meeting of protest against the police suppression of Emma Goldman’s lectures. By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE FELLOW-MEN: I have written my speech; I generally write my speech. We have a censor, and the censor may call me to account. He has some reporters here; and in their anxiety to earn their money, and their shortage of intelligence, they are likely to report me as uttering a lot of idiocy which the censorship wishes me to utter, in order to excuse its illegal, unconstitutional, and tyrannical action. To illustrate […]