eads,--even
their tortured brains recognize the impossibility of that task;
nor do they hope to so far terrify rulers as to bring about their
abdication. Not at all; but they do hope by deeds of violence to
so attract attention to the theory of anarchy as to win
followers;--in other words, murders such as those of Humbert,
Carnot, and President McKinley were mere advertisements of
anarchism. In the words of Brousse, "Deeds are talked of on all
sides; the indifferent masses inquire about their origin, and thus
pay attention to the new doctrine and discuss it. Let men once get
as far as this, and it is not hard to win over many of them."

Hence, the greater the crime the greater the advertisement; from
that point of view, the shooting of President McKinley, under
circumstances so atrocious, is so far the greatest achievement of
the "propaganda of action."

It is worth noting that the "reign of terror" which the Nihilists
sought to and did create in Russia was for a far more practical
and immediate purpose. They sought to terrify the government into
granting reforms; so far from seeking to annihilate the
government, they sought to spur it into activity for the benefit
of the masses.

The methods of the Nihilists, without the excuse of their object,
were borrowed by the more fanatical anarchists, and applied to the
advertising of their belief. Since the adoption of the "propaganda
of action" by the extremists, anarchism has undergone a great
change. It has passed from a visionary and harmless theory, as
advocated by Godwin, Proudhon, and Reclus, to a very concrete
agency of crime and destruction under the teachings of such as
Bakunin, Krapotkin, and Most; not forgetting certain women like
Louise Michel in France and Emma Goldman in this country who out-
Herod Herod;--when a woman goes to the devil she frightens him;
his Satanic majesty welcomes a man, but dreads a woman; to a woman
the downward path is a toboggan slide, to a man it is a gentle but
seductive descent.

It is against the "propaganda of action" that legislation must be
directed, not because it is any part of anarchism, but because it
is the propaganda of crime.

Laws directed towards the suppression of anarchism might result in
more harm than good, but crime is quite another matter. It is one
thing to advocate less and less of government, to preach the final
disappearance of government and the evolution of anarchy; it is a
fundamentally different thing