The Memphis Appeal

CONFESSION AND BOAST OF THE ANARCHISTS WHO MEET AT SCHLAG'S.

A Noted Resort in New York of All Sorts of German Socialists and House Burners.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE APPEAL.]

New York, January 14—The anarchist of the imagination is a wild-eyed, unkempt savage, with a dagger up his sleeve and his pockets full of dynamite. The name is now used indiscriminately to describe every kind of revolutionary crank. In this city the genuine anarchist, followers of Josiah Warren and P. J. Proudhon, are scarce, but believers of Karl Marx and Herr Most are numerous. They meet in little beer rooms, as a rule, and over pipe and beverage get into fierce guttural discussions of social questions, disagreeing with great variety of opinion on every point involved. Some time ago a number of the more ignorant Bohemian socialists, encouraged by unscrupulous men like Most, conceived the idea that it would be a fine thing to plunder the capitalistic insurance companies for the benefit of their cause, and they conspired to set fire to tenements and small houses for that purpose. They carried out the scheme and many incendiary fires occurred, in some of which human life was lost. Two of the incendiaries, the Kohut brothers, were sent to State prison, but the police never suspected that a conspiracy existed, and refused to believe it until the facts were presented to them. The singular feature of the case is the fact that the police did not discover the plot, for a more reckless, loose-tongued set of conspirators never hatched deviltry in this world. They met in saloons, and jabbered their plans to one another across the tables as freely as other men talk politics, seeming to take it for granted that everybody who spoke or understood their language could be trusted not to betray them. A detective who knew German could have sent the whole gang to prison on their own confessions and boasts. But their acquaintances and the saloon keepers, some of whom did not approve of their plans, did not betray them. One of the places frequented by all stripes of German socialists is a little beer saloon in Fifth street, kept by A. Schlag, himself a socialist but neither a bomb thrower nor an incendiary. It was here, however, that the fire bugs were accustomed to meet and discuss their schemes. It is a long, narrow basement room, with a low ceiling, and in general appearance does not differ from hundreds of its class. Schlag's name is over the door, and brewers' advertising signs are in the window, half below the sidewalk level. The door and window frames are stained to imitate cherry, and give the place a cheaply neat appearance. A short counter to the left of the door serves as a bar and a temporary resting place for the thirst-producing pretzel. The usual beer tables are arranged along the room, and at some hours are occupied by parties of good-natured Germans and Switzers, sipping their beer and all talking at once. If you are a stranger, you may take a seat within a foot of a table full of socialists, and not one of them will pay the least heed to your presence, but all will continue the discussion of the Chicago case, or anything else, without the least reserve or restraint. Schlag, a short, mild-mannered man, with a prodigious mustache, will come from behind the counter to wait upon you, and after bringing your beer, or Rhine wine, will offer the newspapers in English and German, with the evident desire to make you feel at home as though you were an old acquaintance. A singularly open, unsuspecting nature is Schlag's. He thinks the conviction of the Chicago gang an outrage, and he will say so to anybody. He will talk socialism with an utter stranger, and if he had any plot in his bald head he could not keep them there. He takes it as a matter of course that anybody who comes into his place and calls for beer agrees with him, and he sees no reason why he should make any mystery of his opinions or his efforts in behalf of the Chicago "martyrs." If you do not care to talk you may sit and drink in peace, listen to what others are saying, read the papers, or walk about and look at the pictures and notices on the walls, and nobody will pay any more attention to what you do than to the movements of a winter benumbed fly on the ceiling. The first thing you observe is the number of pictures of Henry George scattered about the place. Behind the bar is a large imperial photograph of him; a cabinet picture of him stands beside one of Lucy Parsons among the decanters, and campaign lithographs of the bald-headed author adorn the wall. Notices of trade union meetings, Knights of Labor proclamations, announcements to denounce the Chicago verdict, and similar documents in German and English are pasted up here and there between chromos representing various incidents of German and Swiss history. Hanging at one side of the room a blackboard in a picture frame, and upon this some patrons with talent for caricature display their accomplishment. The favorite subject is the German Chancellor, probably because his face, like Ben Butler's, is so unique that anything bearing the slightest resemblance to it is readily recognizable. To avoid all possibility of mistake the German artist always puts three bristling hairs at the top of Bismarck's head. Bismarck's three hairs, like Ben's bad eye, determine his identity, and relieve the artist of the embarrassment of being asked whose picture he has been trying to draw. A kind of family sociability prevails in Schlag's. When he is away his wife runs the establishment, and indeed she runs it when he isn't away. Mrs. Schlag is a medium-sized woman of peculiar appearance. Upon the shoulders so round as to appear almost deformed is set a queer head, covered sparsely with grayish hair. The lines of her face are deeply drawn, as though by bodily suffering rather than age, but her large gray eyes, so widely separated as to appear stuck on her temples, shine with almost unnatural clearness and brightness. Her gaze is keen and penetrating, and a deep, irregular furrow in her forehead gives her at times an almost fierce expression. Yet she is pleasant and friendly in manner, and when talking her queerly unhandsome face lights up with a smile, not at all terrifying or suggestive of dynamite. Evidently she is a better judge of men than her husband, and less likely to be imposed upon, and she seems to superintend the business for him. Altogether she is an odd character. Schlag and his family live upstairs, but the saloon is the sitting room of the place. After school, Schlag's niece, a rosy-cheeked, bouncing girl of a dozen years, comes in like a young cyclone, slams her books upon the counter and treats her aunt to an account, in mixed English and German, of the day's events and lessons. She has just come across in the reader a description of Santa Claus driving over the roofs and is immensely aroused by the names given to the deer. "Donner und blitzen," mild German profanity, strikes her as very funny words in a school book, and she recites the lines in great glee for the edification of Aunt Schlag and the big-bearded socialists at the tables. A coach dog that has been dozing behind the stove jumps up and plainly invites the bouncing young fraulein to a frolic, and away they go down the room.

"Give the dog some water," suggests Mrs. Schlag.

"He won't drink water," the girl; "he's a drunken old bum," and sets a pail of beer drippings before him.

Schlag's dog is one of the features of the place. He is thoroughly German in his tastes, and prefers beer and bologna to any other kind of refreshments. But he won't drink flat beer, if he knows it, and sniffs contemptuously at the pail of stale drippings. He wants plenty of froth, and when the spigot is turned and the drip enlivened with a little deceptive foam, he makes away with a quart easily, and licks his lips approvingly. When that dog is a little older, and learns to smoke, he will have all the accomplishments attributed by the cartoonists to good anarchists, and may be expected to go about with a can of dynamite tied to his tail. The occupants of the table appear to be too familiar with these odd ties to bestow more than usual notice upon them. They drink their beer, and gravely discuss all sorts of schemes for reforming the world and abolishing the Police Department and are not to be diverted from their purpose by either the verdicts of Chicago juries or the antics of a dissipated coach dog. It was here at Schlag's that Mrs. Parsons lived while in New York. She occupied an upstairs room that commanded a view of a wilderness of clothes lines, and made the place her headquarters while lecturing in this part of the country. Schlag accompanied her on trips once in awhile, and while waiting for him to get ready, the wife of the Chicago leader would come down into the saloon and sit by the stove. She was treated with grave respect and kindly sympathy, and none intruded upon her as she sat there wrapped in her own sad thoughts, all unconscious of those around her. It was here that she received the telegram from her husband saying that all the prisoners refused mercy. Her eyes lighted up as she rose to her feet and read the dispatch to her friends.

"Good," she said; "I've always told them to demand justice, not mercy."

and all present nodded their heads in emphatic approval.

There was nothing forced about the scene. It was quiet, natural and unconscious; but when this dark-skinned woman, worn and weary with her labors, hollow-eyed and yet not unhandsome, stood up among the grim-bearded Germans and calmly approved her husband's refusal to accept his life at the price of his beliefs and principles, mistaken though these may be, it was dramatic. One could not but think there was something of the lioness about the woman. Such is one of the haunts of the socialists of New York and such are the people one may meet there.