question could have regretted the circumstance no more than I, for if there was one right which I tried to induce the police to respect, it was the right of free speech. On the whole they did fairly well, and at a time when there seemed to be an epidemic of ferocity among municipal officials in the land that led them to all sorts of unwarranted interferences with human and constitutional rights, we had folk of all sorts preaching their strange doctrines in our streets—Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, of their several sorts, I. W. W.'s, evangelists, anarchists, suffragists, Mormons, Salvationists, to say nothing of all the religious sects; wisdom was veritably crying in the streets. Emma Goldman, during that period of hysteria when the advent of that little woman in a city precipitated a siege of fear, delivered her course of lectures in Toledo to audiences that were very small, since there were no police to insure the attendance of those who were interested more in sensations than in her philosophic discussions of the German drama. And we tried to respect the rights of all.
But it is one thing to give orders, and another to have them implicitly obeyed. Those of the indurated sectarian mind, who would order all life by mechanism, are given to saying that if they were in authority the police would do so and so, and would not do such and such a thing, that they would have the police see to this and that, etc., etc., etc. After they had been in power a while they would grow humble, if not discouraged, and, like me, be gratified if they succeeded in accomplishing about one-
