
From The Transmetropolitan Review
Click here for the full pamphlet of The Selected Writings of Andrej Klemenčič
INTRODUCTION
Andrej Klemenčič was born on November 30, 1867 in the town of Spodnja Šiška, just north of Ljubljana, the historical capital of Slovenia. At the time of Andrej’s birth, Slovenia was under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he grew up under their despotic reign until 1880 when he began to wander across the Earth. This unique journey not only made Andrej a committed anarchist, it eventually delivered him to the industrial dystopia of the United States.
The first article in this collection was written by Andrej in 1890, when he was living in Trieste, which was then part of greater Slovenia. He moved to Trieste from Llubljana after finishing his mandatory military service to the Empire, and it wasn’t long before he and his comrades started publishing Delavski List, or Worker’s Rag, the first socialist paper in Slovenia. There are currently only three issues extant on the internet, and of their articles, only one is signed by Andrej Klemenčič, although he is alleged to have written many of the unsigned texts.
His signed 1890 article is simply titled Coal and Mines and provides a quick overview of how Slovenia’s economy transformed from an agrarian and artisan-based culture to an industrial one, all powered by coal and steam. Andrej points out how vulnerable this industrial network was to disruption, just as he reminded industrial workers that during the coal miners’ strikes in northern England, it was seen that few factories had more than a week’s supply of coal; some factories had to stop work for quite a while due to a lack of coal.
Delavski List only ran from 1890 to 1891, after which it was suppressed and Andrej briefly arrested by the Empire. Once he was released, Andrej fled to Switzerland and soon made his way to Paris, where he made several new comrades, among them Jean Grave, future editor of Les Temps Nouveaux, the largest anarchist newspaper in France. Andrej was only in Paris for several months before boarding a boat to New York City. From there, he traveled to Chicago and ultimately settled across the continent in the remote industrial city of Tacoma, Washington.
Andrej arrived in Tacoma in July 1893 and quickly opened his own tailor shop, a trade he’d worked in since he was a child. Andrej was also the first anarchist agitator in Tacoma, a city whose labor movement was thoroughly racist. Back in 1885, the Tacoma labor movement led an anti-Chinese pogrom which drove out every Asian person from the city. By the time Andrej arrived, the first white workers in Tacoma were beginning to realize the Chinese weren’t responsible for their misery, capitalism was, although it was too late for Tacoma’s Chinatown, which was completely erased.
Andrej didn’t get involved in any labor union when he arrived in Tacoma, but he did organize 1,000 people to go pillage capitalist warehouses when Jacob Coxey’s hobo army assembled in Tacoma for their train-hop to DC. As he explained, our attitude, frankly anarchist and revolutionary, meant the big trading houses never dared to refuse our delegations the products requested them; we therefore loaded the goods onto carts to distribute them later according to everyone’s needs.
In this manner, Andrej spread anarchism across Tacoma, and he soon caught the attention of Oliver A. Verity, who helped found a socialist colony called Glennis. Although he disliked their proscribed socialist ways, Andrej joined Glennis in 1894 and quickly converted half of its members to anarchism. Around this time, Andrej became the Tacoma correspondent for The Firebrand, a weekly paper from Portland and the first anarchist periodical in the Pacific Northwest.
The first article Andrej wrote for The Firebrand was about Glennis and its development, as well as the particulars of its socialist economy. Andrej expressed his criticisms of their socialist methods, but he nevertheless supported them, as the article in this volume shows.
Andrej literally brought anarchism to Tacoma, and throughout 1895 he regularly reported his activities for The Firebrand. Every Tuesday night he held an anarchist meeting at the Labor Exchange on C Street, just as every day he worked at his tailor shop on Railroad Street.
In early 1896, Andrej wrote his first Tacoma dispatch for Les Temps Nouveaux in Paris where he summed up his past two years of activity, describing how anarchism in the Pacific Northwest had a better chance of succeeding [than] anywhere else in the world I’ve had the opportunity to travel, because the people are very intelligent and are now in dire poverty.
Andrej didn’t just write for Les Temps Nouveaux, he also read its dispatches and summarized them for readers of The Firebrand. For example, in the April 12, 1896 issue, Andrej explained how Pyotr Kropotkin was arrested in Paris for his planned lectures on anarchism. Beyond this, Andrej also wrote basic anarchist propaganda against voting and government, just as he applied his anarchist analysis to local Tacoma politics, such as the recent election of Angelo Fawcett as mayor.
In the fall of 1896, Andrej organized an anarchist mass-meeting at the Germania Hall in Tacoma, set to take place on October 17 at 8 pm. A man called Professor Jensen would conduct an orchestra for the event, just as the Tacoma Zither club would perform. However, despite all these performers (and more), Andrej was ultimately disappointed with the event, writing that we got only about a couple hundred persons present who were mostly my personal friends. On top of this disappointment, only $2 was raised for The Firebrand, although in his optimistic manner, Andrej noted that one thing is sure now here in Tacoma: that we are able to arrange as fine and interesting entertainments as any one of the secret societies in this locality.
Andrej was determined to host a successful event, and he soon announced a social entertainment Saturday Nov. 21, at our mothers place (Mrs. Wilson of the “Victor House,” South E. St. between 19th and 21st street). Little is known about this Mrs. Wilson, mother to the fledgling Tacoma anarchists, but not only did Andrej lecture on Individual Initiative that night, singers of the Tacoma Saengerbund performed music with the local comrades. As advertised, admission will be 15 cents a person, for the benefit of Anarchist propaganda.
A month later, Andrej helped form the Independent Educational Club at 1927 E Street, the address of the above-mentioned Victor House, which was run by Mrs. Wilson. The group met every Sunday at 7 pm for a lecture on some subject concerning the welfare of mankind, by one of the members, which will be followed by a free discussion. This group had been meeting for less than a month when tragedy suddenly hit the anarchists of Spain.
Earlier that year, on June 7, 1896, a bomb exploded during the Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona, killing twelve and injuring dozens, all of them random civilians. This act was instantly attributed to the local anarchists and dozens of them were arrested and thrown into the dreaded Montjuic prison to be severely tortured. Several of the anarchists eventually signed false confessions to escape this brutality, and their trial began on December 11, 1896. It took some weeks, but Andrej received updates from the comrades in Spain and Europe and summarized them in his article The Barcelona Martyrs.
Printed in the January 31, 1897 issue of The Firebrand, his article laid out the entire case and described how, at the session of Dec. 15th Nogues declared that all his previous declarations on his own account and against other comrades were false, because he was cruelly tortured in order to force him to make some statements. Callis, Molas and Sunye also declared that they were tortured, and by horrible cruelties forced to make statements.
After describing the tortures inflicted on his body, the anarchist Antoni Nogues cried, “you can torture me again with fire, with restlessness, thirst and hunger; you can mangle my testicles and make out of me whatever you want…I denounced your cruelties…I am satisfied!” Nogues was ultimately sentenced to death along with several other anarchists, while dozens more were either deported or sentenced to years in a dungeon. All of this enraged Andrej to the limit, and so he and the Independent Educational Club organized a mass-meeting against the Spanish Crown.
This mass-meeting took place in Tacoma on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1897, at the corner of Pacific Avenue and 12th Street. At least 300 people showed up to hear Andrej give a speech on the tortures in Montjuic. He addressed his words to Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the Prime Minister of Spain, calling him a villain, assassin!: You are chiefly responsible for all the inhuman horrors perpetrated in Cuba, the Philipines and Spain, and it is against you, and your “bloody” council meeting at Aranjuer, that the people of Tacoma are protesting today, at an open air massmetting.
Over a century before the anarchist slogan solidarity means attack came into being, Andrej Klemenčič told his readers to avenge the Spanish anarchists by attacking Spanish consulates. As he described, take a big lump of sulphur and light it at the door of the Consular’s office. That will poison the whole neighborhood with the stinking smell. One man can do it and not risk much either. If there are more boys they can “mob” the Consul and give him just as good a licking as our comrades got in Barcelona.
Throughout the rest of 1897, Andrej continued to tailor, agitate, and write articles for The Firebrand, providing updates from Spain as well the rest of the planet, while also focusing on local and state issues. Beyond this, Andrej helped his comrades from Glennis start an anarchist colony called Home just west of Tacoma, and he appears to have gone back and forth from Tacoma to assist them. This was Andrej’s routine for the winter of 1897, but once spring arrived he appears to have left Tacoma and traveled south to San Francisco, seemingly for the first time.
Andrej soon wrote an article for The Firebrand entitled The Labor Movement in San Francisco where he described the wide constellation of anarchists in that Pacific bastion. Among them was Bianca Gaffe, a Swiss anarchist who arrived in San Francisco with the Italian anarchist orator Pietro Gori in 1896, serving as his lecture organizer and co-speaker. She remained in San Francisco through 1897, as revealed by this article, and appears to have lived in the Latin Quarter at 111 Trenton Street. Andrej described her a very forcible and logical speaker, especially in French and Italian, but also in English. She is well received and appreciated.
In the same May 9, 1897 article, Andrej commented on working as a tailor, explaining that my time is very limited, as it is just now the busy season in my trade, and beside this I have also to pay some attention to my lady companions which is harder, of course, than to take care of myself, but I suppose that I will settle down soon.
Meanwhile, an Italian anarchist named Michele Angiolillo tracked down Spanish Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo to a health spa in Mondragón and executed him with three shots on August 8, 1897. Although Michele had help from the Puerto Rican anarchist Ramón Emeterio Betances and the wider anarchist network, Michele claimed to have acted alone to avenge the Barcelona martyrs. His last word before execution was simply germinal, the anarchist code for their purifying spring.
It’s unclear where Andrej lived in San Francisco during 1897, but he wrote a steady stream of articles for the The Firebrand, most of them about Spain. In August he wrote a short dispatch for Les Temps Nouveaux describing conditions in the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco, while in September he wrote and even shorter dispatch for The Firebrand, explaining how the San Francisco comrades were raising money for the Spanish anarchists through a raffle. One of the raffle items was a quilt made by Lois Waisbrooker, the famed anarcho-spiritualist, who was then living in San Francisco.
The Firebrand was unfortunately shut down by the government a month later for publishing an obscene poem by Walt Whitman, and after the repression was over, half of the editorial crew moved to Home, the anarchist colony Andrej helped found, while the other half moved south to San Francisco, namely the Isaak family. There they started a new anarchist newspaper, Free Society, for which Andrej began writing. In its fifth issue, Andrej wrote an article entitled Conditions in Austria, a thorough analysis of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which Andrej had fled six years previous.
Andrej kept busy, not just at tailoring, but also giving anarchist lectures across San Francisco. With the help of Bianca Jaffe, he helped organize Emma Goldman’s lectures when she visited from April to May, 1898. The US had just declared war on Spain, and Emma Goldman was clear in her warnings of a new US imperialism, no matter how barbaric the Spaniards were. The lectures were a great success, and as Andrej described, all the meetings were well attended and good order prevailed at all times.
Shortly after Emma Goldman left the city, Bianca Jaffe went off to found the Nuovo Ideal anarchist colony somewhere to the north in either Sonoma or Mendocino counties. This is the last record of Bianca Jaffe, and her comrade Andrej Klemenčič would also depart San Francisco, although history records where he went. In June 1898, he sailed first to Yokohama, Japan, then back to the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where Andrej would live until 1901.
In her autobiography Living My Life, the great Emma Goldman records how in San Francisco during 1898 she was profoundly in sympathy with the Cuban and Philippine rebels who were striving to throw off the Spanish yoke. In fact, I had worked with some of the members of the Junta engaged in underground activities to secure freedom for the Philippine Islands. But I had no faith whatever in the patriotic protestations of America as a disinterested and noble agency.
To help these Philippine rebels fight the Spanish and soon the US, it appears that Emma Goldman and Andrej Klemenčič began running weapons and aid across the Pacific. History records that Andrej traveled from Honolulu to the Philippines in 1902 and 1903, although he may have done so before that. Meanwhile, his comrade Lois Waisbrooker, the anarcho-spiritualist, moved from San Francisco to Home, the anarchist colony Andrej helped found. All of that, however, is a story for another time.
For now, please enjoy these selected works of Andrej Klemenčič, an anarchist agitator that history has almost forgotten. As Andrej once wrote, destroy the spirit of authority, and the mute sphinx of ages will give you the keys to heavenly treasures hidden by our mother earth.
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