The Infernal Machine Quotes

“Goldman confessed to Berkman—whom she had begun calling Sasha, the diminutive form of Alexander—that her failed marriage had left her jaded about the institution itself. “If ever I love a man again, I will give myself to him without being bound by the rabbi or the law,” she vowed, “and when that love dies, I will leave without permission.” They were scandalous values for a woman to hold in the late 1800s, much less give voice to, but Berkman received them approvingly.”
― Steven Johnson, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. —OSCAR WILDE”
― Steven Johnson, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

“After another clash erupted between striking workers and Chicago police at the Reaper Works in May of 1886, anarchist groups organized a rally at the city’s Haymarket Square as a memorial for the strikers killed by the police. Two thousand workers gathered to hear speeches by anarchist leaders August Spies and Albert Parsons. When the police moved in to break up the rally, an unseen assailant tossed a dynamite bomb at the officers, killing one immediately and maiming several others. Gunfire erupted; by the time the mêlée ended, seven officers were dead, along with at least four protestors. As many as a hundred others were injured in the riot. The Haymarket Affair sparked an immediate crackdown against the radical groups; Parsons and Spies were both arrested, along with six others, and accused of being accessories to the murder of the officer killed by the bomb. During the trial, key evidence was supplied by the lead Pinkerton undercover agent, Andrew C. Johnson, who claimed firsthand knowledge of the anarchists’ murderous plot. In response, Albert Parsons denounced the Pinkertons as “a private army…at the command and control of those who grind the faces of the poor, who keep wages down to the starvation point.” In the end, the jury sided with Johnson, and all eight were condemned to death. Four of them—including both Spies and Parsons—were executed, despite the fact that no evidence ever directly connected them to the infernal machine that had exploded during the rally. A fifth condemned prisoner committed suicide the night before the executions, detonating a dynamite blasting cap with his teeth in his prison cell.”
― Steven Johnson, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

“In early December while they were enjoying a boisterous dinner with friends in Chicago, a reporter passed along a report that had just come down the wire. Financier Henry Clay Frick had died of a heart attack at his Fifth Avenue mansion at the age of 69.

Berkman took in the news with a wry smile and then proclaimed, "Deported by God.”
― Steven Johnson, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

“There was still the matter of the $10,000 fine for the original crimes under the Espionage Act. For that she had to sign an affidavit testifying that she possessed insufficient financial assets to pay the fine.

The agent gave her a suspicious look. "You're dress is swell," he said. "Funny you claim to be poor."

"I am a multi-millionaire in friends," she replied.”
― Steven Johnson, The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective