“A woman student in Russia may receive visitors all day and most of the night, discuss all vital subjects with them, go with men when and where she pleases, and yet she will not be criticised, and no landlady would dream of insinuating that there was anything wrong with her morals. What is more, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with them. The standard of morals in the student class is phenomenally high, and the average intelligent Russian woman’s mind is as pure as it is broad.
“The relation between the sexes in Russia is the most ideal of any I know about. That is why young Russian women learn to think. And because they think they become Anarchists.
“I was an Anarchist when I left Russia to come to America, but I had hardly formulated my belief. The final influence that crystallized my views was the hanging of the Chicago Anarchists in 1887. I followed that case carefully and it made me an active Anarchist. I was living with my family in Rochester then, and the nearest thing to a radical society the town had was a Social Democratic society, tame as a house cat. I came away to New York and went to work in a factory. That showed me a new side of life. My family had been well-to-do, and I hadn’t come in actual contact with the want and suffering of the world until I joined the wage-earners.
“Of course the experience strengthened my revolutionary ideas. When the Waist and Shirtmaker Girls’ union went out in 1888 I led the strike. That is, in a way I led it. I have never been an Anarchist leader. I cannot afford it. A leader must be a diplomat. I am not a diplomat. A leader of a party makes concessions to his party, for the sake of holding his power. He must give way to his followers in order to be sure they will sustain him. I can’t do all that, I am an Anarchist because I love individual freedom and I will not surrender that freedom.
“You know I am a professional nurse. It has always been the dream of my life to be a doctor, but I never could manage it—could not get means for the study. My factory work undermined my health, so I thought that if I couldn’t be a doctor I could at least be a little part of the profession. I went through the training for a nurse, did the hospital work, and now nurse private cases.