Free The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror by John Merriman

practical guide for the movement. Two of the most important venues were Belleville's Salle Favié and the Salle du Commerce on rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. On Friday, March 30,1883, for example, posters announced a grand public meeting, organized by the group Vengeance of Anarchist Youth and located on rue de Charenton in eastern Paris. The topic for discussion: "the workers' crisis, revisionist agitation, and revolutionary movements." The small entry fee went toward the rental of the hall and other related expenses.
    Yet finding rooms or even bars in which anarchist groups could meet was extremely difficult, particularly once the police started pressuring owners. Neighbors tired of the shouting and singing that emanated from the meetings also took a stand. For example, in November 1893 the group known as the Lads of the Butte (Montmartre) met in a bar. But when the gathering was over, the owner of the establishment told them that they could not return. They had recently been evicted from another bar on the same street because their presence terrified local shopkeepers.
    The meetings of most anarchist groups were relatively small but swelled in size when speakers from other groups were invited, or debates, sometimes with socialists, were planned. When the Père Lachaise group met in June 1886, eleven members showed up. The same number attended a meeting in the Salle Bourdel, rue de Belleville, in late June 1888 to discuss opposition to the celebration of Bastille Day at a time when about 200,000 workers in the capital were unemployed. Unlike the format of socialist gatherings, presiding officers did not lead meetings of anarchists. The idea of having officers, even for one gathering, was totally antithetical to the anarchist principle of "individual initiative."
    Anarchists organized "family evenings" and "popular discussions," usually on Sunday. At times they offered soup or something else to eat in exchange for listening to speeches. Amid boisterous singing, they put small coins in a passed hat to help anarchists and their families who were struggling to make ends meet, such as those whose husband or father had been jailed. On these occasions, crowds of one hundred, four hundred, or even more were not uncommon. In December 1892, more than two thousand bowls of soup, along with anarchist newspapers, were distributed at a
soupe-conference
in the Salle Favié, amid occasional shouts of "Death to the cops!" and "Death to the pigs!"
    Anarchist songs reached an ever larger popular audience. Adrienne Chailley was one of the better-known anarchist singers. Twenty-six years old, she went by the name "Marie Puget," a poor soul who sang in various Left Bank brasseries while living in an attic room in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank near the Seine. This "hysterical madwoman" was denigrated by a conservative newspaper as a "priestess of anarchy" who, with short brown hair and a snub nose, sang rough, vulgar anti-bourgeois tunes, "her blouse open, hair blowing in the wind, eyes lit up by alcohol ... while wiggling in the middle of the hall, wearing herself out amid a chaotic uproar which often concludes with some major act of imprudence."
    Henry Leyret, the Belleville bar owner, did not believe that "the people" were anarchist, even if most occasionally read anarchist newspapers. Yet Leyret remembered in particular two workers standing at the counter, drinking their absinthe and coolly, with considerable perception, discussing and comparing the literary talents, merits, and weaknesses of two anarchist journalists. Leyret's customers in general did not like anyone associated with the authorities and resented the uneven application of the law. They hated the police, who, they perceived, had it in for them. So the enemies of the police, whoever they might be, automatically became their friends. Even if these customers did not know much about anarchism, they approved in principle of the anarchist struggle, often forgiving the deeds of the