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

anarchists, whom they viewed as the righters of wrongs.
    Émile Henry plunged into the world of Parisian anarchism. It soon became clear to him, and to others, that despite the movement's emphasis on individual autonomy, anarchists would have to work together to build the revolution. Thus anarchists were part of an informal corporation (
compagnonnage
), which provided moral and sometimes material assistance for
compagnons
—the word itself stemming from the idea of sharing bread. Some anarchists served as "midnight movers," helping poor families move in silence from their apartments without paying the rent while their landlord or concierge slept. The anarchist Augustin Léger described one very rapid move in the dark of night. At the agreed-upon time, his anarchist pals showed up, hauling a little wagon, which they parked in an alley to avoid attracting attention. Then they quietly went upstairs, carrying their friend's belongings back down. On at least one occasion, a property owner or concierge was gagged, tied up, and left on his bed. Midnight moves could be enacted swiftly, since most anarchists owned very little.
    Newspapers provided some cohesion to the anarchist cause, underlining its international character while solidifying anarchism's informal network and keeping
compagnons
informed of debates concerning theory and tactics. At the base of rue Mouffetard behind and below the Panthéon, near the misery of the faubourg Saint-Marcel, Jean Grave published
La Révolte.
Grave, whose father was a miller and then a farmer in central France, had become a shoemaker before turning full-time to the anarchist cause. He had taken over publication of the newspaper's predecessor,
Le Révolté,
in Geneva in 1883, after its founder, Peter Kropotkin, was permanently expelled from Switzerland. In the wake of harassment from Swiss authorities, Grave moved the newspaper to Paris. With a slight change in its title,
La Révolte
became a weekly in May 1886. From the workshop of "the Pope of rue Mouffetard" also appeared anarchist pamphlets, sold in anarchist bookshops, particularly in Montmartre, but also in the Latin Quarter, where the first group of student anarchists was formed in 1890.
    Grave's office was in the attic of a four-story building. Four flights of stairs and a narrow ladder led there. A small sign on the door indicated the newspaper's presence, but since there was no bell, a visitor had to knock. A large room that had once served as a place to dry laundry now accommodated piles of papers and newspapers. Grave's desk consisted of a board resting on two supports, next to which lay his shoes. Four pages long and printed on good-quality paper,
La Révolte
included a literary supplement and appeared each Saturday.
    Grave struggled to keep the publication going. Raising money from a generally impoverished clientele was not easy; printing 6,500 to 7,000 copies each week cost 320 francs. A few intellectuals and artists helped Grave along with small gifts of cash. The paper provided a forum for the philosophy of anarchism, with articles on "property," "anarchism and terrorism," "the noxious influence of industrialization," "anarchy and order," and so on. Other pieces described incidents of state repression in France, crackdowns on demonstrations, or other actions against anarchists, including raids that began with the sudden arrival of jail wagons in working-class neighborhoods.
    For all this,
La Révolte
was relatively staid compared to Émile Pouget's
Père Peinard.
Père Peinard was the name of a fictitious cobbler, a straight talking soul who exuded common sense and in the name of justice went after corrupt politicians, officials, and magistrates, with the imposing leather strap of his trade. After trying to organize department store employees, the well-educated, twenty-two-year-old Pouget, the son of a notary in Dordogne in the southwest, was sentenced to prison for "provocation to pillage." (This followed the incident in the