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When Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist, came to Philadelphia in 1909 to deliver a speech at the Odd Fellows’ Temple, she was met by a hostile police establishment. Anticipating her September 28 arrival on the noon train, assistant police superintendent Tim O’Leary threatened to turn a fire hose on her if she dared to speak a single word about anarchism. “She had better put on a rubber suit if she undertakes to make a speech there, because she certainly will get a ducking,” O’Leary told the press. “There is nothing more distasteful to anarchists than a stream from a fire engine.” He vowed that Emma Goldman would never speak in Philadelphia.

Goldman’s less-than-cordial reception in the City of Brotherly Love was similar to her reception in many other cities where she had also recently attempted to hold lectures. The sharp economic downturn of 1907 and 1908 sparked anarchist demonstrations in Philadelphia and many other cities, leading to police crackdowns on anarchist speakers. In 1907, police prevented Goldman meetings planned for Columbus, Toledo, and Detroit. In March 1908, police repeatedly barred Goldman from speaking in Chicago. In December 1908, she was arrested in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington, and in January 1909, she spent four days in a San Francisco jail. During the month of May alone, police stopped eleven of her lectures. In New York City, the police anarchist squad broke
up her Sunday morning lecture on Victorian playwright Henrik Ibsen, a non-anarchist lecture, outraging her middle-class and socially connected audience.