ABSTRACT
As 21-year-old Alexander Berkman prepared to attack Henry Clay Frick, chairman of the board at the Carnegie Steel Company, his mind was clear. Exulting in what he later described as the ‘first terrorist act in America’, Berkman conceptualised his attack on Frick in July 1892 as a pure example of propaganda by the deed:
to enlighten [the American people] as to the true aims of Anarchy . . . to impart a miniature lesson with regard to the ways and means of liberation – the collective deed as preface to the social revolution – in fine, to make propaganda in the interest of Anarchy, that was the object of my act.2
