The Iron Heel
by
Jack London

Part 1 out of 6








This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.





THE IRON HEEL

by Jack London




"At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means."


CONTENTS

FORWARD
I. MY EAGLE
II. CHALLENGES
III. JOHNSON'S ARM
IV. SLAVES OF THE MACHINE
V. THE PHILOMATHS
VI. ADUMBRATIONS
VII. THE BISHOP'S VISION
VIII. THE MACHINE BREAKERS
IX. THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM
X. THE VORTEX
XI. THE GREAT ADVENTURE
XII. THE BISHOP
XIII. THE GENERAL STRIKE
XIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END
XV. LAST DAYS
XVI. THE END
XVII. THE SCARLET LIVERY
XVIII. IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA
XIX. TRANSFORMATION
XX. THE LAST OLIGARCH
XXI. THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST
XXII. THE CHICAGO COMMUNE
XXIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
XXIV. NIGHTMARE
XXV. THE TERRORISTS




THE IRON HEEL


FOREWORD


It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important
historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors--not
errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across
the seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed
her manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were
confused and veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked
perspective. She was too close to the events she writes about.
Nay, she was merged in the events she has described.

Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of
inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and
vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and
forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled
her husband. We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that
he loomed among the events of his times less largely than the
Manuscript would lead us to believe.

We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but
not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after
all, but one of a large number of heroes who, throughout the world,
devoted their lives to the Revolution; though it must be conceded
that he did unusual work, especially in his elaboration and
interpretation of working-class philosophy. "Proletarian science"
and "proletarian philosophy" were his phrases for it, and therein
he shows the provincialism of his mind--a defect, however, that was
due to the times and that none in that day could escape.

But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the FEEL of those terrible times. Nowhere do
we find more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that
lived in that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and
1932--their mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and
misapprehensions, their ethical delusions, their violent passions,
their inconceivable sordidness and selfishness. These are the
things that are so hard for us of this enlightened age to
understand. History tells us that these things were, and biology
and psychology tell us why they were; but history and biology and
psychology do not make these things alive. We accept them as
facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension of them.

This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse the Everhard
Manuscript. We enter into the minds of the actors in that long-ago
world-drama, and for the time being their mental processes are our
mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's love
for her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first days,
the vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel (well
named) we feel descending upon and crushing mankind.

And in passing we note that that historic phrase, the Iron Heel,
originated in Ernest Everhard's mind. This, we may say, is the one
moot question that this new-found document clears up. Previous to
this, the earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the
pamphlet, "Ye Slaves," written by George Milford and published in
December, 1912. This George Milford was an obscure agitator about
whom nothing is known, save the one additional bit of information
gained from the Manuscript, which mentions that he was shot in the
Chicago Commune. Evidently he had heard Ernest Everhard make use
of the phrase in some public speech, most probably when he was
running for Congress in the fall of 1912. From the Manuscript we
learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private dinner in the
spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest-known
occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.

The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret
wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great
historical events have their place in social evolution. They were
inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same
certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the
movements of stars. Without these other great historical events,
social evolution could not have proceeded. Primitive communism,
chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary
stepping-stones in the evolution of society. But it were
ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a necessary stepping-
stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step
backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early world a hell,
but that were as necessary as the Iron Heel was unnecessary.

Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What
else than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of that
great centralized governmental machine known as the Roman Empire?
Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure of
social evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary,
and it was not inevitable. It must always remain the great
curiosity of history--a whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing
unexpected and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those
rash political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of
social processes.

Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be the
culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois
revolution. And we of to-day can but applaud that judgment.
Following upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual
and antagonistic giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would
come. Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held,
would arise that flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man.
Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those
that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that
monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.

Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century
divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the
Oligarchy was there--a fact established in blood, a stupendous and
awful reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well
shows, was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its
overthrow was a matter of a few short years, was the judgment of
the revolutionists. It is true, they realized that the Peasant
Revolt was unplanned, and that the First Revolt was premature; but
they little realized that the Second Revolt, planned and mature,
was doomed to equal futility and more terrible punishment.

It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during
the last days of preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the fact
that there is no mention of the disastrous outcome of the Second
Revolt. It is quite clear that she intended the Manuscript for
immediate publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown, so
that her husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit for
all that he had ventured and accomplished. Then came the frightful
crushing of the Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the
moment of danger, ere she fled or was captured by the Mercenaries,
she hid the Manuscript in the hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.

Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was
executed by the Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record of
such executions was kept by the Iron Heel. But little did she
realize, even then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee,
how terrible had been the breakdown of the Second Revolt. Little
did she realize that the tortuous and distorted evolution of the
next three centuries would compel a Third Revolt and a Fourth
Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood, ere the
world-movement of labor should come into its own. And little did
she dream that for seven long centuries the tribute of her love to
Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in the heart of the
ancient oak of Wake Robin Lodge.

ANTHONY MEREDITH

Ardis,

November 27, 419 B.O.M.



THE IRON HEEL



CHAPTER I

MY EAGLE


The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples
sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the
sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is
so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless.
It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the
world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm. I strain my
ears, and all my senses, for some betrayal of that impending storm.
Oh, that it may not be premature! That it may not be premature!*


* The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though
he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders. The capture
and secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the spring
of 1932 A.D. Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the revolt,
that his fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or
delay, to carry out his plans. It was after Everhard's execution
that his wife went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the
Sonoma Hills of California.


Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot
cease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that
I am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from
dwelling upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon
to burst forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I
can see, as I have seen in the past,* all the marring and mangling
of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence
from proud bodies and hurled to God. Thus do we poor humans attain
our ends, striving through carnage and destruction to bring lasting
peace and happiness upon the earth.


* Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.


And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I
think of what has been and is no more--my Eagle, beating with
tireless wings the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the
flaming ideal of human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the
great event that is his making, though he is not here to see. He
devoted all the years of his manhood to it, and for it he gave his
life. It is his handiwork. He made it.*


* With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that
Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second
Revolt. And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can
safely say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have
been less calamitous in its outcome than it was.


And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write
of my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons
living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character
cannot be blazoned forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and,
when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not
here to witness to-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built
too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon
shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity. When the word
goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall rise. There has
been nothing like it in the history of the world. The solidarity
of labor is assured, and for the first time will there be an
international revolution wide as the world is wide.*


* The Second Revolt was truly international. It was a colossal
plan--too colossal to be wrought by the genius of one man alone.
Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world, was prepared to rise at
the signal. Germany, Italy, France, and all Australasia were labor
countries--socialist states. They were ready to lend aid to the
revolution. Gallantly they did; and it was for this reason, when
the Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the
united oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being
replaced by oligarchical governments.


You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and
night utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind.
For that matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of
it. He was the soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two
in thought?

As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon his
character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and
suffered sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I
well know; for I have been with him during these twenty anxious
years and I know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite
devotion to the Cause for which, only two months gone, he laid down
his life.

I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard
entered my life--how I first met him, how he grew until I became a
part of him, and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In
this way may you look at him through my eyes and learn him as I
learned him--in all save the things too secret and sweet for me to
tell.

It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of
my father's* at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot
say that my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one
of many at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and
waited for all to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance.
It was "preacher's night," as my father privately called it, and
Ernest was certainly out of place in the midst of the churchmen.


* John Cunningham, Avis Everhard's father, was a professor at the
State University at Berkeley, California. His chosen field was
physics, and in addition he did much original research and was
greatly distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to
science was his studies of the electron and his monumental work on
the "Identification of Matter and Energy," wherein he established,
beyond cavil and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and
the ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been
earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and
other students in the new field of radio-activity.


In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-
made suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In
fact, no ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And
on this night, as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while
the coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-
development, was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a
prize-fighter,* thick and strong. So this was the social
philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father had discovered, was my
thought. And he certainly looked it with those bulging muscles and
that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him--a sort of prodigy,
I thought, a Blind Tom** of the working class.


* In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses of
money. They fought with their hands. When one was beaten into
insensibility or killed, the survivor took the money.

** This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician who
took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era.


And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and
strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes--too boldly,
I thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that
time had strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a
man of my own class would have been almost unforgivable. I know
that I could not avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved
when I passed him on and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a
favorite of mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age, Christ-
like in appearance and goodness, and a scholar as well.

But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to
the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of
nothing, and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms.
"You pleased me," he explained long afterward; "and why should I
not fill my eyes with that which pleases me?" I have said that he
was afraid of nothing. He was a natural aristocrat--and this in
spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats.
He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche* has described,
and in addition he was aflame with democracy.


* Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth,
but who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great
circle of human thought and off into madness.


In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my
unfavorable impression, I forgot all about the working-class
philosopher, though once or twice at table I noticed him--
especially the twinkle in his eye as he listened to the talk first
of one minister and then of another. He has humor, I thought, and
I almost forgave him his clothes. But the time went by, and the
dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to speak, while the
ministers talked interminably about the working class and its
relation to the church, and what the church had done and was doing
for it. I noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest did
not talk. Once father took advantage of a lull and asked him to
say something; but Ernest shrugged his shoulders and with an "I
have nothing to say" went on eating salted almonds.

But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:

"We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that he
can present things from a new point of view that will be
interesting and refreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard."

The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest for
a statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so broadly
tolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And I saw that
Ernest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about him, and I
saw the glint of laughter in his eyes.

"I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy,"
he began, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.

"Go on," they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: "We do not mind the
truth that is in any man. If it is sincere," he amended.

"Then you separate sincerity from truth?" Ernest laughed quickly.

Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, "The best of us may
be mistaken, young man, the best of us."

Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became another man.

"All right, then," he answered; "and let me begin by saying that
you are all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing,
about the working class. Your sociology is as vicious and
worthless as is your method of thinking."

It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at the
first sound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was a
clarion-call that thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused,
shaken alive from monotony and drowsiness.

"What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of
thinking, young man?" Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there
was something unpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.

"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics;
and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other
metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists
in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of
you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own
fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you
live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so
far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.

"Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened
to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the
scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated
the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point
of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the
intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-
man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years
ago."

As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, his
eyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent with
aggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused
people. His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably
made them forget themselves. And they were forgetting themselves
now. Bishop Morehouse was leaning forward and listening intently.
Exasperation and anger were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield.
And others were exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an
amused and superior way. As for myself, I found it most enjoyable.
I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at the
effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty of launching
amongst us.

"Your terms are rather vague," Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. "Just
precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?"

"I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,"
Ernest went on. "Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that
of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can
prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon
anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain
himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your
own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness."

"I do not understand," Bishop Morehouse said. "It seems to me that
all things of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact and
convincing of all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical.
Each and every thought-process of the scientific reasoner is
metaphysical. Surely you will agree with me?"

"As you say, you do not understand," Ernest replied. "The
metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The
scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The
metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons
from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by
himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe."

"Thank God we are not scientists," Dr. Hammerfield murmured
complacently.

"What are you then?" Ernest demanded.

"Philosophers."

"There you go," Ernest laughed. "You have left the real and solid
earth and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine. Pray
come down to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by
philosophy."

"Philosophy is--" (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his throat)--
"something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to such
minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientist
with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy."

Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point
back upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming
brotherliness of face and utterance.

"Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now
make of philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you to
point out error in it or to remain a silent metaphysician.
Philosophy is merely the widest science of all. Its reasoning
method is the same as that of any particular science and of all
particular sciences. And by that same method of reasoning, the
inductive method, philosophy fuses all particular sciences into one
great science. As Spencer says, the data of any particular science
are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy unifies the knowledge
that is contributed by all the sciences. Philosophy is the science
of science, the master science, if you please. How do you like my
definition?"

"Very creditable, very creditable," Dr. Hammerfield muttered
lamely.

But Ernest was merciless.

"Remember," he warned, "my definition is fatal to metaphysics. If
you do not now point out a flaw in my definition, you are
disqualified later on from advancing metaphysical arguments. You
must go through life seeking that flaw and remaining metaphysically
silent until you have found it."

Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was
pained. He was also puzzled. Ernest's sledge-hammer attack
disconcerted him. He was not used to the simple and direct method
of controversy. He looked appealingly around the table, but no one
answered for him. I caught father grinning into his napkin.

"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians," Ernest
said, when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield's discomfiture complete.
"Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond
the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows
for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but
what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They
philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the
heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were
formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about
famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the
scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They
builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires,
while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were
describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the
scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars
and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done
nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the
advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the
ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective
explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations
of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts.
And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time.
Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference
between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god
is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained
facts. That is all."

"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,"
Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a
metaphysician."

Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods
and smiles of approval.

"Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You
refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call
that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by
the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the
Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and
astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's
thought!"

Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:

"Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess
that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew
humanity out of this dark period and on into the illumination of
the succeeding centuries."

"Metaphysics had nothing to do with it," Ernest retorted.

"What?" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "It was not the thinking and the
speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?"

"Ah, my dear sir," Ernest smiled, "I thought you were disqualified.
You have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of
philosophy. You are now on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the
way of the metaphysicians, and I forgive you. No, I repeat,
metaphysics had nothing to do with it. Bread and butter, silks and
jewels, dollars and cents, and, incidentally, the closing up of the
overland trade-routes to India, were the things that caused the
voyages of discovery. With the fall of Constantinople, in 1453,
the Turks blocked the way of the caravans to India. The traders of
Europe had to find another route. Here was the original cause for
the voyages of discovery. Columbus sailed to find a new route to
the Indies. It is so stated in all the history books.
Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and
form of the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering."

Dr. Hammerfield snorted.

"You do not agree with me?" Ernest queried. "Then wherein am I
wrong?"

"I can only reaffirm my position," Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly.
"It is too long a story to enter into now."

"No story is too long for the scientist," Ernest said sweetly.
"That is why the scientist gets to places. That is why he got to
America."

I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me to
recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my
coming to know Ernest Everhard.

Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,
especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic
philosophers, shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he
checked them back to facts. "The fact, man, the irrefragable
fact!" he would proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought one of
them a cropper. He bristled with facts. He tripped them up with
facts, ambuscaded them with facts, bombarded them with broadsides
of facts.

"You seem to worship at the shrine of fact," Dr. Hammerfield
taunted him.

"There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet," Dr.
Ballingford paraphrased.

Ernest smilingly acquiesced.

"I'm like the man from Texas," he said. And, on being solicited,
he explained. "You see, the man from Missouri always says, "You've
got to show me." But the man from Texas says, "You've got to put
it in my hand." From which it is apparent that he is no
metaphysician."

Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysical
philosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfield
suddenly demanded:

"What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain
what has so long puzzled wiser heads than yours?"

"Certainly," Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them.
"The wise heads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they went
up into the air after it. Had they remained on the solid earth,
they would have found it easily enough--ay, they would have found
that they themselves were precisely testing truth with every
practical act and thought of their lives."

"The test, the test," Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. "Never
mind the preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long--the
test of truth. Give it us, and we will be as gods."

There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and
manner that secretly pleased most of them at the table, though it
seemed to bother Bishop Morehouse.

"Dr. Jordan* has stated it very clearly," Ernest said. "His test
of truth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?'"


* A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries of the Christian Era. He was president of the Stanford
University, a private benefaction of the times.


"Pish!" Dr. Hammerfield sneered. "You have not taken Bishop
Berkeley* into account. He has never been answered."


* An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of that
time with his denial of the existence of matter, but whose clever
argument was finally demolished when the new empiric facts of
science were philosophically generalized.


"The noblest metaphysician of them all," Ernest laughed. "But your
example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his
metaphysics didn't work."

Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he
had caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.

"Young man," he trumpeted, "that statement is on a par with all you
have uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption."

"I am quite crushed," Ernest murmured meekly. "Only I don't know
what hit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor."

"I will, I will," Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. "How do you know?
You do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics
did not work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always
worked."

"I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work,
because--" Ernest paused calmly for a moment. "Because Berkeley
made an invariable practice of going through doors instead of
walls. Because he trusted his life to solid bread and butter and
roast beef. Because he shaved himself with a razor that worked
when it removed the hair from his face."

"But those are actual things!" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "Metaphysics
is of the mind."

"And they work--in the mind?" Ernest queried softly.

The other nodded.

"And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle-
-in the mind," Ernest went on reflectively. "And a blubber-eating,
fur-clad god can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no
proofs to the contrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live
in the mind?"

"My mind to me a kingdom is," was the answer.

"That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you
come back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake
happens along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in
an earthquake that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an
immaterial brick?"

Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot up
to his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened
that Ernest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr.
Hammerfield had been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake* by a
falling chimney. Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.


* The Great Earthquake of 1906 A.D. that destroyed San Francisco.


"Well?" Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. "Proofs to
the contrary?"

And in the silence he asked again, "Well?" Then he added, "Still
well, but not so well, that argument of yours."

But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged
on in new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the
ministers. When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he
told them fundamental truths about the working class that they did
not know, and challenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts,
always facts, checked their excursions into the air, and brought
them back to the solid earth and its facts.

How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-
note in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash
that stung and stung again. And he was merciless. He took no
quarter,* and gave none. I can never forget the flaying he gave
them at the end:


* This figure arises from the customs of the times. When, among
men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a beaten man
threw down his weapons, it was at the option of the victor to slay
him or spare him.


"You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or
ignorant statement, that you do not know the working class. But
you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about
the working class? You do not live in the same locality with the
working class. You herd with the capitalist class in another
locality. And why not? It is the capitalist class that pays you,
that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you
are wearing to-night. And in return you preach to your employers
the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them;
and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do
not menace the established order of society."

Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.

"Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity," Ernest continued. "You
are sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your
strength and your value--to the capitalist class. But should you
change your belief to something that menaces the established order,
your preaching would be unacceptable to your employers, and you
would be discharged. Every little while some one or another of you
is so discharged.* Am I not right?"


* During this period there were many ministers cast out of the
church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially were they
cast out when their preaching became tainted with socialism.


This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with
the exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

"It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign."

"Which is another way of saying when their thinking is
unacceptable," Ernest answered, and then went on. "So I say to
you, go ahead and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake
leave the working class alone. You belong in the enemy's camp.
You have nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are
soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs
are round with the plenitude of eating." (Here Dr. Ballingford
winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said
he had not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds are filled
with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You
are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the
men of the Swiss Guard.* Be true to your salt and your hire;
guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do
not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders. You
cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has
done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to
do without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better
without you than with you."


* The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of France
that was beheaded by his people.



CHAPTER II

CHALLENGES.


After the guests had gone, father threw himself into a chair and
gave vent to roars of Gargantuan laughter. Not since the death of
my mother had I known him to laugh so heartily.

I'll wager Dr. Hammerfield was never up against anything like it in
his life," he laughed. "'The courtesies of ecclesiastical
controversy!' Did you notice how he began like a lamb--Everhard, I
mean, and how quickly he became a roaring lion? He has a
splendidly disciplined mind. He would have made a good scientist
if his energies had been directed that way."

I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in Ernest
Everhard. It was not alone what he had said and how he had said
it, but it was the man himself. I had never met a man like him. I
suppose that was why, in spite of my twenty-four years, I had not
married. I liked him; I had to confess it to myself. And my like
for him was founded on things beyond intellect and argument.
Regardless of his bulging muscles and prize-fighter's throat, he
impressed me as an ingenuous boy. I felt that under the guise of
an intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and sensitive spirit.
I sensed this, in ways I knew not, save that they were my woman's
intuitions.

There was something in that clarion-call of his that went to my
heart. It still rang in my ears, and I felt that I should like to
hear it again--and to see again that glint of laughter in his eyes
that belied the impassioned seriousness of his face. And there
were further reaches of vague and indeterminate feelings that
stirred in me. I almost loved him then, though I am confident, had
I never seen him again, that the vague feelings would have passed
away and that I should easily have forgotten him.

But I was not destined never to see him again. My father's new-
born interest in sociology and the dinner parties he gave would not
permit. Father was not a sociologist. His marriage with my mother
had been very happy, and in the researches of his own science,
physics, he had been very happy. But when mother died, his own
work could not fill the emptiness. At first, in a mild way, he had
dabbled in philosophy; then, becoming interested, he had drifted on
into economics and sociology. He had a strong sense of justice,
and he soon became fired with a passion to redress wrong. It was
with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a new interest in life,
though I little dreamed what the outcome would be. With the
enthusiasm of a boy he plunged excitedly into these new pursuits,
regardless of whither they led him.

He had been used always to the laboratory, and so it was that he
turned the dining room into a sociological laboratory. Here came
to dinner all sorts and conditions of men,--scientists,
politicians, bankers, merchants, professors, labor leaders,
socialists, and anarchists. He stirred them to discussion, and
analyzed their thoughts of life and society.

He had met Ernest shortly prior to the "preacher's night." And
after the guests were gone, I learned how he had met him, passing
down a street at night and stopping to listen to a man on a soap-
box who was addressing a crowd of workingmen. The man on the box
was Ernest. Not that he was a mere soap-box orator. He stood high
in the councils of the socialist party, was one of the leaders, and
was the acknowledged leader in the philosophy of socialism. But he
had a certain clear way of stating the abstruse in simple language,
was a born expositor and teacher, and was not above the soap-box as
a means of interpreting economics to the workingmen.

My father stopped to listen, became interested, effected a meeting,
and, after quite an acquaintance, invited him to the ministers'
dinner. It was after the dinner that father told me what little he
knew about him. He had been born in the working class, though he
was a descendant of the old line of Everhards that for over two
hundred years had lived in America.* At ten years of age he had
gone to work in the mills, and later he served his apprenticeship
and became a horseshoer. He was self-educated, had taught himself
German and French, and at that time was earning a meagre living by
translating scientific and philosophical works for a struggling
socialist publishing house in Chicago. Also, his earnings were
added to by the royalties from the small sales of his own economic
and philosophic works.


* The distinction between being native born and foreign born was
sharp and invidious in those days.


This much I learned of him before I went to bed, and I lay long
awake, listening in memory to the sound of his voice. I grew
frightened at my thoughts. He was so unlike the men of my own
class, so alien and so strong. His masterfulness delighted me and
terrified me, for my fancies wantonly roved until I found myself
considering him as a lover, as a husband. I had always heard that
the strength of men was an irresistible attraction to women; but he
was too strong. "No! no!" I cried out. "It is impossible,
absurd!" And on the morrow I awoke to find in myself a longing to
see him again. I wanted to see him mastering men in discussion,
the war-note in his voice; to see him, in all his certitude and
strength, shattering their complacency, shaking them out of their
ruts of thinking. What if he did swashbuckle? To use his own
phrase, "it worked," it produced effects. And, besides, his
swashbuckling was a fine thing to see. It stirred one like the
onset of battle.

Several days passed during which I read Ernest's books, borrowed
from my father. His written word was as his spoken word, clear and
convincing. It was its absolute simplicity that convinced even
while one continued to doubt. He had the gift of lucidity. He was
the perfect expositor. Yet, in spite of his style, there was much
that I did not like. He laid too great stress on what he called
the class struggle, the antagonism between labor and capital, the
conflict of interest.

Father reported with glee Dr. Hammerfield's judgment of Ernest,
which was to the effect that he was "an insolent young puppy, made
bumptious by a little and very inadequate learning." Also, Dr.
Hammerfield declined to meet Ernest again.

But Bishop Morehouse turned out to have become interested in
Ernest, and was anxious for another meeting. "A strong young man,"
he said; "and very much alive, very much alive. But he is too
sure, too sure."

Ernest came one afternoon with father. The Bishop had already
arrived, and we were having tea on the veranda. Ernest's continued
presence in Berkeley, by the way, was accounted for by the fact
that he was taking special courses in biology at the university,
and also that he was hard at work on a new book entitled
"Philosophy and Revolution."*


* This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three
centuries of the Iron Heel. There are several copies of various
editions in the National Library of Ardis.


The veranda seemed suddenly to have become small when Ernest
arrived. Not that he was so very large--he stood only five feet
nine inches; but that he seemed to radiate an atmosphere of
largeness. As he stopped to meet me, he betrayed a certain slight
awkwardness that was strangely at variance with his bold-looking
eyes and his firm, sure hand that clasped for a moment in greeting.
And in that moment his eyes were just as steady and sure. There
seemed a question in them this time, and as before he looked at me
over long.

"I have been reading your 'Working-class Philosophy,'" I said, and
his eyes lighted in a pleased way.

"Of course," he answered, "you took into consideration the audience
to which it was addressed."

"I did, and it is because I did that I have a quarrel with you," I
challenged.

"I, too, have a quarrel with you, Mr. Everhard," Bishop Morehouse
said.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders whimsically and accepted a cup of
tea.

The Bishop bowed and gave me precedence.

"You foment class hatred," I said. "I consider it wrong and
criminal to appeal to all that is narrow and brutal in the working
class. Class hatred is anti-social, and, it seems to me, anti-
socialistic."

"Not guilty," he answered. "Class hatred is neither in the text
nor in the spirit of anything I have every written."

"Oh!" I cried reproachfully, and reached for his book and opened
it.

He sipped his tea and smiled at me while I ran over the pages.

"Page one hundred and thirty-two," I read aloud: "'The class
struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social
development between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes.'"

I looked at him triumphantly.

"No mention there of class hatred," he smiled back.

"But," I answered, "you say 'class struggle.'"

"A different thing from class hatred," he replied. "And, believe
me, we foment no hatred. We say that the class struggle is a law
of social development. We are not responsible for it. We do not
make the class struggle. We merely explain it, as Newton explained
gravitation. We explain the nature of the conflict of interest
that produces the class struggle."

"But there should be no conflict of interest!" I cried.

"I agree with you heartily," he answered. "That is what we
socialists are trying to bring about,--the abolition of the
conflict of interest. Pardon me. Let me read an extract." He
took his book and turned back several pages. "Page one hundred and
twenty-six: 'The cycle of class struggles which began with the
dissolution of rude, tribal communism and the rise of private
property will end with the passing of private property in the means
of social existence.'"

"But I disagree with you," the Bishop interposed, his pale, ascetic
face betraying by a faint glow the intensity of his feelings.
"Your premise is wrong. There is no such thing as a conflict of
interest between labor and capital--or, rather, there ought not to
be."

"Thank you," Ernest said gravely. "By that last statement you have
given me back my premise."

"But why should there be a conflict?" the Bishop demanded warmly.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "Because we are so made, I guess."

"But we are not so made!" cried the other.

"Are you discussing the ideal man?" Ernest asked, "--unselfish and
godlike, and so few in numbers as to be practically non-existent,
or are you discussing the common and ordinary average man?"

"The common and ordinary man," was the answer.

"Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?"

Bishop Morehouse nodded.

"And petty and selfish?"

Again he nodded.

"Watch out!" Ernest warned. "I said 'selfish.'"

"The average man IS selfish," the Bishop affirmed valiantly.

"Wants all he can get?"

"Wants all he can get--true but deplorable."

"Then I've got you." Ernest's jaw snapped like a trap. "Let me
show you. Here is a man who works on the street railways."

"He couldn't work if it weren't for capital," the Bishop
interrupted.

"True, and you will grant that capital would perish if there were
no labor to earn the dividends."

The Bishop was silent.

"Won't you?" Ernest insisted.

The Bishop nodded.

"Then our statements cancel each other," Ernest said in a matter-
of-fact tone, "and we are where we were. Now to begin again. The
workingmen on the street railway furnish the labor. The
stockholders furnish the capital. By the joint effort of the
workingmen and the capital, money is earned.* They divide between
them this money that is earned. Capital's share is called
'dividends.' Labor's share is called 'wages.'"


* In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the
means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon
the public.


"Very good," the Bishop interposed. "And there is no reason that
the division should not be amicable."

"You have already forgotten what we had agreed upon," Ernest
replied. "We agreed that the average man is selfish. He is the
man that is. You have gone up in the air and are arranging a
division between the kind of men that ought to be but are not. But
to return to the earth, the workingman, being selfish, wants all he
can get in the division. The capitalist, being selfish, wants all
he can get in the division. When there is only so much of the same
thing, and when two men want all they can get of the same thing,
there is a conflict of interest between labor and capital. And it
is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as workingmen and
capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over the division.
If you were in San Francisco this afternoon, you'd have to walk.
There isn't a street car running."

"Another strike?"* the Bishop queried with alarm.


* These quarrels were very common in those irrational and anarchic
times. Sometimes the laborers refused to work. Sometimes the
capitalists refused to let the laborers work. In the violence and
turbulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and
many lives lost. All this is inconceivable to us--as inconceivable
as another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the
lower classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled
with their wives.


"Yes, they're quarrelling over the division of the earnings of the
street railways."

Bishop Morehouse became excited.

"It is wrong!" he cried. "It is so short-sighted on the part of
the workingmen. How can they hope to keep our sympathy--"

"When we are compelled to walk," Ernest said slyly.

But Bishop Morehouse ignored him and went on:

"Their outlook is too narrow. Men should be men, not brutes.
There will be violence and murder now, and sorrowing widows and
orphans. Capital and labor should be friends. They should work
hand in hand and to their mutual benefit."

"Ah, now you are up in the air again," Ernest remarked dryly.
"Come back to earth. Remember, we agreed that the average man is
selfish."

"But he ought not to be!" the Bishop cried.

"And there I agree with you," was Ernest's rejoinder. "He ought
not to be selfish, but he will continue to be selfish as long as he
lives in a social system that is based on pig-ethics."

The Bishop was aghast, and my father chuckled.

"Yes, pig-ethics," Ernest went on remorselessly. "That is the
meaning of the capitalist system. And that is what your church is
standing for, what you are preaching for every time you get up in
the pulpit. Pig-ethics! There is no other name for it."

Bishop Morehouse turned appealingly to my father, but he laughed
and nodded his head.

"I'm afraid Mr. Everhard is right," he said. "LAISSEZ-FAIRE, the
let-alone policy of each for himself and devil take the hindmost.
As Mr. Everhard said the other night, the function you churchmen
perform is to maintain the established order of society, and
society is established on that foundation."

"But that is not the teaching of Christ!" cried the Bishop.

"The Church is not teaching Christ these days," Ernest put in
quickly. "That is why the workingmen will have nothing to do with
the Church. The Church condones the frightful brutality and
savagery with which the capitalist class treats the working class."

"The Church does not condone it," the Bishop objected.

"The Church does not protest against it," Ernest replied. "And in
so far as the Church does not protest, it condones, for remember
the Church is supported by the capitalist class."

"I had not looked at it in that light," the Bishop said naively.
"You must be wrong. I know that there is much that is sad and
wicked in this world. I know that the Church has lost the--what
you call the proletariat."*


* Proletariat: Derived originally from the Latin PROLETARII, the
name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of
value to the state only as the rearers of offspring (PROLES); in
other words, they were of no importance either for wealth, or
position, or exceptional ability.


"You never had the proletariat," Ernest cried. "The proletariat
has grown up outside the Church and without the Church."

"I do not follow you," the Bishop said faintly.

"Then let me explain. With the introduction of machinery and the
factory system in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the
great mass of the working people was separated from the land. The
old system of labor was broken down. The working people were
driven from their villages and herded in factory towns. The
mothers and children were put to work at the new machines. Family
life ceased. The conditions were frightful. It is a tale of
blood."

"I know, I know," Bishop Morehouse interrupted with an agonized
expression on his face. "It was terrible. But it occurred a
century and a half ago."

"And there, a century and a half ago, originated the modern
proletariat," Ernest continued. "And the Church ignored it. While
a slaughter-house was made of the nation by the capitalist, the
Church was dumb. It did not protest, as to-day it does not
protest. As Austin Lewis* says, speaking of that time, those to
whom the command 'Feed my lambs' had been given, saw those lambs
sold into slavery and worked to death without a protest.** The
Church was dumb, then, and before I go on I want you either flatly
to agree with me or flatly to disagree with me. Was the Church
dumb then?"


* Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in
the fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a
writer of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one
of the Socialist leaders of the times.

** There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of
the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter
half of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era. In such
industrial hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.


Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to
this fierce "infighting," as Ernest called it.

"The history of the eighteenth century is written," Ernest
prompted. "If the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb
in the books."

"I am afraid the Church was dumb," the Bishop confessed.

"And the Church is dumb to-day."

"There I disagree," said the Bishop.

Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the
challenge.

"All right," he said. "Let us see. In Chicago there are women who
toil all the week for ninety cents. Has the Church protested?"

"This is news to me," was the answer. "Ninety cents per week! It
is horrible!"

"Has the Church protested?" Ernest insisted.

"The Church does not know." The Bishop was struggling hard.

"Yet the command to the Church was, 'Feed my lambs,'" Ernest
sneered. And then, the next moment, "Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But
can you wonder that we lose patience with you? When have you
protested to your capitalistic congregations at the working of
children in the Southern cotton mills?* Children, six and seven
years of age, working every night at twelve-hour shifts? They
never see the blessed sunshine. They die like flies. The
dividends are paid out of their blood. And out of the dividends
magnificent churches are builded in New England, wherein your kind
preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied recipients
of those dividends."


* Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the Southern
Church's outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is
known as the "War of the Rebellion." Several such illustrations,
culled from the documents of the times, are here appended. In 1835
A.D., the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved
that: "slavery is recognized in both the Old and the New
Testaments, and is not condemned by the authority of God." The
Charleston Baptist Association issued the following, in an address,
in 1835 A.D.: "The right of masters to dispose of the time of their
slaves has been distinctly recognized by the Creator of all things,
who is surely at liberty to vest the right of property over any
object whomsoever He pleases." The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of
Divinity and professor in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of
Virginia, wrote: "Extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the
right of property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to
that right. The right to buy and sell is clearly stated. Upon the
whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish policy instituted by God
himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of mankind in all
ages, or the injunctions of the New Testament and the moral law, we
are brought to the conclusion that slavery is not immoral. Having
established the point that the first African slaves were legally
brought into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage
follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the
slavery that exists in America was founded in right."

It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have been
struck by the Church a generation or so later in relation to the
defence of capitalistic property. In the great museum at Asgard
there is a book entitled "Essays in Application," written by Henry
van Dyke. The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era.
From what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a churchman.
The book is a good example of what Everhard would have called
bourgeois thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of
the Charleston Baptist Association quoted above, and the following
utterance of Van Dyke seventy years later: "The Bible teaches that
God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His
own good pleasure, conformably to general laws."


"I did not know," the Bishop murmured faintly. His face was pale,
and he seemed suffering from nausea.

"Then you have not protested?"

The Bishop shook his head.

"Then the Church is dumb to-day, as it was in the eighteenth
century?"

The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore to press the
point.

"And do not forget, whenever a churchman does protest, that he is
discharged."

"I hardly think that is fair," was the objection.

"Will you protest?" Ernest demanded.

"Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own community, and I
will protest."

"I'll show you," Ernest said quietly. "I am at your disposal. I
will take you on a journey through hell."

"And I shall protest." The Bishop straightened himself in his
chair, and over his gentle face spread the harshness of the
warrior. "The Church shall not be dumb!"

"You will be discharged," was the warning.

"I shall prove the contrary," was the retort. "I shall prove, if
what you say is so, that the Church has erred through ignorance.
And, furthermore, I hold that whatever is horrible in industrial
society is due to the ignorance of the capitalist class. It will
mend all that is wrong as soon as it receives the message. And
this message it shall be the duty of the Church to deliver."

Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was driven to the
Bishop's defence.

"Remember," I said, "you see but one side of the shield. There is
much good in us, though you give us credit for no good at all.
Bishop Morehouse is right. The industrial wrong, terrible as you
say it is, is due to ignorance. The divisions of society have
become too widely separated."

"The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the capitalist
class," he answered; and in that moment I hated him.

"You do not know us," I answered. "We are not brutal and savage."

"Prove it," he challenged.

"How can I prove it . . . to you?" I was growing angry.

He shook his head. "I do not ask you to prove it to me. I ask you
to prove it to yourself."

"I know," I said.

"You know nothing," was his rude reply.

"There, there, children," father said soothingly.

"I don't care--" I began indignantly, but Ernest interrupted.

"I understand you have money, or your father has, which is the same
thing--money invested in the Sierra Mills."

"What has that to do with it?" I cried.

"Nothing much," he began slowly, "except that the gown you wear is
stained with blood. The food you eat is a bloody stew. The blood
of little children and of strong men is dripping from your very
roof-beams. I can close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop,
drip, drop, all about me."

And suiting the action to the words, he closed his eyes and leaned
back in his chair. I burst into tears of mortification and hurt
vanity. I had never been so brutally treated in my life. Both the
Bishop and my father were embarrassed and perturbed. They tried to
lead the conversation away into easier channels; but Ernest opened
his eyes, looked at me, and waved them aside. His mouth was stern,
and his eyes too; and in the latter there was no glint of laughter.
What he was about to say, what terrible castigation he was going to
give me, I never knew; for at that moment a man, passing along the
sidewalk, stopped and glanced in at us. He was a large man, poorly
dressed, and on his back was a great load of rattan and bamboo
stands, chairs, and screens. He looked at the house as if debating
whether or not he should come in and try to sell some of his wares.

"That man's name is Jackson," Ernest said.

"With that strong body of his he should be at work, and not
peddling,"* I answered curtly.


* In that day there were many thousands of these poor merchants
called PEDLERS. They carried their whole stock in trade from door
to door. It was a most wasteful expenditure of energy.
Distribution was as confused and irrational as the whole general
system of society.


"Notice the sleeve of his left arm," Ernest said gently.

I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.

"It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from
your roof-beams," Ernest said with continued gentleness. "He lost
his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you
turned him out on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the
superintendent and the officials that you and the other
stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident.
It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The
toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the
small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have
smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint,
and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to
the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime.
They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working
many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap.
They made his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine
caught him. He had a wife and three children."

"And what did the company do for him?" I asked.

"Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully
fought the damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital.
The company employs very efficient lawyers, you know."

"You have not told the whole story," I said with conviction. "Or
else you do not know the whole story. Maybe the man was insolent."

"Insolent! Ha! ha!" His laughter was Mephistophelian. "Great
God! Insolent! And with his arm chewed off! Nevertheless he was
a meek and lowly servant, and there is no record of his having been
insolent."

"But the courts," I urged. "The case would not have been decided
against him had there been no more to the affair than you have
mentioned."

"Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company. He is a shrewd
lawyer." Ernest looked at me intently for a moment, then went on.
"I'll tell you what you do, Miss Cunningham. You investigate
Jackson's case."

"I had already determined to," I said coldly.

"All right," he beamed good-naturedly, "and I'll tell you where to
find him. But I tremble for you when I think of all you are to
prove by Jackson's arm."

And so it came about that both the Bishop and I accepted Ernest's
challenges. They went away together, leaving me smarting with a
sense of injustice that had been done me and my class. The man was
a beast. I hated him, then, and consoled myself with the thought
that his behavior was what was to be expected from a man of the
working class.



CHAPTER III

JACKSON'S ARM.


Little did I dream the fateful part Jackson's arm was to play in my
life. Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him out. I
found him in a crazy, ramshackle* house down near the bay on the
edge of the marsh. Pools of stagnant water stood around the house,
their surfaces covered with a green and putrid-looking scum, while
the stench that arose from them was intolerable.


* An adjective descriptive of ruined and dilapidated houses in
which great numbers of the working people found shelter in those
days. They invariably paid rent, and, considering the value of
such houses, enormous rent, to the landlords.


I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been described. He
was making some sort of rattan-work, and he toiled on stolidly
while I talked with him. But in spite of his meekness and
lowliness, I fancied I caught the first note of a nascent
bitterness in him when he said:

"They might a-given me a job as watchman,* anyway."


* In those days thievery was incredibly prevalent. Everybody stole
property from everybody else. The lords of society stole legally
or else legalized their stealing, while the poorer classes stole
illegally. Nothing was safe unless guarded. Enormous numbers of
men were employed as watchmen to protect property. The houses of
the well-to-do were a combination of safe deposit vault and
fortress. The appropriation of the personal belongings of others
by our own children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary
survival of the theft-characteristic that in those early times was
universal.


I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the
deftness with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his
stupidity. This suggested an idea to me.

"How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?" I
asked.

He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head.
"I don't know. It just happened."

"Carelessness?" I prompted.

"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin'
overtime, an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen
years in them mills, an' I've took notice that most of the
accidents happens just before whistle-blow.* I'm willin' to bet
that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in
all the rest of the day. A man ain't so quick after workin' steady
for hours. I've seen too many of 'em cut up an' gouged an' chawed
not to know."


* The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.


"Many of them?" I queried.

"Hundreds an' hundreds, an' children, too."

With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's story of his
accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked
him if he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook
his head.

"I chucked off the belt with my right hand," he said, "an' made a
reach for the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the belt
was off. I thought my right hand had done it--only it didn't. I
reached quick, and the belt wasn't all the way off. And then my
arm was chewed off."

"It must have been painful," I said sympathetically.

"The crunchin' of the bones wasn't nice," was his answer.

His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one
thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any
damages. He had a feeling that the testimony of the foremen and
the superintendent had brought about the adverse decision of the
court. Their testimony, as he put it, "wasn't what it ought to
have ben." And to them I resolved to go.

One thing was plain, Jackson's situation was wretched. His wife
was in ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work
and peddling, sufficient food for the family. He was back in his
rent, and the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in
the mills.

"They might a-given me that watchman's job," were his last words as
I went away.

By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson's case,
and the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had
testified, I began to feel that there was something after all in
Ernest's contention.

He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight
of him I did not wonder that Jackson's case had been lost. My
first thought was that it had served Jackson right for getting such
a lawyer. But the next moment two of Ernest's statements came
flashing into my consciousness: "The company employs very efficient
lawyers" and "Colonel Ingram is a shrewd lawyer." I did some rapid
thinking. It dawned upon me that of course the company could
afford finer legal talent than could a workingman like Jackson.
But this was merely a minor detail. There was some very good
reason, I was sure, why Jackson's case had gone against him.

"Why did you lose the case?" I asked.

The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it
in my heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to
whine. I do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man beaten
at birth. He whined about the testimony. The witnesses had given
only the evidence that helped the other side. Not one word could
he get out of them that would have helped Jackson. They knew which
side their bread was buttered on. Jackson was a fool. He had been
brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram. Colonel Ingram was
brilliant at cross-examination. He had made Jackson answer
damaging questions.

"How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his
side?" I demanded.

"What's right got to do with it?" he demanded back. "You see all
those books." He moved his hand over the array of volumes on the
walls of his tiny office. "All my reading and studying of them has
taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask
any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right. But
you go to those books to learn . . . law."

"Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side and
yet was beaten?" I queried tentatively. "Do you mean to tell me
that there is no justice in Judge Caldwell's court?"

The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then the belligerence
faded out of his face.

"I hadn't a fair chance," he began whining again. "They made a
fool out of Jackson and out of me, too. What chance had I?
Colonel Ingram is a great lawyer. If he wasn't great, would he
have charge of the law business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston
Land Syndicate, of the Berkeley Consolidated, of the Oakland, San
Leandro, and Pleasanton Electric? He's a corporation lawyer, and
corporation lawyers are not paid for being fools.* What do you
think the Sierra Mills alone give him twenty thousand dollars a
year for? Because he's worth twenty thousand dollars a year to
them, that's what for. I'm not worth that much. If I was, I
wouldn't be on the outside, starving and taking cases like
Jackson's. What do you think I'd have got if I'd won Jackson's
case?"


* The function of the corporation lawyer was to serve, by corrupt
methods, the money-grabbing propensities of the corporations. It
is on record that Theodore Roosevelt, at that time President of the
United States, said in 1905 A.D., in his address at Harvard
Commencement: "We all know that, as things actually are, many of
the most influential and most highly remunerated members of the Bar
in every centre of wealth, make it their special task to work out
bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients,
individual or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to
regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great
wealth."


"You'd have robbed him, most probably," I answered.

"Of course I would," he cried angrily. "I've got to live, haven't
I?"*


* A typical illustration of the internecine strife that permeated
all society. Men preyed upon one another like ravening wolves.
The big wolves ate the little wolves, and in the social pack
Jackson was one of the least of the little wolves.


"He has a wife and children," I chided.

"So have I a wife and children," he retorted. "And there's not a
soul in this world except myself that cares whether they starve or
not."

His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed me a
small photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside the
case.

"There they are. Look at them. We've had a hard time, a hard
time. I had hoped to send them away to the country if I'd won
Jackson's case. They're not healthy here, but I can't afford to
send them away."

When I started to leave, he dropped back into his whine.

"I hadn't the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram and Judge Caldwell
are pretty friendly. I'm not saying that if I'd got the right kind
of testimony out of their witnesses on cross-examination, that
friendship would have decided the case. And yet I must say that
Judge Caldwell did a whole lot to prevent my getting that very
testimony. Why, Judge Caldwell and Colonel Ingram belong to the
same lodge and the same club. They live in the same neighborhood--
one I can't afford. And their wives are always in and out of each
other's houses. They're always having whist parties and such
things back and forth."

"And yet you think Jackson had the right of it?" I asked, pausing
for the moment on the threshold.

"I don't think; I know it," was his answer. "And at first I
thought he had some show, too. But I didn't tell my wife. I
didn't want to disappoint her. She had her heart set on a trip to
the country hard enough as it was."

"Why did you not call attention to the fact that Jackson was trying
to save the machinery from being injured?" I asked Peter Donnelly,
one of the foremen who had testified at the trial.

He pondered a long time before replying. Then he cast an anxious
look about him and said:

"Because I've a good wife an' three of the sweetest children ye
ever laid eyes on, that's why."

"I do not understand," I said.

"In other words, because it wouldn't a-ben healthy," he answered.

"You mean--" I began.

But he interrupted passionately.

"I mean what I said. It's long years I've worked in the mills.
I began as a little lad on the spindles. I worked up ever since.
It's by hard work I got to my present exalted position. I'm a
foreman, if you please. An' I doubt me if there's a man in the
mills that'd put out a hand to drag me from drownin'. I used to
belong to the union. But I've stayed by the company through two
strikes. They called me 'scab.' There's not a man among 'em to-
day to take a drink with me if I asked him. D'ye see the scars on
me head where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain't a child
at the spindles but what would curse me name. Me only friend is
the company. It's not me duty, but me bread an' butter an' the
life of me children to stand by the mills. That's why."

"Was Jackson to blame?" I asked.

"He should a-got the damages. He was a good worker an' never made
trouble."

"Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole truth, as you had
sworn to do?"

He shook his head.

"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" I said
solemnly.

Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted it, not to me, but
to heaven.

"I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell for them
children of mine," was his answer.

Henry Dallas, the superintendent, was a vulpine-faced creature who
regarded me insolently and refused to talk. Not a word could I get
from him concerning the trial and his testimony. But with the
other foreman I had better luck. James Smith was a hard-faced man,
and my heart sank as I encountered him. He, too, gave me the
impression that he was not a free agent, as we talked I began to
see that he was mentally superior to the average of his kind. He
agreed with Peter Donnelly that Jackson should have got damages,
and he went farther and called the action heartless and cold-
blooded that had turned the worker adrift after he had been made
helpless by the accident. Also, he explained that there were many
accidents in the mills, and that the company's policy was to fight
to the bitter end all consequent damage suits.

"It means hundreds of thousands a year to the stockholders," he
said; and as he spoke I remembered the last dividend that had been
paid my father, and the pretty gown for me and the books for him
that had been bought out of that dividend. I remembered Ernest's
charge that my gown was stained with blood, and my flesh began to
crawl underneath my garments.

"When you testified at the trial, you didn't point out that Jackson
received his accident through trying to save the machinery from
damage?" I said.

"No, I did not," was the answer, and his mouth set bitterly. "I
testified to the effect that Jackson injured himself by neglect and
carelessness, and that the company was not in any way to blame or
liable."

"Was it carelessness?" I asked.

"Call it that, or anything you want to call it. The fact is, a man
gets tired after he's been working for hours."

I was becoming interested in the man. He certainly was of a
superior kind.

"You are better educated than most workingmen," I said.

"I went through high school," he replied. "I worked my way through
doing janitor-work. I wanted to go through the university. But my
father died, and I came to work in the mills.

"I wanted to become a naturalist," he explained shyly, as though
confessing a weakness. "I love animals. But I came to work in the
mills. When I was promoted to foreman I got married, then the
family came, and . . . well, I wasn't my own boss any more."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"I was explaining why I testified at the trial the way I did--why I
followed instructions."

"Whose instructions?"

"Colonel Ingram. He outlined the evidence I was to give."

"And it lost Jackson's case for him."

He nodded, and the blood began to rise darkly in his face.

"And Jackson had a wife and two children dependent on him."

"I know," he said quietly, though his face was growing darker.

"Tell me," I went on, "was it easy to make yourself over from what
you were, say in high school, to the man you must have become to do
such a thing at the trial?"

The suddenness of his outburst startled and frightened me. He
ripped* out a savage oath, and clenched his fist as though about to
strike me.


* It is interesting to note the virilities of language that were
common speech in that day, as indicative of the life, 'red of claw
and fang,' that was then lived. Reference is here made, of course,
not to the oath of Smith, but to the verb ripped used by Avis
Everhard.


"I beg your pardon," he said the next moment. "No, it was not
easy. And now I guess you can go away. You've got all you wanted
out of me. But let me tell you this before you go. It won't do
you any good to repeat anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there
are no witnesses. I'll deny every word of it; and if I have to,
I'll do it under oath on the witness stand."

After my interview with Smith I went to my father's office in the
Chemistry Building and there encountered Ernest. It was quite
unexpected, but he met me with his bold eyes and firm hand-clasp,
and with that curious blend of his awkwardness and ease. It was as
though our last stormy meeting was forgotten; but I was not in the
mood to have it forgotten.

"I have been looking up Jackson's case," I said abruptly.

He was all interested attention, and waited for me to go on, though
I could see in his eyes the certitude that my convictions had been
shaken.

"He seems to have been badly treated," I confessed. "I--I--think
some of his blood is dripping from our roof-beams."

"Of course," he answered. "If Jackson and all his fellows were
treated mercifully, the dividends would not be so large."

"I shall never be able to take pleasure in pretty gowns again," I
added.

I felt humble and contrite, and was aware of a sweet feeling that
Ernest was a sort of father confessor. Then, as ever after, his
strength appealed to me. It seemed to radiate a promise of peace
and protection.

"Nor will you be able to take pleasure in sackcloth," he said
gravely. "There are the jute mills, you know, and the same thing
goes on there. It goes on everywhere. Our boasted civilization is
based upon blood, soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of
us can escape the scarlet stain. The men you talked with--who were
they?"

I told him all that had taken place.

"And not one of them was a free agent," he said. "They were all
tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and
the tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their
children--always the young life that it is their instinct to
protect. This instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess.
My father! He lied, he stole, he did all sorts of dishonorable
things to put bread into my mouth and into the mouths of my
brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine,
and it stamped his life out, worked him to death."

"But you," I interjected. "You are surely a free agent."

"Not wholly," he replied. "I am not tied by my heartstrings. I am
often thankful that I have no children, and I dearly love children.
Yet if I married I should not dare to have any."

"That surely is bad doctrine," I cried.

"I know it is," he said sadly. "But it is expedient doctrine. I
am a revolutionist, and it is a perilous vocation."

I laughed incredulously.

"If I tried to enter your father's house at night to steal his
dividends from the Sierra Mills, what would he do?"

"He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed," I answered.
"He would most probably shoot you."

"And if I and a few others should lead a million and a half of men*
into the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great deal
of shooting, wouldn't there?"


* This reference is to the socialist vote cast in the United States
in 1910. The rise of this vote clearly indicates the swift growth
of the party of revolution. Its voting strength in the United
States in 1888 was 2068; in 1902, 127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in
1908, 1,108,427; and in 1910, 1,688,211.


"Yes, but you are not doing that," I objected.

"It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the
mere wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth, all
the mines, and railroads, and factories, and banks, and stores.
That is the revolution. It is truly perilous. There will be more
shooting, I am afraid, than even I dream of. But as I was saying,
no one to-day is a free agent. We are all caught up in the wheels
and cogs of the industrial machine. You found that you were, and
that the men you talked with were. Talk with more of them. Go and
see Colonel Ingram. Look up the reporters that kept Jackson's case
out of the papers, and the editors that run the papers. You will
find them all slaves of the machine."

A little later in our conversation I asked him a simple little
question about the liability of workingmen to accidents, and
received a statistical lecture in return.

"It is all in the books," he said. "The figures have been
gathered, and it has been proved conclusively that accidents rarely
occur in the first hours of the morning work, but that they
increase rapidly in the succeeding hours as the workers grow tired
and slower in both their muscular and mental processes.

"Why, do you know that your father has three times as many chances
for safety of life and limb than has a working-man? He has. The
insurance* companies know. They will charge him four dollars and
twenty cents a year on a thousand-dollar accident policy, and for
the same policy they will charge a laborer fifteen dollars."


* In the terrible wolf-struggle of those centuries, no man was
permanently safe, no matter how much wealth he amassed. Out of
fear for the welfare of their families, men devised the scheme of
insurance. To us, in this intelligent age, such a device is
laughably absurd and primitive. But in that age insurance was a
very serious matter. The amusing part of it is that the funds of
the insurance companies were frequently plundered and wasted by the
very officials who were intrusted with the management of them.


"And you?" I asked; and in the moment of asking I was aware of a
solicitude that was something more than slight.

"Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances to the
workingman's one of being injured or killed," he answered
carelessly. "The insurance companies charge the highly trained
chemists that handle explosives eight times what they charge the
workingmen. I don't think they'd insure me at all. Why did you
ask?"

My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in my face. It
was not that he had caught me in my solicitude, but that I had
caught myself, and in his presence.

Just then my father came in and began making preparations to depart
with me. Ernest returned some books he had borrowed, and went away
first. But just as he was going, he turned and said:

"Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind and I
am ruining the Bishop's, you'd better look up Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.
Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal
stockholders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those
two women are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they
sit on top of it."



CHAPTER IV

SLAVES OF THE MACHINE


The more I thought of Jackson's arm, the more shaken I was. I was
confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life.
My university life, and study and culture, had not been real. I
had learned nothing but theories of life and society that looked
all very well on the printed page, but now I had seen life itself.


 


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