The iron heel

“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.”

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historical document.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![1]

[1] The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though

he coöperated, 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,[2] 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.

[2] 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.[3]

[3] 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.[4]

[4] 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[5] 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.

[5] 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,[6] 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[7] of the working class.

[6] 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.

[7] 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[8] has described, and in addition he was aflame with

democracy.

[8] 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[9] has stated it very clearly,” Ernest said. “His test of

truth is: ‘Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?’”

[9] 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[10] into account. He has never been answered.”

[10] 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[11] by a falling chimney.

Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.

[11] 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,[12] and gave

none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at the end:

[12] 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.[13] Am I not

right?”

[13] 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.[14] 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.”

[14] 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.[1] 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.

[1] 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.”[2]

[2] 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 ever 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.[3] They divide between them this money that

is earned. Capital’s share is called ‘dividends.’ Labor’s share is

called ‘wages.’”

[3] 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?”[4] the Bishop queried with alarm.

[4] 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.”[5]

[5] _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[6] 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.[7] 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?”

[6] 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.

[7] 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?[8] 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.”

[8] 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,”[9] I answered curtly.

[9] 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[1] 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.

[1] 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,[2] anyway.”

[2] 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.[3] 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.”

[3] 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.[4] 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?”

[4] 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?”[5]

[5] 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, and 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[6]

out a savage oath, and clenched his fist as though about to strike me.

[6] 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[7]

into the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great deal of

shooting, wouldn’t there?”

[7] 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[8] 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.”

[8] 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. Jackson’s arm

was a fact of life. “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” of Ernest’s

was ringing in my consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based upon

blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from him.

Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the Pole. He

had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been paid for in order

that a larger dividend might be paid. And I knew a score of happy

complacent families that had received those dividends and by that much

had profited by Jackson’s blood. If one man could be so monstrously

treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so

monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest’s women of Chicago who toiled

for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton

mills he had described. And I could see their wan white hands, from

which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which

had been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the

dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my

gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations led me

back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a

precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful

revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over.

There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to

have on him. And then there was the Bishop. When I had last seen him he

had looked a sick man. He was at high nervous tension, and in his eyes

there was unspeakable horror. From the little I learned I knew that

Ernest had been keeping his promise of taking him through hell. But

what scenes of hell the Bishop’s eyes had seen, I knew not, for he

seemed too stunned to speak about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the world

was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and also I

thought, “We were so happy and peaceful before he came!” And the next

moment I was aware that the thought was a treason against truth, and

Ernest rose before me transfigured, the apostle of truth, with shining

brows and the fearlessness of one of God’s own angels, battling for the

truth and the right, and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely

and oppressed. And then there arose before me another figure, the

Christ! He, too, had taken the part of the lowly and oppressed, and

against all the established power of priest and pharisee. And I

remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart contracted with a pang

as I thought of Ernest. Was he, too, destined for a cross?—he, with his

clarion call and war-noted voice, and all the fine man’s vigor of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting with

desire to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid, harsh, and

meagre life it must have been. And I thought of his father, who had

lied and stolen for him and been worked to death. And he himself had

gone into the mills when he was ten! All my heart seemed bursting with

desire to fold my arms around him, and to rest his head on my

breast—his head that must be weary with so many thoughts; and to give

him rest—just rest—and easement and forgetfulness for a tender space.

I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I knew well and had

known well for many years. I trapped him behind large palms and rubber

plants, though he did not know he was trapped. He met me with the

conventional gayety and gallantry. He was ever a graceful man,

diplomatic, tactful, and considerate. And as for appearance, he was the

most distinguished-looking man in our society. Beside him even the

venerable head of the university looked tawdry and small.

And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as the unlettered

mechanics. He was not a free agent. He, too, was bound upon the wheel.

I shall never forget the change in him when I mentioned Jackson’s case.

His smiling good nature vanished like a ghost. A sudden, frightful

expression distorted his well-bred face. I felt the same alarm that I

had felt when James Smith broke out. But Colonel Ingram did not curse.

That was the slight difference that was left between the workingman and

him. He was famed as a wit, but he had no wit now. And, unconsciously,

this way and that he glanced for avenues of escape. But he was trapped

amid the palms and rubber trees.

Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson’s name. Why had I brought the

matter up? He did not relish my joke. It was poor taste on my part, and

very inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his profession personal

feelings did not count? He left his personal feelings at home when he

went down to the office. At the office he had only professional

feelings.

“Should Jackson have received damages?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he answered. “That is, personally, I have a feeling that

he should. But that has nothing to do with the legal aspects of the

case.”

He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.

“Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?” I asked.

“You have used the wrong initial consonant,” he smiled in answer.

“Might?” I queried; and he nodded his head. “And yet we are supposed to

get justice by means of the law?”

“That is the paradox of it,” he countered. “We do get justice.”

“You are speaking professionally now, are you not?” I asked.

Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again he looked anxiously

about him for a way of escape. But I blocked his path and did not offer

to move.

“Tell me,” I said, “when one surrenders his personal feelings to his

professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort of

spiritual mayhem?”

I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted,

overturning a palm in his flight.

Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, restrained, dispassionate

account of Jackson’s case. I made no charges against the men with whom

I had talked, nor, for that matter, did I even mention them. I gave the

actual facts of the case, the long years Jackson had worked in the

mills, his effort to save the machinery from damage and the consequent

accident, and his own present wretched and starving condition. The

three local newspapers rejected my communication, likewise did the two

weeklies.

I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university, had

gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship as

reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers. He smiled

when I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all mention of

Jackson or his case.

“Editorial policy,” he said. “We have nothing to do with that. It’s up

to the editors.”

“But why is it policy?” I asked.

“We’re all solid with the corporations,” he answered. “If you paid

advertising rates, you couldn’t get any such matter into the papers. A

man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job. You couldn’t get it

in if you paid ten times the regular advertising rates.”

“How about your own policy?” I questioned. “It would seem your function

is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who, in turn, obey

the behests of the corporations.”

“I haven’t anything to do with that.” He looked uncomfortable for the

moment, then brightened as he saw his way out. “I, myself, do not write

untruthful things. I keep square all right with my own conscience. Of

course, there’s lots that’s repugnant in the course of the day’s work.

But then, you see, that’s all part of the day’s work,” he wound up

boyishly.

“Yet you expect to sit at an editor’s desk some day and conduct a

policy.”

“I’ll be case-hardened by that time,” was his reply.

“Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right now

about the general editorial policy.”

“I don’t think,” he answered quickly. “One can’t kick over the ropes if

he’s going to succeed in journalism. I’ve learned that much, at any

rate.”

And he nodded his young head sagely.

“But the right?” I persisted.

“You don’t understand the game. Of course it’s all right, because it

comes out all right, don’t you see?”

“Delightfully vague,” I murmured; but my heart was aching for the youth

of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst into tears.

I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which

I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were

beneath. There seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and I was

aware of a thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer who had

ingloriously fought his case. But this tacit conspiracy grew large. Not

alone was it aimed against Jackson. It was aimed against every

workingman who was maimed in the mills. And if against every man in the

mills, why not against every man in all the other mills and factories?

In fact, was it not true of all the industries?

And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank back from my own

conclusions. It was too terrible and awful to be true. But there was

Jackson, and Jackson’s arm, and the blood that stained my gown and

dripped from my own roof-beams. And there were many Jacksons—hundreds

of them in the mills alone, as Jackson himself had said. Jackson I

could not escape.

I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most of

the stock in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as I had

shaken the mechanics in their employ. I discovered that they had an

ethic superior to that of the rest of society. It was what I may call

the aristocratic ethic or the master ethic.[1] They talked in large

ways of policy, and they identified policy and right. And to me they

talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience. They

were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest. They

believed absolutely that their conduct was right. There was no question

about it, no discussion. They were convinced that they were the

saviours of society, and that it was they who made happiness for the

many. And they drew pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings

of the working class were it not for the employment that they, and they

alone, by their wisdom, provided for it.

[1] Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, _On

Liberty_, wrote: “Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large

portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its

class feelings of superiority.”

Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience.

He looked at me with a pleased expression, and said:

“Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for yourself. It

is your own empirical generalization, and it is correct. No man in the

industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist,

and he isn’t, if you’ll pardon the Irishism.[2] You see, the masters

are quite sure that they are right in what they are doing. That is the

crowning absurdity of the whole situation. They are so tied by their

human nature that they can’t do a thing unless they think it is right.

They must have a sanction for their acts.

[2] Verbal contradictions, called _bulls_, were long an amiable

weakness of the ancient Irish.

“When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait

till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or

scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then

they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the

human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought. No matter what

they want to do, the sanction always comes. They are superficial

casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing wrong

that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions

they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in

wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the

bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the

theory of the divine right of kings—commercial kings in their case.[3]

[3] The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the president of the

Anthracite Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with the enunciation of the

following principle: “_The rights and interests of the laboring man

will be protected by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite

wisdom has given the property interests of the country._”

“The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely business

men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists nor

sociologists. If they were, of course all would be well. A business man

who was also a biologist and a sociologist would know, approximately,

the right thing to do for humanity. But, outside the realm of business,

these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind

nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of

the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some

day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.”

I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.

Pertonwaithe. They were society women.[4] Their homes were palaces.

They had many homes scattered over the country, in the mountains, on

lakes, and by the sea. They were tended by armies of servants, and

their social activities were bewildering. They patronized the

university and the churches, and the pastors especially bowed at their

knees in meek subservience.[5] They were powers, these two women, what

of the money that was theirs. The power of subsidization of thought was

theirs to a remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn under Ernest’s

tuition.

[4] _Society_ is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage of

the times to denote the gilded drones that did no labor, but only

glutted themselves at the honey-vats of the workers. Neither the

business men nor the laborers had time or opportunity for _society_.

_Society_ was the creation of the idle rich who toiled not and who in

this way played.

[5] “Bring on your tainted money,” was the expressed sentiment of the

Church during this period.

They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about

policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were

swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands—the ethic of

their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears did not

understand.

Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition

of Jackson’s family, and when I wondered that they had made no

voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they thanked no one

for instructing them in their social duties. When I asked them flatly

to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The astounding thing about

it was that they refused in almost identically the same language, and

this in face of the fact that I interviewed them separately and that

one did not know that I had seen or was going to see the other. Their

common reply was that they were glad of the opportunity to make it

perfectly plain that no premium would ever be put on carelessness by

them; nor would they, by paying for accident, tempt the poor to hurt

themselves in the machinery.[6]

[6] In the files of the _Outlook_, a critical weekly of the period, in

the number dated August 18, 1906, is related the circumstance of a

workingman losing his arm, the details of which are quite similar to

those of Jackson’s case as related by Avis Everhard.

And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with conviction

of the superiority of their class and of themselves. They had a

sanction, in their own class-ethic, for every act they performed. As I

drove away from Mrs. Pertonwaithe’s great house, I looked back at it,

and I remembered Ernest’s expression that they were bound to the

machine, but that they were so bound that they sat on top of it.

CHAPTER V.

THE PHILOMATHS

Ernest was often at the house. Nor was it my father, merely, nor the

controversial dinners, that drew him there. Even at that time I

flattered myself that I played some part in causing his visits, and it

was not long before I learned the correctness of my surmise. For never

was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard. His gaze and his hand-clasp

grew firmer and steadier, if that were possible; and the question that

had grown from the first in his eyes, grew only the more imperative.

My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had been unfavorable.

Then I had found myself attracted toward him. Next came my repulsion,

when he so savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I saw that

he had not maligned my class, and that the harsh and bitter things he

said about it were justified, I had drawn closer to him again. He

became my oracle. For me he tore the sham from the face of society and

gave me glimpses of reality that were as unpleasant as they were

undeniably true.

As I have said, there was never such a lover as he. No girl could live

in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have love

experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray

professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one of

them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I

knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before

his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me

off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him. He did not propose.

He put his arms around me and kissed me and took it for granted that we

should be married. There was no discussion about it. The only

discussion—and that arose afterward—was when we should be married.

It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in accordance with Ernest’s

test of truth, it worked. I trusted my life to it. And fortunate was

the trust. Yet during those first days of our love, fear of the future

came often to me when I thought of the violence and impetuosity of his

love-making. Yet such fears were groundless. No woman was ever blessed

with a gentler, tenderer husband. This gentleness and violence on his

part was a curious blend similar to the one in his carriage of

awkwardness and ease. That slight awkwardness! He never got over it,

and it was delicious. His behavior in our drawing-room reminded me of a

careful bull in a china shop.[1]

[1] In those days it was still the custom to fill the living rooms

with bric-a-brac. They had not discovered simplicity of living. Such

rooms were museums, entailing endless labor to keep clean. The

dust-demon was the lord of the household. There were a myriad devices

for catching dust, and only a few devices for getting rid of it.

It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of the completeness of

my love for him (a subconscious doubt, at most). It was at the

Philomath Club—a wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest bearded the

masters in their lair. Now the Philomath Club was the most select on

the Pacific Coast. It was the creation of Miss Brentwood, an enormously

wealthy old maid; and it was her husband, and family, and toy. Its

members were the wealthiest in the community, and the strongest-minded

of the wealthy, with, of course, a sprinkling of scholars to give it

intellectual tone.

The Philomath had no club house. It was not that kind of a club. Once a

month its members gathered at some one of their private houses to

listen to a lecture. The lecturers were usually, though not always,

hired. If a chemist in New York made a new discovery in say radium, all

his expenses across the continent were paid, and as well he received a

princely fee for his time. The same with a returning explorer from the

polar regions, or the latest literary or artistic success. No visitors

were allowed, while it was the Philomath’s policy to permit none of its

discussions to get into the papers. Thus great statesmen—and there had

been such occasions—were able fully to speak their minds.

I spread before me a wrinkled letter, written to me by Ernest twenty

years ago, and from it I copy the following:

“Your father is a member of the Philomath, so you are able to come.

Therefore come next Tuesday night. I promise you that you will have the

time of your life. In your recent encounters, you failed to shake the

masters. If you come, I’ll shake them for you. I’ll make them snarl

like wolves. You merely questioned their morality. When their morality

is questioned, they grow only the more complacent and superior. But I

shall menace their money-bags. That will shake them to the roots of

their primitive natures. If you can come, you will see the cave-man, in

evening dress, snarling and snapping over a bone. I promise you a great

caterwauling and an illuminating insight into the nature of the beast.

“They’ve invited me in order to tear me to pieces. This is the idea of

Miss Brentwood. She clumsily hinted as much when she invited me. She’s

given them that kind of fun before. They delight in getting

trustful-souled gentle reformers before them. Miss Brentwood thinks I

am as mild as a kitten and as good-natured and stolid as the family

cow. I’ll not deny that I helped to give her that impression. She was

very tentative at first, until she divined my harmlessness. I am to

receive a handsome fee—two hundred and fifty dollars—as befits the man

who, though a radical, once ran for governor. Also, I am to wear

evening dress. This is compulsory. I never was so apparelled in my

life. I suppose I’ll have to hire one somewhere. But I’d do more than

that to get a chance at the Philomaths.”

Of all places, the Club gathered that night at the Pertonwaithe house.

Extra chairs had been brought into the great drawing-room, and in all

there must have been two hundred Philomaths that sat down to hear

Ernest. They were truly lords of society. I amused myself with running

over in my mind the sum of the fortunes represented, and it ran well

into the hundreds of millions. And the possessors were not of the idle

rich. They were men of affairs who took most active parts in industrial

and political life.

We were all seated when Miss Brentwood brought Ernest in. They moved at

once to the head of the room, from where he was to speak. He was in

evening dress, and, what of his broad shoulders and kingly head, he

looked magnificent. And then there was that faint and unmistakable

touch of awkwardness in his movements. I almost think I could have

loved him for that alone. And as I looked at him I was aware of a great

joy. I felt again the pulse of his palm on mine, the touch of his lips;

and such pride was mine that I felt I must rise up and cry out to the

assembled company: “He is mine! He has held me in his arms, and I, mere

I, have filled that mind of his to the exclusion of all his

multitudinous and kingly thoughts!”

At the head of the room, Miss Brentwood introduced him to Colonel Van

Gilbert, and I knew that the latter was to preside. Colonel Van Gilbert

was a great corporation lawyer. In addition, he was immensely wealthy.

The smallest fee he would deign to notice was a hundred thousand

dollars. He was a master of law. The law was a puppet with which he

played. He moulded it like clay, twisted and distorted it like a

Chinese puzzle into any design he chose. In appearance and rhetoric he

was old-fashioned, but in imagination and knowledge and resource he was

as young as the latest statute. His first prominence had come when he

broke the Shardwell will.[2] His fee for this one act was five hundred

thousand dollars. From then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often

called the greatest lawyer in the country—corporation lawyer, of

course; and no classification of the three greatest lawyers in the

United States could have excluded him.

[2] This breaking of wills was a peculiar feature of the period. With

the accumulation of vast fortunes, the problem of disposing of these

fortunes after death was a vexing one to the accumulators. Will-making

and will-breaking became complementary trades, like armor-making and

gun-making. The shrewdest will-making lawyers were called in to make

wills that could not be broken. But these wills were always broken,

and very often by the very lawyers that had drawn them up.

Nevertheless the delusion persisted in the wealthy class that an

absolutely unbreakable will could be cast; and so, through the

generations, clients and lawyers pursued the illusion. It was a

pursuit like unto that of the Universal Solvent of the mediæval

alchemists.

He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried an

undertone of faint irony, to introduce Ernest. Colonel Van Gilbert was

subtly facetious in his introduction of the social reformer and member

of the working class, and the audience smiled. It made me angry, and I

glanced at Ernest. The sight of him made me doubly angry. He did not

seem to resent the delicate slurs. Worse than that, he did not seem to

be aware of them. There he sat, gentle, and stolid, and somnolent. He

really looked stupid. And for a moment the thought rose in my mind,

What if he were overawed by this imposing array of power and brains?

Then I smiled. He couldn’t fool me. But he fooled the others, just as

he had fooled Miss Brentwood. She occupied a chair right up to the

front, and several times she turned her head toward one or another of

her _confrères_ and smiled her appreciation of the remarks.

Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began to speak. He began in

a low voice, haltingly and modestly, and with an air of evident

embarrassment. He spoke of his birth in the working class, and of the

sordidness and wretchedness of his environment, where flesh and spirit

were alike starved and tormented. He described his ambitions and

ideals, and his conception of the paradise wherein lived the people of

the upper classes. As he said:

“Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and

noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I

read ‘Seaside Library’[3] novels, in which, with the exception of the

villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful

thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In

short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me

was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and

dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated

one for his travail and misery.”

[3] A curious and amazing literature that served to make the working

class utterly misapprehend the nature of the leisure class.

He went on and traced his life in the mills, the learning of the

horseshoeing trade, and his meeting with the socialists. Among them, he

said, he had found keen intellects and brilliant wits, ministers of the

Gospel who had been broken because their Christianity was too wide for

any congregation of mammon-worshippers, and professors who had been

broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class. The

socialists were revolutionists, he said, struggling to overthrow the

irrational society of the present and out of the material to build the

rational society of the future. Much more he said that would take too

long to write, but I shall never forget how he described the life among

the revolutionists. All halting utterance vanished. His voice grew

strong and confident, and it glowed as he glowed, and as the thoughts

glowed that poured out from him. He said:

“Amongst the revolutionists I found, also, warm faith in the human,

ardent idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and

martyrdom—all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life

was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls who

exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin

wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and

circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me

were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights

were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes,

ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ’s own Grail, the warm

human, long-suffering and maltreated but to be rescued and saved at the

last.”

As before I had seen him transfigured, so now he stood transfigured

before me. His brows were bright with the divine that was in him, and

brighter yet shone his eyes from the midst of the radiance that seemed

to envelop him as a mantle. But the others did not see this radiance,

and I assumed that it was due to the tears of joy and love that dimmed

my vision. At any rate, Mr. Wickson, who sat behind me, was unaffected,

for I heard him sneer aloud, “Utopian.”[4]

[4] The people of that age were phrase slaves. The abjectness of their

servitude is incomprehensible to us. There was a magic in words

greater than the conjurer’s art. So befuddled and chaotic were their

minds that the utterance of a single word could negative the

generalizations of a lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a

word was the adjective _Utopian_. The mere utterance of it could damn

any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic amelioration

or regeneration. Vast populations grew frenzied over such phrases as

“an honest dollar” and “a full dinner pail.” The coinage of such

phrases was considered strokes of genius.

Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he came in touch

with members of the upper classes, and rubbed shoulders with the men

who sat in the high places. Then came his disillusionment, and this

disillusionment he described in terms that did not flatter his

audience. He was surprised at the commonness of the clay. Life proved

not to be fine and gracious. He was appalled by the selfishness he

encountered, and what had surprised him even more than that was the

absence of intellectual life. Fresh from his revolutionists, he was

shocked by the intellectual stupidity of the master class. And then, in

spite of their magnificent churches and well-paid preachers, he had

found the masters, men and women, grossly material. It was true that

they prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities, but in

spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was

materialistic. And they were without real morality—for instance, that

which Christ had preached but which was no longer preached.

“I met men,” he said, “who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in

their diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands of

Pinkertons[5] with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories.

I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of

prize-fighting, and who, at the same time, were parties to the

adulteration of food that killed each year more babes than even

red-handed Herod had killed.

[5] Originally, they were private detectives; but they quickly became

hired fighting men of the capitalists, and ultimately developed into

the Mercenaries of the Oligarchy.

“This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman was a dummy director

and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans.

This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was a patron of

literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a

municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine

advertisements, called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I dared him

to print in his paper the truth about patent medicines.[6] This man,

talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the

goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal.

This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign

missions, worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage

and thereby directly encouraged prostitution. This man, who endowed

chairs in universities and erected magnificent chapels, perjured

himself in courts of law over dollars and cents. This railroad magnate

broke his word as a citizen, as a gentleman, and as a Christian, when

he granted a secret rebate, and he granted many secret rebates. This

senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet, of a brutal

uneducated machine boss;[7] so was this governor and this supreme court

judge; and all three rode on railroad passes; and, also, this sleek

capitalist owned the machine, the machine boss, and the railroads that

issued the passes.

[6] _Patent medicines_ were patent lies, but, like the charms and

indulgences of the Middle Ages, they deceived the people. The only

difference lay in that the patent medicines were more harmful and more

costly.

[7] Even as late as 1912, A.D., the great mass of the people still

persisted in the belief that they ruled the country by virtue of their

ballots. In reality, the country was ruled by what were called

_political machines_. At first the machine bosses charged the master

capitalists extortionate tolls for legislation; but in a short time

the master capitalists found it cheaper to own the political machines

themselves and to hire the machine bosses.

“And so it was, instead of in paradise, that I found myself in the arid

desert of commercialism. I found nothing but stupidity, except for

business. I found none clean, noble, and alive, though I found many who

were alive—with rottenness. What I did find was monstrous selfishness

and heartlessness, and a gross, gluttonous, practised, and practical

materialism.”

Much more Ernest told them of themselves and of his disillusionment.

Intellectually they had bored him; morally and spiritually they had

sickened him; so that he was glad to go back to his revolutionists, who

were clean, noble, and alive, and all that the capitalists were not.

“And now,” he said, “let me tell you about that revolution.”

But first I must say that his terrible diatribe had not touched them. I

looked about me at their faces and saw that they remained complacently

superior to what he had charged. And I remembered what he had told me:

that no indictment of their morality could shake them. However, I could

see that the boldness of his language had affected Miss Brentwood. She

was looking worried and apprehensive.

Ernest began by describing the army of revolution, and as he gave the

figures of its strength (the votes cast in the various countries), the

assemblage began to grow restless. Concern showed in their faces, and I

noticed a tightening of lips. At last the gage of battle had been

thrown down. He described the international organization of the

socialists that united the million and a half in the United States with

the twenty-three millions and a half in the rest of the world.

“Such an army of revolution,” he said, “twenty-five millions strong, is

a thing to make rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. The cry

of this army is: ‘No quarter! We want all that you possess. We will be

content with nothing less than all that you possess. We want in our

hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind. Here are our

hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take your governments,

your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you, and in that day

you shall work for your bread even as the peasant in the field or the

starved and runty clerk in your metropolises. Here are our hands. They

are strong hands!’”

And as he spoke he extended from his splendid shoulders his two great

arms, and the horseshoer’s hands were clutching the air like eagle’s

talons. He was the spirit of regnant labor as he stood there, his hands

outreaching to rend and crush his audience. I was aware of a faintly

perceptible shrinking on the part of the listeners before this figure

of revolution, concrete, potential, and menacing. That is, the women

shrank, and fear was in their faces. Not so with the men. They were of

the active rich, and not the idle, and they were fighters. A low,

throaty rumble arose, lingered on the air a moment, and ceased. It was

the forerunner of the snarl, and I was to hear it many times that

night—the token of the brute in man, the earnest of his primitive

passions. And they were unconscious that they had made this sound. It

was the growl of the pack, mouthed by the pack, and mouthed in all

unconsciousness. And in that moment, as I saw the harshness form in

their faces and saw the fight-light flashing in their eyes, I realized

that not easily would they let their lordship of the world be wrested

from them.

Ernest proceeded with his attack. He accounted for the existence of the

million and a half of revolutionists in the United States by charging

the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. He sketched the

economic condition of the cave-man and of the savage peoples of to-day,

pointing out that they possessed neither tools nor machines, and

possessed only a natural efficiency of one in producing power. Then he

traced the development of machinery and social organization so that

to-day the producing power of civilized man was a thousand times

greater than that of the savage.

“Five men,” he said, “can produce bread for a thousand. One man can

produce cotton cloth for two hundred and fifty people, woollens for

three hundred, and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would conclude

from this that under a capable management of society modern civilized

man would be a great deal better off than the cave-man. But is he? Let

us see. In the United States to-day there are fifteen million[8] people

living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in

which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of

working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States to-day,

in spite of all your so-called labor legislation, there are three

millions of child laborers.[9] In twelve years their numbers have been

doubled. And in passing I will ask you managers of society why you did

not make public the census figures of 1910? And I will answer for you,

that you were afraid. The figures of misery would have precipitated the

revolution that even now is gathering.

[8] Robert Hunter, in 1906, in a book entitled “Poverty,” pointed out

that at that time there were ten millions in the United States living

in poverty.

[9] In the United States Census of 1900 (the last census the figures

of which were made public), the number of child laborers was placed at

1,752,187.

“But to return to my indictment. If modern man’s producing power is a

thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the

United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not

properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States

to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true

indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts

that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his

producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man,

no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has

mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have

criminally and selfishly mismanaged. And on this count you cannot

answer me here to-night, face to face, any more than can your whole

class answer the million and a half of revolutionists in the United

States. You cannot answer. I challenge you to answer. And furthermore,

I dare to say to you now that when I have finished you will not answer.

On that point you will be tongue-tied, though you will talk wordily

enough about other things.

“You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of

civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you

to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared

that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes.

Don’t take my word for it. It is all in the records against you. You

have lulled your conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and

dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with

success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones,

clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them

to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of

society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million

and a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to

get the rest of the working class to join with them and take the

management away from you. This is the revolution, my masters. Stop it

if you can.”

For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest’s voice continued to ring

through the great room. Then arose the throaty rumble I had heard

before, and a dozen men were on their feet clamoring for recognition

from Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood’s shoulders moving

convulsively, and for the moment I was angry, for I thought that she

was laughing at Ernest. And then I discovered that it was not laughter,

but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had done in bringing this

firebrand before her blessed Philomath Club.

Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men, with passion-wrought

faces, who strove to get permission from him to speak. His own face was

passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and for a

moment could utter only incoherent sounds. Then speech poured from him.

But it was not the speech of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer, nor

was the rhetoric old-fashioned.

“Fallacy upon fallacy!” he cried. “Never in all my life have I heard so

many fallacies uttered in one short hour. And besides, young man, I

must tell you that you have said nothing new. I learned all that at

college before you were born. Jean Jacques Rousseau enunciated your

socialistic theory nearly two centuries ago. A return to the soil,

forsooth! Reversion! Our biology teaches the absurdity of it. It has

been truly said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and you

have exemplified it to-night with your madcap theories. Fallacy upon

fallacy! I was never so nauseated in my life with overplus of fallacy.

That for your immature generalizations and childish reasonings!”

He snapped his fingers contemptuously and proceeded to sit down. There

were lip-exclamations of approval on the part of the women, and hoarser

notes of confirmation came from the men. As for the dozen men who were

clamoring for the floor, half of them began speaking at once. The

confusion and babel was indescribable. Never had Mrs. Pertonwaithe’s

spacious walls beheld such a spectacle. These, then, were the cool

captains of industry and lords of society, these snarling, growling

savages in evening clothes. Truly Ernest had shaken them when he

stretched out his hands for their moneybags, his hands that had

appeared in their eyes as the hands of the fifteen hundred thousand

revolutionists.

But Ernest never lost his head in a situation. Before Colonel Van

Gilbert had succeeded in sitting down, Ernest was on his feet and had

sprung forward.

“One at a time!” he roared at them.

The sound arose from his great lungs and dominated the human tempest.

By sheer compulsion of personality he commanded silence.

“One at a time,” he repeated softly. “Let me answer Colonel Van

Gilbert. After that the rest of you can come at me—but one at a time,

remember. No mass-plays here. This is not a football field.

“As for you,” he went on, turning toward Colonel Van Gilbert, “you have

replied to nothing I have said. You have merely made a few excited and

dogmatic assertions about my mental caliber. That may serve you in your

business, but you can’t talk to me like that. I am not a workingman,

cap in hand, asking you to increase my wages or to protect me from the

machine at which I work. You cannot be dogmatic with truth when you

deal with me. Save that for dealing with your wage-slaves. They will

not dare reply to you because you hold their bread and butter, their

lives, in your hands.

“As for this return to nature that you say you learned at college

before I was born, permit me to point out that on the face of it you

cannot have learned anything since. Socialism has no more to do with

the state of nature than has differential calculus with a Bible class.

I have called your class stupid when outside the realm of business.

You, sir, have brilliantly exemplified my statement.”

This terrible castigation of her hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer was too

much for Miss Brentwood’s nerves. Her hysteria became violent, and she

was helped, weeping and laughing, out of the room. It was just as well,

for there was worse to follow.

“Don’t take my word for it,” Ernest continued, when the interruption

had been led away. “Your own authorities with one unanimous voice will

prove you stupid. Your own hired purveyors of knowledge will tell you

that you are wrong. Go to your meekest little assistant instructor of

sociology and ask him what is the difference between Rousseau’s theory

of the return to nature and the theory of socialism; ask your greatest

orthodox bourgeois political economists and sociologists; question

through the pages of every text-book written on the subject and stored

on the shelves of your subsidized libraries; and from one and all the

answer will be that there is nothing congruous between the return to

nature and socialism. On the other hand, the unanimous affirmative

answer will be that the return to nature and socialism are

diametrically opposed to each other. As I say, don’t take my word for

it. The record of your stupidity is there in the books, your own books

that you never read. And so far as your stupidity is concerned, you are

but the exemplar of your class.

“You know law and business, Colonel Van Gilbert. You know how to serve

corporations and increase dividends by twisting the law. Very good.

Stick to it. You are quite a figure. You are a very good lawyer, but

you are a poor historian, you know nothing of sociology, and your

biology is contemporaneous with Pliny.”

Here Colonel Van Gilbert writhed in his chair. There was perfect quiet

in the room. Everybody sat fascinated—paralyzed, I may say. Such

fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard of,

undreamed of, impossible to believe—the great Colonel Van Gilbert

before whom judges trembled when he arose in court. But Ernest never

gave quarter to an enemy.

“This is, of course, no reflection on you,” Ernest said. “Every man to

his trade. Only you stick to your trade, and I’ll stick to mine. You

have specialized. When it comes to a knowledge of the law, of how best

to evade the law or make new law for the benefit of thieving

corporations, I am down in the dirt at your feet. But when it comes to

sociology—my trade—you are down in the dirt at my feet. Remember that.

Remember, also, that your law is the stuff of a day, and that you are

not versatile in the stuff of more than a day. Therefore your dogmatic

assertions and rash generalizations on things historical and

sociological are not worth the breath you waste on them.”

Ernest paused for a moment and regarded him thoughtfully, noting his

face dark and twisted with anger, his panting chest, his writhing body,

and his slim white hands nervously clenching and unclenching.

“But it seems you have breath to use, and I’ll give you a chance to use

it. I indicted your class. Show me that my indictment is wrong. I

pointed out to you the wretchedness of modern man—three million child

slaves in the United States, without whose labor profits would not be

possible, and fifteen million under-fed, ill-clothed, and worse-housed

people. I pointed out that modern man’s producing power through social

organization and the use of machinery was a thousand times greater than

that of the cave-man. And I stated that from these two facts no other

conclusion was possible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged.

This was my indictment, and I specifically and at length challenged you

to answer it. Nay, I did more. I prophesied that you would not answer.

It remains for your breath to smash my prophecy. You called my speech

fallacy. Show the fallacy, Colonel Van Gilbert. Answer the indictment

that I and my fifteen hundred thousand comrades have brought against

your class and you.”

Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot that he was presiding, and that in

courtesy he should permit the other clamorers to speak. He was on his

feet, flinging his arms, his rhetoric, and his control to the winds,

alternately abusing Ernest for his youth and demagoguery, and savagely

attacking the working class, elaborating its inefficiency and

worthlessness.

“For a lawyer, you are the hardest man to keep to a point I ever saw,”

Ernest began his answer to the tirade. “My youth has nothing to do with

what I have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of the working class.

I charged the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. You have

not answered. You have made no attempt to answer. Why? Is it because

you have no answer? You are the champion of this whole audience. Every

one here, except me, is hanging on your lips for that answer. They are

hanging on your lips for that answer because they have no answer

themselves. As for me, as I said before, I know that you not only

cannot answer, but that you will not attempt an answer.”

“This is intolerable!” Colonel Van Gilbert cried out. “This is insult!”

“That you should not answer is intolerable,” Ernest replied gravely.

“No man can be intellectually insulted. Insult, in its very nature, is

emotional. Recover yourself. Give me an intellectual answer to my

intellectual charge that the capitalist class has mismanaged society.”

Colonel Van Gilbert remained silent, a sullen, superior expression on

his face, such as will appear on the face of a man who will not bandy

words with a ruffian.

“Do not be downcast,” Ernest said. “Take consolation in the fact that

no member of your class has ever yet answered that charge.” He turned

to the other men who were anxious to speak. “And now it’s your chance.

Fire away, and do not forget that I here challenge you to give the

answer that Colonel Van Gilbert has failed to give.”

It would be impossible for me to write all that was said in the

discussion. I never realized before how many words could be spoken in

three short hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents

grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an

encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a

phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the

points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion

had no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an

impostor because it had cunningly hidden in it the conclusion that was

being attempted to be proved. This was an error, that was an

assumption, and the next was an assertion contrary to ascertained truth

as printed in all the text-books.

And so it went. Sometimes he exchanged the rapier for the club and went

smashing amongst their thoughts right and left. And always he demanded

facts and refused to discuss theories. And his facts made for them a

Waterloo. When they attacked the working class, he always retorted,

“The pot calling the kettle black; that is no answer to the charge that

your own face is dirty.” And to one and all he said: “Why have you not

answered the charge that your class has mismanaged? You have talked

about other things and things concerning other things, but you have not

answered. Is it because you have no answer?”

It was at the end of the discussion that Mr. Wickson spoke. He was the

only one that was cool, and Ernest treated him with a respect he had

not accorded the others.

“No answer is necessary,” Mr. Wickson said with slow deliberation. “I

have followed the whole discussion with amazement and disgust. I am

disgusted with you gentlemen, members of my class. You have behaved

like foolish little schoolboys, what with intruding ethics and the

thunder of the common politician into such a discussion. You have been

outgeneralled and outclassed. You have been very wordy, and all you

have done is buzz. You have buzzed like gnats about a bear. Gentlemen,

there stands the bear” (he pointed at Ernest), “and your buzzing has

only tickled his ears.

“Believe me, the situation is serious. That bear reached out his paws

tonight to crush us. He has said there are a million and a half of

revolutionists in the United States. That is a fact. He has said that

it is their intention to take away from us our governments, our

palaces, and all our purpled ease. That, also, is a fact. A change, a

great change, is coming in society; but, haply, it may not be the

change the bear anticipates. The bear has said that he will crush us.

What if we crush the bear?”

The throat-rumble arose in the great room, and man nodded to man with

indorsement and certitude. Their faces were set hard. They were

fighters, that was certain.

“But not by buzzing will we crush the bear,” Mr. Wickson went on coldly

and dispassionately. “We will hunt the bear. We will not reply to the

bear in words. Our reply shall be couched in terms of lead. We are in

power. Nobody will deny it. By virtue of that power we shall remain in

power.”

He turned suddenly upon Ernest. The moment was dramatic.

“This, then, is our answer. We have no words to waste on you. When you

reach out your vaunted strong hands for our palaces and purpled ease,

we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and in

whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched.[10] We will grind you

revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces.

The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for

the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I

read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and

mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word. It

is the king of words—Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it

over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.”

[10] To show the tenor of thought, the following definition is quoted

from “The Cynic’s Word Book” (1906 A.D.), written by one Ambrose

Bierce, an avowed and confirmed misanthrope of the period: “Grapeshot,

_n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands

of American Socialism._”

“I am answered,” Ernest said quietly. “It is the only answer that could

be given. Power. It is what we of the working class preach. We know,

and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right,

for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as

your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have

preached power. By the power of our ballots on election day will we

take your government away from you—”

“What if you do get a majority, a sweeping majority, on election day?”

Mr. Wickson broke in to demand. “Suppose we refuse to turn the

government over to you after you have captured it at the ballot-box?”

“That, also, have we considered,” Ernest replied. “And we shall give

you an answer in terms of lead. Power you have proclaimed the king of

words. Very good. Power it shall be. And in the day that we sweep to

victory at the ballot-box, and you refuse to turn over to us the

government we have constitutionally and peacefully captured, and you

demand what we are going to do about it—in that day, I say, we shall

answer you; and in roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of

machine-guns shall our answer be couched.

“You cannot escape us. It is true that you have read history aright. It

is true that labor has from the beginning of history been in the dirt.

And it is equally true that so long as you and yours and those that

come after you have power, that labor shall remain in the dirt. I agree

with you. I agree with all that you have said. Power will be the

arbiter, as it always has been the arbiter. It is a struggle of

classes. Just as your class dragged down the old feudal nobility, so

shall it be dragged down by my class, the working class. If you will

read your biology and your sociology as clearly as you do your history,

you will see that this end I have described is inevitable. It does not

matter whether it is in one year, ten, or a thousand—your class shall

be dragged down. And it shall be done by power. We of the labor hosts

have conned that word over till our minds are all a-tingle with it.

Power. It is a kingly word.”

And so ended the night with the Philomaths.

CHAPTER VI.

ADUMBRATIONS

It was about this time that the warnings of coming events began to fall

about us thick and fast. Ernest had already questioned father’s policy

of having socialists and labor leaders at his house, and of openly

attending socialist meetings; and father had only laughed at him for

his pains. As for myself, I was learning much from this contact with

the working-class leaders and thinkers. I was seeing the other side of

the shield. I was delighted with the unselfishness and high idealism I

encountered, though I was appalled by the vast philosophic and

scientific literature of socialism that was opened up to me. I was

learning fast, but I learned not fast enough to realize then the peril

of our position.

There were warnings, but I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs.

Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power in the

university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that I was a

too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous penchant

for officiousness and interference in other persons’ affairs. This I

thought no more than natural, considering the part I had played in

investigating the case of Jackson’s arm. But the effect of such a

sentiment, enunciated by two such powerful social arbiters, I

underestimated.

True, I noticed a certain aloofness on the part of my general friends,

but this I ascribed to the disapproval that was prevalent in my circles

of my intended marriage with Ernest. It was not till some time

afterward that Ernest pointed out to me clearly that this general

attitude of my class was something more than spontaneous, that behind

it were the hidden springs of an organized conduct. “You have given

shelter to an enemy of your class,” he said. “And not alone shelter,

for you have given your love, yourself. This is treason to your class.

Think not that you will escape being penalized.”

But it was before this that father returned one afternoon. Ernest was

with me, and we could see that father was angry—philosophically angry.

He was rarely really angry; but a certain measure of controlled anger

he allowed himself. He called it a tonic. And we could see that he was

tonic-angry when he entered the room.

“What do you think?” he demanded. “I had luncheon with Wilcox.”

Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university, whose

withered mind was stored with generalizations that were young in 1870,

and which he had since failed to revise.

“I was invited,” father announced. “I was sent for.”

He paused, and we waited.

“Oh, it was done very nicely, I’ll allow; but I was reprimanded. I! And

by that old fossil!”

“I’ll wager I know what you were reprimanded for,” Ernest said.

“Not in three guesses,” father laughed.

“One guess will do,” Ernest retorted. “And it won’t be a guess. It will

be a deduction. You were reprimanded for your private life.”

“The very thing!” father cried. “How did you guess?”

“I knew it was coming. I warned you before about it.”

“Yes, you did,” father meditated. “But I couldn’t believe it. At any

rate, it is only so much more clinching evidence for my book.”

“It is nothing to what will come,” Ernest went on, “if you persist in

your policy of having these socialists and radicals of all sorts at

your house, myself included.”

“Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted things! He said it

was in poor taste, utterly profitless, anyway, and not in harmony with

university traditions and policy. He said much more of the same vague

sort, and I couldn’t pin him down to anything specific. I made it

pretty awkward for him, and he could only go on repeating himself and

telling me how much he honored me, and all the world honored me, as a

scientist. It wasn’t an agreeable task for him. I could see he didn’t

like it.”

“He was not a free agent,” Ernest said. “The leg-bar[1] is not always

worn graciously.”

[1] _Leg-bar_—the African slaves were so manacled; also criminals. It

was not until the coming of the Brotherhood of Man that the leg-bar

passed out of use.

“Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the university needed ever so

much more money this year than the state was willing to furnish; and

that it must come from wealthy personages who could not but be offended

by the swerving of the university from its high ideal of the

passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence. When I tried to pin

him down to what my home life had to do with swerving the university

from its high ideal, he offered me a two years’ vacation, on full pay,

in Europe, for recreation and research. Of course I couldn’t accept it

under the circumstances.”

“It would have been far better if you had,” Ernest said gravely.

“It was a bribe,” father protested; and Ernest nodded.

“Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and so

forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious a

character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university tone

and dignity. Not that he personally objected—oh, no; but that there was

talk and that I would understand.”

Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said, and

his face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in it:

“There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody has

put pressure on President Wilcox.”

“Do you think so?” father asked, and his face showed that he was

interested rather than frightened.

“I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming in

my own mind,” Ernest said. “Never in the history of the world was

society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in

our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our

religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful

revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One

can only dimly feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day.

One can feel the loom of them—things vast, vague, and terrible. My mind

recoils from contemplation of what they may crystallize into. You heard

Wickson talk the other night. Behind what he said were the same

nameless, formless things that I feel. He spoke out of a superconscious

apprehension of them.”

“You mean . . . ?” father began, then paused.

“I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that

even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an

oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What

its nature may be I refuse to imagine.[2] But what I wanted to say was

this: You are in a perilous position—a peril that my own fear enhances

because I am not able even to measure it. Take my advice and accept the

vacation.”

[2] Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it,

there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the

shadow. John C. Calhoun said: “_A power has risen up in the government

greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and

powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the

cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks_.” And that great

humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: “_I

see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and

causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations

have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow,

and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign

by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is

aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed._”

“But it would be cowardly,” was the protest.

“Not at all. You are an old man. You have done your work in the world,

and a great work. Leave the present battle to youth and strength. We

young fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will stand by my side in

what is to come. She will be your representative in the battle-front.”

“But they can’t hurt me,” father objected. “Thank God I am independent.

Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution they can wage on a

professor who is economically dependent on his university. But I am

independent. I have not been a professor for the sake of my salary. I

can get along very comfortably on my own income, and the salary is all

they can take away from me.”

“But you do not realize,” Ernest answered. “If all that I fear be so,

your private income, your principal itself, can be taken from you just

as easily as your salary.”

Father was silent for a few minutes. He was thinking deeply, and I

could see the lines of decision forming in his face. At last he spoke.

“I shall not take the vacation.” He paused again. “I shall go on with

my book.[3] You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or right, I

shall stand by my guns.”

[3] This book, “Economics and Education,” was published in that year.

Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and one at Asgard. It

dealt, in elaborate detail, with one factor in the persistence of the

established, namely, the capitalistic bias of the universities and

common schools. It was a logical and crushing indictment of the whole

system of education that developed in the minds of the students only

such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic regime, to the

exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and subversive. The book

created a furor, and was promptly suppressed by the Oligarchy.

“All right,” Ernest said. “You are travelling the same path that Bishop

Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up. You’ll both be

proletarians before you’re done with it.”

The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to explain

what he had been doing with him.

“He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him. I took

him through the homes of a few of our factory workers. I showed him the

human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine, and he listened to

their life stories. I took him through the slums of San Francisco, and

in drunkenness, prostitution, and criminality he learned a deeper cause

than innate depravity. He is very sick, and, worse than that, he has

got out of hand. He is too ethical. He has been too severely touched.

And, as usual, he is unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of

ethical delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured. He

feels it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the

Church and to deliver its message to the masters. He is overwrought.

Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then there’s going to be

a smash-up. What form it will take I can’t even guess. He is a pure,

exalted soul, but he is so unpractical. He’s beyond me. I can’t keep

his feet on the earth. And through the air he is rushing on to his

Gethsemane. And after this his crucifixion. Such high souls are made

for crucifixion.”

“And you?” I asked; and beneath my smile was the seriousness of the

anxiety of love.

“Not I,” he laughed back. “I may be executed, or assassinated, but I

shall never be crucified. I am planted too solidly and stolidly upon

the earth.”

“But why should you bring about the crucifixion of the Bishop?” I

asked. “You will not deny that you are the cause of it.”

“Why should I leave one comfortable soul in comfort when there are

millions in travail and misery?” he demanded back.

“Then why did you advise father to accept the vacation?”

“Because I am not a pure, exalted soul,” was the answer. “Because I am

solid and stolid and selfish. Because I love you and, like Ruth of old,

thy people are my people. As for the Bishop, he has no daughter.

Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless his little

inadequate wail will be productive of some good in the revolution, and

every little bit counts.”

I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the noble nature of Bishop

Morehouse, and I could not conceive that his voice raised for

righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate wail. But I did

not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers’ ends as Ernest had.

He saw clearly the futility of the Bishop’s great soul, as coming

events were soon to show as clearly to me.

It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story, the

offer he had received from the government, namely, an appointment as

United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary was

comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And then it

surely was congenial work for Ernest, and, furthermore, my jealous

pride in him made me hail the proffered appointment as a recognition of

his abilities.

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.

“You are not going to . . . to decline?” I quavered.

“It is a bribe,” he said. “Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson, and

behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old trick, old as

the class struggle is old—stealing the captains from the army of labor.

Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how many of its leaders have been

bought out in similar ways in the past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper,

to buy a general than to fight him and his whole army. There was—but

I’ll not call any names. I’m bitter enough over it as it is. Dear

heart, I am a captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other

reason, the memory of my poor old father and the way he was worked to

death would prevent.”

The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He never

could forgive the way his father had been malformed—the sordid lies and

the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order to put food in his

children’s mouths.

“My father was a good man,” Ernest once said to me. “The soul of him

was good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted by the

savagery of his life. He was made into a broken-down beast by his

masters, the arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your father.

He had a strong constitution. But he was caught in the machine and

worked to death—for profit. Think of it. For profit—his life blood

transmuted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or some similar

sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich, his masters, the

arch-beasts.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE BISHOP’S VISION

“The Bishop is out of hand,” Ernest wrote me. “He is clear up in the

air. Tonight he is going to begin putting to rights this very miserable

world of ours. He is going to deliver his message. He has told me so,

and I cannot dissuade him. To-night he is chairman of the I.P.H.,[1]

and he will embody his message in his introductory remarks.

[1] There is no clew to the name of the organization for which these

initials stand.

“May I bring you to hear him? Of course, he is foredoomed to futility.

It will break your heart—it will break his; but for you it will be an

excellent object lesson. You know, dear heart, how proud I am because

you love me. And because of that I want you to know my fullest value, I

want to redeem, in your eyes, some small measure of my unworthiness.

And so it is that my pride desires that you shall know my thinking is

correct and right. My views are harsh; the futility of so noble a soul

as the Bishop will show you the compulsion for such harshness. So come

to-night. Sad though this night’s happening will be, I feel that it

will but draw you more closely to me.”

The I.P.H. held its convention that night in San Francisco.[2] This

convention had been called to consider public immorality and the remedy

for it. Bishop Morehouse presided. He was very nervous as he sat on the

platform, and I could see the high tension he was under. By his side

were Bishop Dickinson; H. H. Jones, the head of the ethical department

in the University of California; Mrs. W. W. Hurd, the great charity

organizer; Philip Ward, the equally great philanthropist; and several

lesser luminaries in the field of morality and charity. Bishop

Morehouse arose and abruptly began:

[2] It took but a few minutes to cross by ferry from Berkeley to San

Francisco. These, and the other bay cities, practically composed one

community.

“I was in my brougham, driving through the streets. It was night-time.

Now and then I looked through the carriage windows, and suddenly my

eyes seemed to be opened, and I saw things as they really are. At first

I covered my eyes with my hands to shut out the awful sight, and then,

in the darkness, the question came to me: What is to be done? What is

to be done? A little later the question came to me in another way: What

would the Master do? And with the question a great light seemed to fill

the place, and I saw my duty sun-clear, as Saul saw his on the way to

Damascus.

“I stopped the carriage, got out, and, after a few minutes’

conversation, persuaded two of the public women to get into the

brougham with me. If Jesus was right, then these two unfortunates were

my sisters, and the only hope of their purification was in my affection

and tenderness.

“I live in one of the loveliest localities of San Francisco. The house

in which I live cost a hundred thousand dollars, and its furnishings,

books, and works of art cost as much more. The house is a mansion. No,

it is a palace, wherein there are many servants. I never knew what

palaces were good for. I had thought they were to live in. But now I

know. I took the two women of the street to my palace, and they are

going to stay with me. I hope to fill every room in my palace with such

sisters as they.”

The audience had been growing more and more restless and unsettled, and

the faces of those that sat on the platform had been betraying greater

and greater dismay and consternation. And at this point Bishop

Dickinson arose, and with an expression of disgust on his face, fled

from the platform and the hall. But Bishop Morehouse, oblivious to all,

his eyes filled with his vision, continued:

“Oh, sisters and brothers, in this act of mine I find the solution of

all my difficulties. I didn’t know what broughams were made for, but

now I know. They are made to carry the weak, the sick, and the aged;

they are made to show honor to those who have lost the sense even of

shame.

“I did not know what palaces were made for, but now I have found a use

for them. The palaces of the Church should be hospitals and nurseries

for those who have fallen by the wayside and are perishing.”

He made a long pause, plainly overcome by the thought that was in him,

and nervous how best to express it.

“I am not fit, dear brethren, to tell you anything about morality. I

have lived in shame and hypocrisies too long to be able to help others;

but my action with those women, sisters of mine, shows me that the

better way is easy to find. To those who believe in Jesus and his

gospel there can be no other relation between man and man than the

relation of affection. Love alone is stronger than sin—stronger than

death. I therefore say to the rich among you that it is their duty to

do what I have done and am doing. Let each one of you who is prosperous

take into his house some thief and treat him as his brother, some

unfortunate and treat her as his sister, and San Francisco will need no

police force and no magistrates; the prisons will be turned into

hospitals, and the criminal will disappear with his crime.

“We must give ourselves and not our money alone. We must do as Christ

did; that is the message of the Church today. We have wandered far from

the Master’s teaching. We are consumed in our own flesh-pots. We have

put mammon in the place of Christ. I have here a poem that tells the

whole story. I should like to read it to you. It was written by an

erring soul who yet saw clearly.[3] It must not be mistaken for an

attack upon the Catholic Church. It is an attack upon all churches,

upon the pomp and splendor of all churches that have wandered from the

Master’s path and hedged themselves in from his lambs. Here it is:

“The silver trumpets rang across the Dome;

The people knelt upon the ground with awe;

And borne upon the necks of men I saw,

Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.

“Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,

And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,

Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head;

In splendor and in light the Pope passed home.

“My heart stole back across wide wastes of years

To One who wandered by a lonely sea;

And sought in vain for any place of rest:

‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,

I, only I, must wander wearily,

And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’”

[3] Oscar Wilde, one of the lords of language of the nineteenth

century of the Christian Era.

The audience was agitated, but unresponsive. Yet Bishop Morehouse was

not aware of it. He held steadily on his way.

“And so I say to the rich among you, and to all the rich, that bitterly

you oppress the Master’s lambs. You have hardened your hearts. You have

closed your ears to the voices that are crying in the land—the voices

of pain and sorrow that you will not hear but that some day will be

heard. And so I say—”

But at this point H. H. Jones and Philip Ward, who had already risen

from their chairs, led the Bishop off the platform, while the audience

sat breathless and shocked.

Ernest laughed harshly and savagely when he had gained the street. His

laughter jarred upon me. My heart seemed ready to burst with suppressed

tears.

“He has delivered his message,” Ernest cried. “The manhood and the

deep-hidden, tender nature of their Bishop burst out, and his Christian

audience, that loved him, concluded that he was crazy! Did you see them

leading him so solicitously from the platform? There must have been

laughter in hell at the spectacle.”

“Nevertheless, it will make a great impression, what the Bishop did and

said to-night,” I said.

“Think so?” Ernest queried mockingly.

“It will make a sensation,” I asserted. “Didn’t you see the reporters

scribbling like mad while he was speaking?”

“Not a line of which will appear in to-morrow’s papers.”

“I can’t believe it,” I cried.

“Just wait and see,” was the answer. “Not a line, not a thought that he

uttered. The daily press? The daily suppressage!”

“But the reporters,” I objected. “I saw them.”

“Not a word that he uttered will see print. You have forgotten the

editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their

policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established.

The Bishop’s utterance was a violent assault upon the established

morality. It was heresy. They led him from the platform to prevent him

from uttering more heresy. The newspapers will purge his heresy in the

oblivion of silence. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic

growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve

the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves

it.

“Let me prophesy. To-morrow’s papers will merely mention that the

Bishop is in poor health, that he has been working too hard, and that

he broke down last night. The next mention, some days hence, will be to

the effect that he is suffering from nervous prostration and has been

given a vacation by his grateful flock. After that, one of two things

will happen: either the Bishop will see the error of his way and return

from his vacation a well man in whose eyes there are no more visions,

or else he will persist in his madness, and then you may expect to see

in the papers, couched pathetically and tenderly, the announcement of

his insanity. After that he will be left to gibber his visions to

padded walls.”

“Now there you go too far!” I cried out.

“In the eyes of society it will truly be insanity,” he replied. “What

honest man, who is not insane, would take lost women and thieves into

his house to dwell with him sisterly and brotherly? True, Christ died

between two thieves, but that is another story. Insanity? The mental

processes of the man with whom one disagrees, are always wrong.

Therefore the mind of the man is wrong. Where is the line between wrong

mind and insane mind? It is inconceivable that any sane man can

radically disagree with one’s most sane conclusions.

“There is a good example of it in this evening’s paper. Mary McKenna

lives south of Market Street. She is a poor but honest woman. She is

also patriotic. But she has erroneous ideas concerning the American

flag and the protection it is supposed to symbolize. And here’s what

happened to her. Her husband had an accident and was laid up in

hospital three months. In spite of taking in washing, she got behind in

her rent. Yesterday they evicted her. But first, she hoisted an

American flag, and from under its folds she announced that by virtue of

its protection they could not turn her out on to the cold street. What

was done? She was arrested and arraigned for insanity. To-day she was

examined by the regular insanity experts. She was found insane. She was

consigned to the Napa Asylum.”

“But that is far-fetched,” I objected. “Suppose I should disagree with

everybody about the literary style of a book. They wouldn’t send me to

an asylum for that.”

“Very true,” he replied. “But such divergence of opinion would

constitute no menace to society. Therein lies the difference. The

divergence of opinion on the parts of Mary McKenna and the Bishop do

menace society. What if all the poor people should refuse to pay rent

and shelter themselves under the American flag? Landlordism would go

crumbling. The Bishop’s views are just as perilous to society. Ergo, to

the asylum with him.”

But still I refused to believe.

“Wait and see,” Ernest said, and I waited.

Next morning I sent out for all the papers. So far Ernest was right.

Not a word that Bishop Morehouse had uttered was in print. Mention was

made in one or two of the papers that he had been overcome by his

feelings. Yet the platitudes of the speakers that followed him were

reported at length.

Several days later the brief announcement was made that he had gone

away on a vacation to recover from the effects of overwork. So far so

good, but there had been no hint of insanity, nor even of nervous

collapse. Little did I dream the terrible road the Bishop was destined

to travel—the Gethsemane and crucifixion that Ernest had pondered

about.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MACHINE BREAKERS

It was just before Ernest ran for Congress, on the socialist ticket,

that father gave what he privately called his “Profit and Loss” dinner.

Ernest called it the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In point of fact,

it was merely a dinner for business men—small business men, of course.

I doubt if one of them was interested in any business the total

capitalization of which exceeded a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

They were truly representative middle-class business men.

There was Owen, of Silverberg, Owen & Company—a large grocery firm with

several branch stores. We bought our groceries from them. There were

both partners of the big drug firm of Kowalt & Washburn, and Mr.

Asmunsen, the owner of a large granite quarry in Contra Costa County.

And there were many similar men, owners or part-owners in small

factories, small businesses and small industries—small capitalists, in

short.

They were shrewd-faced, interesting men, and they talked with

simplicity and clearness. Their unanimous complaint was against the

corporations and trusts. Their creed was, “Bust the Trusts.” All

oppression originated in the trusts, and one and all told the same tale

of woe. They advocated government ownership of such trusts as the

railroads and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes, graduated with

ferocity, to destroy large accumulations. Likewise they advocated, as a

cure for local ills, municipal ownership of such public utilities as

water, gas, telephones, and street railways.

Especially interesting was Mr. Asmunsen’s narrative of his tribulations

as a quarry owner. He confessed that he never made any profits out of

his quarry, and this, in spite of the enormous volume of business that

had been caused by the destruction of San Francisco by the big

earthquake. For six years the rebuilding of San Francisco had been

going on, and his business had quadrupled and octupled, and yet he was

no better off.

“The railroad knows my business just a little bit better than I do,” he

said. “It knows my operating expenses to a cent, and it knows the terms

of my contracts. How it knows these things I can only guess. It must

have spies in my employ, and it must have access to the parties to all

my contracts. For look you, when I place a big contract, the terms of

which favor me a goodly profit, the freight rate from my quarry to

market is promptly raised. No explanation is made. The railroad gets my

profit. Under such circumstances I have never succeeded in getting the

railroad to reconsider its raise. On the other hand, when there have

been accidents, increased expenses of operating, or contracts with less

profitable terms, I have always succeeded in getting the railroad to

lower its rate. What is the result? Large or small, the railroad always

gets my profits.”

“What remains to you over and above,” Ernest interrupted to ask, “would

roughly be the equivalent of your salary as a manager did the railroad

own the quarry.”

“The very thing,” Mr. Asmunsen replied. “Only a short time ago I had my

books gone through for the past ten years. I discovered that for those

ten years my gain was just equivalent to a manager’s salary. The

railroad might just as well have owned my quarry and hired me to run

it.”

“But with this difference,” Ernest laughed; “the railroad would have

had to assume all the risk which you so obligingly assumed for it.”

“Very true,” Mr. Asmunsen answered sadly.

Having let them have their say, Ernest began asking questions right and

left. He began with Mr. Owen.

“You started a branch store here in Berkeley about six months ago?”

“Yes,” Mr. Owen answered.

“And since then I’ve noticed that three little corner groceries have

gone out of business. Was your branch store the cause of it?”

Mr. Owen affirmed with a complacent smile. “They had no chance against

us.”

“Why not?”

“We had greater capital. With a large business there is always less

waste and greater efficiency.”

“And your branch store absorbed the profits of the three small ones. I

see. But tell me, what became of the owners of the three stores?”

“One is driving a delivery wagon for us. I don’t know what happened to

the other two.”

Ernest turned abruptly on Mr. Kowalt.

“You sell a great deal at cut-rates.[1] What have become of the owners

of the small drug stores that you forced to the wall?”

[1] A lowering of selling price to cost, and even to less than cost.

Thus, a large company could sell at a loss for a longer period than a

small company, and so drive the small company out of business. A

common device of competition.

“One of them, Mr. Haasfurther, has charge now of our prescription

department,” was the answer.

“And you absorbed the profits they had been making?”

“Surely. That is what we are in business for.”

“And you?” Ernest said suddenly to Mr. Asmunsen. “You are disgusted

because the railroad has absorbed your profits?”

Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

“What you want is to make profits yourself?”

Again Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

“Out of others?”

There was no answer.

“Out of others?” Ernest insisted.

“That is the way profits are made,” Mr. Asmunsen replied curtly.

“Then the business game is to make profits out of others, and to

prevent others from making profits out of you. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Ernest had to repeat his question before Mr. Asmunsen gave an answer,

and then he said:

“Yes, that’s it, except that we do not object to the others making

profits so long as they are not extortionate.”

“By extortionate you mean large; yet you do not object to making large

profits yourself? . . . Surely not?”

And Mr. Asmunsen amiably confessed to the weakness. There was one other

man who was quizzed by Ernest at this juncture, a Mr. Calvin, who had

once been a great dairy-owner.

“Some time ago you were fighting the Milk Trust,” Ernest said to him;

“and now you are in Grange politics.[2] How did it happen?”

[2] Many efforts were made during this period to organize the

perishing farmer class into a political party, the aim of which was to

destroy the trusts and corporations by drastic legislation. All such

attempts ended in failure.

“Oh, I haven’t quit the fight,” Mr. Calvin answered, and he looked

belligerent enough. “I’m fighting the Trust on the only field where it

is possible to fight—the political field. Let me show you. A few years

ago we dairymen had everything our own way.”

“But you competed among yourselves?” Ernest interrupted.

“Yes, that was what kept the profits down. We did try to organize, but

independent dairymen always broke through us. Then came the Milk

Trust.”

“Financed by surplus capital from Standard Oil,”[3] Ernest said.

[3] The first successful great trust—almost a generation in advance of

the rest.

“Yes,” Mr. Calvin acknowledged. “But we did not know it at the time.

Its agents approached us with a club. “Come in and be fat,” was their

proposition, “or stay out and starve.” Most of us came in. Those that

didn’t, starved. Oh, it paid us . . . at first. Milk was raised a cent

a quart. One-quarter of this cent came to us. Three-quarters of it went

to the Trust. Then milk was raised another cent, only we didn’t get any

of that cent. Our complaints were useless. The Trust was in control. We

discovered that we were pawns. Finally, the additional quarter of a

cent was denied us. Then the Trust began to squeeze us out. What could

we do? We were squeezed out. There were no dairymen, only a Milk

Trust.”

“But with milk two cents higher, I should think you could have

competed,” Ernest suggested slyly.

“So we thought. We tried it.” Mr. Calvin paused a moment. “It broke us.

The Trust could put milk upon the market more cheaply than we. It could

sell still at a slight profit when we were selling at actual loss. I

dropped fifty thousand dollars in that venture. Most of us went

bankrupt.[4] The dairymen were wiped out of existence.”

[4] Bankruptcy—a peculiar institution that enabled an individual, who

had failed in competitive industry, to forego paying his debts. The

effect was to ameliorate the too savage conditions of the

fang-and-claw social struggle.

“So the Trust took your profits away from you,” Ernest said, “and

you’ve gone into politics in order to legislate the Trust out of

existence and get the profits back?”

Mr. Calvin’s face lighted up. “That is precisely what I say in my

speeches to the farmers. That’s our whole idea in a nutshell.”

“And yet the Trust produces milk more cheaply than could the

independent dairymen?” Ernest queried.

“Why shouldn’t it, with the splendid organization and new machinery its

large capital makes possible?”

“There is no discussion,” Ernest answered. “It certainly should, and,

furthermore, it does.”

Mr. Calvin here launched out into a political speech in exposition of

his views. He was warmly followed by a number of the others, and the

cry of all was to destroy the trusts.

“Poor simple folk,” Ernest said to me in an undertone. “They see

clearly as far as they see, but they see only to the ends of their

noses.”

A little later he got the floor again, and in his characteristic way

controlled it for the rest of the evening.

“I have listened carefully to all of you,” he began, “and I see plainly

that you play the business game in the orthodox fashion. Life sums

itself up to you in profits. You have a firm and abiding belief that

you were created for the sole purpose of making profits. Only there is

a hitch. In the midst of your own profit-making along comes the trust

and takes your profits away from you. This is a dilemma that interferes

somehow with the aim of creation, and the only way out, as it seems to

you, is to destroy that which takes from you your profits.

“I have listened carefully, and there is only one name that will

epitomize you. I shall call you that name. You are machine-breakers. Do

you know what a machine-breaker is? Let me tell you. In the eighteenth

century, in England, men and women wove cloth on hand-looms in their

own cottages. It was a slow, clumsy, and costly way of weaving cloth,

this cottage system of manufacture. Along came the steam-engine and

labor-saving machinery. A thousand looms assembled in a large factory,

and driven by a central engine wove cloth vastly more cheaply than

could the cottage weavers on their hand-looms. Here in the factory was

combination, and before it competition faded away. The men and women

who had worked the hand-looms for themselves now went into the

factories and worked the machine-looms, not for themselves, but for the

capitalist owners. Furthermore, little children went to work on the

machine-looms, at lower wages, and displaced the men. This made hard

times for the men. Their standard of living fell. They starved. And

they said it was all the fault of the machines. Therefore, they

proceeded to break the machines. They did not succeed, and they were

very stupid.

“Yet you have not learned their lesson. Here are you, a century and a

half later, trying to break machines. By your own confession the trust

machines do the work more efficiently and more cheaply than you can.

That is why you cannot compete with them. And yet you would break those

machines. You are even more stupid than the stupid workmen of England.

And while you maunder about restoring competition, the trusts go on

destroying you.

“One and all you tell the same story,—the passing away of competition

and the coming on of combination. You, Mr. Owen, destroyed competition

here in Berkeley when your branch store drove the three small groceries

out of business. Your combination was more effective. Yet you feel the

pressure of other combinations on you, the trust combinations, and you

cry out. It is because you are not a trust. If you were a grocery trust

for the whole United States, you would be singing another song. And the

song would be, ‘Blessed are the trusts.’ And yet again, not only is

your small combination not a trust, but you are aware yourself of its

lack of strength. You are beginning to divine your own end. You feel

yourself and your branch stores a pawn in the game. You see the

powerful interests rising and growing more powerful day by day; you

feel their mailed hands descending upon your profits and taking a pinch

here and a pinch there—the railroad trust, the oil trust, the steel

trust, the coal trust; and you know that in the end they will destroy

you, take away from you the last per cent of your little profits.

“You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three small

groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you

swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and

sent your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by eating up the

three small groceries. It is dog eat dog, and you ate them up. But, on

the other hand, you are being eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs,

wherefore you squeal. And what I say to you is true of all of you at

this table. You are all squealing. You are all playing the losing game,

and you are all squealing about it.

“But when you squeal you don’t state the situation flatly, as I have

stated it. You don’t say that you like to squeeze profits out of

others, and that you are making all the row because others are

squeezing your profits out of you. No, you are too cunning for that.

You say something else. You make small-capitalist political speeches

such as Mr. Calvin made. What did he say? Here are a few of his phrases

I caught: ‘Our original principles are all right,’ ‘What this country

requires is a return to fundamental American methods—free opportunity

for all,’ ‘The spirit of liberty in which this nation was born,’ ‘Let

us return to the principles of our forefathers.’

“When he says ‘free opportunity for all,’ he means free opportunity to

squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the

great trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated

these phrases so often that you believe them. You want opportunity to

plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize

yourselves into thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and

acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that

you are patriotic. Your desire for profits, which is sheer selfishness,

you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity.

Come on now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for once. Look

the matter in the face and state it in direct terms.”

There were flushed and angry faces at the table, and withal a measure

of awe. They were a little frightened at this smooth-faced young

fellow, and the swing and smash of his words, and his dreadful trait of

calling a spade a spade. Mr. Calvin promptly replied.

“And why not?” he demanded. “Why can we not return to the ways of our

fathers when this republic was founded? You have spoken much truth, Mr.

Everhard, unpalatable though it has been. But here amongst ourselves

let us speak out. Let us throw off all disguise and accept the truth as

Mr. Everhard has flatly stated it. It is true that we smaller

capitalists are after profits, and that the trusts are taking our

profits away from us. It is true that we want to destroy the trusts in

order that our profits may remain to us. And why can we not do it? Why

not? I say, why not?”

“Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter,” Ernest said with a pleased

expression. “I’ll try to tell you why not, though the telling will be

rather hard. You see, you fellows have studied business, in a small

way, but you have not studied social evolution at all. You are in the

midst of a transition stage now in economic evolution, but you do not

understand it, and that’s what causes all the confusion. Why cannot you

return? Because you can’t. You can no more make water run up hill than

can you cause the tide of economic evolution to flow back in its

channel along the way it came. Joshua made the sun stand still upon

Gibeon, but you would outdo Joshua. You would make the sun go backward

in the sky. You would have time retrace its steps from noon to morning.

“In the face of labor-saving machinery, of organized production, of the

increased efficiency of combination, you would set the economic sun

back a whole generation or so to the time when there were no great

capitalists, no great machinery, no railroads—a time when a host of

little capitalists warred with each other in economic anarchy, and when

production was primitive, wasteful, unorganized, and costly. Believe

me, Joshua’s task was easier, and he had Jehovah to help him. But God

has forsaken you small capitalists. The sun of the small capitalists is

setting. It will never rise again. Nor is it in your power even to make

it stand still. You are perishing, and you are doomed to perish utterly

from the face of society.

“This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God. Combination is

stronger than competition. Primitive man was a puny creature hiding in

the crevices of the rocks. He combined and made war upon his

carnivorous enemies. They were competitive beasts. Primitive man was a

combinative beast, and because of it he rose to primacy over all the

animals. And man has been achieving greater and greater combinations

ever since. It is combination _versus_ competition, a thousand

centuries long struggle, in which competition has always been worsted.

Whoso enlists on the side of competition perishes.”

“But the trusts themselves arose out of competition,” Mr. Calvin

interrupted.

“Very true,” Ernest answered. “And the trusts themselves destroyed

competition. That, by your own word, is why you are no longer in the

dairy business.”

The first laughter of the evening went around the table, and even Mr.

Calvin joined in the laugh against himself.

“And now, while we are on the trusts,” Ernest went on, “let us settle a

few things. I shall make certain statements, and if you disagree with

them, speak up. Silence will mean agreement. Is it not true that a

machine-loom will weave more cloth and weave more cheaply than a

hand-loom?” He paused, but nobody spoke up. “Is it not then highly

irrational to break the machine-loom and go back to the clumsy and more

costly hand-loom method of weaving?” Heads nodded in acquiescence. “Is

it not true that that known as a trust produces more efficiently and

cheaply than can a thousand competing small concerns?” Still no one

objected. “Then is it not irrational to destroy that cheap and

efficient combination?”

No one answered for a long time. Then Mr. Kowalt spoke.

“What are we to do, then?” he demanded. “To destroy the trusts is the

only way we can see to escape their domination.”

Ernest was all fire and aliveness on the instant.

“I’ll show you another way!” he cried. “Let us not destroy those

wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control

them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run them

for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners of the wonderful

machines, and let us own the wonderful machines ourselves. That,

gentlemen, is socialism, a greater combination than the trusts, a

greater economic and social combination than any that has as yet

appeared on the planet. It is in line with evolution. We meet

combination with greater combination. It is the winning side. Come on

over with us socialists and play on the winning side.”

Here arose dissent. There was a shaking of heads, and mutterings arose.

“All right, then, you prefer to be anachronisms,” Ernest laughed. “You

prefer to play atavistic rôles. You are doomed to perish as all

atavisms perish. Have you ever asked what will happen to you when

greater combinations than even the present trusts arise? Have you ever

considered where you will stand when the great trusts themselves

combine into the combination of combinations—into the social, economic,

and political trust?”

He turned abruptly and irrelevantly upon Mr. Calvin.

“Tell me,” Ernest said, “if this is not true. You are compelled to form

a new political party because the old parties are in the hands of the

trusts. The chief obstacle to your Grange propaganda is the trusts.

Behind every obstacle you encounter, every blow that smites you, every

defeat that you receive, is the hand of the trusts. Is this not so?

Tell me.”

Mr. Calvin sat in uncomfortable silence.

“Go ahead,” Ernest encouraged.

“It is true,” Mr. Calvin confessed. “We captured the state legislature

of Oregon and put through splendid protective legislation, and it was

vetoed by the governor, who was a creature of the trusts. We elected a

governor of Colorado, and the legislature refused to permit him to take

office. Twice we have passed a national income tax, and each time the

supreme court smashed it as unconstitutional. The courts are in the

hands of the trusts. We, the people, do not pay our judges

sufficiently. But there will come a time—”

“When the combination of the trusts will control all legislation, when

the combination of the trusts will itself be the government,” Ernest

interrupted.

“Never! never!” were the cries that arose. Everybody was excited and

belligerent.

“Tell me,” Ernest demanded, “what will you do when such a time comes?”

“We will rise in our strength!” Mr. Asmunsen cried, and many voices

backed his decision.

“That will be civil war,” Ernest warned them.

“So be it, civil war,” was Mr. Asmunsen’s answer, with the cries of all

the men at the table behind him. “We have not forgotten the deeds of

our forefathers. For our liberties we are ready to fight and die.”

Ernest smiled.

“Do not forget,” he said, “that we had tacitly agreed that liberty in

your case, gentlemen, means liberty to squeeze profits out of others.”

The table was angry, now, fighting angry; but Ernest controlled the

tumult and made himself heard.

“One more question. When you rise in your strength, remember, the

reason for your rising will be that the government is in the hands of

the trusts. Therefore, against your strength the government will turn

the regular army, the navy, the militia, the police—in short, the whole

organized war machinery of the United States. Where will your strength

be then?”

Dismay sat on their faces, and before they could recover, Ernest struck

again.

“Do you remember, not so long ago, when our regular army was only fifty

thousand? Year by year it has been increased until to-day it is three

hundred thousand.”

Again he struck.

“Nor is that all. While you diligently pursued that favorite phantom of

yours, called profits, and moralized about that favorite fetich of

yours, called competition, even greater and more direful things have

been accomplished by combination. There is the militia.”

“It is our strength!” cried Mr. Kowalt. “With it we would repel the

invasion of the regular army.”

“You would go into the militia yourself,” was Ernest’s retort, “and be

sent to Maine, or Florida, or the Philippines, or anywhere else, to

drown in blood your own comrades civil-warring for their liberties.

While from Kansas, or Wisconsin, or any other state, your own comrades

would go into the militia and come here to California to drown in blood

your own civil-warring.”

Now they were really shocked, and they sat wordless, until Mr. Owen

murmured:

“We would not go into the militia. That would settle it. We would not

be so foolish.”

Ernest laughed outright.

“You do not understand the combination that has been effected. You

could not help yourself. You would be drafted into the militia.”

“There is such a thing as civil law,” Mr. Owen insisted.

“Not when the government suspends civil law. In that day when you speak

of rising in your strength, your strength would be turned against

yourself. Into the militia you would go, willy-nilly. Habeas corpus, I

heard some one mutter just now. Instead of habeas corpus you would get

post mortems. If you refused to go into the militia, or to obey after

you were in, you would be tried by drumhead court martial and shot down

like dogs. It is the law.”

“It is not the law!” Mr. Calvin asserted positively. “There is no such

law. Young man, you have dreamed all this. Why, you spoke of sending

the militia to the Philippines. That is unconstitutional. The

Constitution especially states that the militia cannot be sent out of

the country.”

“What’s the Constitution got to do with it?” Ernest demanded. “The

courts interpret the Constitution, and the courts, as Mr. Asmunsen

agreed, are the creatures of the trusts. Besides, it is as I have said,

the law. It has been the law for years, for nine years, gentlemen.”

“That we can be drafted into the militia?” Mr. Calvin asked

incredulously. “That they can shoot us by drumhead court martial if we

refuse?”

“Yes,” Ernest answered, “precisely that.”

“How is it that we have never heard of this law?” my father asked, and

I could see that it was likewise new to him.

“For two reasons,” Ernest said. “First, there has been no need to

enforce it. If there had, you’d have heard of it soon enough. And

secondly, the law was rushed through Congress and the Senate secretly,

with practically no discussion. Of course, the newspapers made no

mention of it. But we socialists knew about it. We published it in our

papers. But you never read our papers.”

“I still insist you are dreaming,” Mr. Calvin said stubbornly. “The

country would never have permitted it.”

“But the country did permit it,” Ernest replied. “And as for my

dreaming—” he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small

pamphlet—“tell me if this looks like dream-stuff.”

He opened it and began to read:

“‘Section One, be it enacted, and so forth and so forth, that the

militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the

respective states, territories, and District of Columbia, who is more

than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age.’

“‘Section Seven, that any officer or enlisted man’—remember Section

One, gentlemen, you are all enlisted men—‘that any enlisted man of the

militia who shall refuse or neglect to present himself to such

mustering officer upon being called forth as herein prescribed, shall

be subject to trial by court martial, and shall be punished as such

court martial shall direct.’

“‘Section Eight, that courts martial, for the trial of officers or men

of the militia, shall be composed of militia officers only.’

“‘Section Nine, that the militia, when called into the actual service

of the United States, shall be subject to the same rules and articles

of war as the regular troops of the United States.’

“There you are gentlemen, American citizens, and fellow-militiamen.

Nine years ago we socialists thought that law was aimed against labor.

But it would seem that it was aimed against you, too. Congressman

Wiley, in the brief discussion that was permitted, said that the bill

‘provided for a reserve force to take the mob by the throat’—you’re the

mob, gentlemen—‘and protect at all hazards life, liberty, and

property.’ And in the time to come, when you rise in your strength,

remember that you will be rising against the property of the trusts,

and the liberty of the trusts, according to the law, to squeeze you.

Your teeth are pulled, gentlemen. Your claws are trimmed. In the day

you rise in your strength, toothless and clawless, you will be as

harmless as any army of clams.”

“I don’t believe it!” Kowalt cried. “There is no such law. It is a

canard got up by you socialists.”

“This bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on July 30,

1902,” was the reply. “It was introduced by Representative Dick of

Ohio. It was rushed through. It was passed unanimously by the Senate on

January 14, 1903. And just seven days afterward was approved by the

President of the United States.”[5]

[5] Everhard was right in the essential particulars, though his date

of the introduction of the bill is in error. The bill was introduced

on June 30, and not on July 30. The _Congressional Record_ is here in

Ardis, and a reference to it shows mention of the bill on the

following dates: June 30, December 9, 15, 16, and 17, 1902, and

January 7 and 14, 1903. The ignorance evidenced by the business men at

the dinner was nothing unusual. Very few people knew of the existence

of this law. E. Untermann, a revolutionist, in July, 1903, published a

pamphlet at Girard, Kansas, on the “Militia Bill.” This pamphlet had a

small circulation among workingmen; but already had the segregation of

classes proceeded so far, that the members of the middle class never

heard of the pamphlet at all, and so remained in ignorance of the law.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM

In the midst of the consternation his revelation had produced, Ernest

began again to speak.

“You have said, a dozen of you to-night, that socialism is impossible.

You have asserted the impossible, now let me demonstrate the

inevitable. Not only is it inevitable that you small capitalists shall

pass away, but it is inevitable that the large capitalists, and the

trusts also, shall pass away. Remember, the tide of evolution never

flows backward. It flows on and on, and it flows from competition to

combination, and from little combination to large combination, and from

large combination to colossal combination, and it flows on to

socialism, which is the most colossal combination of all.

“You tell me that I dream. Very good. I’ll give you the mathematics of

my dream; and here, in advance, I challenge you to show that my

mathematics are wrong. I shall develop the inevitability of the

breakdown of the capitalist system, and I shall demonstrate

mathematically why it must break down. Here goes, and bear with me if

at first I seem irrelevant.

“Let us, first of all, investigate a particular industrial process, and

whenever I state something with which you disagree, please interrupt

me. Here is a shoe factory. This factory takes leather and makes it

into shoes. Here is one hundred dollars’ worth of leather. It goes

through the factory and comes out in the form of shoes, worth, let us

say, two hundred dollars. What has happened? One hundred dollars has

been added to the value of the leather. How was it added? Let us see.

“Capital and labor added this value of one hundred dollars. Capital

furnished the factory, the machines, and paid all the expenses. Labor

furnished labor. By the joint effort of capital and labor one hundred

dollars of value was added. Are you all agreed so far?”

Heads nodded around the table in affirmation.

“Labor and capital having produced this one hundred dollars, now

proceed to divide it. The statistics of this division are fractional;

so let us, for the sake of convenience, make them roughly approximate.

Capital takes fifty dollars as its share, and labor gets in wages fifty

dollars as its share. We will not enter into the squabbling over the

division.[1] No matter how much squabbling takes place, in one

percentage or another the division is arranged. And take notice here,

that what is true of this particular industrial process is true of all

industrial processes. Am I right?”

[1] Everhard here clearly develops the cause of all the labor troubles

of that time. In the division of the joint-product, capital wanted all

it could get, and labor wanted all it could get. This quarrel over the

division was irreconcilable. So long as the system of capitalistic

production existed, labor and capital continued to quarrel over the

division of the joint-product. It is a ludicrous spectacle to us, but

we must not forget that we have seven centuries’ advantage over those

that lived in that time.

Again the whole table agreed with Ernest.

“Now, suppose labor, having received its fifty dollars, wanted to buy

back shoes. It could only buy back fifty dollars’ worth. That’s clear,

isn’t it?

“And now we shift from this particular process to the sum total of all

industrial processes in the United States, which includes the leather

itself, raw material, transportation, selling, everything. We will say,

for the sake of round figures, that the total production of wealth in

the United States in one year is four billion dollars. Then labor has

received in wages, during the same period, two billion dollars. Four

billion dollars has been produced. How much of this can labor buy back?

Two billions. There is no discussion of this, I am sure. For that

matter, my percentages are mild. Because of a thousand capitalistic

devices, labor cannot buy back even half of the total product.

“But to return. We will say labor buys back two billions. Then it

stands to reason that labor can consume only two billions. There are

still two billions to be accounted for, which labor cannot buy back and

consume.”

“Labor does not consume its two billions, even,” Mr. Kowalt spoke up.

“If it did, it would not have any deposits in the savings banks.”

“Labor’s deposits in the savings banks are only a sort of reserve fund

that is consumed as fast as it accumulates. These deposits are saved

for old age, for sickness and accident, and for funeral expenses. The

savings bank deposit is simply a piece of the loaf put back on the

shelf to be eaten next day. No, labor consumes all of the total product

that its wages will buy back.

“Two billions are left to capital. After it has paid its expenses, does

it consume the remainder? Does capital consume all of its two

billions?”

Ernest stopped and put the question point blank to a number of the men.

They shook their heads.

“I don’t know,” one of them frankly said.

“Of course you do,” Ernest went on. “Stop and think a moment. If

capital consumed its share, the sum total of capital could not

increase. It would remain constant. If you will look at the economic

history of the United States, you will see that the sum total of

capital has continually increased. Therefore capital does not consume

its share. Do you remember when England owned so much of our railroad

bonds? As the years went by, we bought back those bonds. What does that

mean? That part of capital’s unconsumed share bought back the bonds.

What is the meaning of the fact that to-day the capitalists of the

United States own hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of

Mexican bonds, Russian bonds, Italian bonds, Grecian bonds? The meaning

is that those hundreds and hundreds of millions were part of capital’s

share which capital did not consume. Furthermore, from the very

beginning of the capitalist system, capital has never consumed all of

its share.

“And now we come to the point. Four billion dollars of wealth is

produced in one year in the United States. Labor buys back and consumes

two billions. Capital does not consume the remaining two billions.

There is a large balance left over unconsumed. What is done with this

balance? What can be done with it? Labor cannot consume any of it, for

labor has already spent all its wages. Capital will not consume this

balance, because, already, according to its nature, it has consumed all

it can. And still remains the balance. What can be done with it? What

is done with it?”

“It is sold abroad,” Mr. Kowalt volunteered.

“The very thing,” Ernest agreed. “Because of this balance arises our

need for a foreign market. This is sold abroad. It has to be sold

abroad. There is no other way of getting rid of it. And that unconsumed

surplus, sold abroad, becomes what we call our favorable balance of

trade. Are we all agreed so far?”

“Surely it is a waste of time to elaborate these A B C’s of commerce,”

Mr. Calvin said tartly. “We all understand them.”

“And it is by these A B C’s I have so carefully elaborated that I shall

confound you,” Ernest retorted. “There’s the beauty of it. And I’m

going to confound you with them right now. Here goes.

“The United States is a capitalist country that has developed its

resources. According to its capitalist system of industry, it has an

unconsumed surplus that must be got rid of, and that must be got rid of

abroad.[2] What is true of the United States is true of every other

capitalist country with developed resources. Every one of such

countries has an unconsumed surplus. Don’t forget that they have

already traded with one another, and that these surpluses yet remain.

Labor in all these countries has spent its wages, and cannot buy any of

the surpluses. Capital in all these countries has already consumed all

it is able according to its nature. And still remain the surpluses.

They cannot dispose of these surpluses to one another. How are they

going to get rid of them?”

[2] Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States a few years

prior to this time, made the following public declaration: “_A more

liberal and extensive reciprocity in the purchase and sale of

commodities is necessary, so that the overproduction of the United

States can be satisfactorily disposed of to foreign countries._” Of

course, this overproduction he mentions was the profits of the

capitalist system over and beyond the consuming power of the

capitalists. It was at this time that Senator Mark Hanna said: “_The

production of wealth in the United States is one-third larger annually

than its consumption._” Also a fellow-Senator, Chauncey Depew, said:

“_The American people produce annually two billions more wealth than

they consume._”

“Sell them to countries with undeveloped resources,” Mr. Kowalt

suggested.

“The very thing. You see, my argument is so clear and simple that in

your own minds you carry it on for me. And now for the next step.

Suppose the United States disposes of its surplus to a country with

undeveloped resources like, say, Brazil. Remember this surplus is over

and above trade, which articles of trade have been consumed. What,

then, does the United States get in return from Brazil?”

“Gold,” said Mr. Kowalt.

“But there is only so much gold, and not much of it, in the world,”

Ernest objected.

“Gold in the form of securities and bonds and so forth,” Mr. Kowalt

amended.

“Now you’ve struck it,” Ernest said. “From Brazil the United States, in

return for her surplus, gets bonds and securities. And what does that

mean? It means that the United States is coming to own railroads in

Brazil, factories, mines, and lands in Brazil. And what is the meaning

of that in turn?”

Mr. Kowalt pondered and shook his head.

“I’ll tell you,” Ernest continued. “It means that the resources of

Brazil are being developed. And now, the next point. When Brazil, under

the capitalist system, has developed her resources, she will herself

have an unconsumed surplus. Can she get rid of this surplus to the

United States? No, because the United States has herself a surplus. Can

the United States do what she previously did—get rid of her surplus to

Brazil? No, for Brazil now has a surplus, too.

“What happens? The United States and Brazil must both seek out other

countries with undeveloped resources, in order to unload the surpluses

on them. But by the very process of unloading the surpluses, the

resources of those countries are in turn developed. Soon they have

surpluses, and are seeking other countries on which to unload. Now,

gentlemen, follow me. The planet is only so large. There are only so

many countries in the world. What will happen when every country in the

world, down to the smallest and last, with a surplus in its hands,

stands confronting every other country with surpluses in their hands?”

He paused and regarded his listeners. The bepuzzlement in their faces

was delicious. Also, there was awe in their faces. Out of abstractions

Ernest had conjured a vision and made them see it. They were seeing it

then, as they sat there, and they were frightened by it.

“We started with A B C, Mr. Calvin,” Ernest said slyly. “I have now

given you the rest of the alphabet. It is very simple. That is the

beauty of it. You surely have the answer forthcoming. What, then, when

every country in the world has an unconsumed surplus? Where will your

capitalist system be then?”

But Mr. Calvin shook a troubled head. He was obviously questing back

through Ernest’s reasoning in search of an error.

“Let me briefly go over the ground with you again,” Ernest said. “We

began with a particular industrial process, the shoe factory. We found

that the division of the joint product that took place there was

similar to the division that took place in the sum total of all

industrial processes. We found that labor could buy back with its wages

only so much of the product, and that capital did not consume all of

the remainder of the product. We found that when labor had consumed to

the full extent of its wages, and when capital had consumed all it

wanted, there was still left an unconsumed surplus. We agreed that this

surplus could only be disposed of abroad. We agreed, also, that the

effect of unloading this surplus on another country would be to develop

the resources of that country, and that in a short time that country

would have an unconsumed surplus. We extended this process to all the

countries on the planet, till every country was producing every year,

and every day, an unconsumed surplus, which it could dispose of to no

other country. And now I ask you again, what are we going to do with

those surpluses?”

Still no one answered.

“Mr. Calvin?” Ernest queried.

“It beats me,” Mr. Calvin confessed.

“I never dreamed of such a thing,” Mr. Asmunsen said. “And yet it does

seem clear as print.”

It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx’s[3] doctrine of

surplus value elaborated, and Ernest had done it so simply that I, too,

sat puzzled and dumbfounded.

[3] Karl Marx—the great intellectual hero of Socialism. A German Jew

of the nineteenth century. A contemporary of John Stuart Mill. It

seems incredible to us that whole generations should have elapsed

after the enunciation of Marx’s economic discoveries, in which time he

was sneered at by the world’s accepted thinkers and scholars. Because

of his discoveries he was banished from his native country, and he

died an exile in England.

“I’ll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus,” Ernest said. “Throw it

into the sea. Throw every year hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth

of shoes and wheat and clothing and all the commodities of commerce

into the sea. Won’t that fix it?”

“It will certainly fix it,” Mr. Calvin answered. “But it is absurd for

you to talk that way.”

Ernest was upon him like a flash.

“Is it a bit more absurd than what you advocate, you machine-breaker,

returning to the antediluvian ways of your forefathers? What do you

propose in order to get rid of the surplus? You would escape the

problem of the surplus by not producing any surplus. And how do you

propose to avoid producing a surplus? By returning to a primitive

method of production, so confused and disorderly and irrational, so

wasteful and costly, that it will be impossible to produce a surplus.”

Mr. Calvin swallowed. The point had been driven home. He swallowed

again and cleared his throat.

“You are right,” he said. “I stand convicted. It is absurd. But we’ve

got to do something. It is a case of life and death for us of the

middle class. We refuse to perish. We elect to be absurd and to return

to the truly crude and wasteful methods of our forefathers. We will put

back industry to its pre-trust stage. We will break the machines. And

what are you going to do about it?”

“But you can’t break the machines,” Ernest replied. “You cannot make

the tide of evolution flow backward. Opposed to you are two great

forces, each of which is more powerful than you of the middle class.

The large capitalists, the trusts, in short, will not let you turn

back. They don’t want the machines destroyed. And greater than the

trusts, and more powerful, is labor. It will not let you destroy the

machines. The ownership of the world, along with the machines, lies

between the trusts and labor. That is the battle alignment. Neither

side wants the destruction of the machines. But each side wants to

possess the machines. In this battle the middle class has no place. The

middle class is a pygmy between two giants. Don’t you see, you poor

perishing middle class, you are caught between the upper and nether

millstones, and even now has the grinding begun.

“I have demonstrated to you mathematically the inevitable breakdown of

the capitalist system. When every country stands with an unconsumed and

unsalable surplus on its hands, the capitalist system will break down

under the terrific structure of profits that it itself has reared. And

in that day there won’t be any destruction of the machines. The

struggle then will be for the ownership of the machines. If labor wins,

your way will be easy. The United States, and the whole world for that

matter, will enter upon a new and tremendous era. Instead of being

crushed by the machines, life will be made fairer, and happier, and

nobler by them. You of the destroyed middle class, along with

labor—there will be nothing but labor then; so you, and all the rest of

labor, will participate in the equitable distribution of the products

of the wonderful machines. And we, all of us, will make new and more

wonderful machines. And there won’t be any unconsumed surplus, because

there won’t be any profits.”

“But suppose the trusts win in this battle over the ownership of the

machines and the world?” Mr. Kowalt asked.

“Then,” Ernest answered, “you, and labor, and all of us, will be

crushed under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible

as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man.

That will be a good name for that despotism, the Iron Heel.”[4]

[4] The earliest known use of that name to designate the Oligarchy.

There was a long pause, and every man at the table meditated in ways

unwonted and profound.

“But this socialism of yours is a dream,” Mr. Calvin said; and

repeated, “a dream.”

“I’ll show you something that isn’t a dream, then,” Ernest answered.

“And that something I shall call the Oligarchy. You call it the

Plutocracy. We both mean the same thing, the large capitalists or the

trusts. Let us see where the power lies today. And in order to do so,

let us apportion society into its class divisions.

“There are three big classes in society. First comes the Plutocracy,

which is composed of wealthy bankers, railway magnates, corporation

directors, and trust magnates. Second, is the middle class, your class,

gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants, small

manufacturers, and professional men. And third and last comes my class,

the proletariat, which is composed of the wage-workers.[5]

[5] This division of society made by Everhard is in accordance with

that made by Lucien Sanial, one of the statistical authorities of that

time. His calculation of the membership of these divisions by

occupation, from the United States Census of 1900, is as follows:

Plutocratic class, 250,251; Middle class, 8,429,845; and Proletariat

class, 20,393,137.

“You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth constitutes

essential power in the United States to-day. How is this wealth owned

by these three classes? Here are the figures. The Plutocracy owns

sixty-seven billions of wealth. Of the total number of persons engaged

in occupations in the United States, only nine-tenths of one per cent

are from the Plutocracy, yet the Plutocracy owns seventy per cent of

the total wealth. The middle class owns twenty-four billions.

Twenty-nine per cent of those in occupations are from the middle class,

and they own twenty-five per cent of the total wealth. Remains the

proletariat. It owns four billions. Of all persons in occupations,

seventy per cent come from the proletariat; and the proletariat owns

four per cent of the total wealth. Where does the power lie,

gentlemen?”

“From your own figures, we of the middle class are more powerful than

labor,” Mr. Asmunsen remarked.

“Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the face of the strength

of the Plutocracy,” Ernest retorted. “And furthermore, I’m not done

with you. There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater

because it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the strength of the

proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our

fingers to pull triggers. This strength we cannot be stripped of. It is

the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it

is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot

take away.

“But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you. Even

now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end it will take

it all away from you. And then you will cease to be the middle class.

You will descend to us. You will become proletarians. And the beauty of

it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you

brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of

humanity.

“You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled. Its

share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and household

furniture, with here and there, in very rare cases, an unencumbered

home. But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of it, and

the Plutocracy will take it away from you. Of course, there is the

large likelihood that the proletariat will take it away first. Don’t

you see your position, gentlemen? The middle class is a wobbly little

lamb between a lion and a tiger. If one doesn’t get you, the other

will. And if the Plutocracy gets you first, why it’s only a matter of

time when the Proletariat gets the Plutocracy.

“Even your present wealth is not a true measure of your power. The

strength of your wealth at this moment is only an empty shell. That is

why you are crying out your feeble little battle-cry, ‘Return to the

ways of our fathers.’ You are aware of your impotency. You know that

your strength is an empty shell. And I’ll show you the emptiness of it.

“What power have the farmers? Over fifty per cent are thralls by virtue

of the fact that they are merely tenants or are mortgaged. And all of

them are thralls by virtue of the fact that the trusts already own or

control (which is the same thing only better)—own and control all the

means of marketing the crops, such as cold storage, railroads,

elevators, and steamship lines. And, furthermore, the trusts control

the markets. In all this the farmers are without power. As regards

their political and governmental power, I’ll take that up later, along

with the political and governmental power of the whole middle class.

“Day by day the trusts squeeze out the farmers as they squeezed out Mr.

Calvin and the rest of the dairymen. And day by day are the merchants

squeezed out in the same way. Do you remember how, in six months, the

Tobacco Trust squeezed out over four hundred cigar stores in New York

City alone? Where are the old-time owners of the coal fields? You know

today, without my telling you, that the Railroad Trust owns or controls

the entire anthracite and bituminous coal fields. Doesn’t the Standard

Oil Trust[6] own a score of the ocean lines? And does it not also

control copper, to say nothing of running a smelter trust as a little

side enterprise? There are ten thousand cities in the United States

to-night lighted by the companies owned or controlled by Standard Oil,

and in as many cities all the electric transportation,—urban, suburban,

and interurban,—is in the hands of Standard Oil. The small capitalists

who were in these thousands of enterprises are gone. You know that.

It’s the same way that you are going.

[6] Standard Oil and Rockefeller—see footnote [10]

“The small manufacturer is like the farmer; and small manufacturers and

farmers to-day are reduced, to all intents and purposes, to feudal

tenure. For that matter, the professional men and the artists are at

this present moment villeins in everything but name, while the

politicians are henchmen. Why do you, Mr. Calvin, work all your nights

and days to organize the farmers, along with the rest of the middle

class, into a new political party? Because the politicians of the old

parties will have nothing to do with your atavistic ideas; and with

your atavistic ideas, they will have nothing to do because they are

what I said they are, henchmen, retainers of the Plutocracy.

“I spoke of the professional men and the artists as villeins. What else

are they? One and all, the professors, the preachers, and the editors,

hold their jobs by serving the Plutocracy, and their service consists

of propagating only such ideas as are either harmless to or

commendatory of the Plutocracy. Whenever they propagate ideas that

menace the Plutocracy, they lose their jobs, in which case, if they

have not provided for the rainy day, they descend into the proletariat

and either perish or become working-class agitators. And don’t forget

that it is the press, the pulpit, and the university that mould public

opinion, set the thought-pace of the nation. As for the artists, they

merely pander to the little less than ignoble tastes of the Plutocracy.

“But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power; it is the means

to power, and power is governmental. Who controls the government

to-day? The proletariat with its twenty millions engaged in

occupations? Even you laugh at the idea. Does the middle class, with

its eight million occupied members? No more than the proletariat. Who,

then, controls the government? The Plutocracy, with its paltry quarter

of a million of occupied members. But this quarter of a million does

not control the government, though it renders yeoman service. It is the

brain of the Plutocracy that controls the government, and this brain

consists of seven[7] small and powerful groups of men. And do not

forget that these groups are working to-day practically in unison.

[7] Even as late as 1907, it was considered that eleven groups

dominated the country, but this number was reduced by the amalgamation

of the five railroad groups into a supreme combination of all the

railroads. These five groups so amalgamated, along with their

financial and political allies, were (1) James J. Hill with his

control of the Northwest; (2) the Pennsylvania railway group, Schiff

financial manager, with big banking firms of Philadelphia and New

York; (3) Harriman, with Frick for counsel and Odell as political

lieutenant, controlling the central continental, Southwestern and

Southern Pacific Coast lines of transportation; (4) the Gould family

railway interests; and (5) Moore, Reid, and Leeds, known as the “Rock

Island crowd.” These strong oligarchs arose out of the conflict of

competition and travelled the inevitable road toward combination.

“Let me point out the power of but one of them, the railroad group. It

employs forty thousand lawyers to defeat the people in the courts. It

issues countless thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors,

ministers, university men, members of state legislatures, and of

Congress. It maintains luxurious lobbies[8] at every state capital, and

at the national capital; and in all the cities and towns of the land it

employs an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians whose

business is to attend primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe

judges, and in every way to work for its interests.[9]

[8] _Lobby_—a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and

corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent the people’s

interests.

[9] A decade before this speech of Everhard’s, the New York Board of

Trade issued a report from which the following is quoted: “_The

railroads control absolutely the legislatures of a majority of the

states of the Union; they make and unmake United States Senators,

congressmen, and governors, and are practically dictators of the

governmental policy of the United States._”

“Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven groups

that constitute the brain of the Plutocracy.[10] Your twenty-four

billions of wealth does not give you twenty-five cents’ worth of

governmental power. It is an empty shell, and soon even the empty shell

will be taken away from you. The Plutocracy has all power in its hands

to-day. It to-day makes the laws, for it owns the Senate, Congress, the

courts, and the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind law must

be force to execute the law. To-day the Plutocracy makes the law, and

to enforce the law it has at its beck and call the police, the army,

the navy, and, lastly, the militia, which is you, and me, and all of

us.”

[10] Rockefeller began as a member of the proletariat, and through

thrift and cunning succeeded in developing the first perfect trust,

namely that known as Standard Oil. We cannot forbear giving the

following remarkable page from the history of the times, to show how

the need for reinvestment of the Standard Oil surplus crushed out

small capitalists and hastened the breakdown of the capitalist system.

David Graham Phillips was a radical writer of the period, and the

quotation, by him, is taken from a copy of the _Saturday Evening

Post_, dated October 4, 1902 A.D. This is the only copy of this

publication that has come down to us, and yet, from its appearance and

content, we cannot but conclude that it was one of the popular

periodicals with a large circulation. The quotation here follows:

“_About ten years ago Rockefeller’s income was given as thirty

millions by an excellent authority. He had reached the limit of

profitable investment of profits in the oil industry. Here, then,

were these enormous sums in cash pouring in—more than $2,000,000 a

month for John Davison Rockefeller alone. The problem of

reinvestment became more serious. It became a nightmare. The oil

income was swelling, swelling, and the number of sound investments

limited, even more limited than it is now. It was through no

special eagerness for more gains that the Rockefellers began to

branch out from oil into other things. They were forced, swept on

by this inrolling tide of wealth which their monopoly magnet

irresistibly attracted. They developed a staff of investment

seekers and investigators. It is said that the chief of this staff

has a salary of $125,000 a year.

“The first conspicuous excursion and incursion of the Rockefellers

was into the railway field. By 1895 they controlled one-fifth of

the railway mileage of the country. What do they own or, through

dominant ownership, control to-day? They are powerful in all the

great railways of New York, north, east, and west, except one,

where their share is only a few millions. They are in most of the

great railways radiating from Chicago. They dominate in several of

the systems that extend to the Pacific. It is their votes that make

Mr. Morgan so potent, though, it may be added, they need his brains

more than he needs their votes— at present, and the combination of

the two constitutes in large measure the ‘community of interest.’

“But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those mighty

floods of gold. Presently John D. Rockefeller’s $2,500,000 a month

had increased to four, to five, to six millions a month, to

$75,000,000 a year. Illuminating oil was becoming all profit. The

reinvestments of income were adding their mite of many annual

millions.

“The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those

industries had developed to the safe investment stage. And now a

large part of the American people must begin to enrich the

Rockefellers as soon as the sun goes down, no matter what form of

illuminant they use. They went into farm mortgages. It is said that

when prosperity a few years ago enabled the farmers to rid

themselves of their mortgages, John D. Rockefeller was moved almost

to tears; eight millions which he had thought taken care of for

years to come at a good interest were suddenly dumped upon his

doorstep and there set up a-squawking for a new home. This

unexpected addition to his worriments in finding places for the

progeny of his petroleum and their progeny and their progeny’s

progeny was too much for the equanimity of a man without a

digestion. . . .

“The Rockefellers went into mines—iron and coal and copper and

lead; into other industrial companies; into street railways, into

national, state, and municipal bonds; into steamships and

steamboats and telegraphy; into real estate, into skyscrapers and

residences and hotels and business blocks; into life insurance,

into banking. There was soon literally no field of industry where

their millions were not at work. . . .

“The Rockefeller bank—the National City Bank—is by itself far and

away the biggest bank in the United States. It is exceeded in the

world only by the Bank of England and the Bank of France. The

deposits average more than one hundred millions a day; and it

dominates the call loan market on Wall Street and the stock market.

But it is not alone; it is the head of the Rockefeller chain of

banks, which includes fourteen banks and trust companies in New

York City, and banks of great strength and influence in every large

money center in the country.

“John D. Rockefeller owns Standard Oil stock worth between four and

five hundred millions at the market quotations. He has a hundred

millions in the steel trust, almost as much in a single western

railway system, half as much in a second, and so on and on and on

until the mind wearies of the cataloguing. His income last year was

about $100,000,000— it is doubtful if the incomes of all the

Rothschilds together make a greater sum. And it is going up by

leaps and bounds._”

Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner soon broke up.

All were quiet and subdued, and leave-taking was done with low voices.

It seemed almost that they were scared by the vision of the times they

had seen.

“The situation is, indeed, serious,” Mr. Calvin said to Ernest. “I have

little quarrel with the way you have depicted it. Only I disagree with

you about the doom of the middle class. We shall survive, and we shall

overthrow the trusts.”

“And return to the ways of your fathers,” Ernest finished for him.

“Even so,” Mr. Calvin answered gravely. “I know it’s a sort of

machine-breaking, and that it is absurd. But then life seems absurd

to-day, what of the machinations of the Plutocracy. And at any rate,

our sort of machine-breaking is at least practical and possible, which

your dream is not. Your socialistic dream is . . . well, a dream. We

cannot follow you.”

“I only wish you fellows knew a little something about evolution and

sociology,” Ernest said wistfully, as they shook hands. “We would be

saved so much trouble if you did.”

CHAPTER X.

THE VORTEX

Following like thunder claps upon the Business Men’s dinner, occurred

event after event of terrifying moment; and I, little I, who had lived

so placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found myself and

my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great world-affairs.

Whether it was my love for Ernest, or the clear sight he had given me

of the society in which I lived, that made me a revolutionist, I know

not; but a revolutionist I became, and I was plunged into a whirl of

happenings that would have been inconceivable three short months

before.

The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises in

society. First of all, father was discharged from the university. Oh,

he was not technically discharged. His resignation was demanded, that

was all. This, in itself, did not amount to much. Father, in fact, was

delighted. He was especially delighted because his discharge had been

precipitated by the publication of his book, “Economics and Education.”

It clinched his argument, he contended. What better evidence could be

advanced to prove that education was dominated by the capitalist class?

But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew he had been forced to

resign from the university. He was so eminent a scientist that such an

announcement, coupled with the reason for his enforced resignation,

would have created somewhat of a furor all over the world. The

newspapers showered him with praise and honor, and commended him for

having given up the drudgery of the lecture room in order to devote his

whole time to scientific research.

At first father laughed. Then he became angry—tonic angry. Then came

the suppression of his book. This suppression was performed secretly,

so secretly that at first we could not comprehend. The publication of

the book had immediately caused a bit of excitement in the country.

Father had been politely abused in the capitalist press, the tone of

the abuse being to the effect that it was a pity so great a scientist

should leave his field and invade the realm of sociology, about which

he knew nothing and wherein he had promptly become lost. This lasted

for a week, while father chuckled and said the book had touched a sore

spot on capitalism. And then, abruptly, the newspapers and the critical

magazines ceased saying anything about the book at all. Also, and with

equal suddenness, the book disappeared from the market. Not a copy was

obtainable from any bookseller. Father wrote to the publishers and was

informed that the plates had been accidentally injured. An

unsatisfactory correspondence followed. Driven finally to an

unequivocal stand, the publishers stated that they could not see their

way to putting the book into type again, but that they were willing to

relinquish their rights in it.

“And you won’t find another publishing house in the country to touch

it,” Ernest said. “And if I were you, I’d hunt cover right now. You’ve

merely got a foretaste of the Iron Heel.”

But father was nothing if not a scientist. He never believed in jumping

to conclusions. A laboratory experiment was no experiment if it were

not carried through in all its details. So he patiently went the round

of the publishing houses. They gave a multitude of excuses, but not one

house would consider the book.

When father became convinced that the book had actually been

suppressed, he tried to get the fact into the newspapers; but his

communications were ignored. At a political meeting of the socialists,

where many reporters were present, father saw his chance. He arose and

related the history of the suppression of the book. He laughed next day

when he read the newspapers, and then he grew angry to a degree that

eliminated all tonic qualities. The papers made no mention of the book,

but they misreported him beautifully. They twisted his words and

phrases away from the context, and turned his subdued and controlled

remarks into a howling anarchistic speech. It was done artfully. One

instance, in particular, I remember. He had used the phrase “social

revolution.” The reporter merely dropped out “social.” This was sent

out all over the country in an Associated Press despatch, and from all

over the country arose a cry of alarm. Father was branded as a nihilist

and an anarchist, and in one cartoon that was copied widely he was

portrayed waving a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired,

wild-eyed men who bore in their hands torches, knives, and dynamite

bombs.

He was assailed terribly in the press, in long and abusive editorials,

for his anarchy, and hints were made of mental breakdown on his part.

This behavior, on the part of the capitalist press, was nothing new,

Ernest told us. It was the custom, he said, to send reporters to all

the socialist meetings for the express purpose of misreporting and

distorting what was said, in order to frighten the middle class away

from any possible affiliation with the proletariat. And repeatedly

Ernest warned father to cease fighting and to take to cover.

The socialist press of the country took up the fight, however, and

throughout the reading portion of the working class it was known that

the book had been suppressed. But this knowledge stopped with the

working class. Next, the “Appeal to Reason,” a big socialist publishing

house, arranged with father to bring out the book. Father was jubilant,

but Ernest was alarmed.

“I tell you we are on the verge of the unknown,” he insisted. “Big

things are happening secretly all around us. We can feel them. We do

not know what they are, but they are there. The whole fabric of society

is a-tremble with them. Don’t ask me. I don’t know myself. But out of

this flux of society something is about to crystallize. It is

crystallizing now. The suppression of the book is a precipitation. How

many books have been suppressed? We haven’t the least idea. We are in

the dark. We have no way of learning. Watch out next for the

suppression of the socialist press and socialist publishing houses. I’m

afraid it’s coming. We are going to be throttled.”

Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even more closely than the

rest of the socialists, and within two days the first blow was struck.

The _Appeal to Reason_ was a weekly, and its regular circulation

amongst the proletariat was seven hundred and fifty thousand. Also, it

very frequently got out special editions of from two to five millions.

These great editions were paid for and distributed by the small army of

voluntary workers who had marshalled around the _Appeal_. The first

blow was aimed at these special editions, and it was a crushing one. By

an arbitrary ruling of the Post Office, these editions were decided to

be not the regular circulation of the paper, and for that reason were

denied admission to the mails.

A week later the Post Office Department ruled that the paper was

seditious, and barred it entirely from the mails. This was a fearful

blow to the socialist propaganda. The _Appeal_ was desperate. It

devised a plan of reaching its subscribers through the express

companies, but they declined to handle it. This was the end of the

_Appeal_. But not quite. It prepared to go on with its book publishing.

Twenty thousand copies of father’s book were in the bindery, and the

presses were turning off more. And then, without warning, a mob arose

one night, and, under a waving American flag, singing patriotic songs,

set fire to the great plant of the _Appeal_ and totally destroyed it.

Now Girard, Kansas, was a quiet, peaceable town. There had never been

any labor troubles there. The _Appeal_ paid union wages; and, in fact,

was the backbone of the town, giving employment to hundreds of men and

women. It was not the citizens of Girard that composed the mob. This

mob had risen up out of the earth apparently, and to all intents and

purposes, its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest saw in

the affair the most sinister import.

“The Black Hundreds[1] are being organized in the United States,” he

said. “This is the beginning. There will be more of it. The Iron Heel

is getting bold.”

[1] The Black Hundreds were reactionary mobs organized by the

perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution. These reactionary

groups attacked the revolutionary groups, and also, at needed moments,

rioted and destroyed property so as to afford the Autocracy the

pretext of calling out the Cossacks.

And so perished father’s book. We were to see much of the Black

Hundreds as the days went by. Week by week more of the socialist papers

were barred from the mails, and in a number of instances the Black

Hundreds destroyed the socialist presses. Of course, the newspapers of

the land lived up to the reactionary policy of the ruling class, and

the destroyed socialist press was misrepresented and vilified, while

the Black Hundreds were represented as true patriots and saviours of

society. So convincing was all this misrepresentation that even sincere

ministers in the pulpit praised the Black Hundreds while regretting the

necessity of violence.

History was making fast. The fall elections were soon to occur, and

Ernest was nominated by the socialist party to run for Congress. His

chance for election was most favorable. The street-car strike in San

Francisco had been broken. And following upon it the teamsters’ strike

had been broken. These two defeats had been very disastrous to

organized labor. The whole Water Front Federation, along with its

allies in the structural trades, had backed up the teamsters, and all

had been smashed down ingloriously. It had been a bloody strike. The

police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs; and the death

list had been augmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun on the

strikers from the barns of the Marsden Special Delivery Company.

In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive. They wanted blood,

and revenge. Beaten on their chosen field, they were ripe to seek

revenge by means of political action. They still maintained their labor

organization, and this gave them strength in the political struggle

that was on. Ernest’s chance for election grew stronger and stronger.

Day by day unions and more unions voted their support to the

socialists, until even Ernest laughed when the Undertakers’ Assistants

and the Chicken Pickers fell into line. Labor became mulish. While it

packed the socialist meetings with mad enthusiasm, it was impervious to

the wiles of the old-party politicians. The old-party orators were

usually greeted with empty halls, though occasionally they encountered

full halls where they were so roughly handled that more than once it

was necessary to call out the police reserves.

History was making fast. The air was vibrant with things happening and

impending. The country was on the verge of hard times,[2] caused by a

series of prosperous years wherein the difficulty of disposing abroad

of the unconsumed surplus had become increasingly difficult. Industries

were working short time; many great factories were standing idle

against the time when the surplus should be gone; and wages were being

cut right and left.

[2] Under the capitalist régime these periods of hard times were as

inevitable as they were absurd. Prosperity always brought calamity.

This, of course, was due to the excess of unconsumed profits that was

piled up.

Also, the great machinist strike had been broken. Two hundred thousand

machinists, along with their five hundred thousand allies in the

metalworking trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had

ever marred the United States. Pitched battles had been fought with the

small armies of armed strike-breakers[3] put in the field by the

employers’ associations; the Black Hundreds, appearing in scores of

wide-scattered places, had destroyed property; and, in consequence, a

hundred thousand regular soldiers of the United States had been called

out to put a frightful end to the whole affair. A number of the labor

leaders had been executed; many others had been sentenced to prison,

while thousands of the rank and file of the strikers had been herded

into bull-pens[4] and abominably treated by the soldiers.

[3] _Strike-breakers_—these were, in purpose and practice and

everything except name, the private soldiers of the capitalists. They

were thoroughly organized and well armed, and they were held in

readiness to be hurled in special trains to any part of the country

where labor went on strike or was locked out by the employers. Only

those curious times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of

one, Farley, a notorious commander of strike-breakers, who, in 1906,

swept across the United States in special trains from New York to San

Francisco with an army of twenty-five hundred men, fully armed and

equipped, to break a strike of the San Francisco street-car men. Such

an act was in direct violation of the laws of the land. The fact that

this act, and thousands of similar acts, went unpunished, goes to show

how completely the judiciary was the creature of the Plutocracy.

[4] _Bull-pen_—in a miners’ strike in Idaho, in the latter part of the

nineteenth century, it happened that many of the strikers were

confined in a bull-pen by the troops. The practice and the name

continued in the twentieth century.

The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were

glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble of

prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was

convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there,

and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out

by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and

blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot,

arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well

they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called

there by the actions of the Black Hundreds.[5] All cities and towns

were like armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of

the vast army of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and

when the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops

always appeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. As

yet, it was not necessary to have recourse to the secret militia law.

Only the regularly organized militia was out, and it was out

everywhere. And in this time of terror, the regular army was increased

an additional hundred thousand by the government.

[5] The name only, and not the idea, was imported from Russia. The

Black Hundreds were a development out of the secret agents of the

capitalists, and their use arose in the labor struggles of the

nineteenth century. There is no discussion of this. No less an

authority of the times than Carroll D. Wright, United States

Commissioner of Labor, is responsible for the statement. From his

book, entitled “The Battles of Labor,” is quoted the declaration that

“_in some of the great historic strikes the employers themselves have

instigated acts of violence;_” that manufacturers have deliberately

provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock; and that

freight cars have been burned by employers’ agents during railroad

strikes in order to increase disorder. It was out of these secret

agents of the employers that the Black Hundreds arose; and it was

they, in turn, that later became that terrible weapon of the

Oligarchy, the agents-provocateurs.

Never had labor received such an all-around beating. The great captains

of industry, the oligarchs, had for the first time thrown their full

weight into the breach the struggling employers’ associations had made.

These associations were practically middle-class affairs, and now,

compelled by hard times and crashing markets, and aided by the great

captains of industry, they gave organized labor an awful and decisive

defeat. It was an all-powerful alliance, but it was an alliance of the

lion and the lamb, as the middle class was soon to learn.

Labor was bloody and sullen, but crushed. Yet its defeat did not put an

end to the hard times. The banks, themselves constituting one of the

most important forces of the Oligarchy, continued to call in credits.

The Wall Street[6] group turned the stock market into a maelstrom where

the values of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness. And out

of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent Oligarchy,

imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude was

terrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power, but it used all the

power of the United States Treasury to carry out its plans.

[6] _Wall Street_—so named from a street in ancient New York, where

was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization

of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of

the country.

The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. The

employers’ associations, that had helped the captains of industry to

tear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam allies.

Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business men and

manufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts did more than

stand firm. They were active. They sowed wind, and wind, and ever more

wind; for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profit

out of it. And such profits! Colossal profits! Strong enough themselves

to weather the storm that was largely their own brewing, they turned

loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them. Values were

pitifully and inconceivably shrunken, and the trusts added hugely to

their holdings, even extending their enterprises into many new

fields—and always at the expense of the middle class.

Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-thrust to the

middle class. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it

had been done. He shook his head ominously and looked forward without

hope to the fall elections.

“It’s no use,” he said. “We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here. I had

hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong. Wickson

was right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the Iron

Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolution

of the working class. Of course we will win, but I shudder to think of

it.”

And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this he was

in advance of his party. His fellow-socialists could not agree with

him. They still insisted that victory could be gained through the

elections. It was not that they were stunned. They were too cool-headed

and courageous for that. They were merely incredulous, that was all.

Ernest could not get them seriously to fear the coming of the

Oligarchy. They were stirred by him, but they were too sure of their

own strength. There was no room in their theoretical social evolution

for an oligarchy, therefore the Oligarchy could not be.

“We’ll send you to Congress and it will be all right,” they told him at

one of our secret meetings.

“And when they take me out of Congress,” Ernest replied coldly, “and

put me against a wall, and blow my brains out—what then?”

“Then we’ll rise in our might,” a dozen voices answered at once.

“Then you’ll welter in your gore,” was his retort. “I’ve heard that

song sung by the middle class, and where is it now in its might?”

CHAPTER XI.

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Mr. Wickson did not send for father. They met by chance on the

ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that the warning he gave father was not

premeditated. Had they not met accidentally, there would not have been

any warning. Not that the outcome would have been different, however.

Father came of stout old _Mayflower_[1] stock, and the blood was

imperative in him.

[1] One of the first ships that carried colonies to America, after the

discovery of the New World. Descendants of these original colonists

were for a while inordinately proud of their genealogy; but in time

the blood became so widely diffused that it ran in the veins

practically of all Americans.

“Ernest was right,” he told me, as soon as he had returned home.

“Ernest is a very remarkable young man, and I’d rather see you his wife

than the wife of Rockefeller himself or the King of England.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked in alarm.

“The Oligarchy is about to tread upon our faces—yours and mine. Wickson

as much as told me so. He was very kind—for an oligarch. He offered to

reinstate me in the university. What do you think of that? He, Wickson,

a sordid money-grabber, has the power to determine whether I shall or

shall not teach in the university of the state. But he offered me even

better than that—offered to make me president of some great college of

physical sciences that is being planned—the Oligarchy must get rid of

its surplus somehow, you see.

“‘Do you remember what I told that socialist lover of your daughter’s?’

he said. ‘I told him that we would walk upon the faces of the working

class. And so we shall. As for you, I have for you a deep respect as a

scientist; but if you throw your fortunes in with the working

class—well, watch out for your face, that is all.’ And then he turned

and left me.”

“It means we’ll have to marry earlier than you planned,” was Ernest’s

comment when we told him.

I could not follow his reasoning, but I was soon to learn it. It was at

this time that the quarterly dividend of the Sierra Mills was paid—or,

rather, should have been paid, for father did not receive his. After

waiting several days, father wrote to the secretary. Promptly came the

reply that there was no record on the books of father’s owning any

stock, and a polite request for more explicit information.

“I’ll make it explicit enough, confound him,” father declared, and

departed for the bank to get the stock in question from his

safe-deposit box.

“Ernest is a very remarkable man,” he said when he got back and while I

was helping him off with his overcoat. “I repeat, my daughter, that

young man of yours is a very remarkable young man.”

I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion, to expect

disaster.

“They have already walked upon my face,” father explained. “There was

no stock. The box was empty. You and Ernest will have to get married

pretty quickly.”

Father insisted on laboratory methods. He brought the Sierra Mills into

court, but he could not bring the books of the Sierra Mills into court.

He did not control the courts, and the Sierra Mills did. That explained

it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law, and the bare-faced robbery

held good.

It is almost laughable now, when I look back on it, the way father was

beaten. He met Wickson accidentally on the street in San Francisco, and

he told Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then father was

arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court, and bound

over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that when he got home

he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the local

papers! There was grave talk about the bacillus of violence that

infected all men who embraced socialism; and father, with his long and

peaceful life, was instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus

of violence worked. Also, it was asserted by more than one paper that

father’s mind had weakened under the strain of scientific study, and

confinement in a state asylum for the insane was suggested. Nor was

this merely talk. It was an imminent peril. But father was wise enough

to see it. He had the Bishop’s experience to lesson from, and he

lessoned well. He kept quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated

on him, and really, I think, surprised his enemies.

There was the matter of the house—our home. A mortgage was foreclosed

on it, and we had to give up possession. Of course there wasn’t any

mortgage, and never had been any mortgage. The ground had been bought

outright, and the house had been paid for when it was built. And house

and lot had always been free and unencumbered. Nevertheless there was

the mortgage, properly and legally drawn up and signed, with a record

of the payments of interest through a number of years. Father made no

outcry. As he had been robbed of his money, so was he now robbed of his

home. And he had no recourse. The machinery of society was in the hands

of those who were bent on breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart,

and he was no longer even angry.

“I am doomed to be broken,” he said to me; “but that is no reason that

I should not try to be shattered as little as possible. These old bones

of mine are fragile, and I’ve learned my lesson. God knows I don’t want

to spend my last days in an insane asylum.”

Which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse, whom I have neglected for many

pages. But first let me tell of my marriage. In the play of events, my

marriage sinks into insignificance, I know, so I shall barely mention

it.

“Now we shall become real proletarians,” father said, when we were

driven from our home. “I have often envied that young man of yours for

his actual knowledge of the proletariat. Now I shall see and learn for

myself.”

Father must have had strong in him the blood of adventure. He looked

upon our catastrophe in the light of an adventure. No anger nor

bitterness possessed him. He was too philosophic and simple to be

vindictive, and he lived too much in the world of mind to miss the

creature comforts we were giving up. So it was, when we moved to San

Francisco into four wretched rooms in the slum south of Market Street,

that he embarked upon the adventure with the joy and enthusiasm of a

child—combined with the clear sight and mental grasp of an

extraordinary intellect. He really never crystallized mentally. He had

no false sense of values. Conventional or habitual values meant nothing

to him. The only values he recognized were mathematical and scientific

facts. My father was a great man. He had the mind and the soul that

only great men have. In ways he was even greater than Ernest, than whom

I have known none greater.

Even I found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else, I

was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing

portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent

Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise

adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was love-adventure. The

change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage, and it was as a wife

that I came to live in the four rooms on Pell Street, in the San

Francisco slum.

And this out of all remains: I made Ernest happy. I came into his

stormy life, not as a new perturbing force, but as one that made toward

peace and repose. I gave him rest. It was the guerdon of my love for

him. It was the one infallible token that I had not failed. To bring

forgetfulness, or the light of gladness, into those poor tired eyes of

his—what greater joy could have blessed me than that?

Those dear tired eyes. He toiled as few men ever toiled, and all his

lifetime he toiled for others. That was the measure of his manhood. He

was a humanist and a lover. And he, with his incarnate spirit of

battle, his gladiator body and his eagle spirit—he was as gentle and

tender to me as a poet. He was a poet. A singer in deeds. And all his

life he sang the song of man. And he did it out of sheer love of man,

and for man he gave his life and was crucified.

And all this he did with no hope of future reward. In his conception of

things there was no future life. He, who fairly burnt with immortality,

denied himself immortality—such was the paradox of him. He, so warm in

spirit, was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy,

materialistic monism. I used to refute him by telling him that I

measured his immortality by the wings of his soul, and that I should

have to live endless aeons in order to achieve the full measurement.

Whereat he would laugh, and his arms would leap out to me, and he would

call me his sweet metaphysician; and the tiredness would pass out of

his eyes, and into them would flood the happy love-light that was in

itself a new and sufficient advertisement of his immortality.

Also, he used to call me his dualist, and he would explain how Kant, by

means of pure reason, had abolished reason, in order to worship God.

And he drew the parallel and included me guilty of a similar act. And

when I pleaded guilty, but defended the act as highly rational, he but

pressed me closer and laughed as only one of God’s own lovers could

laugh. I was wont to deny that heredity and environment could explain

his own originality and genius, any more than could the cold groping

finger of science catch and analyze and classify that elusive essence

that lurked in the constitution of life itself.

I held that space was an apparition of God, and that soul was a

projection of the character of God; and when he called me his sweet

metaphysician, I called him my immortal materialist. And so we loved

and were happy; and I forgave him his materialism because of his

tremendous work in the world, performed without thought of soul-gain

thereby, and because of his so exceeding modesty of spirit that

prevented him from having pride and regal consciousness of himself and

his soul.

But he had pride. How could he have been an eagle and not have pride?

His contention was that it was finer for a finite mortal speck of life

to feel Godlike, than for a god to feel godlike; and so it was that he

exalted what he deemed his mortality. He was fond of quoting a fragment

from a certain poem. He had never seen the whole poem, and he had tried

vainly to learn its authorship. I here give the fragment, not alone

because he loved it, but because it epitomized the paradox that he was

in the spirit of him, and his conception of his spirit. For how can a

man, with thrilling, and burning, and exaltation, recite the following

and still be mere mortal earth, a bit of fugitive force, an evanescent

form? Here it is:

“Joy upon joy and gain upon gain

Are the destined rights of my birth,

And I shout the praise of my endless days

To the echoing edge of the earth.

Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die

To the uttermost end of time,

I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,

In every age and clime—

“The froth of Pride, the tang of Power,

The sweet of Womanhood!

I drain the lees upon my knees,

For oh, the draught is good;

I drink to Life, I drink to Death,

And smack my lips with song,

For when I die, another ‘I’ shall pass the cup along.

“The man you drove from Eden’s grove

Was I, my Lord, was I,

And I shall be there when the earth and the air

Are rent from sea to sky;

For it is my world, my gorgeous world,

The world of my dearest woes,

From the first faint cry of the newborn

To the rack of the woman’s throes.

“Packed with the pulse of an unborn race,

Torn with a world’s desire,

The surging flood of my wild young blood

Would quench the judgment fire.

I am Man, Man, Man, from the tingling flesh

To the dust of my earthly goal,

From the nestling gloom of the pregnant womb

To the sheen of my naked soul.

Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh

The whole world leaps to my will,

And the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed

Shall harrow the earth for its fill.

Almighty God, when I drain life’s glass

Of all its rainbow gleams,

The hapless plight of eternal night

Shall be none too long for my dreams.

“The man you drove from Eden’s grove

Was I, my Lord, was I,

And I shall be there when the earth and the air

Are rent from sea to sky;

For it is my world, my gorgeous world,

The world of my dear delight,

From the brightest gleam of the Arctic stream

To the dusk of my own love-night.”

Ernest always overworked. His wonderful constitution kept him up; but

even that constitution could not keep the tired look out of his eyes.

His dear, tired eyes! He never slept more than four and one-half hours

a night; yet he never found time to do all the work he wanted to do. He

never ceased from his activities as a propagandist, and was always

scheduled long in advance for lectures to workingmen’s organizations.

Then there was the campaign. He did a man’s full work in that alone.

With the suppression of the socialist publishing houses, his meagre

royalties ceased, and he was hard-put to make a living; for he had to

make a living in addition to all his other labor. He did a great deal

of translating for the magazines on scientific and philosophic

subjects; and, coming home late at night, worn out from the strain of

the campaign, he would plunge into his translating and toil on well

into the morning hours. And in addition to everything, there was his

studying. To the day of his death he kept up his studies, and he

studied prodigiously.

And yet he found time in which to love me and make me happy. But this

was accomplished only through my merging my life completely into his. I

learned shorthand and typewriting, and became his secretary. He

insisted that I succeeded in cutting his work in half; and so it was

that I schooled myself to understand his work. Our interests became

mutual, and we worked together and played together.

And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our

work—just a word, or caress, or flash of love-light; and our moments

were sweeter for being stolen. For we lived on the heights, where the

air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity, and where

sordidness and selfishness never entered. We loved love, and our love

was never smirched by anything less than the best. And this out of all

remains: I did not fail. I gave him rest—he who worked so hard for

others, my dear, tired-eyed mortalist.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BISHOP

It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse. But I

must give the events in their proper sequence. After his outbreak at

the I. P. H. Convention, the Bishop, being a gentle soul, had yielded

to the friendly pressure brought to bear upon him, and had gone away on

a vacation. But he returned more fixed than ever in his determination

to preach the message of the Church. To the consternation of his

congregation, his first sermon was quite similar to the address he had

given before the Convention. Again he said, and at length and with

distressing detail, that the Church had wandered away from the Master’s

teaching, and that Mammon had been instated in the place of Christ.

And the result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away to a private

sanitarium for mental disease, while in the newspapers appeared

pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness of his

character. He was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I called

repeatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was terribly impressed

by the tragedy of a sane, normal, saintly man being crushed by the

brutal will of society. For the Bishop was sane, and pure, and noble.

As Ernest said, all that was the matter with him was that he had

incorrect notions of biology and sociology, and because of his

incorrect notions he had not gone about it in the right way to rectify

matters.

What terrified me was the Bishop’s helplessness. If he persisted in the

truth as he saw it, he was doomed to an insane ward. And he could do

nothing. His money, his position, his culture, could not save him. His

views were perilous to society, and society could not conceive that

such perilous views could be the product of a sane mind. Or, at least,

it seems to me that such was society’s attitude.

But the Bishop, in spite of the gentleness and purity of his spirit,

was possessed of guile. He apprehended clearly his danger. He saw

himself caught in the web, and he tried to escape from it. Denied help

from his friends, such as father and Ernest and I could have given, he

was left to battle for himself alone. And in the enforced solitude of

the sanitarium he recovered. He became again sane. His eyes ceased to

see visions; his brain was purged of the fancy that it was the duty of

society to feed the Master’s lambs.

As I say, he became well, quite well, and the newspapers and the church

people hailed his return with joy. I went once to his church. The

sermon was of the same order as the ones he had preached long before

his eyes had seen visions. I was disappointed, shocked. Had society

then beaten him into submission? Was he a coward? Had he been bulldozed

into recanting? Or had the strain been too great for him, and had he

meekly surrendered to the juggernaut of the established?

I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was woefully changed. He

was thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never seen

before. He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked nervously

at his sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were restless, fluttering

here, there, and everywhere, and refusing to meet mine. His mind seemed

preoccupied, and there were strange pauses in his conversation, abrupt

changes of topic, and an inconsecutiveness that was bewildering. Could

this, then, be the firm-poised, Christ-like man I had known, with pure,

limpid eyes and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul? He had been

man-handled; he had been cowed into subjection. His spirit was too

gentle. It had not been mighty enough to face the organized wolf-pack

of society.

I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambiguously, and was so

apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to catechise

him. He spoke in a far-away manner of his illness, and we talked

disjointedly about the church, the alterations in the organ, and about

petty charities; and he saw me depart with such evident relief that I

should have laughed had not my heart been so full of tears.

The poor little hero! If I had only known! He was battling like a

giant, and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst of

millions of his fellow-men, he was fighting his fight. Torn by his

horror of the asylum and his fidelity to truth and the right, he clung

steadfastly to truth and the right; but so alone was he that he did not

dare to trust even me. He had learned his lesson well—too well.

But I was soon to know. One day the Bishop disappeared. He had told

nobody that he was going away; and as the days went by and he did not

reappear, there was much gossip to the effect that he had committed

suicide while temporarily deranged. But this idea was dispelled when it

was learned that he had sold all his possessions,—his city mansion, his

country house at Menlo Park, his paintings, and collections, and even

his cherished library. It was patent that he had made a clean and

secret sweep of everything before he disappeared.

This happened during the time when calamity had overtaken us in our own

affairs; and it was not till we were well settled in our new home that

we had opportunity really to wonder and speculate about the Bishop’s

doings. And then, everything was suddenly made clear. Early one

evening, while it was yet twilight, I had run across the street and

into the butcher-shop to get some chops for Ernest’s supper. We called

the last meal of the day “supper” in our new environment.

Just at the moment I came out of the butcher-shop, a man emerged from

the corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense of familiarity

made me look again. But the man had turned and was walking rapidly

away. There was something about the slope of the shoulders and the

fringe of silver hair between coat collar and slouch hat that aroused

vague memories. Instead of crossing the street, I hurried after the

man. I quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts that formed

unbidden in my brain. No, it was impossible. It could not be—not in

those faded overalls, too long in the legs and frayed at the bottoms.

I paused, laughed at myself, and almost abandoned the chase. But the

haunting familiarity of those shoulders and that silver hair! Again I

hurried on. As I passed him, I shot a keen look at his face; then I

whirled around abruptly and confronted—the Bishop.

He halted with equal abruptness, and gasped. A large paper bag in his

right hand fell to the sidewalk. It burst, and about his feet and mine

bounced and rolled a flood of potatoes. He looked at me with surprise

and alarm, then he seemed to wilt away; the shoulders drooped with

dejection, and he uttered a deep sigh.

I held out my hand. He shook it, but his hand felt clammy. He cleared

his throat in embarrassment, and I could see the sweat starting out on

his forehead. It was evident that he was badly frightened.

“The potatoes,” he murmured faintly. “They are precious.”

Between us we picked them up and replaced them in the broken bag, which

he now held carefully in the hollow of his arm. I tried to tell him my

gladness at meeting him and that he must come right home with me.

“Father will be rejoiced to see you,” I said. “We live only a stone’s

throw away.

“I can’t,” he said, “I must be going. Good-by.”

He looked apprehensively about him, as though dreading discovery, and

made an attempt to walk on.

“Tell me where you live, and I shall call later,” he said, when he saw

that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to stick to him

now that he was found.

“No,” I answered firmly. “You must come now.”

He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at the small parcels

on his other arm.

“Really, it is impossible,” he said. “Forgive me for my rudeness. If

you only knew.”

He looked as if he were going to break down, but the next moment he had

himself in control.

“Besides, this food,” he went on. “It is a sad case. It is terrible.

She is an old woman. I must take it to her at once. She is suffering

from want of it. I must go at once. You understand. Then I will return.

I promise you.”

“Let me go with you,” I volunteered. “Is it far?”

He sighed again, and surrendered.

“Only two blocks,” he said. “Let us hasten.”

Under the Bishop’s guidance I learned something of my own neighborhood.

I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery existed in it. Of

course, this was because I did not concern myself with charity. I had

become convinced that Ernest was right when he sneered at charity as a

poulticing of an ulcer. Remove the ulcer, was his remedy; give to the

worker his product; pension as soldiers those who grow honorably old in

their toil, and there will be no need for charity. Convinced of this, I

toiled with him at the revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in

alleviating the social ills that continuously arose from the injustice

of the system.

I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by twelve, in a rear

tenement. And there we found a little old German woman—sixty-four years

old, the Bishop said. She was surprised at seeing me, but she nodded a

pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair of men’s trousers in

her lap. Beside her, on the floor, was a pile of trousers. The Bishop

discovered there was neither coal nor kindling, and went out to buy

some.

I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.

“Six cents, lady,” she said, nodding her head gently while she went on

stitching. She stitched slowly, but never did she cease from stitching.

She seemed mastered by the verb “to stitch.”

“For all that work?” I asked. “Is that what they pay? How long does it

take you?”

“Yes,” she answered, “that is what they pay. Six cents for finishing.

Two hours’ sewing on each pair.”

“But the boss doesn’t know that,” she added quickly, betraying a fear

of getting him into trouble. “I’m slow. I’ve got the rheumatism in my

hands. Girls work much faster. They finish in half that time. The boss

is kind. He lets me take the work home, now that I am old and the noise

of the machine bothers my head. If it wasn’t for his kindness, I’d

starve.

“Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents. But what can you do?

There is not enough work for the young. The old have no chance. Often

one pair is all I can get. Sometimes, like to-day, I am given eight

pair to finish before night.”

I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it depended on the

season.

“In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in the

morning to nine at night. But in the winter it is too cold. The hands

do not early get over the stiffness. Then you must work later—till

after midnight sometimes.

“Yes, it has been a bad summer. The hard times. God must be angry. This

is the first work the boss has given me in a week. It is true, one

cannot eat much when there is no work. I am used to it. I have sewed

all my life, in the old country and here in San Francisco—thirty-three

years.

“If you are sure of the rent, it is all right. The houseman is very

kind, but he must have his rent. It is fair. He only charges three

dollars for this room. That is cheap. But it is not easy for you to

find all of three dollars every month.”

She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on stitching.

“You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings,” I

suggested.

She nodded emphatically.

“After the rent it’s not so bad. Of course you can’t buy meat. And

there is no milk for the coffee. But always there is one meal a day,

and often two.”

She said this last proudly. There was a smack of success in her words.

But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness in her

pleasant eyes and the droop of her mouth. The look in her eyes became

far away. She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them; it interfered

with her stitching.

“No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache,” she explained.

“You get used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry. It was

the machine that killed her. It is true she worked hard, but I cannot

understand. She was strong. And she was young—only forty; and she

worked only thirty years. She began young, it is true; but my man died.

The boiler exploded down at the works. And what were we to do? She was

ten, but she was very strong. But the machine killed her. Yes, it did.

It killed her, and she was the fastest worker in the shop. I have

thought about it often, and I know. That is why I cannot work in the

shop. The machine bothers my head. Always I hear it saying, ‘I did it,

I did it.’ And it says that all day long. And then I think of my

daughter, and I cannot work.”

The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it away

before she could go on stitching.

I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door. What

a spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of coal, with

kindling on top. Some of the coal dust had coated his face, and the

sweat from his exertions was running in streaks. He dropped his burden

in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandana

handkerchief. I could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses. The

Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman’s cheap cotton shirt

(one button was missing from the throat), and in overalls! That was the

most incongruous of all—the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged

down at the heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips

such as laborers wear.

Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old woman

were already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the Bishop

had built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them on to

boil. I was to learn, as time went by, that there were many cases

similar to hers, and many worse, hidden away in the monstrous depths of

the tenements in my neighborhood.

We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first

surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,

stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a

comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had met since

his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening weeks he must

have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us much, though he told

us more of the joy he had experienced in doing the Master’s bidding.

“For truly now,” he said, “I am feeding his lambs. And I have learned a

great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is

appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and meat;

after that, and only after that, are their spirits ready for more

refined nourishment.”

He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such an

appetite at our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and he said that

he had never been so healthy in his life.

“I walk always now,” he said, and a blush was on his cheek at the

thought of the time when he rode in his carriage, as though it were a

sin not lightly to be laid.

“My health is better for it,” he added hastily. “And I am very

happy—indeed, most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit.”

And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the world

that he was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in the raw, and

it was a different life from what he had known within the printed books

of his library.

“And you are responsible for all this, young man,” he said directly to

Ernest.

Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.

“I—I warned you,” he faltered.

“No, you misunderstand,” the Bishop answered. “I speak not in reproach,

but in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me my path. You led

me from theories about life to life itself. You pulled aside the veils

from the social shams. You were light in my darkness, but now I, too,

see the light. And I am very happy, only . . .” he hesitated painfully,

and in his eyes fear leaped large. “Only the persecution. I harm no

one. Why will they not let me alone? But it is not that. It is the

nature of the persecution. I shouldn’t mind if they cut my flesh with

stripes, or burned me at the stake, or crucified me head-downward. But

it is the asylum that frightens me. Think of it! Of me—in an asylum for

the insane! It is revolting. I saw some of the cases at the sanitarium.

They were violent. My blood chills when I think of it. And to be

imprisoned for the rest of my life amid scenes of screaming madness!

No! no! Not that! Not that!”

It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body quivered and shrank

away from the picture he had conjured. But the next moment he was calm.

“Forgive me,” he said simply. “It is my wretched nerves. And if the

Master’s work leads there, so be it. Who am I to complain?”

I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: “Great Bishop! O hero!

God’s hero!”

As the evening wore on we learned more of his doings.

“I sold my house—my houses, rather,” he said, “all my other

possessions. I knew I must do it secretly, else they would have taken

everything away from me. That would have been terrible. I often marvel

these days at the immense quantity of potatoes two or three hundred

thousand dollars will buy, or bread, or meat, or coal and kindling.” He

turned to Ernest. “You are right, young man. Labor is dreadfully

underpaid. I never did a bit of work in my life, except to appeal

aesthetically to Pharisees—I thought I was preaching the message—and

yet I was worth half a million dollars. I never knew what half a

million dollars meant until I realized how much potatoes and bread and

butter and meat it could buy. And then I realized something more. I

realized that all those potatoes and that bread and butter and meat

were mine, and that I had not worked to make them. Then it was clear to

me, some one else had worked and made them and been robbed of them. And

when I came down amongst the poor I found those who had been robbed and

who were hungry and wretched because they had been robbed.”

We drew him back to his narrative.

“The money? I have it deposited in many different banks under different

names. It can never be taken away from me, because it can never be

found. And it is so good, that money. It buys so much food. I never

knew before what money was good for.”

“I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda,” Ernest said

wistfully. “It would do immense good.”

“Do you think so?” the Bishop said. “I do not have much faith in

politics. In fact, I am afraid I do not understand politics.”

Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not repeat his suggestion,

though he knew only too well the sore straits the Socialist Party was

in through lack of money.

“I sleep in cheap lodging houses,” the Bishop went on. “But I am

afraid, and never stay long in one place. Also, I rent two rooms in

workingmen’s houses in different quarters of the city. It is a great

extravagance, I know, but it is necessary. I make up for it in part by

doing my own cooking, though sometimes I get something to eat in cheap

coffee-houses. And I have made a discovery. Tamales[1] are very good

when the air grows chilly late at night. Only they are so expensive.

But I have discovered a place where I can get three for ten cents. They

are not so good as the others, but they are very warming.

[1] A Mexican dish, referred to occasionally in the literature of the

times. It is supposed that it was warmly seasoned. No recipe of it has

come down to us.

“And so I have at last found my work in the world, thanks to you, young

man. It is the Master’s work.” He looked at me, and his eyes twinkled.

“You caught me feeding his lambs, you know. And of course you will all

keep my secret.”

He spoke carelessly enough, but there was real fear behind the speech.

He promised to call upon us again. But a week later we read in the

newspaper of the sad case of Bishop Morehouse, who had been committed

to the Napa Asylum and for whom there were still hopes held out. In

vain we tried to see him, to have his case reconsidered or

investigated. Nor could we learn anything about him except the

reiterated statements that slight hopes were still held for his

recovery.

“Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had,” Ernest said

bitterly. “The Bishop obeyed Christ’s injunction and got locked up in a

madhouse. Times have changed since Christ’s day. A rich man to-day who

gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no discussion. Society

has spoken.”

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GENERAL STRIKE

Of course Ernest was elected to Congress in the great socialist

landslide that took place in the fall of 1912. One great factor that

helped to swell the socialist vote was the destruction of Hearst.[1]

This the Plutocracy found an easy task. It cost Hearst eighteen million

dollars a year to run his various papers, and this sum, and more, he

got back from the middle class in payment for advertising. The source

of his financial strength lay wholly in the middle class. The trusts

did not advertise.[2] To destroy Hearst, all that was necessary was to

take away from him his advertising.

[1] _William Randolph Hearst_—a young California millionaire who

became the most powerful newspaper owner in the country. His

newspapers were published in all the large cities, and they appealed

to the perishing middle class and to the proletariat. So large was his

following that he managed to take possession of the empty shell of the

old Democratic Party. He occupied an anomalous position, preaching an

emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript sort of petty

bourgeois capitalism. It was oil and water, and there was no hope for

him, though for a short period he was a source of serious apprehension

to the Plutocrats.

[2] The cost of advertising was amazing in those helter- skelter

times. Only the small capitalists competed, and therefore they did the

advertising. There being no competition where there was a trust, there

was no need for the trusts to advertise.

The whole middle class had not yet been exterminated. The sturdy

skeleton of it remained; but it was without power. The small

manufacturers and small business men who still survived were at the

complete mercy of the Plutocracy. They had no economic nor political

souls of their own. When the fiat of the Plutocracy went forth, they

withdrew their advertisements from the Hearst papers.

Hearst made a gallant fight. He brought his papers out at a loss of a

million and a half each month. He continued to publish the

advertisements for which he no longer received pay. Again the fiat of

the Plutocracy went forth, and the small business men and manufacturers

swamped him with a flood of notices that he must discontinue running

their old advertisements. Hearst persisted. Injunctions were served on

him. Still he persisted. He received six months’ imprisonment for

contempt of court in disobeying the injunctions, while he was

bankrupted by countless damage suits. He had no chance. The Plutocracy

had passed sentence on him. The courts were in the hands of the

Plutocracy to carry the sentence out. And with Hearst crashed also to

destruction the Democratic Party that he had so recently captured.

With the destruction of Hearst and the Democratic Party, there were

only two paths for his following to take. One was into the Socialist

Party; the other was into the Republican Party. Then it was that we

socialists reaped the fruit of Hearst’s pseudo-socialistic preaching;

for the great Majority of his followers came over to us.

The expropriation of the farmers that took place at this time would

also have swelled our vote had it not been for the brief and futile

rise of the Grange Party. Ernest and the socialist leaders fought

fiercely to capture the farmers; but the destruction of the socialist

press and publishing houses constituted too great a handicap, while the

mouth-to-mouth propaganda had not yet been perfected. So it was that

politicians like Mr. Calvin, who were themselves farmers long since

expropriated, captured the farmers and threw their political strength

away in a vain campaign.

“The poor farmers,” Ernest once laughed savagely; “the trusts have them

both coming and going.”

And that was really the situation. The seven great trusts, working

together, had pooled their enormous surpluses and made a farm trust.

The railroads, controlling rates, and the bankers and stock exchange

gamesters, controlling prices, had long since bled the farmers into

indebtedness. The bankers, and all the trusts for that matter, had

likewise long since loaned colossal amounts of money to the farmers.

The farmers were in the net. All that remained to be done was the

drawing in of the net. This the farm trust proceeded to do.

The hard times of 1912 had already caused a frightful slump in the farm

markets. Prices were now deliberately pressed down to bankruptcy, while

the railroads, with extortionate rates, broke the back of the

farmer-camel. Thus the farmers were compelled to borrow more and more,

while they were prevented from paying back old loans. Then ensued the

great foreclosing of mortgages and enforced collection of notes. The

farmers simply surrendered the land to the farm trust. There was

nothing else for them to do. And having surrendered the land, the

farmers next went to work for the farm trust, becoming managers,

superintendents, foremen, and common laborers. They worked for wages.

They became villeins, in short—serfs bound to the soil by a living

wage. They could not leave their masters, for their masters composed

the Plutocracy. They could not go to the cities, for there, also, the

Plutocracy was in control. They had but one alternative,—to leave the

soil and become vagrants, in brief, to starve. And even there they were

frustrated, for stringent vagrancy laws were passed and rigidly

enforced.

Of course, here and there, farmers, and even whole communities of

farmers, escaped expropriation by virtue of exceptional conditions. But

they were merely strays and did not count, and they were gathered in

anyway during the following year.[3]

[3] The destruction of the Roman yeomanry proceeded far less rapidly

than the destruction of the American farmers and small capitalists.

There was momentum in the twentieth century, while there was

practically none in ancient Rome.

Numbers of the farmers, impelled by an insane lust for the soil,

and willing to show what beasts they could become, tried to escape

expropriation by withdrawing from any and all market-dealing. They

sold nothing. They bought nothing. Among themselves a primitive

barter began to spring up. Their privation and hardships were

terrible, but they persisted. It became quite a movement, in fact.

The manner in which they were beaten was unique and logical and

simple. The Plutocracy, by virtue of its possession of the

government, raised their taxes. It was the weak joint in their

armor. Neither buying nor selling, they had no money, and in the

end their land was sold to pay the taxes.

Thus it was that in the fall of 1912 the socialist leaders, with the

exception of Ernest, decided that the end of capitalism had come. What

of the hard times and the consequent vast army of the unemployed; what

of the destruction of the farmers and the middle class; and what of the

decisive defeat administered all along the line to the labor unions;

the socialists were really justified in believing that the end of

capitalism had come and in themselves throwing down the gauntlet to the

Plutocracy.

Alas, how we underestimated the strength of the enemy! Everywhere the

socialists proclaimed their coming victory at the ballot-box, while, in

unmistakable terms, they stated the situation. The Plutocracy accepted

the challenge. It was the Plutocracy, weighing and balancing, that

defeated us by dividing our strength. It was the Plutocracy, through

its secret agents, that raised the cry that socialism was sacrilegious

and atheistic; it was the Plutocracy that whipped the churches, and

especially the Catholic Church, into line, and robbed us of a portion

of the labor vote. And it was the Plutocracy, through its secret agents

of course, that encouraged the Grange Party and even spread it to the

cities into the ranks of the dying middle class.

Nevertheless the socialist landslide occurred. But, instead of a

sweeping victory with chief executive officers and majorities in all

legislative bodies, we found ourselves in the minority. It is true, we

elected fifty Congressmen; but when they took their seats in the spring

of 1913, they found themselves without power of any sort. Yet they were

more fortunate than the Grangers, who captured a dozen state

governments, and who, in the spring, were not permitted to take

possession of the captured offices. The incumbents refused to retire,

and the courts were in the hands of the Oligarchy. But this is too far

in advance of events. I have yet to tell of the stirring times of the

winter of 1912.

The hard times at home had caused an immense decrease in consumption.

Labor, out of work, had no wages with which to buy. The result was that

the Plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its hands. This

surplus it was compelled to dispose of abroad, and, what of its

colossal plans, it needed money. Because of its strenuous efforts to

dispose of the surplus in the world market, the Plutocracy clashed with

Germany. Economic clashes were usually succeeded by wars, and this

particular clash was no exception. The great German war-lord prepared,

and so did the United States prepare.

The war-cloud hovered dark and ominous. The stage was set for a

world-catastrophe, for in all the world were hard times, labor

troubles, perishing middle classes, armies of unemployed, clashes of

economic interests in the world-market, and mutterings and rumblings of

the socialist revolution.[4]

[4] For a long time these mutterings and rumblings had been heard. As

far back as 1906 A.D., Lord Avebury, an Englishman, uttered the

following in the House of Lords: “_The unrest in Europe, the spread of

socialism, and the ominous rise of Anarchism, are warnings to the

governments and the ruling classes that the condition of the working

classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a revolution is

to be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages, reduce the

hours of labor, and lower the prices of the necessaries of life._” The

_Wall Street Journal_, a stock gamesters’ publication, in commenting

upon Lord Avebury’s speech, said: “_These words were spoken by an

aristocrat and a member of the most conservative body in all Europe.

That gives them all the more significance. They contain more valuable

political economy than is to be found in most of the books. They sound

a note of warning. Take heed, gentlemen of the war and navy

departments!_”

At the same time, Sydney Brooks, writing in America, in Harper’s

Weekly, said: “_You will not hear the socialists mentioned in

Washington. Why should you? The politicians are always the last

people in this country to see what is going on under their noses.

They will jeer at me when I prophesy, and prophesy with the utmost

confidence, that at the next presidential election the socialists

will poll over a million votes._”

The Oligarchy wanted the war with Germany. And it wanted the war for a

dozen reasons. In the juggling of events such a war would cause, in the

reshuffling of the international cards and the making of new treaties

and alliances, the Oligarchy had much to gain. And, furthermore, the

war would consume many national surpluses, reduce the armies of

unemployed that menaced all countries, and give the Oligarchy a

breathing space in which to perfect its plans and carry them out. Such

a war would virtually put the Oligarchy in possession of the

world-market. Also, such a war would create a large standing army that

need never be disbanded, while in the minds of the people would be

substituted the issue, “America _versus_ Germany,” in place of

“Socialism _versus_ Oligarchy.”

And truly the war would have done all these things had it not been for

the socialists. A secret meeting of the Western leaders was held in our

four tiny rooms in Pell Street. Here was first considered the stand the

socialists were to take. It was not the first time we had put our foot

down upon war,[5] but it was the first time we had done so in the

United States. After our secret meeting we got in touch with the

national organization, and soon our code cables were passing back and

forth across the Atlantic between us and the International Bureau.

[5] It was at the very beginning of the twentieth century A.D., that

the international organization of the socialists finally formulated

their long-maturing policy on war. Epitomized their doctrine was:

“_Why should the workingmen of one country fight with the workingmen

of another country for the benefit of their capitalist masters?_”

On May 21, 1905 A.D., when war threatened between Austria and

Italy, the socialists of Italy, Austria, and Hungary held a

conference at Trieste, and threatened a general strike of the

workingmen of both countries in case war was declared. This was

repeated the following year, when the “Morocco Affair” threatened

to involve France, Germany, and England.

The German socialists were ready to act with us. There were over five

million of them, many of them in the standing army, and, in addition,

they were on friendly terms with the labor unions. In both countries

the socialists came out in bold declaration against the war and

threatened the general strike. And in the meantime they made

preparation for the general strike. Furthermore, the revolutionary

parties in all countries gave public utterance to the socialist

principle of international peace that must be preserved at all hazards,

even to the extent of revolt and revolution at home.

The general strike was the one great victory we American socialists

won. On the 4th of December the American minister was withdrawn from

the German capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu,

sinking three American cruisers and a revenue cutter, and bombarding

the city. Next day both Germany and the United States declared war, and

within an hour the socialists called the general strike in both

countries.

For the first time the German war-lord faced the men of his empire who

made his empire go. Without them he could not run his empire. The

novelty of the situation lay in that their revolt was passive. They did

not fight. They did nothing. And by doing nothing they tied their

war-lord’s hands. He would have asked for nothing better than an

opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat. But

this was denied him. He could not loose his war-dogs. Neither could he

mobilize his army to go forth to war, nor could he punish his

recalcitrant subjects. Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not a train

ran, not a telegraphic message went over the wires, for the

telegraphers and railroad men had ceased work along with the rest of

the population.

And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United States. At last

organized labor had learned its lesson. Beaten decisively on its own

chosen field, it had abandoned that field and come over to the

political field of the socialists; for the general strike was a

political strike. Besides, organized labor had been so badly beaten

that it did not care. It joined in the general strike out of sheer

desperation. The workers threw down their tools and left their tasks by

the millions. Especially notable were the machinists. Their heads were

bloody, their organization had apparently been destroyed, yet out they

came, along with their allies in the metal-working trades.

Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The

strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the

women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set

their faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to

die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the

people. It struck their sense of humor. The idea was infectious. The

children struck in all the schools, and such teachers as came, went

home again from deserted class rooms. The general strike took the form

of a great national picnic. And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so

evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all. And, finally, there was

no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic. When everybody was

guilty, how was anybody to be punished?

The United States was paralyzed. No one knew what was happening. There

were no newspapers, no letters, no despatches. Every community was as

completely isolated as though ten thousand miles of primeval wilderness

stretched between it and the rest of the world. For that matter, the

world had ceased to exist. And for a week this state of affairs was

maintained.

In San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across the bay

in Oakland or Berkeley. The effect on one’s sensibilities was weird,

depressing. It seemed as though some great cosmic thing lay dead. The

pulse of the land had ceased to beat. Of a truth the nation had died.

There were no wagons rumbling on the streets, no factory whistles, no

hum of electricity in the air, no passing of street cars, no cries of

news-boys—nothing but persons who at rare intervals went by like

furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed and made unreal by the silence.

And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was taught its lesson.

And well it learned the lesson. The general strike was a warning. It

should never occur again. The Oligarchy would see to that.

At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the telegraphers of

Germany and the United States returned to their posts. Through them the

socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum to the

rulers. The war should be called off, or the general strike would

continue. It did not take long to come to an understanding. The war was

declared off, and the populations of both countries returned to their

tasks.

It was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between

Germany and the United States. In reality, this was an alliance between

the Emperor and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting their common

foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both countries. And it was this

alliance that the Oligarchy afterward so treacherously broke when the

German socialists rose and drove the war-lord from his throne. It was

the very thing the Oligarchy had played for—the destruction of its

great rival in the world-market. With the German Emperor out of the

way, Germany would have no surplus to sell abroad. By the very nature

of the socialist state, the German population would consume all that it

produced. Of course, it would trade abroad certain things it produced

for things it did not produce; but this would be quite different from

an unconsumable surplus.

“I’ll wager the Oligarchy finds justification,” Ernest said, when its

treachery to the German Emperor became known. “As usual, the Oligarchy

will believe it has done right.”

And sure enough. The Oligarchy’s public defence for the act was that it

had done it for the sake of the American people whose interests it was

looking out for. It had flung its hated rival out of the world-market

and enabled us to dispose of our surplus in that market.

“And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that such

idiots really are managing our interests,” was Ernest’s comment. “They

have enabled us to sell more abroad, which means that we’ll be

compelled to consume less at home.”

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

As early as January, 1913, Ernest saw the true trend of affairs, but he

could not get his brother leaders to see the vision of the Iron Heel

that had arisen in his brain. They were too confident. Events were

rushing too rapidly to culmination. A crisis had come in world affairs.

The American Oligarchy was practically in possession of the

world-market, and scores of countries were flung out of that market

with unconsumable and unsalable surpluses on their hands. For such

countries nothing remained but reorganization. They could not continue

their method of producing surpluses. The capitalistic system, so far as

they were concerned, had hopelessly broken down.

The reorganization of these countries took the form of revolution. It

was a time of confusion and violence. Everywhere institutions and

governments were crashing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or

three countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought bitterly for

their possessions. But the governments were taken away from them by the

militant proletariat. At last was being realized Karl Marx’s classic:

“The knell of private capitalist property sounds. The expropriators are

expropriated.” And as fast as capitalistic governments crashed,

cooperative commonwealths arose in their place.

“Why does the United States lag behind?”; “Get busy, you American

revolutionists!”; “What’s the matter with America?”—were the messages

sent to us by our successful comrades in other lands. But we could not

keep up. The Oligarchy stood in the way. Its bulk, like that of some

huge monster, blocked our path.

“Wait till we take office in the spring,” we answered. “Then you’ll

see.”

Behind this lay our secret. We had won over the Grangers, and in the

spring a dozen states would pass into their hands by virtue of the

elections of the preceding fall. At once would be instituted a dozen

cooperative commonwealth states. After that, the rest would be easy.

“But what if the Grangers fail to get possession?” Ernest demanded. And

his comrades called him a calamity howler.

But this failure to get possession was not the chief danger that Ernest

had in mind. What he foresaw was the defection of the great labor

unions and the rise of the castes.

“Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it,” Ernest said. “I’ll wager

they’ve made a text-book out of his ‘Benevolent Feudalism.’”[1]

[1] “Our Benevolent Feudalism,” a book published in 1902 A.D., by W.

J. Ghent. It has always been insisted that Ghent put the idea of the

Oligarchy into the minds of the great capitalists. This belief

persists throughout the literature of the three centuries of the Iron

Heel, and even in the literature of the first century of the

Brotherhood of Man. To-day we know better, but our knowledge does not

overcome the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in

all history.

Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot discussion with half a

dozen labor leaders, Ernest turned to me and said quietly: “That

settles it. The Iron Heel has won. The end is in sight.”

This little conference in our home was unofficial; but Ernest, like the

rest of his comrades, was working for assurances from the labor leaders

that they would call out their men in the next general strike.

O’Connor, the president of the Association of Machinists, had been

foremost of the six leaders present in refusing to give such assurance.

“You have seen that you were beaten soundly at your old tactics of

strike and boycott,” Ernest urged.

O’Connor and the others nodded their heads.

“And you saw what a general strike would do,” Ernest went on. “We

stopped the war with Germany. Never was there so fine a display of the

solidarity and the power of labor. Labor can and will rule the world.

If you continue to stand with us, we’ll put an end to the reign of

capitalism. It is your only hope. And what is more, you know it. There

is no other way out. No matter what you do under your old tactics, you

are doomed to defeat, if for no other reason because the masters

control the courts.”[2]

[2] As a sample of the decisions of the courts adverse to labor, the

following instances are given. In the coal- mining regions the

employment of children was notorious. In 1905 A.D., labor succeeded in

getting a law passed in Pennsylvania providing that proof of the age

of the child and of certain educational qualifications must accompany

the oath of the parent. This was promptly declared unconstitutional by

the Luzerne County Court, on the ground that it violated the

Fourteenth Amendment in that it discriminated between individuals of

the same class—namely, children above fourteen years of age and

children below. The state court sustained the decision. The New York

Court of Special Sessions, in 1905 A.D., declared unconstitutional the

law prohibiting minors and women from working in factories after nine

o’clock at night, the ground taken being that such a law was “class

legislation.” Again, the bakers of that time were terribly overworked.

The New York Legislature passed a law restricting work in bakeries to

ten hours a day. In 1906 A.D., the Supreme Court of the United States

declared this law to be unconstitutional. In part the decision read:

“_There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of

persons or the right of free contract by determining the hours of

labor in the occupation of a baker._”

“You run ahead too fast,” O’Connor answered. “You don’t know all the

ways out. There is another way out. We know what we’re about. We’re

sick of strikes. They’ve got us beaten that way to a frazzle. But I

don’t think we’ll ever need to call our men out again.”

“What is your way out?” Ernest demanded bluntly.

O’Connor laughed and shook his head. “I can tell you this much: We’ve

not been asleep. And we’re not dreaming now.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, or ashamed of, I hope,” Ernest

challenged.

“I guess we know our business best,” was the retort.

“It’s a dark business, from the way you hide it,” Ernest said with

growing anger.

“We’ve paid for our experience in sweat and blood, and we’ve earned all

that’s coming to us,” was the reply. “Charity begins at home.”

“If you’re afraid to tell me your way out, I’ll tell it to you.”

Ernest’s blood was up. “You’re going in for grab-sharing. You’ve made

terms with the enemy, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve sold out the

cause of labor, of all labor. You are leaving the battle-field like

cowards.”

“I’m not saying anything,” O’Connor answered sullenly. “Only I guess we

know what’s best for us a little bit better than you do.”

“And you don’t care a cent for what is best for the rest of labor. You

kick it into the ditch.”

“I’m not saying anything,” O’Connor replied, “except that I’m president

of the Machinists’ Association, and it’s my business to consider the

interests of the men I represent, that’s all.”

And then, when the labor leaders had left, Ernest, with the calmness of

defeat, outlined to me the course of events to come.

“The socialists used to foretell with joy,” he said, “the coming of the

day when organized labor, defeated on the industrial field, would come

over on to the political field. Well, the Iron Heel has defeated the

labor unions on the industrial field and driven them over to the

political field; and instead of this being joyful for us, it will be a

source of grief. The Iron Heel learned its lesson. We showed it our

power in the general strike. It has taken steps to prevent another

general strike.”

“But how?” I asked.

“Simply by subsidizing the great unions. They won’t join in the next

general strike. Therefore it won’t be a general strike.”

“But the Iron Heel can’t maintain so costly a programme forever,” I

objected.

“Oh, it hasn’t subsidized all of the unions. That’s not necessary. Here

is what is going to happen. Wages are going to be advanced and hours

shortened in the railroad unions, the iron and steel workers unions,

and the engineer and machinist unions. In these unions more favorable

conditions will continue to prevail. Membership in these unions will

become like seats in Paradise.”

“Still I don’t see,” I objected. “What is to become of the other

unions? There are far more unions outside of this combination than in

it.”

“The other unions will be ground out of existence—all of them. For,

don’t you see, the railway men, machinists and engineers, iron and

steel workers, do all of the vitally essential work in our machine

civilization. Assured of their faithfulness, the Iron Heel can snap its

fingers at all the rest of labor. Iron, steel, coal, machinery, and

transportation constitute the backbone of the whole industrial fabric.”

“But coal?” I queried. “There are nearly a million coal miners.”

They are practically unskilled labor. They will not count. Their wages

will go down and their hours will increase. They will be slaves like

all the rest of us, and they will become about the most bestial of all

of us. They will be compelled to work, just as the farmers are

compelled to work now for the masters who robbed them of their land.

And the same with all the other unions outside the combination. Watch

them wobble and go to pieces, and their members become slaves driven to

toil by empty stomachs and the law of the land.

“Do you know what will happen to Farley[3] and his strike-breakers?

I’ll tell you. Strike-breaking as an occupation will cease. There won’t

be any more strikes. In place of strikes will be slave revolts. Farley

and his gang will be promoted to slave-driving. Oh, it won’t be called

that; it will be called enforcing the law of the land that compels the

laborers to work. It simply prolongs the fight, this treachery of the

big unions. Heaven only knows now where and when the Revolution will

triumph.”

[3] James Farley—a notorious strike-breaker of the period. A man more

courageous than ethical, and of undeniable ability. He rose high under

the rule of the Iron Heel and finally was translated into the oligarch

class. He was assassinated in 1932 by Sarah Jenkins, whose husband,

thirty years before, had been killed by Farley’s strike-breakers.

“But with such a powerful combination as the Oligarchy and the big

unions, is there any reason to believe that the Revolution will ever

triumph?” I queried. “May not the combination endure forever?”

He shook his head. “One of our generalizations is that every system

founded upon class and caste contains within itself the germs of its

own decay. When a system is founded upon class, how can caste be

prevented? The Iron Heel will not be able to prevent it, and in the end

caste will destroy the Iron Heel. The oligarchs have already developed

caste among themselves; but wait until the favored unions develop

caste. The Iron Heel will use all its power to prevent it, but it will

fail.

“In the favored unions are the flower of the American workingmen. They

are strong, efficient men. They have become members of those unions

through competition for place. Every fit workman in the United States

will be possessed by the ambition to become a member of the favored

unions. The Oligarchy will encourage such ambition and the consequent

competition. Thus will the strong men, who might else be

revolutionists, be won away and their strength used to bolster the

Oligarchy.

“On the other hand, the labor castes, the members of the favored

unions, will strive to make their organizations into close

corporations. And they will succeed. Membership in the labor castes

will become hereditary. Sons will succeed fathers, and there will be no

inflow of new strength from that eternal reservoir of strength, the

common people. This will mean deterioration of the labor castes, and in

the end they will become weaker and weaker. At the same time, as an

institution, they will become temporarily all-powerful. They will be

like the guards of the palace in old Rome, and there will be palace

revolutions whereby the labor castes will seize the reins of power. And

there will be counter-palace revolutions of the oligarchs, and

sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, will be in power. And

through it all the inevitable caste-weakening will go on, so that in

the end the common people will come into their own.”

This foreshadowing of a slow social evolution was made when Ernest was

first depressed by the defection of the great unions. I never agreed

with him in it, and I disagree now, as I write these lines, more

heartily than ever; for even now, though Ernest is gone, we are on the

verge of the revolt that will sweep all oligarchies away. Yet I have

here given Ernest’s prophecy because it was his prophecy. In spite of

his belief in it, he worked like a giant against it, and he, more than

any man, has made possible the revolt that even now waits the signal to

burst forth.[4]

[4] Everhard’s social foresight was remarkable. As clearly as in the

light of past events, he saw the defection of the favored unions, the

rise and the slow decay of the labor castes, and the struggle between

the decaying oligarchs and labor castes for control of the great

governmental machine.

“But if the Oligarchy persists,” I asked him that evening, “what will

become of the great surpluses that will fall to its share every year?”

“The surpluses will have to be expended somehow,” he answered; “and

trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built.

There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art.

When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have

time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty.

They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously

rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no

longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois

taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder

cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old

time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship

beauty.[5]

[5] We cannot but marvel at Everhard’s foresight. Before ever the

thought of wonder cities like Ardis and Asgard entered the minds of

the oligarchs, Everhard saw those cities and the inevitable necessity

for their creation.

“Thus will the surplus be constantly expended while labor does the

work. The building of these great works and cities will give a

starvation ration to millions of common laborers, for the enormous bulk

of the surplus will compel an equally enormous expenditure, and the

oligarchs will build for a thousand years—ay, for ten thousand years.

They will build as the Egyptians and the Babylonians never dreamed of

building; and when the oligarchs have passed away, their great roads

and their wonder cities will remain for the brotherhood of labor to

tread upon and dwell within.[6]

[6] And since that day of prophecy, have passed away the three

centuries of the Iron Heel and the four centuries of the Brotherhood

of Man, and to-day we tread the roads and dwell in the cities that the

oligarchs built. It is true, we are even now building still more

wonderful wonder cities, but the wonder cities of the oligarchs

endure, and I write these lines in Ardis, one of the most wonderful of

them all.

“These things the oligarchs will do because they cannot help doing

them. These great works will be the form their expenditure of the

surplus will take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt

of long ago expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the

building of temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish,

not a priest class, but an artist class. And in place of the merchant

class of bourgeoisie will be the labor castes. And beneath will be the

abyss, wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself,

the common people, the great bulk of the population. And in the end,

who knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss;

the labor castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away; and then, at

last, after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the

common man. I had thought to see that day; but now I know that I shall

never see it.”

He paused and looked at me, and added:

“Social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

My arms were about him, and his head was on my breast.

“Sing me to sleep,” he murmured whimsically. “I have had a visioning,

and I wish to forget.”

CHAPTER XV.

LAST DAYS

It was near the end of January, 1913, that the changed attitude of the

Oligarchy toward the favored unions was made public. The newspapers

published information of an unprecedented rise in wages and shortening

of hours for the railroad employees, the iron and steel workers, and

the engineers and machinists. But the whole truth was not told. The

oligarchs did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth. In

reality, the wages had been raised much higher, and the privileges were

correspondingly greater. All this was secret, but secrets will out.

Members of the favored unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped,

and soon all the labor world knew what had happened.

It was merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth century

had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time,

profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to

placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work. But

profit-sharing, as a system, was ridiculous and impossible.

Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated cases in the midst

of a system of industrial strife; for if all labor and all capital

shared profits, the same conditions would obtain as did obtain when

there was no profit-sharing.

So, out of the unpractical idea of profit-sharing, arose the practical

idea of grab-sharing. “Give us more pay and charge it to the public,”

was the slogan of the strong unions.[1] And here and there this selfish

policy worked successfully. In charging it to the public, it was

charged to the great mass of unorganized labor and of weakly organized

labor. These workers actually paid the increased wages of their

stronger brothers who were members of unions that were labor

monopolies. This idea, as I say, was merely carried to its logical

conclusion, on a large scale, by the combination of the oligarchs and

the favored unions.

[1] All the railroad unions entered into this combination with the

oligarchs, and it is of interest to note that the first definite

application of the policy of profit-grabbing was made by a railroad

union in the nineteenth century A.D., namely, the Brotherhood of

Locomotive Engineers. P. M. Arthur was for twenty years Grand Chief of

the Brotherhood. After the strike on the Pennsylvania Railroad in

1877, he broached a scheme to have the Locomotive Engineers make terms

with the railroads and to “go it alone” so far as the rest of the

labor unions were concerned. This scheme was eminently successful. It

was as successful as it was selfish, and out of it was coined the word

“arthurization,” to denote grab-sharing on the part of labor unions.

This word “arthurization” has long puzzled the etymologists, but its

derivation, I hope, is now made clear.

As soon as the secret of the defection of the favored unions leaked

out, there were rumblings and mutterings in the labor world. Next, the

favored unions withdrew from the international organizations and broke

off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence. The members of

the favored unions were branded as traitors, and in saloons and

brothels, on the streets and at work, and, in fact, everywhere, they

were assaulted by the comrades they had so treacherously deserted.

Countless heads were broken, and there were many killed. No member of

the favored unions was safe. They gathered together in bands in order

to go to work or to return from work. They walked always in the middle

of the street. On the sidewalk they were liable to have their skulls

crushed by bricks and cobblestones thrown from windows and house-tops.

They were permitted to carry weapons, and the authorities aided them in

every way. Their persecutors were sentenced to long terms in prison,

where they were harshly treated; while no man, not a member of the

favored unions, was permitted to carry weapons. Violation of this law

was made a high misdemeanor and punished accordingly.

Outraged labor continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Caste

lines formed automatically. The children of the traitors were

persecuted by the children of the workers who had been betrayed, until

it was impossible for the former to play on the streets or to attend

the public schools. Also, the wives and families of the traitors were

ostracized, while the corner groceryman who sold provisions to them was

boycotted.

As a result, driven back upon themselves from every side, the traitors

and their families became clannish. Finding it impossible to dwell in

safety in the midst of the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new

localities inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were favored by

the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and sanitary, were built for

them, surrounded by spacious yards, and separated here and there by

parks and playgrounds. Their children attended schools especially built

for them, and in these schools manual training and applied science were

specialized upon. Thus, and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of

this segregation arose caste. The members of the favored unions became

the aristocracy of labor. They were set apart from the rest of labor.

They were better housed, better clothed, better fed, better treated.

They were grab-sharing with a vengeance.

In the meantime, the rest of the working class was more harshly

treated. Many little privileges were taken away from it, while its

wages and its standard of living steadily sank down. Incidentally, its

public schools deteriorated, and education slowly ceased to be

compulsory. The increase in the younger generation of children who

could not read nor write was perilous.

The capture of the world-market by the United States had disrupted the

rest of the world. Institutions and governments were everywhere

crashing or transforming. Germany, Italy, France, Australia, and New

Zealand were busy forming cooperative commonwealths. The British Empire

was falling apart. England’s hands were full. In India revolt was in

full swing. The cry in all Asia was, “Asia for the Asiatics!” And

behind this cry was Japan, ever urging and aiding the yellow and brown

races against the white. And while Japan dreamed of continental empire

and strove to realize the dream, she suppressed her own proletarian

revolution. It was a simple war of the castes, Coolie versus Samurai,

and the coolie socialists were executed by tens of thousands. Forty

thousand were killed in the street-fighting of Tokio and in the futile

assault on the Mikado’s palace. Kobe was a shambles; the slaughter of

the cotton operatives by machine-guns became classic as the most

terrific execution ever achieved by modern war machines. Most savage of

all was the Japanese Oligarchy that arose. Japan dominated the East,

and took to herself the whole Asiatic portion of the world-market, with

the exception of India.

England managed to crush her own proletarian revolution and to hold on

to India, though she was brought to the verge of exhaustion. Also, she

was compelled to let her great colonies slip away from her. So it was

that the socialists succeeded in making Australia and New Zealand into

cooperative commonwealths. And it was for the same reason that Canada

was lost to the mother country. But Canada crushed her own socialist

revolution, being aided in this by the Iron Heel. At the same time, the

Iron Heel helped Mexico and Cuba to put down revolt. The result was

that the Iron Heel was firmly established in the New World. It had

welded into one compact political mass the whole of North America from

the Panama Canal to the Arctic Ocean.

And England, at the sacrifice of her great colonies, had succeeded only

in retaining India. But this was no more than temporary. The struggle

with Japan and the rest of Asia for India was merely delayed. England

was destined shortly to lose India, while behind that event loomed the

struggle between a united Asia and the world.

And while all the world was torn with conflict, we of the United States

were not placid and peaceful. The defection of the great unions had

prevented our proletarian revolt, but violence was everywhere. In

addition to the labor troubles, and the discontent of the farmers and

of the remnant of the middle class, a religious revival had blazed up.

An offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists sprang into sudden

prominence, proclaiming the end of the world.

“Confusion thrice confounded!” Ernest cried. “How can we hope for

solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts?”

And truly the religious revival assumed formidable proportions. The

people, what of their wretchedness, and of their disappointment in all

things earthly, were ripe and eager for a heaven where industrial

tyrants entered no more than camels passed through needle-eyes.

Wild-eyed itinerant preachers swarmed over the land; and despite the

prohibition of the civil authorities, and the persecution for

disobedience, the flames of religious frenzy were fanned by countless

camp-meetings.

It was the last days, they claimed, the beginning of the end of the

world. The four winds had been loosed. God had stirred the nations to

strife. It was a time of visions and miracles, while seers and

prophetesses were legion. The people ceased work by hundreds of

thousands and fled to the mountains, there to await the imminent coming

of God and the rising of the hundred and forty and four thousand to

heaven. But in the meantime God did not come, and they starved to death

in great numbers. In their desperation they ravaged the farms for food,

and the consequent tumult and anarchy in the country districts but

increased the woes of the poor expropriated farmers.

Also, the farms and warehouses were the property of the Iron Heel.

Armies of troops were put into the field, and the fanatics were herded

back at the bayonet point to their tasks in the cities. There they

broke out in ever recurring mobs and riots. Their leaders were executed

for sedition or confined in madhouses. Those who were executed went to

their deaths with all the gladness of martyrs. It was a time of

madness. The unrest spread. In the swamps and deserts and waste places,

from Florida to Alaska, the small groups of Indians that survived were

dancing ghost dances and waiting the coming of a Messiah of their own.

And through it all, with a serenity and certitude that was terrifying,

continued to rise the form of that monster of the ages, the Oligarchy.

With iron hand and iron heel it mastered the surging millions, out of

confusion brought order, out of the very chaos wrought its own

foundation and structure.

“Just wait till we get in,” the Grangers said—Calvin said it to us in

our Pell Street quarters. “Look at the states we’ve captured. With you

socialists to back us, we’ll make them sing another song when we take

office.”

“The millions of the discontented and the impoverished are ours,” the

socialists said. “The Grangers have come over to us, the farmers, the

middle class, and the laborers. The capitalist system will fall to

pieces. In another month we send fifty men to Congress. Two years hence

every office will be ours, from the President down to the local

dog-catcher.”

To all of which Ernest would shake his head and say:

“How many rifles have you got? Do you know where you can get plenty of

lead? When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than

mechanical mixtures, you take my word.”

CHAPTER XVI.

THE END

When it came time for Ernest and me to go to Washington, father did not

accompany us. He had become enamoured of proletarian life. He looked

upon our slum neighborhood as a great sociological laboratory, and he

had embarked upon an apparently endless orgy of investigation. He

chummed with the laborers, and was an intimate in scores of homes.

Also, he worked at odd jobs, and the work was play as well as learned

investigation, for he delighted in it and was always returning home

with copious notes and bubbling over with new adventures. He was the

perfect scientist.

There was no need for his working at all, because Ernest managed to

earn enough from his translating to take care of the three of us. But

father insisted on pursuing his favorite phantom, and a protean phantom

it was, judging from the jobs he worked at. I shall never forget the

evening he brought home his street pedler’s outfit of shoe-laces and

suspenders, nor the time I went into the little corner grocery to make

some purchase and had him wait on me. After that I was not surprised

when he tended bar for a week in the saloon across the street. He

worked as a night watchman, hawked potatoes on the street, pasted

labels in a cannery warehouse, was utility man in a paper-box factory,

and water-carrier for a street railway construction gang, and even

joined the Dishwashers’ Union just before it fell to pieces.

I think the Bishop’s example, so far as wearing apparel was concerned,

must have fascinated father, for he wore the cheap cotton shirt of the

laborer and the overalls with the narrow strap about the hips. Yet one

habit remained to him from the old life; he always dressed for dinner,

or supper, rather.

I could be happy anywhere with Ernest; and father’s happiness in our

changed circumstances rounded out my own happiness.

“When I was a boy,” father said, “I was very curious. I wanted to know

why things were and how they came to pass. That was why I became a

physicist. The life in me to-day is just as curious as it was in my

boyhood, and it’s the being curious that makes life worth living.”

Sometimes he ventured north of Market Street into the shopping and

theatre district, where he sold papers, ran errands, and opened cabs.

There, one day, closing a cab, he encountered Mr. Wickson. In high glee

father described the incident to us that evening.

“Wickson looked at me sharply when I closed the door on him, and

muttered, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Just like that he said it, ‘Well,

I’ll be damned.’ His face turned red and he was so confused that he

forgot to tip me. But he must have recovered himself quickly, for the

cab hadn’t gone fifty feet before it turned around and came back. He

leaned out of the door.

“‘Look here, Professor,’ he said, ‘this is too much. What can I do for

you?’

“‘I closed the cab door for you,’ I answered. ‘According to common

custom you might give me a dime.’

“‘Bother that!’ he snorted. ‘I mean something substantial.’

“He was certainly serious—a twinge of ossified conscience or something;

and so I considered with grave deliberation for a moment.

“His face was quite expectant when I began my answer, but you should

have seen it when I finished.

“‘You might give me back my home,’ I said, ‘and my stock in the Sierra

Mills.’”

Father paused.

“What did he say?” I questioned eagerly.

“What could he say? He said nothing. But I said, ‘I hope you are

happy.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘Tell me, are you happy?’” I asked.

“He ordered the cabman to drive on, and went away swearing horribly.

And he didn’t give me the dime, much less the home and stock; so you

see, my dear, your father’s street-arab career is beset with

disappointments.”

And so it was that father kept on at our Pell Street quarters, while

Ernest and I went to Washington. Except for the final consummation, the

old order had passed away, and the final consummation was nearer than I

dreamed. Contrary to our expectation, no obstacles were raised to

prevent the socialist Congressmen from taking their seats. Everything

went smoothly, and I laughed at Ernest when he looked upon the very

smoothness as something ominous.

We found our socialist comrades confident, optimistic of their strength

and of the things they would accomplish. A few Grangers who had been

elected to Congress increased our strength, and an elaborate programme

of what was to be done was prepared by the united forces. In all of

which Ernest joined loyally and energetically, though he could not

forbear, now and again, from saying, apropos of nothing in particular,

“When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than mechanical

mixtures, you take my word.”

The trouble arose first with the Grangers in the various states they

had captured at the last election. There were a dozen of these states,

but the Grangers who had been elected were not permitted to take

office. The incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They

merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole

situation in the interminable red tape of the law. The Grangers were

powerless. The courts were in the hands of their enemies.

This was the moment of danger. If the cheated Grangers became violent,

all was lost. How we socialists worked to hold them back! There were

days and nights when Ernest never closed his eyes in sleep. The big

leaders of the Grangers saw the peril and were with us to a man. But it

was all of no avail. The Oligarchy wanted violence, and it set its

agents-provocateurs to work. Without discussion, it was the

agents-provocateurs who caused the Peasant Revolt.

In a dozen states the revolt flared up. The expropriated farmers took

forcible possession of the state governments. Of course this was

unconstitutional, and of course the United States put its soldiers into

the field. Everywhere the agents-provocateurs urged the people on.

These emissaries of the Iron Heel disguised themselves as artisans,

farmers, and farm laborers. In Sacramento, the capital of California,

the Grangers had succeeded in maintaining order. Thousands of secret

agents were rushed to the devoted city. In mobs composed wholly of

themselves, they fired and looted buildings and factories. They worked

the people up until they joined them in the pillage. Liquor in large

quantities was distributed among the slum classes further to inflame

their minds. And then, when all was ready, appeared upon the scene the

soldiers of the United States, who were, in reality, the soldiers of

the Iron Heel. Eleven thousand men, women, and children were shot down

on the streets of Sacramento or murdered in their houses. The national

government took possession of the state government, and all was over

for California.

And as with California, so elsewhere. Every Granger state was ravaged

with violence and washed in blood. First, disorder was precipitated by

the secret agents and the Black Hundreds, then the troops were called

out. Rioting and mob-rule reigned throughout the rural districts. Day

and night the smoke of burning farms, warehouses, villages, and cities

filled the sky. Dynamite appeared. Railroad bridges and tunnels were

blown up and trains were wrecked. The poor farmers were shot and hanged

in great numbers. Reprisals were bitter, and many plutocrats and army

officers were murdered. Blood and vengeance were in men’s hearts. The

regular troops fought the farmers as savagely as had they been Indians.

And the regular troops had cause. Twenty-eight hundred of them had been

annihilated in a tremendous series of dynamite explosions in Oregon,

and in a similar manner, a number of train loads, at different times

and places, had been destroyed. So it was that the regular troops

fought for their lives as well as did the farmers.

As for the militia, the militia law of 1903 was put into effect, and

the workers of one state were compelled, under pain of death, to shoot

down their comrade-workers in other states. Of course, the militia law

did not work smoothly at first. Many militia officers were murdered,

and many militiamen were executed by drumhead court martial. Ernest’s

prophecy was strikingly fulfilled in the cases of Mr. Kowalt and Mr.

Asmunsen. Both were eligible for the militia, and both were drafted to

serve in the punitive expedition that was despatched from California

against the farmers of Missouri. Mr. Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen refused to

serve. They were given short shrift. Drumhead court martial was their

portion, and military execution their end. They were shot with their

backs to the firing squad.

Many young men fled into the mountains to escape serving in the

militia. There they became outlaws, and it was not until more peaceful

times that they received their punishment. It was drastic. The

government issued a proclamation for all law-abiding citizens to come

in from the mountains for a period of three months. When the proclaimed

date arrived, half a million soldiers were sent into the mountainous

districts everywhere. There was no investigation, no trial. Wherever a

man was encountered, he was shot down on the spot. The troops operated

on the basis that no man not an outlaw remained in the mountains. Some

bands, in strong positions, fought gallantly, but in the end every

deserter from the militia met death.

A more immediate lesson, however, was impressed on the minds of the

people by the punishment meted out to the Kansas militia. The great

Kansas Mutiny occurred at the very beginning of military operations

against the Grangers. Six thousand of the militia mutinied. They had

been for several weeks very turbulent and sullen, and for that reason

had been kept in camp. Their open mutiny, however, was without doubt

precipitated by the agents-provocateurs.

On the night of the 22d of April they arose and murdered their

officers, only a small remnant of the latter escaping. This was beyond

the scheme of the Iron Heel, for the agents-provocateurs had done their

work too well. But everything was grist to the Iron Heel. It had

prepared for the outbreak, and the killing of so many officers gave it

justification for what followed. As by magic, forty thousand soldiers

of the regular army surrounded the malcontents. It was a trap. The

wretched militiamen found that their machine-guns had been tampered

with, and that the cartridges from the captured magazines did not fit

their rifles. They hoisted the white flag of surrender, but it was

ignored. There were no survivors. The entire six thousand were

annihilated. Common shell and shrapnel were thrown in upon them from a

distance, and, when, in their desperation, they charged the encircling

lines, they were mowed down by the machine-guns. I talked with an

eye-witness, and he said that the nearest any militiaman approached the

machine-guns was a hundred and fifty yards. The earth was carpeted with

the slain, and a final charge of cavalry, with trampling of horses’

hoofs, revolvers, and sabres, crushed the wounded into the ground.

Simultaneously with the destruction of the Grangers came the revolt of

the coal miners. It was the expiring effort of organized labor.

Three-quarters of a million of miners went out on strike. But they were

too widely scattered over the country to advantage from their own

strength. They were segregated in their own districts and beaten into

submission. This was the first great slave-drive. Pocock[1] won his

spurs as a slave-driver and earned the undying hatred of the

proletariat. Countless attempts were made upon his life, but he seemed

to bear a charmed existence. It was he who was responsible for the

introduction of the Russian passport system among the miners, and the

denial of their right of removal from one part of the country to

another.

[1] Albert Pocock, another of the notorious strike-breakers of earlier

years, who, to the day of his death, successfully held all the

coal-miners of the country to their task. He was succeeded by his son,

Lewis Pocock, and for five generations this remarkable line of

slave-drivers handled the coal mines. The elder Pocock, known as

Pocock I., has been described as follows: “A long, lean head,

semicircled by a fringe of brown and gray hair, with big cheek-bones

and a heavy chin, . . . a pale face, lustreless gray eyes, a metallic

voice, and a languid manner.” He was born of humble parents, and began

his career as a bartender. He next became a private detective for a

street railway corporation, and by successive steps developed into a

professional strikebreaker. Pocock V., the last of the line, was blown

up in a pump-house by a bomb during a petty revolt of the miners in

the Indian Territory. This occurred in 2073 A.D.

In the meantime, the socialists held firm. While the Grangers expired

in flame and blood, and organized labor was disrupted, the socialists

held their peace and perfected their secret organization. In vain the

Grangers pleaded with us. We rightly contended that any revolt on our

part was virtually suicide for the whole Revolution. The Iron Heel, at

first dubious about dealing with the entire proletariat at one time,

had found the work easier than it had expected, and would have asked

nothing better than an uprising on our part. But we avoided the issue,

in spite of the fact that agents-provocateurs swarmed in our midst. In

those early days, the agents of the Iron Heel were clumsy in their

methods. They had much to learn and in the meantime our Fighting Groups

weeded them out. It was bitter, bloody work, but we were fighting for

life and for the Revolution, and we had to fight the enemy with its own

weapons. Yet we were fair. No agent of the Iron Heel was executed

without a trial. We may have made mistakes, but if so, very rarely. The

bravest, and the most combative and self-sacrificing of our comrades

went into the Fighting Groups. Once, after ten years had passed, Ernest

made a calculation from figures furnished by the chiefs of the Fighting

Groups, and his conclusion was that the average life of a man or woman

after becoming a member was five years. The comrades of the Fighting

Groups were heroes all, and the peculiar thing about it was that they

were opposed to the taking of life. They violated their own natures,

yet they loved liberty and knew of no sacrifice too great to make for

the Cause.[2]

[2] These Fighting groups were modelled somewhat after the Fighting

Organization of the Russian Revolution, and, despite the unceasing

efforts of the Iron Heel, these groups persisted throughout the three

centuries of its existence. Composed of men and women actuated by

lofty purpose and unafraid to die, the Fighting Groups exercised

tremendous influence and tempered the savage brutality of the rulers.

Not alone was their work confined to unseen warfare with the secret

agents of the Oligarchy. The oligarchs themselves were compelled to

listen to the decrees of the Groups, and often, when they disobeyed,

were punished by death—and likewise with the subordinates of the

oligarchs, with the officers of the army and the leaders of the labor

castes.

Stern justice was meted out by these organized avengers, but most

remarkable was their passionless and judicial procedure. There were

no snap judgments. When a man was captured he was given fair trial

and opportunity for defence. Of necessity, many men were tried and

condemned by proxy, as in the case of General Lampton. This

occurred in 2138 A.D. Possibly the most bloodthirsty and malignant

of all the mercenaries that ever served the Iron Heel, he was

informed by the Fighting Groups that they had tried him, found him

guilty, and condemned him to death—and this, after three warnings

for him to cease from his ferocious treatment of the proletariat.

After his condemnation he surrounded himself with a myriad

protective devices. Years passed, and in vain the Fighting Groups

strove to execute their decree. Comrade after comrade, men and

women, failed in their attempts, and were cruelly executed by the

Oligarchy. It was the case of General Lampton that revived

crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the

condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl

of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose,

served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household.

She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged

torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the

Pantheon of Brotherhood in the wonder city of Serles.

We, who by personal experience know nothing of bloodshed, must not

judge harshly the heroes of the Fighting Groups. They gave up their

lives for humanity, no sacrifice was too great for them to

accomplish, while inexorable necessity compelled them to bloody

expression in an age of blood. The Fighting Groups constituted the

one thorn in the side of the Iron Heel that the Iron Heel could

never remove. Everhard was the father of this curious army, and its

accomplishments and successful persistence for three hundred years

bear witness to the wisdom with which he organized and the solid

foundation he laid for the succeeding generations to build upon. In

some respects, despite his great economic and sociological

contributions, and his work as a general leader in the Revolution,

his organization of the Fighting Groups must be regarded as his

greatest achievement.

The task we set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from

our circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the

organizing of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general

secret organization of the Revolution. And third, the introduction of

our own secret agents into every branch of the Oligarchy—into the labor

castes and especially among the telegraphers and secretaries and

clerks, into the army, the agents-provocateurs, and the slave-drivers.

It was slow work, and perilous, and often were our efforts rewarded

with costly failures.

The Iron Heel had triumphed in open warfare, but we held our own in the

new warfare, strange and awful and subterranean, that we instituted.

All was unseen, much was unguessed; the blind fought the blind; and yet

through it all was order, purpose, control. We permeated the entire

organization of the Iron Heel with our agents, while our own

organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was

warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot

and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and

terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades.

We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were gone; we never saw them again,

and we knew that they had died.

There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The man who plotted beside

us, for all we knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the

organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel

countermined with its secret agents inside its own organization. And it

was the same with our organization. And despite the absence of

confidence and trust we were compelled to base our every effort on

confidence and trust. Often were we betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron

Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited in

the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the

satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the rest, the

wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and death.

Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled

to make the only other reward that was within our power. It was the

reward of death. Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For

every man who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were

loosed upon his heels. We might fail to carry out our decrees against

our enemies, such as the Pococks, for instance; but the one thing we

could not afford to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors.

Comrades turned traitor by permission, in order to win to the wonder

cities and there execute our sentences on the real traitors. In fact,

so terrible did we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to

betray us than to remain loyal to us.

The Revolution took on largely the character of religion. We worshipped

at the shrine of the Revolution, which was the shrine of liberty. It

was the divine flashing through us. Men and women devoted their lives

to the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to it as of old they had

been sealed to the service of God. We were lovers of Humanity.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SCARLET LIVERY

With the destruction of the Granger states, the Grangers in Congress

disappeared. They were being tried for high treason, and their places

were taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The socialists were in a

pitiful minority, and they knew that their end was near. Congress and

the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely

debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality

all that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to

the mandates of the Oligarchy.

Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in the

debate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of the

preceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the

starvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had but

sunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs

and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.[1] We called these

wretched people the people of the abyss,[2] and it was to alleviate

their awful suffering that the socialists had introduced the unemployed

bill. But this was not to the fancy of the Iron Heel. In its own way it

was preparing to set these millions to work, but the way was not our

way, wherefore it had issued its orders that our bill should be voted

down. Ernest and his fellows knew that their effort was futile, but

they were tired of the suspense. They wanted something to happen. They

were accomplishing nothing, and the best they hoped for was the putting

of an end to the legislative farce in which they were unwilling

players. They knew not what end would come, but they never anticipated

a more disastrous end than the one that did come.

[1] The same conditions obtained in the nineteenth century A.D. under

British rule in India. The natives died of starvation by the million,

while their rulers robbed them of the fruits of their toil and

expended it on magnificent pageants and mumbo-jumbo fooleries.

Perforce, in this enlightened age, we have much to blush for in the

acts of our ancestors. Our only consolation is philosophic. We must

accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par

with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those

stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was

inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not

easily shaken off.

[2] _The people of the abyss_—this phrase was struck out by the genius

of H. G. Wells in the late nineteenth century A.D. Wells was a

sociological seer, sane and normal as well as warm human. Many

fragments of his work have come down to us, while two of his greatest

achievements, “Anticipations” and “Mankind in the Making,” have come

down intact. Before the oligarchs, and before Everhard, Wells

speculated upon the building of the wonder cities, though in his

writings they are referred to as “pleasure cities.”

I sat in the gallery that day. We all knew that something terrible was

imminent. It was in the air, and its presence was made visible by the

armed soldiers drawn up in lines in the corridors, and by the officers

grouped in the entrances to the House itself. The Oligarchy was about

to strike. Ernest was speaking. He was describing the sufferings of the

unemployed, as if with the wild idea of in some way touching their

hearts and consciences; but the Republican and Democratic members

sneered and jeered at him, and there was uproar and confusion. Ernest

abruptly changed front.

“I know nothing that I may say can influence you,” he said. “You have

no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You

pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no

Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no

Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and

panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in

antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you

wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel.”

Here the shouting and the cries of “Order! order!” drowned his voice,

and he stood disdainfully till the din had somewhat subsided. He waved

his hand to include all of them, turned to his own comrades, and said:

“Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts.”

Pandemonium broke out again. The Speaker rapped for order and glanced

expectantly at the officers in the doorways. There were cries of

“Sedition!” and a great, rotund New York member began shouting

“Anarchist!” at Ernest. And Ernest was not pleasant to look at. Every

fighting fibre of him was quivering, and his face was the face of a

fighting animal, withal he was cool and collected.

“Remember,” he said, in a voice that made itself heard above the din,

“that as you show mercy now to the proletariat, some day will that same

proletariat show mercy to you.”

The cries of “Sedition!” and “Anarchist!” redoubled.

“I know that you will not vote for this bill,” Ernest went on. “You

have received the command from your masters to vote against it. And yet

you call me anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government of the

people, and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet shame in public places,

call me anarchist. I do not believe in hell-fire and brimstone; but in

moments like this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this I

almost do believe. Surely there must be a hell, for in no less place

could it be possible for you to receive punishment adequate to your

crimes. So long as you exist, there is a vital need for hell-fire in

the Cosmos.”

There was movement in the doorways. Ernest, the Speaker, all the

members turned to see.

“Why do you not call your soldiers in, Mr. Speaker, and bid them do

their work?” Ernest demanded. “They should carry out your plan with

expedition.”

“There are other plans afoot,” was the retort. “That is why the

soldiers are present.”

“Our plans, I suppose,” Ernest sneered. “Assassination or something

kindred.”

But at the word “assassination” the uproar broke out again. Ernest

could not make himself heard, but he remained on his feet waiting for a

lull. And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing

except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I

saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers

rushing up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with

anger, capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a

moment, and waved his arms for silence.

“It is a plot!” his voice rang out in warning to his comrades. “Do

nothing, or you will be destroyed.”

Then he slowly sank down, and the soldiers reached him. The next moment

soldiers were clearing the galleries and I saw no more.

Though he was my husband, I was not permitted to get to him. When I

announced who I was, I was promptly placed under arrest. And at the

same time were arrested all socialist Congressmen in Washington,

including the unfortunate Simpson, who lay ill with typhoid fever in

his hotel.

The trial was prompt and brief. The men were foredoomed. The wonder was

that Ernest was not executed. This was a blunder on the part of the

Oligarchy, and a costly one. But the Oligarchy was too confident in

those days. It was drunk with success, and little did it dream that

that small handful of heroes had within them the power to rock it to

its foundations. To-morrow, when the Great Revolt breaks out and all

the world resounds with the tramp, tramp of the millions, the Oligarchy

will realize, and too late, how mightily that band of heroes has

grown.[3]

[3] Avis Everhard took for granted that her narrative would be read in

her own day, and so omits to mention the outcome of the trial for high

treason. Many other similar disconcerting omissions will be noticed in

the Manuscript. Fifty-two socialist Congressmen were tried, and all

were found guilty. Strange to relate, not one received the death

sentence. Everhard and eleven others, among whom were Theodore

Donnelson and Matthew Kent, received life imprisonment. The remaining

forty received sentences varying from thirty to forty-five years;

while Arthur Simpson, referred to in the Manuscript as being ill of

typhoid fever at the time of the explosion, received only fifteen

years. It is the tradition that he died of starvation in solitary

confinement, and this harsh treatment is explained as having been

caused by his uncompromising stubbornness and his fiery and tactless

hatred for all men that served the despotism. He died in Cabañas in

Cuba, where three of his comrades were also confined. The fifty- two

socialist Congressmen were confined in military fortresses scattered

all over the United States. Thus, Du Bois and Woods were held in Porto

Rico, while Everhard and Merryweather were placed in Alcatraz, an

island in San Francisco Bay that had already seen long service as a

military prison.

As a revolutionist myself, as one on the inside who knew the hopes and

fears and secret plans of the revolutionists, I am fitted to answer, as

very few are, the charge that they were guilty of exploding the bomb in

Congress. And I can say flatly, without qualification or doubt of any

sort, that the socialists, in Congress and out, had no hand in the

affair. Who threw the bomb we do not know, but the one thing we are

absolutely sure of is that we did not throw it.

On the other hand, there is evidence to show that the Iron Heel was

responsible for the act. Of course, we cannot prove this. Our

conclusion is merely presumptive. But here are such facts as we do

know. It had been reported to the Speaker of the House, by

secret-service agents of the government, that the Socialist Congressmen

were about to resort to terroristic tactics, and that they had decided

upon the day when their tactics would go into effect. This day was the

very day of the explosion. Wherefore the Capitol had been packed with

troops in anticipation. Since we knew nothing about the bomb, and since

a bomb actually was exploded, and since the authorities had prepared in

advance for the explosion, it is only fair to conclude that the Iron

Heel did know. Furthermore, we charge that the Iron Heel was guilty of

the outrage, and that the Iron Heel planned and perpetrated the outrage

for the purpose of foisting the guilt on our shoulders and so bringing

about our destruction.

From the Speaker the warning leaked out to all the creatures in the

House that wore the scarlet livery. They knew, while Ernest was

speaking, that some violent act was to be committed. And to do them

justice, they honestly believed that the act was to be committed by the

socialists. At the trial, and still with honest belief, several

testified to having seen Ernest prepare to throw the bomb, and that it

exploded prematurely. Of course they saw nothing of the sort. In the

fevered imagination of fear they thought they saw, that was all.

As Ernest said at the trial: “Does it stand to reason, if I were going

to throw a bomb, that I should elect to throw a feeble little squib

like the one that was thrown? There wasn’t enough powder in it. It made

a lot of smoke, but hurt no one except me. It exploded right at my

feet, and yet it did not kill me. Believe me, when I get to throwing

bombs, I’ll do damage. There’ll be more than smoke in my petards.”

In return it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the

bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature

explosion, caused by Ernest’s losing his nerve and dropping it, was a

blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen

who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop the bomb.

As for ourselves, not one of us knew how the bomb was thrown. Ernest

told me that the fraction of an instant before it exploded he both

heard and saw it strike at his feet. He testified to this at the trial,

but no one believed him. Besides, the whole thing, in popular slang,

was “cooked up.” The Iron Heel had made up its mind to destroy us, and

there was no withstanding it.

There is a saying that truth will out. I have come to doubt that

saying. Nineteen years have elapsed, and despite our untiring efforts,

we have failed to find the man who really did throw the bomb.

Undoubtedly he was some emissary of the Iron Heel, but he has escaped

detection. We have never got the slightest clew to his identity. And

now, at this late date, nothing remains but for the affair to take its

place among the mysteries of history.[4]

[4] Avis Everhard would have had to live for many generations ere she

could have seen the clearing up of this particular mystery. A little

less than a hundred years ago, and a little more than six hundred

years after her death, the confession of Pervaise was discovered in

the secret archives of the Vatican. It is perhaps well to tell a

little something about this obscure document, which, in the main, is

of interest to the historian only.

Pervaise was an American, of French descent, who in 1913 A.D., was

lying in the Tombs Prison, New York City, awaiting trial for

murder. From his confession we learn that he was not a criminal. He

was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional. In an insane fit of

jealousy he killed his wife—a very common act in those times.

Pervaise was mastered by the fear of death, all of which is

recounted at length in his confession. To escape death he would

have done anything, and the police agents prepared him by assuring

him that he could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the

first degree when his trial came off. In those days, murder in the

first degree was a capital offense. The guilty man or woman was

placed in a specially constructed death-chair, and, under the

supervision of competent physicians, was destroyed by a current of

electricity. This was called electrocution, and it was very popular

during that period. Anaesthesia, as a mode of compulsory death, was

not introduced until later.

This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close at the

surface of his being, lying in jail and expectant of nothing less

than death, was prevailed upon by the agents of the Iron Heel to

throw the bomb in the House of Representatives. In his confession

he states explicitly that he was informed that the bomb was to be a

feeble thing and that no lives would be lost. This is directly in

line with the fact that the bomb was lightly charged, and that its

explosion at Everhard’s feet was not deadly.

Pervaise was smuggled into one of the galleries ostensibly closed

for repairs. He was to select the moment for the throwing of the

bomb, and he naively confesses that in his interest in Everhard’s

tirade and the general commotion raised thereby, he nearly forgot

his mission.

Not only was he released from prison in reward for his deed, but he

was granted an income for life. This he did not long enjoy. In 1914

A.D., in September, he was stricken with rheumatism of the heart

and lived for three days. It was then that he sent for the Catholic

priest, Father Peter Durban, and to him made confession. So

important did it seem to the priest, that he had the confession

taken down in writing and sworn to. What happened after this we can

only surmise. The document was certainly important enough to find

its way to Rome. Powerful influences must have been brought to

bear, hence its suppression. For centuries no hint of its existence

reached the world. It was not until in the last century that

Lorbia, the brilliant Italian scholar, stumbled upon it quite by

chance during his researches in the Vatican.

There is to-day no doubt whatever that the Iron Heel was

responsible for the bomb that exploded in the House of

Representatives in 1913 A.D. Even though the Pervaise confession

had never come to light, no reasonable doubt could obtain; for the

act in question, that sent fifty-two Congressmen to prison, was on

a par with countless other acts committed by the oligarchs, and,

before them, by the capitalists.

There is the classic instance of the ferocious and wanton judicial

murder of the innocent and so-called Haymarket Anarchists in

Chicago in the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century A.D. In

a category by itself is the deliberate burning and destruction of

capitalist property by the capitalists themselves. For such

destruction of property innocent men were frequently

punished—“railroaded” in the parlance of the times.

In the labor troubles of the first decade of the twentieth century

A.D., between the capitalists and the Western Federation of Miners,

similar but more bloody tactics were employed. The railroad station

at Independence was blown up by the agents of the capitalists.

Thirteen men were killed, and many more were wounded. And then the

capitalists, controlling the legislative and judicial machinery of

the state of Colorado, charged the miners with the crime and came

very near to convicting them. Romaines, one of the tools in this

affair, like Pervaise, was lying in jail in another state, Kansas,

awaiting trial, when he was approached by the agents of the

capitalists. But, unlike Pervaise, the confession of Romaines was

made public in his own time.

Then, during this same period, there was the case of Moyer and

Haywood, two strong, fearless leaders of labor. One was president

and the other was secretary of the Western Federation of Miners.

The ex-governor of Idaho had been mysteriously murdered. The crime,

at the time, was openly charged to the mine owners by the

socialists and miners. Nevertheless, in violation of the national

and state constitutions, and by means of conspiracy on the parts of

the governors of Idaho and Colorado, Moyer and Haywood were

kidnapped, thrown into jail, and charged with the murder. It was

this instance that provoked from Eugene V. Debs, national leader of

the American socialists at the time, the following words: “_The

labor leaders that cannot be bribed nor bullied, must be ambushed

and murdered. The only crime of Moyer and Haywood is that they have

been unswervingly true to the working class. The capitalists have

stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary,

and ridden over us rough-shod, and now they propose to murder those

who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion. The

governors of Colorado and Idaho are but executing the mandates of

their masters, the Plutocracy. The issue is the Workers versus the

Plutocracy. If they strike the first violent blow, we will strike

the last._”

CHAPTER XVIII.

IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA

Of myself, during this period, there is not much to say. For six months

I was kept in prison, though charged with no crime. I was a _suspect_—a

word of fear that all revolutionists were soon to come to know. But our

own nascent secret service was beginning to work. By the end of my

second month in prison, one of the jailers made himself known as a

revolutionist in touch with the organization. Several weeks later,

Joseph Parkhurst, the prison doctor who had just been appointed, proved

himself to be a member of one of the Fighting Groups.

Thus, throughout the organization of the Oligarchy, our own

organization, weblike and spidery, was insinuating itself. And so I was

kept in touch with all that was happening in the world without. And

furthermore, every one of our imprisoned leaders was in contact with

brave comrades who masqueraded in the livery of the Iron Heel. Though

Ernest lay in prison three thousand miles away, on the Pacific Coast, I

was in unbroken communication with him, and our letters passed

regularly back and forth.

The leaders, in prison and out, were able to discuss and direct the

campaign. It would have been possible, within a few months, to have

effected the escape of some of them; but since imprisonment proved no

bar to our activities, it was decided to avoid anything premature.

Fifty-two Congressmen were in prison, and fully three hundred more of

our leaders. It was planned that they should be delivered

simultaneously. If part of them escaped, the vigilance of the oligarchs

might be aroused so as to prevent the escape of the remainder. On the

other hand, it was held that a simultaneous jail-delivery all over the

land would have immense psychological influence on the proletariat. It

would show our strength and give confidence.

So it was arranged, when I was released at the end of six months, that

I was to disappear and prepare a secure hiding-place for Ernest. To

disappear was in itself no easy thing. No sooner did I get my freedom

than my footsteps began to be dogged by the spies of the Iron Heel. It

was necessary that they should be thrown off the track, and that I

should win to California. It is laughable, the way this was

accomplished.

Already the passport system, modelled on the Russian, was developing. I

dared not cross the continent in my own character. It was necessary

that I should be completely lost if ever I was to see Ernest again, for

by trailing me after he escaped, he would be caught once more. Again, I

could not disguise myself as a proletarian and travel. There remained

the disguise of a member of the Oligarchy. While the arch-oligarchs

were no more than a handful, there were myriads of lesser ones of the

type, say, of Mr. Wickson—men, worth a few millions, who were adherents

of the arch-oligarchs. The wives and daughters of these lesser

oligarchs were legion, and it was decided that I should assume the

disguise of such a one. A few years later this would have been

impossible, because the passport system was to become so perfect that

no man, woman, nor child in all the land was unregistered and

unaccounted for in his or her movements.

When the time was ripe, the spies were thrown off my track. An hour

later Avis Everhard was no more. At that time one Felice Van Verdighan,

accompanied by two maids and a lap-dog, with another maid for the

lap-dog,[1] entered a drawing-room on a Pullman,[2] and a few minutes

later was speeding west.

[1] This ridiculous picture well illustrates the heartless conduct of

the masters. While people starved, lap-dogs were waited upon by maids.

This was a serious masquerade on the part of Avis Everhard. Life and

death and the Cause were in the issue; therefore the picture must be

accepted as a true picture. It affords a striking commentary of the

times.

[2] _Pullman_—the designation of the more luxurious railway cars of

the period and so named from the inventor.

The three maids who accompanied me were revolutionists. Two were

members of the Fighting Groups, and the third, Grace Holbrook, entered

a group the following year, and six months later was executed by the

Iron Heel. She it was who waited upon the dog. Of the other two, Bertha

Stole disappeared twelve years later, while Anna Roylston still lives

and plays an increasingly important part in the Revolution.[3]

[3] Despite continual and almost inconceivable hazards, Anna Roylston

lived to the royal age of ninety-one. As the Pococks defied the

executioners of the Fighting Groups, so she defied the executioners of

the Iron Heel. She bore a charmed life and prospered amid dangers and

alarms. She herself was an executioner for the Fighting Groups, and,

known as the Red Virgin, she became one of the inspired figures of the

Revolution. When she was an old woman of sixty-nine she shot “Bloody”

Halcliffe down in the midst of his armed escort and got away

unscathed. In the end she died peaceably of old age in a secret refuge

of the revolutionists in the Ozark mountains.

Without adventure we crossed the United States to California. When the

train stopped at Sixteenth Street Station, in Oakland, we alighted, and

there Felice Van Verdighan, with her two maids, her lap-dog, and her

lap-dog’s maid, disappeared forever. The maids, guided by trusty

comrades, were led away. Other comrades took charge of me. Within half

an hour after leaving the train I was on board a small fishing boat and

out on the waters of San Francisco Bay. The winds baffled, and we

drifted aimlessly the greater part of the night. But I saw the lights

of Alcatraz where Ernest lay, and found comfort in the thought of

nearness to him. By dawn, what with the rowing of the fishermen, we

made the Marin Islands. Here we lay in hiding all day, and on the

following night, swept on by a flood tide and a fresh wind, we crossed

San Pablo Bay in two hours and ran up Petaluma Creek.

Here horses were ready and another comrade, and without delay we were

away through the starlight. To the north I could see the loom of Sonoma

Mountain, toward which we rode. We left the old town of Sonoma to the

right and rode up a canyon that lay between outlying buttresses of the

mountain. The wagon-road became a wood-road, the wood-road became a

cow-path, and the cow-path dwindled away and ceased among the upland

pastures. Straight over Sonoma Mountain we rode. It was the safest

route. There was no one to mark our passing.

Dawn caught us on the northern brow, and in the gray light we dropped

down through chaparral into redwood canyons deep and warm with the

breath of passing summer. It was old country to me that I knew and

loved, and soon I became the guide. The hiding-place was mine. I had

selected it. We let down the bars and crossed an upland meadow. Next,

we went over a low, oak-covered ridge and descended into a smaller

meadow. Again we climbed a ridge, this time riding under red-limbed

madronos and manzanitas of deeper red. The first rays of the sun

streamed upon our backs as we climbed. A flight of quail thrummed off

through the thickets. A big jackrabbit crossed our path, leaping

swiftly and silently like a deer. And then a deer, a many-pronged buck,

the sun flashing red-gold from neck and shoulders, cleared the crest of

the ridge before us and was gone.

We followed in his wake a space, then dropped down a zigzag trail that

he disdained into a group of noble redwoods that stood about a pool of

water murky with minerals from the mountain side. I knew every inch of

the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned the ranch; but he, too,

had become a revolutionist, though more disastrously than I, for he was

already dead and gone, and none knew where nor how. He alone, in the

days he had lived, knew the secret of the hiding-place for which I was

bound. He had bought the ranch for beauty, and paid a round price for

it, much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to tell with

great glee how they were wont to shake their heads mournfully at the

price, to accomplish ponderously a bit of mental arithmetic, and then

to say, “But you can’t make six per cent on it.”

But he was dead now, nor did the ranch descend to his children. Of all

men, it was now the property of Mr. Wickson, who owned the whole

eastern and northern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, running from the

Spreckels estate to the divide of Bennett Valley. Out of it he had made

a magnificent deer-park, where, over thousands of acres of sweet slopes

and glades and canyons, the deer ran almost in primitive wildness. The

people who had owned the soil had been driven away. A state home for

the feeble-minded had also been demolished to make room for the deer.

To cap it all, Wickson’s hunting lodge was a quarter of a mile from my

hiding-place. This, instead of being a danger, was an added security.

We were sheltered under the very ægis of one of the minor oligarchs.

Suspicion, by the nature of the situation, was turned aside. The last

place in the world the spies of the Iron Heel would dream of looking

for me, and for Ernest when he joined me, was Wickson’s deer-park.

We tied our horses among the redwoods at the pool. From a cache behind

a hollow rotting log my companion brought out a variety of things,—a

fifty-pound sack of flour, tinned foods of all sorts, cooking utensils,

blankets, a canvas tarpaulin, books and writing material, a great

bundle of letters, a five-gallon can of kerosene, an oil stove, and,

last and most important, a large coil of stout rope. So large was the

supply of things that a number of trips would be necessary to carry

them to the refuge.

But the refuge was very near. Taking the rope and leading the way, I

passed through a glade of tangled vines and bushes that ran between two

wooded knolls. The glade ended abruptly at the steep bank of a stream.

It was a little stream, rising from springs, and the hottest summer

never dried it up. On every hand were tall wooded knolls, a group of

them, with all the seeming of having been flung there from some

careless Titan’s hand. There was no bed-rock in them. They rose from

their bases hundreds of feet, and they were composed of red volcanic

earth, the famous wine-soil of Sonoma. Through these the tiny stream

had cut its deep and precipitous channel.

It was quite a scramble down to the stream bed, and, once on the bed,

we went down stream perhaps for a hundred feet. And then we came to the

great hole. There was no warning of the existence of the hole, nor was

it a hole in the common sense of the word. One crawled through

tight-locked briers and branches, and found oneself on the very edge,

peering out and down through a green screen. A couple of hundred feet

in length and width, it was half of that in depth. Possibly because of

some fault that had occurred when the knolls were flung together, and

certainly helped by freakish erosion, the hole had been scooped out in

the course of centuries by the wash of water. Nowhere did the raw earth

appear. All was garmented by vegetation, from tiny maiden-hair and

gold-back ferns to mighty redwood and Douglas spruces. These great

trees even sprang out from the walls of the hole. Some leaned over at

angles as great as forty-five degrees, though the majority towered

straight up from the soft and almost perpendicular earth walls.

It was a perfect hiding-place. No one ever came there, not even the

village boys of Glen Ellen. Had this hole existed in the bed of a

canyon a mile long, or several miles long, it would have been well

known. But this was no canyon. From beginning to end the length of the

stream was no more than five hundred yards. Three hundred yards above

the hole the stream took its rise in a spring at the foot of a flat

meadow. A hundred yards below the hole the stream ran out into open

country, joining the main stream and flowing across rolling and

grass-covered land.

My companion took a turn of the rope around a tree, and with me fast on

the other end lowered away. In no time I was on the bottom. And in but

a short while he had carried all the articles from the cache and

lowered them down to me. He hauled the rope up and hid it, and before

he went away called down to me a cheerful parting.

Before I go on I want to say a word for this comrade, John Carlson, a

humble figure of the Revolution, one of the countless faithful ones in

the ranks. He worked for Wickson, in the stables near the hunting

lodge. In fact, it was on Wickson’s horses that we had ridden over

Sonoma Mountain. For nearly twenty years now John Carlson has been

custodian of the refuge. No thought of disloyalty, I am sure, has ever

entered his mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have

been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a

degree that one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning

to him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in

his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and

imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was

neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was a

revolutionist.

“When I was a young man I was a soldier,” was his answer. “It was in

Germany. There all young men must be in the army. So I was in the army.

There was another soldier there, a young man, too. His father was what

you call an agitator, and his father was in jail for lese majesty—what

you call speaking the truth about the Emperor. And the young man, the

son, talked with me much about people, and work, and the robbery of the

people by the capitalists. He made me see things in new ways, and I

became a socialist. His talk was very true and good, and I have never

forgotten. When I came to the United States I hunted up the socialists.

I became a member of a section—that was in the day of the S. L. P. Then

later, when the split came, I joined the local of the S. P. I was

working in a livery stable in San Francisco then. That was before the

Earthquake. I have paid my dues for twenty-two years. I am yet a

member, and I yet pay my dues, though it is very secret now. I will

always pay my dues, and when the cooperative commonwealth comes, I will

be glad.”

Left to myself, I proceeded to cook breakfast on the oil stove and to

prepare my home. Often, in the early morning, or in the evening after

dark, Carlson would steal down to the refuge and work for a couple of

hours. At first my home was the tarpaulin. Later, a small tent was put

up. And still later, when we became assured of the perfect security of

the place, a small house was erected. This house was completely hidden

from any chance eye that might peer down from the edge of the hole. The

lush vegetation of that sheltered spot make a natural shield. Also, the

house was built against the perpendicular wall; and in the wall itself,

shored by strong timbers, well drained and ventilated, we excavated two

small rooms. Oh, believe me, we had many comforts. When Biedenbach, the

German terrorist, hid with us some time later, he installed a

smoke-consuming device that enabled us to sit by crackling wood fires

on winter nights.

And here I must say a word for that gentle-souled terrorist, than whom

there is no comrade in the Revolution more fearfully misunderstood.

Comrade Biedenbach did not betray the Cause. Nor was he executed by the

comrades as is commonly supposed. This canard was circulated by the

creatures of the Oligarchy. Comrade Biedenbach was absent-minded,

forgetful. He was shot by one of our lookouts at the cave-refuge at

Carmel, through failure on his part to remember the secret signals. It

was all a sad mistake. And that he betrayed his Fighting Group is an

absolute lie. No truer, more loyal man ever labored for the Cause.[4]

[4] Search as we may through all the material of those times that has

come down to us, we can find no clew to the Biedenbach here referred

to. No mention is made of him anywhere save in the Everhard

Manuscript.

For nineteen years now the refuge that I selected had been almost

continuously occupied, and in all that time, with one exception, it has

never been discovered by an outsider. And yet it was only a quarter of

a mile from Wickson’s hunting-lodge, and a short mile from the village

of Glen Ellen. I was able, always, to hear the morning and evening

trains arrive and depart, and I used to set my watch by the whistle at

the brickyards.[5]

[5] If the curious traveller will turn south from Glen Ellen, he will

find himself on a boulevard that is identical with the old country

road seven centuries ago. A quarter of a mile from Glen Ellen, after

the second bridge is passed, to the right will be noticed a barranca

that runs like a scar across the rolling land toward a group of wooded

knolls. The barranca is the site of the ancient right of way that in

the time of private property in land ran across the holding of one

Chauvet, a French pioneer of California who came from his native

country in the fabled days of gold. The wooded knolls are the same

knolls referred to by Avis Everhard.

The Great Earthquake of 2368 A.D. broke off the side of one of

these knolls and toppled it into the hole where the Everhards made

their refuge. Since the finding of the Manuscript excavations have

been made, and the house, the two cave rooms, and all the

accumulated rubbish of long occupancy have been brought to light.

Many valuable relics have been found, among which, curious to

relate, is the smoke-consuming device of Biedenbach’s mentioned in

the narrative. Students interested in such matters should read the

brochure of Arnold Bentham soon to be published.

A mile northwest from the wooded knolls brings one to the site of

Wake Robin Lodge at the junction of Wild-Water and Sonoma Creeks.

It may be noticed, in passing, that Wild- Water was originally

called Graham Creek and was so named on the early local maps. But

the later name sticks. It was at Wake Robin Lodge that Avis

Everhard later lived for short periods, when, disguised as an

agent-provocateur of the Iron Heel, she was enabled to play with

impunity her part among men and events. The official permission to

occupy Wake Robin Lodge is still on the records, signed by no less

a man than Wickson, the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.

CHAPTER XIX.

TRANSFORMATION

“You must make yourself over again,” Ernest wrote to me. “You must

cease to be. You must become another woman—and not merely in the

clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make

yourself over again so that even I would not know you—your voice, your

gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.”

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for hours in burying

forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman whom I

may call my other self. It was only by long practice that such results

could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intonation I practised

almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed,

automatic. It was this automatic assumption of a rôle that was

considered imperative. One must become so adept as to deceive oneself.

It was like learning a new language, say the French. At first speech in

French is self-conscious, a matter of the will. The student thinks in

English and then transmutes into French, or reads in French but

transmutes into English before he can understand. Then later, becoming

firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads, writes, and _thinks_ in

French, without any recourse to English at all.

And so with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise until

our assumed roles became real; until to be our original selves would

require a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course, at first,

much was mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art, and we

had much to discover. But the work was going on everywhere; masters in

the art were developing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being

accumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that was passed on, a

part of the curriculum, as it were, of the school of Revolution.[1]

[1] Disguise did become a veritable art during that period. The

revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their refuges. They

scorned accessories, such as wigs and beards, false eyebrows, and such

aids of the theatrical actors. The game of revolution was a game of

life and death, and mere accessories were traps. Disguise had to be

fundamental, intrinsic, part and parcel of one’s being, second nature.

The Red Virgin is reported to have been one of the most adept in the

art, to which must be ascribed her long and successful career.

It was at this time that my father disappeared. His letters, which had

come to me regularly, ceased. He no longer appeared at our Pell Street

quarters. Our comrades sought him everywhere. Through our secret

service we ransacked every prison in the land. But he was lost as

completely as if the earth had swallowed him up, and to this day no

clew to his end has been discovered.[2]

[2] Disappearance was one of the horrors of the time. As a motif, in

song and story, it constantly crops up. It was an inevitable

concomitant of the subterranean warfare that raged through those three

centuries. This phenomenon was almost as common in the oligarch class

and the labor castes, as it was in the ranks of the revolutionists.

Without warning, without trace, men and women, and even children,

disappeared and were seen no more, their end shrouded in mystery.

Six lonely months I spent in the refuge, but they were not idle months.

Our organization went on apace, and there were mountains of work always

waiting to be done. Ernest and his fellow-leaders, from their prisons,

decided what should be done; and it remained for us on the outside to

do it. There was the organization of the mouth-to-mouth propaganda; the

organization, with all its ramifications, of our spy system; the

establishment of our secret printing-presses; and the establishment of

our underground railways, which meant the knitting together of all our

myriads of places of refuge, and the formation of new refuges where

links were missing in the chains we ran over all the land.

So I say, the work was never done. At the end of six months my

loneliness was broken by the arrival of two comrades. They were young

girls, brave souls and passionate lovers of liberty: Lora Peterson, who

disappeared in 1922, and Kate Bierce, who later married Du Bois,[3] and

who is still with us with eyes lifted to to-morrow’s sun, that heralds

in the new age.

[3] Du Bois, the present librarian of Ardis, is a lineal descendant of

this revolutionary pair.

The two girls arrived in a flurry of excitement, danger, and sudden

death. In the crew of the fishing boat that conveyed them across San

Pablo Bay was a spy. A creature of the Iron Heel, he had successfully

masqueraded as a revolutionist and penetrated deep into the secrets of

our organization. Without doubt he was on my trail, for we had long

since learned that my disappearance had been cause of deep concern to

the secret service of the Oligarchy. Luckily, as the outcome proved, he

had not divulged his discoveries to any one. He had evidently delayed

reporting, preferring to wait until he had brought things to a

successful conclusion by discovering my hiding-place and capturing me.

His information died with him. Under some pretext, after the girls had

landed at Petaluma Creek and taken to the horses, he managed to get

away from the boat.

Part way up Sonoma Mountain, John Carlson let the girls go on, leading

his horse, while he went back on foot. His suspicions had been aroused.

He captured the spy, and as to what then happened, Carlson gave us a

fair idea.

“I fixed him,” was Carlson’s unimaginative way of describing the

affair. “I fixed him,” he repeated, while a sombre light burnt in his

eyes, and his huge, toil-distorted hands opened and closed eloquently.

“He made no noise. I hid him, and tonight I will go back and bury him

deep.”

During that period I used to marvel at my own metamorphosis. At times

it seemed impossible, either that I had ever lived a placid, peaceful

life in a college town, or else that I had become a revolutionist

inured to scenes of violence and death. One or the other could not be.

One was real, the other was a dream, but which was which? Was this

present life of a revolutionist, hiding in a hole, a nightmare? or was

I a revolutionist who had somewhere, somehow, dreamed that in some

former existence I have lived in Berkeley and never known of life more

violent than teas and dances, debating societies, and lecture rooms?

But then I suppose this was a common experience of all of us who had

rallied under the red banner of the brotherhood of man.

I often remembered figures from that other life, and, curiously enough,

they appeared and disappeared, now and again, in my new life. There was

Bishop Morehouse. In vain we searched for him after our organization

had developed. He had been transferred from asylum to asylum. We traced

him from the state hospital for the insane at Napa to the one in

Stockton, and from there to the one in the Santa Clara Valley called

Agnews, and there the trail ceased. There was no record of his death.

In some way he must have escaped. Little did I dream of the awful

manner in which I was to see him once again—the fleeting glimpse of him

in the whirlwind carnage of the Chicago Commune.

Jackson, who had lost his arm in the Sierra Mills and who had been the

cause of my own conversion into a revolutionist, I never saw again; but

we all knew what he did before he died. He never joined the

revolutionists. Embittered by his fate, brooding over his wrongs, he

became an anarchist—not a philosophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad

with hate and lust for revenge. And well he revenged himself. Evading

the guards, in the nighttime while all were asleep, he blew the

Pertonwaithe palace into atoms. Not a soul escaped, not even the

guards. And in prison, while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself

under his blankets.

Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford achieved quite different fates from

that of Jackson. They have been faithful to their salt, and they have

been correspondingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they

dwell at peace with the world. Both are apologists for the Oligarchy.

Both have grown very fat. “Dr. Hammerfield,” as Ernest once said, “has

succeeded in modifying his metaphysics so as to give God’s sanction to

the Iron Heel, and also to include much worship of beauty and to reduce

to an invisible wraith the gaseous vertebrate described by Haeckel—the

difference between Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford being that the

latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little more gaseous and a

little less vertebrate.”

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills whom I encountered

while investigating the case of Jackson, was a surprise to all of us.

In 1918 I was present at a meeting of the ’Frisco Reds. Of all our

Fighting Groups this one was the most formidable, ferocious, and

merciless. It was really not a part of our organization. Its members

were fanatics, madmen. We dared not encourage such a spirit. On the

other hand, though they did not belong to us, we remained on friendly

terms with them. It was a matter of vital importance that brought me

there that night. I, alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only

person unmasked. After the business that brought me there was

transacted, I was led away by one of them. In a dark passage this guide

struck a match, and, holding it close to his face, slipped back his

mask. For a moment I gazed upon the passion-wrought features of Peter

Donnelly. Then the match went out.

“I just wanted you to know it was me,” he said in the darkness. “D’you

remember Dallas, the superintendent?”

I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-faced superintendent of the

Sierra Mills.

“Well, I got him first,” Donnelly said with pride. “’Twas after that I

joined the Reds.”

“But how comes it that you are here?” I queried. “Your wife and

children?”

“Dead,” he answered. “That’s why. No,” he went on hastily, “’tis not

revenge for them. They died easily in their beds—sickness, you see, one

time and another. They tied my arms while they lived. And now that

they’re gone, ’tis revenge for my blasted manhood I’m after. I was once

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman. But to-night I’m Number 27 of the

’Frisco Reds. Come on now, and I’ll get you out of this.”

More I heard of him afterward. In his own way he had told the truth

when he said all were dead. But one lived, Timothy, and him his father

considered dead because he had taken service with the Iron Heel in the

Mercenaries.[4] A member of the ’Frisco Reds pledged himself to twelve

annual executions. The penalty for failure was death. A member who

failed to complete his number committed suicide. These executions were

not haphazard. This group of madmen met frequently and passed wholesale

judgments upon offending members and servitors of the Oligarchy. The

executions were afterward apportioned by lot.

[4] In addition to the labor castes, there arose another caste, the

military. A standing army of professional soldiers was created,

officered by members of the Oligarchy and known as the Mercenaries.

This institution took the place of the militia, which had proved

impracticable under the new regime. Outside the regular secret service

of the Iron Heel, there was further established a secret service of

the Mercenaries, this latter forming a connecting link between the

police and the military.

In fact, the business that brought me there the night of my visit was

such a trial. One of our own comrades, who for years had successfully

maintained himself in a clerical position in the local bureau of the

secret service of the Iron Heel, had fallen under the ban of the

’Frisco Reds and was being tried. Of course he was not present, and of

course his judges did not know that he was one of our men. My mission

had been to testify to his identity and loyalty. It may be wondered how

we came to know of the affair at all. The explanation is simple. One of

our secret agents was a member of the ’Frisco Reds. It was necessary

for us to keep an eye on friend as well as foe, and this group of

madmen was not too unimportant to escape our surveillance.

But to return to Peter Donnelly and his son. All went well with

Donnelly until, in the following year, he found among the sheaf of

executions that fell to him the name of Timothy Donnelly. Then it was

that that clannishness, which was his to so extraordinary a degree,

asserted itself. To save his son, he betrayed his comrades. In this he

was partially blocked, but a dozen of the ’Frisco Reds were executed,

and the group was well-nigh destroyed. In retaliation, the survivors

meted out to Donnelly the death he had earned by his treason.

Nor did Timothy Donnelly long survive. The ’Frisco Reds pledged

themselves to his execution. Every effort was made by the Oligarchy to

save him. He was transferred from one part of the country to another.

Three of the Reds lost their lives in vain efforts to get him. The

Group was composed only of men. In the end they fell back on a woman,

one of our comrades, and none other than Anna Roylston. Our Inner

Circle forbade her, but she had ever a will of her own and disdained

discipline. Furthermore, she was a genius and lovable, and we could

never discipline her anyway. She is in a class by herself and not

amenable to the ordinary standards of the revolutionists.

Despite our refusal to grant permission to do the deed, she went on

with it. Now Anna Roylston was a fascinating woman. All she had to do

was to beckon a man to her. She broke the hearts of scores of our young

comrades, and scores of others she captured, and by their heart-strings

led into our organization. Yet she steadfastly refused to marry. She

dearly loved children, but she held that a child of her own would claim

her from the Cause, and that it was the Cause to which her life was

devoted.

It was an easy task for Anna Roylston to win Timothy Donnelly. Her

conscience did not trouble her, for at that very time occurred the

_Nashville Massacre_, when the Mercenaries, Donnelly in command,

literally murdered eight hundred weavers of that city. But she did not

kill Donnelly. She turned him over, a prisoner, to the ’Frisco Reds.

This happened only last year, and now she had been renamed. The

revolutionists everywhere are calling her the “Red Virgin.”[5]

[5] It was not until the Second Revolt was crushed, that the ’Frisco

Reds flourished again. And for two generations the Group flourished.

Then an agent of the Iron Heel managed to become a member, penetrated

all its secrets, and brought about its total annihilation. This

occurred in 2002 A.D. The members were executed one at a time, at

intervals of three weeks, and their bodies exposed in the labor-ghetto

of San Francisco.

Colonel Ingram and Colonel Van Gilbert are two more familiar figures

that I was later to encounter. Colonel Ingram rose high in the

Oligarchy and became Minister to Germany. He was cordially detested by

the proletariat of both countries. It was in Berlin that I met him,

where, as an accredited international spy of the Iron Heel, I was

received by him and afforded much assistance. Incidentally, I may state

that in my dual rôle I managed a few important things for the

Revolution.

Colonel Van Gilbert became known as “Snarling” Van Gilbert. His

important part was played in drafting the new code after the Chicago

Commune. But before that, as trial judge, he had earned sentence of

death by his fiendish malignancy. I was one of those that tried him and

passed sentence upon him. Anna Roylston carried out the execution.

Still another figure arises out of the old life—Jackson’s lawyer. Least

of all would I have expected again to meet this man, Joseph Hurd. It

was a strange meeting. Late at night, two years after the Chicago

Commune, Ernest and I arrived together at the Benton Harbor refuge.

This was in Michigan, across the lake from Chicago. We arrived just at

the conclusion of the trial of a spy. Sentence of death had been

passed, and he was being led away. Such was the scene as we came upon

it. The next moment the wretched man had wrenched free from his captors

and flung himself at my feet, his arms clutching me about the knees in

a vicelike grip as he prayed in a frenzy for mercy. As he turned his

agonized face up to me, I recognized him as Joseph Hurd. Of all the

terrible things I have witnessed, never have I been so unnerved as by

this frantic creature’s pleading for life. He was mad for life. It was

pitiable. He refused to let go of me, despite the hands of a dozen

comrades. And when at last he was dragged shrieking away, I sank down

fainting upon the floor. It is far easier to see brave men die than to

hear a coward beg for life.[6]

[6] The Benton Harbor refuge was a catacomb, the entrance of which was

cunningly contrived by way of a well. It has been maintained in a fair

state of preservation, and the curious visitor may to-day tread its

labyrinths to the assembly hall, where, without doubt, occurred the

scene described by Avis Everhard. Farther on are the cells where the

prisoners were confined, and the death chamber where the executions

took place. Beyond is the cemetery—long, winding galleries hewn out of

the solid rock, with recesses on either hand, wherein, tier above

tier, lie the revolutionists just as they were laid away by their

comrades long years agone.

CHAPTER XX.

A LOST OLIGARCH

But in remembering the old life I have run ahead of my story into the

new life. The wholesale jail delivery did not occur until well along

into 1915. Complicated as it was, it was carried through without a

hitch, and as a very creditable achievement it cheered us on in our

work. From Cuba to California, out of scores of jails, military

prisons, and fortresses, in a single night, we delivered fifty-one of

our fifty-two Congressmen, and in addition over three hundred other

leaders. There was not a single instance of miscarriage. Not only did

they escape, but every one of them won to the refuges as planned. The

one comrade Congressman we did not get was Arthur Simpson, and he had

already died in Cabañas after cruel tortures.

The eighteen months that followed was perhaps the happiest of my life

with Ernest. During that time we were never apart. Later, when we went

back into the world, we were separated much. Not more impatiently do I

await the flame of to-morrow’s revolt than did I that night await the

coming of Ernest. I had not seen him for so long, and the thought of a

possible hitch or error in our plans that would keep him still in his

island prison almost drove me mad. The hours passed like ages. I was

all alone. Biedenbach, and three young men who had been living in the

refuge, were out and over the mountain, heavily armed and prepared for

anything. The refuges all over the land were quite empty, I imagine, of

comrades that night.

Just as the sky paled with the first warning of dawn, I heard the

signal from above and gave the answer. In the darkness I almost

embraced Biedenbach, who came down first; but the next moment I was in

Ernest’s arms. And in that moment, so complete had been my

transformation, I discovered it was only by an effort of will that I

could be the old Avis Everhard, with the old mannerisms and smiles,

phrases and intonations of voice. It was by strong effort only that I

was able to maintain my old identity; I could not allow myself to

forget for an instant, so automatically imperative had become the new

personality I had created.

Once inside the little cabin, I saw Ernest’s face in the light. With

the exception of the prison pallor, there was no change in him—at

least, not much. He was my same lover-husband and hero. And yet there

was a certain ascetic lengthening of the lines of his face. But he

could well stand it, for it seemed to add a certain nobility of

refinement to the riotous excess of life that had always marked his

features. He might have been a trifle graver than of yore, but the

glint of laughter still was in his eyes. He was twenty pounds lighter,

but in splendid physical condition. He had kept up exercise during the

whole period of confinement, and his muscles were like iron. In truth,

he was in better condition than when he had entered prison. Hours

passed before his head touched pillow and I had soothed him off to

sleep. But there was no sleep for me. I was too happy, and the fatigue

of jail-breaking and riding horseback had not been mine.

While Ernest slept, I changed my dress, arranged my hair differently,

and came back to my new automatic self. Then, when Biedenbach and the

other comrades awoke, with their aid I concocted a little conspiracy.

All was ready, and we were in the cave-room that served for kitchen and

dining room when Ernest opened the door and entered. At that moment

Biedenbach addressed me as Mary, and I turned and answered him. Then I

glanced at Ernest with curious interest, such as any young comrade

might betray on seeing for the first time so noted a hero of the

Revolution. But Ernest’s glance took me in and questioned impatiently

past and around the room. The next moment I was being introduced to him

as Mary Holmes.

To complete the deception, an extra plate was laid, and when we sat

down to table one chair was not occupied. I could have cried with joy

as I noted Ernest’s increasing uneasiness and impatience. Finally he

could stand it no longer.

“Where’s my wife?” he demanded bluntly.

“She is still asleep,” I answered.

It was the crucial moment. But my voice was a strange voice, and in it

he recognized nothing familiar. The meal went on. I talked a great

deal, and enthusiastically, as a hero-worshipper might talk, and it was

obvious that he was my hero. I rose to a climax of enthusiasm and

worship, and, before he could guess my intention, threw my arms around

his neck and kissed him on the lips. He held me from him at arm’s

length and stared about in annoyance and perplexity. The four men

greeted him with roars of laughter, and explanations were made. At

first he was sceptical. He scrutinized me keenly and was half

convinced, then shook his head and would not believe. It was not until

I became the old Avis Everhard and whispered secrets in his ear that

none knew but he and Avis Everhard, that he accepted me as his really,

truly wife.

It was later in the day that he took me in his arms, manifesting great

embarrassment and claiming polygamous emotions.

“You are my Avis,” he said, “and you are also some one else. You are

two women, and therefore you are my harem. At any rate, we are safe

now. If the United States becomes too hot for us, why I have qualified

for citizenship in Turkey.”[1]

[1] At that time polygamy was still practised in Turkey.

Life became for me very happy in the refuge. It is true, we worked hard

and for long hours; but we worked together. We had each other for

eighteen precious months, and we were not lonely, for there was always

a coming and going of leaders and comrades—strange voices from the

under-world of intrigue and revolution, bringing stranger tales of

strife and war from all our battle-line. And there was much fun and

delight. We were not mere gloomy conspirators. We toiled hard and

suffered greatly, filled the gaps in our ranks and went on, and through

all the labour and the play and interplay of life and death we found

time to laugh and love. There were artists, scientists, scholars,

musicians, and poets among us; and in that hole in the ground culture

was higher and finer than in the palaces of wonder-cities of the

oligarchs. In truth, many of our comrades toiled at making beautiful

those same palaces and wonder-cities.[2]

[2] This is not braggadocio on the part of Avis Everhard. The flower

of the artistic and intellectual world were revolutionists. With the

exception of a few of the musicians and singers, and of a few of the

oligarchs, all the great creators of the period whose names have come

down to us, were revolutionists.

Nor were we confined to the refuge itself. Often at night we rode over

the mountains for exercise, and we rode on Wickson’s horses. If only he

knew how many revolutionists his horses have carried! We even went on

picnics to isolated spots we knew, where we remained all day, going

before daylight and returning after dark. Also, we used Wickson’s cream

and butter,[3] and Ernest was not above shooting Wickson’s quail and

rabbits, and, on occasion, his young bucks.

[3] Even as late as that period, cream and butter were still crudely

extracted from cow’s milk. The laboratory preparation of foods had not

yet begun.

Indeed, it was a safe refuge. I have said that it was discovered only

once, and this brings me to the clearing up of the mystery of the

disappearance of young Wickson. Now that he is dead, I am free to

speak. There was a nook on the bottom of the great hole where the sun

shone for several hours and which was hidden from above. Here we had

carried many loads of gravel from the creek-bed, so that it was dry and

warm, a pleasant basking place; and here, one afternoon, I was

drowsing, half asleep, over a volume of Mendenhall.[4] I was so

comfortable and secure that even his flaming lyrics failed to stir me.

[4] In all the extant literature and documents of that period,

continual reference is made to the poems of Rudolph Mendenhall. By his

comrades he was called “The Flame.” He was undoubtedly a great genius;

yet, beyond weird and haunting fragments of his verse, quoted in the

writings of others, nothing of his has come down to us. He was

executed by the Iron Heel in 1928 A.D.

I was aroused by a clod of earth striking at my feet. Then from above,

I heard a sound of scrambling. The next moment a young man, with a

final slide down the crumbling wall, alighted at my feet. It was Philip

Wickson, though I did not know him at the time. He looked at me coolly

and uttered a low whistle of surprise.

“Well,” he said; and the next moment, cap in hand, he was saying, “I

beg your pardon. I did not expect to find any one here.”

I was not so cool. I was still a tyro so far as concerned knowing how

to behave in desperate circumstances. Later on, when I was an

international spy, I should have been less clumsy, I am sure. As it

was, I scrambled to my feet and cried out the danger call.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, looking at me searchingly.