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Title: The iron heel

Author: Jack London

Release date: May 3, 2006 [eBook #1164]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1164

Credits: Donald Lainson and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IRON
HEEL ***

The Iron Heel

by Jack London

Contents

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

“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It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important historical
document.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.
It was evident that he had no suspicion of our presence when making the
descent. I recognized this with relief.
“For what purpose do you think I did it?” I countered. I was indeed
clumsy in those days.

“I don’t know,” he answered, shaking his head. “Unless you’ve got
friends about. Anyway, you’ve got some explanations to make. I don’t like
the look of it. You are trespassing. This is my father’s land, and—”
But at that moment, Biedenbach, ever polite and gentle, said from behind
him in a low voice, “Hands up, my young sir.”
Young Wickson put his hands up first, then turned to confront
Biedenbach, who held a thirty-thirty automatic rifle on him. Wickson was
imperturbable.
“Oh, ho,” he said, “a nest of revolutionists—and quite a hornet’s nest it
would seem. Well, you won’t abide here long, I can tell you.”
“Maybe you’ll abide here long enough to reconsider that statement,”
Biedenbach said quietly. “And in the meanwhile I must ask you to come
inside with me.”
“Inside?” The young man was genuinely astonished. “Have you a
catacomb here? I have heard of such things.”
“Come and see,” Biedenbach answered with his adorable accent.
“But it is unlawful,” was the protest.
“Yes, by your law,” the terrorist replied significantly. “But by our law,
believe me, it is quite lawful. You must accustom yourself to the fact that
you are in another world than the one of oppression and brutality in which
you have lived.”
“There is room for argument there,” Wickson muttered.
“Then stay with us and discuss it.”
The young fellow laughed and followed his captor into the house. He was
led into the inner cave-room, and one of the young comrades left to guard
him, while we discussed the situation in the kitchen.
Biedenbach, with tears in his eyes, held that Wickson must die, and was
quite relieved when we outvoted him and his horrible proposition. On the
other hand, we could not dream of allowing the young oligarch to depart.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” Ernest said. “We’ll keep him and give him an
education.”
“I bespeak the privilege, then, of enlightening him in jurisprudence,”
Biedenbach cried.

And so a decision was laughingly reached. We would keep Philip
Wickson a prisoner and educate him in our ethics and sociology. But in the
meantime there was work to be done. All trace of the young oligarch must
be obliterated. There were the marks he had left when descending the
crumbling wall of the hole. This task fell to Biedenbach, and, slung on a
rope from above, he toiled cunningly for the rest of the day till no sign
remained. Back up the canyon from the lip of the hole all marks were
likewise removed. Then, at twilight, came John Carlson, who demanded
Wickson’s shoes.
The young man did not want to give up his shoes, and even offered to
fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer’s strength in Ernest’s hands.
Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous loss of skin
due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded in doing gallant work
with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended the young man’s
obliterated trial, Carlson put on the shoes and walked away to the left. He
walked for miles, around knolls, over ridges and through canyons, and
finally covered the trail in the running water of a creek-bed. Here he
removed the shoes, and, still hiding trail for a distance, at last put on his
own shoes. A week later Wickson got back his shoes.
That night the hounds were out, and there was little sleep in the refuge.
Next day, time and again, the baying hounds came down the canyon,
plunged off to the left on the trail Carlson had made for them, and were lost
to ear in the farther canyons high up the mountain. And all the time our men
waited in the refuge, weapons in hand—automatic revolvers and rifles, to
say nothing of half a dozen infernal machines of Biedenbach’s manufacture.
A more surprised party of rescuers could not be imagined, had they
ventured down into our hiding-place.
I have now given the true disappearance of Philip Wickson, one-time
oligarch, and, later, comrade in the Revolution. For we converted him in the
end. His mind was fresh and plastic, and by nature he was very ethical.
Several months later we rode him, on one of his father’s horses, over
Sonoma Mountains to Petaluma Creek and embarked him in a small
fishing-launch. By easy stages we smuggled him along our underground
railway to the Carmel refuge.
There he remained eight months, at the end of which time, for two
reasons, he was loath to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in love

with Anna Roylston, and the other was that he had become one of us. It was
not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his love affair that he
acceded to our wishes and went back to his father. Ostensibly an oligarch
until his death, he was in reality one of the most valuable of our agents.
Often and often has the Iron Heel been dumbfounded by the miscarriage of
its plans and operations against us. If it but knew the number of its own
members who are our agents, it would understand. Young Wickson never
wavered in his loyalty to the Cause. In truth, his very death was incurred by
his devotion to duty. In the great storm of 1927, while attending a meeting
of our leaders, he contracted the pneumonia of which he died.[5]
[5] The case of this young man was not unusual. Many young men of the
Oligarchy, impelled by sense of right conduct, or their imaginations captured by
the glory of the Revolution, ethically or romantically devoted their lives to it. In
similar way, many sons of the Russian nobility played their parts in the earlier
and protracted revolution in that country.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST

During the long period of our stay in the refuge, we were kept closely in
touch with what was happening in the world without, and we were learning
thoroughly the strength of the Oligarchy with which we were at war. Out of
the flux of transition the new institutions were forming more definitely and
taking on the appearance and attributes of permanence. The oligarchs had
succeeded in devising a governmental machine, as intricate as it was vast,
that worked—and this despite all our efforts to clog and hamper.
This was a surprise to many of the revolutionists. They had not conceived
it possible. Nevertheless the work of the country went on. The men toiled in
the mines and fields—perforce they were no more than slaves. As for the
vital industries, everything prospered. The members of the great labor
castes were contented and worked on merrily. For the first time in their
lives they knew industrial peace. No more were they worried by slack
times, strike and lockout, and the union label. They lived in more
comfortable homes and in delightful cities of their own—delightful
compared with the slums and ghettos in which they had formerly dwelt.
They had better food to eat, less hours of labor, more holidays, and a greater
amount and variety of interests and pleasures. And for their less fortunate
brothers and sisters, the unfavored laborers, the driven people of the abyss,
they cared nothing. An age of selfishness was dawning upon mankind. And
yet this is not altogether true. The labor castes were honeycombed by our
agents—men whose eyes saw, beyond the belly-need, the radiant figure of
liberty and brotherhood.
Another great institution that had taken form and was working smoothly
was the Mercenaries. This body of soldiers had been evolved out of the old
regular army and was now a million strong, to say nothing of the colonial
forces. The Mercenaries constituted a race apart. They dwelt in cities of

their own which were practically self-governed, and they were granted
many privileges. By them a large portion of the perplexing surplus was
consumed. They were losing all touch and sympathy with the rest of the
people, and, in fact, were developing their own class morality and
consciousness. And yet we had thousands of our agents among them.[1]
[1] The Mercenaries, in the last days of the Iron Heel, played an important rôle.
They constituted the balance of power in the struggles between the labor castes
and the oligarchs, and now to one side and now to the other, threw their strength
according to the play of intrigue and conspiracy.

The oligarchs themselves were going through a remarkable and, it must
be confessed, unexpected development. As a class, they disciplined
themselves. Every member had his work to do in the world, and this work
he was compelled to do. There were no more idle-rich young men. Their
strength was used to give united strength to the Oligarchy. They served as
leaders of troops and as lieutenants and captains of industry. They found
careers in applied science, and many of them became great engineers. They
went into the multitudinous divisions of the government, took service in the
colonial possessions, and by tens of thousands went into the various secret
services. They were, I may say, apprenticed to education, to art, to the
church, to science, to literature; and in those fields they served the
important function of moulding the thought-processes of the nation in the
direction of the perpetuity of the Oligarchy.
They were taught, and later they in turn taught, that what they were doing
was right. They assimilated the aristocratic idea from the moment they
began, as children, to receive impressions of the world. The aristocratic idea
was woven into the making of them until it became bone of them and flesh
of them. They looked upon themselves as wild-animal trainers, rulers of
beasts. From beneath their feet rose always the subterranean rumbles of
revolt. Violent death ever stalked in their midst; bomb and knife and bullet
were looked upon as so many fangs of the roaring abysmal beast they must
dominate if humanity were to persist. They were the saviours of humanity,
and they regarded themselves as heroic and sacrificing laborers for the
highest good.
They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization. It was
their belief that if ever they weakened, the great beast would ingulf them
and everything of beauty and wonder and joy and good in its cavernous and

slime-dripping maw. Without them, anarchy would reign and humanity
would drop backward into the primitive night out of which it had so
painfully emerged. The horrid picture of anarchy was held always before
their child’s eyes until they, in turn, obsessed by this cultivated fear, held
the picture of anarchy before the eyes of the children that followed them.
This was the beast to be stamped upon, and the highest duty of the aristocrat
was to stamp upon it. In short, they alone, by their unremitting toil and
sacrifice, stood between weak humanity and the all-devouring beast; and
they believed it, firmly believed it.
I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical righteousness of the
whole oligarch class. This has been the strength of the Iron Heel, and too
many of the comrades have been slow or loath to realize it. Many of them
have ascribed the strength of the Iron Heel to its system of reward and
punishment. This is a mistake. Heaven and hell may be the prime factors of
zeal in the religion of a fanatic; but for the great majority of the religious,
heaven and hell are incidental to right and wrong. Love of the right, desire
for the right, unhappiness with anything less than the right—in short, right
conduct, is the prime factor of religion. And so with the Oligarchy. Prisons,
banishment and degradation, honors and palaces and wonder-cities, are all
incidental. The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are
doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression and
injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The point is
that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its
own righteousness.[2]
[2] Out of the ethical incoherency and inconsistency of capitalism, the oligarchs
emerged with a new ethics, coherent and definite, sharp and severe as steel, the
most absurd and unscientific and at the same time the most potent ever possessed
by any tyrant class. The oligarchs believed their ethics, in spite of the fact that
biology and evolution gave them the lie; and, because of their faith, for three
centuries they were able to hold back the mighty tide of human progress—a
spectacle, profound, tremendous, puzzling to the metaphysical moralist, and one
that to the materialist is the cause of many doubts and reconsiderations.

For that matter, the strength of the Revolution, during these frightful
twenty years, has resided in nothing else than the sense of righteousness. In
no other way can be explained our sacrifices and martyrdoms. For no other
reason did Rudolph Mendenhall flame out his soul for the Cause and sing
his wild swan-song that last night of life. For no other reason did Hurlbert
die under torture, refusing to the last to betray his comrades. For no other

reason has Anna Roylston refused blessed motherhood. For no other reason
has John Carlson been the faithful and unrewarded custodian of the Glen
Ellen Refuge. It does not matter, young or old, man or woman, high or low,
genius or clod, go where one will among the comrades of the Revolution,
the motor-force will be found to be a great and abiding desire for the right.
But I have run away from my narrative. Ernest and I well understood,
before we left the refuge, how the strength of the Iron Heel was developing.
The labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes of secret agents and
police of various sorts were all pledged to the Oligarchy. In the main, and
ignoring the loss of liberty, they were better off than they had been. On the
other hand, the great helpless mass of the population, the people of the
abyss, was sinking into a brutish apathy of content with misery. Whenever
strong proletarians asserted their strength in the midst of the mass, they
were drawn away from the mass by the oligarchs and given better
conditions by being made members of the labor castes or of the
Mercenaries. Thus discontent was lulled and the proletariat robbed of its
natural leaders.
The condition of the people of the abyss was pitiable. Common school
education, so far as they were concerned, had ceased. They lived like beasts
in great squalid labor-ghettos, festering in misery and degradation. All their
old liberties were gone. They were labor-slaves. Choice of work was denied
them. Likewise was denied them the right to move from place to place, or
the right to bear or possess arms. They were not land serfs like the farmers.
They were machine-serfs and labor-serfs. When unusual needs arose for
them, such as the building of the great highways and air-lines, of canals,
tunnels, subways, and fortifications, levies were made on the labor-ghettos,
and tens of thousands of serfs, willy-nilly, were transported to the scene of
operations. Great armies of them are toiling now at the building of Ardis,
housed in wretched barracks where family life cannot exist, and where
decency is displaced by dull bestiality. In all truth, there in the labor-ghettos
is the roaring abysmal beast the oligarchs fear so dreadfully—but it is the
beast of their own making. In it they will not let the ape and tiger die.
And just now the word has gone forth that new levies are being imposed
for the building of Asgard, the projected wonder-city that will far exceed
Ardis when the latter is completed.[3] We of the Revolution will go on with
that great work, but it will not be done by the miserable serfs. The walls and

towers and shafts of that fair city will arise to the sound of singing, and into
its beauty and wonder will be woven, not sighs and groans, but music and
laughter.
[3] Ardis was completed in 1942 A.D., Asgard was not completed until 1984
A.D. It was fifty-two years in the building, during which time a permanent army
of half a million serfs was employed. At times these numbers swelled to over a
million—without any account being taken of the hundreds of thousands of the
labor castes and the artists.

Ernest was madly impatient to be out in the world and doing, for our ill-
fated First Revolt, that had miscarried in the Chicago Commune, was
ripening fast. Yet he possessed his soul with patience, and during this time
of his torment, when Hadly, who had been brought for the purpose from
Illinois, made him over into another man[4] he revolved great plans in his
head for the organization of the learned proletariat, and for the maintenance
of at least the rudiments of education amongst the people of the abyss—all
this of course in the event of the First Revolt being a failure.
[4] Among the Revolutionists were many surgeons, and in vivisection they
attained marvellous proficiency. In Avis Everhard’s words, they could literally
make a man over. To them the elimination of scars and disfigurements was a
trivial detail. They changed the features with such microscopic care that no
traces were left of their handiwork. The nose was a favorite organ to work upon.
Skin-grafting and hair-transplanting were among their commonest devices. The
changes in expression they accomplished were wizard-like. Eyes and eyebrows,
lips, mouths, and ears, were radically altered. By cunning operations on tongue,
throat, larynx, and nasal cavities a man’s whole enunciation and manner of
speech could be changed. Desperate times give need for desperate remedies, and
the surgeons of the Revolution rose to the need. Among other things, they could
increase an adult’s stature by as much as four or five inches and decrease it by
one or two inches. What they did is to-day a lost art. We have no need for it.

It was not until January, 1917, that we left the refuge. All had been
arranged. We took our place at once as agents-provocateurs in the scheme
of the Iron Heel. I was supposed to be Ernest’s sister. By oligarchs and
comrades on the inside who were high in authority, place had been made for
us, we were in possession of all necessary documents, and our pasts were
accounted for. With help on the inside, this was not difficult, for in that
shadow-world of secret service identity was nebulous. Like ghosts the
agents came and went, obeying commands, fulfilling duties, following
clews, making their reports often to officers they never saw or cooperating
with other agents they had never seen before and would never see again.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE

As agents-provocateurs, not alone were we able to travel a great deal, but
our very work threw us in contact with the proletariat and with our
comrades, the revolutionists. Thus we were in both camps at the same time,
ostensibly serving the Iron Heel and secretly working with all our might for
the Cause. There were many of us in the various secret services of the
Oligarchy, and despite the shakings-up and reorganizations the secret
services have undergone, they have never been able to weed all of us out.
Ernest had largely planned the First Revolt, and the date set had been
somewhere early in the spring of 1918. In the fall of 1917 we were not
ready; much remained to be done, and when the Revolt was precipitated, of
course it was doomed to failure. The plot of necessity was frightfully
intricate, and anything premature was sure to destroy it. This the Iron Heel
foresaw and laid its schemes accordingly.
We had planned to strike our first blow at the nervous system of the
Oligarchy. The latter had remembered the general strike, and had guarded
against the defection of the telegraphers by installing wireless stations, in
the control of the Mercenaries. We, in turn, had countered this move. When
the signal was given, from every refuge, all over the land, and from the
cities, and towns, and barracks, devoted comrades were to go forth and
blow up the wireless stations. Thus at the first shock would the Iron Heel be
brought to earth and lie practically dismembered.
At the same moment, other comrades were to blow up the bridges and
tunnels and disrupt the whole network of railroads. Still further, other
groups of comrades, at the signal, were to seize the officers of the
Mercenaries and the police, as well as all Oligarchs of unusual ability or
who held executive positions. Thus would the leaders of the enemy be

removed from the field of the local battles that would inevitably be fought
all over the land.
Many things were to occur simultaneously when the signal went forth.
The Canadian and Mexican patriots, who were far stronger than the Iron
Heel dreamed, were to duplicate our tactics. Then there were comrades
(these were the women, for the men would be busy elsewhere) who were to
post the proclamations from our secret presses. Those of us in the higher
employ of the Iron Heel were to proceed immediately to make confusion
and anarchy in all our departments. Inside the Mercenaries were thousands
of our comrades. Their work was to blow up the magazines and to destroy
the delicate mechanism of all the war machinery. In the cities of the
Mercenaries and of the labor castes similar programmes of disruption were
to be carried out.
In short, a sudden, colossal, stunning blow was to be struck. Before the
paralyzed Oligarchy could recover itself, its end would have come. It would
have meant terrible times and great loss of life, but no revolutionist
hesitates at such things. Why, we even depended much, in our plan, on the
unorganized people of the abyss. They were to be loosed on the palaces and
cities of the masters. Never mind the destruction of life and property. Let
the abysmal brute roar and the police and Mercenaries slay. The abysmal
brute would roar anyway, and the police and Mercenaries would slay
anyway. It would merely mean that various dangers to us were harmlessly
destroying one another. In the meantime we would be doing our own work,
largely unhampered, and gaining control of all the machinery of society.
Such was our plan, every detail of which had to be worked out in secret,
and, as the day drew near, communicated to more and more comrades. This
was the danger point, the stretching of the conspiracy. But that danger-point
was never reached. Through its spy-system the Iron Heel got wind of the
Revolt and prepared to teach us another of its bloody lessons. Chicago was
the devoted city selected for the instruction, and well were we instructed.
Chicago[1] was the ripest of all—Chicago which of old time was the city
of blood and which was to earn anew its name. There the revolutionary
spirit was strong. Too many bitter strikes had been curbed there in the days
of capitalism for the workers to forget and forgive. Even the labor castes of
the city were alive with revolt. Too many heads had been broken in the
early strikes. Despite their changed and favorable conditions, their hatred

for the master class had not died. This spirit had infected the Mercenaries,
of which three regiments in particular were ready to come over to us en
masse.
[1] Chicago was the industrial inferno of the nineteenth century A.D. A curious
anecdote has come down to us of John Burns, a great English labor leader and
one time member of the British Cabinet. In Chicago, while on a visit to the
United States, he was asked by a newspaper reporter for his opinion of that city.
“Chicago,” he answered, “is a pocket edition of hell.” Some time later, as he was
going aboard his steamer to sail to England, he was approached by another
reporter, who wanted to know if he had changed his opinion of Chicago. “Yes, I
have,” was his reply. “My present opinion is that hell is a pocket edition of
Chicago.”

Chicago had always been the storm-centre of the conflict between labor
and capital, a city of street-battles and violent death, with a class-conscious
capitalist organization and a class-conscious workman organization, where,
in the old days, the very school-teachers were formed into labor unions and
affiliated with the hod-carriers and brick-layers in the American Federation
of Labor. And Chicago became the storm-centre of the premature First
Revolt.
The trouble was precipitated by the Iron Heel. It was cleverly done. The
whole population, including the favored labor castes, was given a course of
outrageous treatment. Promises and agreements were broken, and most
drastic punishments visited upon even petty offenders. The people of the
abyss were tormented out of their apathy. In fact, the Iron Heel was
preparing to make the abysmal beast roar. And hand in hand with this, in all
precautionary measures in Chicago, the Iron Heel was inconceivably
careless. Discipline was relaxed among the Mercenaries that remained,
while many regiments had been withdrawn and sent to various parts of the
country.
It did not take long to carry out this programme—only several weeks. We
of the Revolution caught vague rumors of the state of affairs, but had
nothing definite enough for an understanding. In fact, we thought it was a
spontaneous spirit of revolt that would require careful curbing on our part,
and never dreamed that it was deliberately manufactured—and it had been
manufactured so secretly, from the very innermost circle of the Iron Heel,
that we had got no inkling. The counter-plot was an able achievement, and
ably carried out.

I was in New York when I received the order to proceed immediately to
Chicago. The man who gave me the order was one of the oligarchs, I could
tell that by his speech, though I did not know his name nor see his face. His
instructions were too clear for me to make a mistake. Plainly I read between
the lines that our plot had been discovered, that we had been countermined.
The explosion was ready for the flash of powder, and countless agents of
the Iron Heel, including me, either on the ground or being sent there, were
to supply that flash. I flatter myself that I maintained my composure under
the keen eye of the oligarch, but my heart was beating madly. I could
almost have shrieked and flown at his throat with my naked hands before
his final, cold-blooded instructions were given.
Once out of his presence, I calculated the time. I had just the moments to
spare, if I were lucky, to get in touch with some local leader before catching
my train. Guarding against being trailed, I made a rush of it for the
Emergency Hospital. Luck was with me, and I gained access at once to
comrade Galvin, the surgeon-in-chief. I started to gasp out my information,
but he stopped me.
“I already know,” he said quietly, though his Irish eyes were flashing. “I
knew what you had come for. I got the word fifteen minutes ago, and I have
already passed it along. Everything shall be done here to keep the comrades
quiet. Chicago is to be sacrificed, but it shall be Chicago alone.”
“Have you tried to get word to Chicago?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No telegraphic communication. Chicago is shut off.
It’s going to be hell there.”
He paused a moment, and I saw his white hands clinch. Then he burst
out:
“By God! I wish I were going to be there!”
“There is yet a chance to stop it,” I said, “if nothing happens to the train
and I can get there in time. Or if some of the other secret-service comrades
who have learned the truth can get there in time.”
“You on the inside were caught napping this time,” he said.
I nodded my head humbly.
“It was very secret,” I answered. “Only the inner chiefs could have
known up to to-day. We haven’t yet penetrated that far, so we couldn’t

escape being kept in the dark. If only Ernest were here. Maybe he is in
Chicago now, and all is well.”
Dr. Galvin shook his head. “The last news I heard of him was that he had
been sent to Boston or New Haven. This secret service for the enemy must
hamper him a lot, but it’s better than lying in a refuge.”
I started to go, and Galvin wrung my hand.
“Keep a stout heart,” were his parting words. “What if the First Revolt is
lost? There will be a second, and we will be wiser then. Good-by and good
luck. I don’t know whether I’ll ever see you again. It’s going to be hell
there, but I’d give ten years of my life for your chance to be in it.”
The Twentieth Century[2] left New York at six in the evening, and was
supposed to arrive at Chicago at seven next morning. But it lost time that
night. We were running behind another train. Among the travellers in my
Pullman was comrade Hartman, like myself in the secret service of the Iron
Heel. He it was who told me of the train that immediately preceded us. It
was an exact duplicate of our train, though it contained no passengers. The
idea was that the empty train should receive the disaster were an attempt
made to blow up the Twentieth Century. For that matter there were very few
people on the train—only a baker’s dozen in our car.
[2] This was reputed to be the fastest train in the world then. It was quite a
famous train.

“There must be some big men on board,” Hartman concluded. “I noticed
a private car on the rear.”
Night had fallen when we made our first change of engine, and I walked
down the platform for a breath of fresh air and to see what I could see.
Through the windows of the private car I caught a glimpse of three men
whom I recognized. Hartman was right. One of the men was General
Altendorff; and the other two were Mason and Vanderbold, the brains of the
inner circle of the Oligarchy’s secret service.
It was a quiet moonlight night, but I tossed restlessly and could not sleep.
At five in the morning I dressed and abandoned my bed.
I asked the maid in the dressing-room how late the train was, and she told
me two hours. She was a mulatto woman, and I noticed that her face was
haggard, with great circles under the eyes, while the eyes themselves were
wide with some haunting fear.

“What is the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing, miss; I didn’t sleep well, I guess,” was her reply.
I looked at her closely, and tried her with one of our signals. She
responded, and I made sure of her.
“Something terrible is going to happen in Chicago,” she said. “There’s
that fake[3] train in front of us. That and the troop-trains have made us late.”
[3] False.

“Troop-trains?” I queried.
She nodded her head. “The line is thick with them. We’ve been passing
them all night. And they’re all heading for Chicago. And bringing them
over the air-line—that means business.
“I’ve a lover in Chicago,” she added apologetically. “He’s one of us, and
he’s in the Mercenaries, and I’m afraid for him.”
Poor girl. Her lover was in one of the three disloyal regiments.
Hartman and I had breakfast together in the dining car, and I forced
myself to eat. The sky had clouded, and the train rushed on like a sullen
thunderbolt through the gray pall of advancing day. The very negroes that
waited on us knew that something terrible was impending. Oppression sat
heavily upon them; the lightness of their natures had ebbed out of them;
they were slack and absent-minded in their service, and they whispered
gloomily to one another in the far end of the car next to the kitchen.
Hartman was hopeless over the situation.
“What can we do?” he demanded for the twentieth time, with a helpless
shrug of the shoulders.
He pointed out of the window. “See, all is ready. You can depend upon it
that they’re holding them like this, thirty or forty miles outside the city, on
every road.”
He had reference to troop-trains on the side-track. The soldiers were
cooking their breakfasts over fires built on the ground beside the track, and
they looked up curiously at us as we thundered past without slackening our
terrific speed.
All was quiet as we entered Chicago. It was evident nothing had
happened yet. In the suburbs the morning papers came on board the train.
There was nothing in them, and yet there was much in them for those

skilled in reading between the lines that it was intended the ordinary reader
should read into the text. The fine hand of the Iron Heel was apparent in
every column. Glimmerings of weakness in the armor of the Oligarchy
were given. Of course, there was nothing definite. It was intended that the
reader should feel his way to these glimmerings. It was cleverly done. As
fiction, those morning papers of October 27th were masterpieces.
The local news was missing. This in itself was a masterstroke. It
shrouded Chicago in mystery, and it suggested to the average Chicago
reader that the Oligarchy did not dare give the local news. Hints that were
untrue, of course, were given of insubordination all over the land, crudely
disguised with complacent references to punitive measures to be taken.
There were reports of numerous wireless stations that had been blown up,
with heavy rewards offered for the detection of the perpetrators. Of course
no wireless stations had been blown up. Many similar outrages, that
dovetailed with the plot of the revolutionists, were given. The impression to
be made on the minds of the Chicago comrades was that the general Revolt
was beginning, albeit with a confusing miscarriage in many details. It was
impossible for one uninformed to escape the vague yet certain feeling that
all the land was ripe for the revolt that had already begun to break out.
It was reported that the defection of the Mercenaries in California had
become so serious that half a dozen regiments had been disbanded and
broken, and that their members with their families had been driven from
their own city and on into the labor-ghettos. And the California Mercenaries
were in reality the most faithful of all to their salt! But how was Chicago,
shut off from the rest of the world, to know? Then there was a ragged
telegram describing an outbreak of the populace in New York City, in which
the labor castes were joining, concluding with the statement (intended to be
accepted as a bluff[4]) that the troops had the situation in hand.
[4] A lie.

And as the oligarchs had done with the morning papers, so had they done
in a thousand other ways. These we learned afterward, as, for example, the
secret messages of the oligarchs, sent with the express purpose of leaking to
the ears of the revolutionists, that had come over the wires, now and again,
during the first part of the night.

“I guess the Iron Heel won’t need our services,” Hartman remarked,
putting down the paper he had been reading, when the train pulled into the
central depot. “They wasted their time sending us here. Their plans have
evidently prospered better than they expected. Hell will break loose any
second now.”
He turned and looked down the train as we alighted.
“I thought so,” he muttered. “They dropped that private car when the
papers came aboard.”
Hartman was hopelessly depressed. I tried to cheer him up, but he
ignored my effort and suddenly began talking very hurriedly, in a low voice,
as we passed through the station. At first I could not understand.
“I have not been sure,” he was saying, “and I have told no one. I have
been working on it for weeks, and I cannot make sure. Watch out for
Knowlton. I suspect him. He knows the secrets of a score of our refuges. He
carries the lives of hundreds of us in his hands, and I think he is a traitor.
It’s more a feeling on my part than anything else. But I thought I marked a
change in him a short while back. There is the danger that he has sold us
out, or is going to sell us out. I am almost sure of it. I wouldn’t whisper my
suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don’t think I’ll leave Chicago alive.
Keep your eye on Knowlton. Trap him. Find out. I don’t know anything
more. It is only an intuition, and so far I have failed to find the slightest
clew.” We were just stepping out upon the sidewalk. “Remember,” Hartman
concluded earnestly. “Keep your eyes upon Knowlton.”
And Hartman was right. Before a month went by Knowlton paid for his
treason with his life. He was formally executed by the comrades in
Milwaukee.
All was quiet on the streets—too quiet. Chicago lay dead. There was no
roar and rumble of traffic. There were not even cabs on the streets. The
surface cars and the elevated were not running. Only occasionally, on the
sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians, and these pedestrians did not loiter.
They went their ways with great haste and definiteness, withal there was a
curious indecision in their movements, as though they expected the
buildings to topple over on them or the sidewalks to sink under their feet or
fly up in the air. A few gamins, however, were around, in their eyes a
suppressed eagerness in anticipation of wonderful and exciting things to
happen.

From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of an explosion came to
our ears. That was all. Then quiet again, though the gamins had startled and
listened, like young deer, at the sound. The doorways to all the buildings
were closed; the shutters to the shops were up. But there were many police
and watchmen in evidence, and now and again automobile patrols of the
Mercenaries slipped swiftly past.
Hartman and I agreed that it was useless to report ourselves to the local
chiefs of the secret service. Our failure so to report would be excused, we
knew, in the light of subsequent events. So we headed for the great labor-
ghetto on the South Side in the hope of getting in contact with some of the
comrades. Too late! We knew it. But we could not stand still and do nothing
in those ghastly, silent streets. Where was Ernest? I was wondering. What
was happening in the cities of the labor castes and Mercenaries? In the
fortresses?
As if in answer, a great screaming roar went up, dim with distance,
punctuated with detonation after detonation.
“It’s the fortresses,” Hartman said. “God pity those three regiments!”
At a crossing we noticed, in the direction of the stockyards, a gigantic
pillar of smoke. At the next crossing several similar smoke pillars were
rising skyward in the direction of the West Side. Over the city of the
Mercenaries we saw a great captive war-balloon that burst even as we
looked at it, and fell in flaming wreckage toward the earth. There was no
clew to that tragedy of the air. We could not determine whether the balloon
had been manned by comrades or enemies. A vague sound came to our ears,
like the bubbling of a gigantic caldron a long way off, and Hartman said it
was machine-guns and automatic rifles.
And still we walked in immediate quietude. Nothing was happening
where we were. The police and the automobile patrols went by, and once
half a dozen fire-engines, returning evidently from some conflagration. A
question was called to the fireman by an officer in an automobile, and we
heard one shout in reply: “No water! They’ve blown up the mains!”
“We’ve smashed the water supply,” Hartman cried excitedly to me. “If
we can do all this in a premature, isolated, abortive attempt, what can’t we
do in a concerted, ripened effort all over the land?”
The automobile containing the officer who had asked the question darted
on. Suddenly there was a deafening roar. The machine, with its human

freight, lifted in an upburst of smoke, and sank down a mass of wreckage
and death.
Hartman was jubilant. “Well done! well done!” he was repeating, over
and over, in a whisper. “The proletariat gets its lesson to-day, but it gives
one, too.”
Police were running for the spot. Also, another patrol machine had
halted. As for myself, I was in a daze. The suddenness of it was stunning.
How had it happened? I knew not how, and yet I had been looking directly
at it. So dazed was I for the moment that I was scarcely aware of the fact
that we were being held up by the police. I abruptly saw that a policeman
was in the act of shooting Hartman. But Hartman was cool and was giving
the proper passwords. I saw the levelled revolver hesitate, then sink down,
and heard the disgusted grunt of the policeman. He was very angry, and was
cursing the whole secret service. It was always in the way, he was averring,
while Hartman was talking back to him and with fitting secret-service pride
explaining to him the clumsiness of the police.
The next moment I knew how it had happened. There was quite a group
about the wreck, and two men were just lifting up the wounded officer to
carry him to the other machine. A panic seized all of them, and they
scattered in every direction, running in blind terror, the wounded officer,
roughly dropped, being left behind. The cursing policeman alongside of me
also ran, and Hartman and I ran, too, we knew not why, obsessed with the
same blind terror to get away from that particular spot.
Nothing really happened then, but everything was explained. The flying
men were sheepishly coming back, but all the while their eyes were raised
apprehensively to the many-windowed, lofty buildings that towered like the
sheer walls of a canyon on each side of the street. From one of those
countless windows the bomb had been thrown, but which window? There
had been no second bomb, only a fear of one.
Thereafter we looked with speculative comprehension at the windows.
Any of them contained possible death. Each building was a possible
ambuscade. This was warfare in that modern jungle, a great city. Every
street was a canyon, every building a mountain. We had not changed much
from primitive man, despite the war automobiles that were sliding by.
Turning a corner, we came upon a woman. She was lying on the
pavement, in a pool of blood. Hartman bent over and examined her. As for

myself, I turned deathly sick. I was to see many dead that day, but the total
carnage was not to affect me as did this first forlorn body lying there at my
feet abandoned on the pavement. “Shot in the breast,” was Hartman’s
report. Clasped in the hollow of her arm, as a child might be clasped, was a
bundle of printed matter. Even in death she seemed loath to part with that
which had caused her death; for when Hartman had succeeded in
withdrawing the bundle, we found that it consisted of large printed sheets,
the proclamations of the revolutionists.
“A comrade,” I said.
But Hartman only cursed the Iron Heel, and we passed on. Often we were
halted by the police and patrols, but our passwords enabled us to proceed.
No more bombs fell from the windows, the last pedestrians seemed to have
vanished from the streets, and our immediate quietude grew more profound;
though the gigantic caldron continued to bubble in the distance, dull roars
of explosions came to us from all directions, and the smoke-pillars were
towering more ominously in the heavens.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS

Suddenly a change came over the face of things. A tingle of excitement
ran along the air. Automobiles fled past, two, three, a dozen, and from them
warnings were shouted to us. One of the machines swerved wildly at high
speed half a block down, and the next moment, already left well behind it,
the pavement was torn into a great hole by a bursting bomb. We saw the
police disappearing down the cross-streets on the run, and knew that
something terrible was coming. We could hear the rising roar of it.
“Our brave comrades are coming,” Hartman said.
We could see the front of their column filling the street from gutter to
gutter, as the last war-automobile fled past. The machine stopped for a
moment just abreast of us. A soldier leaped from it, carrying something
carefully in his hands. This, with the same care, he deposited in the gutter.
Then he leaped back to his seat and the machine dashed on, took the turn at
the corner, and was gone from sight. Hartman ran to the gutter and stooped
over the object.
“Keep back,” he warned me.
I could see he was working rapidly with his hands. When he returned to
me the sweat was heavy on his forehead.
“I disconnected it,” he said, “and just in the nick of time. The soldier was
clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn’t give it enough time.
It would have exploded prematurely. Now it won’t explode at all.”
Everything was happening rapidly now. Across the street and half a block
down, high up in a building, I could see heads peering out. I had just
pointed them out to Hartman, when a sheet of flame and smoke ran along
that portion of the face of the building where the heads had appeared, and
the air was shaken by the explosion. In places the stone facing of the

building was torn away, exposing the iron construction beneath. The next
moment similar sheets of flame and smoke smote the front of the building
across the street opposite it. Between the explosions we could hear the rattle
of the automatic pistols and rifles. For several minutes this mid-air battle
continued, then died out. It was patent that our comrades were in one
building, that Mercenaries were in the other, and that they were fighting
across the street. But we could not tell which was which—which building
contained our comrades and which the Mercenaries.
By this time the column on the street was almost on us. As the front of it
passed under the warring buildings, both went into action again—one
building dropping bombs into the street, being attacked from across the
street, and in return replying to that attack. Thus we learned which building
was held by our comrades, and they did good work, saving those in the
street from the bombs of the enemy.
Hartman gripped my arm and dragged me into a wide entrance.
“They’re not our comrades,” he shouted in my ear.
The inner doors to the entrance were locked and bolted. We could not
escape. The next moment the front of the column went by. It was not a
column, but a mob, an awful river that filled the street, the people of the
abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at last and roaring for the blood of
their masters. I had seen the people of the abyss before, gone through its
ghettos, and thought I knew it; but I found that I was now looking on it for
the first time. Dumb apathy had vanished. It was now dynamic—a
fascinating spectacle of dread. It surged past my vision in concrete waves of
wrath, snarling and growling, carnivorous, drunk with whiskey from
pillaged warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunk with lust for blood—men,
women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious intelligences with
all the godlike blotted from their features and all the fiendlike stamped in,
apes and tigers, anaemic consumptives and great hairy beasts of burden,
wan faces from which vampire society had sucked the juice of life, bloated
forms swollen with physical grossness and corruption, withered hags and
death’s-heads bearded like patriarchs, festering youth and festering age,
faces of fiends, crooked, twisted, misshapen monsters blasted with the
ravages of disease and all the horrors of chronic innutrition—the refuse and
the scum of life, a raging, screaming, screeching, demoniacal horde.

And why not? The people of the abyss had nothing to lose but the misery
and pain of living. And to gain?—nothing, save one final, awful glut of
vengeance. And as I looked the thought came to me that in that rushing
stream of human lava were men, comrades and heroes, whose mission had
been to rouse the abysmal beast and to keep the enemy occupied in coping
with it.
And now a strange thing happened to me. A transformation came over
me. The fear of death, for myself and for others, left me. I was strangely
exalted, another being in another life. Nothing mattered. The Cause for this
one time was lost, but the Cause would be here to-morrow, the same Cause,
ever fresh and ever burning. And thereafter, in the orgy of horror that raged
through the succeeding hours, I was able to take a calm interest. Death
meant nothing, life meant nothing. I was an interested spectator of events,
and, sometimes swept on by the rush, was myself a curious participant. For
my mind had leaped to a star-cool altitude and grasped a passionless
transvaluation of values. Had it not done this, I know that I should have
died.
Half a mile of the mob had swept by when we were discovered. A woman
in fantastic rags, with cheeks cavernously hollow and with narrow black
eyes like burning gimlets, caught a glimpse of Hartman and me. She let out
a shrill shriek and bore in upon us. A section of the mob tore itself loose and
surged in after her. I can see her now, as I write these lines, a leap in
advance, her gray hair flying in thin tangled strings, the blood dripping
down her forehead from some wound in the scalp, in her right hand a
hatchet, her left hand, lean and wrinkled, a yellow talon, gripping the air
convulsively. Hartman sprang in front of me. This was no time for
explanations. We were well dressed, and that was enough. His fist shot out,
striking the woman between her burning eyes. The impact of the blow
drove her backward, but she struck the wall of her on-coming fellows and
bounced forward again, dazed and helpless, the brandished hatchet falling
feebly on Hartman’s shoulder.
The next moment I knew not what was happening. I was overborne by
the crowd. The confined space was filled with shrieks and yells and curses.
Blows were falling on me. Hands were ripping and tearing at my flesh and
garments. I felt that I was being torn to pieces. I was being borne down,
suffocated. Some strong hand gripped my shoulder in the thick of the press

and was dragging fiercely at me. Between pain and pressure I fainted.
Hartman never came out of that entrance. He had shielded me and received
the first brunt of the attack. This had saved me, for the jam had quickly
become too dense for anything more than the mad gripping and tearing of
hands.
I came to in the midst of wild movement. All about me was the same
movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was sweeping
me I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly in my
lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of a strong arm around my
body under the arms, and half-lifting me and dragging me along. Feebly my
own limbs were helping me. In front of me I could see the moving back of a
man’s coat. It had been slit from top to bottom along the centre seam, and it
pulsed rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly with every leap
of the wearer. This phenomenon fascinated me for a time, while my senses
were coming back to me. Next I became aware of stinging cheeks and nose,
and could feel blood dripping on my face. My hat was gone. My hair was
down and flying, and from the stinging of the scalp I managed to recollect a
hand in the press of the entrance that had torn at my hair. My chest and
arms were bruised and aching in a score of places.
My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and looked at the man who
was holding me up. He it was who had dragged me out and saved me. He
noticed my movement.
“It’s all right!” he shouted hoarsely. “I knew you on the instant.”
I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak I trod upon something
that was alive and that squirmed under my foot. I was swept on by those
behind and could not look down and see, and yet I knew that it was a
woman who had fallen and who was being trampled into the pavement by
thousands of successive feet.
“It’s all right,” he repeated. “I’m Garthwaite.”
He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded in remembering him
as the stalwart youth that had spent several months in our Glen Ellen refuge
three years before. He passed me the signals of the Iron Heel’s secret
service, in token that he, too, was in its employ.
“I’ll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance,” he assured me.
“But watch your footing. On your life don’t stumble and go down.”

All things happened abruptly on that day, and with an abruptness that was
sickening the mob checked itself. I came in violent collision with a large
woman in front of me (the man with the split coat had vanished), while
those behind collided against me. A devilish pandemonium reigned,—
shrieks, curses, and cries of death, while above all rose the churning rattle
of machine-guns and the put-a-put, put-a-put of rifles. At first I could make
out nothing. People were falling about me right and left. The woman in
front doubled up and went down, her hands on her abdomen in a frenzied
clutch. A man was quivering against my legs in a death-struggle.
It came to me that we were at the head of the column. Half a mile of it
had disappeared—where or how I never learned. To this day I do not know
what became of that half-mile of humanity—whether it was blotted out by
some frightful bolt of war, whether it was scattered and destroyed
piecemeal, or whether it escaped. But there we were, at the head of the
column instead of in its middle, and we were being swept out of life by a
torrent of shrieking lead.
As soon as death had thinned the jam, Garthwaite, still grasping my arm,
led a rush of survivors into the wide entrance of an office building. Here, at
the rear, against the doors, we were pressed by a panting, gasping mass of
creatures. For some time we remained in this position without a change in
the situation.
“I did it beautifully,” Garthwaite was lamenting to me. “Ran you right
into a trap. We had a gambler’s chance in the street, but in here there is no
chance at all. It’s all over but the shouting. Vive la Revolution!”
Then, what he expected, began. The Mercenaries were killing without
quarter. At first, the surge back upon us was crushing, but as the killing
continued the pressure was eased. The dead and dying went down and made
room. Garthwaite put his mouth to my ear and shouted, but in the frightful
din I could not catch what he said. He did not wait. He seized me and threw
me down. Next he dragged a dying woman over on top of me, and, with
much squeezing and shoving, crawled in beside me and partly over me. A
mound of dead and dying began to pile up over us, and over this mound,
pawing and moaning, crept those that still survived. But these, too, soon
ceased, and a semi-silence settled down, broken by groans and sobs and
sounds of strangulation.

I should have been crushed had it not been for Garthwaite. As it was, it
seemed inconceivable that I could bear the weight I did and live. And yet,
outside of pain, the only feeling I possessed was one of curiosity. How was
it going to end? What would death be like? Thus did I receive my red
baptism in that Chicago shambles. Prior to that, death to me had been a
theory; but ever afterward death has been a simple fact that does not matter,
it is so easy.
But the Mercenaries were not content with what they had done. They
invaded the entrance, killing the wounded and searching out the unhurt that,
like ourselves, were playing dead. I remember one man they dragged out of
a heap, who pleaded abjectly until a revolver shot cut him short. Then there
was a woman who charged from a heap, snarling and shooting. She fired six
shots before they got her, though what damage she did we could not know.
We could follow these tragedies only by the sound. Every little while
flurries like this occurred, each flurry culminating in the revolver shot that
put an end to it. In the intervals we could hear the soldiers talking and
swearing as they rummaged among the carcasses, urged on by their officers
to hurry up.
At last they went to work on our heap, and we could feel the pressure
diminish as they dragged away the dead and wounded. Garthwaite began
uttering aloud the signals. At first he was not heard. Then he raised his
voice.
“Listen to that,” we heard a soldier say. And next the sharp voice of an
officer. “Hold on there! Careful as you go!”
Oh, that first breath of air as we were dragged out! Garthwaite did the
talking at first, but I was compelled to undergo a brief examination to prove
service with the Iron Heel.
“Agents-provocateurs all right,” was the officer’s conclusion. He was a
beardless young fellow, a cadet, evidently, of some great oligarch family.
“It’s a hell of a job,” Garthwaite grumbled. “I’m going to try and resign
and get into the army. You fellows have a snap.”
“You’ve earned it,” was the young officer’s answer. “I’ve got some pull,
and I’ll see if it can be managed. I can tell them how I found you.”
He took Garthwaite’s name and number, then turned to me.
“And you?”

“Oh, I’m going to be married,” I answered lightly, “and then I’ll be out of
it all.”
And so we talked, while the killing of the wounded went on. It is all a
dream, now, as I look back on it; but at the time it was the most natural
thing in the world. Garthwaite and the young officer fell into an animated
conversation over the difference between so-called modern warfare and the
present street-fighting and sky-scraper fighting that was taking place all
over the city. I followed them intently, fixing up my hair at the same time
and pinning together my torn skirts. And all the time the killing of the
wounded went on. Sometimes the revolver shots drowned the voices of
Garthwaite and the officer, and they were compelled to repeat what they
had been saying.
I lived through three days of the Chicago Commune, and the vastness of
it and of the slaughter may be imagined when I say that in all that time I
saw practically nothing outside the killing of the people of the abyss and the
mid-air fighting between sky-scrapers. I really saw nothing of the heroic
work done by the comrades. I could hear the explosions of their mines and
bombs, and see the smoke of their conflagrations, and that was all. The mid-
air part of one great deed I saw, however, and that was the balloon attacks
made by our comrades on the fortresses. That was on the second day. The
three disloyal regiments had been destroyed in the fortresses to the last man.
The fortresses were crowded with Mercenaries, the wind blew in the right
direction, and up went our balloons from one of the office buildings in the
city.
Now Biedenbach, after he left Glen Ellen, had invented a most powerful
explosive—“expedite” he called it. This was the weapon the balloons used.
They were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and hastily made, but they did
the work. I saw it all from the top of an office building. The first balloon
missed the fortresses completely and disappeared into the country; but we
learned about it afterward. Burton and O’Sullivan were in it. As they were
descending they swept across a railroad directly over a troop-train that was
heading at full speed for Chicago. They dropped their whole supply of
expedite upon the locomotive. The resulting wreck tied the line up for days.
And the best of it was that, released from the weight of expedite, the
balloon shot up into the air and did not come down for half a dozen miles,
both heroes escaping unharmed.

The second balloon was a failure. Its flight was lame. It floated too low
and was shot full of holes before it could reach the fortresses. Herford and
Guinness were in it, and they were blown to pieces along with the field into
which they fell. Biedenbach was in despair—we heard all about it afterward
—and he went up alone in the third balloon. He, too, made a low flight, but
he was in luck, for they failed seriously to puncture his balloon. I can see it
now as I did then, from the lofty top of the building—that inflated bag
drifting along the air, and that tiny speck of a man clinging on beneath. I
could not see the fortress, but those on the roof with me said he was directly
over it. I did not see the expedite fall when he cut it loose. But I did see the
balloon suddenly leap up into the sky. An appreciable time after that the
great column of the explosion towered in the air, and after that, in turn, I
heard the roar of it. Biedenbach the gentle had destroyed a fortress. Two
other balloons followed at the same time. One was blown to pieces in the
air, the expedite exploding, and the shock of it disrupted the second balloon,
which fell prettily into the remaining fortress. It couldn’t have been better
planned, though the two comrades in it sacrificed their lives.
But to return to the people of the abyss. My experiences were confined to
them. They raged and slaughtered and destroyed all over the city proper,
and were in turn destroyed; but never once did they succeed in reaching the
city of the oligarchs over on the west side. The oligarchs had protected
themselves well. No matter what destruction was wreaked in the heart of
the city, they, and their womenkind and children, were to escape hurt. I am
told that their children played in the parks during those terrible days and
that their favorite game was an imitation of their elders stamping upon the
proletariat.
But the Mercenaries found it no easy task to cope with the people of the
abyss and at the same time fight with the comrades. Chicago was true to her
traditions, and though a generation of revolutionists was wiped out, it took
along with it pretty close to a generation of its enemies. Of course, the Iron
Heel kept the figures secret, but, at a very conservative estimate, at least
one hundred and thirty thousand Mercenaries were slain. But the comrades
had no chance. Instead of the whole country being hand in hand in revolt,
they were all alone, and the total strength of the Oligarchy could have been
directed against them if necessary. As it was, hour after hour, day after day,
in endless train-loads, by hundreds of thousands, the Mercenaries were
hurled into Chicago.

And there were so many of the people of the abyss! Tiring of the
slaughter, a great herding movement was begun by the soldiers, the intent of
which was to drive the street mobs, like cattle, into Lake Michigan. It was
at the beginning of this movement that Garthwaite and I had encountered
the young officer. This herding movement was practically a failure, thanks
to the splendid work of the comrades. Instead of the great host the
Mercenaries had hoped to gather together, they succeeded in driving no
more than forty thousand of the wretches into the lake. Time and again,
when a mob of them was well in hand and being driven along the streets to
the water, the comrades would create a diversion, and the mob would
escape through the consequent hole torn in the encircling net.
Garthwaite and I saw an example of this shortly after meeting with the
young officer. The mob of which we had been a part, and which had been
put in retreat, was prevented from escaping to the south and east by strong
bodies of troops. The troops we had fallen in with had held it back on the
west. The only outlet was north, and north it went toward the lake, driven
on from east and west and south by machine-gun fire and automatics.
Whether it divined that it was being driven toward the lake, or whether it
was merely a blind squirm of the monster, I do not know; but at any rate the
mob took a cross street to the west, turned down the next street, and came
back upon its track, heading south toward the great ghetto.
Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make our way westward to
get out of the territory of street-fighting, and we were caught right in the
thick of it again. As we came to the corner we saw the howling mob bearing
down upon us. Garthwaite seized my arm and we were just starting to run,
when he dragged me back from in front of the wheels of half a dozen war
automobiles, equipped with machine-guns, that were rushing for the spot.
Behind them came the soldiers with their automatic rifles. By the time they
took position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as though they would
be overwhelmed before they could get into action.
Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle, but this scattered fire
had no effect in checking the mob. On it came, bellowing with brute rage. It
seemed the machine-guns could not get started. The automobiles on which
they were mounted blocked the street, compelling the soldiers to find
positions in, between, and on the sidewalks. More and more soldiers were

arriving, and in the jam we were unable to get away. Garthwaite held me by
the arm, and we pressed close against the front of a building.
The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away when the machine-
guns opened up; but before that flaming sheet of death nothing could live.
The mob came on, but it could not advance. It piled up in a heap, a mound,
a huge and growing wave of dead and dying. Those behind urged on, and
the column, from gutter to gutter, telescoped upon itself. Wounded
creatures, men and women, were vomited over the top of that awful wave
and fell squirming down the face of it till they threshed about under the
automobiles and against the legs of the soldiers. The latter bayoneted the
struggling wretches, though one I saw who gained his feet and flew at a
soldier’s throat with his teeth. Together they went down, soldier and slave,
into the welter.
The firing ceased. The work was done. The mob had been stopped in its
wild attempt to break through. Orders were being given to clear the wheels
of the war-machines. They could not advance over that wave of dead, and
the idea was to run them down the cross street. The soldiers were dragging
the bodies away from the wheels when it happened. We learned afterward
how it happened. A block distant a hundred of our comrades had been
holding a building. Across roofs and through buildings they made their way,
till they found themselves looking down upon the close-packed soldiers.
Then it was counter-massacre.
Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the top of the building.
The automobiles were blown to fragments, along with many soldiers. We,
with the survivors, swept back in mad retreat. Half a block down another
building opened fire on us. As the soldiers had carpeted the street with dead
slaves, so, in turn, did they themselves become carpet. Garthwaite and I
bore charmed lives. As we had done before, so again we sought shelter in
an entrance. But he was not to be caught napping this time. As the roar of
the bombs died away, he began peering out.
“The mob’s coming back!” he called to me. “We’ve got to get out of
this!”
We fled, hand in hand, down the bloody pavement, slipping and sliding,
and making for the corner. Down the cross street we could see a few
soldiers still running. Nothing was happening to them. The way was clear.
So we paused a moment and looked back. The mob came on slowly. It was

busy arming itself with the rifles of the slain and killing the wounded. We
saw the end of the young officer who had rescued us. He painfully lifted
himself on his elbow and turned loose with his automatic pistol.
“There goes my chance of promotion,” Garthwaite laughed, as a woman
bore down on the wounded man, brandishing a butcher’s cleaver. “Come
on. It’s the wrong direction, but we’ll get out somehow.”
And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, prepared at every cross
street for anything to happen. To the south a monster conflagration was
filling the sky, and we knew that the great ghetto was burning. At last I sank
down on the sidewalk. I was exhausted and could go no farther. I was
bruised and sore and aching in every limb; yet I could not escape smiling at
Garthwaite, who was rolling a cigarette and saying:
“I know I’m making a mess of rescuing you, but I can’t get head nor tail
of the situation. It’s all a mess. Every time we try to break out, something
happens and we’re turned back. We’re only a couple of blocks now from
where I got you out of that entrance. Friend and foe are all mixed up. It’s
chaos. You can’t tell who is in those darned buildings. Try to find out, and
you get a bomb on your head. Try to go peaceably on your way, and you
run into a mob and are killed by machine-guns, or you run into the
Mercenaries and are killed by your own comrades from a roof. And on the
top of it all the mob comes along and kills you, too.”
He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette, and sat down beside
me.
“And I’m that hungry,” he added, “I could eat cobblestones.”
The next moment he was on his feet again and out in the street prying up
a cobblestone. He came back with it and assaulted the window of a store
behind us.
“It’s ground floor and no good,” he explained as he helped me through
the hole he had made; “but it’s the best we can do. You get a nap and I’ll
reconnoitre. I’ll finish this rescue all right, but I want time, time, lots of it—
and something to eat.”
It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he fixed me up a couch
of horse blankets in the private office well to the rear. To add to my
wretchedness a splitting headache was coming on, and I was only too glad
to close my eyes and try to sleep.

“I’ll be back,” were his parting words. “I don’t hope to get an auto, but
I’ll surely bring some grub,[1] anyway.”
[1] Food.

And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three years. Instead of
coming back, he was carried away to a hospital with a bullet through his
lungs and another through the fleshy part of his neck.

CHAPTER XXIV.
NIGHTMARE

I had not closed my eyes the night before on the Twentieth Century, and
what of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke, it
was night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my watch and had no
idea of the time. As I lay with my eyes closed, I heard the same dull sound
of distant explosions. The inferno was still raging. I crept through the store
to the front. The reflection from the sky of vast conflagrations made the
street almost as light as day. One could have read the finest print with ease.
From several blocks away came the crackle of small hand-bombs and the
churning of machine-guns, and from a long way off came a long series of
heavy explosions. I crept back to my horse blankets and slept again.
When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me. It was
dawn of the second day. I crept to the front of the store. A smoke pall, shot
through with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the opposite side of the
street tottered a wretched slave. One hand he held tightly against his side,
and behind him he left a bloody trail. His eyes roved everywhere, and they
were filled with apprehension and dread. Once he looked straight across at
me, and in his face was all the dumb pathos of the wounded and hunted
animal. He saw me, but there was no kinship between us, and with him, at
least, no sympathy of understanding; for he cowered perceptibly and
dragged himself on. He could expect no aid in all God’s world. He was a
helot in the great hunt of helots that the masters were making. All he could
hope for, all he sought, was some hole to crawl away in and hide like any
animal. The sharp clang of a passing ambulance at the corner gave him a
start. Ambulances were not for such as he. With a groan of pain he threw
himself into a doorway. A minute later he was out again and desperately
hobbling on.

I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite. My
headache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing. It was by
an effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes and look at objects.
And with the opening of my eyes and the looking came intolerable torment.
Also, a great pulse was beating in my brain. Weak and reeling, I went out
through the broken window and down the street, seeking to escape,
instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived
nightmare. My memory of what happened in the succeeding hours is the
memory one would have of nightmare. Many events are focussed sharply
on my brain, but between these indelible pictures I retain are intervals of
unconsciousness. What occurred in those intervals I know not, and never
shall know.
I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It was the
poor hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place. How
distinctly do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he lay there on
the pavement—hands that were more hoof and claw than hands, all twisted
and distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palms a horny growth of
callous a half inch thick. And as I picked myself up and started on, I looked
into the face of the thing and saw that it still lived; for the eyes, dimly
intelligent, were looking at me and seeing me.
After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merely
tottered on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was a quiet
street of the dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in the country
would come upon a flowing stream. Only this stream I gazed upon did not
flow. It was congealed in death. From pavement to pavement, and covering
the sidewalks, it lay there, spread out quite evenly, with only here and there
a lump or mound of bodies to break the surface. Poor driven people of the
abyss, hunted helots—they lay there as the rabbits in California after a
drive.[1] Up the street and down I looked. There was no movement, no
sound. The quiet buildings looked down upon the scene from their many
windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that moved in that dead
stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strange writhing gesture of agony, and
with it lifted a head, gory with nameless horror, that gibbered at me and
then lay down again and moved no more.
[1] In those days, so sparsely populated was the land that wild animals often
became pests. In California the custom of rabbit-driving obtained. On a given
day all the farmers in a locality would assemble and sweep across the country in

converging lines, driving the rabbits by scores of thousands into a prepared
enclosure, where they were clubbed to death by men and boys.

I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side, and the
panic that smote me into consciousness as again I saw the people of the
abyss, but this time in a stream that flowed and came on. And then I saw
there was nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly, while from it arose
groans and lamentations, cursings, babblings of senility, hysteria, and
insanity; for these were the very young and the very old, the feeble and the
sick, the helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto. The
burning of the great ghetto on the South Side had driven them forth into the
inferno of the street-fighting, and whither they wended and whatever
became of them I did not know and never learned.[2]
[2] It was long a question of debate, whether the burning of the South Side
ghetto was accidental, or whether it was done by the Mercenaries; but it is
definitely settled now that the ghetto was fired by the Mercenaries under orders
from their chiefs.

I have faint memories of breaking a window and hiding in some shop to
escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst near
me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up and down, I could
see no human being. But my next sharp recollection begins with the crack
of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am being fired at by a soldier
in an automobile. The shot missed, and the next moment I was screaming
and motioning the signals. My memory of riding in the automobile is very
hazy, though this ride, in turn, is broken by one vivid picture. The crack of
the rifle of the soldier sitting beside me made me open my eyes, and I saw
George Milford, whom I had known in the Pell Street days, sinking slowly
down to the sidewalk. Even as he sank the soldier fired again, and Milford
doubled in, then flung his body out, and fell sprawling. The soldier
chuckled, and the automobile sped on.
The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a man
who walked up and down close beside me. His face was drawn and
strained, and the sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead. One hand
was clutched tightly against his chest by the other hand, and blood dripped
down upon the floor as he walked. He wore the uniform of the Mercenaries.
From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled roar of bursting

bombs. I was in some building that was locked in combat with some other
building.
A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned that it was
two in the afternoon. My headache was no better, and the surgeon paused
from his work long enough to give me a powerful drug that would depress
the heart and bring relief. I slept again, and the next I knew I was on top of
the building. The immediate fighting had ceased, and I was watching the
balloon attack on the fortresses. Some one had an arm around me and I was
leaning close against him. It came to me quite as a matter of course that this
was Ernest, and I found myself wondering how he had got his hair and
eyebrows so badly singed.
It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in that terrible
city. He had had no idea that I had left New York, and, coming through the
room where I lay asleep, could not at first believe that it was I. Little more I
saw of the Chicago Commune. After watching the balloon attack, Ernest
took me down into the heart of the building, where I slept the afternoon out
and the night. The third day we spent in the building, and on the fourth,
Ernest having got permission and an automobile from the authorities, we
left Chicago.
My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired. I lay back
against Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic eyes watched the
soldiers trying to get the machine out of the city. Fighting was still going
on, but only in isolated localities. Here and there whole districts were still in
possession of the comrades, but such districts were surrounded and guarded
by heavy bodies of troops. In a hundred segregated traps were the comrades
thus held while the work of subjugating them went on. Subjugation meant
death, for no quarter was given, and they fought heroically to the last man.[3]
[3] Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one held out eleven
days. Each building had to be stormed like a fort, and the Mercenaries fought
their way upward floor by floor. It was deadly fighting. Quarter was neither
given nor taken, and in the fighting the revolutionists had the advantage of being
above. While the revolutionists were wiped out, the loss was not one-sided. The
proud Chicago proletariat lived up to its ancient boast. For as many of itself as
were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.

Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back and
sent us around. Once, the only way past two strong positions of the
comrades was through a burnt section that lay between. From either side we