The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Iron Heel, by Jack London
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1164/1164-h/1164-h.htm
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1164 ***
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It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important historical
document.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?”
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