 CHAPTER V. OF THE IRON HEAL THE FILOMATHES 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 some-eyes, for never was there such a lover as Ernest ever had. 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 loved to by beardless sophomores and grey 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 unmind 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 behaviour in our drawing room reminded me of a careful bull in a china shop. Note, in those days it was still accustomed to fill a living room with bric-a-brac. They had not discovered simplicity of living. Such rooms were museums, entailing endlessly but 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 Phylamath Club, a wonderful night of battle where an Ernest bearded the masters in their lair. Now the Phylamath 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 Phylamath had no clubhouse. It was not that kind of a club. Once a month its members gathered at someone of their private houses to listen to a lecture. The lectures were usually, though not always, hired. If a chemist in New York made a new discovery and, 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 Phylamath 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 copied the following. Your father is a member of the Phylamath, 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 caveman, in evening dress, snarling and snapping over a bone. I promise you a great catawalling 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 soul-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 apparel in my life. I suppose I'll have to hire one somewhere. But I do more than that to get a chance at the filer-maths. Of all places the club gathered that night at the Purton Waith House. Extra chairs had been brought into the great drawing-room, and in all there must have been two hundred filer-maths that sat down to here earnest. 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 earnest 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 he 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. 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. Note, 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 armour-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 medieval alchemists. He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried an undertone of faint irony to introduce Ernest. Robert 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 confrars and smiled her appreciation of the remarks. Colonel van Gilbert had 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 unselfishness of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read seaside library novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventurers, 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, with 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. Note A curious and amazing literature that served to make the working class utterly misapprehend the nature of the ledger 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 intellect 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 haltering 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 whale of the starved slumchild 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's to 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 would follow him as a mantle. But the others did not see this radiance, and I assumed that it was due to the tears of Troy and love that dimmed my vision. At any rate, Mr. Wixen, who sat behind me, was unaffected, for I heard him sneer aloud, utopian. Note. The people of that age were fraes 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 generalisations of a lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a word was the adjective utopian. The mere utterance of it could dam 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 carnage 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 commoness 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 Pinkerton's, with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of price-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. Note the Pinkerton's. 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 the municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements, called me a scoundrel-y demagogue because I dared him to print in his paper the truth about patent medicines. Note, 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. 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 shopgirls 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 magnet 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. So was this governor and this Supreme Court judge, on railroad passes and also this sleek capitalist owned the machine, the machine boss and the railroads that issued the passes. Note, 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 the 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, practiced and practical materialism. Much more earnest 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 gauge 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 23 millions and a half in the rest of the world. Such an army of revolution, he said, 25 million 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. Here are our hands, the reigns 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, his two great arms, and the horseshoe's hands were clutching the air like eagles' talons, he was the spirit of regnant labour 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 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 realised that not easily would they let their lordship of the world be rested 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 caveman and of the savage peoples of today pointing out that they possessed neither tools nor machines and possessed only a natural efficiency then he traced the development of machinery and social organisation so that today the producing power of civilised 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, woolens for three hundred and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would conclude from this that under a capable management of society modern civilised man would be a great deal better off than the caveman. But is he? Let us see. In the United States today there are fifteen million 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 today in spite of all your so-called labour legislation there are three millions of child labourers. 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. Note 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. Note In the United States census of 1900 the last census the figures of which were made public the number of child labourers was placed at one million 752,187 But to return to my indictment if modern man's producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the caveman why then in the United States today are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then in the United States today are there three million child labourers? It is a true indictment the capitalist class has mismanaged In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the caveman and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the caveman no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged that you have mismanaged to my masters that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged and on this count you cannot answer me here tonight 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 civilisation you have been blind and greedy you have risen up as you today rise up shamelessly in our legislative halls and declared the prophets 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 earnest 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 clamouring 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 earnest and then I discovered that it was not laughter but hysteria she was appalled by what she had done in bringing this firebrand before a blessed phylamath 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 $100,000 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 tonight with your madcap theories fallacy upon fallacy I was never so nauseated in my life with over plus a 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 horse-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 babble was indescribable never had mrs. Burton with 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 Ernest had shaken them when he stretched out his hands for their money-bags his hands that had appeared in their eyes as the hands of the 1500,000 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 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 calibre that may serve you in your business but you can't talk to me like that I am not a working man 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 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 a hundred thousand dollar lawyer was too much for Miss Brentwood's nerves the 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 textbook 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 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 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 arrived 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 specialised when it comes to a knowledge of the law of how best to evade the law 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 generalisations on things historical and sociological are not worth the breath that 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 labour profits would not be possible and 15 million underfed, ill-clothed and worse housed people I pointed out that modern man's producing power through social organisation and the use of machinery was a thousand times greater than that of the caveman and I stated that from these two facts no other conclusion was possible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged 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 1500,000 comrades have brought against your class and you Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot and that in courtesy he should permit the other clamours 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 to raid, 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 and 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 Gelbert 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 give me an intellectual answer to my intellectual charge that the capitalist class has mismanaged society Colonel van Gelbert remained silent a solemn 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 Gelbert has failed to give it would be impossible for me to write all that was said in the discussion I never realised 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 encyclopedic 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 logic this was a false syllogism that conclusion had no connection with the premise while that next premise was an imposter 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 in all the textbooks 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 to the charge that your class is mismanaged you've 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. Wixen 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. Wixen said with slow deliberation I have followed the whole discussion with amazement and disgust I am disgust 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 out-generaled and out-classed 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 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 purple ease that also is a fact a change a great change is coming in society but happily 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 bear the throat rumble arose in the great room and man nodded to man with endorsement and certitude their faces were set hard and they were fighters that was certain but not by buzzing will we crush the bear Mr. Wixen 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 purple ease we will show you what strength is in roar of shell and shrapnel and in wine of machine guns will our answer be couched note the tenor of thought the following definition is quoted from the cynics word book 1906 AD written by one Ambrose Beers and avowed and confirmed misanthrope of the period grape shot, noun an argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American socialism 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 a right 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 I am answered Ernest sequelae it is the only answer that could be given 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. Wilson broke into 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 wine of machine guns shall our answer be couched you cannot escape us it is true that you have read history right 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 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 phylamats end of chapter 5 recording by matt saw montreal matt saw.org chapter 6 of the iron heel by jack london this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by matt saw. at embrations it was about this time that the warnings of coming events began to fall about as thick and fast earnest 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 realise then the peril of our position there were warnings but I did not heed them for instance mrs. Burton-Waith and mrs. Wixen 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 through 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 organised conduct you've given shelter to an enemy of your class and not alone shelter to love yourself this is treason to your class think not that you will escape being penalised 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 I had luncheon with Wilcox Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university whose withered mind was stored with generalisations 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 though 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 oh 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 great 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 honoured me and all the world honoured 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 is not always worn graciously note leg bar the African slaves were so manacled also criminals and 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 I 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 it was not in keeping with university tone and dignity not that he personally objected to 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 with all there was a somber 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 or society in so terrible 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, today one can feel the loom of them things vast, vague and terrible my mind recoils from contemplation of what they may crystallise into you heard wicks and talk the other night behind what he said were the same nameless, formless things that I feel he spoke out of a super conscious apprehension of them you mean father began then paused I mean the 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 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 note like ever hard 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 oh 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 realise 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 you may be wrong but whether you are wrong or right I shall stand by my guns note 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 favourable 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 were 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 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 is out of hand he is too ethical he's 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 culture he feels it is his bound and 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 is 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 or 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 whale 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 the righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate whale 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 us 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 labour I was overjoyed the salary was comparatively large I 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 prophet appointment as a recognition of his abilities and 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 Wixen 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 labour poor betrayed labour 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 will not call any names I am bitter enough over it as it is dear heart I am a captain of labour 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 today 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 a wine supper or a jeweled googor or some similar sense orgy of the parasitic and idle rich his masters the arch beasts End of Chapter 6 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal Matt Saw.org Chapter 7 of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Matt Saw 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 Tonight he is chairman of the IPH and he will embody his message in his introductory remarks Note there is no clue to the name of the organization for which these initials stand may I bring you to hear him of course he is for doomed 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 because of that I want you to know my fullest value I want to redeem in your eyes a 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 tonight sad though this night's happening will be I feel that it will but draw you more closely to me the IPH held its convention that night in San Francisco Note a few minutes to cross by ferry from Berkeley to San Francisco these and the other base it is practically composed one community 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. Heard the great charity organizer Philip Ward the equally great philanthropist and several less luminaries in the field of morality and charity Bishop Morehouse arose and abruptly began I was in my broom 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 broom with me if Jesus was right 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 how 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 filled 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 brooms were made for but now I know they are made to carry the weak, the sick and the aged they are made to show honour 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 surgeries 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 hypocrisy is 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 and 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 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 flash 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 airing soul who yet saw clearly note one of the lords of language of the 19th century of the Christian era 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 born 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 the foxes have holes and every bird it's nest I only I must wonder wearily and bruise my feet and drink wine, salt, with tears 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 the voices that are crying in the land the voices of pain and sorrow that you will not hear but that someday 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 tonight I said think so Ernest queried mockingly it will make a sensation I asserted the reporters scribbling like mad while he was speaking not a line of which will appear in tomorrow'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 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 the mission is to serve the established by molding public opinion and right while it serves it let me prophesy tomorrow'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 or the 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 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 symbolise 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 onto the cold street what was done? she was arrested and arraigned for insanity today she was examined by the regular insanity experts she was found insane she was consigned to the Napa asylum but that is far fetched 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 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 bishops views are just as perilous to society ergo to the asylum with him but I still refuse 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 End of Chapter 7 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal Matt Saw.org Chapter 8 of The Iron Heel by Jack London this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Matt Saw 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 businessmen small businessmen 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 businessmen there was Owen of Silverburg Owen and Company a large grocery firm with several branch stores we bought out groceries from them there were both partners of the big drug firm of Coalton Washburn and Mr. Asmanson 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 ensured they were shrewd faced interesting men and they talked with simplicity and clearness the 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 the 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. Asmanson's narrative of his tribulations as a quarry owner he confessed that he never made any profit 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 the 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 a cue when I place a big contract the terms of which favour 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 the railroad owned the quarry the very thing Mr. Asmanson 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. Asmanson 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. Colt you sell a great deal at cut rates what have become of the owners of the small drug stores that you've forced to the wall note, cut rates alluring of selling price to cost and even to less than cost thus a large company could sell it to last 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. Hasford that has charged now of our prescription department was the answer and you absorb the profits they had been making surely that is what we are in business for and you Ernest says suddenly to Mr. Asmanson you are disgusted because the railroad has absorbed your profits Mr. Asmanson nodded what you want is to make profits yourself again Mr. Asmanson nodded out of others there was no answer out of others Ernest insisted that is the way profits are made Mr. Asmanson replied curtly and then the business came was 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. Asmanson 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. Asmanson amably confessed to the weakness and there was one other man who was quizzed by Ernest at this juncture 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 how did this happen note grange politics many efforts were made during this period to organise the perishing farmer class into a political party the aim of which was to destroy the trust corporations by drastic legislation all such attempts ended in failure oh I haven't quit the fight Ernest said 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 dairy men had everything our own way but you competed among yourselves Ernest interrupted yes that was what kept the profits down we did try to organise but independent dairy men always broke through us then came the milk trust financed by surplus capital from standard oil Ernest said note standard oil 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 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 dairy men only a milk trust but with milk two cents higher I should think you could have competed Ernest suggested slightly so we thought Mr Calvin paused the 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 $50,000 in that venture most of us went bankrupt the dairy men were wiped out of existence note bankruptcy a peculiar institution that enabled an individual who had failed in competitive industry to forego paying his debts with two 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 dairy men Ernest queried 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 had 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 trust 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 he 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's 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 you know what a machine breaker is let me tell you in the 18th 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 manufacturer along came the steam engine and labour 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 needed 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 when you mourn 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 in your branch stores a pawn in the game you see the powerful interest 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 and a steel trust the coal trust and you know that in the end they will destroy you take away from you the last percent 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 where for 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 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 in 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 pigish and acquisitive but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic 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 with all a measure of awe there were a little frightened at this smooth face 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 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 of the confusion why cannot you return because you can't you can no more make water run uphill than you can 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 labour saving machinery of organised 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 ward with each other in economic anarchy and when production was primitive wasteful, unorganised and costly believe me Joshua's task was easier and he had Jehovah to help him than 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 fear 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 combative 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 in less on the side of competition perishes but the trust themselves arose out of competition Mr. Calvin interrupted very true and the trust 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 life against himself and now while we are on the trusts honest 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 can often 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 more costly hand loom method of weaving it is not an 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. Coalt spoke what are we to do then he demanded to destroy the trust 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 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 in acronyms Ernest laughed you prefer to play atavistic roles 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 trust arise have you ever considered where you will stand when the great trust themselves combine into the combination of combinations into the social economic and political trust you turn 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 he 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 what will you do when such a time comes we will rise in our strength Mr. Asmanson cried and many voices backed his decision that will be civil war Ernest warned them so be it civil war was Mr. Asmanson'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 tassily 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 50,000 year by year it has been increased until today it is 300,000 again he struck nor is that all while you diligently pursued that favorite phantom of yours called profits and moralized about that favorite fetish of yours called competition even greater and more direful things have been accomplished by combination there is the militia it is our strength with it we would repel the invasion of the regular army you would go into the militia yourself who was Ernest 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 at 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 affected 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 someone 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 dogs it's 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 and 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 this 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 18 and less than 45 years of age section 7 that any officer or enlisted man remember section 1 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 here in prescribed shall be subject to trial by court-martial and shall be punished as such court-martial shall direct section 8 that courts-martial for the trial of officers or men shall be composed of militia officers only section 9 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 militia men nine years ago we socialists thought that law was aimed against labor but it was seemed 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 cold 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 the 30th 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 the 14th 1903 and just seven days afterward was approved by the President of the United States note Evard was right in the essential particulars though his date of the introduction of the bill is in error the bill was introduced on June the 30th and not on July the 30th the congressional record is here an artist and a reference to it shows mention of the bill on the following dates June the 30th December 9th 15th 16th and 17th 1902 and January 7th and 14th 1903 the ignorance evidenced by the businessman at the dinner was nothing unusual very few people knew of the existence of this law E. Unterman, a revolutionist in July 1903 published a pamphlet at Gerard, Kansas on the militia bill this pamphlet had a small circulation among working men but already had the segregation of classes preceded so far that the members of the middle class never heard of the pamphlet at all and so remained in ignorance of the law End of Chapter 8 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal MattSaw.org