 Chapter 9 of the Iron Heel by Jack London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Saw. The Mathematics of a Dream In the midst of the consternation his revelation had produced, Ernest began again to speak. You have said, a dozen of you tonight, that socialism is impossible. You have asserted the impossible. Now let me demonstrate the inevitable. Not only is it inevitable that you small capitalists shall pass away, but it is inevitable that the large capitalists and the trusts also shall pass away. Remember, the tide of evolution never flows backward. It flows on and on, and it flows from competition to combination, and from little combination to large combination, and from large combination to colossal combination, and it flows on to socialism, which is the most colossal combination of all. You tell me that I dream. Very good. I'll give you the mathematics of my dream. And here in advance I challenge you to show that my mathematics are wrong. I shall develop the inevitability of the breakdown of the capitalist system, and I shall demonstrate mathematically why it must break down. Here goes, and bear with me if at first I seem irrelevant. Let us, first of all, investigate a particular industrial process, and whenever I state something with which you disagree, please interrupt me. Here is a shoe factory. This factory takes leather and makes it into shoes. Here is $100 worth of leather. It goes through the factory and comes out in the form of shoes worth, let us say, $200. What has happened? $100 has been added to the value of the leather. How was it added? Let us see. Capital and labour added this value of $100. Capital furnished the factory, the machines, and paid all the expenses. Labour furnished labour. By the joint effort of capital and labour, $100 of value was added. Are you all agreed so far? Head nodded around the table in affirmation. Labour and capital have produced this $100. Now proceed to divide it. The statistics of this division are fractional, so letters for the sake of convenience make them roughly approximate. Capital takes $50 as its share, and labour gets in wages $50 as its share. We will not enter into the squabbling over the division. Note, Everhard here clearly develops the cause of all the labour troubles of that time. In the division of the joint product, capital wanted all it could get, and labour wanted all it could get. This quarrel over the division was irreconcilable. So long as this system of capitalistic production existed, labour and capital continued to quarrel over the division of the joint product. It is a ludicrous spectacle to us, but we must not forget that we have seven centuries' advantage over those that lived in that time. No matter how much squabbling takes place, in one percentage or another the division is arranged. And take notice here that what is true of this particular industrial process is true of all industrial processes. Am I right? Again, the whole table agreed with Ernest. Now, suppose labour, having received his $50, wants to buy back shoes. It could only buy back $50 worth. That's clear, isn't it? And now we shift from this particular process to the sum total of all industrial processes in the United States, which includes the leather itself, raw material, transportation, selling, everything. We will say, for the sake of round figures, that the total production of wealth in the United States in one year is $4 billion. Then labour has received in wages during the same period $2 billion. $4 billion has been produced. How much of this can labour buy back? $2 billion. There is no discussion of this, I'm sure. For that matter, my percentages are mild. Because of a thousand capitalistic devices, labour cannot buy back even half of the total product. But to return, we will say labour buys back $2 billion. Then it stands to reason that labour can consume only $2 billion. There are still $2 billion to be accounted for, which labour cannot buy back and consume. Labour does not consume its $2 billion, even. If it did, it would not have any deposits in the savings banks. Labour's deposits in the savings banks are only a sort of reserve fund that is consumed as fast as it accumulates. These deposits are saved for old age, for sickness and accident and for funeral expenses. The savings bank deposit is simply a piece of the loaf put back on the shelf to be eaten next day. No, labour consumes all of the total product that its wages will buy back. $2 billion are left to capital. After it has paid its expenses, does it consume the remainder? Does capital consume all of its $2 billion? Then it stopped and put the question point blank to a number of the men. They shook their heads. I don't know, one of them frankly said. Of course you do, Ernest went on. Stop and think at the moment. If capital consumed its share, the sum total of capital could not increase. It would remain constant. If you look at the economic history of the United States you will see that the sum total of capital has continually increased. Therefore capital does not consume its share. Do you remember when England owned so much of our railroad bonds? As the years went by we bought back those bonds. What does that mean? That part of capital's unconsumed share bought back the bonds. What is the meaning of the fact that today the capitalists of the United States own hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of Mexican bonds, Russian bonds, Italian bonds, Grecian bonds. The meaning is that those hundreds and hundreds of millions were part of capital's share which capital did not consume furthermore from the very beginning of the capitalist system. Capital has never consumed all of its share. And now we come to the point. $4 billion of wealth is produced in one year in the United States. Labor buys back and consumes $2 billion. Capital does not consume the remaining $2 billion. There is no large balance left over unconsumed. What is done with this balance? What can be done with it? Labor cannot consume any of it for labor has already spent all its wages. Capital will not consume this balance because already, according to its nature, it has consumed all it can. And still remains the balance. What can be done with it? What is done with it? It is sold abroad, Mr. Coal volunteered. The very thing, Ernest agreed. Because of this balance arises our need for a foreign market. This is sold abroad. It has to be sold abroad. There is no other way of getting rid of it. And that unconsumed surplus, sold abroad, becomes what we call our favourable balance of trade. And we all agreed so far. Surely it is a waste of time to elaborate these ABCs of commerce. Mr. Calvin said tartly, we all understand them. And it is by these ABCs I have so carefully elaborated that I shall confound you, Ernest retorted. There is the beauty of it. And I am going to confound you with them right now. Here goes. The United States is a capitalist country that has developed its resources. According to its capitalist system of industry, it has an unconsumed surplus that must be got rid of, and that must be got rid of abroad. Note, Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States a few years prior to this time, made the following public declaration. A more liberal and extensive reciprocity in the purchase and sale of commodities is necessary so that the overproduction of the United States can be satisfactorily disposed of to foreign countries. Of course, this overproduction he mentions was the profits of the capitalist system over and beyond the consuming power of the capitalists. It was at this time that Senator Mark Hanna said, the production of wealth in the United States is one-third larger annually than its consumption. Also a fellow senator, Chauncey De Pugh said, the American people produce annually two billions more wealth than they consume. What is true of the United States is true of every other capitalist country with developed resources. Every one of such countries has an unconsumed surplus. Don't forget that they have already traded with one another and that these surpluses yet remain. Labor in all these countries has spent its wages and cannot buy any of the surpluses. Capital in all these countries has already consumed all it is able according to its nature and still remain the surpluses. They cannot dispose of these surpluses to one another. How are they going to get rid of them? Sell them to countries with undeveloped resources. Mr. Cowell suggested the very thing. You see, my argument is so clear and simple that in your own minds you carry it on for me. And now for the next step. Suppose the United States disposes of its surplus to a country with undeveloped resources like, say, Brazil. Remember this surplus is over and above trade, which articles of trade have been consumed. What then does the United States get in return from Brazil? Gold. Said Mr. Cowell. But there is only so much gold and not much of it in the world. And it's objected. Gold in the form of securities and bonds and so forth. Mr. Cowell demanded. Now you've struck it, Ernest said. From Brazil, the United States in return for her surplus gets bonds and securities. And what does that mean? It means that the United States is coming to own railroads in Brazil, factories, mines and lands in Brazil. And what is the meaning of that in turn? Mr. Cowell pundered and shook his head. I'll tell you, Ernest continued. It means that the resources of Brazil are being developed. And now the next point. When Brazil, under the capitalist system, has developed her resources, she will herself have an un-consumed surplus. Can she get rid of this surplus to the United States? No, because the United States has herself a surplus. Can the United States do what she previously did, and get rid of her surplus to Brazil? No, for Brazil now has a surplus too. What happens? The United States and Brazil must both seek out other countries with undeveloped resources in order to unload the surpluses on them. But by the very process of unloading the surpluses, the resources of those countries are in turn developed. Soon they have surpluses and are seeking other countries on which to unload. Now, gentlemen, follow me. The planet is only so large. There are only so many countries in the world. What will happen when every country in the world, down to the smallest and last, with a surplus in its hands, stands confronting every other country with surpluses in their hands? He paused and regarded his listeners. The puzzlement in their faces was delicious. Also, there was awe in their faces. Out of abstractions Ernest had conjured a vision and made them see it. They were seeing it then, as they sat there, and they were frightened by it. We started with A, B, C, Mr. Galvin. Ernest said, Slyly, I have now given you the rest of the alphabet. It is very simple. That is the beauty of it. You surely have the answer forthcoming. What then, when every country in the world has an un-consumed surplus? Why will your capitalist system be then? But Mr. Galvin shook a troubled head. He was obviously questing back through Ernest's reasoning in search of an error. Let me briefly go over the ground with you again. Ernest said, We began with a particular industrial process, the Shoe Factory. We found that the division of the joint product that took place there was similar to the division that took place in the sum total of all industrial processes. We found that Labour could buy back with its wages only so much of the product and that capital did not consume all of the remainder of the product. We found that when Labour had consumed to the full extent of its wages and when capital had consumed all it wanted, there was still left an un-consumed surplus. We agreed that this surplus could only be disposed of abroad. We agreed also that the effect of unloading this surplus on another country would be to develop the resources of that country and that in a short time that country would have an un-consumed surplus. We extended this process to all the countries on the planet till every country was producing every year and every day an un-consumed surplus which it could dispose of to no other country. And now I ask you again, what are we going to do with those surpluses? Still no one answered. Mr. Galvin. Ernest queried. Oh, it beats me. Mr. Galvin confessed. I never dreamed of such a thing, Mr. Asmanson said, and yet it does seem clear as print. It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx's doctrine of surplus values elaborated and Ernest had done it so simply that I too sat puzzled and dumbfounded. Note. Karl Marx, the great intellectual hero of socialism, the German Jew of the 19th century, a contemporary of John Stuart Mill. It seems incredible to us that whole generations should have elapsed after the annunciation of Marx's economic discoveries, in which time he was snared out by the world's accepted thinkers and scholars. Because of his discoveries he was banished from his native country and he died in exile in England. I'll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus, Ernest said. Throw it into the sea. Throw every year hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shoes and wheat and clothing and all the commodities of commerce into the sea. Will not fix it? Well, it'll certainly fix it, Mr. Calvin answered, but it is absurd for you to talk that way. Ernest was upon him like a flash. Is it a bit more absurd than what you advocate? You machine-breaker, returning to the antediluvian ways of your forefathers? What do you propose in order to get rid of the surplus? You would escape the problem of the surplus by not producing any surplus, and how do you propose to avoid producing a surplus? By returning to a primitive method of production, confused and disorderly and irrational, so wasteful and costly that it will be impossible to produce a surplus? Mr. Calvin swallowed. The point had been driven home. He swallowed again and cleared his throat. You are right, he said. I stand convicted. It is absurd, but we've got to do something. It is a case of life and death for us of the middle class. We refuse to perish. We elect to be absurd and to return to the truly crude and wasteful methods of our forefathers. We will put back industry to its pre-trust stage. We will break the machines. And what are you going to do about it? But you can't break the machines. And, as replied, you cannot make the tide of evolution flow backward. Opposed to you are two great forces, each of which is more powerful than you of the middle class. The large capitalists, the trusts, in short, will not let you turn back. They don't want the machines destroyed. And greater than the trusts and more powerful is labour. It will not let you destroy the machines. The ownership of the world along with the machines lies between the trusts and labour. That is the battle alignment. Neither side wants the destruction of the machines, but each side wants to possess the machines. In this battle the middle class has no place. The middle class is a pygmy between two giants. Don't you see, you poor perishing middle class? You are caught between the upper and nether millstones. And even now has the grinding begun. I have demonstrated to you mathematically the inevitable breakdown of the capitalist system. When every country stands with an unconsumed and unsalable surplus on its hands, the capitalist system will break down under the terrific structure of profits that it itself has reared. And in that day there won't be any destruction of the machines. The struggle then will be for the ownership of the machines. If labour wins, your way will be easy. The United States and the whole world for that matter will enter upon a new and tremendous era, instead of being crushed by the machines, life will be made fairer and happier and nobler by them. You of the destroyed middle class, along with labour, there will be nothing but labour then. So you and all the rest of labour will participate in the equitable distribution of the products of the wonderful machines. And we, all of us, will make new and more wonderful machines. And there won't be any unconsumed surplus, because there won't be any profits. But suppose the trusts win in this battle over the ownership of the machines and the world, Mr. Kowalt asked. Then, Ernst-Hahn said, you and labour, and all of us, will be crushed under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man. That will be a good name for that despotism, the iron heel. Note, the earliest known use of that name to designate the oligarchy. There was a long pause, and every man at the table meditated in ways unwanted and profound. But the socialism of yours is a dream, Mr. Kowalt said, and repeated, a dream. I'll show you something that isn't a dream then, Ernst-Hahn said, and that's something I shall call the oligarchy. You call it the plutocracy. We both mean the same thing, the large capitalists or the trusts. Let us see where the power lies today. And in order to do so, let us apportion society into its class divisions. There are three big classes in society. First comes the plutocracy, which is composed of wealthy bankers, railway magnets, corporation directors, and trust magnates. Second is the middle class, your class, gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants, small manufacturers, and professional men. And third and last comes my class, the proletariat, which is composed of the wage workers. Note, this division of society made by Everhard is in accordance with that made by Lucian Sannil, one of the statistical authorities of that time. His calculation of the membership of these divisions by occupation from the United States censors of 1900 is as follows. Plutocratic class, 250,251. Middle class, 8,429,845. And proletariat class, 20,393,137. You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth constitutes a central power in the United States today. How is this wealth owned by these three classes? Here are the figures. The plutocracy owns 67 billions of wealth. Of the total number of persons engaged in occupations in the United States, only 9 tenths of 1% are from the plutocracy, yet the plutocracy owns 70% of the total wealth. The middle class owns 24 billions. 29% of those in occupations are from the middle class, and they own 25% of the total wealth. Remains the proletariat. It owns 4 billions. Of all persons in occupations, 70% come from the proletariat, and the proletariat owns 4% of the total wealth. Where does the power lie, gentlemen? Well, from your own figures, we of the middle class are more powerful than labor, Mr. Asmonson remarked. Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the face of the strength of the plutocracy, and it's retorted, and furthermore, I'm not done with you. There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater because it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the strength of the proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers. The strength we cannot be stripped of, it is the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane. It is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and the wealth cannot take away. But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you. Even now the plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end it will take it all away from you, and then you will cease to be the middle class. You will descend to us. You will become proletarians, and the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you, brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity. You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled. Its share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and household furniture, with here and there in very rare cases an unencumbered home. But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of it, and the plutocracy will take it away from you. Of course there is the large likelihood that the proletariat will take it away first. Don't you see your position, gentlemen? The middle class is a wobbly little lamb between a lion and a tiger. If one doesn't get you, the other will. And if the plutocracy gets you first, why, it's only a matter of time when the proletariat gets the plutocracy. Even your present wealth is not a true measure of your power. The strength of your wealth at this moment is only an empty shell. That is why you are crying out your feeble little battle cry. Return to the ways of our fathers. You are aware of your plutocracy. You know that your strength is an empty shell. And I'll show you the emptiness of it. What power of the farmers? Over fifty percent are thralls by virtue of the fact that they are merely tenants or un-mortgaged. And all of them are thralls by virtue of the fact that the trusts already own or control, which is the same thing only better, own and control all the means of marketing the crops, such as cold storage, railroads, elevators and steamship lines. And furthermore, the trusts control the markets. In all this, the farmers are without power. As regards their political and governmental power, I'll take that up later, along with the political and governmental power of the whole middle class. Day by day, the trusts squeeze out the farmers as they squeezed out Mr. Calvin and the rest of the dairymen. And day by day, are the merchants squeezed out in the same way. Do you remember how, in six months, the tobacco trusts squeezed out over four hundred cigar stores in New York City alone? Where are the old-time owners of the coal fields? You know today, without my telling you, that the railroad trust owns or controls the entire anthracite and petuminous coal fields. Does the Standard Oil Trust own a score of the ocean lines? Note. Standard Oil and Rockefeller. See upcoming footnote. Rockefeller began as a member. And does it not also control copper? To say nothing of running a smelter trust as a little side enterprise? There are ten thousand cities in the United States tonight lighted by the companies owned or controlled by Standard Oil. And in as many cities, all the electric transportation, urban suburban and interurban is in the hands of Standard Oil. The small capitalists who were in these thousands of enterprises are gone. You know that. It's the same way that you are going. The small manufacturers, like the farmer, and small manufacturers and farmers today are reduced to all intents and purposes to feudal tenure. For that matter, the professional men and the artists are at this present moment villains in everything but name, while the politicians are henchmen. Why do you, Mr. Calvin, work all your nights and days to organize the farmers, along with the rest of the middle class, into a new political party? Because the politicians of the old parties will have nothing to do with your atavistic ideas. And with your atavistic ideas, they will have nothing to do, because they are what I said they are, henchmen, retainers of the plutocracy. I spoke of the professional men and the artists as villains. What else are they? One and all. The professors, the preachers, and the editors hold their jobs by serving the plutocracy. And their service consists of propagating only such ideas as are either harmless to or commendatory of the plutocracy. Whenever they propagate ideas that menace the plutocracy, they lose their jobs. In which case, if they have not provided for the rainy day, they descend into the proletariat and either perish or become working-class agitators, and don't forget that it is the press, the pulpit, and the university that mould public opinion, set the thought-pace of the nation. As for the artists, they merely pander to the little less than ignoble taste of the plutocracy. But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power. It is the means to power, and power is governmental. Who controls the government today? The proletariat, with its 20 millions engaged in occupations? Even you laugh at the idea. Does the middle class, with its 8 million occupied members? No more than the proletariat. Who then controls the government? The plutocracy, with its poultry quarter of a million of occupied members. But this quarter of a million does not control the government, though it renders yeoman service. It is the brain of the plutocracy that controls the government, and this brain consists of seven small and powerful groups of men. And do not forget that these groups are working today practically in unison. Even as late as 1907, it was considered that 11 groups dominated the country, but this number was reduced by the amalgamation of the five railroad groups into a supreme combination of all the railroads. These five groups so amalgamated, along with their financial and political allies, were one, James J. Hill with his control of the Northwest, two, the Pennsylvania Railway Group, Schiff Financial Manager with big banking firms of Philadelphia and New York, three, Harriman with Frick for Council and Odell as political lieutenant controlling the Central Continental, Southwestern and Southern Pacific coastlines of transportation, four, the Gould family railway interests, and five, Moore, Reed and Leeds, known as the Rock Island crowd. These strong oligarchs rose out of the conflict of competition and travelled the inevitable road toward combination. Let me point out the power of but one of them, the Railroad Group. It employs 40,000 lawyers to defeat the people in the courts. It issues countless thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors, ministers, university men, and state legislatures and of Congress. It maintains luxurious lobbies at every state capital and at the national capital, and in all the cities and towns of the land, it employs an immense army of petty foggers and small politicians, whose businesses to attend primaries, PAC conventions, get on jurors, bribe judges, and in every way to work for its interests. Note, lobby, a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing and corrupting the legislatures who were supposed to represent the people's interests. Note, a decade before the speech of Everards, the New York Board of Trade issued a report from which the following is quoted. The Railroad's control absolutely the legislatures of a majority of the states of the Union. They make and unmake United States senators, congressmen and governors, and are practically dictators of the governmental policy of the United States. Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven groups that constitute the brain of the plutocracy. Your 24 billions of wealth does not give you 25 cents worth of governmental power. It is an empty shell, and soon even the empty shell will be taken away from you. The plutocracy has all power in its hands today. It today makes the laws for it owns the senate, congress, the courts, and the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind law must be forced to execute the law. Today the plutocracy makes the law and to enforce the law it has at its back and call the police, the army, the navy, and lastly the militia, which is you and me. And all of us. Note. Rockefeller began as a member of the proletariat and through thrift and cunning succeeded in developing the first perfect trust, namely that known as Standard Oil. We cannot forbear giving the following remarkable page from the history of the times to show how the need for reinvestment of the Standard Oil surplus crushed out small capitalists and hastened the breakdown of the capitalist system. David Graham Phillips was a radical writer of the period and the quotation by him is taken from a copy of the Saturday evening poster dated October 4th 1902 AD. This is the only copy of this publication that has come down to us and yet from its appearance and content we cannot but conclude that it was one of the popular periodicals with a large circulation. The quotation here follows. About 10 years ago Rockefeller's income was given as 30 millions by an excellent authority. He had reached the limit of profitable investment of profits in the oil industry. Here then were these enormous sums in cash pouring in more than $2 million a month for John Davis and Rockefeller alone. The problem of reinvestment became more serious. It became a nightmare. The oil income was swelling, swelling, and the number of sound investments limited even more limited than it is now. It was through no special eagerness for more gains that the Rockefellers began to branch out from oil into other things. They were forced, swept on by this enrolling tide of wealth which their monopoly magnet irresistibly attracted. They developed a staff of investment seekers and investigators. It is said that the chief has a salary of $125,000 a year. The first conspicuous excursion and incursion of the Rockefellers was into the railway field. By 1895 they controlled one-fifth of the railway mileage of the country. What do they own or through dominant ownership control today? They are powerful in all the great railways of New York, North, East and West, except one where their share is only a few millions. They are in most of the great railways graduating from Chicago. They dominate in several of the systems that extend to the Pacific. It is their votes that make Mr. Morgan so potent though, it may be added. They need his brains more than he needs their votes. They are present and the combination of the two constitutes in large measure the community of interest. But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those mighty floods of gold. Presently, John D. Rockefeller's $2.5 million a month had increased to four, to five, to six millions a month, to 75 millions a year. Illuminating oil was becoming all profit. The reinvestments of income were adding their might of many annual millions. The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those industries had developed the safe investment stage. And now a large part of the American people must begin to enrich the Rockefellers as soon as the sun goes down, no matter what form of illuminant they use. They went into farm mortgages. It is said that when prosperity a few years ago enabled the farmers to rid themselves of their mortgages, John D. Rockefeller was moved almost to tears. Eight millions which he had thought taken care of for years to come, at a good interest, and set up a squawking for a new home. This unexpected addition to his worryments in finding places for the progeny of his petroleum and their progeny and their progeny's progeny was too much for the equanimity of a man without a digestion. The Rockefellers went into mines, iron and coal and copper and lead, into other industrial companies, into street railways, into national, state and municipal bonds, into steamships and steamboats and telegraphy, into real estate, into skyscrapers and residences and hotels and business blocks, into life insurance, into banking. There was soon literally no field of industry where their millions were not at work. The Rockefeller Bank, the national city bank, is by itself far and away the biggest bank in the United States. It is exceeded in the world only by the Bank of England and the Bank of France. The deposits average more than 100 millions a day and it dominates the call loan market on Wall Street and the stock market. But it is not alone. It is the head of the Rockefeller chain of banks which includes 14 banks and trust companies in New York City and banks of great strength and influence in every large money centre in the country. John D. Rockefeller owned standard oil stock worth between four and five hundred millions at the market quotations. He has 100 millions in steel trust almost as much in a single western railway system, half as much in a second and so on and on and on until the mind where is of the cataloging. His income last year was about $100 million. It is doubtful if the incomes of all the Rothschilds together make a greater sum and it is going up by leaps and bounds. Little discussion took place after this and the dinner soon broke up. All were quiet and subdued and leave-taking was done with low voices. It seemed almost that they were scared by the vision of the times they had seen. The situation is indeed serious, Mr Calvin said to Ernest, I have little quarrel with the way you have depicted it. Only I disagree with you about the doom of the middle class. We shall survive and we shall overthrow the trusts and return to the ways of your fathers. Ernest finished for him. Even so, Mr Calvin answered gravely, I know it is a sort of machine-breaking and that it is absurd, but then life seems absurd today. What of the machinations of the putocracy? And at any rate, our sort of machine-breaking is at least practical and possible, which your dream is not. Your socialistic dream is well, a dream. We cannot follow you. I only wish you fellows knew a little something about evolution and sociology. Ernest said wistfully as they shook hands. We would be saved so much trouble if you did. And I, a little I, who had lived so placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found myself and my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great world affairs. Whether it was my love for Ernest or the clear sight he had given me of the society in which I lived that made me a revolutionist, I know not. But a revolutionist I became. And I was plunged into a whirl of happenings that would have been inconceivable in the short months before. The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises in society. First of all, father was discharged from the university. Oh, he was not technically discharged. His resignation was demanded. That was all. This in itself did not amount to much. Father, in fact, was delighted. He was especially delighted because his discharge had been precipitated by the publication of his book Economics and Education. What better evidence could be advanced to prove that education was dominated by the capitalist class? But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew he had been forced to resign from the university. He was so eminent a scientist that such an announcement, coupled with the reason for his enforced resignation, would have created somewhat of a furor all over the world. The newspapers showered him with praise and honour and commended him for having given up the drudgery of the lecture room in order to launch his whole time to scientific research. At first, father laughed. Then he became angry. Tonic angry. Then came the suppression of his book. This suppression was performed secretly. So secretly that at first we could not comprehend. The publication of the book had immediately caused a bit of excitement in the country. Father had been politely abused in the capitalist press, the tone of the abuse being to the effect that it was a pity so great a scientist should leave his field of sociology about which he knew nothing and wherein he had promptly become lost. This lasted for a week while father chuckled and said the book had touched a sore spot on capitalism. And then, abruptly, the newspapers and the critical magazines ceased to saying anything about the book at all. Also and with equal sadness the book disappeared from the market. Not a copy was obtainable from any bookseller. Father wrote to the publishers and was informed that the plates had been accidentally injured. An unsatisfactory correspondence followed driven finally to an unequivocal stand the publishers stated that they could not see their way to putting the book into time again but that they were willing to relinquish their right in it. And you won't find another publishing house in the country to touch it, Ernest said. And if I were you, I'd hunt cover right now. You've merely got a foretaste of the iron heel. But father was nothing but a scientist. He never believed in jumping to conclusions. A laboratory experiment was no experiment if it were not carried through in all its details. So he patiently went the round of the publishing houses. They gave a multitude of excuses but not one house would consider the book. When father became convinced that the book had actually been suppressed he tried to get the fact into the newspapers but his communications were ignored. At a political meeting of the socialists where many reporters were present father saw his chance. He arose and related the history of the suppression of the book. He laughed next day when he read the newspapers and then he grew angry to a degree that eliminated all tarnic qualities. The papers made no mention of the book but they misreported him beautifully. They twisted his words and phrases away from the context and turned his subdued and controlled remarks into a howling anarchistic speech. It was done artfully. One instance in particular I remember he had used the phrase social revolution. The reporter merely dropped out social. This was sent out all over the country in an associated press dispatch and from all over the country arose a cry of alarm. Father was branded as a nihilist and an anarchist and in one cartoon that was copied widely he was portrayed waving a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired, wild-eyed men who bore in their hands tortures, knives and dynamite bombs. He was assailed terribly in the press in long and abusive editorials for his anarchy and hints were made of mental breakdown on his part. This behaviour on the part of the capitalist press was nothing new, Ernest told us. It was the custom he said to send reporters to all the socialist meetings for the express purpose of misreporting and distorting what was said in order to frighten the middle class away from any possible affiliation with the proletariat and repeatedly Ernest warned Father to cease fighting and to take to cover. The socialist press of the country took up the fight however and throughout the reading portion of the working class it was known that the book had been suppressed but this knowledge stocked with the working class. The appeal to reason a big socialist publishing house arranged with Father to bring out the book. Father was jubilant but Ernest was alarmed. I'll tell you we are on the verge of the unknown he insisted. Big things are happening secretly all around us. We can feel them. We do not know what they are but they are there. The whole fabric of society is a tremble with them. Don't ask me. But out of this flux of society something is about to crystallise it is crystallising now. The suppression of the book is a precipitation. How many books have been suppressed? We have the least idea. We are in the dark. We have no way of learning. Watch out next for the suppression of the socialist press and socialist publishing houses. I'm afraid it's coming. We are going to be throttled. Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even more closely than the rest of the socialists and within two days the first blow was struck. The appeal to reason was a weekly and its regular circulation among the proletariat was 750,000. Also it very frequently got out special editions of from two to five millions. These great editions were paid for and distributed by the small army of voluntary workers who had marshaled around the appeal. The first blow was aimed at these special editions and it was a crushing one. By an arbitrary ruling of the post office these editions were decided to be not the regular circulation of the paper and for that reason were denied admission to the males. A week later the post office department ruled that the paper was seditious and barred it entirely from the males. This was a fearful blow to the socialist propaganda. The appeal was desperate. It devised a plan of reaching its subscribers through the express companies but they declined to handle it. This was the end of the appeal but not quite. 20,000 copies of father's book were in the bindery and the presses were turning off more and then without warning a mob arose one night and under a waving American flag singing patriotic songs set fire to the great part of the appeal and totally destroyed it. Now, Girard, Kansas was a quiet, peaceable town. There had never been any labour troubles there. The appeal paid union wages and in fact was the backbone of the town giving employment to hundreds of men and women. It was not the citizens of Girard that composed the mob. This mob had risen up out of the earth, apparently and all intents and purposes its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest saw in the affair the most sinister import. The black hundreds are being organised in the United States. He said, this is the beginning. There will be more of it. It is getting bold. Note the black hundreds were reactionary mobs organised by the perishing autocracy in the Russian Revolution. These reactionary groups attacked the revolutionary groups and also at needed moments rioted and destroyed property so as to afford the autocracy the pretext of calling out the Cossacks and so perished Father's book. We were to see much of the black hundreds as the days went by. Week by week more of the socialist papers were barred from the mails and a number of instances the black hundreds destroyed the socialist presses. Of course the newspapers of the land lived up to the reactionary policy of the ruling class and the destroyed socialist press was misrepresented and vilified while the black hundreds were represented as true patriots and saviours of society. So convincing was all this misrepresentation that even sincere ministers in the pulpit praised the black hundreds while regretting the necessity of violence. History was making fast. The fall elections were soon to occur and Ernest was nominated by the Socialist Party to run for Congress. His chance for election was most favourable. The streetcar strike in San Francisco had been broken and following upon it the Teamsters' strike had been broken. These two defeats had been very disastrous to organise labour. The whole waterfront federation along with its allies and the structural trades had backed up the Teamsters and all had smashed down in gloriously. It had been a bloody strike the police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs and were augmented by the turning loose of a machine gun on the strikers from the barns of the Marsden special delivery company. In consequence the men were sullen and vindictive they wanted blood and revenge. Beaten on their chosen field they were ripe to seek revenge by means of political action. They still maintained their labour organisation and this gave them strength in the political struggle that was on. Ernest's chance for election grew stronger and stronger. Day by day unions and more unions supported their support to the socialists until even Ernest laughed when the undertaker's assistants and the chicken pickers fell into line. Labour became mullish. While it packed the socialist meetings with mad enthusiasm it was impervious to the wiles of the old party politicians. The old party orators were usually greeted with empty halls though occasionally they encountered full halls where they were so roughly handled that more than once it was necessary to call out the police reserves. History was making fast. The air was vibrant with things happening and impending. The country was on the verge of hard times caused by a series of prosperous years wherein the difficulty of disposing abroad of the unconsumed surplus had become increasingly difficult. Industries were working short time. Many great factors were standing idle against the time when the surplus should be gone and wages were being cut right and left. Note under the capitalist regime these periods of hard times were as inevitable as they were absurd. This, of course, was due to the excess of unconsumed profits that was piled up. Also the great machinist strike had been broken. 200,000 machinists along with their 500,000 allies in the metalworking trades had been defeated in as bloody a strike as at Evermarg, the United States. Pitched battles had been fought with the small armies of army strike breakers put in the field by the employers' associations. The black hundreds appearing in scores of wide-scattered places destroyed property and, in consequence, 100,000 regular soldiers of the United States had been called out to put a frightful end to the whole affair. A number of the labor leaders had been executed. Many others had been sentenced to prison while thousands of the rank and file of the strikers had been herded into bullpens and abominably treated by the soldiers. Note strike breakers these were in purpose and practice and everything except the name of private soldiers of the capitalists. They were organized and well-armed and they were held in readiness to be held in special trains to any part of the country where labor went on strike or was locked out by the employers. Only those curious times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of one, Farley, a notorious commander of strike breakers who, in 1906, swept across the United States in special trains from New York to San Francisco with an army of 2,500 men fully armed and equipped to break a strike of the San Francisco streetcar men. Such an act was in direct violation of the laws of the land. The fact that this act and thousands of similar acts went unpunished goes to show how completely the judiciary was the creature of the plutocracy. Note bullpen In a minor strike in Idaho, in the latter part of the 19th century, it happened that many of the strikers were confined in a bullpen by the troops. The practice and the name continued in the 20th century. The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were cluttered. All markets were fallen and amidst the general crumble of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there and everywhere. And where it was not striking it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and blood and through it all the black hundreds played their part. Riot, arson and wanton destruction of property was their function and while they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field by the actions of the black hundreds. Note the name only and not the idea was imported from Russia. The black hundreds were a development out of the secret agents of the capitalists and their use arose in the labor struggles of the 19th century. There is no discussion of this. No less an authority of the times than Carol D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor is responsible for the statement. From his book entitled The Battles of Labor is quoted the declaration that the employers themselves have instigated acts of violence, that manufacturers have deliberately provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock and that freight cars have been burned by employers' agents during railroad strikes in order to increase disorder. It was out of these secret agents of the employers that the black hundreds arose and it was they in turn that later became that terrible weapon of the oligarchy, the ashram provocateur. Never had labor received such an all-round beating. The great captains of industry, the oligarchs had for the first time thrown their full weight to reach the struggling employers' associations had made. These associations were practically middle-class affairs and now compelled by hard times and crashing markets and aided by the great captains of industry they gave organized labor an awful and decisive defeat. It was an all-powerful alliance but it was an alliance of the lion and the lamb as the middle class was soon to learn. Labor was bloody and sullen but crushed. Yet its defeat did not put an end to the hard times. The banks themselves constituting one of the most important forces of the oligarchy continued to call in credits. The Wall Street group turned the stock market into a maelstrom where the values of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness and out of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent oligarchy imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude was terrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power but it used all the power of the United States treasury to carry out its plans. Note Wall Street. So named from a street in ancient New York where was situated the stock exchange and where the irrational organization of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of the country. The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. The employees' associations that had helped the captains of industry to tear and rend labor were now torn and rent by their quantum allies. Amidst the crashing of the middle men the small businessmen and manufacturers the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts did more than stand firm. They were active. They sowed wind and wind and evermore wind for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profit out of it. And such profits, colossal profits, strong enough themselves to weather the storm that was largely their own brewing they turned loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them. Values were pitifully and inconceivably shrunken and the trusts added hugely to their holdings even extending their enterprises into many new fields and always at the expense of the middle class. Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death thrust to the middle class. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it had been done. He shook his head ominously and looked forward without hope to the fall elections. It's no use, he said. We are beaten. The iron hill is here. I had hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot box. I was wrong. Wixon was right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties. The iron hill will walk upon our faces. Nothing remains but a bloody revolution of the working class. Of course we will win. But I shudder to think of it. And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this he was in advance of his party. His fellow socialists could not agree with him. They still insisted that victory could be gained through the elections. It was not that they were stunned. They were too cool-headed and courageous for that. They were merely incredulous. That was all. Ernest could not get them seriously to fear the coming of the oligarchy. They were stirred by him. But they were too sure of their own strength. There was no room in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy. Therefore the oligarchy could not be. We'll send you to Congress. And it will be all right. They told him at one of our secret meetings. And when they take me out of Congress, Ernest replied coldly, and put me against the wall and blow my brains out. What then? Then we'll rise in our might. That doesn't voice his answer at once. Then you'll welter in your gore. Was his retort. I've heard that song sung by the middle class. And where is it now? And it's might. End of chapter 10 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal Matt Saw.org Chapter 11 Of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Saw The Great Adventure Mr. Wixon did not send for father. They met by chance on the ferry boat to San Francisco so that the warning he gave father was not premeditated. Had they not met accidentally, there would not have been any warning. Not that the outcome would have been different, however. Father came of stout old Mayflower stock and the blood was imperative in him. Note the Mayflower, one of the first ships that carried colonies to America after the discovery of the New World. Descendants of these original colonists were for a while inordinately proud of their genealogy, but in time the blood became so widely diffused that it would be difficult for them to understand what was going on. In time the blood became so widely diffused that it ran in the veins practically of all Americans. Ernest was right. He told me as soon as he had returned home. Ernest is a very remarkable young man and I'd rather see you his wife than the wife of Rockefeller himself or the king of England. What's the matter? I asked in alarm. The oligarchy is about to tread upon our faces, yours and mine. Wixon as much as told me so. He offered to reinstate me in the university. What do you think of that? He, Wixon, a sordid money-grabber has the power to determine whether I shall or shall not teach in the University of the State. But he offered me even better than that. Offered to make me president of some great college of physical sciences that is being planned. The oligarchy must get rid of its surplus somehow, you see. Do you remember what I told that socialist lover of your daughters? He said. I told him that we would walk upon the faces of the working class, and so we shall. As for you, I have for you a deep respect as a scientist, but if you throw your fortunes in with the working class, well, watch out for your face, that is all. And then he turned and left me. It means we'll have to marry earlier than you planned. There was Ernest's comment when we told him. I could not follow his reasoning, but I was soon to learn it. It was at this time that the quarterly dividend was paid, or rather, should have been paid, for father did not receive his. After waiting several days, father wrote to the secretary. Promptly came the reply that there was no record on the box of father's owning any stock and a polite request for more explicit information. I'll make it explicit enough! Confound him! Father declared and departed for the bank to get the stock in question from his safe deposit box. Ernest is a very remarkable man. He said when he got back and while I was helping him off with his overcoat. I repeat, my daughter, that young man of yours is a very remarkable young man. I had learned whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion to expect disaster. They have already walked upon my face, father explained. There was no stock. The box was empty. You and Ernest will have to get married pretty quickly. Father insisted on the baritry methods. He did not control the courts and the Sierra Mills did. That explained it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law and the bare-faced robbery held good. It is almost laughable now when I look back on it the way father was beaten. He met Wixon accidentally on the street in San Francisco and he told Wixon that he was a damned scoundrel and then father was arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court and bound over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that when he got home he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the local papers. There was grave talk about the bacillus of violence that infected all men who embraced socialism and father with his long and peaceful life was instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus of violence worked. Also it was asserted by more than one paper that father's mind had weakened under the strain of scientific study and confinement in a state of asylum where pain was suggested. What was this merely talk? It was an imminent peril. The father was wise enough to see it. He had the bishops experienced a lesson from and he lessened well. He kept quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated on him and really I think surprised his enemies. There was the matter of the house, our home. A mortgage was foreclosed on it and we had to give up possession. Of course there wasn't any mortgage there had been any mortgage. The ground had been bought outright and the house had been paid for when it was built and house and lot had always been free and unencumbered. Nevertheless there was the mortgage properly and legally drawn up and signed with a record of the payments of interest through a number of years. Father made no outcry as he had been robbed of his money so was he now robbed of his home and he had no recourse. The machinery of society was in the hands and breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart and he was no longer even angry. I am doomed to be broken, he said to me. But that is no reason that I should not try to be shattered as little as possible. These old bones of mine are fragile and I've learned my lesson. God knows I don't want to spend my last days in an insane asylum which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse whom I've neglected for many pages but first let me tell of my marriage. In the play of events my marriage sinks into insignificance I know so I shall barely mention it. Now we shall become real proletarians Father said when we were driven from our home I have often envied that young man of yours for his actual knowledge of the proletariat. Now I shall see and learn for myself. Father must have had strong in him the blood of adventure. He looked upon our catastrophe in the light of an adventure. The poor bitterness possessed him. He was too philosophic and simple to be vindictive and he lived too much in the world of mine to miss the creature comforts we were giving up. So it was when we moved to San Francisco into four wretched rooms in the slum south of Market Street that he embarked upon the adventure with the joy and enthusiasm of a child combined with the clear sight and mental grasp of an extraordinary intellect. He really never crystallized mentally. He had no false sense of values. The only values he recognized were mathematical and scientific facts. My father was a great man. He had the mind and the soul that only great men have in ways he was even greater than honest than whom I have known and none greater. Even I found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else I was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise adventure and the greatest of all love adventure. The change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage and was as a wife that I came to live in the four rooms on Pell Street in the San Francisco slum. And this out of all remains. I made Ernest happy. I came into his stormy life not as a new perturbing force but as one that made toward peace and repose. I gave him rest. It was the garden of my love for him. It was the one infallible token that I had not failed. To bring forgetfulness or the light of gladness into those poor tired eyes of his what greater joy could have blessed me than that. Those dear tired eyes he toiled as few men ever toiled and all his lifetime he toiled for others. That was the measure of his manhood. He was a humanist and a lover. And he with his incarnate spirit of battle and his holy and his eagle spirit he was as gentle and tender to me as a poet. He was a poet a singer in deeds and all his life he sang the song of man and he did it out of sheer love of man and for man he gave his life and was crucified. And all this he did with no hope of future reward in his conception of things there was no future life he who fairly burnt with immortality denied himself immortality such was the paradox of him he so warm in spirit was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy materialistic monism I used to refute him by telling him that I measured his immortality by the wings of his soul and that I should have to live endless eons in order to achieve the full measurement where he would laugh and his arms would leap out to me and he would call me his sweet metaphysician and the tiredness would pass out of his eyes and would flood the happy love light that was in itself a new and sufficient advertisement of his immortality also he used to call me his dualist and he would explain how Kent by means of pure reason had abolished reason in order to worship God and he drew the parallel and included me guilty of a similar act and when I pleaded guilty but defended the act as highly rational he but pressed me closer and laughed as only one of God's own lovers could laugh I was wont to deny that heredity and environment could explain his own originality and genius any more than could the cold, grouping finger of science catch and analyse and classify that elusive essence that lurked in the constitution of life itself I held that space was an apparition of God and that soul was a projection of the character of God and when he called me his sweet metaphysician I called him my immortal materialist and so we loved and were happy and I forgave him his materialism because of his tremendous work in the world performed without thought of soul gain thereby and because of his so exceeding modesty of spirit that prevented him from having pride and regal consciousness of himself and his soul but he had pride how could he have been an eagle and not have pride his contention was that it was finer for a finite mortal speck of life to feel God like and so it was that he exalted what he deemed his mortality he was fond of quoting a fragment from a certain poem he had never seen the whole poem and he had tried vainly to learn his authorship I here give the fragment not alone because he loved it but because it epitomised the paradox that he was in the spirit of him and his conception of his spirit for how can a man with thrilling and burning and exaltation recite the following here it is the froth of pride the tang of power the sweet of womanhood I drain the leaves upon my knees for oh the draft is good I drink to life I drink to death and smack my lips with song for when I die another I shall pass the cup along the man you drove from Eden's grove was I my lord was I and I shall be there when the earth and the air are rent from sea to sky for it is my world my gorgeous world the world of my dearest woes from the first faint cry of the newborn to the rack of the woman's throes packed with the pulse of an unborn race torn with the world's desire the surging flood of my wild young blood would quench the judgment fire I am man man man from the tingling flesh to the dust of my earthly goal from the nestling gloom of the pregnant womb to the sheen of my naked soul bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh the whole world leaps to my will and the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed shall harrow the earth for its fill almighty God when I drain life's glass of all its rainbow gleams the hapless plight of eternal night shall be none too long from my dreams the man you drove from Eden's grove was I, my lord was I and I shall be there when the earth and the air are rent from sea to sky for it is my world my gorgeous world the world of my dear delight from the brightest gleam of the arctic stream to the dusk of my own love night Ernest always overworked his wonderful constitution kept him up but even that constitution could not keep the tired look out of his eyes his dear tired eyes he never slept more than four and one half hours a night yet he never found time to do all the work he wanted to do he never ceased from his activities as a propagandist and was always scheduled long in advance for lectures to working men's organizations then there was the campaign he did a man's full work in that alone and one of the socialist publishing houses his meagre royalties ceased and he was hard put to make a living for he had to make a living in addition to all his other labor he did a great deal of translating for the magazines on scientific and philosophic subjects and coming home late at night worn out from the strain of the campaign he would plunge into his translating and toil on well into the morning hours and in addition to everything there was his studying to the day of his death he kept up his studies and studied prodigiously and yet he found time in which to love me and make me happy but this was accomplished only through my merging my life completely into his I learned shorthand and typewriting and became his secretary he insisted that I succeeded in cutting his work in half and so it was that I scored myself to understand his work our interest became mutual and we worked together and played together there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our work just a word or caress or flash of love-light and our moments were sweeter for being stolen for we lived on the heights where the air was keen and sparkling where the toil was for humanity and where sordidness and selfishness never entered we loved love and our love was never smudged by anything less than the best and this out of all remains I did not fail I gave him rest he who worked so hard for others my dear tired-eyed mortalist End of Chapter 11 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal Matt Saw.org Chapter 12 of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Matt Saw The Bishop It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse but I must give the events in their proper sequence After his outbreak at the IPH convention the Bishop, being a gentle soul had yielded to the friendly pressure brought to bear upon him and had gone away on a vacation but he returned more fixed than ever in his determination to preach the message of the church to the consternation of his congregation his first sermon was quite similar to the address he had given before the convention again he said and at length and with distressing detail that the church had wandered away from the master's teaching and that Mammon had been instated in the place of Christ and the result was willy-nilly that he was led away to a private sanitarium for mental disease while in the newspapers appeared pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness of his character he was held a prisoner in the sanitarium I called repeatedly but was denied access to him and I was terribly impressed by the tragedy of a sane normal saintly man being crushed by the brutal will of society for the Bishop was sane and pure and noble as Ernest said all that was the matter with him was that he had incorrect notions of biology and sociology and because of his incorrect notions he had not gone about it in the right way to rectify matters what terrified me was the Bishop's helplessness if he persisted in the truth as he saw it he was doomed to an insane ward and he could do nothing his money, his position, his culture could not save him his views were perilous to society and society could not conceive that such perilous views could be the product of a sane mind or at least it seems to me that such was society's attitude but the Bishop in spite of the gentleness and purity of his spirit was possessed of guile he apprehended clearly his danger he saw himself caught in the web and he tried to escape from it denied help from his friends such as Father and Ernest and I could have given he was left a battle for himself alone and in the enforced solitude of the sanitarium he recovered he became again sane his eyes ceased to see visions his brain was purged of the fancy that it was the duty of society to feed the master's lambs as I say he became well quite well and the newspapers and the church people hailed his return with joy I went once to his church the sermon was of the same order as the ones he had preached long before his eyes had seen visions I was disappointed shocked had society then beaten him into submission? was he a coward? had he been bulldozed into recanting? or had the strain been too great for him and had he meekly surrendered to the juggernaut of the established? I called upon him in his beautiful home he was woefully changed he was thinner and there were lines on his face which I had never seen before he was manifestly distressed by my coming he plucked nervously at his sleeve as we talked and his eyes were restless fluttering here, there and everywhere and refusing to meet mine his mind seemed preoccupied and there were strange pauses in his conversation abrupt changes of topic and an inconsecutiveness that was bewildering could this then be the firm poised Christ-like man I had known with pure, limpid eyes and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul? he had been manhandled he had been cowed into subjection his spirit was too gentle it had not been mighty enough to face the organised wolf-back of society I felt sad, unutterably sad he talked ambiguously and he was so apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to cataclyse him he spoke in a faraway manner of his illness and we talked disjointedly about the church the alterations in the organ and about petty charities and he saw me depart with such evident relief that I should have laughed had not my heart been so full of tears the poor little hero if I had only known he was battling like a giant and I did not guess it alone, all alone in the midst of millions of his fellow men he was fighting his fight torn by his horror of the asylum and his fidelity to truth and the right he clung steadfastly to truth and the right but so alone was he that he did not dare to trust even me he had learned his lesson well too well but I was soon to know one day the bishop disappeared he had told nobody that he was going away and as the days went by and he did not reappear there was much gossip to the effect that he had committed suicide while temporarily deranged but this idea was dispelled when it was learned that he had sold all his possessions his city mansion, his country house at Menlo Park, his paintings and collections and even his cherished library it was patent that he had made a clean and secret sweep of everything before he disappeared this happened during the time when calamity had overtaken us in our own affairs and it was not till we were well settled in our new home that we had opportunity really to wonder and speculate about the bishop's doings and then everything was suddenly made clear early one evening while it was yet twilight I had run across the street and into the butcher shop to get some chops for earnest supper we called the last meal of the day supper in our new environment just at the moment I came out of the butcher shop a man emerged from the corner grocery that stood alongside a queer sense of familiarity made me look again but the man had turned and was walking rapidly away there was something about the slope of the shoulders and the fringe of silver head between coat collar and slouch hat that aroused vague memories instead of crossing the street I hurried after the man he was trying not to think the thoughts that formed unbidden in my brain no it was impossible it could not be not in those faded overalls too long in the legs and frayed at the bottoms I paused, laughed at myself and almost abandoned the chase but the haunting familiarity of those shoulders and that silver hair again I hurried on as I passed him I shot a keen look at his face then I whirled around abruptly and confronted the bishop he halted with equal abruptness and gasped a large paper bag in his right hand fell to the sidewalk it burst and about his feet and mind bounced and rolled a flood of potatoes he looked at me with surprise and alarm then he seemed to wilt away the shoulders drooped with dejection and he uttered a deep sigh I held up my hand he shook it but his hand felt clammy he cleared his throat in embarrassment and I could see the sweat starting out on his forehead it was evident that he was badly frightened the potatoes he murmured fatally they are precious between us we picked them up and replaced them in the broken bag which he now held carefully in the hollow of his arm I tried to tell him my gladness at meeting him and that he must go right home with me father will be rejoiced to see you I said we live only a stone throw away I can't he said I must be going goodbye he looked apprehensively about him as though dreading discovery and made an attempt to walk on tell me where you live and I shall call later he said when he saw that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to stick to him now that he was found no I answered firmly he must come now he looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm and at the small parcels on his other arm really it is impossible he said forgive me for my rudeness if you only knew he looked as if he were going to break down but the next moment he had himself in control besides this food he went on it is a sad case it is terrible she is an old woman I must take it to her at once she is suffering from want of it I must go at once you understand then I will return I promise you let me go with you I volunteered is it far? he sighed again and surrendered he said let us hasten under the bishop's guidance I learned something of my own neighbourhood I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery existed in it of course this was because I did not concern myself with charity I had become convinced that Ernest was right when he sneered at charity as a paltising of an ulcer remove the ulcer, was his remedy give to the work of his product pension as soldiers those who grow honourably old in their toil and there will be no need for charity convinced of this I told with him at the revolution and did not exhaust my energy in alleviating the social ills that continuously arose from the injustice of the system I followed the bishop into a small room ten by twelve in a rear tenement and there we found a little old German woman sixty four years old the bishop said she was surprised at seeing me but she nodded a pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair of men's trousers in her lap beside her on the floor was a pile of trousers the bishop discovered there was neither coal nor kindling and went out to buy some I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work six cents lady she said nodding her head gently while she went on stitching she stitched slowly but never did she cease from stitching she seemed mastered by the verb to stitch for all that work I asked is that what they pay how long does it take you yes she answered that's what they pay six cents for finishing two hours sewing on each pair but the boss doesn't know that she added quickly betraying a fear of getting him into trouble I'm slow I've got the rheumatism in my hands girls work much faster they finish in half that time the boss is kind he lets me take the work home now that I'm old and the noise of the machine bothers my head if it wasn't for his kindness I'd starve yes those who work in the shop get eight cents but what can you do there's not enough work for the young hands, after one pair is all I can get sometimes like today I'm given eight pair to finish before night I asked her the hours she worked and she said it depended on the season in the summer when there is a rush order I work from five in the morning to nine at night but in the winter it is too cold the hands do not early get over the stiffness then you must work later till after midnight sometimes yes it has been a bad summer the hard times I'm really angry this is the first work the boss has given me in a week it is true one cannot eat much when there is no work now I'm used to it I have sowed all my life in the old country and here in San Francisco 33 years if you're sure of the rent it is all right the houseman is very kind but he must have his rent it is fair he only charges three dollars for this room that is cheap she sees talking and nodding her head went on stitching you have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings I suggested she nodded emphatically after the rent it's not so bad of course you can't buy meat and there is no milk for the coffee but always there is one meal a day and often two she said this last proudly there was a smack of success in her words but as she stitched on in silence her pleasant eyes and the droop of her mouth the look in her eyes became far away she rubbed the dimness hastily out of them it interfered with her stitching no it's not the hunger that makes the heart ache she explained you get used to being hungry it's for my child that I cry it was the machine that killed her it's true she worked hard but I cannot understand she was strong and she was young only 40 and she worked only 30 years she began young it's true but my man died the boiler exploded down at the works what were we to do she was 10 she was very strong but the machine killed her yes it did it killed her and she was the fastest worker in the shop I've thought about it often and I know that is why I cannot work in the shop the machine bothers my head always I hear it saying I did it I did it and then I think of my daughter and I cannot work the moistness was in her old eyes again and she had to wipe it away before she could go on stitching I heard the bishop stumbling up the stairs and I opened the door what a spectacle he was on his back he carried half a sack of coal with kindling on top some of the coal dust had coated his face and the sweat from his exertions was running in streaks he dropped his burden in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandana handkerchief I could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses the bishop, black as a coal heaver in a working man's cheap cotton shirt one button was missing from the throat and in overalls that was the most incongruous of all the overalls frayed at the bottoms dragged down at the heels and held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips such as labourers wear though the bishop was warm the poor swollen hands of the old woman were already cramping with the cold and before we left her the bishop had built the fire I was to learn as time went by that there were many cases similar to hers and many worse hidden away in the monstrous steps of the tenements in my neighbourhood we got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence after the first surprise of greeting was over the bishop leaned back in his chair stretched out his overall covered legs and actually sighed a comfortable sigh we were the first of his old friends he had met since his disappearance he told us and during the intervening weeks he must have suffered greatly from loneliness he told us much though he told us more of the joy he had experienced in doing the master's bidding for truly now he said I am feeding his lambs and I have learned a great lesson the soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is appeased his lambs must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and meat after that and only after that are their spirits ready for more refined nourishment he ate heartily of the supper I cooked never had he had such an appetite for all days we spoke of it and he said that he had never been so healthy in his life I walk always now and a blush was on his cheek at the thought of the time when he rode in his carriage as though it were a sin not likely to be laid my health is better for it he had a taste of it and I am very happy indeed most happy at last I am a consecrated spirit and yet there was in his face a permanent pain the pain of the world that he was now taking to himself it was a life in the roar and it was a different life from what he had known within the printed books of his library and you are responsible for all this young man he said directly to Ernest Ernest was embarrassed and awkward I warned you he felt it no no you misunderstand the bishop answered I speak not in reproach but in gratitude I have you to thank for showing me my path you let me from theories about life to life itself you were light in my darkness but now I too see the light and I am very happy only he hesitated painfully and in his eyes fear leaped large only the persecution I harm no one why will they not let me alone but it is not that it is the nature of the persecution I shouldn't mind if they cut my flesh with stripes or burned me at the stake or crucified me head downward but it is the asylum that frightens me think of it of me in an asylum for the insane it is revolting I saw some of the cases at the sanitarium they were violent my blood chills when I think of it and to be imprisoned for the rest of my life amid scenes of screaming madness no no not that not that it was pitiful his hands shook, his whole body quivered and shrank away from the picture he had conjured and at this moment he was calm forgive me he said simply it is my wretched nerves and if the master's work leads there so be it who am I to complain I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him great bishop oh hero god-zero as the evening war on we learned more of his doings I sold my house my houses rather all my other possessions else they would have taken everything away from me that would have been terrible I often marvel these days at the immense quantity of potatoes two or three hundred thousand dollars will buy or bread or meat or coal and kindling he turned to earnest you are right young man labour is dreadfully underpaid I never did a bit of work in my life except to appeal aesthetically to Pharisees I thought I was preaching the message and yet I was worth half a million dollars I never knew what half a million dollars meant until I realised how much potatoes and bread and butter and meat it could buy and then I realised something more I realised that all those potatoes and that bread and butter and meat were mine and that I had not worked to make them then it was clear to me someone else had worked and made them and been robbed of them and when I came down amongst the poor I found those who had been robbed and who were hungry and wretched because they had been robbed which went back to his narrative the money was wasted in many different banks under different names it can never be taken away from me because it can never be found and it is so good that money it buys so much food I never knew before what money was good for I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda Ernest said wistfully it would do immense good do you think so? the bishop said I do not have much faith in politics in fact I am afraid I do not understand politics Ernest was delicate in such matters he did not repeat his suggestion though he knew only too well the source straights the Socialist Party was in through lack of money I sleep in cheap lodging houses the bishop went on but I am afraid and never stay long in one place also I rent two rooms in working men's houses in different quarters of the city it is a great extravagance I know but it is necessary I make up for it in part by doing my own cooking though sometimes I get something to eat in cheap coffee houses and I have made a discovery that the air grows chilly late at night note, tamales a Mexican dish referred to occasionally in the literature of the times it is supposed that it was warmly seasoned no recipe of it has come down to us only they are so expensive but I have discovered a place where I can get three for ten cents they are not so good as the others but they are very warming and so I have at last found my work in the world thanks to you young man it is the master's work you caught me feeding his lambs you know and of course you will all keep my secret he spoke callously enough but there was real fear behind the speech he promised to call upon us again but a week later we read in the newspaper of the sad case of Bishop Morehouse who had been committed to the Napa Asylum and for whom there were still hopes held out in vain we tried to see him to have his case reconsidered or investigated nor could we learn anything about him except the reiterated statements that slight hopes were still held for him Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had and said bitterly the bishop obeyed Christ in junction and got locked up in a madhouse times have changed since Christ's day a rich man today who gives all he has to the poor is crazy there is no discussion society has spoken End of Chapter 12 Recording by Matt Soar Montreal Matt Soar Montreal Matt Soar.org Chapter 13 of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Matt Soar The General Strike Of course Ernest was elected to Congress in the great socialist landslide that took place in the fall of 1912 one great factor that helped to swell the socialist vote was the destruction of Hearst this the plutocracy found an easy task it cost Hearst 18 million dollars a year to run his various papers and this sum and more he got back from the middle class in payment for advertising the source of his financial strength lay wholly in the middle class the trusts did not advertise to destroy Hearst all that was necessary was to take away from him his advertising Note William Randolph Hearst a young California millionaire who became the most powerful newspaper owner in the country his newspapers were published in all the large cities and they appealed to the perishing middle class and to the proletariat so large was his following that he managed to take possession of the empty shell of the old democratic party he occupied an anomalous position preaching an emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript sort of petit bourgeois capitalism it was oil and water and there was no hope for him though for a short period he was a source of serious apprehension to the plutocrats note the cost of advertising was amazing in those helter-skelter times only the small capitalists competed and therefore they did the advertising there being no competition where there was a trust there was no need for the trust to advertise the whole middle class had not yet been exterminated the sturdy skeleton of it remained but it was without power the small manufacturers and small businessmen who still survived were at the complete mercy of the plutocracy they had no economic nor political souls of their own when the fear of the plutocracy went forth they withdrew their advertisements from the Hearst papers Hearst made a gallant fight he brought his papers out at a loss of a million and a half each month he continued to publish the advertisements for which he no longer received pay again the fear of the plutocracy went forth and the small businessmen and manufacturers swamped him with a flood of notices that he must discontinue running their old advertisements Hearst persisted injunctions were served on him still he persisted he received six months imprisonment for contempt of court in disobeying the injunctions while he was bankrupted by countless damage suits he had no chance the plutocracy had passed sentence on him the courts were in the hands of the plutocracy to carry the sentence out and with Hearst crashed also to destruction the Democratic Party that he had so recently captured with the destruction of Hearst and the Democratic Party there were only two parts for his following to take one was into the Socialist Party the other was into the Republican Party then it was that we Socialists reaped the fruit of Hearst's pseudo Socialistic preaching for the great majority of his followers came over to us the expropriation of the farmers that took place at this time would also have swelled our vote had it not been for the brief and futile rise of the Greenge Party Ernest and the Socialist leaders fought fiercely to capture the farmers but the destruction of the Socialist press and publishing houses constituted too great a handicamp mouth to mouth propaganda had not yet been perfected so it was that politicians like Mr. Calvin who were themselves farmers long since expropriated captured the farmers and threw their political strength away in a vain campaign that bore farmers Ernest once laughed savagely the trusts of them both coming and going and that was really the situation the seven great trusts working together had pulled their enormous surpluses and made a farm trust the railroads controlling rates and the bankers and stock exchange game-sters controlling prices had long since bled the farmers into indebtedness the bankers and all the trusts for that matter had likewise long since loaned colossal amounts of money to the farmers the farmers were in the net all that remained to be done was the drawing in of the net and this the farm trust proceeded to do the hard times of 1912 had already caused a frightful slump in the farm markets the farmers were greatly pressed down to bankruptcy while the railroads with extortionate rates broke the back of the farmer camel thus the farmers were compelled to borrow more and more while they were prevented from paying back old loans then ensued the great foreclosing of mortgages and enforced collection of notes the farmers simply surrendered the land to the farm trust there was nothing else for them to do and having surrendered the land the farmers next went to work for the farm trust becoming managers, superintendents, foremen and common labourers they worked for wages they became villains in short serfs bound to the soil by a living wage they could not leave their masters for their masters composed the plutocracy they could not go to the cities for there also the plutocracy was in control they had but one alternative to leave the soil and become vagrants in brief to starve and even there they were frustrated for stringent vagrancy laws were passed and rigidly enforced of course here and there the farmers and even whole communities of farmers escaped expropriation by virtue of exceptional conditions but they were merely strays and did not count and they were gathered in any way during the following year note the destruction of the roman yeomanry proceeded far less rapidly than the destruction of the American farmers and small capitalists there was momentum in the 20th century while there was practically none in ancient Rome numbers of the farmers impelled by an insane lust for the soil and willing to show what beasts they could become tried to escape expropriation by withdrawing from any and all market dealing they sold nothing they bought nothing among themselves a primitive barter began to spring up their privation and hardships were terrible but they persisted it became quite a movement in fact the manner in which they were beaten was unique and logical and simple the plutocracy by virtue of its possession of the government raised their taxes it was the weak joint in their armor neither buying nor selling they had no money and in the end their land was sold to pay the taxes thus it was in 1912 the socialist leaders with the exception of earnest decided that the end of capitalism had come what of the hard times and the consequent vast army of the unemployed what of the destruction of the farmers and the middle class and what of the decisive feat administered all along the line to the labour unions the socialists were really justified in believing that the end of capitalism had come and in themselves throwing down the gauntlet to the plutocracy alas how we underestimated the strength of the enemy everywhere the socialist proclaimed their coming victory at the ballot box while in unmistakable terms they stated the situation the plutocracy accepted the challenge it was the plutocracy weighing and balancing that defeated us by dividing our strength it was the plutocracy through its secret agents that raised the cry that socialism was sacrilegious and atheistic it was the plutocracy that whipped the churches and especially the catholic church that robbed us of a portion of the labour vote and it was the plutocracy through its secret agents of course that encouraged the grange party and even spread it to the cities into the ranks of the dying middle class nevertheless the socialist landslide occurred but instead of a sweeping victory with chief executive officers and majorities in all legislative bodies we found ourselves in the minority it is true we elected 50 congressmen but when they took their seats in 1913 they found themselves without power of any sort yet they were more fortunate than the granges who captured a dozen state governments and who in the spring were not permitted to take possession of the captured officers the incumbents refused to retire and the courts were in the hands of the oligarchy but this is too far in advance of events I have yet to tell of the stirring times of the winter of 1912 the hard times at home had caused an immense decrease in consumption labour out of work had no wages with which to buy the result was that the plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its hands the surplus it was compelled to dispose of abroad and what of its colossal plans it needed money because of its strenuous efforts to dispose of the surplus in the world market the plutocracy clashed with Germany economic clashes were usually succeeded by wars and this particular clash was no exception the great german warlord prepared and so did the united states prepare the war cloud hovered dark and ominous the stage was set for a world catastrophe for in all the world were hard times labour troubles perishing middle classes armies of unemployed clashes of economic interests in the world market and mutterings and rumblings of the socialist revolution note for a long time these mutterings and rumblings had been heard as far back as 1906 A.D. Lord Avery an Englishman was following in the House of Lords the unrest in Europe, the spread of socialism and the ominous rise of anarchism are warnings to the governments and the ruling classes that the condition of the working classes in Europe is becoming intolerable and that if a revolution is to be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages reduce the hours of labour and lower the prices of the necessaries of life the Wall Street Journal in commenting upon Lord Avery's speech said these words were spoken by an aristocrat that is the most important part of the party in all Europe that gives them all the more significance they contain more valuable political economy than is to be found in most of the books they sound a note of warning take heed gentlemen of the war and navy departments at the same time Sydney Brooks writing in America in Harper's Weekly said you will not hear the socialists mentioned in Washington why should you the politicians are always the last people in this country to see what is going on under their noses they will jeer at me when I prophecy the utmost confidence that at the next presidential election the socialists will poll over a million votes the oligarchy wanted the war with Germany and it wanted the war for a dozen reasons in the juggling of events such a war would cause in the reshuffling of the international cards and the making of new treaties and alliances the oligarchy had much to gain and furthermore the war would consume many national surpluses reduce the armours of unemployed that menaced all countries and give the oligarchy a breathing space to protect its plans and carry them out such a war would virtually put the oligarchy in possession of the world market also such a war would create a large standing army that need never be disbanded while in the minds of the people would be substituted the issue America versus Germany in place of socialism versus oligarchy and truly the war would have done all these things had it not been for the socialists a secret meeting of the western leaders was held in our four tiny rooms in pal street we first considered the stand the socialists were to take it was not the first time we had put our foot down upon war but it was the first time we had done so in the united states after our secret meeting we got in touch with the national organisation and soon our code cables were passing back and forth across the Atlantic between us and the international bureau note it was at the very beginning of the 20th century AD that the international organisation of the socialists finally formulated their long maturing policy on war epitomised their doctrine was why should the working men of one country fight with the working men of another country for the benefit of their capitalist masters on May 21st 1905 AD when war threatened between Austria and Italy the socialists of Italy, Austria and Hungary held a conference at Trieste and threatened a general strike of the working men of both countries in case war was declared this was repeated the following year when the Morocco affair threatened to involve France, Germany and England the German socialists were ready to act with us there were over 5 million of them many of them in the standing army and in addition they were on friendly terms with the labour unions in both countries the socialists came out in bold declaration against the war and threatened the general strike and in the meantime they made preparation for the general strike furthermore the revolutionary parties in all countries gave public utterance to the socialist principle of international peace that must be preserved at all hazards even to the extent of revolt and revolution at home the general strike was the one great victory we American socialists won on the 4th of December the American minister was withdrawn from the German capital that night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu sinking three American cruisers and a revenue cutter and bombarding the city next day both Germany and the United States declared war and within an hour the socialists called the general strike in both countries for the first time the German warlord faced the men of his empire who made his empire go without them he could not run his empire novelty of the situation lay in that their revolt was passive they did not fight they did nothing and by doing nothing they tied their warlord's hands he would have asked for nothing better than an opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat but this was denied him he could not loose his war-dogs neither could he mobilize his army to go forth to war nor could he punish his recalcitrant subjects not a wheel moved in his empire not a train ran not a telegraphic message went over the wires for the telegraphers and railroad men had ceased work along with the rest of the population and as it was in Germany so it was in the United States at last organized labor had learned its lesson beaten decisively on its own chosen field it had abandoned that field and come over to the political field of the socialists for the general strike was a political strike besides organized labor had been so badly beaten that it did not care it joined in the general strike out of sheer desperation the workers threw down their tools and left their tasks by the millions especially notable were the machinists their heads were bloody their organization had apparently been destroyed yet out they came along with their allies in the metalworking trades even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work the strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work besides the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike they set their faces against the war they did not want their men to go forth to die then also the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people it struck their sense of humor the idea was infectious the children struck in all the schools and such teachers as came went home again from deserted classrooms the general strike took the form of a great national picnic and the idea of the solidarity of labor so evidenced appealed to the imagination of all and finally there was no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic when everybody was guilty how was anybody to be punished the United States was paralyzed no one knew what was happening there were no newspapers no dispatches every community was as completely isolated as though 10,000 miles of primeval wilderness stretched between it and the rest of the world for that matter the world had ceased to exist and for a week this state of affairs was maintained in San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across the bay in Oakland or Berkeley the effect on one's sensibilities was weird depressing it seemed as though some great cosmic thing lay dead the pulse of the land had ceased to beat of a truth the nation had died there were no wagons rumbling on the streets no factory whistles no passing of street cars no cries of news boys nothing but persons who at rare intervals went by like furtive ghosts themselves oppressed and made unreal by the silence and during that week of silence the oligarchy was taught its lesson and while it learned the lesson the general strike was a warning it should never occur again the oligarchy would see to that at the end of the week as had been pre-arranged the telegraphers of Germany and the United States returned to their posts through them the socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum to the rulers the war should be called off or the general strike would continue it did not take long to come to an understanding the war was declared off the populations of both countries returned to their tasks it was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between Germany and the United States in reality this was an alliance between the emperor and the oligarchy for the purpose of meeting their common foe the revolutionary proletariat of both countries and it was this alliance that the oligarchy afterwards so treacherously broke when the German socialist rose and drove the warlord from his throne it was the very thing the oligarchy had played for the destruction of its great rival in the world market with the German emperor out of the way Germany would have no surplus to sell abroad by the very nature of the socialist state the German population would consume all that it produced of course it would trade abroad certain things it produced for things it did not produce but this would be quite different from an unconsumable surplus our wager the oligarchy finds justification Ernest said when it's treachery to the German emperor became known as usual the oligarchy will believe it has done right and sure enough the oligarchy's public defence for the act was that it had done it for the sake of the American people whose interests it was looking out for it had flung its hated rival out of the world market and enabled us to dispose of our surplus in that market and the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that our managing our interests was Ernest's comment they have enabled us to sell more abroad which means that we'll be compelled to consume less at home end of chapter 13