 Chapter 14 of The Iron Heel by Jack London As early as January 1913, Ernest saw the true trend of affairs, but he could not get his brother leaders to see the vision of the Iron Heel that had arisen in his brain. They were too confident. Events were rushing too rapidly to culmination. A crisis had come in world affairs. The American oligarchy was practically in possession of the world market, and scores of countries were flung out of that market with unconsumable and unsalable surpluses on their hands. For such countries nothing remained but reorganization. They could not continue their method of producing surpluses. The capitalistic system, so far as they were concerned, had hopelessly broken down. The reorganization of these countries took the form of revolution. It was a time of confusion and violence. Everywhere institutions and governments were crashing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or three countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought bitterly for their possessions, but the governments were taken away from them by the militant proletariat. At last was being realized Karl Marx's classic. The knell of private capitalist property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. And as fast as capitalistic governments crashed, cooperative commonwealths arose in their place. Why does the United States lag behind? Get busy, you American revolutionists! What's the matter with America? Were the messages sent to us by our successful comrades in other lands? But we could not keep up. The oligarchy stood in the way. Its bulk, like that of some huge monster, blocked our path. Wait till we take office in the spring, we answered, then you'll see. Behind this lay our secret. We had won over the Grangers, and in the spring a dozen states would pass into their hands by virtue of the elections of the preceding fall. At once would be instituted a dozen cooperative commonwealth states. After that the rest would be easy. But what if the Grangers failed to get possession? Ernest demanded, and his comrades called him a calamity howler. But this failure to get possession was not the chief danger that Ernest had in mind. What he foresaw was the defection of the great labour unions and the rise of the castes. Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it, Ernest said. I'll wager they've made a textbook out of his benevolent feudalism. Note, our benevolent feudalism, a book published in 1902 A.D. by W. J. Ghent. It has always been insisted that Ghent put the idea of the oligarchy into the minds of the great capitalists. This belief persists throughout the literature of the three centuries of the iron heel, and even in the literature of the first century of the brotherhood of man. Today we know better, but our knowledge does not overcome the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in all history. Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot discussion with half a dozen labour leaders, Ernest turned to me and said quietly, That settles it. The iron heel has won. The end is in sight. This little conference in our home was unofficial, but Ernest, like the rest of his comrades, was working for assurances from the labour leaders that they would call out their men in the next general strike. O'Connor, the president of the Association of Machinists, had been foremost of the six leaders present in refusing to give such assurance. You have seen that you were beaten soundly at your old tactics of strike and boy-gut, Ernest urged. O'Connor and the others nodded their heads. And you saw what a general strike would do, Ernest went on. We stopped the war with Germany. Never was there so fine a display of the solidarity and the power of labour. Labour can and will rule the world. If you continue to stand with us, we'll put an end to the reign of capitalism. It is your only hope. And what is more? You know it. There is no other way out. No matter what you do under your old tactics you are doomed to defeat, if for no other reason because the masters control the courts. Note, as a sample of the decisions of the courts averse to labour the following instances are given. In the coal mining regions the employment of children was notorious. In 1905 AD Labour succeeded in getting a law passed in Pennsylvania providing the proof of the age of the child and of certain educational qualifications must accompany the oath of the parent. This was promptly declared unconstitutional by the Luzern County Court on the ground that it violated the 14th amendment and that it discriminated between individuals of the same class, namely children above 14 years of age and children below. The state courts sustained the decision, the New York Court of Special Sessions in 1905 AD, declared unconstitutional the law prohibiting minors and women from working in factories after 9 o'clock at night, the grand taken being that such a law was class legislation. Again the bakers of that time were terribly overworked, the New York legislature passed a law restricting working bakers to 10 hours a day. In 1906 AD the Supreme Court of the United States declared this law to be unconstitutional. In part the decision read, there is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of persons or the right of free contract by determining the hours of labour in the occupation of a baker. �You run ahead too fast,� O'Connor answered. �You don�t know all the ways out. There is another way out. We know what we�re about, we�re sick of strikes. They�ve got us beaten that way to a frazzle, but I don�t think we�ll ever need to call our men out again. �What is your way out?� Ernest demanded bluntly. O'Connor laughed and shook his head. �I can tell you this much. We�ve not been asleep, and we�re not dreaming now. �There�s nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of, I hope,� Ernest challenged. �I guess we know our business best,� was the retort. �It�s a dark business, from the way you eyed it,� Ernest said with growing anger. �We�ve paid for our experience in sweat and blood, and we�ve earned all that�s coming to us,� was the reply. She begins at home. �If you�re afraid to tell me your way out, I�ll tell it to you.� Ernest�s blood was up. �You�re going in for grab-sharing. You�ve made terms with the enemy. That�s what you�ve done. �You�ve sold out the cause of labor, of all labor. You�re leaving the battlefield like cowards.� �I�m not saying anything,� O'Connor answered sullenly. �Only I guess we know what�s better for us a little bit better than you do. �And you don�t care ascent for what is best for the rest of labor. You kick it into the ditch.� �I�m not saying anything,� O'Connor replied, except that I�m president of the Machinists�s Association, and it�s my business to consider the interests of the men I represent. That�s all. And then, when the labor leaders had left, Ernest with the calmness of defeat outlined to me the course of events to come. �The socialists used to foretell with joy,� he said. �The coming of the day, when organized labor, defeated on the industrial field, would come over unto the political field. Well, the iron heel has defeated the labor unions on the industrial field and driven them over to the political field, and instead of this being joyful for us, it will be a source of grief.� The iron heel learned its lesson. We showed it our power in the general strike. It has taken steps to prevent another general strike. �But how?� I asked. �Simply by subsidizing the great unions, they won�t join in the next general strike. Therefore, it won�t be a general strike. �But the iron heel can�t maintain so costly a program forever,� I objected. �Oh, it hasn�t subsidized all of the unions. That�s not necessary. Here is what�s going to happen. Wages are going to be advanced and now are shortened in the railroad unions, the iron and steel workers unions, and the engineer and machinist unions. In these unions, more favorable conditions will continue to prevail. Membership in these unions will become like seats in paradise. �Still I don�t see,� I objected. �What is to become of the other unions? There are far more unions outside of this combination than in it. �The other unions will be ground out of existence,� all of them. �For, don�t you see, the railwaymen, machinists, and engineers, iron and steel workers, do all of the vitally essential work in our machine civilization. They should, of their faithfulness, the iron heel can snap its fingers at all the rest of labor. Iron, steel, coal, machinery, and transportation constitute the backbone of the whole industrial fabric. �But coal?� I queried. �There are nearly a million coal miners. �They are practically unskilled labor. �They will not count. �Their wages will go down and their hours will increase. �They will be slaves like all the rest of us, and they will become about the most bestial of all of us. �They will be compelled to work, just as the farmers are compelled to work now for the masters who rob them of their land, and the same with all the other unions outside the combination. Watch them wobble and go to pieces, and their members become slaves driven to toil by empty stomachs in the law of the land. �Do you know what will happen to Farley and his strike-breakers?� I'll tell you, strike-breaking as an occupation will cease. There won't be any more strikes. In place of strikes will be slave revolts. Farley and his gang will be promoted to slave-driving. What we call that, it will be called enforcing the law of the land that compels the laborers to work. It simply prolongs the fight as treachery of the big unions. Heaven only knows now where and when the revolution will triumph. James Farley, a notorious strike-breaker of the period, a man more courageous than ethical and of undeniable ability. He rose high under the rule of the iron hill and finally was translated into the oligarch class. He was assassinated in 1932 by Sarah Jenkins, whose husband, thirty years before, had been killed by Farley's strike-breakers. But with such a powerful combination as the oligarchy and the big unions, is there any reason to believe that the revolution will ever triumph? I queried. May not the combination endure forever? He shook his head. One of our generalizations is that every system founded upon class and caste contains within itself the germs of its own decay. When a system is founded upon class, how can caste be prevented? The iron hill will not be able to prevent it, and in the end caste will destroy the iron hill. The oligarchs have already developed caste among themselves, but wait until the favored unions develop caste. The iron hill will use all its power to prevent it, but it will fail. In the favored unions are the flower of the American working men. They are strong, efficient men. They have become members of those unions through competition for place. Every fit working man in the United States will be possessed by the ambition to become a member of the favored unions. The oligarchy will encourage such ambition and the consequent competition. Thus will the strong men, who might else be revolutionists, be won away and their strength used to bolster the oligarchy. On the other hand, the labor casts, the members of the favored unions, will strive to make their organizations into close corporations, and they will succeed. Membership in the labor casts will become hereditary. Sons will succeed fathers, and there will be no inflow of new strength from that eternal reservoir of strength, the common people. This will mean deterioration of the labor casts, and in the end they will become weaker and weaker. At the same time as an institution they will become temporarily all-powerful. They will be like the guards of the palace in old Rome, and there will be palace revolutions whereby the labor casts will seize the reins of power, and there will be counter-palace revolutions of the oligarchs, and sometimes the one, and sometimes the other will be in power. And through it all, the inevitable cast weakening will go on, so that in the end the common people will come into their own. This foreshadowing of a slow social evolution was made when Ernest was first depressed by the defection of the Great Unions. I never agreed with him in it, and I disagree now, as I write these lines, more heartily than ever. For even now, though Ernest is gone, we are on the verge of the revolt that will sweep all oligarchs away. Yet I have here given Ernest's prophecy, because it was his prophecy. In spite of his belief in it, he worked like a giant against it, and he, more than any man, has made possible the revolt that even now waits the signal to burst forth. Note, Everhard's social foresight was remarkable, as clearly as in the light of past events, he saw the defection of the favored unions, the rise in the slow decay of the labor castes, and the struggle between the decaying oligarchs and labor castes for control of the great governmental machine. But if the oligarchy persists, I asked him that evening, what will become of the great surpluses that will fall to its share every year? The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, he answered, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built, there will be great achievements in science and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshipers of beauty, they will become art lovers, and under their direction and generously rewarded will toil the artists. The result will be great art, for no longer as up to yesterday will the artist pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder-cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheat the cities of old time, and in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty. Note, we cannot but marvel at Everhard's foresight. Before ever the thought of wonder-cities like Artis and Asgard entered the minds of the oligarchs, Everhard saw those cities and the inevitable necessity for their creation. Thus will the surpluses be constantly expended while labour does the work. The building of these great works and cities will give a starvation ration to millions of common labourers, for the enormous bulk of the surplus will compel an equally enormous expenditure, and the oligarchs will build for a thousand years. High, for ten thousand years. They will build as the Egyptians and the Babylonians never dreamed of building, and when the oligarchs have passed away, their great roads and their wonder-cities will remain for the brotherhood of labour to tread upon and dwell within. Note, and since that day of prophecy have passed away the three centuries of the Iron Hill and the four centuries of the brotherhood of man, and today we tread the roads and dwell in the cities that the oligarchs built. It is true, we are even now building still more wonderful wonder-cities, but the wonder-cities of the oligarchs endure, and I write these lines in Artis, one of the most wonderful of them all. These things the oligarchs will do, because they cannot help doing them. These great works will be the form their expenditure of the surplus will take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long ago expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the building of temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish, not a priest class, but an artist class, and in place of the merchant class of bourgeoisie will be the labour-castes, and beneath will be the abyss wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself, the common people, the great bulk of the population, and in the end, who knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss, the labour-castes and the oligarchy will crumble away, and then, at last, after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the common man? I had thought to see that day, but now I know that I shall never see it. He paused and looked at me and added, social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn't it, sweetheart? My arms were about him, and his head was on my breast. So he went to sleep. He murmured whimsibly. I have had a visioning, and I wish to forget. End of Chapter 14, Recording by Matt Saw, Montreal, mattsaw.org Chapter 15 of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Saw It was near the end of January 1913 that the changed attitude of the oligarchy towards the favoured unions was made public. The newspapers published information of an unprecedented rise in wages and shortening of hours for the railroad employees, the iron and steel workers, and the engineers and machinists. But the whole truth was not told. The oligarchs did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth. In reality, the wages had been raised much higher and the privileges were correspondingly greater. All this was secret, but secrets were out. Members of the favoured unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped, and soon all the labour world knew what had happened. It was merely the logical development of what in the 19th century had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time, profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work. But profit-sharing, as a system, was ridiculous and impassable. Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated cases in the midst of a system of industrial strife, for if all labour and all capital shared profits, the same conditions would obtain as did obtain when there was no profit-sharing. So, out of the unpractical idea of profit-sharing arose the practical idea of grab-sharing. Give us more pay and charge it to the public, was the slogan of the strong unions. And here and there this selfish policy worked successfully. In charging it to the public it was charged to the great mass of unorganized labour and of weakly organized labour. These workers actually paid the increased wages of their stronger brothers who were members of unions that when labour monopoly is. This idea, as I say, was merely carried to its logical conclusion on a large scale by the combination of the oligarchs and the favoured unions. Note, all the railroad unions entered into this combination with the oligarchs. And it is of interest to note that the first definite application of the policy of profit-grabbing was made by a railroad union in the 19th century AD, namely the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. PM Arthur was for twenty years Grand Chief of the Brotherhood. After the strike on the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877 he broached a scheme to have the Locomotive Engineers make terms with the railroads and to go it alone as so far as the rest of the labour unions were concerned. The scheme was eminently successful. It was as successful as it was selfish and out of it was coined the word authorization to note grab-sharing on the part of labour unions. This word authorization has long puzzled the etymologists but its derivation, I hope, is now made clear. As soon as the secret of the defection of the favoured unions leaked out there were rumblings and mutterings in the labour world. Next to favoured unions withdrew from the international organizations and broke off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence. The members of the favoured unions were branded as traitors and in saloons and brothels on the streets and at work and in fact everywhere they were assaulted by the comrades they had so treacherously deserted. Countless heads were broken and there were many killed. No member of the favoured unions was safe. They gathered together in bands in order to go to work or to return from work. They walked always in the middle of the street. On the sidewalk they were liable to have their skulls crushed by bricks and cobblestones thrown from windows and house tops. They were permitted to carry weapons and the authorities aided them in every way. Their persecutors were sentenced to long terms in prison where they were harshly treated, while no man, not a member of the favoured unions, was permitted to carry weapons. Violation of this law was made a high misdemeanor and punished accordingly. Outraged labour continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Cast lines formed automatically. The children of the traitors were persecuted by the children of the workers who had been betrayed until it was impossible for the former to play on the streets or to attend the public schools. Also the wives and families of the traitors were ostracised while a corner grocery man who sold provisions to them was boycotted. As a result, driven back upon themselves from every side, the traitors and their families became clannish. Finding it impossible to dwell in safety in the midst of the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new localities inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were favoured by the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and sanitary, were built for them, surrounded by spacious yards and separated here and there by parks and playgrounds. Their children attended schools especially built for them, and in these schools manual training and applied signs were specialised upon. Thus, and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of this segregation arose caste. The members of the favoured unions became the aristocracy of labour. They were set apart from the rest of labour. They were better housed, better clothed, better fed, better treated. They were grab-sharing with a vengeance. In the meantime, the rest of the working class was more harshly treated. Many little privileges were taken away from it, while its wages and its standard of living steadily sank down. Incidentally, its public schools deteriorated, and education slowly ceased to be compulsory. The increase in the younger generation of children who could not read nor write was perilous. The capture of the world market by the United States had disrupted the rest of the world. Institutions and governments were everywhere, crashing or transforming. Germany, Italy, France, Australia and New Zealand were busy forming co-operative Commonwealths. The British Empire was falling apart. England's hands were full. In India revolt was in full swing. The cry in all Asia was, Asia for the Asiatics. And behind this cry was Japan, ever urging and aiding the yellow and brown races against the white. And while Japan dreamed of continental empire and strove to realize the dream, she suppressed her own proletarian revolution. It was a simple war of the castes, Kuli versus Samurai, and the Kuli socialists were executed by tens of thousands. 40,000 were killed in the street fighting of Tokyo and in the futile assault on the Mikado's palace. Kobe was a shambles. The slaughter of the cotton operatives by machine guns became classic as the most terrific execution ever achieved by modern war machines. Most savage of all was the Japanese oligarchy that arose. Japan dominated the east and took to herself the whole Asiatic portion of the world market, with the exception of India. England managed to crush her own proletarian revolution and to hold on to India, though she was brought to the verge of exhaustion. Also, she was compelled to let her great colonists slip away from her. So it was that the socialists succeeded in making Australia and New Zealand into co-operative Commonwealths. And it was for the same reason that Canada was lost to the mother country. Canada crushed her own socialist revolution, being aided in this by the Iron Heel. At the same time, the Iron Heel helped Mexico and Cuba to put down revolt. The result was that the Iron Heel was firmly established in the New World. It had welded into one compact political mass the whole of North America from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Ocean. And England, at the sacrifice of her great colonists, had succeeded only in retaining India. But this was no more than temporary. The struggle with Japan and the rest of Asia for India was merely delayed. England was destined shortly to lose India, while behind that event loomed the struggle between the United Asia and the world. And while all the world was torn with conflict, we of the United States were not placid and peaceful. The defection of the great unions had prevented our proletarian revolt, but violence was everywhere. In addition to the labour troubles and the discontent of the farmers and of the remnant of the middle class, a religious revival had blazed up, an offshoot of the seventh day adventists sprang into sudden prominence, proclaiming the end of the world. Confusion thrice confounded, Ernest cried. How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross-purposes and conflicts? And truly the religious revival assumed formidable proportions. The people, what of their wretchedness, and of their disappointment in all things earthly, were ripe and eager for a heaven where industrial tyrants entered no more than camels passed through needle-eyes. Wild-eyed, itinerant preachers swarmed over the land, and despite the prohibition of the civil authorities and the persecution for disobedience, the flames of religious frenzy were fanned by countless camp meetings. It was the last days, they claimed, the beginning of the end of the world. The four winds had been loosed. God had stirred the nations to strife. It was a time of visions and miracles, while seers and prophetesses were legion. The people ceased work by hundreds of thousands and fled to the mountains, there to await the imminent coming of God, and the rising of the 140 and 4000 to heaven. But in the meantime God did not come, and they starved to death in great numbers. In their desperation, they ravaged the farms for food, and the consequent tumult and anarchy in the country districts, but increased the woes of the poor expropriated farmers. Also, the farms and warehouses were the property of the iron heel. Armies of troops were put into the field, and the fanatics were herded back at the bayonet point to their tasks in the cities. There they broke out in ever recurring mobs and riots. Their leaders were executed for sedition or confined in madhouses. Those who were executed went to their deaths with all the gladness of martyrs. It was a time of madness. The unrest spread. In the swamps and deserts and wasteplaces, from Florida to Alaska, the small groups of Indians that survived were dancing ghost dancers and waiting the coming of a messiah of their own. And through it all, with a serenity and certitude that was terrifying, continued to rise the form of that monster of the ages, the oligarchy. With iron hand and iron heel, it mastered the surging millions, out of confusion brought order, out of the very chaos brought its own foundation and structure. Just wait till we get in, the grangers said. Calvin said it to us, in our Pell Street quarters. Look at the states we've captured, with you socialist tobaccos, we'll make them sing another song when we take office. The millions of the discontented and the impoverished are ours, the socialists said. The grangers have come over to us, the farmers, the middle class and the laborers. The capitalist system will fall to pieces. In another month we send 50 men to Congress. Two years hence every office will be ours, from the president down to the local dog catcher. To all of which, Ernest would shake his head and say, how many rifles have you got? Do you know where you can get plenty of lead? When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than mechanical mixtures. You take my word. End of chapter 15. Recording by Matt Saw. Montreal. Matt Saw.org. Chapter 16 of The Iron Heel by Jack London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Saw. The end. When it came time for Ernest and me to go to Washington, Father did not accompany us. He had become enamored of proletarian life. He looked upon our slum neighborhood as a great sociological laboratory, and he had embarked upon an apparently endless orgy of investigation. He chummed with the laborers and was an intimate in scores of homes. Also he worked at odd jobs and the work was play as well as learned investigation, for he delighted in it and was always returning home with copious notes and bubbling over with new adventures. He was the perfect scientist. There was no need for his working at all because Ernest managed to earn enough for his translating to take care of the three of us, but Father insisted on pursuing his favorite phantom and a protein phantom it was, judging from the jobs he worked at. I shall never forget the evening he brought home his street pedal as outfit of shoelaces and suspenders, nor the timer went into the little corner grocery to make some purchase and had him wait on me. After that I was not surprised when he tended bar for a week in the saloon across the street. He worked as a night watchman, hawked potatoes on the street, pasted labels in a cannery warehouse, was utility man in a paperbox factory and water carrier for a street railway construction gang, and even joined the dishwasher's union just before it fell to pieces. I think the bishop's example, Safara's wearing apparel was concerned, must have fascinated Father, for he wore the cheap cotton shirt of the laborer and the overalls with a narrow strap about the hips. Yet one habit remained to him from the old life. He always dressed for dinner, or supper rather. I could be happy anywhere with earnest, and Father's happiness in unchanged circumstances rounded out my own happiness. When I was a boy, Father said, I was very curious. I wanted to know why things were and how they came to pass. That was why I became a physicist. The life in me today is just as curious as it was in my boyhood, and it's the being curious that makes life worth living. Sometimes he ventured north of Market Street into the shopping and theatre district, where he sold papers, ran errands, and opened cabs. There, one day closing a cab, he encountered Mr. Wixen. In highly, Father described the incident to us that evening. Wixen looked at me sharply when I closed the door on him, and muttered, Well, I'll be damned. Just like that, he said it, Well, I'll be damned. His face turned red, and he was so confused that he forgot to tip me. But he must have recovered himself quickly, for the cab hadn't gone fifty feet before it turned around and came back. He leaned out of the door. Look here, Professor, he said. This is too much. What can I do for you? I closed the cab door for you, I answered. According to common custom, you might give me a dime. Bother that, he snorted. I mean something substantial. He was certainly serious, a twinge of ossified conscience or something, and so I considered with grave deliberation for a moment. His face was quite expectant when I began my answer, but you should have seen it when I finished. You might give me back my home, I said, and my stock in the Sierra Mills. Father paused. What did he say? I questioned eagerly. What could he say? He said nothing. But I said, I hope you are happy. He looked at me curiously. Tell me, are you happy? I asked. He ordered the cab man to drive on, and went away swearing horribly, but he didn't give me the dime, much less the home and stock. So you see, my dear, your father's street Arab career is beset with disappointments. And so it was that father kept on at Arpel Street quarters, while Ernest and I went to Washington. Except for the final consummation, the old order had passed away, and the final consummation was nearer than I dreamed. Contrary to our expectation, no obstacles were raised to prevent the socialist congressmen from taking their seats. Everything went smoothly, and I laughed at Ernest when he looked upon the very smoothness as something ominous. We found our socialist comrades confident, optimistic of their strength, and of the things they would accomplish. A few grangers who had been elected to Congress increased our strength, and an elaborate program of what was to be done was prepared by the United Forces, in all of which Ernest joined loyally and energetically, though he could not forbear, now and again from saying, apropos of nothing in particular. When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than mechanical mixtures. You take my word. The trouble arose first with the grangers in the various states they had captured at the last election. There were a dozen of these states, but the grangers who had been elected were not permitted to take office. The incumbents refused to get out, and it was very simple. They merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable red tape of the law. The grangers were powerless. The courts were in the hands of their enemies. This was the moment of danger. If the cheated grangers became violent, all was lost. Now we socialists worked to hold them back. There were days and nights when Ernest never closed his eyes in sleep. The big leaders of the grangers saw the peril and were with us to a man, but it was all of no avail. The oligarchy wanted violence, and it set its agent provocateur to work. Without discussion, it was the agent provocateur who caused the peasant revolt. In a dozen states, the revolt flared up. The expropriated farmers took forcible possession of the state governments. Of course, this was unconstitutional, and of course the United States put its soldiers into the field. Everywhere the agent provocateur urged the people on. These emissaries of the iron heel disguised themselves as artisans, farmers, and farm laborers. In Sacramento, the capital of California, the grangers had succeeded in maintaining order. Thousands of secret agents were rushed to the devoted city. In mobs composed wholly of themselves, they fired and looted buildings and factories. They worked the people up until they joined them in the pillage. Liquor in large quantities was distributed among the slum classes further to inflame their minds, and then, when all was ready, appeared upon the scene the soldiers of the United States, who were in reality the soldiers of the iron heel. Eleven thousand men, women, and children were shot down on the streets of Sacramento or murdered in their houses. The national government took possession of the state government, and all was over for California. And as with California, so elsewhere. Every granger state was ravaged with violence and washed in blood. First, disorder was precipitated by the secret agents and the black hundreds. Then the troops were called out. Rioting and mob rule reigned throughout the rural districts. Day and night the smoke of burning farms, warehouses, villages, and cities filled the sky. Dynamite appeared. Railroad bridges and tunnels were blown up and trains were wrecked. The poor farmers were shot and hanged in great numbers. Reprisals were bitter, and many plutocrats and army officers were murdered. Blood and vengeance were in men's hearts. The regular troops fought the farmers as savagely as had they been Indians. And the regular troops had cause. 2800 of them had been annihilated in a tremendous series of dynamite explosions in Oregon. And in a similar manner a number of train loads at different times and places had been destroyed. So it was that the regular troops fought for their lives as well as did the farmers. As for the militia, the militia law of 1903 was put into effect and the workers of one state were compelled under pain of death to shoot down their comrade workers in other states. Of course the militia law did not work smoothly at first. Many militia officers were murdered and many militia men were executed by drumhead court martial. Ernest's prophecy was strikingly fulfilled in the cases of Mr. Coalt and Mr. Asmanson. Both were eligible for the militia and both were drafted to serve in the punitive expedition that was dispatched from California against the farmers of Missouri. Mr. Coalt and Mr. Asmanson refused to serve. They were given short shrift. Drumhead court martial was their portion and military execution their end. They were shot with their backs to the firing squad. Many young men fled into the mountains to escape serving in the militia. There they became outlaws and it was not until more peaceful times that they received their punishment. It was drastic. The government issued a proclamation for all law-abiding citizens to come in from the mountains for a period of three months. When the proclaimed date arrived half a million soldiers were sent into the mountainous districts everywhere. There was no investigation, no trial. Wherever a man was encountered he was shot down on the spot. The troops operated on the basis that no man not an outlaw remained in the mountains. Some bands in strong positions fought gallantly but in the end every deserter from the militia met death. A more immediate lesson however was impressed on the minds of the people by the punishment meted out to the Kansas militia. The great Kansas mutiny occurred at the very beginning of military operations against the Granges. Six thousand of the militia mutinied. They had been for several weeks very turbulent and sullen and for that reason had been kept in camp. The open mutiny however was without doubt precipitated by the agent provocateur. On the night of the 22nd of April they arose and murdered their officers on the small remnant of the latter escaping. This was beyond the scheme of the iron heel for the agent provocateur had done their work too well but everything was grist to the iron heel. It had prepared for the outbreak and the killing of so many officers gave it justification for what followed. As by magic 40,000 soldiers of the regular army surrounded the Malkental. It was a trap. The wretched militia men found that their machine guns had been tampered with and that the cartridges from the captured magazines did not fit their rifles. They hoisted the white flag of surrender but it was ignored. There were no survivors. The entire six thousand were annihilated common shell and shrapnel were thrown in upon them from a distance and when in their desperation they charged the encircling lines they were mowed down by the machine guns. I talked with an eyewitness and he said that the nearest any militia man approached the machine guns was 150 yards. The earth was carpeted with the slain and a final charge of cavalry with trampling of horses hooves revolvers and sabers crushed the wounded into the ground. Simultaneously with the destruction of the granges came the revolt of the coal miners. It was the expiring effort of organized labor. Three quarters of a million of miners went out on strike but they were too widely scattered over the country to advantage from their own strength. They were segregated in their own districts and beaten into submission. This was the first great slave drive. Pocock won his spurs as a slave driver and earned the undying hatred of the proletariat. Countless attempts were made upon his life but he seemed to bear a charmed existence. It was he who was responsible for the introduction of the Russian passport system among the miners and the denial of their right to have removal from one part of the country to another. Note. Albert Pocock another of the notorious strike breakers of earlier years who to the day of his death successfully held all the coal miners of the country to their task. He was succeeded by his son Louis Pocock and for five generations this remarkable line of slave drivers handled the coal mines. The elder Pocock known as Pocock the first has been described as follows a long lean head semi-circled by a fringe of brown and grey hair with big cheekbones and a heavy chin a pale face lusterless grey eyes a metallic voice and a languid manner. He was born of humble parents and began his career as a bartender. He next became a private detective for a street railway corporation and by successive steps developed into a professional strike breaker. Pocock the fifth the last of the line was blown up in a pump house by a bomb during a petty revolt of the miners in the Indian territory. This occurred in 2073 AD. In the meantime the socialists held firm. While the grangers expired in flame and blood and organized labor was disrupted the socialists held their peace and perfected their secret organization. In vain the grangers pleaded with us. We rightly contended that any revolt on our part was virtually suicide for the whole revolution. The iron heel at first dubious about dealing with the entire proletariat at one time had found the work easier than it had expected and would have asked nothing better than an uprising on our part. But we avoided the issue in spite of the fact that as your provocateur swarmed in a midst. In those early days the agents of the iron heel were clumsy in their methods. They had much to learn and in the meantime our fighting groups weeded them out. It was bitter bloody work but we were fighting for life and for the revolution and we had to fight the enemy with its own weapons. Yet we were fair. No agent of the iron heel was executed without a trial. But if so very rarely. The bravest and the most combative and self-sacrificing of our comrades went into the fighting groups. Once after ten years had passed Ernest made a calculation from figures furnished by the chiefs of the fighting groups and his conclusion was that the average life of a man or woman after becoming a member was five years. The comrades of the fighting groups were heroes all and the peculiar thing about it was that they were opposed to the taking of life. They violated their own natures yet they loved liberty and knew of no sacrifice too great to make for the cause. Note these fighting groups were modeled somewhat after the fighting organization of the Russian Revolution and despite the unceasing efforts of the iron heel these groups persisted throughout the three centuries of its existence. Composed of men and women actuated by lofty purpose and unafraid to die the fighting groups exercised tremendous influence and tempered the savage brutality of the rulers. Not alone was their work confined to unseen warfare with the secret agents of the oligarchy the oligarchs themselves were compelled to listen to the decrees of the groups and often when they disobeyed were punished by death and likewise were the subordinates of the oligarchs were the officers of the army and the leaders of the labour castes. Stern justice was meted out by these organised avengers but most remarkable was their passionless and judicial procedure. There were no snap judgments. When a man was captured he was given fair trial and opportunity for defence. Of necessity many men were tried and condemned by proxy as in the case of General Lampton. This occurred in 2138 AD. Possibly the most bloodthirsty and malignant of all the mercenaries that ever served the iron heel. He was informed by the fighting groups that they had tried him found him guilty and condemned him to death. In this after three warnings for him to cease from his ferocious treatment of the proletariat after his condemnation he surrounded himself with a myriad protective devices. Years passed and in vain the fighting groups strove to execute their decree. Comrade after comrade men and women failed in their attempts and were cruelly executed by the oligarchy. It was the case of General Lampton that revived crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl of 17, Madeleine Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged torture. But today she stands in imperishable bronze in the pantheon of brotherhood in the wonder city of Sirle. We who by personal experience know nothing of bloodshed must not judge harshly the heroes of the fighting groups. They gave up their lives for humanity, no sacrifice was too great for them to accomplish, while inexorable necessity compelled them to bloody expression in an age of blood. The fighting groups constituted the one thorn in the side of the iron heel that the iron heel could never remove. Everhard was the father of this curious army and his accomplishments and successful persistence for three hundred years bear witness to the wisdom with which he organized and the solid foundation he laid for the succeeding generations to build upon. In some respects, despite his great economic and sociological contributions and his work as a general leader in the revolution, his organization of the fighting groups must be regarded as his greatest achievement. The task we set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from our circles of the secret agents of the oligarchy. Second, the organizing of the fighting groups and outside of them of the general secret organization of the revolution. And third, the introduction of our own secret agents into every branch of the oligarchy, into the labour casts and especially among the telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into the army, the ashram provocateur and the slave drivers. It was slow work and perilous and often were our efforts rewarded with costly failures. The iron heel had triumphed in open warfare, but we held our own in the new warfare, strange and awful and subterranean that we instituted. All was unseen, much was unguessed. The blind fought the blind and yet through it all was order, purpose, control. We permeated the entire organization of the iron heel with our agents while our own organization was permeated with the agents of the iron heel. It was warfare, dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot and counter plot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and terrible. Men and women disappeared our nearest and dearest comrades. We saw them today. Tomorrow they were gone. We never saw them again. And we knew that they had died. There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The man who plotted beside us for all we knew might be an agent of the iron heel. We mined the organization of the iron heel with our secret agents and the iron heel counter mined with its secret agents inside its own organization. And it was the same with our organization. And despite the absence of confidence and trust, we were compelled to base our every effort on confidence and trust. Often where we betrayed, men were weak. The iron heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that awaited in the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the rest, the wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture and death. Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to make the only other reward that was within our power. It was the reward of death. Out of necessity, we had to punish our traitors. For every man who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon his heels. We might fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies, such as the Pococks, for instance, but the one thing we could not afford to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors. Comrades turned traitor by permission in order to win to the wonder cities and there execute our sentences on the real traitors. In fact, so terrible did we make ourselves that it became a great apparel to betray us than to remain loyal to us. The revolution took on largely the character of religion. We worshipped at the shrine of the revolution, which was the shrine of liberty. It was the divine flashing through us. Men and women devoted their lives to the cause and newborn babes were sealed to it as of old they had been sealed to the service of God. We were lovers of humanity. End of chapter 16 Recording by Matt Soar Montreal Matt Soar.org Chapter 17 Of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Soar The Scarlet Livery With the destruction of the Granger States the Grangers in Congress disappeared. They were being tried for high treason and their places were taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The Socialists were in a pitiful minority and they knew that their end was near. Congress and the Senate were empty pretenses, farces. Public questions were gravely debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the mandates of the oligarchy. Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in the debate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of the preceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the starvation line and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had but sunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters were surfiting on the surplus. We called these wretched people the people of the Abyss and it was to alleviate their awful suffering that the Socialists had introduced the unemployed bill. But this was not to the fancy of the Iron Heel. In its own way it was preparing to set these millions to work but the way was not our way. Wherefore it had issued its orders that our bill should be voted down. Ernest and his fellows knew that the effort was futile but they were tired of the suspense. They wanted something to happen. They were accomplishing nothing and the best they hoped for was the putting of an end to the legislative farce in which they were unwilling players. They knew not what end would come but they never anticipated a more disastrous end than the one that did come. Note the surplus. The same conditions obtained in the 19th century A.D. under British rule in India. The natives died of starvation by the million while their rulers robbed them of the fruits of their toil and expended it on magnificent pageants and mumbo jumbo fulleries. Perforce, in this enlightened age we have much to blush for in the acts of our ancestors. Our only consolation is philosophic. We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off. Note the people of the abyss. This phrase was struck out by the genius of HD Wells in the late 19th century A.D. Wells was a sociological seer, sane and normal as well as warm human. Many fragments of his work have come down to us while two of his greatest achievements, anticipations and mankind in the making have come down intact before the oligarchs and before ever hard. Wells speculated upon the building of the wonder cities though in his writings they are referred to as Pleasure Cities. I sat in the gallery that day. We all knew that something terrible was imminent. It was in the air and its presence was made visible by the armed soldiers drawn up in lines in the corridors and by the officers grouped in the entrances to the house itself. The oligarchy was about to strike. Ernest was speaking. He was describing the sufferings of the unemployed as if with the wild idea of in some way touching their hearts and consciences. But the republican and democratic members sneered and cheered at him and there was uproar and confusion. Ernest abruptly changed front. I know nothing that I may say can influence you. He said, You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves republicans and democrats. There is no republican party. There's no democratic party. There are no republicans nor democrats in this house. You are licks, spittlers, and panderas that creatures of the plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty. And all the while you were the scarlet livery of the iron heel. Here the shouting and the cries of order, order drowned his voice and he stood disdainfully till the din had somewhat subsided. He waved his hand to include all of them, turned to his own comrades and said, Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts. Pandemonium broke out again. The speaker wrapped for order and glanced expectantly at the officers in the doorways. There were cries of sedition and a great rotund New York member began shouting, Anarchist at Ernest. And Ernest was not pleasant to look at. Every fighting fibre of him was quivering and his face was the face of a fighting animal with all he was cool and collected. Remember, he said, in a voice that made itself heard above the din, that as you show mercy now to the proletariat, someday will that same proletariat show mercy to you. The cries of sedition and anarchist redoubled. I know that you will not vote for this bill, Ernest went on. You have received the command from your masters to vote against it and yet you call me anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government of the people and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet shame in public places, call me anarchist. I do not believe in hellfire and brimstone, but in moments like this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this I almost do believe. Surely there must be a hell for in no less place could it be possible for you to receive punishment adequate to your crimes. So long as you exist there is a vital need for hellfire in the cosmos. There was movement in the doorways. Ernest, the speaker, all the members turned to see. Why do you not call your soldiers in, Mr. Speaker, and bid them do your work? Ernest demanded. They should carry out your plan with expedition. There are other plans afoot, was the retort. That is why the soldiers are present. Our plans, I suppose, Ernest sneered. Assassination, or something kindred. But at the word assassination the uproar broke out again. Ernest could not make himself heard, but he remained on his feet waiting for a lull. And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke and the soldiers rushing up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger, capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a moment and waved his arms for silence. It is a plot! His voice rang out in warning to his comrades. Do nothing, or you will be destroyed. Then he slowly sank down and the soldiers reached him. The next moment soldiers were clearing the galleries and I saw no more. Though he was my husband I was not permitted to get to him. When I announced who I was I was promptly placed under arrest. And at the same time were arrested all socialist congressmen in Washington including the unfortunate Simpson who lay ill with Tyforge fever in his hotel. The trial was prompt and brief. The men were for doomed. The wonder was that Ernest was not executed. This was a blunder on the part of the oligarchy. And a costly one. But the oligarchy was too confident in those days. It was drunk with success and little did it dream that that small handful of heroes had within them the power to rocket to its foundations. Tomorrow, when the great revolt breaks out and all the world resounds with the tramp, tramp of the millions, the oligarchy will realize and too late how mightily that band of heroes has grown. Note, Avis Everhard took for granted that her narrative would be read in her own day. And so omits to mention the outcome of the trial for high treason. Many other similar disconcerting omissions will be noticed in the manuscript. 52 socialist congressmen were tried and all were found guilty. Strange to relate, not one received the death sentence. Everhard and 11 others among whom were Theodore Donaldson and Matthew Kent received life imprisonment. The remaining 40 received sentences varying from 30 to 45 years while Arthur Simpson referred to in the manuscript as being ill of Tyforge fever at the time of the explosion. Received only 15 years. It is the tradition that he died of starvation and solitary confinement and this harsh treatment is explained as having been caused by his uncompromising stubbornness and his fiery and tackless hatred for all men that served the despotism. He died in Cabanas in Cuba where three of his comrades were also confined. The 52 socialist congressmen were confined in military fortresses scattered all over the United States. Thus Du Bois and Woods were held in Puerto Rico while Everhard and Merryweather were placed in Alcatraz, an island in San Francisco Bay that had already seen long service as a military prison. As a revolutionist myself, as one on the inside who knew the hopes and fears and secret plans of the revolutionists, I am fitted to answer as very few are the charge that they were guilty of exploding the bomb in Congress and I can say flatly without qualification or doubt of any sort that the socialists in Congress and out had no hand in the affair. Who threw the bomb we do not know but the one thing we are absolutely sure of is that we did not throw it. On the other hand, there is evidence to show that the iron heel was responsible for the act. Of course, we cannot prove this. Our conclusion is merely presumptive but here are such facts as we do know. It had been reported to the Speaker of the House by secret service agents of the government that the socialist congressmen were about to resort to terroristic tactics and that they had decided upon the day when their tactics would go into effect. This day was the very day of the explosion where for the Capitol had been packed with troops in anticipation since we knew nothing about the bomb and since the bomb actually was exploded and since the authorities had prepared in advance for the explosion it is only fair to conclude that the iron heel did know. Furthermore, we charge that the iron heel was guilty of the outrage and that the iron heel planned and perpetrated the outrage for the purpose of foisting the guilt on our shoulders and so bringing about our destruction. From the Speaker, the warning leaked out to all the creatures in the House that wore the scarlet livery. They knew, while Ernest was speaking, that some violent act was to be committed and to do them justice. They honestly believed that the act was to be committed by the socialists at the trial and still with honest belief several testified to having seen Ernest prepare to throw the bomb and that it exploded prematurely. Of course, they saw nothing of the sword in the fevered imagination of fear they thought they saw. That was all. As Ernest said at the trial there was a standard reason if I were going to throw a bomb that I should elect to throw a feeble little squib like the one that was thrown. There wasn't enough powder in it. It made a lot of smoke but it had no one except me. It exploded right at my feet and yet it did not kill me. Believe me, when I get to throwing bombs I'll do damage. There'll be more than smoke in my pitards. In return, it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists just as its premature explosion caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it was a blunder. And to clinch the argument there were the several congressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop the bomb. As for ourselves, not one of us knew how the bomb was thrown. Ernest told me that the fraction of an incident before it exploded he both heard and saw it strike at his feet. He testified to this at the trial but no one believed him. Besides, the whole thing in popular slang was cooked up. The iron heel had made up its mind to destroy us and there was nowithstanding it. There is a saying that truth will out. I have come to doubt that saying. Nineteen years have elapsed and despite our untiring efforts we have failed to find the man who really did throw the bomb. Undoubtedly he was some emissary of the iron heel but he has escaped detection. We have never got the slightest clue to his identity. And now at this late date nothing remains but for the affair to take its place among the mysteries of history. Note, Avis Everhard would have had to live for many generations as she could have seen the clearing up of this particular mystery. A little less than a hundred years ago and a little more than six hundred years after the death the confession of Pervais was discovered in the secret archives of the Vatican. It is perhaps well to tell a little something about this obscure document which in the main is of interest to the historian only. Pervais was an American a French descent who in 1913 AD was lying in the tombs prison in New York City awaiting trial for murder. From his confession we learn that he was not a criminal. He was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional. In an insane fit of jealousy he killed his wife, a very common act in those times. Pervais was mastered by the fear of death all of which is recounted at length in his confession. To escape death he would have done anything and the police agents prepared him by assuring him that he could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the first degree when his trial came off. In those days murder in the first degree was a capital offence. Guilty man or woman was placed in a specially constructed death chair and under the supervision of competent physicians was destroyed by a current of electricity. This was called electrocution and it was very popular during that period. Anesthesia as a mode of compulsory death was not introduced until later. This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close at the surface of his being lying in jail and expectant of nothing less than death was prevailed upon by the agents of the iron hill to throw the bomb in the house of representatives. In his confession he states explicitly that he was informed that the bomb was to be a feeble thing and that no lives would be lost. This is directly in line with the fact that the bomb was lightly charged and that its explosion at Everhart's feet was not deadly. Pervais was smuggled into one of the galleries ostensibly closed for repairs. He was to select the moment for the throwing of the bomb and he naively confesses that in his interest in Everhart's terrain and the general commotion raised thereby he nearly forgot his mission. Not only was he released from prison in reward for his deed but he was granted an income for life. This he did not long in joy. In 1914 A.D. in September he was stricken with rheumatism of the heart and lived for three days. It was then that he sent for the Catholic priest Father Peter Durbin and to him made confession. So important did it seem to the priest that he had the confession taken down in writing and sworn to. What happened after this we can only surmise. The document was certainly important enough to find its way to Rome. Powerful influences must have been brought to bear hence its suppression. For centuries no hint of its existence reached the world. It was not until in the last century that Lorbia the brilliant Italian scholar stumbled upon it quite by chance during his researchers in the Vatican. There is today no doubt whatever that the iron hill was responsible for the bomb that exploded in the House of Representatives in 1913 A.D. Even though the pervades confession had never come to light no reasonable doubt could obtain for the act in question that sent 52 congressmen to prison was on a par with countless other acts committed by the oligarchs and before them by the capitalists. There is the classic instance of the ferocious and wanton judicial murder of the innocent and so called hay market anarchists in Chicago in the penultimate decade of the 19th century A.D. In a category by itself is the deliberate burning and destruction of capitalist property by the capitalists themselves. For such destruction of property innocent men were frequently punished railroaded in the parlance of times. In the labor troubles of the first decade of the 20th century A.D. between the capitalists and the western federation of miners similar but more bloody tactics were employed. The railroad station at independence was blown up by the agents of the capitalists. Thirteen men were killed and many more were wounded. And then the capitalists controlling the legislative and judicial machinery of the state of Colorado charged the miners with the crime and came very near to convicting them. Remains, one of the tools in this affair like Pervais was lying in jail in another state Kansas awaiting trial when he was approached by the agents of the capitalists. But unlike Pervais the confession of remains was made public in his own time. Then during this same period there was the case of Moyer and Hayward two strong fearless leaders of labor. One was president and the other was secretary of the western federation of miners. The ex governor of Idaho had been mysteriously murdered. The crime at the time was openly charged to the mine owners by the socialists and miners. Nevertheless, in violation of the national and state constitutions and by means of conspiracy on the parts of the governors of Idaho and Colorado Moyer and Hayward were kidnapped, thrown into jail and charged with the murder. It was this instance that provoked from Eugene V. Debs national leader of the American socialists at the time the following words The labor leaders that cannot be bribed nor bullied must be ambushed and murdered. The only crime of Moyer and Hayward is that they have been unswervingly true to the working class. Capitalists have stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary and ridden over a rough shod. And now they propose to murder those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion. The governors of Colorado and Idaho are about executing the mandates of their masters the plutocracy. The issue is the workers versus the plutocracy. If they strike the first violent blow we will strike the last. End of chapter 17 Recording by Matt Saw Montreal Matt Saw Dot Org Chapter 18 of The Iron Heel by Jack London This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Matt Saw in the shadow of Sonoma. Of myself during this period there is not much to say. For six months I was kept in prison though charged with no crime. I was a suspect a word of fear that all revolutionists were soon to come to know. But our own nascent secret service was beginning to work by the end of my second month in prison. One of the jailers made himself known as a revolutionist in touch with the organization. Several weeks later Joseph Parkhurst the prison doctor who had just been appointed proved himself to be a member of one of the fighting groups. Thus throughout the organization of the oligarchy our own organization Weblike and Spidery was insinuating itself and so I was kept in touch with all that was happening in the world without and furthermore every one of our imprisoned leaders was in contact with brave comrades who masqueraded in the livery of the iron heel. Though earnest lay in prison 3000 miles away on the pacific coast I was in unbroken communication with him and our letters passed regularly back and forth. The leaders in prison and out were able to discuss and direct the campaign. It would have been possible within a few months to have affected the escape of some of them but since imprisonment proved no bar to our activities it was decided to avoid anything premature. Fifty-two congressmen were in prison and fully 300 more of our leaders. It was planned that they should be delivered simultaneously. If part of them escaped the vigilance of the oligarchs might be aroused so as to prevent the escape of the remainder. On the other hand it was held that a simultaneous jail delivery all over the land would have immense psychological influence on the proletariat. It would show our strength and give confidence. So it was arranged when I was released at the end of six months that I was to disappear and prepare a secure hiding place for Ernest. To disappear was in itself no easy thing. No sooner did I get my freedom than my footsteps began to be dogged by the spies of the iron heel. It was necessary that they should be thrown off the track and that I should win the California. It is laughable the way this was accomplished. Already the passport system modelled on the Russian was developing. I dared not cross the continent in my own character. It was necessary that I should be completely lost if ever I was to see Ernest again for by trailing me after he escaped he would be caught once more. Again I could not disguise myself as a proletarian and travel. There remained the disguise of a member of the oligarchy. While the arch oligarchs were no more than a handful there were myriads of lesser ones of the type say of Mr. Wixen. Men worth a few millions who were adherents of the arch oligarchs. The wives and daughters of these lesser oligarchs were legion and it was decided that I should assume the disguise of such a one. A few years later this would have been impossible because the passport system was to become so perfect that no man, woman nor child in all the land was unregistered and unaccounted for in his or her movements. When the time was ripe the spies were thrown off my track and hour later Avis Everhard was no more. At that time one Felice van Verden accompanied by two maids and a lapdog with another maid for the lapdog entered a drawing room on a pullman and a few minutes later was speeding west. Note this ridiculous picture well illustrates the heartless conduct of the masters while people starved lapdogs were waited upon by maids. This was a serious masquerade on the part of Avis Everhard. Life and death and the cause were in the issue. Therefore the picture must be accepted as a true picture. It affords a striking commentary of the times. Note Pullman the designation of the more luxurious railway cars of the period and so named from the inventor. The three maids who accompanied me were revolutionists. Two were members of the fighting groups and the third Grace Holbrook entered a group the following year and six months later was executed by the iron heel. She it was who waited upon the dog. Of the other two Bertha Stoll disappeared 12 years later while Anne Roylston still lives and plays an increasingly important part in the revolution. Note Despite continual and almost inconceivable hazards Anne Roylston lived to the royal age of 91 as the pocochs defied the executioners of the fighting groups so she defied the executioners of the iron heel. She bore a charmed life and prospered amid dangers and alarms. She herself was an executioner for the fighting groups and known as the red virgin she became one of the inspired figures of the revolution. When she was an old woman of 69 she shot bloody hallcliff down in the midst of his armed escort and got away unscathed. In the end she died peacefully of old age in a secret refuge of the revolutionists in the Ozark Mountains. Without adventure we crossed the United States to California when the train stopped at 16th street station in Oakland we alighted and there Felice van Verden with her two mates a lapdog and her lapdogs made disappeared forever. The mates guided by trusty comrades were led away. Other comrades took charge of me. Within half an hour after leaving the train I was on board a small fishing boat and out on the waters of San Francisco Bay. The winds baffled and we drifted aimlessly the greater part of the night. But I saw the lights of Alcatraz were earnest lay and found comfort in the thought of nearness to him. By dawn what with the rowing of the fishermen we made the marine islands. Here we lay in hiding all day and on the following night swept on by a flood tide and a fresh wind we crossed San Pablo Bay in two hours and ran up Petaluma Creek. Here horses were ready and another comrade and without delay we were away through the starlight. To the north I could see the loom of Sonoma Mountain toward which we rode. We left the old town of Sonoma to the right and rode up a canyon that lay between outlying buttresses of the mountain. The wagon road became a wood road. The wood road became a cow path and the cow path dwindled away and ceased among the upland pastures. Straight over Sonoma Mountain we rode. It was the safest route. There was no one to mark our passing. Dawn caught us on the northern brow and in the gray light we dropped down through the chaperral into Redwood Canyon's deep and warm with the breath of passing summer. It was old country to me that I knew and loved and soon I became the guide. The hiding place was mine. I had selected it. We let down the bars and crossed an upland meadow. Next we went over a low oak covered ridge and descended into a smaller meadow. Again we climbed a ridge this time riding under red-limbed madronas and manzanitas of deeper red. The first rays of the sun streamed upon our backs as we climbed. A flight of quail thrummed off through the thickets. A big jackrabbit crossed our path leaping swiftly and silently like a deer. And in the deer a many pronged buck the sun flashing red gold from neck and shoulders cleared the crest of the ridge before us and was gone. We followed in his wakeer space then dropped down a zigzag trail that he disdained into a group of noble redwoods that stood about a pool of water murky with minerals from the mountainside. I knew every inch of the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned the ranch but he too had become a revolutionist no more disastrously than I for he was already dead and gone and none knew where nor how. He alone in the days he had lived knew the secret of the hiding place for which I was bound. He had bought the ranch for beauty and paid a round price for it much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to tell with greatly how they were won't to shake their heads mournfully at the price to accomplish ponderously a bit of mental arithmetic and then to say but you can't make six percent on it. But he was dead now nor did the ranch descend to his children. Of all men it was now the property of Mr. Wixen who owned the whole eastern and northern slopes of Sonoma mountain running from the Spreckles estate to the divide of Bennett Valley. Out of it he had made a magnificent deer park where over thousands of acres of sweet slopes and glades and canyons the deer ran almost in primitive wildness. The people who had owned the soil had been driven away. A state home for the feeble-minded had also been demolished to make room for the deer. To cap it all Wixen's hunting lodge was a quarter of a mile from my hiding place. This, instead of being a danger, was an added security. We were sheltered unto the very aegis of one of the minor oligarchs. Suspicion by the nature of the situation was turned aside. The last place in the world the spies of the iron heel would dream of looking for me and for earnest when he joined me was Wixen's deer park. We tied our horses among the redwoods at the pool. From a cache behind a hollow rotting log my companion brought out a variety of things a 50 pound sack of flour tinned foods of all sorts cooking utensils blankets a canvas tarp hauling books and writing material a great bundle of letters a five gallon can of kerosene an oil stove and last and most important a large coil of stout rope. So large was the supply of things that a number of trips would be necessary to carry them to the refuge. But the refuge was very near. Taking the rope and leading the way I passed through a glade of tangled vines and bushes that ran between two wooded nulls. The glade ended abruptly at the steep bank of a stream. It was a little stream rising from springs and the hottest summer never dried it up. On every hand were tall wooded nulls a group of them with all the seeming of having been flung there from some careless Titan's hand. There was no bedrock in them. There rose from their bases hundreds of feet and they were composed of red volcanic earth the famous wine soil of Sonoma. Through these the tiny stream had cut its deep and precipitous channel. It was quite a scramble down to the stream bed and once on the bed we went downstream perhaps for a hundred feet and then we came to the great hole. There was no warning of the existence of the hole nor was it a hole in the common sense of the word. One crawled through tight locked briars and branches and found oneself on the very edge peering out and down through a green screen. A couple of hundred feet in length and width it was half of that in depth. Possibly because of some fault that it occurred when the knolls were flung together and certainly helped by freakish erosion. The hole had been scooped out in the course of centuries by the wash of water. Nowhere did the raw earth appear. All was garmented by vegetation from tiny maiden hair and gold back ferns to mighty redwood and Douglas spruces. These great trees even sprang out from the walls of the hole. Some leaned over at angles as great at 45 degrees though the majority towered straight up from the soft and almost perpendicular earth walls. It was a perfect hiding place. No one ever came there not even the village boys of Glen Ellen. Had this hole existed in the bed of a canyon a mile long or several miles long it would have been well known. But this was no canyon. From beginning to end the length of the stream was no more than five hundred yards. Three hundred yards above the hole the stream took its rise in the spring at the foot of a flat meadow. A hundred yards below the hole the stream ran out into open country joining the mainstream and flowing across rolling and grass covered land. My companion took a turn of the rope around a tree and with me fast on the other end lowered away. In no time I was on the bottom and in but a short while he had carried all the articles from the cache and lowered them down to me. He hold the rope up and hid it and before he went away called down to me a cheerful parting. Before I go on I want to say a word for this comrade John Carlson a humble figure of the revolution one of the countless faithful ones in the ranks. He worked for Wixen in the staples near the hunting lodge. In fact it was on Wixen's horses that we had ridden over Sonoma Mountain. For nearly 20 years now John Carlson has been custodian of the refuge. No thought of disloyalty I am sure has ever entered his mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic stolid to such a degree that one could not but wonder how the revolution had any meaning to him at all and yet love of freedom glowed somberly and steadily in his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders and he was neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was a revolutionist. When I was a young man I was a soldier was his answer. It was in Germany there all young men must be in the army. So I was in the army. There was another soldier there a young man too. His father was what you call an agitator and his father was in jail for Lee's majesty what you call speaking the truth about the emperor. And the young man the son talked with me much about people and work and the robbery of the people by the capitalists. He made me see things in new ways. And I became a socialist. His talk was very true and good and I have never forgotten. When I came to the United States I hunted up the socialists. I became a member of a section that was in the day of the SLP. Then later when the split came I joined the local of the SP. I was working in a livery stable in San Francisco then that was before the earthquake. I have paid my dues for 22 years. I am yet a member and I yet pay my dues. Though it is very secret now I will always pay my dues and when the cooperative Commonwealth comes I will be glad. Left to myself I proceeded to cook breakfast on the oil stove and to prepare my home. Often in the early morning or in the evening after dark Carlson would steal down to the refuge and work for a couple of hours. At first my home was the tarpaulin. Later a small tent was put up and still later when we became assured of the perfect security of the place a small house was erected. This house was completely hidden from any chance eye that might peer down from the edge of the hole. The lush vegetation of that sheltered spot make a natural shield. Also the house was built against the perpendicular wall and in the wall itself shored by strong timbers well drained and ventilated. We excavated two small rooms. Believe me we had many comforts. When beaten back the German terrorist hid with us sometime later he installed a smoke consuming device that enabled us to sit by crackling wood fires on winter nights. And here I must say a word for that gentle soul terrorist then whom there is no comrade in the revolution more fearfully misunderstood. Comrade beaten back did not betray the cause nor was he executed by the comrade as is commonly supposed. This canal was circulated by the creatures of the oligarchy. Comrade beaten back was absent minded forgetful. He was shot by one of our lookouts at the cave refuge at Carmel through failure on his part to remember the secret signals. It was all a sad mistake and that he betrayed his fighting group is an absolute lie. No truer more loyal man ever laboured for the cause. Note search as we may through all the material of those times that has come down to us we can find no clue to the beaten back here referred to. No mention is made of him anywhere saving the ever hard manuscript. For 19 years now the refuge that I selected had been almost continuously occupied and at all that time with one exception it has never been discovered by an outsider. And yet it was only a quarter of a mile from Wixens Hunting Lodge and a short mile from the village of Glen Ellen. I was able always to hear the morning and evening trains arrive and depart that I used to set my watch by the whistle at the brick yards. Note if the curious traveller will turn south from Glen Ellen he will find himself on a boulevard that is identical with the old country road seven centuries ago. A quarter of a mile from Glen Ellen after the second bridge has passed to the right will be noticed a baranka that runs like a scar across the rolling land toward a group of wooded knolls. The baranka is the site of the ancient right of way that in the time of private property and land ran across the holding of one Chauvet a French pioneer of California who came from his native country in the fabled days of gold. The wooded knolls are the same knolls referred to by Avis Everhard. The great earthquake of 2368 AD broke off the side of one of these knolls and toppled it into the hole where the Everhards made their refuge. Since the finding of the manuscript excavations have been made and the house the two cave rooms and all the accumulated rubbish of long occupancy have been brought to light. Many valuable relics have been found among which curious to relate is the smoke consuming device of beaten banks mentioned in the narrative. Students interested in such matters should read the brochure of Arnold Bentham soon to be published. A mile northwest from the wooded knolls brings one to the site of Wake Robin Lodge at the junction of Wildwater and Sonoma creeks. It may be noticed in passing that Wildwater was originally called Graham Creek and was so named on the early local maps. But the later name sticks. It was at Wake Robin Lodge that Avis Everhard later lived for short periods. When disguised as an Ajamp refocateur of the Iron Heel she was enabled to play with impunity her part among men and events. The official permission to occupy Wake Robin Lodge is still on the records signed by no less a man than Wixen the minor oligarch of the manuscript. by Jack London. Your walk. Everything. This command I obeyed. Every day I practiced for hours in bearing forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman who I may call my other self. It was only by long practice that such results could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intonation I practiced almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed, automatic. It was this automatic assumption of a role that was considered imperative. One must become so adept as to deceive oneself. It was like learning a new language say the French. At first speech in French is self-conscious a matter of the will. The student thinks in English and then transmutes into French or reads in French but transmutes into English before he can understand. Then later becoming firmly grounded automatic. The student reads, writes and thinks in French without any recourse to English at all. And so without disguises. It was necessary for us to practice until our assumed roles became real. Until to be our original selves would require a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course at first much was mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art and we had much to discover. But the work was going on everywhere. Masters in the art were developing and a fund of tricks and expedience was being accumulated. This fund became a sort of textbook that was passed on a part of the curriculum as it were of the School of Revolution. Note, disguise did become a veritable art during that period. The revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their refuges. They scorned accessories such as wigs and beards, false eyebrows and such aids of the theatrical actors. The game of revolution was a game of life and death and mere accessories were traps. Disguise had to be fundamental, intrinsic, part and parcel of one's being second nature. The red virgin is reported to have been one of the most adept in the art to which must be ascribed her long and successful career. It was at this time that my father disappeared. His letters, which had come to me regularly, ceased. He no longer appeared at our Pelf Street quarters. Our comrades sought him everywhere. Through our secret service we ransacked every prison in the land. But he was lost as completely as if the earth had swallowed him up, and to this day no clue to his end has been discovered. Note, disappearance was one of the horrors of the time. As a motif in song and story it constantly crops up. It was an inevitable concomitant of the subterranean warfare that raged through those three centuries. This phenomenon was almost as common in the oligarch class and the labour caste as it was in the ranks of the revolutionists. Without warning, without trace, men and women and even children disappeared and were seen no more their end shrouded in mystery. Six lonely months I spent in the refuge. But they were not idle months. Our organisation went on a pace and there were mountains of work always waiting to be done. Ernest and his fellow leaders from their prisons decided what should be done and it remained for us on the outside to do it. There was the organisation of the mouth-to-mouth propaganda, the organisation with all its ramifications of our spy system, the establishment of our secret printing presses, and the establishment of our underground railways which meant the knitting together of all our myriads of places of refuge and the formation of new refuges where links were missing in the chains we ran over all the land. So I say the work was never done. At the end of six months my loneliness was broken by the arrival of two comrades. They were young girls, brave souls, and passionate lovers of liberty. Laura Peterson, who disappeared in 1922 and Kate Beers, who later married Du Bois and who is still with us with eyes lifted to tomorrow's sun that heralds in the new age. Note, Du Bois, the present librarian of Ardis is a lineal descendant of this revolutionary pair. The two girls arrived in a flurry of excitement, danger and sudden death. In the crew of the fishing boat that conveyed them across San Pablo Bay was a spy, a creature of the iron heel. He had successfully masqueraded as a revolutionist and penetrated deep into the secrets of our organization. Without doubt he was on my trail, for we had long since learned that my disappearance had been cause of deep concern to the Secret Service of the oligarchy. Luckily, as the outcome proved, he had not divulged his discoveries to anyone. He had evidently delayed reporting, preferring to wait until he had brought things to a successful conclusion by discovering my hiding place and capturing me. His information died with him. Under some pretext, after the girls had landed at Petaluma Creek and taken to the horses, he managed to get away from the boat. Partway up Sonoma Mountain, John Carlson let the girls go on, leading his horse while he went back on foot. His suspicions had been aroused. He captured the spy, and as to what then happened, Carlson gave us a fair idea. I fixed him, was Carlson's unimaginative way of describing the affair. I fixed him, he repeated, while a somber light burned in his eyes and his huge, toiled, distorted hands opened and closed eloquently. He made no noise. I hid him, and tonight I will go back and bury him deep. During that period, I used to marvel at my own metamorphosis. At times it seemed impossible, either that I had ever lived a placid peaceful life in a college town, or that I had become a revolutionist, inert to scenes of violence and death. One or the other could not be. One was real, the other was a dream. But which was which? Was this present life of a revolutionist hiding in a hole and nightmare? Or was I a revolutionist, who had somewhere, somehow, dreamed that in some former existence I have lived in Berkeley and never known a life more violent than teas and dancers, debating societies and lectures rooms? But then I suppose this was a common experience of all of us who had rallied under the red banner of the brotherhood of man. I often remembered figures from that other life. And curiously enough, they appeared and disappeared, now and again in my new life. That was Bishop Morehouse. In vain we searched for him after our organisation had developed. He had been transferred from asylum to asylum. We traced him from the state hospital for the insane at Napa to the one at Stockton and from there to the one in the Santa Clara Valley called Anus. And there the trail ceased. There was no record of his death. In some way he must have escaped. Little did I dream of the awful manner in which I was to see him once again, the fleeting glimpse of him in the whirlwind carnage of the Chicago Commune. Jackson, who had lost his arm in the Sierra Mills and who had been the cause of my own conversion into a revolutionist, I never saw again, but we all knew what he did before he died. He never joined the revolutionists. Embittered by his fate brooding over his wrongs, he became an anarchist. Not a philosophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad with hate and lust for revenge. And while he revenged himself, evading the guards in the night time while all were asleep, he blew the Perton-Waith palace into atoms. Not a soul escaped, not even the guards. And in prison, while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself under his blankets. Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Balingford achieved quite different fates from that of Jackson. They have been faithful to their salt and they have been correspondingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they dwell at peace with the world. Both are apologists for the oligarchy. Both have grown very fat. Dr. Hammerfield, as Ernest once said, has succeeded in modifying his metaphysics so as to give God's sanction to the iron heel and also to include much worship of beauty and to reduce to an invisible wreath the gaseous vertebrate described by Hegel. The difference between Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Balingford being that the latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little more gaseous and a little less vertebrate. Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills whom I encountered while investigating the case of Jackson was a surprise to all of us. In 1918 I was present at a meeting of the Frisco Reds. Of all our fighting groups this one was the most formidable, ferocious and merciless. It was really not a part of our organization. Its members were fanatics, madmen. We dared not encourage such a spirit. On the other hand, though they did not belong to us we remained on friendly terms with them. It was a matter of vital importance that brought me there that night. I, alone in the midst of a score of men was the only person unmasked. After the business that brought me there was transacted I was led away by one of them. In a dark passage this guide struck a match and holding it close to his face slipped back his mask. For a moment I gazed upon the passion wrought features of Peter Donnelly. Then the match went out. I just wanted you to know it was me. He said in the darkness, do you remember Dallas, the superintendent? I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-faced superintendent of the Sierra Mills. Well, I got him first. Donnelly said with pride. It was after that I joined the Reds. But how comes it that you were here? I queried. Your wife and children? Dead, he answered. That's why. No, he went on hastily. It is not revenge for them. They died easily in their beds. Sickness, you see, one time and another. They tied my arms while they lived. And now that they're gone it is revenge for my blasted man that I'm after. I was once Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman. But tonight I'm number 27 of the Frisco Reds. Come on now, and I'll get you out of this. More I heard of him afterward. In his own way, he had told the truth when he said all were dead. But one lived. Timothy and him, his father considered dead because he had taken service with the iron heel and the mercenaries. Note, in addition to the labor casts, there arose another cast, the military, a standing army of professional soldiers was created, officered by members of the oligarchy and known as the mercenaries. This institution took the place of the militia, which had proved impracticable under the new regime. Outside the regular secret service of the iron heel, there was further established a secret service of the mercenaries, this latter forming a connecting link between the police and the military. A member of the Frisco Reds pledged himself to 12 annual executions. The penalty for failure was death. A member who failed to complete his number committed suicide. These executions were not haphazard. This group of madmen met frequently and passed wholesale judgments upon offending members and servitors of the oligarchy. The executions were afterward apportioned by lot. In fact, the business that brought me there the night of my visit was such a trial. One of our own comrades, who for years had successfully maintained himself in a clerical position in the local bureau of the secret service of the iron heel, had fallen under the ban of the Frisco Reds and was being tried. Of course he was not present, and of course his judges did not know that he was one of our men. My mission had been to testify to his identity and loyalty. It may be wondered how we came to know of the affair at all. The explanation is simple. One of our secret agents was a member of the Frisco Reds. It was necessary for us to keep an eye on friend as well as foe, and this group of madmen was not too unimportant to escape our surveillance. But to return to Peter Donnelly and his son, all went well with Donnelly until in the following year he found among the chief of executions that fell to him the name of Timothy Donnelly. Then it was that that clannishness, which was his to so extraordinary a degree, asserted itself. To save his son, he betrayed his comrades. In this he was partially blocked, but a dozen of the Frisco Reds were executed, and the group was well now destroyed. In retaliation, the survivors meted out to Donnelly the death he had earned by his treason. Nor did Timothy Donnelly long survive. The Frisco Reds pledged themselves to his execution. Every effort was made by the oligarchy to save him. He was transferred from one part of the country to another, three of the Reds lost their lives in vain efforts to get him. The group was composed only of men. In the end they fell back on a woman, one of our comrades, and none other than Ann Wielsten. Our inner circle forbade her, but she had ever a will of her own and disdained discipline. Furthermore, she was a genius and lovable, and we could never discipline her anyway. She is in a class by herself and not amenable to the ordinary standards of the revolutionists. Despite our refusal to grant permission to do the deed, she went on with it. Now Anna Wielsten was a fascinating woman. All she had to do was to beckon a man to her. She broke the hearts of scores of our young comrades and scores of others she captured, and by their heartstrings led into our organization. Yet she steadfastly refused to marry. She dearly loved children, but she held that a child of her own would claim her from the cause, and that it was the cause to which her life was devoted. It was an easy task for Anna Wielsten to win Timothy Donnelly. Her conscience did not trouble her, for at that very time occurred the Nashville Massacre, when the mercenaries, Donnelly in command, literally murdered 800 weavers of that city. But she did not kill Donnelly. She turned him over, a prisoner, to the Frisco Reds. This happened only last year, and now she had been renamed. The revolutionists everywhere are calling her the Red Virgin. Note, it was not until the second revolt was crushed that the Frisco Reds flourished again, and for two generations the group flourished. Then an agent of the Einheil managed to become a member, penetrated all its secrets, and brought about its total annihilation. This occurred in 2002 AD. The members were executed one at a time, at intervals of three weeks, and their bodies exposed in the labor ghetto of San Francisco. Colonel Ingram, and Colonel van Gilbert, are two more familiar figures that I was later to encounter. Colonel Ingram rose high in the oligarchy and became minister to Germany. He was cordially detested by the proletariat of both countries. It was in Berlin that I met him, where, as an accredited international spy of the Einheil, I was received by him and afforded much assistance. Incidentally, I may state that in my dual role I managed a few important things for the revolution. Colonel van Gilbert became known as snarling van Gilbert. His important part was played in drafting the new code after the Chicago Commune. But before that, as trial judge, he had earned sentence of death by his fiendish malignancy. I was one of those that tried him and passed sentence upon him. Anne Roylston carried out the execution. Still another figure arose out of the old life. Jackson's lawyer. Least of all would I have expected again to meet this man, Joseph Hurd. It was a strange meeting. Late at night, two years after the Chicago Commune, Ernest and I arrived together at the Benton Harbour Refuge. This was in Michigan, across the lake from Chicago. We arrived just at the conclusion of the trial of a spy. Sentence of death had been passed and he was being led away. Such was the scene as we came upon it. The next moment, the wretched man had wrenched free from his captors and flung himself at my feet, his arms clutching me about the knees in a vice-like grip as he prayed in a frenzy of mercy. As he turned his agonized face up to me, I recognized him as Joseph Hurd. Of all the terrible things I have witnessed, never have I been so unnerved as by this frantic creature's pleading for life. He was mad for life. It was pitiable. He refused to let go of me, despite the hands of a dozen comrades. And when at last he was dragged shrieking away, I sank down, fading upon the floor. It is far easier to see brave men die than to hear a coward beg for life. Note, the Benton Harbour Refuge was a catacomb, the entrance of which was cunningly contrived by way of a well. It has been maintained in a fair state of preservation and the curious visitor may today tread its labyrinths to the assembly hall, where without doubt occurred the scene described by Avis Everhard. Farther on are the cells where the prisoners were confined and the death chamber where the executions took place. Beyond is the cemetery, long winding galleries hewn out of the solid rock, with recesses on either hand, wherein, tear above tear, lie the revolutionists, just as they were laid away by their comrades, long years gone. Recording by Matt Saw A Lost Oligarch The 18 months that followed was perhaps the happiest of my life with Ernest. During that time we were never apart. Later, when we went back into the world, we were separated much. Not more impatiently do I await the flame of tomorrow's revolt than did I that night await the coming of Ernest. I had not seen him for so long, and the thought of a possible hitch or error in our plans that would keep him still in his island prison almost drove me mad. The hours passed like ages. I was all alone. Beaten back, and three young men who had been living in the refuge were out and over the mountain, heavily armed and prepared for anything. The refuges all over the land were quite empty, I imagine, of comrades that night. Just as the sky paled with the first warning of dawn, I heard the signal from above and gave the answer. In the darkness I almost embraced Beatenback, who came down first. But the next moment I was in Ernest's arms, and in that moment so complete had been my transformation. I discovered it was only by an effort of will that I could be the old Avis Everhard, with the old mannerisms and smiles, phrases and intonations of voice. It was by strong effort only that I was able to maintain my old identity. I could not allow myself to forget for an instant, so automatically imperative had become the new personality I had created. Once inside the little cabin I saw Ernest's face in the light. With the exception of the prison paler, there was no change in him, at least not much. He was my same lover, husband, and hero. And yet there was a certain ascetic lengthening of the lines of his face. But he could well stand it, for it seemed to add a certain nobility of refinement to the riotous excess of life that had always marked his features. He might have been a trifle graver than of Yor, but the glint of laughter still was in his eyes. He was twenty pounds lighter, but in splendid physical condition. He had kept up exercise during the whole period of confinement, and his muscles were like iron. In truth, he was in better condition than when he had entered prison. Hours passed before his head touched pillow, and I had soothed him off to sleep. But there was no sleep for me. I was too happy, and the fatigue of jail-breaking and riding-horseback had not been mine. While Ernest slept, I changed my dress, arranged my hair differently, and came back to my new automatic self. Then, when beaten back and the other comrades awoke, with their aid, I concocted a little conspiracy. All was ready, and we were in the cave-room that served for kitchen and dining-room when Ernest opened the door and entered. At that moment, beaten back addressed me as Mary, and I turned and answered him, and I glanced at Ernest with curious interest, such as any young comrade might betray on seeing for the first time so noted a hero of the revolution. But Ernest's glance took me in, and questioned impatiently past and around the room. That exponent I was being introduced to him as Mary Holmes. To complete the deception, an extra plate was laid, and when we sat down to table, one chair was not occupied. I could have cried with joy as I noted Ernest's increasing uneasiness and impatience. Finally, he could stand it no longer. Where's my wife? he demanded bluntly. She is still asleep, I answered. It was the crucial moment, but my voice was a strange voice, and in it he recognized nothing familiar. The meal went on. I talked a great deal, and enthusiastically, as a hero worshiped my talk, and it was obvious that he was my hero. I rose to a climax of enthusiasm and worship, and before he could guess my intention threw my arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. He held me from him at arm's length and stared about in annoyance and perplexity. The four men greeted him with roars of laughter and explanations were made. And first he was skeptical. He scrutinized me keenly and was half convinced, then shook his head and would not believe. It was not until I became the old Avis Everhard and whispered secrets in his ear that none knew but he and Avis Everhard that he accepted me as his really, truly wife. It was later in the day that he took me in his arms, manifesting great embarrassment and claiming polygamous emotions. You are my Avis, he said, and you are also someone else. You are two women, and therefore you are my harem. At any rate, we are safe now. If the United States becomes too hard for us, why I have qualified for citizenship in Turkey? Note, at that time polygamy was still practiced in Turkey. Life became for me very happy in the refuge. It is true, we worked hard and for long hours, but we worked together. We had each other for eighteen precious months, and we were not lonely, for there was always a coming and going of leaders and comrades, strange voices from the underworld of intrigue and revolution, bringing stranger tales of strife and war from all our battle line. And there was much fun and delight. We were not made gloomy conspirators, we toiled hard and suffered greatly, filled the gaps in our ranks, and went on and threw all the labor and the play and interplay of life and death we found time to laugh and love. There were artists, scientists, scholars, musicians and poets among us, and in that hole in the ground culture was higher and finer than in the palaces of wonder cities of the oligarchs. In truth, many of our comrades toiled at making beautiful those same palaces and wonder cities. Note, this is not braggadocio on the part of Avis Everhard. The flower of the artistic and intellectual world were revolutionists, with the exception of a few of the musicians and singers and of a few of the oligarchs. All the great creators of the period whose names have come down to us were revolutionists. Nor were we confined to the refuge itself. Often at night we rode over the mountains for exercise and we rode on Wixens horses. If only he knew how many revolutionists his horses have carried. We even went on picnics to isolated spots we knew where we remained all day going before daylight and returning after dark. Also, we used Wixens cream and butter, and Ernest was not above shooting Wixens quail and rabbits and, on occasion, his young bucks. Note, even as late as that period cream and butter was still crudely extracted from cow's milk, the laboratory preparation of foods had not yet begun. Indeed, it was a safe refuge, and I have said that it was discovered only once, and this brings me to the clearing up of the mystery of the disappearance of young Wixen. Now that he is dead, I am free to speak. There was a nook on the bottom of the great hall where the sun shone for several hours and which was hidden from above. Here we had carried many loads of gravel from the creek bed so that it was dry and warm, a pleasant basking place. And here, one afternoon, I was drowsing half asleep over a volume of Mendenhall. I was so comfortable and secure that even his flaming lyrics failed to stir me. Note, in all the extant literature and documents of that period continual references made to the poems of Rudolf Mendenhall by his comrades he was called The Flame. He was undoubtedly a great genius, yet beyond weird and haunting fragments of his verse quoted in the writings of others, nothing of his has come down to us. He was executed by the iron hill in 1928 A.D. I was aroused by a clod of earth striking at my feet. Then from above I heard a sound of scrambling. The next moment a young man with a final slide down the crumbling wall alighted at my feet. It was Philip Wixen, though I did not know him at the time. He looked at me coolly and uttered a low whistle of surprise. Well, he said, and the next moment a cap in hand he was saying, I beg your pardon, I did not expect to find anyone here. I was not so cool. I was still a Tyro so far as concerned knowing how to behave in desperate circumstances. Later on, when I was an international spy, I should have been less clumsily, I'm sure. As it was, I scrambled to my feet and cried out the danger call. Why did you do that? he asked, looking at me searchingly. It was evident that he had no suspicion of our presence when making the dissent. I recognized this with relief. For what purpose do you think I did it? I counted. I was indeed clumsy in those days. I don't know, he answered, shaking his head. Unless you've got friends about. Anyway, you've got some explanations to make. I don't like the look of it. You are trespassing. This is my father's land and, but at that moment, beaten back, ever polite and gentle, said from behind him in a low voice, hands up, my young sir. Young Wixen put his hands up first, then turned to confront beaten back, who held a 30-30 automatic rifle on him. Wixen was imperturbable. Oh, oh, he said, a nest of revolutionists, and quite a hornet's nest, it would seem. Well, you won't abide here long, I can tell you. Maybe you'll abide here long enough to reconsider that statement, beaten back said quietly. And in the meanwhile, I must ask you to come inside with me. Inside? The young man was genuinely astonished. Have you a catacomb here? I've heard of such things. Come and see, beaten back answered with his adorable accent. But it is unlawful, was the protest. Yes, by your law, the terrorist replied significantly. But by our law, believe me, it is quite lawful. You must accustom yourself to the fact that you are in another world than the one of oppression and brutality in which you have lived. There is room for argument there, Wixen muttered. Then stay with us and discuss it. The young fellow laughed and followed his captor into the house. He was led into the inner cave room and one of the young comrades left to guard him while we discussed the situation in the kitchen. Being back, with tears in his eyes, held that Wixen must die, and was quite relieved when we outvoted him and his horrible proposition. On the other hand, we could not dream of allowing the young oligarch to depart. I'll tell you what to do, Ernest said. We'll keep him and give him an education. I bespeak the privilege, then, of enlightening him in jurisprudence. Beatenback cried. And so a decision was laughingly reached. We would keep Philip Wixen a prisoner and educate him in our ethics and sociology. But in the meantime, there was work to be done. All trace of the young oligarch must be obliterated. There were the marks he had left when descending the crumbling wall of the hole. This task fell to Beatenback and slung on a rope from above. He toiled cunningly for the rest of the day till no sign remained. Back up the canyon from the lip of the hole, all marks were likewise removed. Then a twilight came John Carlson who demanded Wixen's shoes. The young man did not want to give up his shoes and even offered to fight for them till he felt the horseshoe's strength in Ernest's hands. Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous loss of skin due to the smallness of the shoes. But he succeeded in doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended the young man's obliterated trail, Carlson put on the shoes and walked away to the left. He walked for miles, around knolls, over ridges and through canyons, and finally covered the trail in the running water of a creek bed. Here he removed the shoes and, still hiding trail for a distance, at last put on his own shoes. A week later Wixen got back his shoes. That night the hounds were out and there was little sleep in the refuge. Next day, time and again, the baying hounds came down the canyon, plunged off to the left on the trail Carlson had made for them and were lost to ear in the father canyon's high up the mountain. And all the time our men waited in the refuge, weapons in hand, automatic revolvers and rifles, to say nothing of half a dozen infernal machines of beaten-backs manufacture. A more surprised party of rescuers could not be imagined had they ventured down into our hiding place. I have now given the true disappearance of Philip Wixen one-time oligarch and later comrade in the revolution for we converted him in the end. His mind was fresh and plastic and by nature he was very ethical. Several months later we rode him on one of his father's horses over Sonoma Mountains to Petaluma Creek and embarked him in a small fishing lodge. By easy stages we smuggled him along our underground railway to the Carmel Refuge. There he remained eight months at the end of which time for two reasons he was loathed to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in love with Anna Roylston and the other was that he had become one of us. It was not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his love affair that he acceded to our wishes and went back to his father. Ostensibly an oligarch until his death he was in reality one of the most valuable of our agents. Often and often has the iron heel been dumbfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and operations against us. If it but knew the number of its own members who are our agents it would understand. Young Wixen never wavered in his loyalty to the cause. In truth his very death was incurred by his devotion to duty. In the great storm of 1927 while attending a meeting of our leaders he contracted the pneumonia of which he died. Note the case of this young man was not unusual. Many young men of the oligarchy impelled by sense of right conduct or their imaginations captured by the glory of the revolution ethically or romantically devoted their lives to it. In similar way many sons of the Russian mobility played their parts in the earlier and protracted revolution in that country.