The Iron Heel

CHALLENGES

After the guests had gone, father threw himself into a chair and gave
vent to roars of Gargantuan laughter. Not since the death of my mother
had I known him to laugh so heartily.

“I’ll wager Dr. Hammerfield was never up against anything like it in
his life,” he laughed. “‘The courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy!’
Did you notice how he began like a lamb—Everhard, I mean, and how
quickly he became a roaring lion? He has a splendidly disciplined mind.
He would have made a good scientist if his energies had been directed
that way.”

I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in Ernest Everhard. It
was not alone what he had said and how he had said it, but it was the
man himself. I had never met a man like him. I suppose that was why, in
spite of my twenty-four years, I had not married. I liked him; I had to
confess it to myself. And my like for him was founded on things beyond
intellect and argument. Regardless of his bulging muscles and
prize-fighter’s throat, he impressed me as an ingenuous boy. I felt
that under the guise of an intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and
sensitive spirit. I sensed this, in ways I knew not, save that they
were my woman’s intuitions.

There was something in that clarion-call of his that went to my heart.
It still rang in my ears, and I felt that I should like to hear it
again—and to see again that glint of laughter in his eyes that belied
the impassioned seriousness of his face. And there were further reaches
of vague and indeterminate feelings that stirred in me. I almost loved
him then, though I am confident, had I never seen him again, that the
vague feelings would have passed away and that I should easily have
forgotten him.

But I was not destined never to see him again. My father’s new-born
interest in sociology and the dinner parties he gave would not permit.
Father was not a sociologist. His marriage with my mother had been very
happy, and in the researches of his own science, physics, he had been
very happy. But when mother died, his own work could not fill the
emptiness. At first, in a mild way, he had dabbled in philosophy; then,
becoming interested, he had drifted on into economics and sociology. He
had a strong sense of justice, and he soon became fired with a passion
to redress wrong. It was with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a
new interest in life, though I little dreamed what the outcome would
be. With the enthusiasm of a boy he plunged excitedly into these new
pursuits, regardless of whither they led him.

He had been used always to the laboratory, and so it was that he turned
the dining room into a sociological laboratory. Here came to dinner all
sorts and conditions of men,—scientists, politicians, bankers,
merchants, professors, labor leaders, socialists, and anarchists. He
stirred them to discussion, and analyzed their thoughts of life and
society.

He had met Ernest shortly prior to the “preacher’s night.” And after
the guests were gone, I learned how he had met him, passing down a
street at night and stopping to listen to a man on a soap-box who was
addressing a crowd of workingmen. The man on the box was Ernest. Not
that he was a mere soap-box orator. He stood high in the councils of
the socialist party, was one of the leaders, and was the acknowledged
leader in the philosophy of socialism. But he had a certain clear way
of stating the abstruse in simple language, was a born expositor and
teacher, and was not above the soap-box as a means of interpreting
economics to the workingmen.

My father stopped to listen, became interested, effected a meeting,
and, after quite an acquaintance, invited him to the ministers’ dinner.
It was after the dinner that father told me what little he knew about
him. He had been born in the working class, though he was a descendant
of the old line of Everhards that for over two hundred years had lived
in America.[1] At ten years of age he had gone to work in the mills,
and later he served his apprenticeship and became a horseshoer. He was
self-educated, had taught himself German and French, and at that time
was earning a meagre living by translating scientific and philosophical
works for a struggling socialist publishing house in Chicago. Also, his
earnings were added to by the royalties from the small sales of his own
economic and philosophic works.

[1] The distinction between being native born and foreign born was
sharp and invidious in those days.

This much I learned of him before I went to bed, and I lay long awake,
listening in memory to the sound of his voice. I grew frightened at my
thoughts. He was so unlike the men of my own class, so alien and so
strong. His masterfulness delighted me and terrified me, for my fancies
wantonly roved until I found myself considering him as a lover, as a
husband. I had always heard that the strength of men was an
irresistible attraction to women; but he was too strong. “No! no!” I
cried out. “It is impossible, absurd!” And on the morrow I awoke to
find in myself a longing to see him again. I wanted to see him
mastering men in discussion, the war-note in his voice; to see him, in
all his certitude and strength, shattering their complacency, shaking
them out of their ruts of thinking. What if he did swashbuckle? To use
his own phrase, “it worked,” it produced effects. And, besides, his
swashbuckling was a fine thing to see. It stirred one like the onset of
battle.

Several days passed during which I read Ernest’s books, borrowed from
my father. His written word was as his spoken word, clear and
convincing. It was its absolute simplicity that convinced even while
one continued to doubt. He had the gift of lucidity. He was the perfect
expositor. Yet, in spite of his style, there was much that I did not
like. He laid too great stress on what he called the class struggle,
the antagonism between labor and capital, the conflict of interest.

Father reported with glee Dr. Hammerfield’s judgment of Ernest, which
was to the effect that he was “an insolent young puppy, made bumptious
by a little and very inadequate learning.” Also, Dr. Hammerfield
declined to meet Ernest again.

But Bishop Morehouse turned out to have become interested in Ernest,
and was anxious for another meeting. “A strong young man,” he said;
“and very much alive, very much alive. But he is too sure, too sure.”

Ernest came one afternoon with father. The Bishop had already arrived,
and we were having tea on the veranda. Ernest’s continued presence in
Berkeley, by the way, was accounted for by the fact that he was taking
special courses in biology at the university, and also that he was hard
at work on a new book entitled “Philosophy and Revolution.”[2]

[2] This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three
centuries of the Iron Heel. There are several copies of various
editions in the National Library of Ardis.

The veranda seemed suddenly to have become small when Ernest arrived.
Not that he was so very large—he stood only five feet nine inches; but
that he seemed to radiate an atmosphere of largeness. As he stopped to
meet me, he betrayed a certain slight awkwardness that was strangely at
variance with his bold-looking eyes and his firm, sure hand that
clasped for a moment in greeting. And in that moment his eyes were just
as steady and sure. There seemed a question in them this time, and as
before he looked at me over long.

“I have been reading your ‘Working-class Philosophy,’” I said, and his
eyes lighted in a pleased way.

“Of course,” he answered, “you took into consideration the audience to
which it was addressed.”

“I did, and it is because I did that I have a quarrel with you,” I
challenged.

“I, too, have a quarrel with you, Mr. Everhard,” Bishop Morehouse said.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders whimsically and accepted a cup of tea.

The Bishop bowed and gave me precedence.

“You foment class hatred,” I said. “I consider it wrong and criminal to
appeal to all that is narrow and brutal in the working class. Class
hatred is anti-social, and, it seems to me, anti-socialistic.”

“Not guilty,” he answered. “Class hatred is neither in the text nor in
the spirit of anything I have ever written.”

“Oh!” I cried reproachfully, and reached for his book and opened it.

He sipped his tea and smiled at me while I ran over the pages.

“Page one hundred and thirty-two,” I read aloud: “‘The class struggle,
therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development
between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes.’”

I looked at him triumphantly.

“No mention there of class hatred,” he smiled back.

“But,” I answered, “you say ‘class struggle.’”

“A different thing from class hatred,” he replied. “And, believe me, we
foment no hatred. We say that the class struggle is a law of social
development. We are not responsible for it. We do not make the class
struggle. We merely explain it, as Newton explained gravitation. We
explain the nature of the conflict of interest that produces the class
struggle.”

“But there should be no conflict of interest!” I cried.

“I agree with you heartily,” he answered. “That is what we socialists
are trying to bring about,—the abolition of the conflict of interest.
Pardon me. Let me read an extract.” He took his book and turned back
several pages. “Page one hundred and twenty-six: ‘The cycle of class
struggles which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal communism
and the rise of private property will end with the passing of private
property in the means of social existence.’”

“But I disagree with you,” the Bishop interposed, his pale, ascetic
face betraying by a faint glow the intensity of his feelings. “Your
premise is wrong. There is no such thing as a conflict of interest
between labor and capital—or, rather, there ought not to be.”

“Thank you,” Ernest said gravely. “By that last statement you have
given me back my premise.”

“But why should there be a conflict?” the Bishop demanded warmly.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders. “Because we are so made, I guess.”

“But we are not so made!” cried the other.

“Are you discussing the ideal man?” Ernest asked, “—unselfish and
godlike, and so few in numbers as to be practically non-existent, or
are you discussing the common and ordinary average man?”

“The common and ordinary man,” was the answer.

“Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?”

Bishop Morehouse nodded.

“And petty and selfish?”

Again he nodded.

“Watch out!” Ernest warned. “I said ‘selfish.’”

“The average man IS selfish,” the Bishop affirmed valiantly.

“Wants all he can get?”

“Wants all he can get—true but deplorable.”

“Then I’ve got you.” Ernest’s jaw snapped like a trap. “Let me show
you. Here is a man who works on the street railways.”

“He couldn’t work if it weren’t for capital,” the Bishop interrupted.

“True, and you will grant that capital would perish if there were no
labor to earn the dividends.”

The Bishop was silent.

“Won’t you?” Ernest insisted.

The Bishop nodded.

“Then our statements cancel each other,” Ernest said in a
matter-of-fact tone, “and we are where we were. Now to begin again. The
workingmen on the street railway furnish the labor. The stockholders
furnish the capital. By the joint effort of the workingmen and the
capital, money is earned.[3] They divide between them this money that
is earned. Capital’s share is called ‘dividends.’ Labor’s share is
called ‘wages.’”

[3] In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the
means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the
public.

“Very good,” the Bishop interposed. “And there is no reason that the
division should not be amicable.”

“You have already forgotten what we had agreed upon,” Ernest replied.
“We agreed that the average man is selfish. He is the man that is. You
have gone up in the air and are arranging a division between the kind
of men that ought to be but are not. But to return to the earth, the
workingman, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. The
capitalist, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. When
there is only so much of the same thing, and when two men want all they
can get of the same thing, there is a conflict of interest between
labor and capital. And it is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as
workingmen and capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over
the division. If you were in San Francisco this afternoon, you’d have
to walk. There isn’t a street car running.”

“Another strike?”[4] the Bishop queried with alarm.

[4] These quarrels were very common in those irrational and anarchic
times. Sometimes the laborers refused to work. Sometimes the
capitalists refused to let the laborers work. In the violence and
turbulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and many
lives lost. All this is inconceivable to us—as inconceivable as
another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the lower
classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with their
wives.

“Yes, they’re quarrelling over the division of the earnings of the
street railways.”

Bishop Morehouse became excited.

“It is wrong!” he cried. “It is so short-sighted on the part of the
workingmen. How can they hope to keep our sympathy—”

“When we are compelled to walk,” Ernest said slyly.

But Bishop Morehouse ignored him and went on:

“Their outlook is too narrow. Men should be men, not brutes. There will
be violence and murder now, and sorrowing widows and orphans. Capital
and labor should be friends. They should work hand in hand and to their
mutual benefit.”

“Ah, now you are up in the air again,” Ernest remarked dryly. “Come
back to earth. Remember, we agreed that the average man is selfish.”

“But he ought not to be!” the Bishop cried.

“And there I agree with you,” was Ernest’s rejoinder. “He ought not to
be selfish, but he will continue to be selfish as long as he lives in a
social system that is based on pig-ethics.”

The Bishop was aghast, and my father chuckled.

“Yes, pig-ethics,” Ernest went on remorselessly. “That is the meaning
of the capitalist system. And that is what your church is standing for,
what you are preaching for every time you get up in the pulpit.
Pig-ethics! There is no other name for it.”

Bishop Morehouse turned appealingly to my father, but he laughed and
nodded his head.

“I’m afraid Mr. Everhard is right,” he said. “Laissez-faire, the
let-alone policy of each for himself and devil take the hindmost. As
Mr. Everhard said the other night, the function you churchmen perform
is to maintain the established order of society, and society is
established on that foundation.”

“But that is not the teaching of Christ!” cried the Bishop.

“The Church is not teaching Christ these days,” Ernest put in quickly.
“That is why the workingmen will have nothing to do with the Church.
The Church condones the frightful brutality and savagery with which the
capitalist class treats the working class.”

“The Church does not condone it,” the Bishop objected.

“The Church does not protest against it,” Ernest replied. “And in so
far as the Church does not protest, it condones, for remember the
Church is supported by the capitalist class.”

“I had not looked at it in that light,” the Bishop said naively. “You
must be wrong. I know that there is much that is sad and wicked in this
world. I know that the Church has lost the—what you call the
proletariat.”[5]

[5] Proletariat: Derived originally from the Latin proletarii, the
name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of value
to the state only as the rearers of offspring (proles); in other
words, they were of no importance either for wealth, or position, or
exceptional ability.

“You never had the proletariat,” Ernest cried. “The proletariat has
grown up outside the Church and without the Church.”

“I do not follow you,” the Bishop said faintly.

“Then let me explain. With the introduction of machinery and the
factory system in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the great
mass of the working people was separated from the land. The old system
of labor was broken down. The working people were driven from their
villages and herded in factory towns. The mothers and children were put
to work at the new machines. Family life ceased. The conditions were
frightful. It is a tale of blood.”

“I know, I know,” Bishop Morehouse interrupted with an agonized
expression on his face. “It was terrible. But it occurred a century and
a half ago.”

“And there, a century and a half ago, originated the modern
proletariat,” Ernest continued. “And the Church ignored it. While a
slaughter-house was made of the nation by the capitalist, the Church
was dumb. It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest. As Austin
Lewis[6] says, speaking of that time, those to whom the command ‘Feed
my lambs’ had been given, saw those lambs sold into slavery and worked
to death without a protest.[7] The Church was dumb, then, and before I
go on I want you either flatly to agree with me or flatly to disagree
with me. Was the Church dumb then?”

[6] Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in
the fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a
writer of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one of
the Socialist leaders of the times.

[7] There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of
the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter half
of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era. In such industrial
hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.

Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this
fierce “infighting,” as Ernest called it.

“The history of the eighteenth century is written,” Ernest prompted.
“If the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb in the books.”

“I am afraid the Church was dumb,” the Bishop confessed.

“And the Church is dumb to-day.”

“There I disagree,” said the Bishop.

Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the challenge.

“All right,” he said. “Let us see. In Chicago there are women who toil
all the week for ninety cents. Has the Church protested?”

“This is news to me,” was the answer. “Ninety cents per week! It is
horrible!”

“Has the Church protested?” Ernest insisted.

“The Church does not know.” The Bishop was struggling hard.

“Yet the command to the Church was, ‘Feed my lambs,’” Ernest sneered.
And then, the next moment, “Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you wonder
that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your
capitalistic congregations at the working of children in the Southern
cotton mills?[8] Children, six and seven years of age, working every
night at twelve-hour shifts? They never see the blessed sunshine. They
die like flies. The dividends are paid out of their blood. And out of
the dividends magnificent churches are builded in New England, wherein
your kind preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied
recipients of those dividends.”

[8] Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the Southern
Church’s outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is known
as the “War of the Rebellion.” Several such illustrations, culled from
the documents of the times, are here appended. In 1835 A.D., the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved that: “slavery
is recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments, and is not
condemned by the authority of God.” The Charleston Baptist
Association issued the following, in an address, in 1835 A.D.: “The
right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been
distinctly recognized by the Creator of all things, who is surely at
liberty to vest the right of property over any object whomsoever He
pleases.” The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor in
the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote: “Extracts
from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves,
together with the usual incidents to that right. The right to buy and
sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the
Jewish policy instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and
practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New
Testament and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion that
slavery is not immoral. Having established the point that the first
African slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain
their children in bondage follows as an indispensable consequence.
Thus we see that the slavery that exists in America was founded in
right.”
It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have been
struck by the Church a generation or so later in relation to the
defence of capitalistic property. In the great museum at Asgard
there is a book entitled “Essays in Application,” written by Henry
van Dyke. The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From
what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a churchman. The book
is a good example of what Everhard would have called bourgeois
thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of the
Charleston Baptist Association quoted above, and the following
utterance of Van Dyke seventy years later: “The Bible teaches that
God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His
own good pleasure, conformably to general laws.”

“I did not know,” the Bishop murmured faintly. His face was pale, and
he seemed suffering from nausea.

“Then you have not protested?”

The Bishop shook his head.

“Then the Church is dumb to-day, as it was in the eighteenth century?”

The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore to press the point.

“And do not forget, whenever a churchman does protest, that he is
discharged.”

“I hardly think that is fair,” was the objection.

“Will you protest?” Ernest demanded.

“Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own community, and I will
protest.”

“I’ll show you,” Ernest said quietly. “I am at your disposal. I will
take you on a journey through hell.”

“And I shall protest.” The Bishop straightened himself in his chair,
and over his gentle face spread the harshness of the warrior. “The
Church shall not be dumb!”

“You will be discharged,” was the warning.

“I shall prove the contrary,” was the retort. “I shall prove, if what
you say is so, that the Church has erred through ignorance. And,
furthermore, I hold that whatever is horrible in industrial society is
due to the ignorance of the capitalist class. It will mend all that is
wrong as soon as it receives the message. And this message it shall be
the duty of the Church to deliver.”

Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was driven to the Bishop’s
defence.

“Remember,” I said, “you see but one side of the shield. There is much
good in us, though you give us credit for no good at all. Bishop
Morehouse is right. The industrial wrong, terrible as you say it is, is
due to ignorance. The divisions of society have become too widely
separated.”

“The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the capitalist class,”
he answered; and in that moment I hated him.

“You do not know us,” I answered. “We are not brutal and savage.”

“Prove it,” he challenged.

“How can I prove it . . . to you?” I was growing angry.

He shook his head. “I do not ask you to prove it to me. I ask you to
prove it to yourself.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know nothing,” was his rude reply.

“There, there, children,” father said soothingly.

“I don’t care—” I began indignantly, but Ernest interrupted.

“I understand you have money, or your father has, which is the same
thing—money invested in the Sierra Mills.”

“What has that to do with it?” I cried.

“Nothing much,” he began slowly, “except that the gown you wear is
stained with blood. The food you eat is a bloody stew. The blood of
little children and of strong men is dripping from your very
roof-beams. I can close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop, drip,
drop, all about me.”

And suiting the action to the words, he closed his eyes and leaned back
in his chair. I burst into tears of mortification and hurt vanity. I
had never been so brutally treated in my life. Both the Bishop and my
father were embarrassed and perturbed. They tried to lead the
conversation away into easier channels; but Ernest opened his eyes,
looked at me, and waved them aside. His mouth was stern, and his eyes
too; and in the latter there was no glint of laughter. What he was
about to say, what terrible castigation he was going to give me, I
never knew; for at that moment a man, passing along the sidewalk,
stopped and glanced in at us. He was a large man, poorly dressed, and
on his back was a great load of rattan and bamboo stands, chairs, and
screens. He looked at the house as if debating whether or not he should
come in and try to sell some of his wares.

“That man’s name is Jackson,” Ernest said.

“With that strong body of his he should be at work, and not
peddling,”[9] I answered curtly.

[9] In that day there were many thousands of these poor merchants
called pedlers. They carried their whole stock in trade from door to
door. It was a most wasteful expenditure of energy. Distribution was
as confused and irrational as the whole general system of society.

“Notice the sleeve of his left arm,” Ernest said gently.

I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.

“It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your
roof-beams,” Ernest said with continued gentleness. “He lost his arm in
the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on
the highway to die. When I say ‘you,’ I mean the superintendent and the
officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills
for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the
company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm.
He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through.
It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for
the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger
tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime.
They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many
hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made
his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a
wife and three children.”

“And what did the company do for him?” I asked.

“Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the
damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company
employs very efficient lawyers, you know.”

“You have not told the whole story,” I said with conviction. “Or else
you do not know the whole story. Maybe the man was insolent.”

“Insolent! Ha! ha!” His laughter was Mephistophelian. “Great God!
Insolent! And with his arm chewed off! Nevertheless he was a meek and
lowly servant, and there is no record of his having been insolent.”

“But the courts,” I urged. “The case would not have been decided
against him had there been no more to the affair than you have
mentioned.”

“Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company. He is a shrewd
lawyer.” Ernest looked at me intently for a moment, then went on. “I’ll
tell you what you do, Miss Cunningham. You investigate Jackson’s case.”

“I had already determined to,” I said coldly.

“All right,” he beamed good-naturedly, “and I’ll tell you where to find
him. But I tremble for you when I think of all you are to prove by
Jackson’s arm.”

And so it came about that both the Bishop and I accepted Ernest’s
challenges. They went away together, leaving me smarting with a sense
of injustice that had been done me and my class. The man was a beast. I
hated him, then, and consoled myself with the thought that his behavior
was what was to be expected from a man of the working class.