1907

IT CANNOT BE SAID THAT THE Everhard Manuscript is an important
historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors--not
errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across
the seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed
her manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were
confused and veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked perspective.
She was too close to the events she writes about. Nay, she was
merged in the events she has described.

Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript
is of inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective,
and vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and
forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled
her husband. We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that
he loomed among the events of his times less largely than the
Manuscript would lead us to believe.

We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man,
but not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was,
after all, but one of a large number of heroes who, throughout
the world, devoted their lives to the Revolution; though it must
be conceded that he did unusual work, especially in his elaboration
and interpretation of working-class philosophy. 'Proletarian science'
and 'proletarian philosophy' were his phrases for it, and therein
he shows the provincialism of his mind--a defect, however, that
was due to the times and that none in that day could escape.

But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the feel of those terrible times. Nowhere do we find more vividly portrayed
the psychology of the persons that lived in that turbulent period
embraced between the years 1912 and 1932--their mistakes and ignorance,
their doubts and fears and misapprehensions, their ethical delusions,
their violent passions, their inconceivable sordidness and selfishness.
These are the things that are so hard for us of this enlightened
age to understand. History tells us that these things were, and
biology and psychology tell us why they were; but history and
biology and psychology do not make these things alive. We accept
them as facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension
of them.

This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse the Everhard
Manuscript. We enter into the minds of the actors in that long-ago
world-drama, and for the time being their mental processes are
our mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's
love for her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first
days, the vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel
(well named) we feel descending upon and crushing mankind.

And in passing we note that that historic phrase, the Iron Heel,
originated in Ernest Everhard's mind. This, we may say, is the
one moot question that this new-found document clears up. Previous
to this, the earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the
pamphlet, 'Ye Slaves,' written by George Milford and published
in December, 1912. This George Milford was an obscure agitator
about whom nothing is known, save the one additional bit of information
gained from the Manuscript, which mentions that he was shot in
the Chicago Commune. Evidently he had heard Ernest Everhard make
use of the phrase in some public speech, most probably when he
was running for Congress in the fall of 1912. From the Manuscript
we learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private dinner in
the spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest
known occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.

The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret
wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical
events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable.
Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude
that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of
stars. Without these other great historical events, social evolution
could not have proceeded. Primitive communism, chattel slavery,
serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones
in the evolution of society. But it were ridiculous to assert
that the Iron Heel was a necessary stepping-stone. Rather, to-day,
is it adjudged a step aside, or a step backward, to the social
tyrannies that made the early world a hell, but that were as necessary
as the Iron Heel was unnecessary.

Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What
else than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of
that great centralized governmental machine known as the Roman
Empire? Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure
of social evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary,
and it was not inevitable. It must always remain the great curiosity
of history- a whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected
and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those rash
political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of social
processes.

Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be
the culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois
revolution. And we of to-day can but applaud that judgment. Following
upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual and antagonistic
giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would come. Out of the
decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise that
flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which,
appalling alike to us who look back and to those that lived at
the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot,
the Oligarchy.

Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century
divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the
Oligarchy was there--a fact established in blood, a stupendous
and awful reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well
shows, was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its overthrow
was a matter of a few short years, was the judgment of the revolutionists.
It is true, they realized that the Peasant Revolt was unplanned,
and that the First Revolt was premature; but they little realized
that the Second Revolt, planned and mature, was doomed to equal
futility and more terrible punishment.

It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during
the last days of preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the
fact that there is no mention of the disastrous outcome of the
Second Revolt. It is quite clear that she intended the Manuscript
for immediate publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown,
so that her husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit
for all that he had ventured and accomplished. Then came the frightful
crushing of the Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the
moment of danger, ere she fled or was captured by the Mercenaries,
she hid the Manuscript in the hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.

Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was
executed by the Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record
of such executions was kept by the Iron Heel. But little did she
realize, even then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to
flee, how terrible had been the breakdown of the Second Revolt.
Little did she realize that the tortuous and distorted evolution
of the next three centuries would compel a Third Revolt and a
Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood,
ere the world-movement of labor should come into its own. And
little did she dream that for seven long centuries the tribute
of her love to Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in the
heart of the ancient oak of Wake Robin Lodge.

ANTHONY MEREDITH

Ardis,

November 27, 419 B.O.M.

THE SOFT SUMMER WIND stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples
sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in
the sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees.
It is so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am
restless. It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal.
All the world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm.
I strain my ears, and all my senses, for some betrayal of that
impending storm. Oh, that it may not be premature! That it may
not be premature!¹

Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot
cease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long
that I am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear
from dwelling upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction
so soon to burst forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken;
and I can see, as I have seen in the past,² all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and
the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to God.
Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through carnage
and destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the
earth.

And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come,
I think of what has been and is no more--my Eagle, beating with
tireless wings the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun,
the flaming ideal of human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait
the great event that is his making, though he is not here to see.
He devoted all the years of his manhood to it, and for it he gave
his life. It is his handiwork. He made it.3

And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write
of my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons
living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character
cannot be blazoned forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and,
when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is
not here to witness to morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built
too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon
shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity. When the
word goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall rise.
There has been nothing like it in the history of the world. The
solidarity of labor is assured, and for the first time will there
be an international revolution wide as the world is wide.⁴

You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and
night utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind.
For that matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking
of it. He was the soul of it, and how can I possibly separate
the two in thought?

As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon
his character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty
and suffered sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered,
I well know; for I have been with him during these twenty anxious
years and I know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite
devotion to the Cause for which, only two months gone, he laid
down his life.

I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard
entered my life--how I first met him, how he grew until I became
a part of him, and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life.
In this way may you look at him through my eyes and learn him
as I learned him--in all save the things too secret and sweet
for me to tell.

It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest
of my father's⁵ at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot say that
my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one of many
at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and waited
for all to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance. It
was 'preacher's night,' as my father privately called it, and
Ernest was certainly out of place in the midst of the churchmen.

In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready
made suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In
fact, no ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And
on this night, as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while
the coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development,
was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,⁶ thick and strong. So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer
my father had discovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked
it with those bulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately
I classified him--a sort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom⁷ of the working class.

And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm
and strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes- too
boldly, I thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and
at that time had strong class instincts. Such boldness on the
part of a man of my own class would have been almost unforgivable.
I know that I could not avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite
relieved when I passed him on and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a
favorite of mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age, Christ-like
in appearance and goodness, and a scholar as well.

But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew
to the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid
of nothing, and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms.
'You pleased me,' he explained long afterward; 'and why should
I not fill my eyes with that which pleases me?' I have said that
he was afraid of nothing. He was a natural aristocrat--and this
in spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats.
He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche⁸ has described, and in addition he was aflame with democracy.

In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my unfavorable
impression, I forgot all about the working-class philosopher,
though once or twice at table I noticed him--especially the twinkle
in his eye as he listened to the talk first of one minister and
then of another. He has humor, I thought, and I almost forgave
him his clothes. But the time went by, and the dinner went by,
and he never opened his mouth to speak, while the ministers talked
interminably about the working class and its relation to the church,
and what the church had done and was doing for it. I noticed that
my father was annoyed because Ernest did not talk. Once father
took advantage of a lull and asked him to say something; but Ernest
shrugged his shoulders and with an 'I have nothing to say' went
on eating salted almonds.

But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:

'We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that
he can present things from a new point of view that will be interesting
and refreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard.'

The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest
for a statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so
broadly tolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And
I saw that Ernest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about
him, and I saw the glint of laughter in his eyes.

'I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy,'
he began, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.

'Go on,' they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: 'We do not mind
the truth that is in any man. If it is sincere,' he amended.

'Then you separate sincerity from truth?' Ernest laughed quickly.

Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, 'The best of us
may be mistaken, young man, the best of us.'

Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became another man.

'All right, then,' he answered; 'and let me begin by saying that
you are all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing,
about the working class. Your sociology is as vicious and worthless
as is your method of thinking.'

It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at
the first sound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was
a clarion-call that thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused,
shaken alive from monotony and drowsiness.

'What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of
thinking, young man?' Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there
was something unpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.

'You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics;
and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other
metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists
in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of
you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own
fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you
live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except
in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.

'Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened
to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the
scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated
the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point
of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual
life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making
incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years ago.'

As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed,
his eyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent
with aggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused
people. His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably
made them forget themselves. And they were forgetting themselves
now. Bishop Morehouse was leaning forward and listening intently.
Exasperation and anger were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield.
And others were exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an
amused and superior way. As for myself, I found it most enjoyable.
I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at
the effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty of launching
amongst us.

'Your terms are rather vague,' Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. 'Just
precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?'

'I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,'
Ernest went on. 'Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that
of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can
prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon
anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain
himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your
own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness.'

'I do not understand,' Bishop Morehouse said. 'It seems to me
that all things of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact
and convincing of all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical.
Each and every thought-process of the scientific reasoner is metaphysical.
Surely you will agree with me?'

'As you say, you do not understand,' Ernest replied. 'The metaphysician
reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist
reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician
reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts
to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself,
the scientist explains himself by the universe.'

'Thank God we are not scientists,' Dr. Hammerfield murmured complacently.

'What are you then?' Ernest demanded.

'Philosophers.'

'There you go,' Ernest laughed. 'You have left the real and solid
earth and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine.
Pray come down to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean
by philosophy.'

'Philosophy is--' (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his throat)
'something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to such
minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientist
with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy.'

Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point
back upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming brotherliness
of face and utterance.

'Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now
make of philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you
to point out error in it or to remain a silent metaphysician.
Philosophy is merely the widest science of all. Its reasoning
method is the same as that of any particular science and of all
particular sciences. And by that same method of reasoning, the
inductive method, philosophy fuses all particular sciences into
one great science. As Spencer says, the data of any particular
science are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy unifies the
knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences. Philosophy
is the science of science, the master science, if you please.
How do you like my definition?'

'Very creditable, very creditable,' Dr. Hammerfield muttered lamely.

But Ernest was merciless.

'Remember,' he warned, 'my definition is fatal to metaphysics.
If you do not now point out a flaw in my definition, you are disqualified
later on from advancing metaphysical arguments. You must go through
life seeking that flaw and remaining metaphysically silent until
you have found it.'

Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was pained.
He was also puzzled. Ernest's sledge-hammer attack disconcerted
him. He was not used to the simple and direct method of controversy.
He looked appealingly around the table, but no one answered for
him. I caught father grinning into his napkin.

'There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians,' Ernest
said, when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield's discomfiture complete.
'Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond
the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows
for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but
what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized,
if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the
seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the
circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence
as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries
and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and
out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads
and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the
universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing
space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians
have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step,
before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As
fast as the ascertained facts of science have overthrown their
subjective explanations of things, they have made new subjective
explanations of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained
facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end
of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference
between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating
god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained
facts. That is all.'

'Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,'
Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. 'And Aristotle was a metaphysician.'

Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods
and smiles of approval.

'Your illustration is most unfortunate,' Ernest replied. 'You
refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call
that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped
by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the
Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy
became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's thought!'

Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:

'Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess
that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity
out of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding
centuries.'

'Metaphysics had nothing to do with it,' Ernest retorted.

'What?' Dr. Hammerfield cried. 'It was not the thinking and the
speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?'

'Ah, my dear sir,' Ernest smiled, 'I thought you were disqualified.
You have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of philosophy.
You are now on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the way of the
metaphysicians, and I forgive you. No, I repeat, metaphysics had
nothing to do with it. Bread and butter, silks and jewels, dollars
and cents, and, incidentally, the closing up of the overland trade-routes
to India, were the things that caused the voyages of discovery.
With the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, the Turks blocked the
way of the caravans to India. The traders of Europe had to find
another route. Here was the original cause for the voyages of
discovery. Columbus sailed to find a new route to the Indies.
It is so stated in all the history books. Incidentally, new facts
were learned about the nature, size, and form of the earth, and
the Ptolemaic system went glimmering.'

Dr. Hammerfield snorted.

'You do not agree with me?' Ernest queried. 'Then wherein am I
wrong?'

'I can only reaffirm my position,' Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly.
'It is too long a story to enter into now.'

'No story is too long for the scientist,' Ernest said sweetly.
'That is why the scientist gets to places. That is why he got
to America.'

I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to
me to recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours
of my coming to know Ernest Everhard.

Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,
especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic philosophers,
shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he checked them
back to facts. 'The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!' he would
proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought one of them a cropper.
He bristled with facts. He tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded
them with facts, bombarded them with broadsides of facts.

'You seem to worship at the shrine of fact,' Dr. Hammerfield taunted
him.

'There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet,' Dr.
Ballingford paraphrased.

Ernest smilingly acquiesced.

'I'm like the man from Texas,' he said. And, on being solicited,
he explained. 'You see, the man from Missouri always says, 'You've
got to show me.' But the man from Texas says, 'You've got to put
it in my hand.' From which it is apparent that he is no metaphysician.'

Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysical
philosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfield
suddenly demanded:

'What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain
what has so long puzzled wiser heads than yours?'

'Certainly,' Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them.
'The wise heads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they
went up into the air after it. Had they remained on the solid
earth, they would have found it easily enough--ay, they would
have found that they themselves were precisely testing truth with
every practical act and thought of their lives.'

'The test, the test,' Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. 'Never
mind the preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long--the
test of truth. Give it us, and we will be as gods.'

There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and
manner that secretly pleased most of them at the table, though
it seemed to bother Bishop Morehouse.

'Dr. Jordan⁹ has stated it very clearly,' Ernest said. 'His test of truth
is: "Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?"'

'Pish!' Dr. Hammerfield sneered. 'You have not taken Bishop Berkeley¹⁰ into account. He has never been answered.'

'The noblest metaphysician of them all,' Ernest laughed. 'But
your example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his
metaphysics didn't work.'

Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though
he had caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.

'Young man,' he trumpeted, 'that statement is on a par with all
you have uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption.'

'I am quite crushed,' Ernest murmured meekly. 'Only I don't know
what hit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor.'

'I will, I will,' Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. 'How do you know?
You do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics
did not work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked.'

'I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work,
because--' Ernest paused calmly for a moment. 'Because Berkeley
made an invariable practice of going through doors instead of
walls. Because he trusted his life to solid bread and butter and
roast beef. Because he shaved himself with a razor that worked
when it removed the hair from his face.'

'But those are actual things!' Dr. Hammerfield cried. 'Metaphysics
is of the mind.'

'And they work--in the mind?' Ernest queried softly.

The other nodded.

'And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle
-in the mind,' Ernest went on reflectively. 'And a blubber-eating,
fur clad god can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no
proofs to the contrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live
in the mind?'

'My mind to me a kingdom is,' was the answer.

'That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But
you come back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake
happens along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension
in an earthquake that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit
by an immaterial brick?'

Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot
up to his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened
that Ernest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr. Hammerfield
had been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake¹¹ by a falling chimney. Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.

'Well?' Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. 'Proofs
to the contrary?'

And in the silence he asked again, 'Well?' Then he added, 'Still
well, but not so well, that argument of yours.'

But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged
on in new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged
the ministers. When they affirmed that they knew the working class,
he told them fundamental truths about the working class that they
did not know, and challenged them for disproofs. He gave them
facts, always facts, checked their excursions into the air, and
brought them back to the solid earth and its facts.

How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that
war-note in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact
a lash that stung and stung again. And he was merciless. He took
no quarter,¹² and gave none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at
the end:

'You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant
statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are
not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the
working class? You do not live in the same locality with the working
class. You herd with the capitalist class in another locality.
And why not? It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds
you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing
to-night. And in return you preach to your employers the brands
of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the
especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not
menace the established order of society.'

Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.

'Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity,' Ernest continued. 'You
are sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength
and your value--to the capitalist class. But should you change
your belief to something that menaces the established order, your
preaching would be unacceptable to your employers, and you would
be discharged. Every little while some one or another of you is
so discharged.¹³ Am I not right?'

This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with
the exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

'It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign.'

'Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,'
Ernest answered, and then went on. 'So I say to you, go ahead
and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the
working class alone. You belong in the enemy's camp. You have
nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are soft
with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs are
round with the plenitude of eating.' (Here Dr. Ballingford winced,
and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said he
had not seen his own feet in years.) 'And your minds are filled
with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You
are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were
the men of the Swiss Guard.¹⁴ Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with your preaching,
the interests of your employers; but do not come down to the working
class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in the
two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe
me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore,
the working class can do better without you than with you.'

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.¹⁵ 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.

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.'

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, antisocialistic.'

'Not guilty,' he answered. 'Class hatred is neither in the text
nor in the spirit of anything I have every 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.¹⁷ They divide between them this money that is earned. Capital's
share is called "dividends." Labor's share is called "wages."'

'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?'¹⁸ the Bishop queried with alarm.

'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.'¹⁹

'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 Lewis²⁰ 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.²¹ 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?'

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?²² 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.'

'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,'²³ I answered curtly.

'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.

LITTLE DID I DREAM THE FATEFUL part Jackson's arm was to play
in my life. Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him
out. I found him in a crazy, ramshackle²⁴ house down near the bay on the edge of the marsh. Pools of stagnant
water stood around the house, their surfaces covered with a green
and putrid-looking scum, while the stench that arose from them
was intolerable.

I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been described.
He was making some sort of rattan-work, and he toiled on stolidly
while I talked with him. But in spite of his meekness and lowliness,
I fancied I caught the first note of a nascent bitterness in him
when he said:

'They might a-given me a job as watchman,²⁵ anyway.'

I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness
with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity.
This suggested an idea to me.

'How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?' I
asked.

He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head.
'I don't know. It just happened.'

'Carelessness?' I prompted.

'No,' he answered, 'I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin'
overtime, an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen
years in them mills, an' I've took notice that most of the accidents
happens just before whistle-blow.²⁶ I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens in the hour before
whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man ain't so quick
after workin' steady for hours. I've seen too many of 'em cut
up an' gouged an' chawed not to know.'

'Many of them?' I queried.

'Hundreds an' hundreds, an' children, too.'

With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's story of
his accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I
asked him if he had broken some rule of working the machinery,
he shook his head.

'I chucked off the belt with my right hand,' he said, 'an' made
a reach for the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the
belt was off. I thought my right hand had done it- only it didn't.
I reached quick, and the belt wasn't all the way off. And then
my arm was chewed off.'

'It must have been painful,' I said sympathetically.

'The crunchin' of the bones wasn't nice,' was his answer.

His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one
thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages.
He had a feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent
had brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony,
as he put it, 'wasn't what it ought to have ben.' And to them
I resolved to go.

One thing was plain, Jackson's situation was wretched. His wife
was in ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work
and peddling, sufficient food for the family. He was back in his
rent, and the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work
in the mills.

'They might a-given me that watchman's job,' were his last words
as I went away.

By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson's case,
and the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had
testified, I began to feel that there was something after all
in Ernest's contention.

He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at
sight of him I did not wonder that Jackson's case had been lost.
My first thought was that it had served Jackson right for getting
such a lawyer. But the next moment two of Ernest's statements
came flashing into my consciousness: 'The company employs very
efficient lawyers' and 'Colonel Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.' I
did some rapid thinking. It dawned upon me that of course the
company could afford finer legal talent than could a workingman
like Jackson. But this was merely a minor detail. There was some
very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson's case had gone against
him.

'Why did you lose the case?' I asked.

The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found
it in my heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began
to whine. I do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man
beaten at birth. He whined about the testimony. The witnesses
had given only the evidence that helped the other side. Not one
word could he get out of them that would have helped Jackson.
They knew which side their bread was buttered on. Jackson was
a fool. He had been brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram.
Colonel Ingram was brilliant at cross-examination. He had made
Jackson answer damaging questions.

'How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his
side?' I demanded.

'What's right got to do with it?' he demanded back. 'You see all
those books.' He moved his hand over the array of volumes on the
walls of his tiny office. 'All my reading and studying of them
has taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing.
Ask any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right.
But you go to those books to learn... law.'

'Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side
and yet was beaten?' I queried tentatively. 'Do you mean to tell
me that there is no justice in Judge Caldwell's court?'

The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then the belligerence
faded out of his face.

'I hadn't a fair chance,' he began whining again. 'They made a
fool out of Jackson and out of me, too. What chance had I? Colonel
Ingram is a great lawyer. If he wasn't great, would he have charge
of the law business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston Land Syndicate,
of the Berkeley Consolidated, of the Oakland, San Leandro, and
Pleasanton Electric? He's a corporation lawyer, and corporation
lawyers are not paid for being fools.²⁷ What do you think the Sierra Mills alone give him twenty thousand
dollars a year for? Because he's worth twenty thousand dollars
a year to them, that's what for. I'm not worth that much. If I
was, I wouldn't be on the outside, starving and taking cases like
Jackson's. What do you think I'd have got if I'd won Jackson's
case?'

'You'd have robbed him, most probably,' I answered.

'Of course I would,' he cried angrily. 'I've got to live, haven't
I?'²⁸

'He has a wife and children,' I chided.

'So have I a wife and children,' he retorted. 'And there's not
a soul in this world except myself that cares whether they starve
or not.'

His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed
me a small photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside
the case.

'There they are. Look at them. We've had a hard time, a hard time.
I had hoped to send them away to the country if I'd won Jackson's
case. They're not healthy here, but I can't afford to send them
away.'

When I started to leave, he dropped back into his whine.

'I hadn't the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram and Judge Caldwell
are pretty friendly. I'm not saying that if I'd got the right
kind of testimony out of their witnesses on cross-examination,
that friendship would have decided the case. And yet I must say
that Judge Caldwell did a whole lot to prevent my getting that
very testimony. Why, Judge Caldwell and Colonel Ingram belong
to the same lodge and the same club. They live in the same neighborhood--one
I can't afford. And their wives are always in and out of each
other's houses. They're always having whist parties and such things
back and forth.'

'And yet you think Jackson had the right of it?' I asked, pausing
for the moment on the threshold.

'I don't think; I know it,' was his answer. 'And at first I thought
he had some show, too. But I didn't tell my wife. I didn't want
to disappoint her. She had her heart set on a trip to the country
hard enough as it was.'

'Why did you not call attention to the fact that Jackson was trying
to save the machinery from being injured?' I asked Peter Donnelly,
one of the foremen who had testified at the trial.

He pondered a long time before replying. Then he cast an anxious
look about him and said:

'Because I've a good wife an' three of the sweetest children ye
ever laid eyes on, that's why.'

'I do not understand,' I said.

'In other words, because it wouldn't a-ben healthy,' he answered.

'You mean--' I began.

But he interrupted passionately.

'I mean what I said. It's long years I've worked in the mills.
I began as a little lad on the spindles. I worked up ever since.
It's by hard work I got to my present exalted position. I'm a
foreman, if you please. An' I doubt me if there's a man in the
mills that'd put out a hand to drag me from drownin'. I used to
belong to the union. But I've stayed by the company through two
strikes. They called me "scab." There's not a man among 'em to-day
to take a drink with me if I asked him. D'ye see the scars on
me head where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain't a child
at the spindles but what would curse me name. Me only friend is
the company. It's not me duty, but me bread an' butter an' the
life of me children to stand by the mills. That's why.'

'Was Jackson to blame?' I asked.

'He should a-got the damages. He was a good worker an' never made
trouble.'

'Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole truth, as you
had sworn to do?'

He shook his head.

'The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?' I said
solemnly.

Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted it, not to me,
but to heaven.

'I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell for them children
of mine,' was his answer.

Henry Dallas, the superintendent, was a vulpine-faced creature
who regarded me insolently and refused to talk. Not a word could
I get from him concerning the trial and his testimony. But with
the other foreman I had better luck. James Smith was a hard-faced
man, and my heart sank as I encountered him. He, too, gave me
the impression that he was not a free agent, as we talked I began
to see that he was mentally superior to the average of his kind.
He agreed with Peter Donnelly that Jackson should have got damages,
and he went farther and called the action heartless and cold-blooded
that had turned the worker adrift after he had been made helpless
by the accident. Also, he explained that there were many accidents
in the mills, and that the company's policy was to fight to the
bitter end all consequent damage suits.

'It means hundreds of thousands a year to the stockholders,' he
said; and as he spoke I remembered the last dividend that had
been paid my father, and the pretty gown for me and the books
for him that had been bought out of that dividend. I remembered
Ernest's charge that my gown was stained with blood, and my flesh
began to crawl underneath my garments.

'When you testified at the trial, you didn't point out that Jackson
received his accident through trying to save the machinery from
damage?' I said.

'No, I did not,' was the answer, and his mouth set bitterly. 'I
testified to the effect that Jackson injured himself by neglect
and carelessness, and that the company was not in any way to blame
or liable.'

'Was it carelessness?' I asked.

'Call it that, or anything you want to call it. The fact is, a
man gets tired after he's been working for hours.'

I was becoming interested in the man. He certainly was of a superior
kind.

'You are better educated than most workingmen,' I said.

'I went through high school,' he replied. 'I worked my way through
doing janitor-work. I wanted to go through the university. But
my father died, and I came to work in the mills.

'I wanted to become a naturalist,' he explained shyly, as though
confessing a weakness. 'I love animals. But I came to work in
the mills. When I was promoted to foreman I got married, then
the family came, and... well, I wasn't my own boss any more.'

'What do you mean by that?' I asked.

'I was explaining why I testified at the trial the way I did--why
I followed instructions.'

'Whose instructions?'

'Colonel Ingram. He outlined the evidence I was to give.'

'And it lost Jackson's case for him.'

He nodded, and the blood began to rise darkly in his face.

'And Jackson had a wife and two children dependent on him.'

'I know,' he said quietly, though his face was growing darker.

'Tell me,' I went on, 'was it easy to make yourself over from
what you were, say in high school, to the man you must have become
to do such a thing at the trial?'

The suddenness of his outburst startled and frightened me. He
ripped²⁹ out a savage oath, and clenched his fist as though about to strike
me.

'I beg your pardon,' he said the next moment. 'No, it was not
easy. And now I guess you can go away. You've got all you wanted
out of me. But let me tell you this before you go. It won't do
you any good to repeat anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there
are no witnesses. I'll deny every word of it; and if I have to,
I'll do it under oath on the witness stand.'

After my interview with Smith I went to my father's office in
the Chemistry Building and there encountered Ernest. It was quite
unexpected, but he met me with his bold eyes and firm hand-clasp,
and with that curious blend of his awkwardness and ease. It was
as though our last stormy meeting was forgotten; but I was not
in the mood to have it forgotten.

'I have been looking up Jackson's case,' I said abruptly.

He was all interested attention, and waited for me to go on, though
I could see in his eyes the certitude that my convictions had
been shaken.

'He seems to have been badly treated,' I confessed. 'I--I--think
some of his blood is dripping from our roof-beams.'

'Of course,' he answered. 'If Jackson and all his fellows were
treated mercifully, the dividends would not be so large.'

'I shall never be able to take pleasure in pretty gowns again,'
I added.

I felt humble and contrite, and was aware of a sweet feeling that
Ernest was a sort of father confessor. Then, as ever after, his
strength appealed to me. It seemed to radiate a promise of peace
and protection.

'Nor will you be able to take pleasure in sackcloth,' he said
gravely. 'There are the jute mills, you know, and the same thing
goes on there. It goes on everywhere. Our boasted civilization
is based upon blood, soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor
any of us can escape the scarlet stain. The men you talked with--who
were they?'

I told him all that had taken place.

'And not one of them was a free agent,' he said. 'They were all
tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it
and the tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their
children--always the young life that it is their instinct to protect.
This instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My father!
He lied, he stole, he did all sorts of dishonorable things to
put bread into my mouth and into the mouths of my brothers and
sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine, and it stamped
his life out, worked him to death.'

'But you,' I interjected. 'You are surely a free agent.'

'Not wholly,' he replied. 'I am not tied by my heartstrings. I
am often thankful that I have no children, and I dearly love children.
Yet if I married I should not dare to have any.'

'That surely is bad doctrine,' I cried.

'I know it is,' he said sadly. 'But it is expedient doctrine.
I am a revolutionist, and it is a perilous vocation.'

I laughed incredulously.

'If I tried to enter your father's house at night to steal his
dividends from the Sierra Mills, what would he do?'

'He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed,' I answered.
'He would most probably shoot you.'

'And if I and a few others should lead a million and a half of
men³⁰ into the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great
deal of shooting, wouldn't there?'

'Yes, but you are not doing that,' I objected.

'It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the
mere wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth,
all the mines, and railroads, and factories, and banks, and stores.
That is the revolution. It is truly perilous. There will be more
shooting, I am afraid, than even I dream of. But as I was saying,
no one to-day is a free agent. We are all caught up in the wheels
and cogs of the industrial machine. You found that you were, and
that the men you talked with were. Talk with more of them. Go
and see Colonel Ingram. Look up the reporters that kept Jackson's
case out of the papers, and the editors that run the papers. You
will find them all slaves of the machine.'

A little later in our conversation I asked him a simple little
question about the liability of workingmen to accidents, and received
a statistical lecture in return.

'It is all in the books,' he said. 'The figures have been gathered,
and it has been proved conclusively that accidents rarely occur
in the first hours of the morning work, but that they increase
rapidly in the succeeding hours as the workers grow tired and
slower in both their muscular and mental processes.

'Why, do you know that your father has three times as many chances
for safety of life and limb than has a working-man? He has. The
insurance³¹ companies know. They will charge him four dollars and twenty
cents a year on a thousand-dollar accident policy, and for the
same policy they will charge a laborer fifteen dollars.'

'And you?' I asked; and in the moment of asking I was aware of
a solicitude that was something more than slight.

'Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances to the workingman's
one of being injured or killed,' he answered carelessly. 'The
insurance companies charge the highly trained chemists that handle
explosives eight times what they charge the workingmen. I don't
think they'd insure me at all. Why did you ask?'

My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in my face.
It was not that he had caught me in my solicitude, but that I
had caught myself, and in his presence.

Just then my father came in and began making preparations to depart
with me. Ernest returned some books he had borrowed, and went
away first. But just as he was going, he turned and said:

'Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind
and I am ruining the Bishop's, you'd better look up Mrs. Wickson
and Mrs. Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal
stockholders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those
two women are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they
sit on top of it.'

THE MORE I THOUGHT OF JACKSON'S arm, the more shaken I was. I
was confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing
life. My university life, and study and culture, had not been
real. I had learned nothing but theories of life and society that
looked all very well on the printed page, but now I had seen life
itself. Jackson's arm was a fact of life. 'The fact, man, the
irrefragable fact!' of Ernest's was ringing in my consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based
upon blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from
him. Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to
the Pole. He had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been
paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid. And I
knew a score of happy complacent families that had received those
dividends and by that much had profited by Jackson's blood. If
one man could be so monstrously treated and society move on its
way unheeding, might not many men be so monstrously treated? I
remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents
a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had
described. And I could see their wan white hands, from which the
blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had
been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and
the dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson
upon my gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations
led me back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge
of a precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and
awful revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was
turning over. There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest
was beginning to have on him. And then there was the Bishop. When
I had last seen him he had looked a sick man. He was at high nervous
tension, and in his eyes there was unspeakable horror. From the
little I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his promise
of taking him through hell. But what scenes of hell the Bishop's
eyes had seen, I knew not, for he seemed too stunned to speak
about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all
the world was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of
it; and also I thought, 'We were so happy and peaceful before
he came!' And the next moment I was aware that the thought was
a treason against truth, and Ernest rose before me transfigured,
the apostle of truth, with shining brows and the fearlessness
of one of God's own angels, battling for the truth and the right,
and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely and oppressed.
And then there arose before me another figure, the Christ! He,
too, had taken the part of the lowly and oppressed, and against
all the established power of priest and pharisee. And I remembered
his end upon the cross, and my heart contracted with a pang as
I thought of Ernest. Was he, too, destined for a cross?--he, with
his clarion call and war noted voice, and all the fine man's vigor
of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting
with desire to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid, harsh,
and meagre life it must have been. And I thought of his father,
who had lied and stolen for him and been worked to death. And
he himself had gone into the mills when he was ten! All my heart
seemed bursting with desire to fold my arms around him, and to
rest his head on my breast- his head that must be weary with so
many thoughts; and to give him rest--just rest--and easement and
forgetfulness for a tender space.

I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I knew well and
had known well for many years. I trapped him behind large palms
and rubber plants, though he did not know he was trapped. He met
me with the conventional gayety and gallantry. He was ever a graceful
man, diplomatic, tactful, and considerate. And as for appearance,
he was the most distinguished-looking man in our society. Beside
him even the venerable head of the university looked tawdry and
small.

And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as the unlettered
mechanics. He was not a free agent. He, too, was bound upon the
wheel. I shall never forget the change in him when I mentioned
Jackson's case. His smiling good nature vanished like a ghost.
A sudden, frightful expression distorted his well-bred face. I
felt the same alarm that I had felt when James Smith broke out.
But Colonel Ingram did not curse. That was the slight difference
that was left between the workingman and him. He was famed as
a wit, but he had no wit now. And, unconsciously, this way and
that he glanced for avenues of escape. But he was trapped amid
the palms and rubber trees.

Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson's name. Why had I brought
the matter up? He did not relish my joke. It was poor taste on
my part, and very inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his profession
personal feelings did not count? He left his personal feelings
at home when he went down to the office. At the office he had
only professional feelings.

'Should Jackson have received damages?' I asked.

'Certainly,' he answered. 'That is, personally, I have a feeling
that he should. But that has nothing to do with the legal aspects
of the case.'

He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.

Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?' I asked.

'You have used the wrong initial consonant,' he smiled in answer.

'Might?' I queried; and he nodded his head. 'And yet we are supposed
to get justice by means of the law?'

'That is the paradox of it,' he countered. 'We do get justice.'

'You are speaking professionally now, are you not?' I asked.

Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again he looked
anxiously about him for a way of escape. But I blocked his path
and did not offer to move.

'Tell me,' I said, 'when one surrenders his personal feelings
to his professional feelings, may not the action be defined as
a sort of spiritual mayhem?'

I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted,
overturning a palm in his flight.

Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, restrained, dispassionate
account of Jackson's case. I made no charges against the men with
whom I had talked, nor, for that matter, did I even mention them.
I gave the actual facts of the case, the long years Jackson had
worked in the mills, his effort to save the machinery from damage
and the consequent accident, and his own present wretched and
starving condition. The three local newspapers rejected my communication,
likewise did the two weeklies.

I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university,
had gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship
as reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers. He
smiled when I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all
mention of Jackson or his case.

'Editorial policy,' he said. 'We have nothing to do with that.
It's up to the editors.'

'But why is it policy?' I asked.

'We're all solid with the corporations,' he answered. 'If you
paid advertising rates, you couldn't get any such matter into
the papers. A man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job.
You couldn't get it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising
rates.'

'How about your own policy?' I questioned. 'It would seem your
function is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who,
in turn, obey the behests of the corporations.'

'I haven't anything to do with that.' He looked uncomfortable
for the moment, then brightened as he saw his way out. 'I, myself,
do not write untruthful things. I keep square all right with my
own conscience. Of course, there's lots that's repugnant in the
course of the day's work. But then, you see, that's all part of
the day's work,' he wound up boyishly.

'Yet you expect to sit at an editor's desk some day and conduct
a policy.'

'I'll be case-hardened by that time,' was his reply.

'Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right
now about the general editorial policy.'

'I don't think,' he answered quickly. 'One can't kick over the
ropes if he's going to succeed in journalism. I've learned that
much, at any rate.'

And he nodded his young head sagely.

'But the right?' I persisted.

'You don't understand the game. Of course it's all right, because
it comes out all right, don't you see?'

'Delightfully vague,' I murmured; but my heart was aching for
the youth of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst
into tears.

I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society
in which I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities
that were beneath. There seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson,
and I was aware of a thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer
who had ingloriously fought his case. But this tacit conspiracy
grew large. Not alone was it aimed against Jackson. It was aimed
against every workingman who was maimed in the mills. And if against
every man in the mills, why not against every man in all the other
mills and factories? In fact, was it not true of all the industries?

And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank back from
my own conclusions. It was too terrible and awful to be true.
But there was Jackson, and Jackson's arm, and the blood that stained
my gown and dripped from my own roof-beams. And there were many
Jacksons- hundreds of them in the mills alone, as Jackson himself
had said. Jackson I could not escape.

I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most
of the stock in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as
I had shaken the mechanics in their employ. I discovered that
they had an ethic superior to that of the rest of society. It
was what I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master ethic.³² They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy
and right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing
my youth and inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all
I had encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely that their
conduct was right. There was no question about it, no discussion.
They were convinced that they were the saviours of society, and
that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew
pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working
class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone,
by their wisdom, provided for it.

Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience.
He looked at me with a pleased expression, and said:

'Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for yourself.
It is your own empirical generalization, and it is correct. No
man in the industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the
large capitalist, and he isn't, if you'll pardon the Irishism.³³ You see, the masters are quite sure that they are right in what
they are doing. That is the crowning absurdity of the whole situation.
They are so tied by their human nature that they can't do a thing
unless they think it is right. They must have a sanction for their
acts.

'When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must
wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious,
or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing
is right. And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one
of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent
to the thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always
comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They
even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One
of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that
they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency.
Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter
of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory
of the divine right of kings--commercial kings in their case.³⁴

'The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely business
men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists nor sociologists.
If they were, of course all would be well. A business man who
was also a biologist and a sociologist would know, approximately,
the right thing to do for humanity. But, outside the realm of
business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They
do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up
as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other
millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating
laugh at their expense.'

I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs. Wickson and
Mrs. Pertonwaithe. They were society women.³⁵ Their homes were palaces. They had many homes scattered over
the country, in the mountains, on lakes, and by the sea. They
were tended by armies of servants, and their social activities
were bewildering. They patronized the university and the churches,
and the pastors especially bowed at their knees in meek subservience.³⁶ They were powers, these two women, what of the money that was
theirs. The power of subsidization of thought was theirs to a
remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn under Ernest's tuition.

They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about
policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They
were swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands--the
ethic of their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their
own ears did not understand.

Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition
of Jackson's family, and when I wondered that they had made no
voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they thanked
no one for instructing them in their social duties. When I asked
them flatly to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The astounding
thing about it was that they refused in almost identically the
same language, and this in face of the fact that I interviewed
them separately and that one did not know that I had seen or was
going to see the other. Their common reply was that they were
glad of the opportunity to make it perfectly plain that no premium
would ever be put on carelessness by them; nor would they, by
paying for accident, tempt the poor to hurt themselves in the
machinery.³⁷

And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with conviction
of the superiority of their class and of themselves. They had
a sanction, in their own class-ethic, for every act they performed.
As I drove away from Mrs. Pertonwaithe's great house, I looked
back at it, and I remembered Ernest's expression that they were
bound to the machine, but that they were so bound that they sat
on top of it.

ERNEST WAS OFTEN AT THE house. Nor was it my father, merely, nor
the controversial dinners, that drew him there. Even at that time
I flattered myself that I played some part in causing his visits,
and it was not long before I learned the correctness of my surmise.
For never was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard. His gaze
and his hand-clasp grew firmer and steadier, if that were possible;
and the question that had grown from the first in his eyes, grew
only the more imperative.

My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had been unfavorable.
Then I had found myself attracted toward him. Next came my repulsion,
when he so savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I
saw that he had not maligned my class, and that the harsh and
bitter things he said about it were justified, I had drawn closer
to him again. He became my oracle. For me he tore the sham from
the face of society and gave me glimpses of reality that were
as unpleasant as they were undeniably true.

As I have said, there was never such a lover as he. No girl could
live in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have
love experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores
and gray professors, and by the athletes and the football giants.
But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were
around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I could
protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden
dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid
invincible rush of him. He did not propose. He put his arms around
me and kissed me and took it for granted that we should be married.
There was no discussion about it. The only discussion--and that
arose afterward--was when we should be married.

It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in accordance with Ernest's
test of truth, it worked. I trusted my life to it. And fortunate
was the trust. Yet during those first days of our love, fear of
the future came often to me when I thought of the violence and
impetuosity of his love-making. Yet such fears were groundless.
No woman was ever blessed with a gentler, tenderer husband. This
gentleness and violence on his part was a curious blend similar
to the one in his carriage of awkwardness and ease. That slight
awkwardness! He never got over it, and it was delicious. His behavior
in our drawing-room reminded me of a careful bull in a china shop.³⁸

It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of the completeness
of my love for him (a subconscious doubt, at most). It was at
the Philomath Club--a wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest
bearded the masters in their lair. Now the Philomath Club was
the most select on the Pacific Coast. It was the creation of Miss
Brentwood, an enormously wealthy old maid; and it was her husband,
and family, and toy. Its members were the wealthiest in the community,
and the strongest-minded of the wealthy, with, of course, a sprinkling
of scholars to give it intellectual tone.

The Philomath had no club house. It was not that kind of a club.
Once a month its members gathered at some one of their private
houses to listen to a lecture. The lecturers were usually, though
not always, hired. If a chemist in New York made a new discovery
in say radium, all his expenses across the continent were paid,
and as well he received a princely fee for his time. The same
with a returning explorer from the polar regions, or the latest
literary or artistic success. No visitors were allowed, while
it was the Philomath's policy to permit none of its discussions
to get into the papers. Thus great statesmen--and there had been
such occasions--were able fully to speak their minds.

I spread before me a wrinkled letter, written to me by Ernest
twenty years ago, and from it I copy the following:

'Your father is a member of the Philomath, so you are able to
come. Therefore come next Tuesday night. I promise you that you
will have the time of your life. In your recent encounters, you
failed to shake the masters. If you come, I'll shake them for
you. I'll make them snarl like wolves. You merely questioned their
morality. When their morality is questioned, they grow only the
more complacent and superior. But I shall menace their money-bags.
That will shake them to the roots of their primitive natures.
If you can come, you will see the cave-man, in evening dress,
snarling and snapping over a bone. I promise you a great caterwauling
and an illuminating insight into the nature of the beast.

'They've invited me in order to tear me to pieces. This is the
idea of Miss Brentwood. She clumsily hinted as much when she invited
me. She's given them that kind of fun before. They delight in
getting trustful-souled gentle reformers before them. Miss Brentwood
thinks I am as mild as a kitten and as good-natured and stolid
as the family cow. I'll not deny that I helped to give her that
impression. She was very tentative at first, until she divined
my harmlessness. I am to receive a handsome fee--two hundred and
fifty dollars--as befits the man who, though a radical, once ran
for governor. Also, I am to wear evening dress. This is compulsory.
I never was so apparelled in my life. I suppose I'll have to hire
one somewhere. But I'd do more than that to get a chance at the
Philomaths.'

Of all places, the Club gathered that night at the Pertonwaithe
house. Extra chairs had been brought into the great drawing-room,
and in all there must have been two hundred Philomaths that sat
down to hear Ernest. They were truly lords of society. I amused
myself with running over in my mind the sum of the fortunes represented,
and it ran well into the hundreds of millions. And the possessors
were not of the idle rich. They were men of affairs who took most
active parts in industrial and political life.

We were all seated when Miss Brentwood brought Ernest in. They
moved at once to the head of the room, from where he was to speak.
He was in evening dress, and, what of his broad shoulders and
kingly head, he looked magnificent. And then there was that faint
and unmistakable touch of awkwardness in his movements. I almost
think I could have loved him for that alone. And as I looked at
him I was aware of a great joy. I felt again the pulse of his
palm on mine, the touch of his lips; and such pride was mine that
I felt I must rise up and cry out to the assembled company: 'He
is mine! He has held me in his arms, and I, mere I, have filled
that mind of his to the exclusion of all his multitudinous and
kingly thoughts!'

At the head of the room, Miss Brentwood introduced him to Colonel
Van Gilbert, and I knew that the latter was to preside. Colonel
Van Gilbert was a great corporation lawyer. In addition, he was
immensely wealthy. The smallest fee he would deign to notice was
a hundred thousand dollars. He was a master of law. The law was
a puppet with which he played. He moulded it like clay, twisted
and distorted it like a Chinese puzzle into any design he chose.
In appearance and rhetoric he was old-fashioned, but in imagination
and knowledge and resource he was as young as the latest statute.
His first prominence had come when he broke the Shardwell will.³⁹ His fee for this one act was five hundred thousand dollars. From
then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often called the greatest
lawyer in the country--corporation lawyer, of course; and no classification
of the three greatest lawyers in the United States could have
excluded him.

He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried
an undertone of faint irony, to introduce Ernest. Colonel Van
Gilbert was subtly facetious in his introduction of the social
reformer and member of the working class, and the audience smiled.
It made me angry, and I glanced at Ernest. The sight of him made
me doubly angry. He did not seem to resent the delicate slurs.
Worse than that, he did not seem to be aware of them. There he
sat, gentle, and stolid, and somnolent. He really looked stupid.
And for a moment the thought rose in my mind, What if he were
overawed by this imposing array of power and brains? Then I smiled.
He couldn't fool me. But he fooled the others, just as he had
fooled Miss Brentwood. She occupied a chair right up to the front,
and several times she turned her head toward one or another of
her confreres and smiled her appreciation of the remarks.

Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began to speak. He
began in a low voice, haltingly and modestly, and with an air
of evident embarrassment. He spoke of his birth in the working
class, and of the sordidness and wretchedness of his environment,
where flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented. He described
his ambitions and ideals, and his conception of the paradise wherein
lived the people of the upper classes. As he said:

'Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean
and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this
because I read Seaside Library⁴⁰ novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses,
all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful
tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted
the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that
was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity
to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated
one for his travail and misery.'

He went on and traced his life in the mills, the learning of the
horseshoeing trade, and his meeting with the socialists. Among
them, he said, he had found keen intellects and brilliant wits,
ministers of the Gospel who had been broken because their Christianity
was too wide for any congregation of mammon-worshippers, and professors
who had been broken on the wheel of university subservience to
the ruling class. The socialists were revolutionists, he said,
struggling to overthrow the irrational society of the present
and out of the material to build the rational society of the future.
Much more he said that would take too long to write, but I shall
never forget how he described the life among the revolutionists.
All halting utterance vanished. His voice grew strong and confident,
and it glowed as he glowed, and as the thoughts glowed that poured
out from him. He said;

'Amongst the revolutionists I found, also, warm faith in the human,
ardent idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and
martyrdom--all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here
life was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls
who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom
the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the
pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire.
All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort,
and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and
dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail,
Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long suffering and maltreated
but to be rescued and saved at the last.'

As before I had seen him transfigured, so now he stood transfigured
before me. His brows were bright with the divine that was in him,
and brighter yet shone his eyes from the midst of the radiance
that seemed to envelop him as a mantle. But the others did not
see this radiance, and I assumed that it was due to the tears
of joy and love that dimmed my vision. At any rate, Mr. Wickson,
who sat behind me, was unaffected, for I heard him sneer aloud,
'Utopian.'⁴¹

Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he came in
touch with members of the upper classes, and rubbed shoulders
with the men who sat in the high places. Then came his disillusionment,
and this disillusionment he described in terms that did not flatter
his audience. He was surprised at the commonness of the clay.
Life proved not to be fine and gracious. He was appalled by the
selfishness he encountered, and what had surprised him even more
than that was the absence of intellectual life. Fresh from his
revolutionists, he was shocked by the intellectual stupidity of
the master class. And then, in spite of their magnificent churches
and well-paid preachers, he had found the masters, men and women,
grossly material. It was true that they prattled sweet little
ideals and dear little moralities, but in spite of their prattle
the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And
they were without real morality--for instance, that which Christ
had preached but which was no longer preached.

'I met men,' he said, 'who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace
in their diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands
of Pinkertons⁴² with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met
men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting,
and who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of
food that killed each year more babes than even red-handed Herod
had killed.

'This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman was a dummy director
and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans.
This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was a patron of
literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss
of a municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine
advertisements, called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I dared
him to print in his paper the truth about patent medicines.⁴³ This man, talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of
idealism and the goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades
in a business deal. This man, a pillar of the church and heavy
contributor to foreign missions, worked his shop girls ten hours
a day on a starvation wage and thereby directly encouraged prostitution.
This man, who endowed chairs in universities and erected magnificent
chapels, perjured himself in courts of law over dollars and cents.
This railroad magnate broke his word as a citizen, as a gentleman,
and as a Christian, when he granted a secret rebate, and he granted
many secret rebates. This senator was the tool and the slave,
the little puppet, of a brutal uneducated machine boss;⁴⁴ so was this governor and this supreme court judge; and all three
rode on railroad passes; and, also, this sleek capitalist owned
the machine, the machine boss, and the railroads that issued the
passes.

'And so it was, instead of in paradise, that I found myself in
the arid desert of commercialism. I found nothing but stupidity,
except for business. I found none clean, noble, and alive, though
I found many who were alive--with rottenness. What I did find
was monstrous selfishness and heartlessness, and a gross, gluttonous,
practised, and practical materialism.'

Much more Ernest told them of themselves and of his disillusionment.
Intellectually they had bored him; morally and spiritually they
had sickened him; so that he was glad to go back to his revolutionists,
who were clean, noble, and alive, and all that the capitalists
were not.

'And now,' he said, 'let me tell you about that revolution.'

But first I must say that his terrible diatribe had not touched
them. I looked about me at their faces and saw that they remained
complacently superior to what he had charged. And I remembered
what he had told me: that no indictment of their morality could
shake them. However, I could see that the boldness of his language
had affected Miss Brentwood. She was looking worried and apprehensive.

Ernest began by describing the army of revolution, and as he gave
the figures of its strength (the votes cast in the various countries),
the assemblage began to grow restless. Concern showed in their
faces, and I noticed a tightening of lips. At last the gage of
battle had been thrown down. He described the international organization
of the socialists that united the million and a half in the United
States with the twenty-three millions and a half in the rest of
the world.

'Such an army of revolution,' he said, 'twenty-five millions strong,
is a thing to make rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.
The cry of this army is: "No quarter! We want all that you possess.
We will be content with nothing less than all that you possess.
We want in our hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind.
Here are our hands. They are strong hands. We are going to take
your governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away
from you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as
the peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your
metropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands!"'

And as he spoke he extended from his splendid shoulders his two
great arms, and the horseshoer's hands were clutching the air
like eagle's talons. He was the spirit of regnant labor as he
stood there, his hands outreaching to rend and crush his audience.
I was aware of a faintly perceptible shrinking on the part of
the listeners before this figure of revolution, concrete, potential,
and menacing. That is, the women shrank, and fear was in their
faces. Not so with the men. They were of the active rich, and
not the idle, and they were fighters. A low, throaty rumble arose,
lingered on the air a moment, and ceased. It was the forerunner
of the snarl, and I was to hear it many times that night- the
token of the brute in man, the earnest of his primitive passions.
And they were unconscious that they had made this sound. It was
the growl of the pack, mouthed by the pack, and mouthed in all
unconsciousness. And in that moment, as I saw the harshness form
in their faces and saw the fight-light flashing in their eyes,
I realized that not easily would they let their lordship of the
world be wrested from them.

Ernest proceeded with his attack. He accounted for the existence
of the million and a half of revolutionists in the United States
by charging the capitalist class with having mismanaged society.
He sketched the economic condition of the cave-man and of the
savage peoples of to-day, pointing out that they possessed neither
tools nor machines, and possessed only a natural efficiency of
one in producing power. Then he traced the development of machinery
and social organization so that to day the producing power of
civilized man was a thousand times greater than that of the savage.

'Five men,' he said, 'can produce bread for a thousand. One man
can produce cotton cloth for two hundred and fifty people, woollens
for three hundred, and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would
conclude from this that under a capable management of society
modern civilized man would be a great deal better off than the
cave-man. But is he? Let us see. In the United States to-day there
are fifteen million⁴⁵ people living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition
in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the
mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the
United States to-day, in spite of all your so-called labor legislation,
there are three millions of child laborers.⁴⁶ In twelve years their numbers have been doubled. And in passing
I will ask you managers of society why you did not make public
the census figures of 1910? And I will answer for you, that you
were afraid. The figures of misery would have precipitated the
revolution that even now is gathering.

'But to return to my indictment. If modern man's producing power
is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then,
in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people
who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in
the United States to day, are there three million child laborers?
It is a true indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged.
In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than
the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times
greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible
than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged,
my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged.
And on this count you cannot answer me here to night, face to
face, any more than can your whole class answer the million and
a half of revolutionists in the United States. You cannot answer.
I challenge you to answer. And furthermore, I dare to say to you
now that when I have finished you will not answer. On that point
you will be tongue-tied, though you will talk wordily enough about
other things.

'You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles
of civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen
up (as you to day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls,
and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of
children and babes. Don't take my word for it. It is all in the
records against you. You have lulled your conscience to sleep
with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities. You are fat
with power and possession, drunken with success; and you have
no more hope against us than have the drones, clustered about
the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their
rotund existence. You have failed in your management of society,
and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and
a half of the men of the working class say that they are going
to get the rest of the working class to join with them and take
the management away from you. This is the revolution, my masters.
Stop it if you can.'

For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest's voice continued to ring
through the great room. Then arose the throaty rumble I had heard
before, and a dozen men were on their feet clamoring for recognition
from Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood's shoulders
moving convulsively, and for the moment I was angry, for I thought
that she was laughing at Ernest. And then I discovered that it
was not laughter, but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had
done in bringing this firebrand before her blessed Philomath Club.

Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men, with passion
wrought faces, who strove to get permission from him to speak.
His own face was passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving
his arms, and for a moment could utter only incoherent sounds.
Then speech poured from him. But it was not the speech of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar
lawyer, nor was the rhetoric old-fashioned.

'Fallacy upon fallacy!' he cried. 'Never in all my life have I
heard so many fallacies uttered in one short hour. And besides,
young man, I must tell you that you have said nothing new. I learned
all that at college before you were born. Jean Jacques Rousseau
enunciated your socialistic theory nearly two centuries ago. A
return to the soil, forsooth! Reversion! Our biology teaches the
absurdity of it. It has been truly said that a little learning
is a dangerous thing, and you have exemplified it to-night with
your madcap theories. Fallacy upon fallacy! I was never so nauseated
in my life with overplus of fallacy. That for your immature generalizations
and childish reasonings!'

He snapped his fingers contemptuously and proceeded to sit down.
There were lip-exclamations of approval on the part of the women,
and hoarser notes of confirmation came from the men. As for the
dozen men who were clamoring for the floor, half of them began
speaking at once. The confusion and babel was indescribable. Never
had Mrs. Pertonwaithe's spacious walls beheld such a spectacle.
These, then, were the cool captains of industry and lords of society,
these snarling, growling savages in evening clothes. Truly Ernest
had shaken them when he stretched out his hands for their moneybags,
his hands that had appeared in their eyes as the hands of the
fifteen hundred thousand revolutionists.

But Ernest never lost his head in a situation. Before Colonel
Van Gilbert had succeeded in sitting down, Ernest was on his feet
and had sprung forward.

'One at a time!' he roared at them.

The sound arose from his great lungs and dominated the human tempest.
By sheer compulsion of personality he commanded silence.

'One at a time,' he repeated softly. 'Let me answer Colonel Van
Gilbert. After that the rest of you can come at me--but one at
a time, remember. No mass-plays here. This is not a football field.

'As for you,' he went on, turning toward Colonel Van Gilbert,
'you have replied to nothing I have said. You have merely made
a few excited and dogmatic assertions about my mental caliber.
That may serve you in your business, but you can't talk to me
like that. I am not a workingman, cap in hand, asking you to increase
my wages or to protect me from the machine at which I work. You
cannot be dogmatic with truth when you deal with me. Save that
for dealing with your wage-slaves. They will not dare reply to
you because you hold their bread and butter, their lives, in your
hands.

'As for this return to nature that you say you learned at college
before I was born, permit me to point out that on the face of
it you cannot have learned anything since. Socialism has no more
to do with the state of nature than has differential calculus
with a Bible class. I have called your class stupid when outside
the realm of business. You, sir, have brilliantly exemplified
my statement.'

This terrible castigation of her hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer
was too much for Miss Brentwood's nerves. Her hysteria became
violent, and she was helped, weeping and laughing, out of the
room. It was just as well, for there was worse to follow.

'Don't take my word for it,' Ernest continued, when the interruption
had been led away. 'Your own authorities with one unanimous voice
will prove you stupid. Your own hired purveyors of knowledge will
tell you that you are wrong. Go to your meekest little assistant
instructor of sociology and ask him what is the difference between
Rousseau's theory of the return to nature and the theory of socialism;
ask your greatest orthodox bourgeois political economists and
sociologists; question through the pages of every text-book written
on the subject and stored on the shelves of your subsidized libraries;
and from one and all the answer will be that there is nothing
congruous between the return to nature and socialism. On the other
hand, the unanimous affirmative answer will be that the return
to nature and socialism are diametrically opposed to each other.
As I say, don't take my word for it. The record of your stupidity
is there in the books, your own books that you never read. And
so far as your stupidity is concerned, you are but the exemplar
of your class.

'You know law and business, Colonel Van Gilbert. You know how
to serve corporations and increase dividends by twisting the law.
Very good. Stick to it. You are quite a figure. You are a very
good lawyer, but you are a poor historian, you know nothing of
sociology, and your biology is contemporaneous with Pliny.'

Here Colonel Van Gilbert writhed in his chair. There was perfect
quiet in the room. Everybody sat fascinated--paralyzed, I may
say. Such fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was
unheard of, undreamed of, impossible to believe--the great Colonel
Van Gilbert before whom judges trembled when he arose in court.
But Ernest never gave quarter to an enemy.

'This is, of course, no reflection on you,' Ernest said. 'Every
man to his trade. Only you stick to your trade, and I'll stick
to mine. You have specialized. When it comes to a knowledge of
the law, of how best to evade the law or make new law for the
benefit of thieving corporations, I am down in the dirt at your
feet. But when it comes to sociology--my trade--you are down in
the dirt at my feet. Remember that. Remember, also, that your
law is the stuff of a day, and that you are not versatile in the
stuff of more than a day. Therefore your dogmatic assertions and
rash generalizations on things historical and sociological are
not worth the breath you waste on them.'

Ernest paused for a moment and regarded him thoughtfully, noting
his face dark and twisted with anger, his panting chest, his writhing
body, and his slim white hands nervously clenching and unclenching.

'But it seems you have breath to use, and I'll give you a chance
to use it. I indicted your class. Show me that my indictment is
wrong. I pointed out to you the wretchedness of modern man--three
million child slaves in the United States, without whose labor
profits would not be possible, and fifteen million under-fed,
ill-clothed, and worse-housed people. I pointed out that modern
man's producing power through social organization and the use
of machinery was a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man.
And I stated that from these two facts no other conclusion was
possible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged. This was
my indictment, and I specifically and at length challenged you
to answer it. Nay, I did more. I prophesied that you would not
answer. It remains for your breath to smash my prophecy. You called
my speech fallacy. Show the fallacy, Colonel Van Gilbert. Answer
the indictment that I and my fifteen hundred thousand comrades
have brought against your class and you.'

Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot that he was presiding, and that
in courtesy he should permit the other clamorers to speak. He
was on his feet, flinging his arms, his rhetoric, and his control
to the winds, alternately abusing Ernest for his youth and demagoguery,
and savagely attacking the working class, elaborating its inefficiency
and worthlessness.

'For a lawyer, you are the hardest man to keep to a point I ever
saw,' Ernest began his answer to the tirade. 'My youth has nothing
to do with what I have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of
the working class. I charged the capitalist class with having
mismanaged society. You have not answered. You have made no attempt
to answer. Why? Is it because you have no answer? You are the
champion of this whole audience. Every one here, except me, is
hanging on your lips for that answer. They are hanging on your
lips for that answer because they have no answer themselves. As
for me, as I said before, I know that you not only cannot answer,
but that you will not attempt an answer.'

'This is intolerable!' Colonel Van Gilbert cried out. 'This is
insult!'

'That you should not answer is intolerable,' Ernest replied gravely.
'No man can be intellectually insulted. Insult, in its very nature,
is emotional. Recover yourself. Give me an intellectual answer
to my intellectual charge that the capitalist class has mismanaged
society.'

Colonel Van Gilbert remained silent, a sullen, superior expression
on his face, such as will appear on the face of a man who will
not bandy words with a ruffian.

'Do not be downcast,' Ernest said. 'Take consolation in the fact
that no member of your class has ever yet answered that charge.'
He turned to the other men who were anxious to speak. 'And now
it's your chance. Fire away, and do not forget that I here challenge
you to give the answer that Colonel Van Gilbert has failed to
give.'

It would be impossible for me to write all that was said in the
discussion. I never realized before how many words could be spoken
in three short hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his
opponents grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them.
He had an encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and
by a word or a phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured
them, He named the points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism,
that conclusion had no connection with the premise, while that
next premise was an impostor because it had cunningly hidden in
it the conclusion that was being attempted to be proved. This
was an error, that was an assumption, and the next was an assertion
contrary to ascertained truth as printed in all the text-books.

And so it went. Sometimes he exchanged the rapier for the club
and went smashing amongst their thoughts right and left. And always
he demanded facts and refused to discuss theories. And his facts
made for them a Waterloo. When they attacked the working class,
he always retorted, 'The pot calling the kettle black; that is
no answer to the charge that your own face is dirty.' And to one
and all he said: 'Why have you not answered the charge that your
class has mismanaged? You have talked about other things and things
concerning other things, but you have not answered. Is it because
you have no answer?'

It was at the end of the discussion that Mr. Wickson spoke. He
was the only one that was cool, and Ernest treated him with a
respect he had not accorded the others.

'No answer is necessary,' Mr. Wickson said with slow deliberation.
'I have followed the whole discussion with amazement and disgust.
I am disgusted with you gentlemen, members of my class. You have
behaved like foolish little schoolboys, what with intruding ethics
and the thunder of the common politician into such a discussion.
You have been outgeneralled and outclassed. You have been very
wordy, and all you have done is buzz. You have buzzed like gnats
about a bear. Gentlemen, there stands the bear' (he pointed at
Ernest), 'and your buzzing has only tickled his ears.

'Believe me, the situation is serious. That bear reached out his
paws tonight to crush us. He has said there are a million and
a half of revolutionists in the United States. That is a fact.
He has said that it is their intention to take away from us our
governments, our palaces, and all our purpled ease. That, also,
is a fact. A change, a great change, is coming in society; but,
haply, it may not be the change the bear anticipates. The bear
has said that he will crush us. What if we crush the bear?'

The throat-rumble arose in the great room, and man nodded to man
with indorsement and certitude. Their faces were set hard. They
were fighters, that was certain.

'But not by buzzing will we crush the bear,' Mr. Wickson went
on coldly and dispassionately. 'We will hunt the bear. We will
not reply to the bear in words. Our reply shall be couched in
terms of lead. We are in power. Nobody will deny it. By virtue
of that power we shall remain in power.'

He turned suddenly upon Ernest. The moment was dramatic.

'This, then, is our answer. We have no words to waste on you.
When you reach out your vaunted strong hands for our palaces and
purpled ease, we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell
and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched.⁴⁷ We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we
shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords,
and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been
in the dirt since history began, and I read history aright. And
in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that
come after us have the power. There is the word. It is the king
of words--Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over
your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.'

'I am answered,' Ernest said quietly. 'It is the only answer that
could be given. Power. It is what we of the working class preach.
We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal
for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.
Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the
faces of the poor. So we have preached power. By the power of
our ballots on election day will we take your government away
from you--'

'What if you do get a majority, a sweeping majority, on election
day?' Mr. Wickson broke in to demand. 'Suppose we refuse to turn
the government over to you after you have captured it at the ballot-box?'

'That, also, have we considered,' Ernest replied. 'And we shall
give you an answer in terms of lead. Power you have proclaimed
the king of words. Very good. Power it shall be. And in the day
that we sweep to victory at the ballot-box, and you refuse to
turn over to us the government we have constitutionally and peacefully
captured, and you demand what we are going to do about it--in
that day, I say, we shall answer you; and in roar of shell and
shrapnel and in whine of machine guns shall our answer be couched.

'You cannot escape us. It is true that you have read history aright.
It is true that labor has from the beginning of history been in
the dirt. And it is equally true that so long as you and yours
and those that come after you have power, that labor shall remain
in the dirt. I agree with you. I agree with all that you have
said. Power will be the arbiter, as it always has been the arbiter.
It is a struggle of classes. Just as your class dragged down the
old feudal nobility, so shall it be dragged down by my class,
the working class. If you will read your biology and your sociology
as clearly as you do your history, you will see that this end
I have described is inevitable. It does not matter whether it
is in one year, ten, or a thousand--your class shall be dragged
down. And it shall be done by power. We of the labor hosts have
conned that word over till our minds are all a-tingle with it.
Power. It is a kingly word.'

And so ended the night with the Philomaths.

IT WAS ABOUT THIS TIME THAT the warnings of coming events began
to fall about us thick and fast. Ernest had already questioned
father's policy of having socialists and labor leaders at his
house, and of openly attending socialist meetings; and father
had only laughed at him for his pains. As for myself, I was learning
much from this contact with the working-class leaders and thinkers.
I was seeing the other side of the shield. I was delighted with
the unselfishness and high idealism I encountered, though I was
appalled by the vast philosophic and scientific literature of
socialism that was opened up to me. I was learning fast, but I
learned not fast enough to realize then the peril of our position.

There were warnings, but I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs.
Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power
in the university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that
I was a too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous
penchant for officiousness and interference in other persons'
affairs. This I thought no more than natural, considering the
part I had played in investigating the case of Jackson's arm.
But the effect of such a sentiment, enunciated by two such powerful
social arbiters, I underestimated.

True, I noticed a certain aloofness on the part of my general
friends, but this I ascribed to the disapproval that was prevalent
in my circles of my intended marriage with Ernest. It was not
till some time afterward that Ernest pointed out to me clearly
that this general attitude of my class was something more than
spontaneous, that behind it were the hidden springs of an organized
conduct. 'You have given shelter to an enemy of your class,' he
said. 'And not alone shelter, for you have given your love, yourself.
This is treason to your class. Think not that you will escape
being penalized.'

But it was before this that father returned one afternoon. Ernest
was with me, and we could see that father was angry--philosophically
angry. He was rarely really angry; but a certain measure of controlled
anger he allowed himself. He called it a tonic. And we could see
that he was tonic-angry when he entered the room.

'What do you think?' he demanded. 'I had luncheon with Wilcox.'

Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university, whose
withered mind was stored with generalizations that were young
in 1870, and which he had since failed to revise.

'I was invited,' father announced. 'I was sent for.'

He paused, and we waited.

'Oh, it was done very nicely, I'll allow; but I was reprimanded.
I! And by that old fossil!'

'I'll wager I know what you were reprimanded for,' Ernest said.

'Not in three guesses,' father laughed.

'One guess will do,' Ernest retorted. 'And it won't be a guess.
It will be a deduction. You were reprimanded for your private
life.'

'The very thing!' father cried. 'How did you guess?'

'I knew it was coming. I warned you before about it.'

'Yes, you did,' father meditated. 'But I couldn't believe it.
At any rate, it is only so much more clinching evidence for my
book.'

'It is nothing to what will come,' Ernest went on, 'if you persist
in your policy of having these socialists and radicals of all
sorts at your house, myself included.'

'Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted things! He
said it was in poor taste, utterly profitless, anyway, and not
in harmony with university traditions and policy. He said much
more of the same vague sort, and I couldn't pin him down to anything
specific. I made it pretty awkward for him, and he could only
go on repeating himself and telling me how much he honored me,
and all the world honored me, as a scientist. It wasn't an agreeable
task for him. I could see he didn't like it.'

'He was not a free agent,' Ernest said. 'The leg-bar⁴⁸ is not always worn graciously.'

'Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the university needed
ever so much more money this year than the state was willing to
furnish; and that it must come from wealthy personages who could
not but be offended by the swerving of the university from its
high ideal of the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence.
When I tried to pin him down to what my home life had to do with
swerving the university from its high ideal, he offered me a two
years' vacation, on full pay, in Europe, for recreation and research.
Of course I couldn't accept it under the circumstances.'

'It would have been far better if you had,' Ernest said gravely.

'It was a bribe,' father protested; and Ernest nodded.

'Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and
so forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious
a character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university
tone and dignity. Not that he personally objected--oh, no; but
that there was talk and that I would understand.'

Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said,
and his face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in
it:

'There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody
has put pressure on President Wilcox.'

'Do you think so?' father asked, and his face showed that he was
interested rather than frightened.

'I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming
in my own mind,' Ernest said. 'Never in the history of the world
was society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift
changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes
in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen
and fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure
of society. One can only dimly feel these things. But they are
in the air, now, to-day. One can feel the loom of them- things
vast, vague, and terrible. My mind recoils from contemplation
of what they may crystallize into. You heard Wickson talk the
other night. Behind what he said were the same nameless, formless
things that I feel. He spoke out of a superconscious apprehension
of them.'

'You mean...?' father began, then paused.

'I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing
that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the
shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare
approximate it. What its nature may be I refuse to imagine.⁴⁹ But what I wanted to say was this: You are in a perilous position--a
peril that my own fear enhances because I am not able even to
measure it. Take my advice and accept the vacation.'

'But it would be cowardly,' was the protest.

'Not at all. You are an old man. You have done your work in the
world, and a great work. Leave the present battle to youth and
strength. We young fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will
stand by my side in what is to come. She will be your representative
in the battle-front.'

'But they can't hurt me,' father objected. 'Thank God I am independent.
Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution they can wage
on a professor who is economically dependent on his university.
But I am independent. I have not been a professor for the sake
of my salary. I can get along very comfortably on my own income,
and the salary is all they can take away from me.'

'But you do not realize,' Ernest answered. 'If all that I fear
be so, your private income, your principal itself, can be taken
from you just as easily as your salary.'

Father was silent for a few minutes. He was thinking deeply, and
I could see the lines of decision forming in his face. At last
he spoke.

'I shall not take the vacation.' He paused again. 'I shall go
on with my book.⁵⁰ You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or right, I shall
stand by my guns.'

'All right,' Ernest said. 'You are travelling the same path that
Bishop Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up. You'll both
be proletarians before you're done with it.'

The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to
explain what he had been doing with him.

'He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him.
I took him through the homes of a few of our factory workers.
I showed him the human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine,
and he listened to their life stories. I took him through the
slums of San Francisco, and in drunkenness, prostitution, and
criminality he learned a deeper cause than innate depravity. He
is very sick, and, worse than that, he has got out of hand. He
is too ethical. He has been too severely touched. And, as usual,
he is unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of ethical
delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured. He feels
it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the
Church and to deliver its message to the masters. He is overwrought.
Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then there's going
to be a smash-up. What form it will take I can't even guess. He
is a pure, exalted soul, but he is so unpractical. He's beyond
me. I can't keep his feet on the earth. And through the air he
is rushing on to his Gethsemane. And after this his crucifixion.
Such high souls are made for crucifixion.'

'And you?' I asked; and beneath my smile was the seriousness of
the anxiety of love.

'Not I,' he laughed back. 'I may be executed, or assassinated,
but I shall never be crucified. I am planted too solidly and stolidly
upon the earth.'

'But why should you bring about the crucifixion of the Bishop?'
I asked. 'You will not deny that you are the cause of it.'

'Why should I leave one comfortable soul in comfort when there
are millions in travail and misery?' he demanded back.

'Then why did you advise father to accept the vacation?'

'Because I am not a pure, exalted soul,' was the answer. 'Because
I am solid and stolid and selfish. Because I love you and, like
Ruth of old, thy people are my people. As for the Bishop, he has
no daughter. Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless
his little inadequate wail will be productive of some good in
the revolution, and every little bit counts.'

I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the noble nature of
Bishop Morehouse, and I could not conceive that his voice raised
for righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate wail.
But I did not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers'
ends as Ernest had. He saw clearly the futility of the Bishop's
great soul, as coming events were soon to show as clearly to me.

It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story,
the offer he had received from the government, namely, an appointment
as United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary
was comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And
then it surely was congenial work for Ernest, and, furthermore,
my jealous pride in him made me hail the proffered appointment
as a recognition of his abilities.

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.

'You are not going to... to decline?' I quavered.

'It is a bribe,' he said. 'Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson,
and behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old
trick, old as the class struggle is old--stealing the captains
from the army of labor. Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how
many of its leaders have been bought out in similar ways in the
past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper, to buy a general than to
fight him and his whole army. There was--but I'll not call any
names. I'm bitter enough over it as it is. Dear heart, I am a
captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other reason,
the memory of my poor old father and the way he was worked to
death would prevent.'

The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He
never could forgive the way his father had been malformed--the
sordid lies and the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in
order to put food in his children's mouths.

'My father was a good man,' Ernest once said to me. 'The soul
of him was good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted
by the savagery of his life. He was made into a broken-down beast
by his masters, the arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like
your father. He had a strong constitution. But he was caught in
the machine and worked to death--for profit. Think of it. For
profit--his life blood transmuted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled
gewgaw, or some similar sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich,
his masters, the arch-beasts.'

'THE BISHOP IS OUT OF HAND,' Ernest wrote me. 'He is clear up
in the air. Tonight he is going to begin putting to rights this
very miserable world of ours. He is going to deliver his message.
He has told me so, and I cannot dissuade him. To-night he is chairman
of the I.P.H.⁵¹, and he will embody his message in his introductory remarks.

'May I bring you to hear him? Of course, he is foredoomed to futility.
It will break your heart--it will break his; but for you it will
be an excellent object lesson. You know, dear heart, how proud
I am because you love me. And because of that I want you to know
my fullest value, I want to redeem, in your eyes, some small measure
of my unworthiness. And so it is that my pride desires that you
shall know my thinking is correct and right. My views are harsh;
the futility of so noble a soul as the Bishop will show you the
compulsion for such harshness. So come to night. Sad though this
night's happening will be, I feel that it will but draw you more
closely to me.'

The I.P.H. held its convention that night in San Francisco.⁵² This convention had been called to consider public immorality
and the remedy for it. Bishop Morehouse presided. He was very
nervous as he sat on the platform, and I could see the high tension
he was under. By his side were Bishop Dickinson; H. H. Jones,
the head of the ethical department in the University of California;
Mrs. W. W. Hurd, the great charity organizer; Philip Ward, the
equally great philanthropist; and several lesser luminaries in
the field of morality and charity. Bishop Morehouse arose and
abruptly began:

'I was in my brougham, driving through the streets. It was night
time. Now and then I looked through the carriage windows, and
suddenly my eyes seemed to be opened, and I saw things as they
really are. At first I covered my eyes with my hands to shut out
the awful sight, and then, in the darkness, the question came
to me: What is to be done? What is to be done? A little later
the question came to me in another way: What would the Master
do? And with the question a great light seemed to fill the place,
and I saw my duty sun-clear, as Saul saw his on the way to Damascus.

'I stopped the carriage, got out, and, after a few minutes' conversation,
persuaded two of the public women to get into the brougham with
me. If Jesus was right, then these two unfortunates were my sisters,
and the only hope of their purification was in my affection and
tenderness.

'I live in one of the loveliest localities of San Francisco. The
house in which I live cost a hundred thousand dollars, and its
furnishings, books, and works of art cost as much more. The house
is a mansion. No, it is a palace, wherein there are many servants.
I never knew what palaces were good for. I had thought they were
to live in. But now I know. I took the two women of the street
to my palace, and they are going to stay with me. I hope to fill
every room in my palace with such sisters as they.'

The audience had been growing more and more restless and unsettled,
and the faces of those that sat on the platform had been betraying
greater and greater dismay and consternation. And at this point
Bishop Dickinson arose, and with an expression of disgust on his
face, fled from the platform and the hall. But Bishop Morehouse,
oblivious to all, his eyes filled with his vision, continued:

'Oh, sisters and brothers, in this act of mine I find the solution
of all my difficulties. I didn't know what broughams were made
for, but now I know. They are made to carry the weak, the sick,
and the aged; they are made to show honor to those who have lost
the sense even of shame.

'I did not know what palaces were made for, but now I have found
a use for them. The palaces of the Church should be hospitals
and nurseries for those who have fallen by the wayside and are
perishing.'

He made a long pause, plainly overcome by the thought that was
in him, and nervous how best to express it.

'I am not fit, dear brethren, to tell you anything about morality.
I have lived in shame and hypocrisies too long to be able to help
others; but my action with those women, sisters of mine, shows
me that the better way is easy to find. To those who believe in
Jesus and his gospel there can be no other relation between man
and man than the relation of affection. Love alone is stronger
than sin--stronger than death. I therefore say to the rich among
you that it is their duty to do what I have done and am doing.
Let each one of you who is prosperous take into his house some
thief and treat him as his brother, some unfortunate and treat
her as his sister, and San Francisco will need no police force
and no magistrates; the prisons will be turned into hospitals,
and the criminal will disappear with his crime.

'We must give ourselves and not our money alone. We must do as
Christ did; that is the message of the Church today. We have wandered
far from the Master's teaching. We are consumed in our own flesh-pots.
We have put mammon in the place of Christ. I have here a poem
that tells the whole story. I should like to read it to you. It
was written by an erring soul who yet saw clearly.⁵³ It must not be mistaken for an attack upon the Catholic Church.
It is an attack upon all churches, upon the pomp and splendor
of all churches that have wandered from the Master's path and
hedged themselves in from his lambs. Here it is:

'The silver trumpets rang across the Dome;

The people knelt upon the ground with awe;

And borne upon the necks of men I saw,

Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.

'Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,

And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,

Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head;

In splendor and in light the Pope passed home.

'My heart stole back across wide wastes of years

To One who wandered by a lonely sea;

And sought in vain for any place of rest:

"Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,

I, only I, must wander wearily,

And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears."'

The audience was agitated, but unresponsive. Yet Bishop Morehouse
was not aware of it. He held steadily on his way.

'And so I say to the rich among you, and to all the rich, that
bitterly you oppress the Master's lambs. You have hardened your
hearts. You have closed your ears to the voices that are crying
in the land--the voices of pain and sorrow that you will not hear
but that some day will be heard. And so I say--'

But at this point H. H. Jones and Philip Ward, who had already
risen from their chairs, led the Bishop off the platform, while
the audience sat breathless and shocked.

Ernest laughed harshly and savagely when he had gained the street.
His laughter jarred upon me. My heart seemed ready to burst with
suppressed tears.

'He has delivered his message,' Ernest cried. 'The manhood and
the deep-hidden, tender nature of their Bishop burst out, and
his Christian audience, that loved him, concluded that he was
crazy! Did you see them leading him so solicitously from the platform?
There must have been laughter in hell at the spectacle.'

'Nevertheless, it will make a great impression, what the Bishop
did and said to-night,' I said.

'Think so?' Ernest queried mockingly.

'It will make a sensation,' I asserted. 'Didn't you see the reporters
scribbling like mad while he was speaking?'

'Not a line of which will appear in to-morrow's papers.'

'I can't believe it,' I cried.

'Just wait and see,' was the answer. 'Not a line, not a thought
that he uttered. The daily press? The daily suppressage!'

'But the reporters,' I objected. 'I saw them.'

'Not a word that he uttered will see print. You have forgotten
the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain.
Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the
established. The Bishop's utterance was a violent assault upon
the established morality. It was heresy. They led him from the
platform to prevent him from uttering more heresy. The newspapers
will purge his heresy in the oblivion of silence. The press of
the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the
capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by
moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.

'Let me prophesy. To-morrow's papers will merely mention that
the Bishop is in poor health, that he has been working too hard,
and that he broke down last night. The next mention, some days
hence, will be to the effect that he is suffering from nervous
prostration and has been given a vacation by his grateful flock.
After that, one of two things will happen: either the Bishop will
see the error of his way and return from his vacation a well man
in whose eyes there are no more visions, or else he will persist
in his madness, and then you may expect to see in the papers,
couched pathetically and tenderly, the announcement of his insanity.
After that he will be left to gibber his visions to padded walls.'

'Now there you go too far!' I cried out.

'In the eyes of society it will truly be insanity,' he replied.
'What honest man, who is not insane, would take lost women and
thieves into his house to dwell with him sisterly and brotherly?
True, Christ died between two thieves, but that is another story.
Insanity? The mental processes of the man with whom one disagrees,
are always wrong. Therefore the mind of the man is wrong. Where
is the line between wrong mind and insane mind? It is inconceivable
that any sane man can radically disagree with one's most sane
conclusions.

'There is a good example of it in this evening's paper. Mary McKenna
lives south of Market Street. She is a poor but honest woman.
She is also patriotic. But she has erroneous ideas concerning
the American flag and the protection it is supposed to symbolize.
And here's what happened to her. Her husband had an accident and
was laid up in hospital three months. In spite of taking in washing,
she got behind in her rent. Yesterday they evicted her. But first,
she hoisted an American flag, and from under its folds she announced
that by virtue of its protection they could not turn her out on
to the cold street. What was done? She was arrested and arraigned
for insanity. To-day she was examined by the regular insanity
experts. She was found insane. She was consigned to the Napa Asylum.'

'But that is far-fetched,' I objected. 'Suppose I should disagree
with everybody about the literary style of a book. They wouldn't
send me to an asylum for that.'

'Very true,' he replied. 'But such divergence of opinion would
constitute no menace to society. Therein lies the difference.
The divergence of opinion on the parts of Mary McKenna and the
Bishop do menace society. What if all the poor people should refuse
to pay rent and shelter themselves under the American flag? Landlordism
would go crumbling. The Bishop's views are just as perilous to
society. Ergo, to the asylum with him.'

But still I refused to believe.

'Wait and see,' Ernest said, and I waited.

Next morning I sent out for all the papers. So far Ernest was
right. Not a word that Bishop Morehouse had uttered was in print.
Mention was made in one or two of the papers that he had been
overcome by his feelings. Yet the platitudes of the speakers that
followed him were reported at length.

Several days later the brief announcement was made that he had
gone away on a vacation to recover from the effects of overwork.
So far so good, but there had been no hint of insanity, nor even
of nervous collapse. Little did I dream the terrible road the
Bishop was destined to travel--the Gethsemane and crucifixion
that Ernest had pondered about.

IT WAS JUST BEFORE ERNEST ran for Congress, on the socialist ticket,
that father gave what he privately called his 'Profit and Loss'
dinner. Ernest called it the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In
point of fact, it was merely a dinner for business men--small
business men, of course. I doubt if one of them was interested
in any business the total capitalization of which exceeded a couple
of hundred thousand dollars. They were truly representative middle-class
business men.

There was Owen, of Silverberg, Owen & Company--a large grocery
firm with several branch stores. We bought our groceries from
them. There were both partners of the big drug firm of Kowalt
& Washburn, and Mr. Asmunsen, the owner of a large granite quarry
in Contra Costa County. And there were many similar men, owners
or part-owners in small factories, small businesses and small
industries--small capitalists, in short.

They were shrewd-faced, interesting men, and they talked with
simplicity and clearness. Their unanimous complaint was against
the corporations and trusts. Their creed was, 'Bust the Trusts.'
All oppression originated in the trusts, and one and all told
the same tale of woe. They advocated government ownership of such
trusts as the railroads and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes,
graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations. Likewise
they advocated, as a cure for local ills, municipal ownership
of such public utilities as water, gas, telephones, and street
railways.

Especially interesting was Mr. Asmunsen's narrative of his tribulations
as a quarry owner. He confessed that he never made any profits
out of his quarry, and this, in spite of the enormous volume of
business that had been caused by the destruction of San Francisco
by the big earthquake. For six years the rebuilding of San Francisco
had been going on, and his business had quadrupled and octupled,
and yet he was no better off.

'The railroad knows my business just a little bit better than
I do,' he said. 'It knows my operating expenses to a cent, and
it knows the terms of my contracts. How it knows these things
I can only guess. It must have spies in my employ, and it must
have access to the parties to all my contracts. For look you,
when I place a big contract, the terms of which favor me a goodly
profit, the freight rate from my quarry to market is promptly
raised. No explanation is made. The railroad gets my profit. Under
such circumstances I have never succeeded in getting the railroad
to reconsider its raise. On the other hand, when there have been
accidents, increased expenses of operating, or contracts with
less profitable terms, I have always succeeded in getting the
railroad to lower its rate. What is the result? Large or small,
the railroad always gets my profits.'

'What remains to you over and above,' Ernest interrupted to ask,
'would roughly be the equivalent of your salary as a manager did
the railroad own the quarry.'

'The very thing,' Mr. Asmunsen replied. 'Only a short time ago
I had my books gone through for the past ten years. I discovered
that for those ten years my gain was just equivalent to a manager's
salary. The railroad might just as well have owned my quarry and
hired me to run it.'

'But with this difference,' Ernest laughed; 'the railroad would
have had to assume all the risk which you so obligingly assumed
for it.'

'Very true,' Mr. Asmunsen answered sadly.

Having let them have they say, Ernest began asking questions right
and left. He began with Mr. Owen.

'You started a branch store here in Berkeley about six months
ago?'

'Yes,' Mr. Owen answered.

'And since then I've noticed that three little corner groceries
have gone out of business. Was your branch store the cause of
it?'

Mr. Owen affirmed with a complacent smile. 'They had no chance
against us.

'Why not?'

'We had greater capital. With a large business there is always
less waste and greater efficiency.'

'And your branch store absorbed the profits of the three small
ones. I see. But tell me, what became of the owners of the three
stores?'

'One is driving a delivery wagon for us. I don't know what happened
to the other two.'

Ernest turned abruptly on Mr. Kowalt.

'You sell a great deal at cut-rates.⁵⁴ What have become of the owners of the small drug stores that
you forced to the wall?'

'One of them, Mr. Haasfurther, has charge now of our prescription

department,' was the answer.

'And you absorbed the profits they had been making?'

'Surely. That is what we are in business for.'

'And you?' Ernest said suddenly to Mr. Asmunsen. 'You are disgusted
because the railroad has absorbed your profits?'

Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

'What you want is to make profits yourself?'

Again Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

'Out of others?'

There was no answer.

'Out of others?' Ernest insisted.

'That is the way profits are made,' Mr. Asmunsen replied curtly.

'Then the business game is to make profits out of others, and
to prevent others from making profits out of you. That's it, isn't
it?'

Ernest had to repeat his question before Mr. Asmunsen gave an
answer, and then he said:

'Yes, that's it, except that we do not object to the others making
profits so long as they are not extortionate.'

'By extortionate you mean large; yet you do not object to making
large profits yourself?... Surely not?'

And Mr. Asmunsen amiably confessed to the weakness. There was
one other man who was quizzed by Ernest at this juncture, a Mr.
Calvin, who had once been a great dairy-owner.

'Some time ago you were fighting the Milk Trust,' Ernest said
to him; 'and now you are in Grange politics.⁵⁵ How did it happen?'

'Oh, I haven't quit the fight,' Mr. Calvin answered, and he looked
belligerent enough. 'I'm fighting the Trust on the only field
where it is possible to fight--the political field. Let me show
you. A few years ago we dairymen had everything our own way.'

'But you competed among yourselves?' Ernest interrupted.

'Yes, that was what kept the profits down. We did try to organize,
but independent dairymen always broke through us. Then came the
Milk Trust.'

'Financed by surplus capital from Standard Oil,⁵⁶ Ernest said.

'Yes,' Mr. Calvin acknowledged. 'But we did not know it at the
time. Its agents approached us with a club. "Come in and be fat,"
was their proposition, "or stay out and starve." Most of us came
in. Those that didn't, starved. Oh, it paid us... at first. Milk
was raised a cent a quart. One-quarter of this cent came to us.
Three-quarters of it went to the Trust. Then milk was raised another
cent, only we didn't get any of that cent. Our complaints were
useless. The Trust was in control. We discovered that we were
pawns. Finally, the additional quarter of a cent was denied us.
Then the Trust began to squeeze us out. What could we do? We were
squeezed out. There were no dairymen, only a Milk Trust.'

'But with milk two cents higher, I should think you could have
competed,' Ernest suggested slyly.

'So we thought. We tried it.' Mr. Calvin paused a moment. 'It
broke us. The Trust could put milk upon the market more cheaply
than we. It could sell still at a slight profit when we were selling
at actual loss. I dropped fifty thousand dollars in that venture.
Most of us went bankrupt.⁵⁷ The dairymen were wiped out of existence.'

'So the Trust took your profits away from you,' Ernest said, 'and
you've gone into politics in order to legislate the Trust out
of existence and get the profits back?'

Mr. Calvin's face lighted up. 'That is precisely what I say in
my speeches to the farmers. That's our whole idea in a nutshell.'

'And yet the Trust produces milk more cheaply than could the independent
dairymen?' Ernest queried.

'Why shouldn't it, with the splendid organization and new machinery
its large capital makes possible?'

'There is no discussion,' Ernest answered. 'It certainly should,
and, furthermore, it does.'

Mr. Calvin here launched out into a political speech in exposition
of his views. He was warmly followed by a number of the others,
and the cry of all was to destroy the trusts.

'Poor simple folk,' Ernest said to me in an undertone. 'They see
clearly as far as they see, but they see only to the ends of their
noses.'

A little later he got the floor again, and in his characteristic
way controlled it for the rest of the evening.

'I have listened carefully to all of you,' he began, 'and I see
plainly that you play the business game in the orthodox fashion.
Life sums itself up to you in profits. You have a firm and abiding
belief that you were created for the sole purpose of making profits.
Only there is a hitch. In the midst of your own profit-making
along comes the trust and takes your profits away from you. This
is a dilemma that interferes somehow with the aim of creation,
and the only way out, as it seems to you, is to destroy that which
takes from you your profits.

'I have listened carefully, and there is only one name that will
epitomize you. I shall call you that name. You are machine-breakers.
Do you know what a machine-breaker is? Let me tell you. In the
eighteenth century, in England, men and women wove cloth on hand-looms
in their own cottages. It was a slow, clumsy, and costly way of
weaving cloth, this cottage system of manufacture. Along came
the steam-engine and labor-saving machinery. A thousand looms
assembled in a large factory, and driven by a central engine wove
cloth vastly more cheaply than could the cottage weavers on their
hand-looms. Here in the factory was combination, and before it
competition faded away. The men and women who had worked the hand-looms
for themselves now went into the factories and worked the machine-looms,
not for themselves, but for the capitalist owners. Furthermore,
little children went to work on the machine-looms, at lower wages,
and displaced the men. This made hard times for the men. Their
standard of living fell. They starved. And they said it was all
the fault of the machines. Therefore, they proceeded to break
the machines. They did not succeed, and they were very stupid.

'Yet you have not learned their lesson. Here are you, a century
and a half later, trying to break machines. By your own confession
the trust machines do the work more efficiently and more cheaply
than you can. That is why you cannot compete with them. And yet
you would break those machines. You are even more stupid than
the stupid workmen of England. And while you maunder about restoring
competition, the trusts go on destroying you.

'One and all you tell the same story,--the passing away of competition
and the coming on of combination. You, Mr. Owen, destroyed competition
here in Berkeley when your branch store drove the three small
groceries out of business. Your combination was more effective.
Yet you feel the pressure of other combinations on you, the trust
combinations, and you cry out. It is because you are not a trust.
If you were a grocery trust for the whole United States, you would
be singing another song. And the song would be, "Blessed are the
trusts." And yet again, not only is your small combination not
a trust, but you are aware yourself of its lack of strength. You
are beginning to divine your own end. You feel yourself and your
branch stores a pawn in the game. You see the powerful interests
rising and growing more powerful day by day; you feel their mailed
hands descending upon your profits and taking a pinch here and
a pinch there--the railroad trust, the oil trust, the steel trust,
the coal trust; and you know that in the end they will destroy
you, take away from you the last per cent of your little profits.

'You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three
small groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination,
you swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise,
and sent your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by
eating up the three small groceries. It is dog eat dog, and you
ate them up. But, on the other hand, you are being eaten up in
turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore you squeal. And what I say
to you is true of all of you at this table. You are all squealing.
You are all playing the losing game, and you are all squealing
about it.

'But when you squeal you don't state the situation flatly, as
I have stated it. You don't say that you like to squeeze profits
out of others, and that you are making all the row because others
are squeezing your profits out of you. No, you are too cunning
for that. You say something else. You make small-capitalist political
speeches such as Mr. Calvin made. What did he say? Here are a
few of his phrases I caught: "Our original principles are all
right," "What this country requires is a return to fundamental
American methods--free opportunity for all," "The spirit of liberty
in which this nation was born," "Let us return to the principles
of our forefathers."

'When he says "free opportunity for all," he means free opportunity
to squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied
him by the great trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that
you have repeated these phrases so often that you believe them.
You want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your own small
way, but you hypnotize yourselves into thinking you want freedom.
You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases
leads you to believe that you are patriotic. Your desire for profits,
which is sheer selfishness, you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude
for suffering humanity. Come on now, right here amongst ourselves,
and be honest for once. Look the matter in the face and state
it in direct terms.'

There were flushed and angry faces at the table, and withal a
measure of awe. They were a little frightened at this smooth-faced
young fellow, and the swing and smash of his words, and his dreadful
trait of calling a spade a spade. Mr. Calvin promptly replied.

'And why not?' he demanded. 'Why can we not return to ways of
our fathers when this republic was founded? You have spoken much
truth, Mr. Everhard, unpalatable though it has been. But here
amongst ourselves let us speak out. Let us throw off all disguise
and accept the truth as Mr. Everhard has flatly stated it. It
is true that we smaller capitalists are after profits, and that
the trusts are taking our profits away from us. It is true that
we want to destroy the trusts in order that our profits may remain
to us. And why can we not do it? Why not? I say, why not?'

'Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter,' Ernest said with
a pleased expression. 'I'll try to tell you why not, though the
telling will be rather hard. You see, you fellows have studied
business, in a small way, but you have not studied social evolution
at all. You are in the midst of a transition stage now in economic
evolution, but you do not understand it, and that's what causes
all the confusion. Why cannot you return? Because you can't. You
can no more make water run up hill than can you cause the tide
of economic evolution to flow back in its channel along the way
it came. Joshua made the sun stand still upon Gibeon, but you
would outdo Joshua. You would make the sun go backward in the
sky. You would have time retrace its steps from noon to morning.

'In the face of labor-saving machinery, of organized production,
of the increased efficiency of combination, you would set the
economic sun back a whole generation or so to the time when there
were no great capitalists, no great machinery, no railroads- a
time when a host of little capitalists warred with each other
in economic anarchy, and when production was primitive, wasteful,
unorganized, and costly. Believe me, Joshua's task was easier,
and he had Jehovah to help him. But God has forsaken you small
capitalists. The sun of the small capitalists is setting. It will
never rise again. Nor is it in your power even to make it stand
still. You are perishing, and you are doomed to perish utterly
from the face of society.

'This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God. Combination
is stronger than competition. Primitive man was a puny creature
hiding in the crevices of the rocks. He combined and made war
upon his carnivorous enemies. They were competitive beasts. Primitive
man was a combinative beast, and because of it he rose to primacy
over all the animals. And man has been achieving greater and greater
combinations ever since. It is combination versus competition,
a thousand centuries long struggle, in which competition has always
been worsted. Whoso enlists on the side of competition perishes.'

'But the trusts themselves arose out of competition,' Mr. Calvin
interrupted.

Very true,' Ernest answered. 'And the trusts themselves destroyed
competition. That, by your own word, is why you are no longer
in the dairy business.'

The first laughter of the evening went around the table, and even
Mr. Calvin joined in the laugh against himself.

'And now, while we are on the trusts,' Ernest went on, 'let us
settle a few things. I shall make certain statements, and if you
disagree with them, speak up. Silence will mean agreement. Is
it not true that a machine-loom will weave more cloth and weave
more cheaply than a hand-loom?' He paused, but nobody spoke up.
'Is it not then highly irrational to break the machine-loom and
go back to the clumsy and more costly hand-loom method of weaving?'
Heads nodded in acquiescence. 'Is it not true that that known
as a trust produces more efficiently and cheaply than can a thousand
competing small concerns?' Still no one objected. 'Then is it
not irrational to destroy that cheap and efficient combination?'

No one answered for a long time. Then Mr. Kowalt spoke.

'What are we to do, then?' he demanded. 'To destroy the trusts
is the only way we can see to escape their domination.'

Ernest was all fire and aliveness on the instant.

'I'll show you another way!' he cried. 'Let us not destroy those
wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us
control them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness.
Let us run them for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners
of the wonderful machines, and let us own the wonderful machines
ourselves. That, gentlemen, is socialism, a greater combination
than the trusts, a greater economic and social combination than
any that has as yet appeared on the planet. It is in line with
evolution. We meet combination with greater combination. It is
the winning side. Come on over with us socialists and play on
the winning side.'

Here arose dissent. There was a shaking of heads, and mutterings
arose.

'All right, then, you prefer to be anachronisms,' Ernest laughed.
'You prefer to play atavistic roles. You are doomed to perish
as all atavisms perish. Have you ever asked what will happen to
you when greater combinations than even the present trusts arise?
Have you ever considered where you will stand when the great trusts
themselves combine into the combination of combinations--into
the social, economic, and political trust?'

He turned abruptly and irrelevantly upon Mr. Calvin.

'Tell me,' Ernest said, 'if this is not true. You are compelled
to form a new political party because the old parties are in the
hands of the trusts. The chief obstacle to your Grange propaganda
is the trusts. Behind every obstacle you encounter, every blow
that smites you, every defeat that you receive, is the hand of
the trusts. Is this not so? Tell me.'

Mr. Calvin sat in uncomfortable silence.

'Go ahead,' Ernest encouraged.

'It is true,' Mr. Calvin confessed. 'We captured the state legislature
of Oregon and put through splendid protective legislation, and
it was vetoed by the governor, who was a creature of the trusts.
We elected a governor of Colorado, and the legislature refused
to permit him to take office. Twice we have passed a national
income tax, and each time the supreme court smashed it as unconstitutional.
The courts are in the hands of the trusts. We, the people, do
not pay our judges sufficiently. But there will come a time--'

'When the combination of the trusts will control all legislation,
when the combination of the trusts will itself be the government,'
Ernest interrupted.

'Never! never!' were the cries that arose. Everybody was excited
and belligerent.

'Tell me,' Ernest demanded, 'what will you do when such a time
comes?'

'We will rise in our strength!' Mr. Asmunsen cried, and many voices
backed his decision.

'That will be civil war,' Ernest warned them.

'So be it, civil war,' was Mr. Asmunsen's answer, with the cries
of all the men at the table behind him. 'We have not forgotten
the deeds of our forefathers. For our liberties we are ready to
fight and die.'

Ernest smiled.

'Do not forget,' he said, 'that we had tacitly agreed that liberty
in your case, gentlemen, means liberty to squeeze profits out
of others.'

The table was angry, now, fighting angry; but Ernest controlled
the tumult and made himself heard.

'One more question. When you rise in your strength, remember,
the reason for your rising will be that the government is in the
hands of the trusts. Therefore, against your strength the government
will turn the regular army, the navy, the militia, the police--in
short, the whole organized war machinery of the United States.
Where will your strength be then?'

Dismay sat on their faces, and before they could recover, Ernest
struck again.

'Do you remember, not so long ago, when our regular army was only
fifty thousand? Year by year it has been increased until to-day
it is three hundred thousand.'

Again he struck.

'Nor is that all. While you diligently pursued that favorite phantom
of yours, called profits, and moralized about that favorite fetich
of yours, called competition, even greater and more direful things
have been accomplished by combination. There is the militia.'

'It is our strength!' cried Mr. Kowalt. 'With it we would repel
the invasion of the regular army.'

'You would go into the militia yourself,' was Ernest's retort,
'and be sent to Maine, or Florida, or the Philippines, or anywhere
else, to drown in blood your own comrades civil-warring for their
liberties. While from Kansas, or Wisconsin, or any other state,
your own comrades would go into the militia and come here to California
to drown in blood your own civil-warring.'

Now they were really shocked, and they sat wordless, until Mr.
Owen murmured:

'We would not go into the militia. That would settle it. We would
not be so foolish.'

Ernest laughed outright.

'You do not understand the combination that has been effected.
You could not help yourself. You would be drafted into the militia.'

'There is such a thing as civil law,' Mr. Owen insisted.

'Not when the government suspends civil law. In that day when
you speak of rising in your strength, your strength would be turned
against yourself. Into the militia you would go, willy-nilly.
Habeas corpus, I heard some one mutter just now. Instead of habeas corpus you would get post mortems. If you refused to go into the militia,
or to obey after you were in, you would be tried by drumhead court
martial and shot down like dogs. It is the law.'

'It is not the law!' Mr. Calvin asserted positively. 'There is
no such law. Young man, you have dreamed all this. Why, you spoke
of sending the militia to the Philippines. That is unconstitutional.
The Constitution especially states that the militia cannot be
sent out of the country.'

'What's the Constitution got to do with it?' Ernest demanded.
'The courts interpret the Constitution, and the courts, as Mr.
Asmunsen agreed, are the creatures of the trusts. Besides, it
is as I have said, the law. It has been the law for years, for
nine years, gentlemen.'

'That we can be drafted into the militia?' Mr. Calvin asked incredulously.
'That they can shoot us by drumhead court martial if we refuse?'

'Yes,' Ernest answered, 'precisely that.'

'How is it that we have never heard of this law?' my father asked,
and I could see that it was likewise new to him.

'For two reasons,' Ernest said. 'First, there has been no need
to enforce it. If there had, you'd have heard of it soon enough.
And secondly, the law was rushed through Congress and the Senate
secretly, with practically no discussion. Of course, the newspapers
made no mention of it. But we socialists knew about it. We published
it in our papers. But you never read our papers.'

'I still insist you are dreaming,' Mr. Calvin said stubbornly.
'The country would never have permitted it.'

'But the country did permit it,' Ernest replied. 'And as for my
dreaming--' he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small
pamphlet -'tell me if this looks like dream-stuff.'

He opened it and began to read:

'"Section One, be it enacted, and so forth and so forth, that
the militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of
the respective states, territories, and District of Columbia,
who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age."

'"Section Seven, that any officer or enlisted man"--emember Section
One, gentlemen, you are all enlisted men--"that any enlisted man
of the militia who shall refuse or neglect to present himself
to such mustering officer upon being called forth as herein prescribed,
shall be subject to trial by court martial, and shall be punished
as such court martial shall direct."

'"Section Eight, that courts martial, for the trial of officers
or men of the militia, shall be composed of militia officers only."

'"Section Nine, that the militia, when called into the actual
service of the United States, shall be subject to the same rules
and articles of war as the regular troops of the United States."

'There you are gentlemen, American citizens, and fellow militiamen.
Nine years ago we socialists thought that law was aimed against
labor. But it would seem that it was aimed against you, too. Congressman
Wiley, in the brief discussion that was permitted, said that the
bill "provided for a reserve force to take the mob by the throat"-
you're the mob, gentlemen--"and protect at all hazards life, liberty,
and property." And in the time to come, when you rise in your
strength, remember that you will be rising against the property
of the trusts, and the liberty of the trusts, according to the
law, to squeeze you. Your teeth are pulled, gentlemen. Your claws
are trimmed. In the day you rise in your strength, toothless and
clawless, you will be as harmless as any army of clams.'

'I don't believe it!' Kowalt cried. 'There is no such law. It
is a canard got up by you socialists.'

'This bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on July
30, 1902,' was the reply. 'It was introduced by Representative
Dick of Ohio. It was rushed through. It was passed unanimously
by the Senate on January 14, 1903. And just seven days afterward
was approved by the President of the United States.'⁵⁸

IN THE MIDST OF THE consternation his revelation had produced,
Ernest began again to speak.

'You have said, a dozen of you to-night, that socialism is impossible.
You have asserted the impossible, now let me demonstrate the inevitable.
Not only is it inevitable that you small capitalists shall pass
away, but it is inevitable that the large capitalists, and the
trusts also, shall pass away. Remember, the tide of evolution
never flows backward. It flows on and on, and it flows from competition
to combination, and from little combination to large combination,
and from large combination to colossal combination, and it flows
on to socialism, which is the most colossal combination of all.

'You tell me that I dream. Very good. I'll give you the mathematics
of my dream; and here, in advance, I challenge you to show that
my mathematics are wrong. I shall develop the inevitability of
the breakdown of the capitalist system, and I shall demonstrate
mathematically why it must break down. Here goes, and bear with
me if at first I seem irrelevant.

'Let us, first of all, investigate a particular industrial process,
and whenever I state something with which you disagree, please
interrupt me. Here is a shoe factory. This factory takes leather
and makes it into shoes. Here is one hundred dollars' worth of
leather. It goes through the factory and comes out in the form
of shoes, worth, let us say, two hundred dollars. What has happened?
One hundred dollars has been added to the value of the leather.
How was it added? Let us see.

'Capital and labor added this value of one hundred dollars. Capital
furnished the factory, the machines, and paid all the expenses.
Labor furnished labor. By the joint effort of capital and labor
one hundred dollars of value was added. Are you all agreed so
far?'

Heads nodded around the table in affirmation.

'Labor and capital having produced this one hundred dollars, now
proceed to divide it. The statistics of this division are fractional;
so let us, for the sake of convenience, make them roughly approximate.
Capital takes fifty dollars as its share, and labor gets in wages
fifty dollars as its share. We will not enter into the squabbling
over the division.⁵⁹ No matter how much squabbling takes place, in one percentage
or another the division is arranged. And take notice here, that
what is true of this particular industrial process is true of
all industrial processes. Am I right?'

Again the whole table agreed with Ernest.

'Now, suppose labor, having received its fifty dollars, wanted
to buy back shoes. It could only buy back fifty dollars' worth.
That's clear, isn't it?

'And now we shift from this particular process to the sum total
of all industrial processes in the United States, which includes
the leather itself, raw material, transportation, selling, everything.
We will say, for the sake of round figures, that the total production
of wealth in the United States is one year is four billion dollars.
Then labor has received in wages, during the same period, two
billion dollars. Four billion dollars has been produced. How much
of this can labor buy back? Two billions. There is no discussion
of this, I am sure. For that matter, my percentages are mild.
Because of a thousand capitalistic devices, labor cannot buy back
even half of the total product.

'But to return. We will say labor buys back two billions. Then
it stands to reason that labor can consume only two billions.
There are still two billions to be accounted for, which labor
cannot buy back and consume.'

'Labor does not consume its two billions, even,' Mr. Kowalt spoke
up. 'If it did, it would not have any deposits in the savings
banks.'

'Labor's deposits in the savings banks are only a sort of reserve
fund that is consumed as fast as it accumulates. These deposits
are saved for old age, for sickness and accident, and for funeral
expenses. The savings bank deposit is simply a piece of the loaf
put back on the shelf to be eaten next day. No, labor consumes
all of the total product that its wages will buy back.

'Two billions are left to capital. After it has paid its expenses,
does it consume the remainder? Does capital consume all of its
two billions?'

Ernest stopped and put the question point blank to a number of
the men. They shook their heads.

'I don't know,' one of them frankly said.

'Of course you do,' Ernest went on. 'Stop and think a moment.
If capital consumed its share, the sum total of capital could
not increase. It would remain constant. If you will look at the
economic history of the United States, you will see that the sum
total of capital has continually increased. Therefore capital
does not consume its share. Do you remember when England owned
so much of our railroad bonds? As the years went by, we bought
back those bonds. What does that mean? That part of capital's
unconsumed share bought back the bonds. What is the meaning of
the fact that to-day the capitalists of the United States own
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of Mexican bonds,
Russian bonds, Italian bonds, Grecian bonds? The meaning is that
those hundreds and hundreds of millions were part of capital's
share which capital did not consume. Furthermore, from the very
beginning of the capitalist system, capital has never consumed
all of its share.

'And now we come to the point. Four billion dollars of wealth
is produced in one year in the United States. Labor buys back
and consumes two billions. Capital does not consume the remaining
two billions. There is a large balance left over unconsumed. What
is done with this balance? What can be done with it? Labor cannot
consume any of it, for labor has already spent all its wages.
Capital will not consume this balance, because, already, according
to its nature, it has consumed all it can. And still remains the
balance. What can be done with it? What is done with it?'

'It is sold abroad,' Mr. Kowalt volunteered.

'The very thing,' Ernest agreed. 'Because of this balance arises
our need for a foreign market. This is sold abroad. It has to
be sold abroad. There is no other way of getting rid of it. And
that unconsumed surplus, sold abroad, becomes what we call our
favorable balance of trade. Are we all agreed so far?'

'Surely it is a waste of time to elaborate these A B C's of commerce,'
Mr. Calvin said tartly. 'We all understand them.'

'And it is by these A B C's I have so carefully elaborated that
I shall confound you,' Ernest retorted. 'There's the beauty of
it. And I'm going to confound you with them right now. Here goes.

'The United States is a capitalist country that has developed
its resources. According to its capitalist system of industry,
it has an unconsumed surplus that must be got rid of, and that
must be got rid of abroad.⁶⁰ What is true of the United States is true of every other capitalist
country with developed resources. Every one of such countries
has an unconsumed surplus. Don't forget that they have already
traded with one another, and that these surpluses yet remain.
Labor in all these countries has spent it wages, and cannot buy
any of the surpluses. Capital in all these countries has already
consumed all it is able according to its nature. And still remain
the surpluses. They cannot dispose of these surpluses to one another.
How are they going to get rid of them?'

'Sell them to countries with undeveloped resources,' Mr. Kowalt
suggested.

'The very thing. You see, my argument is so clear and simple that
in your own minds you carry it on for me. And now for the next
step. Suppose the United States disposes of its surplus to a country
with undeveloped resources like, say, Brazil. Remember this surplus
is over and above trade, which articles of trade have been consumed.
What, then, does the United States get in return from Brazil?'

'Gold,' said Mr. Kowalt.

'But there is only so much gold, and not much of it, in the world,'
Ernest objected.

'Gold in the form of securities and bonds and so forth,' Mr. Kowalt
amended.

'Now you've struck it,' Ernest said. 'From Brazil the United States,
in return for her surplus, gets bonds and securities. And what
does that mean? It means that the United States is coming to own
railroads in Brazil, factories, mines, and lands in Brazil. And
what is the meaning of that in turn?'

Mr. Kowalt pondered and shook his head.

'I'll tell you,' Ernest continued. 'It means that the resources
of Brazil are being developed. And now, the next point. When Brazil,
under the capitalist system, has developed her resources, she
will herself have an unconsumed surplus. Can she get rid of this
surplus to the United States? No, because the United States has
herself a surplus. Can the United States do what she previously
did--get rid of her surplus to Brazil? No, for Brazil now has
a surplus, too.

'What happens? The United States and Brazil must both seek out
other countries with undeveloped resources, in order to unload
the surpluses on them. But by the very process of unloading the
surpluses, the resources of those countries are in turn developed.
Soon they have surpluses, and are seeking other countries on which
to unload. Now, gentlemen, follow me. The planet is only so large.
There are only so many countries in the world. What will happen
when every country in the world, down to the smallest and last,
with a surplus in its hands, stands confronting every other country
with surpluses in their hands?'

He paused and regarded his listeners. The bepuzzlement in their
faces was delicious. Also, there was awe in their faces. Out of
abstractions Ernest had conjured a vision and made them see it.
They were seeing it then, as they sat there, and they were frightened
by it.

'We started with A B C, Mr. Calvin,' Ernest said slyly. 'I have
now given you the rest of the alphabet. It is very simple. That
is the beauty of it. You surely have the answer forthcoming. What,
then, when every country in the world has an unconsumed surplus?
Where will your capitalist system be then?'

But Mr. Calvin shook a troubled head. He was obviously questing
back through Ernest's reasoning in search of an error.

'Let me briefly go over the ground with you again,' Ernest said.
'We began with a particular industrial process, the shoe factory.
We found that the division of the joint product that took place
there was similar to the division that took place in the sum total
of all industrial processes. We found that labor could buy back
with its wages only so much of the product, and that capital did
not consume all of the remainder of the product. We found that
when labor had consumed to the full extent of its wages, and when
capital had consumed all it wanted, there was still left an unconsumed
surplus. We agreed that this surplus could only be disposed of
abroad. We agreed, also, that the effect of unloading this surplus
on another country would be to develop the resources of that country,
and that in a short time that country would have an unconsumed
surplus. We extended this process to all the countries on the
planet, till every country was producing every year, and every
day, an unconsumed surplus, which it could dispose of to no other
country. And now I ask you again, what are we going to do with
those surpluses?'

Still no one answered.

'Mr. Calvin?' Ernest queried.

'It beats me,' Mr. Calvin confessed.

'I never dreamed of such a thing,' Mr. Asmunsen said. 'And yet
it does seem clear as print.'

It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx's⁶¹ doctrine of surplus value elaborated, and Ernest had done it
so simply that I, too, sat puzzled and dumbfounded.

'I'll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus,' Ernest said.
'Throw it into the sea. Throw every year hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of shoes and wheat and clothing and all the
commodities of commerce into the sea. Won't that fix it?'

'It will certainly fix it,' Mr. Calvin answered. 'But it is absurd
for you to talk that way.'

Ernest was upon him like a flash.

'Is it a bit more absurd than what you advocate, you machine breaker,
returning to the antediluvian ways of your forefathers? What do
you propose in order to get rid of the surplus? You would escape
the problem of the surplus by not producing any surplus. And how
do you propose to avoid producing a surplus? By returning to a
primitive method of production, so confused and disorderly and
irrational, so wasteful and costly, that it will be impossible
to produce a surplus.'

Mr. Calvin swallowed. The point had been driven home. He swallowed
again and cleared his throat.

'You are right,' he said. 'I stand convicted. It is absurd. But
we've got to do something. It is a case of life and death for
us of the middle class. We refuse to perish. We elect to be absurd
and to return to the truly crude and wasteful methods of our forefathers.
We will put back industry to its pre-trust stage. We will break
the machines. And what are you going to do about it?'

'But you can't break the machines,' Ernest replied. 'You cannot
make the tide of evolution flow backward. Opposed to you are two
great forces, each of which is more powerful than you of the middle
class. The large capitalists, the trusts, in short, will not let
you turn back. They don't want the machines destroyed. And greater
than the trusts, and more powerful, is labor. It will not let
you destroy the machines. The ownership of the world, along with
the machines, lies between the trusts and labor. That is the battle
alignment. Neither side wants the destruction of the machines.
But each side wants to possess the machines. In this battle the
middle class has no place. The middle class is a pygmy between
two giants. Don't you see, you poor perishing middle class, you
are caught between the upper and nether millstones, and even now
has the grinding begun.

'I have demonstrated to you mathematically the inevitable breakdown
of the capitalist system. When every country stands with an unconsumed
and unsalable surplus on its hands, the capitalist system will
break down under the terrific structure of profits that it itself
has reared. And in that day there won't be any destruction of
the machines. The struggle then will be for the ownership of the
machines. If labor wins, your way will be easy. The United States,
and the whole world for that matter, will enter upon a new and
tremendous era. Instead of being crushed by the machines, life
will be made fairer, and happier, and nobler by them. You of the
destroyed middle class, along with labor- there will be nothing
but labor then; so you, and all the rest of labor, will participate
in the equitable distribution of the products of the wonderful
machines. And we, all of us, will make new and more wonderful
machines. And there won't be any unconsumed surplus, because there
won't be any profits.'

'But suppose the trusts win in this battle over the ownership
of the machines and the world?' Mr. Kowalt asked.

'Then,' Ernest answered, 'you, and labor, and all of us, will
be crushed under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and
terrible as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the
history of man. That will be a good name for that despotism, the
Iron Heel.'⁶²

There was a long pause, and every man at the table meditated in
ways unwonted and profound.

'But this socialism of yours is a dream,' Mr. Calvin said; and
repeated, 'a dream.'

'I'll show you something that isn't a dream, then,' Ernest answered.
'And that something I shall call the Oligarchy. You call it the
Plutocracy. We both mean the same thing, the large capitalists
or the trusts. Let us see where the power lies today. And in order
to do so, let us apportion society into its class divisions.

'There are three big classes in society. First comes the Plutocracy,
which is composed of wealthy bankers, railway magnates, corporation
directors, and trust magnates. Second, is the middle class, your
class, gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants, small
manufacturers, and professional men. And third and last comes
my class, the proletariat, which is composed of the wage-workers.⁶³

'You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth constitutes
essential power in the United States to-day. How is this wealth
owned by these three classes? Here are the figures. The Plutocracy
owns sixty seven billions of wealth. Of the total number of persons
engaged in occupations in the United States, only nine-tenths
of one per cent are from the Plutocracy, yet the Plutocracy owns
seventy per cent of the total wealth. The middle class owns twenty-four
billions. Twenty-nine per cent of those in occupations are from
the middle class, and they own twenty-five per cent of the total
wealth. Remains the proletariat. It owns four billions. Of all
persons in occupations, seventy per cent come from the proletariat;
and the proletariat owns four per cent of the total wealth. Where
does the power lie, gentlemen?'

'From your own figures, we of the middle class are more powerful
than labor,' Mr. Asmunsen remarked.

'Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the face of the
strength of the Plutocracy,' Ernest retorted. 'And furthermore,
I'm not done with you. There is a greater strength than wealth,
and it is greater because it cannot be taken away. Our strength,
the strength of the proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands
to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers. This strength
we cannot be stripped of. It is the primitive strength, it is
the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength that
is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away.

'But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you.
Even now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end
it will take it all away from you. And then you will cease to
be the middle class. You will descend to us. You will become proletarians.
And the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength.
We will hail you brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder
in the cause of humanity.

'You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled.
Its share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and
household furniture, with here and there, in very rare cases,
an unencumbered home. But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four
billions of it, and the Plutocracy will take it away from you.
Of course, there is the large likelihood that the proletariat
will take it away first. Don't you see your position, gentlemen?
The middle class is a wobbly little lamb between a lion and a
tiger. If one doesn't get you, the other will. And if the Plutocracy
gets you first, why it's only a matter of time when the Proletariat
gets the Plutocracy.

'Even your present wealth is not a true measure of your power.
The strength of your wealth at this moment is only an empty shell.
That is why you are crying out your feeble little battle-cry,
"Return to the ways of our fathers." You are aware of your impotency.
You know that your strength is an empty shell. And I'll show you
the emptiness of it.

'What power have the farmers? Over fifty per cent are thralls
by virtue of the fact that they are merely tenants or are mortgaged.
And all of them are thralls by virtue of the fact that the trusts
already own or control (which is the same thing only better)--own
and control all the means of marketing the crops, such as cold
storage, railroads, elevators, and steamship lines. And, furthermore,
the trusts control the markets. In all this the farmers are without
power. As regards their political and governmental power, I'll
take that up later, along with the political and governmental
power of the whole middle class.

'Day by day the trusts squeeze out the farmers as they squeezed
out Mr. Calvin and the rest of the dairymen. And day by day are
the merchants squeezed out in the same way. Do you remember how,
in six months, the Tobacco Trust squeezed out over four hundred
cigar stores in New York City alone? Where are the old-time owners
of the coal fields? You know today, without my telling you, that
the Railroad Trust owns or controls the entire anthracite and
bituminous coal fields. Doesn't the Standard Oil Trust⁶⁴ own a score of the ocean lines? And does it not also control
copper, to say nothing of running a smelter trust as a little
side enterprise? There are ten thousand cities in the United States
to-night lighted by the companies owned or controlled by Standard
Oil, and in as many cities all the electric transportation--urban,
suburban, and interurban,--is in the hands of Standard Oil. The
small capitalists who were in these thousands of enterprises are
gone. You know that. It's the same way that you are going.

'The small manufacturer is like the farmer; and small manufacturers
and farmers to-day are reduced, to all intents and purposes, to
feudal tenure. For that matter, the professional men and the artists
are at this present moment villeins in everything but name, while
the politicians are henchmen. Why do you, Mr. Calvin, work all
your nights and days to organize the farmers, along with the rest
of the middle class, into a new political party? Because the politicians
of the old parties will have nothing to do with your atavistic
ideas; and with your atavistic ideas, they will have nothing to
do because they are what I said they are, henchmen, retainers
of the Plutocracy.

'I spoke of the professional men and the artists as villeins.
What else are they? One and all, the professors, the preachers,
and the editors, hold their jobs by serving the Plutocracy, and
their service consists of propagating only such ideas as are either
harmless to or commendatory of the Plutocracy. Whenever they propagate
ideas that menace the Plutocracy, they lose their jobs, in which
case, if they have not provided for the rainy day, they descend
into the proletariat and either perish or become working-class
agitators. And don't forget that it is the press, the pulpit,
and the university that mould public opinion, set the thought-pace
of the nation. As for the artists, they merely pander to the little
less than ignoble tastes of the Plutocracy.

'But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power; it is
the means to power, and power is governmental. Who controls the
government to-day? The proletariat with its twenty millions engaged
in occupations? Even you laugh at the idea. Does the middle class,
with its eight million occupied members? No more than the proletariat.
Who, then, controls the government? The Plutocracy, with its paltry
quarter of a million of occupied members. But this quarter of
a million does not control the government, though it renders yeoman
service. It is the brain of the Plutocracy that controls the government,
and this brain consists of seven⁶⁵ small and powerful groups of men. And do not forget that these
groups are working to-day practically in unison.

'Let me point out the power of but one of them, the railroad group.
It employs forty thousand lawyers to defeat the people in the
courts. It issues countless thousands of free passes to judges,
bankers, editors, ministers, university men, members of state
legislatures, and of Congress. It maintains luxurious lobbies⁶⁶ at every state capital, and at the national capital; and in all
the cities and towns of the land it employs an immense army of
pettifoggers and small politicians whose business is to attend
primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe judges, and
in every way to work for its interests.⁶⁷

'Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven
groups that constitute the brain of the Plutocracy.⁶⁸ Your twenty-four billions of wealth does not give you twenty-five
cents' worth of governmental power. It is an empty shell, and
soon even the empty shell will be taken away from you. The Plutocracy
has all power in its hands to-day. It to-day makes the laws, for
it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts, and the state legislatures.
And not only that. Behind law must be force to execute the law.
To-day the Plutocracy makes the law, and to enforce the law it
has at its beck and call the, police, the army, the navy, and,
lastly, the militia, which is you, and me, and all of us.'

Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner soon broke
up. All were quiet and subdued, and leave-taking was done with
low voices. It seemed almost that they were scared by the vision
of the times they had seen.

'The situation is, indeed, serious,' Mr. Calvin said to Ernest.
'I have little quarrel with the way you have depicted it. Only
I disagree with you about the doom of the middle class. We shall
survive, and we shall overthrow the trusts.'

'And return to the ways of your fathers,' Ernest finished for
him.

'Even so,' Mr. Calvin answered gravely. 'I know it's a sort of
machine-breaking, and that it is absurd. But then life seems absurd
to day, what of the machinations of the Plutocracy. And at any
rate, our sort of machine-breaking is at least practical and possible,
which your dream is not. Your socialistic dream is... well, a
dream. We cannot follow you.'

'I only wish you fellows knew a little something about evolution
and sociology,' Ernest said wistfully, as they shook hands. 'We
would be saved so much trouble if you did.'

FOLLOWING LIKE THUNDER claps upon the Business Men's dinner, occurred
event after event of terrifying moment; and I, little I, who had
lived so placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found
myself and my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great
world affairs. Whether it was my love for Ernest, or the clear
sight he had given me of the society in which I lived, that made
me a revolutionist, I know not; but a revolutionist I became,
and I was plunged into a whirl of happenings that would have been
inconceivable three short months before.

The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises
in society. First of all, father was discharged from the university.
Oh, he was not technically discharged. His resignation was demanded,
that was all. This, in itself, did not amount to much. Father,
in fact, was delighted. He was especially delighted because his
discharge had been precipitated by the publication of his book,
Economics and Education. It clinched his argument, he contended. What better evidence
could be advanced to prove that education was dominated by the
capitalist class?

But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew he had been forced
to resign from the university. He was so eminent a scientist that
such an announcement, coupled with the reason for his enforced
resignation, would have created somewhat of a furor all over the
world. The newspapers showered him with praise and honor, and
commended him for having given up the drudgery of the lecture
room in order to devote his whole time to scientific research.

At first father laughed. Then he became angry--tonic angry. Then
came the suppression of his book. This suppression was performed
secretly, so secretly that at first we could not comprehend. The
publication of the book had immediately caused a bit of excitement
in the country. Father had been politely abused in the capitalist
press, the tone of the abuse being to the effect that it was a
pity so great a scientist should leave his field and invade the
realm of sociology, about which he knew nothing and wherein he
had promptly become lost. This lasted for a week, while father
chuckled and said the book had touched a sore spot on capitalism.
And then, abruptly, the newspapers and the critical magazines
ceased saying anything about the book at all. Also, and with equal
suddenness, the book disappeared from the market. Not a copy was
obtainable from any bookseller. Father wrote to the publishers
and was informed that the plates had been accidentally injured.
An unsatisfactory correspondence followed. Driven finally to an
unequivocal stand, the publishers stated that they could not see
their way to putting the book into type again, but that they were
willing to relinquish their rights in it.

'And you won't find another publishing house in the country to
touch it,' Ernest said. 'And if I were you, I'd hunt cover right
now. You've merely got a foretaste of the Iron Heel.'

But father was nothing if not a scientist. He never believed in
jumping to conclusions. A laboratory experiment was no experiment
if it were not carried through in all its details. So he patiently
went the round of the publishing houses. They gave a multitude
of excuses, but not one house would consider the book.

When father became convinced that the book had actually been suppressed,
he tried to get the fact into the newspapers; but his communications
were ignored. At a political meeting of the socialists, where
many reporters were present, father saw his chance. He arose and
related the history of the suppression of the book. He laughed
next day when he read the newspapers, and then he grew angry to
a degree that eliminated all tonic qualities. The papers made
no mention of the book, but they misreported him beautifully.
They twisted his words and phrases away from the context, and
turned his subdued and controlled remarks into a howling anarchistic
speech. It was done artfully. One instance, in particular, I remember.
He had used the phrase 'social revolution.' The reporter merely
dropped out 'social.' This was sent out all over the country in
an Associated Press despatch, and from all over the country arose
a cry of alarm. Father was branded as a nihilist and an anarchist,
and in one cartoon that was copied widely he was portrayed waving
a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired, wild-eyed men
who bore in their hands torches, knives, and dynamite bombs.

He was assailed terribly in the press, in long and abusive editorials,
for his anarchy, and hints were made of mental breakdown on his
part. This behavior, on the part of the capitalist press, was
nothing new, Ernest told us. It was the custom, he said, to send
reporters to all the socialist meetings for the express purpose
of misreporting and distorting what was said, in order to frighten
the middle class away from any possible affiliation with the proletariat.
And repeatedly Ernest warned father to cease fighting and to take
to cover.

The socialist press of the country took up the fight, however,
and throughout the reading portion of the working class it was
known that the book had been suppressed. But this knowledge stopped
with the working class. Next, the 'Appeal to Reason,' a big socialist
publishing house, arranged with father to bring out the book.
Father was jubilant, but Ernest was alarmed.

'I tell you we are on the verge of the unknown,' he insisted.
'Big things are happening secretly all around us. We can feel
them. We do not know what they are, but they are there. The whole
fabric of society is a tremble with them. Don't ask me. I don't
know myself. But out of this flux of society something is about
to crystallize. It is crystallizing now. The suppression of the
book is a precipitation. How many books have been suppressed?
We haven't the least idea. We are in the dark. We have no way
of learning. Watch out next for the suppression of the socialist
press and socialist publishing houses. I'm afraid it's coming.
We are going to be throttled.'

Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even more closely than
the rest of the socialists, and within two days the first blow
was struck. The Appeal to Reason was a weekly, and its regular circulation amongst the proletariat
was seven hundred and fifty thousand. Also, it very frequently
got out special editions of from two to five millions. These great
editions were paid for and distributed by the small army of voluntary
workers who had marshalled around the Appeal. The first blow was aimed at these special editions, and it was
a crushing one. By an arbitrary ruling of the Post Office, these
editions were decided to be not the regular circulation of the
paper, and for that reason were denied admission to the mails.

A week later the Post Office Department ruled that the paper was
seditious, and barred it entirely from the mails. This was a fearful
blow to the socialist propaganda. The Appeal was desperate. It devised a plan of reaching its subscribers
through the express companies, but they declined to handle it.
This was the end of the Appeal. But not quite. It prepared to go on with its book publishing.
Twenty thousand copies of father's book were in the bindery, and
the presses were turning off more. And then, without warning,
a mob arose one night, and, under a waving American flag, singing
patriotic songs, set fire to the great plant of the Appeal and totally destroyed it.

Now Girard, Kansas, was a quiet, peaceable town. There had never
been any labor troubles there. The Appeal paid union wages; and, in fact, was the backbone of the town,
giving employment to hundreds of men and women. It was not the
citizens of Girard that composed the mob. This mob had risen up
out of the earth apparently, and to all intents and purposes,
its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest saw in
the affair the most sinister import.

'The Black Hundreds⁶⁹ are being organized in the United States,' he said. 'This is
the beginning. There will be more of it. The Iron Heel is getting
bold.'

And so perished father's book. We were to see much of the Black
Hundreds as the days went by. Week by week more of the socialist
papers were barred from the mails, and in a number of instances
the Black Hundreds destroyed the socialist presses. Of course,
the newspapers of the land lived up to the reactionary policy
of the ruling class, and the destroyed socialist press was misrepresented
and vilified, while the Black Hundreds were represented as true
patriots and saviours of society. So convincing was all this misrepresentation
that even sincere ministers in the pulpit praised the Black Hundreds
while regretting the necessity of violence.

History was making fast. The fall elections were soon to occur,
and Ernest was nominated by the socialist party to run for Congress.
His chance for election was most favorable. The street-car strike
in San Francisco had been broken. And following upon it the teamsters'
strike had been broken. These two defeats had been very disastrous
to organized labor. The whole Water Front Federation, along with
its allies in the structural trades, had backed up the teamsters,
and all had smashed down ingloriously. It had been a bloody strike.
The police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs; and
the death list had been augmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun
on the strikers from the barns of the Marsden Special Delivery
Company.

In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive. They wanted
blood, and revenge. Beaten on their chosen field, they were ripe
to seek revenge by means of political action. They still maintained
their labor organization, and this gave them strength in the political
struggle that was on. Ernest's chance for election grew stronger
and stronger. Day by day unions and more unions voted their support
to the socialists, until even Ernest laughed when the Undertakers'
Assistants and the Chicken Pickers fell into line. Labor became
mulish. While it packed the socialist meetings with mad enthusiasm,
it was impervious to the wiles of the old-party politicians. The
old-party orators were usually greeted with empty halls, though
occasionally they encountered full halls where they were so roughly
handled that more than once it was necessary to call out the police
reserves.

History was making fast. The air was vibrant with things happening
and impending. The country was on the verge of hard times,⁷⁰ caused by a series of prosperous years wherein the difficulty
of disposing abroad of the unconsumed surplus had become increasingly
difficult. Industries were working short time; many great factories
were standing idle against the time when the surplus should be
gone; and wages were being cut right and left.

Also, the great machinist strike had been broken. Two hundred
thousand machinists, along with their five hundred thousand allies
in the metalworking trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike
as had ever marred the United States. Pitched battles had been
fought with the small armies of armed strike-breakers⁷¹ put in the field by the employers' associations; the Black Hundreds,
appearing in scores of wide-scattered places, had destroyed property;
and, in consequence, a hundred thousand regular soldiers of the
United States has been called out to put a frightful end to the
whole affair. A number of the labor leaders had been executed;
many others had been sentenced to prison, while thousands of the
rank and file of the strikers had been herded into bull-pens⁷² and abominably treated by the soldiers.

The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were
glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble
of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land
was convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking
here, there, and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it
was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled
with tales of violence and blood. And through it all the Black
Hundreds played their part. Riot, arson, and wanton destruction
of property was their function, and well they performed it. The
whole regular army was in the field, called there by the actions
of the Black Hundreds.⁷³ All cities and towns were like armed camps, and laborers were
shot down like dogs. Out of the vast army of the unemployed the
strike-breakers were recruited; and when the strike-breakers were
worsted by the labor unions, the troops always appeared and crushed
the unions. Then there was the militia. As yet, it was not necessary
to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only the regularly
organized militia was out, and it was out everywhere. And in this
time of terror, the regular army was increased an additional hundred
thousand by the government.

Never had labor received such an all-around beating. The great
captains of industry, the oligarchs, had for the first time thrown
their full weight into the breach the struggling employers' associations
had made. These associations were practically middle-class affairs,
and now, compelled by hard times and crashing markets, and aided
by the great captains of industry, they gave organized labor an
awful and decisive defeat. It was an all-powerful alliance, but
it was an alliance of the lion and the lamb, as the middle class
was soon to learn.

Labor was bloody and sullen, but crushed. Yet its defeat did not
put an end to the hard times. The banks, themselves constituting
one of the most important forces of the Oligarchy, continued to
call in credits. The Wall Street⁷⁴ group turned the stock market into a maelstrom where the values
of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness. And out of
all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent Oligarchy,
imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude
was terrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power, but it
used all the power of the United States Treasury to carry out
its plans.

The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. The
employers' associations, that had helped the captains of industry
to tear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam
allies. Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business
men and manufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts
did more than stand firm. They were active. They sowed wind, and
wind, and ever more wind; for they alone knew how to reap the
whirlwind and make a profit out of it. And such profits! Colossal
profits! Strong enough themselves to weather the storm that was
largely their own brewing, they turned loose and plundered the
wrecks that floated about them. Values were pitifully and inconceivably
shrunken, and the trusts added hugely to their holdings, even
extending their enterprises into many new fields--and always at
the expense of the middle class.

Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-thrust to
the middle class. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with
which it had been done. He shook his head ominously and looked
forward without hope to the fall elections.

'It's no use,' he said. 'We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here.
I had hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong.
Wickson was right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties;
the Iron Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a
bloody revolution of the working class. Of course we will win,
but I shudder to think of it.'

And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this
he was in advance of his party. His fellow-socialists could not
agree with him. They still insisted that victory could be gained
through the elections. It was not that they were stunned. They
were too cool-headed and courageous for that. They were merely
incredulous, that was all. Ernest could not get them seriously
to fear the coming of the Oligarchy. They were stirred by him,
but they were too sure of their own strength. There was no room
in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy, therefore
the Oligarchy could not be.

'We'll send you to Congress and it will be all right,' they told
him at one of our secret meetings.

'And when they take me out of Congress,' Ernest replied coldly,
'and put me against a wall, and blow my brains out--what then?'

'Then we'll rise in our might,' a dozen voices answered at once.

'Then you'll welter in your gore,' was his retort. 'I've heard
that song sung by the middle class, and where is it now in its
might?'

MR. WICKSON DID NOT SEND for father. They met by chance on the
ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that the warning he gave father
was not premeditated. Had they not met accidentally, there would
not have been any warning. Not that the outcome would have been
different, however. Father came of stout old Mayflower⁷⁵ stock, and the blood was imperative in him.

'Ernest was right,' he told me, as soon as he had returned home.
'Ernest is a very remarkable young man, and I'd rather see you
his wife than the wife of Rockefeller himself or the King of England.'

'What's the matter?' I asked in alarm.

'The Oligarchy is about to tread upon our faces--yours and mine.
Wickson as much as told me so. He was very kind--for an oligarch.
He offered to reinstate me in the university. What do you think
of that? He, Wickson, a sordid money-grabber, has the power to
determine whether I shall or shall not teach in the university
of the state. But he offered me even better than that- offered
to make me president of some great college of physical sciences
that is being planned--the Oligarchy must get rid of its surplus
somehow, you see.

'"Do you remember what I told that socialist lover of your daughter's?"
he said. "I told him that we would walk upon the faces of the
working class. And so we shall. As for you, I have for you a deep
respect as a scientist; but if you throw your fortunes in with
the working class--well, watch out for your face, that is all."
And then he turned and left me.'

'It means we'll have to marry earlier than you planned,' was Ernest's
comment when we told him.

I could not follow his reasoning, but I was soon to learn it.
It was at this time that the quarterly dividend of the Sierra
Mills was paid--or, rather, should have been paid, for father
did not receive his. After waiting several days, father wrote
to the secretary. Promptly came the reply that there was no record
on the books of father's owning any stock, and a polite request
for more explicit information.

'I'll make it explicit enough, confound him,' father declared,
and departed for the bank to get the stock in question from his
safe-deposit box.

'Ernest is a very remarkable man,' he said when he got back and
while I was helping him off with his overcoat. 'I repeat, my daughter,
that young man of yours is a very remarkable young man.'

I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion, to
expect disaster.

'They have already walked upon my face,' father explained. 'There
was no stock. The box was empty. You and Ernest will have to get
married pretty quickly.'

Father insisted on laboratory methods. He brought the Sierra Mills
into court, but he could not bring the books of the Sierra Mills
into court. He did not control the courts, and the Sierra Mills
did. That explained it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law,
and the bare-faced robbery held good.

It is almost laughable now, when I look back on it, the way father
was beaten. He met Wickson accidentally on the street in San Francisco,
and he told Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then father
was arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court,
and bound over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that
when he got home he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was
raised in the local papers! There was grave talk about the bacillus
of violence that infected all men who embraced socialism; and
father, with his long and peaceful life, was instanced as a shining
example of how the bacillus of violence worked. Also, it was asserted
by more than one paper that father's mind had weakened under the
strain of scientific study, and confinement in a state asylum
for the insane was suggested. Nor was this merely talk. It was
an imminent peril. But father was wise enough to see it. He had
the Bishop's experience to lesson from, and he lessoned well.
He kept quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated on him,
and really, I think, surprised his enemies.

There was the matter of the house- our home. A mortgage was foreclosed
on it, and we had to give up possession. Of course there wasn't
any mortgage, and never had been any mortgage. The ground had
been bought outright, and the house had been paid for when it
was built. And house and lot had always been free and unencumbered.
Nevertheless there was the mortgage, properly and legally drawn
up and signed, with a record of the payments of interest through
a number of years. Father made no outcry. As he had been robbed
of his money, so was he now robbed of his home. And he had no
recourse. The machinery of society was in the hands of those who
were bent on breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart, and
he was no longer even angry.

'I am doomed to be broken,' he said to me; 'but that is no reason
that I should not try to be shattered as little as possible. These
old bones of mine are fragile, and I've learned my lesson. God
knows I don't want to spend my last days in an insane asylum.'

Which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse, whom I have neglected for
many pages. But first let me tell of my marriage. In the play
of events, my marriage sinks into insignificance, I know, so I
shall barely mention it.

'Now we shall become real proletarians,' father said, when we
were driven from our home. 'I have often envied that young man
of yours for his actual knowledge of the proletariat. Now I shall
see and learn for myself.'

Father must have had strong in him the blood of adventure. He
looked upon our catastrophe in the light of an adventure. No anger
nor bitterness possessed him. He was too philosophic and simple
to be vindictive, and he lived too much in the world of mind to
miss the creature comforts we were giving up. So it was, when
we moved to San Francisco into four wretched rooms in the slum
south of Market Street, that he embarked upon the adventure with
the joy and enthusiasm of a child--combined with the clear sight
and mental grasp of an extraordinary intellect. He really never
crystallized mentally. He had no false sense of values. Conventional
or habitual values meant nothing to him. The only values he recognized
were mathematical and scientific facts. My father was a great
man. He had the mind and the soul that only great men have. In
ways he was even greater than Ernest, than whom I have known none
greater.

Even I found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else,
I was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our
increasing portion in the university town ever since the enmity
of the nascent Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was
to me likewise adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was
love-adventure. The change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage,
and it was as a wife that I came to live in the four rooms on
Pell Street, in the San Francisco slum.

And this out of all remains: I made Ernest happy. I came into
his stormy life, not as a new perturbing force, but as one that
made toward peace and repose. I gave him rest. It was the guerdon
of my love for him. It was the one infallible token that I had
not failed. To bring forgetfulness, or the light of gladness,
into those poor tired eyes of his -what greater joy could have
blessed me than that?

Those dear tired eyes. He toiled as few men ever toiled, and all
his lifetime he toiled for others. That was the measure of his
manhood. He was a humanist and a lover. And he, with his incarnate
spirit of battle, his gladiator body and his eagle spirit--he
was as gentle and tender to me as a poet. He was a poet. A singer
in deeds. And all his life he sang the song of man. And he did
it out of sheer love of man, and for man he gave his life and
was crucified.

And all this he did with no hope of future reward. In his conception
of things there was no future life. He, who fairly burnt with
immortality, denied himself immortality- such was the paradox
of him. He, so warm in spirit, was dominated by that cold and
forbidding philosophy, materialistic monism. I used to refute
him by telling him that I measured his immortality by the wings
of his soul, and that I should have to live endless aeons in order
to achieve the full measurement. Whereat he would laugh, and his
arms would leap out to me, and he would call me his sweet metaphysician;
and the tiredness would pass out of his eyes, and into them would
flood the happy love light that was in itself a new and sufficient
advertisement of his immortality.

Also, he used to call me his dualist, and he would explain how
Kant, by means of pure reason, had abolished reason, in order
to worship God. And he drew the parallel and included me guilty
of a similar act. And when I pleaded guilty, but defended the
act as highly rational, he but pressed me closer and laughed as
only one of God's own lovers could laugh. I was wont to deny that
heredity and environment could explain his own originality and
genius, any more than could the cold groping finger of science
catch and analyze and classify that elusive essence that lurked
in the constitution of life itself.

I held that space was an apparition of God, and that soul was
a projection of the character of God; and when he called me his
sweet metaphysician, I called him my immortal materialist. And
so we loved and were happy; and I forgave him his materialism
because of his tremendous work in the world, performed without
thought of soul-gain thereby, and because of his so exceeding
modesty of spirit that prevented him from having pride and regal
consciousness of himself and his soul.

But he had pride. How could he have been an eagle and not have
pride? His contention was that it was finer for a finite mortal
speck of life to feel Godlike, than for a god to feel godlike;
and so it was that he exalted what he deemed his mortality. He
was fond of quoting a fragment from a certain poem. He had never
seen the whole poem, and he had tried vainly to learn its authorship.
I here give the fragment, not alone because he loved it, but because
it epitomized the paradox that he was in the spirit of him, and
his conception of his spirit. For how can a man, with thrilling,
and burning, and exaltation, recite the following and still be
mere mortal earth, a bit of fugitive force, an evanescent form?
Here it is:

'Joy upon joy and gain upon gain

Are the destined rights of my birth,

And I shout the praise of my endless days

To the echoing edge of the earth.

Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die

To the uttermost end of time,

I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,

In every age and clime--

'The froth of Pride, the tang of Power,

The sweet of Womanhood!

I drain the lees upon my knees,

For oh, the draught is good;

I drink to Life, I drink to Death,

And smack my lips with song,

For when I die, another 'I' shall pass the cup along.

'The man you drove from Eden's grove

Was I, my Lord, was I,

And I shall be there when the earth and the air

Are rent from sea to sky;

For it is my world, my gorgeous world,

The world of my dearest woes,

From the first faint cry of the newborn

To the rack of the woman's throes.

'Packed with the pulse of an unborn race,

Torn with a world's desire,

The surging flood of my wild young blood

Would quench the judgment fire.

I am Man, Man, Man, from the tingling flesh

To the dust of my earthly goal,

From the nestling gloom of the pregnant womb

To the sheen of my naked soul.

Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh

The whole world leaps to my will,

And the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed

Shall harrow the earth for its fill.

Almighty God, when I drain life's glass

Of all its rainbow gleams,

The hapless plight of eternal night

Shall be none too long for my dreams.

'The man you drove from Eden's grove

Was I, my Lord, was I,

And I shall be there when the earth and the air

Are rent from sea to sky;

For it is my world, my gorgeous world,

The world of my dear delight,

From the brightest gleam of the Arctic stream

To the dusk of my own love-night.'⁷⁶

Ernest always overworked. His wonderful constitution kept him
up; but even that constitution could not keep the tired look out
of his eyes. His dear, tired eyes! He never slept more than four
and one-half hours a night; yet he never found time to do all
the work he wanted to do. He never ceased from his activities
as a propagandist, and was always scheduled long in advance for
lectures to workingmen's organizations. Then there was the campaign.
He did a man's full work in that alone. With the suppression of
the socialist publishing houses, his meagre royalties ceased,
and he was hard-put to make a living; for he had to make a living
in addition to all his other labor. He did a great deal of translating
for the magazines on scientific and philosophic subjects; and,
coming home late at night, worn out from the strain of the campaign,
he would plunge into his translating and toil on well into the
morning hours. And in addition to everything, there was his studying.
To the day of his death he kept up his studies, and he studied
prodigiously.

And yet he found time in which to love me and make me happy. But
this was accomplished only through my merging my life completely
into his. I learned shorthand and typewriting, and became his
secretary. He insisted that I succeeded in cutting his work in
half; and so it was that I schooled myself to understand his work.
Our interests became mutual, and we worked together and played
together.

And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our
work--just a word, or caress, or flash of love-light; and our
moments were sweeter for being stolen. For we lived on the heights,
where the air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity,
and where sordidness and selfishness never entered. We loved love,
and our love was never smirched by anything less than the best.
And this out of all remains: I did not fail. I gave him rest-
he who worked so hard for others, my dear, tired-eyed mortalist.

IT WAS AFTER MY MARRIAGE that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse.
But I must give the events in their proper sequence. After his
outbreak at the I.P.H. Convention, the Bishop, being a gentle
soul, had yielded to the friendly pressure brought to bear upon
him, and had gone away on a vacation. But he returned more fixed
than ever in his determination to preach the message of the Church.
To the consternation of his congregation, his first sermon was
quite similar to the address he had given before the Convention.
Again he said, and at length and with distressing detail, that
the Church had wandered away from the Master's teaching, and that
Mammon had been instated in the place of Christ.

And the result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away to a private
sanitarium for mental disease, while in the newspapers appeared
pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness
of his character. He was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I
called repeatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was terribly
impressed by the tragedy of a sane, normal, saintly man being
crushed by the brutal will of society. For the Bishop was sane,
and pure, and noble. As Ernest said, all that was the matter with
him was that he had incorrect notions of biology and sociology,
and because of his incorrect notions he had not gone about it
in the right way to rectify matters.

What terrified me was the Bishop's helplessness. If he persisted
in the truth as he saw it, he was doomed to an insane ward. And
he could do nothing. His money, his position, his culture, could
not save him. His views were perilous to society, and society
could not conceive that such perilous views could be the product
of a sane mind. Or, at least, it seems to me that such was society's
attitude.

But the Bishop, in spite of the gentleness and purity of his spirit,
was possessed of guile. He apprehended clearly his danger. He
saw himself caught in the web, and he tried to escape from it.
Denied help from his friends, such as father and Ernest and I
could have given, he was left to battle for himself alone. And
in the enforced solitude of the sanitarium he recovered. He became
again sane. His eyes ceased to see visions; his brain was purged
of the fancy that it was the duty of society to feed the Master's
lambs.

As I say, he became well, quite well, and the newspapers and the
church people hailed his return with joy. I went once to his church.
The sermon was of the same order as the ones he had preached long
before his eyes had seen visions. I was disappointed, shocked.
Had society then beaten him into submission? Was he a coward?
Had he been bulldozed into recanting? Or had the strain been too
great for him, and had he meekly surrendered to the juggernaut
of the established?

I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was woefully changed.
He was thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never
seen before. He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked
nervously at his sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were restless,
fluttering here, there, and everywhere, and refusing to meet mine.
His mind seemed preoccupied, and there were strange pauses in
his conversation, abrupt changes of topic, and an inconsecutiveness
that was bewildering. Could this, then, be the firm-poised, Christ-like
man I had known, with pure, limpid eyes and a gaze steady and
unfaltering as his soul? He had been man-handled; he had been
cowed into subjection. His spirit was too gentle. It had not been
mighty enough to face the organized wolf-pack of society.

I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambiguously, and was so
apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to catechise
him. He spoke in a far-away manner of his illness, and we talked
disjointedly about the church, the alterations in the organ, and
about petty charities; and he saw me depart with such evident
relief that I should have laughed had not my heart been so full
of tears.

The poor little hero! If I had only known! He was battling like
a giant, and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst
of millions of his fellow-men, he was fighting his fight. Torn
by his horror of the asylum and his fidelity to truth and the
right, he clung steadfastly to truth and the right; but so alone
was he that he did not dare to trust even me. He had learned his
lesson well--too well.

But I was soon to know. One day the Bishop disappeared. He had
told nobody that he was going away; and as the days went by and
he did not reappear, there was much gossip to the effect that
he had committed suicide while temporarily deranged. But this
idea was dispelled when it was learned that he had sold all his
possessions,--his city mansion, his country house at Menlo Park,
his paintings, and collections, and even his cherished library.
It was patent that he had made a clean and secret sweep of everything
before he disappeared.

This happened during the time when calamity had overtaken us in
our own affairs; and it was not till we were well settled in our
new home that we had opportunity really to wonder and speculate
about the Bishop's doings. And then, everything was suddenly made
clear. Early one evening, while it was yet twilight, I had run
across the street and into the butcher-shop to get some chops
for Ernest's supper. We called the last meal of the day 'supper'
in our new environment.

Just at the moment I came out of the butcher-shop, a man emerged
from the corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense familiarity
made me look again. But the man had turned and was walking rapidly
away. There was something about the slope of the shoulders and
the fringe of silver hair between coat collar and slouch hat that
aroused vague memories. Instead of crossing the street, I hurried
after the man. I quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts
that formed unbidden in my brain. No, it was impossible. It could
not be--not in those faded overalls, too long in the legs and
frayed at the bottoms.

I paused, laughed at myself, and almost abandoned the chase. But
the haunting familiarity of those shoulders and that silver hair!
Again I hurried on. As I passed him, I shot a keen look at his
face; then I whirled around abruptly and confronted--the Bishop.

He halted with equal abruptness, and gasped. A large paper bag
in his right hand fell to the sidewalk. It burst, and about his
feet and mine bounced and rolled a flood of potatoes. He looked
at me with surprise and alarm, then he seemed to wilt away; the
shoulders drooped with dejection, and he uttered a deep sigh.

I held out my hand. He shook it, but his hand felt clammy. He
cleared his throat in embarrassment, and I could see the sweat
starting out on his forehead. It was evident that he was badly
frightened.

'The potatoes,' he murmured faintly. 'They are precious.'

Between us we picked them up and replaced them in the broken bag,
which he now held carefully in the hollow of his arm. I tried
to tell him my gladness at meeting him and that he must come right
home with me.

'Father will be rejoiced to see you,' I said. 'We live only a
stone's throw away.

'I can't,' he said, 'I must be going. Good-by.'

He looked apprehensively about him, as though dreading discovery,
and made an attempt to walk on.

'Tell me where you live, and I shall call later,' he said, when
he saw that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to
stick to him now that he was found.

'No,' I answered firmly. 'You must come now.'

He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at the small
parcels on his other arm.

'Really, it is impossible,' he said. 'Forgive me for my rudeness.
If you only knew.'

He looked as if he were going to break down, but the next moment
he had himself in control.

'Besides, this food,' he went on. 'It is a sad case. It is terrible.
She is an old woman. I must take it to her at once. She is suffering
from want of it. I must go at once. You understand. Then I will
return. I promise you.'

'Let me go with you,' I volunteered. 'Is it far?'

He sighed again, and surrendered.

'Only two blocks,' he said. 'Let us hasten.'

Under the Bishop's guidance I learned something of my own neighborhood.
I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery existed in it.
Of course, this was because I did not concern myself with charity.
I had become convinced that Ernest was right when he sneered at
charity as a poulticing of an ulcer. Remove the ulcer, was his
remedy; give to the worker his product; pension as soldiers those
who grow honorably old in their toil, and there will be no need
for charity. Convinced of this, I toiled with him at the revolution,
and did not exhaust my energy in alleviating the social ills that
continuously arose from the injustice of the system.

I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by twelve, in a rear
tenement. And there we found a little old German woman- sixty-four
years old, the Bishop said. She was surprised at seeing me, but
she nodded a pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair
of men's trousers in her lap. Beside her, on the floor, was a
pile of trousers. The Bishop discovered there was neither coal
nor kindling, and went out to buy some.

I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.

'Six cents, lady,' she said, nodding her head gently while she
went on stitching. She stitched slowly, but never did she cease
from stitching. She seemed mastered by the verb 'to stitch.'

'For all that work?' I asked. 'Is that what they pay? How long
does it take you?'

'Yes,' she answered, 'that is what they pay. Six cents for finishing.
Two hours' sewing on each pair.'

But the boss doesn't know that,' she added quickly, betraying
a fear of getting him into trouble. 'I'm slow. I've got the rheumatism
in my hands. Girls work much faster. They finish in half that
time. The boss is kind. He lets me take the work home, now that
I am old and the noise of the machine bothers my head. If it wasn't
for his kindness, I'd starve.

'Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents. But what can
you do? There is not enough work for the young. The old have no
chance. Often one pair is all I can get. Sometimes, like to-day,
I am given eight pair to finish before night.'

I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it depended on
the season.

'In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in
the morning to nine at night. But in the winter it is too cold.
The hands do not early get over the stiffness. Then you must work
later--till after midnight sometimes.

'Yes, it has been a bad summer. The hard times. God must be angry.
This is the first work the boss has given me in a week. It is
true, one cannot eat much when there is no work. I am used to
it. I have sewed all my life, in the old country and here in San
Francisco--thirty-three years.

'If you are sure of the rent, it is all right. The houseman is
very kind, but he must have his rent. It is fair. He only charges
three dollars for this room. That is cheap. But it is not easy
for you to find all of three dollars every month.'

She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on stitching.

'You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings,'
I suggested.

She nodded emphatically.

'After the rent it's not so bad. Of course you can't buy meat.
And there is no milk for the coffee. But always there is one meal
a day, and often two.'

She said this last proudly. There was a smack of success in her
words. But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness
in her pleasant eyes and the droop of her mouth. The look in her
eyes became far away. She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them;
it interfered with her stitching.

No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache,' she explained.
'You get used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry.
It was the machine that killed her. It is true she worked hard,
but I cannot understand. She was strong. And she was young--only
forty; and she worked only thirty years. She began young, it is
true; but my man died. The boiler exploded down at the works.
And what were we to do? She was ten, but she was very strong.
But the machine killed her. Yes, it did. It killed her, and she
was the fastest worker in the shop. I have thought about it often,
and I know. That is why I cannot work in the shop. The machine
bothers my head. Always I hear it saying, "I did it, I did it."
And it says that all day long. And then I think of my daughter,
and I cannot work.'

The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it
away before she could go on stitching.

I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door.
What a spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of
coal, with kindling on top. Some of the coal dust had coated his
face, and the sweat from his exertions was running in streaks.
He dropped his burden in the corner by the stove and wiped his
face on a coarse bandana handkerchief. I could scarcely accept
the verdict of my senses. The Bishop, black as a coal-heaver,
in a workingman's cheap cotton shirt (one button was missing from
the throat), and in overalls! That was the most incongruous of
all--the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged down at the
heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips such
as laborers wear.

Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old
woman were already cramping with the cold; and before we left
her, the Bishop had built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes
and put them on to boil. I was to learn, as time went by, that
there were many cases similar to hers, and many worse, hidden
away in the monstrous depths of the tenements in my neighborhood.

We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first
surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,
stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a
comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had
met since his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening
weeks he must have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us
much, though he told us more of the joy he had experienced in
doing the Master's bidding.

'For truly now,' he said, 'I am feeding his lambs. And I have
learned a great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till
the stomach is appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter
and potatoes and meat; after that, and only after that, are their
spirits ready for more refined nourishment.'

He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such
an appetite at our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and
he said that he had never been so healthy in his life.

'I walk always now,' he said, and a blush was on his cheek at
the thought of the time when he rode in his carriage, as though
it were a sin not lightly to be laid.

'My health is better for it,' he added hastily. 'And I am very
happy- indeed, most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit.'

And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the
world that he was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in
the raw, and it was a different life from what he had known within
the printed books of his library.

'And you are responsible for all this, young man,' he said directly
to Ernest.

Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.

'I--I warned you,' he faltered.

'No, you misunderstand,' the Bishop answered. 'I speak not in
reproach, but in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me
my path. You led me from theories about life to life itself. You
pulled aside the veils from the social shams. You were light in
my darkness, but now I, too, see the light. And I am very happy,
only...' he hesitated painfully, and in his eyes fear leaped large.
'Only the persecution. I harm no one. Why will they not let me
alone? But it is not that. It is the nature of the persecution.
I shouldn't mind if they cut my flesh with stripes, or burned
me at the stake, or crucified me head--downward. But it is the
asylum that frightens me.

Think of it! Of me--in an asylum for the insane! It is revolting.
I saw some of the cases at the sanitarium. They were violent.
My blood chills when I think of it. And to be imprisoned for the
rest of my life amid scenes of screaming madness! No! no! Not
that! Not that!'

It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body quivered and shrank
away from the picture he had conjured. But the next moment he
was calm.

'Forgive me,' he said simply. 'It is my wretched nerves. And if
the Master's work leads there, so be it. Who am I to complain?'

I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: 'Great Bishop! O
hero! God's hero!'

As the evening wore on we learned more of his doings.

'I sold my house--my houses, rather,' he said, all my other possessions.
I knew I must do it secretly, else they would have taken everything
away from me. That would have been terrible. I often marvel these
days at the immense quantity of potatoes two or three hundred
thousand dollars will buy, or bread, or meat, or coal and kindling.'
He turned to Ernest. 'You are right, young man. Labor is dreadfully
underpaid. I never did a bit of work in my life, except to appeal
aesthetically to Pharisees--I thought I was preaching the message--and
yet I was worth half a million dollars. I never knew what half
a million dollars meant until I realized how much potatoes and
bread and butter and meat it could buy. And then I realized something
more. I realized that all those potatoes and that bread and butter
and meat were mine, and that I had not worked to make them. Then
it was clear to me, some one else had worked and made them and
been robbed of them. And when I came down amongst the poor I found
those who had been robbed and who were hungry and wretched because
they had been robbed.'

We drew him back to his narrative.

'The money? I have it deposited in many different banks under
different names. It can never be taken away from me, because it
can never be found. And it is so good, that money. It buys so
much food. I never knew before what money was good for.'

'I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda,' Ernest said
wistfully. 'It would do immense good.'

'Do you think so?' the Bishop said. 'I do not have much faith
in politics. In fact, I am afraid I do not understand politics.'

Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not repeat his suggestion,
though he knew only too well the sore straits the Socialist Party
was in through lack of money.

'I sleep in cheap lodging houses,' the Bishop went on. 'But I
am afraid, and never stay long in one place. Also, I rent two
rooms in workingmen's houses in different quarters of the city.
It is a great extravagance, I know, but it is necessary. I make
up for it in part by doing my own cooking, though sometimes I
get something to eat in cheap coffee-houses. And I have made a
discovery. Tamales⁷⁷ are very good when the air grows chilly late at night. Only they
are so expensive. But I have discovered a place where I can get
three for ten cents. They are not so good as the others, but they
are very warming.

'And so I have at last found my work in the world, thanks to you,
young man. It is the Master's work.' He looked at me, and his
eyes twinkled. 'You caught me feeding his lambs, you know. And
of course you will all keep my secret.'

He spoke carelessly enough, but there was real fear behind the
speech. He promised to call upon us again. But a week later we
read in the newspaper of the sad case of Bishop Morehouse, who
had been committed to the Napa Asylum and for whom there were
still hopes held out. In vain we tried to see him, to have his
case reconsidered or investigated. Nor could we learn anything
about him except the reiterated statements that slight hopes were
still held for his recovery.

'Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had,' Ernest said
bitterly. 'The Bishop obeyed Christ's injunction and got locked
up in a madhouse. Times have changed since Christ's day. A rich
man to-day who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is
no discussion. Society has spoken.'

OF COURSE ERNEST WAS ELECTED to Congress in the great socialist
landslide that took place in the fall of 1912. One great factor
that helped to swell the socialist vote was the destruction of
Hearst.⁷⁸ This the Plutocracy found an easy task. It cost Hearst eighteen
million dollars a year to run his various papers, and this sum,
and more, he got back from the middle class in payment for advertising.
The source of his financial strength lay wholly in the middle
class. The trusts did not advertise.⁷⁹ To destroy Hearst, all that was necessary was to take away from
him his advertising.

The whole middle class had not yet been exterminated. The sturdy
skeleton of it remained; but it was without power. The small manufacturers
and small business men who still survived were at the complete
mercy of the Plutocracy. They had no economic nor political souls
of their own. When the fiat of the Plutocracy went forth, they
withdrew their advertisements from the Hearst papers.

Hearst made a gallant fight. He brought his papers out at a loss
of a million and a half each month. He continued to publish the
advertisements for which he no longer received pay. Again the
fiat of the Plutocracy went forth, and the small business men
and manufacturers swamped him with a flood of notices that he
must discontinue running their old advertisements. Hearst persisted.
Injunctions were served on him. Still he persisted. He received
six months' imprisonment for contempt of court in disobeying the
injunctions, while he was bankrupted by countless damage suits.
He had no chance. The Plutocracy had passed sentence on him. The
courts were in the hands of the Plutocracy to carry the sentence
out. And with Hearst crashed also to destruction the Democratic
Party that he had so recently captured.

With the destruction of Hearst and the Democratic Party, there
were only two paths for his following to take. One was into the
Socialist Party; the other was into the Republican Party. Then
it was that we socialists reaped the fruit of Hearst's pseudo-socialistic
preaching; for the great Majority of his followers came over to
us.

The expropriation of the farmers that took place at this time
would also have swelled our vote had it not been for the brief
and futile rise of the Grange Party. Ernest and the socialist
leaders fought fiercely to capture the farmers; but the destruction
of the socialist press and publishing houses constituted too great
a handicap, while the mouth-to mouth propaganda had not yet been
perfected. So it was that politicians like Mr. Calvin, who were
themselves farmers long since expropriated, captured the farmers
and threw their political strength away in a vain campaign.

'The poor farmers,' Ernest once laughed savagely; 'the trusts
have them both coming and going.'

And that was really the situation. The seven great trusts, working
together, had pooled their enormous surpluses and made a farm
trust. The railroads, controlling rates, and the bankers and stock
exchange gamesters, controlling prices, had long since bled the
farmers into indebtedness. The bankers, and all the trusts for
that matter, had likewise long since loaned colossal amounts of
money to the farmers. The farmers were in the net. All that remained
to be done was the drawing in of the net. This the farm trust
proceeded to do.

The hard times of 1912 had already caused a frightful slump in
the farm markets. Prices were now deliberately pressed down to
bankruptcy, while the railroads, with extortionate rates, broke
the back of the farmer-camel. Thus the farmers were compelled
to borrow more and more, while they were prevented from paying
back old loans. Then ensued the great foreclosing of mortgages
and enforced collection of notes. The farmers simply surrendered
the land to the farm trust. There was nothing else for them to
do. And having surrendered the land, the farmers next went to
work for the farm trust, becoming managers, superintendents, foremen,
and common laborers. They worked for wages. They became villeins,
in short--serfs bound to the soil by a living wage. They could
not leave their masters, for their masters composed the Plutocracy.
They could not go to the cities, for there, also, the Plutocracy
was in control. They had but one alternative,--to leave the soil
and become vagrants, in brief, to starve. And even there they
were frustrated, for stringent vagrancy laws were passed and rigidly
enforced.

Of course, here and there, farmers, and even whole communities
of farmers, escaped expropriation by virtue of exceptional conditions.
But they were merely strays and did not count, and they were gathered
in anyway during the following year.⁸⁰

Thus it was that in the fall of 1912 the socialist leaders, with
the exception of Ernest, decided that the end of capitalism had
come. What of the hard times and the consequent vast army of the
unemployed; what of the destruction of the farmers and the middle
class; and what of the decisive defeat administered all along
the line to the labor unions; the socialists were really justified
in believing that the end of capitalism had come and in themselves
throwing down the gauntlet to the Plutocracy.

Alas, how we underestimated the strength of the enemy! Everywhere
the socialists proclaimed their coming victory at the ballot box,
while, in unmistakable terms, they stated the situation. The Plutocracy
accepted the challenge. It was the Plutocracy, weighing and balancing,
that defeated us by dividing our strength. It was the Plutocracy,
through its secret agents, that raised the cry that socialism
was sacrilegious and atheistic; it was the Plutocracy that whipped
the churches, and especially the Catholic Church, into line, and
robbed us of a portion of the labor vote. And it was the Plutocracy,
through its secret agents of course, that encouraged the Grange
Party and even spread it to the cities into the ranks of the dying
middle class.

Nevertheless the socialist landslide occurred. But, instead of
a sweeping victory with chief executive officers and majorities
in all legislative bodies, we found ourselves in the minority.
It is true, we elected fifty Congressmen; but when they took their
seats in the spring of 1913, they found themselves without power
of any sort. Yet they were more fortunate than the Grangers, who
captured a dozen state governments, and who, in the spring, were
not permitted to take possession of the captured offices. The
incumbents refused to retire, and the courts were in the hands
of the Oligarchy. But this is too far in advance of events. I
have yet to tell of the stirring times of the winter of 1912.

The hard times at home had caused an immense decrease in consumption.
Labor, out of work, had no wages with which to buy. The result
was that the Plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its
hands. This surplus it was compelled to dispose of abroad, and,
what of its colossal plans, it needed money. Because of its strenuous
efforts to dispose of the surplus in the world market, the Plutocracy
clashed with Germany. Economic clashes were usually succeeded
by wars, and this particular clash was no exception. The great
German war-lord prepared, and so did the United States prepare.

The war-cloud hovered dark and ominous. The stage was set for
a world-catastrophe, for in all the world were hard times, labor
troubles, perishing middle classes, armies of unemployed, clashes
of economic interests in the world-market, and mutterings and
rumblings of the socialist revolution.⁸¹

The Oligarchy wanted the war with Germany. And it wanted the war
for a dozen reasons. In the juggling of events such a war would
cause, in the reshuffling of the international cards and the making
of new treaties and alliances, the Oligarchy had much to gain.
And, furthermore, the war would consume many national surpluses,
reduce the armies of unemployed that menaced all countries, and
give the Oligarchy a breathing space in which to perfect its plans
and carry them out. Such a war would virtually put the Oligarchy
in possession of the world-market. Also, such a war would create
a large standing army that need never be disbanded, while in the
minds of the people would be substituted the issue, 'America versus Germany,' in place of 'Socialism versus Oligarchy.'

And truly the war would have done all these things had it not
been for the socialists. A secret meeting of the Western leaders
was held in our four tiny rooms in Pell Street. Here was first
considered the stand the socialists were to take. It was not the
first time we had put our foot down upon war,⁸² but it was the first time we had done so in the United States.
After our secret meeting we got in touch with the national organization,
and soon our code cables were passing back and forth across the
Atlantic between us and the International Bureau.

The German socialists were ready to act with us. There were over
five million of them, many of them in the standing army, and,
in addition, they were on friendly terms with the labor unions.
In both countries the socialists came out in bold declaration
against the war and threatened the general strike. And in the
meantime they made preparation for the general strike. Furthermore,
the revolutionary parties in all countries gave public utterance
to the socialist principle of international peace that must be
preserved at all hazards, even to the extent of revolt and revolution
at home.

The general strike was the one great victory we American socialists
won. On 4 December the American minister was withdrawn from the
German capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu,
sinking three American cruisers and a revenue cutter, and bombarding
the city. Next day both Germany and the United States declared
war, and within an hour the socialists called the general strike
in both countries.

For the first time the German war-lord faced the men of his empire
who made his empire go. Without them he could not run his empire.
The novelty of the situation lay in that their revolt was passive.
They did not fight. They did nothing. And by doing nothing they
tied their war-lord's hands. He would have asked for nothing better
than an opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat.
But this was denied him. He could not loose his war-dogs. Neither
could he mobilize his army to go forth to war, nor could he punish
his recalcitrant subjects. Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not
a train ran, not a telegraphic message went over the wires, for
the telegraphers and railroad men had ceased work along with the
rest of the population.

And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United States. At last
organized labor had learned its lesson. Beaten decisively on its
own chosen field, it had abandoned that field and come over to
the political field of the socialists; for the general strike
was a political strike. Besides, organized labor had been so badly
beaten that it did not care. It joined in the general strike out
of sheer desperation. The workers threw down their tools and left
their tasks by the millions. Especially notable were the machinists.
Their heads were bloody, their organization had apparently been
destroyed, yet out they came, along with their allies in the metal-working
trades.

Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work.
The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides,
the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike.
They set their faces against the war. They did not want their
men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike
caught the mood of the people. It struck their sense of humor.
The idea was infectious. The children struck in all the schools,
and such teachers as came, went home again from deserted class
rooms. The general strike took the form of a great national picnic.
And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so evidenced, appealed
to the imagination of all. And, finally, there was no danger to
be incurred by the colossal frolic. When everybody was guilty,
how was anybody to be punished?

The United States was paralyzed. No one knew what was happening.
There were no newspapers, no letters, no despatches. Every community
was as completely isolated as though ten thousand miles of primeval
wilderness stretched between it and the rest of the world. For
that matter, the world had ceased to exist. And for a week this
state of affairs was maintained.

In San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across
the bay in Oakland or Berkeley. The effect on one's sensibilities
was weird, depressing. It seemed as though some great cosmic thing
lay dead. The pulse of the land had ceased to beat. Of a truth
the nation had died. There were no wagons rumbling on the streets,
no factory whistles, no hum of electricity in the air, no passing
of street cars, no cries of news boys--nothing but persons who
at rare intervals went by like furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed
and made unreal by the silence.

And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was taught its lesson.
And well it learned the lesson. The general strike was a warning.
It should never occur again. The Oligarchy would see to that.

At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the telegraphers
of Germany and the United States returned to their posts. Through
them the socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum
to the rulers. The war should be called off, or the general strike
would continue. It did not take long to come to an understanding.
The war was declared off, and the populations of both countries
returned to their tasks.

It was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between
Germany and the United States. In reality, this was an alliance
between the Emperor and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting
their common foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both countries.
And it was this alliance that the Oligarchy afterward so treacherously
broke when the German socialists rose and drove the war-lord from
his throne. It was the very thing the Oligarchy had played for--the
destruction of its great rival in the world-market. With the German
Emperor out of the way, Germany would have no surplus to sell
abroad. By the very nature of the socialist state, the German
population would consume all that it produced. Of course, it would
trade abroad certain things it produced for things it did not
produce; but this would be quite different from an unconsumable
surplus.

'I'll wager the Oligarchy finds justification,' Ernest said, when
its treachery to the German Emperor became known. 'As usual, the
Oligarchy will believe it has done right.'

And sure enough. The Oligarchy's public defence for the act was
that it had done it for the sake of the American people whose
interests it was looking out for. It had flung its hated rival
out of the world market and enabled us to dispose of our surplus
in that market.

'And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that such
idiots really are managing our interests,' was Ernest's comment.
'They have enabled us to sell more abroad, which means that we'll
be compelled to consume less at home.'

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 fail 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
labor 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 text-book out of his Benevolent Feudalism.'⁸³

Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot discussion with
half a dozen labor 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 labor 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 boycott,' 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 labor. Labor 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.'84 '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 hide 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. 'Charity 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 are leaving the battle-field
like cowards.'

'I'm not saying anything,' O'Connor answered sullenly. 'Only I
guess we know what's best for us a little bit better than you
do.'

'And you don't care a cent 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' 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 on to 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 programme forever,'
I objected.

'Oh, it hasn't subsidized all of the unions. That's not necessary.
Here is what is going to happen. Wages are going to be advanced
and hours 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 railway men, machinists and engineers,
iron and steel workers, do all of the vitally essential work in
our machine civilization. Assured 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 robbed
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 and the
law of the land.

'Do you know what will happen to Farley⁸⁵ 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. Oh, it won't be called that; it will
be called enforcing the law of the land that compels the laborers
to work. It simply prolongs the fight, this treachery of the big
unions. Heaven only knows now where and when the Revolution will
triumph.'

'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 Heel will not be able to prevent
it, and in the end caste will destroy the Iron Heel. The oligarchs
have already developed caste among themselves; but wait until
the favored unions develop caste. The Iron Heel will use all its
power to prevent it, but it will fail.

'In the favored unions are the flower of the American workingmen.
They are strong, efficient men. They have become members of those
unions through competition for place. Every fit workman 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 castes, the members of the favored
unions, will strive to make their organizations into close corporations.
And they will succeed. Membership in the labor castes 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 castes, 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 castes 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 caste-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 oligarchies
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.⁸⁶

'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
worshippers 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 artists 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 cheap the cities of old time. And in
these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty.⁸⁷

'Thus will the surplus be constantly expended while labor does
the work. The building of these great works and cities will give
a starvation ration to millions of common laborers, for the enormous
bulk of the surplus will compel an equally enormous expenditure,
and the oligarchs will build for a thousand years--ay, 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 labor to tread upon and dwell within.⁸⁸

'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 labor 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 labor 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.

'Sing me to sleep,' he murmured whimsically. 'I have had a visioning,
and I wish to forget.'

IT WAS NEAR THE END OF January, 1913, that the changed attitude
of the Oligarchy toward the favored 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 will out. Members of the favored unions
told their wives, and the wives gossiped, and soon all the labor
world knew what had happened.

It was merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth
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 impossible. Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated
cases in the midst of a system of industrial strife; for if all
labor 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.89 And here and there this selfish policy worked successfully. In
charging it to the public, it was charged to the great mass of
unorganized labor and of weakly organized labor. These workers
actually paid the increased wages of their stronger brothers who
were members of unions that were labor monopolies. This idea,
as I say, was merely carried to its logical conclusion, on a large
scale, by the combination of the oligarchs and the favored unions.

As soon as the secret of the defection of the favored unions leaked
out, there were rumblings and mutterings in the labor world. Next,
the favored unions withdrew from the international organizations
and broke off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence.
The members of the favored 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 favored 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 favored unions, was
permitted to carry weapons. Violation of this law was made a high
misdemeanor and punished accordingly.

Outraged labor continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Caste
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 ostracized, while the corner groceryman 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 favored 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 science were specialized upon. Thus,
and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of this segregation
arose caste. The members of the favored unions became the aristocracy
of labor. They were set apart from the rest of labor. 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 cooperative 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, Coolie versus Samurai, and the coolie socialists were executed by tens of thousands.
Forty thousand were killed in the street-fighting of Tokio 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 colonies slip away from
her. So it was that the socialists succeeded in making Australia
and New Zealand into cooperative commonwealths. And it was for
the same reason that Canada was lost to the mother country. But
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 colonies, 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 a 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 labor 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 hundred and forty
and four thousand 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 waste places, from Florida to Alaska, the small groups
of Indians that survived were dancing ghost dances 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 wrought
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 socialists to back us, 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 fifty 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.'

WHEN IT CAME TIME FOR Ernest and me to go to Washington, father
did not accompany us. He had become enamoured 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 from his translating to take care of the three
of us. But father insisted on pursuing his favorite phantom, and
a protean phantom it was, judging from the jobs he worked at.
I shall never forget the evening he brought home his street pedler's
outfit of shoe-laces and suspenders, nor the time I 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 paper-box factory, and water carrier for
a street railway construction gang, and even joined the Dishwashers'
Union just before it fell to pieces.

I think the Bishop's example, so far as wearing apparel was concerned,
must have fascinated father, for he wore the cheap cotton shirt
of the laborer and the overalls with the 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 Ernest; and father's happiness
in our changed 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 to-day 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. Wickson.
In high glee father described the incident to us that evening.

'Wickson 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 cabman to drive on, and went away swearing horribly.
And 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 our Pell 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 programme 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. 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. How 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 agents provocateurs to work. Without
discussion, it was the agents provocateurs 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 agents-provocateurs 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. Twenty-eight hundred 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 militiamen were executed by drumhead court
martial. Ernest's prophecy was strikingly fulfilled in the cases
of Mr. Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen. Both were eligible for the militia,
and both were drafted to serve in the punitive expedition that
was despatched from California against the farmers of Missouri.
Mr. Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen 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 Grangers. 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. Their open mutiny, however,
was without doubt precipitated by the agents-provocateurs.

On the night of the April 22 they arose and murdered their officers,
only a small remnant of the latter escaping. This was beyond the
scheme of the Iron Heel, for the agents-provocateurs 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, forty thousand
soldiers of the regular army surrounded the malcontents. It was
a trap. The wretched militiamen 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 eye-witness, and he
said that the nearest any militiaman approached the machine-guns
was a hundred and fifty yards. The earth was carpeted with the
slain, and a final charge of cavalry, with trampling of horses'
hoofs, revolvers, and sabres, crushed the wounded into the ground.

Simultaneously with the destruction of the Grangers 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.
Pocock⁹⁰ 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 of removal from one part
of the country to another.

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
agents-provocateurs swarmed in our 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. We may have made mistakes, 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.⁹¹

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 labor castes and especially among the
telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into the army, the agents-provocateurs,
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 counterplot. And behind all,
ever menacing, was death, violent and terrible. Men and women
disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades. We saw them to-day.
To-morrow 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 countermined 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 were we
betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron Heel could offer money, leisure,
the joys and pleasures that waited 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 greater peril 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 new-born babes were sealed to it as of
old they had been sealed to the service of God. We were lovers
of Humanity.

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 pretences, 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 surfeiting on the
surplus⁹² We called these wretched people the people of the abyss,⁹³ 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 their 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.

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 jeered 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 is no Democratic Party. There are
no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers
and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely
in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the
while you wear 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 rapped 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, withal 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, some day
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
hell-fire 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 hell-fire 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 their 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 typhoid fever
in his hotel.

The trial was prompt and brief. The men were foredoomed. 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 rock it to its foundations. To-morrow, 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.⁹⁴

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. Wherefore
the Capitol had been packed with troops in anticipation. Since
we knew nothing about the bomb, and since a 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 sort. In the fevered imagination of fear they thought
they saw, that was all.

As Ernest said at the trial: 'Does it stand to 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 hurt 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 petards.'

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 instant 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 no withstanding 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 clew to
his identity. And now, at this late date, nothing remains but
for the affair to take its place among the mysteries of history.⁹⁵

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 Ernest lay in prison three thousand 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 effected 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 three
hundred 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 to California. It is laughable,
the way this was accomplished.

Although 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. Wickson--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. An
hour later Avis Everhard was no more. At that time one Felice
Van Verdighan, accompanied by two maids and a lap-dog, with another
maid for the lap-dog,⁹⁶ entered a drawing-room on a Pullman⁹⁷, and a few minutes later was speeding west.

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 Stole disappeared twelve years later, while Anna Roylston
still lives and plays an increasingly important part in the Revolution.⁹⁸

Without adventure we crossed the United States to California.
When the train stopped at Sixteenth Street Station, in Oakland,
we alighted, and there Felice Van Verdighan, with her two maids,
her lap dog, and her lap-dog's maid, disappeared forever. The
maids, 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 where
Ernest lay, and found comfort in the thought of nearness to him.
By dawn, what with the rowing of the fishermen, we made the Marin
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 chaparral into redwood canyons 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 madronos 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
then a 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 wake a 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 mountain side. I
knew every inch of the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned
the ranch; but he, too, had become a revolutionist, though 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 great glee
how they were wont 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 per cent 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. Wickson, who owned
the whole eastern and northern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, running
from the Spreckels estate to the divide of Bennett Valley. Out
of it he had made a magnificent deerpark, 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, Wickson'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 under 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 Ernest when he
joined me, was Wickson'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 fifty-pound sack of flour, tinned foods of all sorts,
cooking utensils, blankets, a canvas tarpaulin, 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 knolls. 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 knolls, a group of them, with all the seeming of having
been flung there from some careless Titan's hand. There was no
bed-rock in them. They 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 down stream 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 briers 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 had 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 as forty-five 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
a spring at the foot of a flat meadow. A hundred yards below the
hole the stream ran out into open country, joining the main stream
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 hauled 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 Wickson, in the stables near
the hunting lodge. In fact, it was on Wickson's horses that we
had ridden over Sonoma Mountain. For nearly twenty 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 sombrely 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 lese 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 S.L.P.
Then later, when the split came, I joined the local of the S.P.
I was working in a livery stable in San Francisco then. That was
before the Earthquake. I have paid my dues for twenty-two 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. Oh, believe me, we had many comforts. When Biedenbach,
the German terrorist, hid with us some time 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-souled terrorist, than
whom there is no comrade in the Revolution more fearfully misunderstood.
Comrade Biedenbach did not betray the Cause. Nor was he executed
by the comrades as is commonly supposed. This canard was circulated
by the creatures of the Oligarchy. Comrade Biedenbach 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 labored
for the Cause.⁹⁹

For nineteen years now the refuge that I selected had been almost
continuously occupied, and in 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 Wickson's 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, and I used to
set my watch by the whistle at the brickyards.¹⁰⁰

'YOU MUST MAKE YOURSELF over again,' Ernest wrote to me. 'You
must cease to be. You must become another woman--and not merely
in the clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes.
You must make yourself over again so that even I would not know
you--your voice, your gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage,
your walk, everything.'

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for hours in burying
forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman
whom 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 practised 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 with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise
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 expedients was being accumulated. This fund
became a sort of text-book that was passed on, a part of the curriculum,
as it were, of the school of Revolution.¹⁰¹

It was at this time that my father disappeared. His letters, which
had come to me regularly, ceased. He no longer appeared at our
Pell 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 clew to his end has been discovered.¹⁰²

Six lonely months I spent in the refuge, but they were not idle
months. Our organization went on apace, 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 organization of
the mouth-to-mouth propaganda; the organization, 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: Lora
Peterson, who disappeared in 1922, and Kate Bierce, who later
married Du Bois,¹⁰³ and who is still with us with eyes lifted to to-morrow's sun,
that heralds in the new age.

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
any one. 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.

Part way 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 sombre light burnt
in his eyes, and his huge, toil-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 else that I had become a revolutionist
inured 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, a
nightmare? or was I a revolutionist who had somewhere, somehow,
dreamed that in some former existence I have lived in Berkeley
and never known of life more violent than teas and dances, 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. There was Bishop Morehouse. In vain we searched for him
after our organization 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 in Stockton, and from there to the
one in the Santa Clara Valley called Agnews, 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 well
he revenged himself. Evading the guards, in the nighttime while
all were asleep, he blew the Pertonwaithe 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. Ballingford 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 wraith the
gaseous vertebrate described by Haeckel--the difference between
Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford 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.
'D'you remember Dallas, the superintendent?'

I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-face superintendent of
the Sierra Mills.

'Well, I got him first,' Donnelly said with pride. ''Twas after
that I joined the Reds.'

'But how comes it that you are here?' I queried. 'Your wife and
children?'

'Dead,' he answered. 'That's why. No,' he went on hastily, ''tis
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, 'tis revenge for my blasted manhood
I'm after. I was once Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman. But to-night
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 in the Mercenaries.¹⁰⁴ A member of the 'Frisco Reds pledged himself to twelve 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 sheaf
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-nigh 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 Anna
Roylston. 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 Roylston 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 heart-strings 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 Roylston 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
eight hundred 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.'¹⁰⁵

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 Iron
Heel, 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. Anna Roylston carried out the
execution.

Still another figure arises 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
Harbor 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 vicelike grip as he
prayed in a frenzy for 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 fainting
upon the floor. It is far easier to see brave men die than to
hear a coward beg for life.¹⁰⁶

BUT IN REMEMBERING THE old life I have run ahead of my story into
the new life. The wholesale jail delivery did not occur until
well along into 1915. Complicated as it was, it was carried through
without a hitch, and as a very creditable achievement it cheered
us on in our work. From Cuba to California, out of scores of jails,
military prisons, and fortresses, in a single night, we delivered
fifty-one of our fifty-two Congressmen, and in addition over three
hundred other leaders. There was not a single instance of miscarriage.
Not only did they escape, but every one of them won to the refuges
as planned. The one comrade Congressman we did not get was Arthur
Simpson, and he had already died in Cabanas after cruel tortures.

The eighteen 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 to-morrow'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. Biedenbach,
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 Biedenbach, 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 pallor, 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 yore, 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 Biedenbach
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 Biedenbach addressed me as Mary, and I turned and
answered him. Then 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. The
next moment 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-worshipper might
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. At first he was sceptical. 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 some one else. You
are two women, and therefore you are my harem. At any rate, we
are safe now. If the United States becomes too hot for us, why
I have qualified for citizenship in Turkey.'¹⁰⁷

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 under-world 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 mere gloomy conspirators.
We toiled hard and suffered greatly, filled the gaps in our ranks
and went on, and through all the labour 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.¹⁰⁸

Nor were we confined to the refuge itself. Often at night we rode
over the mountains for exercise, and we rode on Wickson's 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 Wickson's cream and butter,¹⁰⁹ and Ernest was not above shooting Wickson's quail and rabbits,
and, on occasion, his young bucks.

Indeed, it was a safe refuge. 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 Wickson. Now that he is dead. I
am free to speak. There was a nook on the bottom of the great
hole 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.¹¹⁰ I was so comfortable and secure that even his flaming lyrics
failed to stir me.

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 Wickson, 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, cap in hand, he was saying,
'I beg your pardon. I did not expect to find any one 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 clumsy, I am 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 descent. I recognized this with relief.

'For what purpose do you think I did it?' I countered. 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, Biedenbach, every polite and gentle, said
from behind him in a low voice, 'Hands up, my young sir.'

Young Wickson put his hands up first, then turned to confront
Biedenbach, who held a thirty-thirty automatic rifle on him. Wickson
was imperturbable.

'Oh, ho,' 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,'
Biedenbach 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 have heard of such things.'

'Come and see,' Biedenbach 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,' Wickson 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.

Biedenbach, with tears in his eyes, held that Wickson 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,
Biedenbach cried.

And so a decision was laughingly reached. We would keep Philip
Wickson 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 Biedenbach, 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, at twilight, came John Carlson, who demanded Wickson's
shoes.

The young man did not want to give up his shoes, and even offered
to fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer'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 trial, 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 Wickson 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 farther canyons 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 Biedenbach's 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 Wickson, 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-launch. 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 loath 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
Wickson 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.¹¹¹

DURING THE LONG PERIOD Of our stay in the refuge, we were kept
closely in touch with what was happening in the world without,
and we were learning thoroughly the strength of the Oligarchy
with which we were at war. Out of the flux of transition the new
institutions were forming more definitely and taking on the appearance
and attributes of permanence. The oligarchs had succeeded in devising
a governmental machine, as intricate as it was vast, that worked--and
this despite all our efforts to clog and hamper.

This was a surprise to many of the revolutionists. They had not
conceived it possible. Nevertheless the work of the country went
on. The men toiled in the mines and fields--perforce they were
no more than slaves. As for the vital industries, everything prospered.
The members of the great labor castes were contented and worked
on merrily. For the first time in their lives they knew industrial
peace. No more were they worried by slack times, strike and lockout,
and the union label. They lived in more comfortable homes and
in delightful cities of their own- delightful compared with the
slums and ghettos in which they had formerly dwelt. They had better
food to eat, less hours of labor, more holidays, and a greater
amount and variety of interests and pleasures. And for their less
fortunate brothers and sisters, the unfavored laborers, the driven
people of the abyss, they cared nothing. An age of selfishness
was dawning upon mankind. And yet this is not altogether true.
The labor castes were honeycombed by our agents--men whose eyes
saw, beyond the belly-need, the radiant figure of liberty and
brotherhood.

Another great institution that had taken form and was working
smoothly was the Mercenaries. This body of soldiers had been evolved
out of the old regular army and was now a million strong, to say
nothing of the colonial forces. The Mercenaries constituted a
race apart. They dwelt in cities of their own which were practically
self-governed, and they were granted many privileges. By them
a large portion of the perplexing surplus was consumed. They were
losing all touch and sympathy with the rest of the people, and,
in fact, were developing their own class morality and consciousness.
And yet we had thousands of our agents among them.¹¹²

The oligarchs themselves were going through a remarkable and,
it must be confessed, unexpected development. As a class, they
disciplined themselves. Every member had his work to do in the
world, and this work he was compelled to do. There were no more
idle-rich young men. Their strength was used to give united strength
to the Oligarchy. They served as leaders of troops and as lieutenants
and captains of industry. They found careers in applied science,
and many of them became great engineers. They went into the multitudinous
divisions of the government, took service in the colonial possessions,
and by tens of thousands went into the various secret services.
They were, I may say, apprenticed to education, to art, to the
church, to science, to literature; and in those fields they served
the important function of moulding the thought processes of the
nation in the direction of the perpetuity of the Oligarchy.

They were taught, and later they in turn taught, that what they
were doing was right. They assimilated the aristocratic idea from
the moment they began, as children, to receive impressions of
the world. The aristocratic idea was woven into the making of
them until it became bone of them and flesh of them. They looked
upon themselves as wild animal trainers, rulers of beasts. From
beneath their feet rose always the subterranean rumbles of revolt.
Violent death ever stalked in their midst; bomb and knife and
bullet were looked upon as so many fangs of the roaring abysmal
beast they must dominate if humanity were to persist. They were
the saviours of humanity, and they regarded themselves as heroic
and sacrificing laborers for the highest good.

They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization.
It was their belief that if ever they weakened, the great beast
would ingulf them and everything of beauty and wonder and joy
and good in its cavernous and slime-dripping maw. Without them,
anarchy would reign and humanity would drop backward into the
primitive night out of which it had so painfully emerged. The
horrid picture of anarchy was held always before their child's
eyes until they, in turn, obsessed by this cultivated fear, held
the picture of anarchy before the eyes of the children that followed
them. This was the beast to be stamped upon, and the highest duty
of the aristocrat was to stamp upon it. In short, they alone,
by their unremitting toil and sacrifice, stood between weak humanity
and the all-devouring beast; and they believed it, firmly believed
it.

I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical righteousness
of the whole oligarch class. This has been the strength of the
Iron Heel, and too many of the comrades have been slow or loath
to realize it. Many of them have ascribed the strength of the
Iron Heel to its system of reward and punishment. This is a mistake.
Heaven and hell may be the prime factors of zeal in the religion
of a fanatic; but for the great majority of the religious, heaven
and hell are incidental to right and wrong. Love of the right,
desire for the right, unhappiness with anything less than the
right--in short, right conduct, is the prime factor of religion.
And so with the Oligarchy. Prisons, banishment and degradation,
honors and palaces and wonder-cities, are all incidental. The
great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are
doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression
and injustice in Which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted.
The point is that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in
its satisfied conception of its own righteousness.¹¹³

For that matter, the strength of the Revolution, during these
frightful twenty years, has resided in nothing else than the sense
of righteousness. In no other way can be explained our sacrifices
and martyrdoms. For no other reason did Rudolph Mendenhall flame
out his soul for the Cause and sing his wild swan-song that last
night of life. For no other reason did Hurlbert die under torture,
refusing to the last to betray his comrades. For no other reason
has Anna Roylston refused blessed motherhood. For no other reason
has John Carlson been the faithful and unrewarded custodian of
the Glen Ellen Refuge. It does not matter, young or old, man or
woman, high or low, genius or clod, go where one will among the
comrades of the Revolution, the motor-force will be found to be
a great and abiding desire for the right.

But I have run away from my narrative. Ernest and I well understood,
before we left the refuge, how the strength of the Iron Heel was
developing. The labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes
of secret agents and police of various sorts were all pledged
to the Oligarchy. In the main, and ignoring the loss of liberty,
they were better off than they had been. On the other hand, the
great helpless mass of the population, the people of the abyss,
was sinking into a brutish apathy of content with misery. Whenever
strong proletarians asserted their strength in the midst of the
mass, they were drawn away from the mass by the oligarchs and
given better conditions by being made members of the labor castes
or of the Mercenaries. Thus discontent was lulled and the proletariat
robbed of its natural leaders.

The condition of the people of the abyss was pitiable. Common
school education, so far as they were concerned, had ceased. They
lived like beasts in great squalid labor-ghettos, festering in
misery and degradation. All their old liberties were gone. They
were labor-slaves. Choice of work was denied them. Likewise was
denied them the right to move from place to place, or the right
to bear or possess arms. They were not land serfs like the farmers.
They were machine-serfs and labor-serfs. When unusual needs arose
for them, such as the building of the great highways and air-lines,
of canals, tunnels, subways, and fortifications, levies were made
on the labor-ghettos, and tens of thousands of serfs, willy-nilly,
were transported to the scene of operations. Great armies of them
are toiling now at the building of Ardis, housed in wretched barracks
where family life cannot exist, and where decency is displaced
by dull bestiality. In all truth, there in the labor-ghettos is
the roaring abysmal beast the oligarchs fear so dreadfully--but
it is the beast of their own making. In it they will not let the
ape and tiger die.

And just now the word has gone forth that new levies are being
imposed for the building of Asgard, the projected wonder-city
that will far exceed Ardis when the latter is completed.¹¹⁴ We of the Revolution will go on with that great work, but it
will not be done by the miserable serfs. The walls and towers
and shafts of that fair city will arise to the sound of singing,
and into its beauty and wonder will be woven, not sighs and groans,
but music and laughter.

Ernest was madly impatient to be out in the world and doing, for
our ill-fated First Revolt, that had miscarried in the Chicago
Commune, was ripening fast. Yet he possessed his soul with patience,
and during this time of his torment, when Hadly, who had been
brought for the purpose from Illinois, made him over into another
man¹¹⁵ he revolved great plans in his head for the organization of the
learned proletariat, and for the maintenance of at least the rudiments
of education amongst the people of the abyss--all this of course
in the event of the First Revolt being a failure.

It was not until January, 1917, that we left the refuge. All had
been arranged. We took our place at once as agents-provocateurs
in the scheme of the Iron Heel. I was supposed to be Ernest's
sister. By oligarchs and comrades on the inside who were high
in authority, place had been made for us, we were in possession
of all necessary documents, and our pasts were accounted for.
With help on the inside, this was not difficult, for in that shadow-world
of secret service identity was nebulous. Like ghosts the agents
came and went, obeying commands, fulfilling duties, following
clews, making their reports often to officers they never saw or
cooperating with other agents they had never seen before and would
never see again.

AS AGENTS-PROVOCATEURS, not alone were we able to travel a great
deal, but our very work threw us in contact with the proletariat
and with our comrades, the revolutionists. Thus we were in both
camps at the same time, ostensibly serving the Iron Heel and secretly
working with all our might for the Cause. There were many of us
in the various secret services of the Oligarchy, and despite the
shakings-up and reorganizations the secret services have undergone,
they have never been able to weed all of us out.

Ernest had largely planned the First Revolt, and the date set
had been somewhere early in the spring of 1918. In the fall of
1917 we were not ready; much remained to be done, and when the
Revolt was precipitated, of course it was doomed to failure. The
plot of necessity was frightfully intricate, and anything premature
was sure to destroy it. This the Iron Heel foresaw and laid its
schemes accordingly.

We had planned to strike our first blow at the nervous system
of the Oligarchy. The latter had remembered the general strike,
and had guarded against the defection of the telegraphers by installing
wireless stations, in the control of the Mercenaries. We, in turn,
had countered this move. When the signal was given, from every
refuge, all over the land, and from the cities, and towns, and
barracks, devoted comrades were to go forth and blow up the wireless
stations. Thus at the first shock would the Iron Heel be brought
to earth and lie practically dismembered.

At the same moment, other comrades were to blow up the bridges
and tunnels and disrupt the whole network of railroads. Still
further, other groups of comrades, at the signal, were to seize
the officers of the Mercenaries and the police, as well as all
Oligarchs of unusual ability or who held executive positions.
Thus would the leaders of the enemy be removed from the field
of the local battles that would inevitably be fought all over
the land.

Many things were to occur simultaneously when the signal went
forth. The Canadian and Mexican patriots, who were far stronger
than the Iron Heel dreamed, were to duplicate our tactics. Then
there were comrades (these were the women, for the men would be
busy elsewhere) who were to post the proclamations from our secret
presses. Those of us in the higher employ of the Iron Heel were
to proceed immediately to make confusion and anarchy in all our
departments. Inside the Mercenaries were thousands of our comrades.
Their work was to blow up the magazines and to destroy the delicate
mechanism of all the war machinery. In the cities of the Mercenaries
and of the labor castes similar programmes of disruption were
to be carried out.

In short, a sudden, colossal, stunning blow was to be struck.
Before the paralyzed Oligarchy could recover itself, its end would
have come. It would have meant terrible times and great loss of
life, but no revolutionist hesitates at such things. Why, we even
depended much, in our plan, on the unorganized people of the abyss.
They were to be loosed on the palaces and cities of the masters.
Never mind the destruction of life and property. Let the abysmal
brute roar and the police and Mercenaries slay. The abysmal brute
would roar anyway, and the police and Mercenaries would slay anyway.
It would merely mean that various dangers to us were harmlessly
destroying one another. In the meantime we would be doing our
own work, largely unhampered, and gaining control of all the machinery
of society.

Such was our plan, every detail of which had to be worked out
in secret, and, as the day drew near, communicated to more and
more comrades. This was the danger point, the stretching of the
conspiracy. But that danger-point was never reached. Through its
spy-system the Iron Heel got wind of the Revolt and prepared to
teach us another of its bloody lessons. Chicago was the devoted
city selected for the instruction, and well were we instructed.

Chicago¹¹⁶ was the ripest of all--Chicago which of old time was the city
of blood and which was to earn anew its name. There the revolutionary
spirit was strong. Too many bitter strikes had been curbed there
in the days of capitalism for the workers to forget and forgive.
Even the labor castes of the city were alive with revolt. Too
many heads had been broken in the early strikes. Despite their
changed and favorable conditions, their hatred for the master
class had not died. This spirit had infected the Mercenaries,
of which three regiments in particular were ready to come over
to us en masse.

Chicago had always been the storm-centre of the conflict between
labor and capital, a city of street-battles and violent death,
with a class-conscious capitalist organization and a class-conscious
workman organization, where, in the old days, the very school-teachers
were formed into labor unions and affiliated with the hod-carriers
and brick layers in the American Federation of Labor. And Chicago
became the storm-centre of the premature First Revolt.

The trouble was precipitated by the Iron Heel. It was cleverly
done. The whole population, including the favored labor castes,
was given a course of outrageous treatment. Promises and agreements
were broken, and most drastic punishments visited upon even petty
offenders. The people of the abyss were tormented out of their
apathy. In fact, the Iron Heel was preparing to make the abysmal
beast roar. And hand in hand with this, in all precautionary measures
in Chicago, the Iron Heel was inconceivably careless. Discipline
was relaxed among the Mercenaries that remained, while many regiments
had been withdrawn and sent to various parts of the country.

It did not take long to carry out this programme--only several
weeks. We of the Revolution caught vague rumors of the state of
affairs, but had nothing definite enough for an understanding.
In fact, we thought it was a spontaneous spirit of revolt that
would require careful curbing on our part, and never dreamed that
it was deliberately manufactured- and it had been manufactured
so secretly, from the very innermost circle of the Iron Heel,
that we had got no inkling. The counter-plot was an able achievement,
and ably carried out.

I was in New York when I received the order to proceed immediately
to Chicago. The man who gave me the order was one of the oligarchs,
I could tell that by his speech, though I did not know his name
nor see his face. His instructions were too clear for me to make
a mistake. Plainly I read between the lines that our plot had
been discovered, that we had been countermined. The explosion
was ready for the flash of powder, and countless agents of the
Iron Heel, including me, either on the ground or being sent there,
were to supply that flash. I flatter myself that I maintained
my composure under the keen eye of the oligarch, but my heart
was beating madly. I could almost have shrieked and flown at his
throat with my naked hands before his final, cold blooded instructions
were given.

Once out of his presence, I calculated the time. I had just the
moments to spare, if I were lucky, to get in touch with some local
leader before catching my train. Guarding against being trailed,
I made a rush of it for the Emergency Hospital. Luck was with
me, and I gained access at once to comrade Galvin, the surgeon-in-chief.
I started to gasp out my information, but he stopped me.

'I already know,' he said quietly, though his Irish eyes were
flashing. 'I knew what you had come for. I got the word fifteen
minutes ago, and I have already passed it along. Everything shall
be done here to keep the comrades quiet. Chicago is to be sacrificed,
but it shall be Chicago alone.'

'Have you tried to get word to Chicago?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'No telegraphic communication. Chicago is shut
off. It's going to be hell there.'

He paused a moment, and I saw his white hands clinch. Then he
burst out:

'By God! I wish I were going to be there!'

'There is yet a chance to stop it,' I said, 'if nothing happens
to the train and I can get there in time. Or if some of the other
secret-service comrades who have learned the truth can get there
in time.'

'You on the inside were caught napping this time,' he said.

I nodded my head humbly.

'It was very secret,' I answered. 'Only the inner chiefs could
have known up to to-day. We haven't yet penetrated that far, so
we couldn't escape being kept in the dark. If only Ernest were
here. Maybe he is in Chicago now, and all is well.'

Dr. Galvin shook his head. 'The last news I heard of him was that
he had been sent to Boston or New Haven. This secret service for
the enemy must hamper him a lot, but it's better than lying in
a refuge.'

I started to go, and Galvin wrung my hand.

'Keep a stout heart,' were his parting words. 'What if the First
Revolt is lost? There will be a second, and we will be wiser then.
Good by and good luck. I don't know whether I'll ever see you
again. It's going to be hell there, but I'd give ten years of
my life for your chance to be in it.'

The Twentieth Century¹¹⁷ left New York at six in the evening, and was supposed to arrive
at Chicago at seven next morning. But it lost time that night.
We were running behind another train. Among the travellers in
my Pullman was comrade Hartman, like myself in the secret service
of the Iron Heel. He it was who told me of the train that immediately
preceded us. It was an exact duplicate of our train, though it
contained no passengers. The idea was that the empty train should
receive the disaster were an attempt made to blow up the Twentieth
Century. For that matter there were very few people on the train--only
a baker's dozen in our car.

'There must be some big men on board,' Hartman concluded. 'I noticed
a private car on the rear.'

Night had fallen when we made our first change of engine, and
I walked down the platform for a breath of fresh air and to see
what I could see. Through the windows of the private car I caught
a glimpse of three men whom I recognized. Hartman was right. One
of the men was General Altendorff; and the other two were Mason
and Vanderbold, the brains of the inner circle of the Oligarchy's
secret service.

It was a quiet moonlight night, but I tossed restlessly and could
not sleep. At five in the morning I dressed and abandoned my bed.

I asked the man in the dressing-room how late the train was, and
she told me two hours. She was a mulatto woman, and I noticed
that her face was haggard, with great circles under the eyes,
while the eyes themselves were wide with some haunting fear.

'What is the matter?' I asked.

'Nothing, miss; I didn't sleep well, I guess,' was her reply.

I looked at her closely, and tried her with one of our signals.
She responded, and I made sure of her.

'Something terrible is going to happen in Chicago,' she said.
'There's that fake¹¹⁸ train in front of us. That and the troop-trains have made us
late.'

'Troop-trains?' I queried.

She nodded her head. 'The line is thick with them. We've been
passing them all night. And they're all heading for Chicago. And
bringing them over the air-line--that means business.

'I've a lover in Chicago,' she added apologetically. 'He's one
of us, and he's in the Mercenaries, and I'm afraid for him.'

Poor girl. Her lover was in one of the three disloyal regiments.

Hartman and I had breakfast together in the dining car, and I
forced myself to eat. The sky had clouded, and the train rushed
on like a sullen thunderbolt through the gray pall of advancing
day. The very negroes that waited on us knew that something terrible
was impending. Oppression sat heavily upon them; the lightness
of their natures had ebbed out of them; they were slack and absent-minded
in their service, and they whispered gloomily to one another in
the far end of the car next to the kitchen. Hartman was hopeless
over the situation.

'What can we do?' he demanded for the twentieth time, with a helpless
shrug of the shoulders.

He pointed out of the window. 'See, all is ready. You can depend
upon it that they're holding them like this, thirty or forty miles
outside the city, on every road.'

He had reference to troop-trains on the side-track. The soldiers
were cooking their breakfasts over fires built on the ground beside
the track, and they looked up curiously at us as we thundered
past without slackening our terrific speed.

All was quiet as we entered Chicago. It was evident nothing had
happened yet. In the suburbs the morning papers came on board
the train. There was nothing in them, and yet there was much in
them for those skilled in reading between the lines that it was
intended the ordinary reader should read into the text. The fine
hand of the Iron Heel was apparent in every column. Glimmerings
of weakness in the armor of the Oligarchy were given. Of course,
there was nothing definite. It was intended that the reader should
feel his way to these glimmerings. It was cleverly done. As fiction,
those morning papers of October 27 were masterpieces.

The local news was missing. This in itself was a masterstroke.
It shrouded Chicago in mystery, and it suggested to the average
Chicago reader that the Oligarchy did not dare give the local
news. Hints that were untrue, of course, were given of insubordination
all over the land, crudely disguised with complacent references
to punitive measures to be taken. There were reports of numerous
wireless stations that had been blown up, with heavy rewards offered
for the detection of the perpetrators. Of course no wireless stations
had been blown up. Many similar outrages, that dovetailed with
the plot of the revolutionists, were given. The impression to
be made on the minds of the Chicago comrades was that the general
Revolt was beginning, albeit with a confusing miscarriage in many
details. It was impossible for one uninformed to escape the vague
yet certain feeling that all the land was ripe for the revolt
that had already begun to break out.

It was reported that the defection of the Mercenaries in California
had become so serious that half a dozen regiments had been disbanded
and broken, and that their members with their families had been
driven from their own city and on into the labor-ghettos. And
the California Mercenaries were in reality the most faithful of
all to their salt! But how was Chicago, shut off from the rest
of the world, to know? Then there was a ragged telegram describing
an outbreak of the populace in New York City, in which the labor
castes were joining, concluding with the statement (intended to
be accepted as a bluff¹¹⁹) that the troops had the situation in hand.

And as the oligarchs had done with the morning papers, so had
they done in a thousand other ways. These we learned afterward,
as, for example, the secret messages of the oligarchs, sent with
the express purpose of leaking to the ears of the revolutionists,
that had come over the wires, now and again, during the first
part of the night.

'I guess the Iron Heel won't need our services,' Hartman remarked,
putting down the paper he had been reading, when the train pulled
into the central depot. 'They wasted their time sending us here.
Their plans have evidently prospered better than they expected.
Hell will break loose any second now.'

He turned and looked down the train as we alighted.

'I thought so,' he muttered. 'They dropped that private car when
the papers came aboard.'

Hartman was hopelessly depressed. I tried to cheer him up, but
he ignored my effort and suddenly began talking very hurriedly,
in a low voice, as we passed through the station. At first I could
not understand.

'I have not been sure,' he was saying, 'and I have told no one.
I have been working on it for weeks, and I cannot make sure. Watch
out for Knowlton. I suspect him. He knows the secrets of a score
of our refuges. He carries the lives of hundreds of us in his
hands, and I think he is a traitor. It's more a feeling on my
part than anything else. But I thought I marked a change in him
a short while back. There is the danger that he has sold us out,
or is going to sell us out. I am almost sure of it. I wouldn't
whisper my suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don't think I'll
leave Chicago alive. Keep your eye on Knowlton. Trap him. Find
out. I don't know anything more. It is only an intuition, and
so far I have failed to find the slightest clew.' We were just
stepping out upon the sidewalk. 'Remember,' Hartman concluded
earnestly. 'Keep your eyes upon Knowlton.'

And Hartman was right. Before a month went by Knowlton paid for
his treason with his life. He was formally executed by the comrades
in Milwaukee.

All was quiet on the streets--too quiet. Chicago lay dead. There
was no roar and rumble of traffic. There were not even cabs on
the streets. The surface cars and the elevated were not running.
Only occasionally, on the sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians,
and these pedestrians did not loiter. They went their ways with
great haste and definiteness, withal there was a curious indecision
in their movements, as though they expected the buildings to topple
over on them or the sidewalks to sink under their feet or fly
up in the air. A few gamins, however, were around, in their eyes
a suppressed eagerness in anticipation of wonderful and exciting
things to happen.

From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of an explosion
came to our ears. That was all. Then quiet again, though the gamins
had startled and listened, like young deer, at the sound. The
doorways to all the buildings were closed; the shutters to the
shops were up. But there were many police and watchmen in evidence,
and now and again automobile patrols of the Mercenaries slipped
swiftly past.

Hartman and I agreed that it was useless to report ourselves to
the local chiefs of the secret service. Our failure so to report
would be excused, we knew, in the light of subsequent events.
So we headed for the great labor-ghetto on the South Side in the
hope of getting in contact with some of the comrades. Too late!
We knew it. But we could not stand still and do nothing in those
ghastly, silent streets. Where was Ernest? I was wondering. What
was happening in the cities of the labor castes and Mercenaries?
In the fortresses?

As if in answer, a great screaming roar went up, dim with distance,
punctuated with detonation after detonation.

'It's the fortresses,' Hartman said. 'God pity those three regiments!'

At a crossing we noticed, in the direction of the stockyards,
a gigantic pillar of smoke. At the next crossing several similar
smoke pillars were rising skyward in the direction of the West
Side. Over the city of the Mercenaries we saw a great captive
war-balloon that burst even as we looked at it, and fell in flaming
wreckage toward the earth. There was no clew to that tragedy of
the air. We could not determine whether the balloon had been manned
by comrades or enemies. A vague sound came to our ears, like the
bubbling of a gigantic caldron a long way off, and Hartman said
it was machine-guns and automatic rifles.

And still we walked in immediate quietude. Nothing was happening
where we were. The police and the automobile patrols went by,
and once half a dozen fire-engines, returning evidently from some
conflagration. A question was called to the fireman by an officer
in an automobile, and we heard one shout in reply: 'No water!
They've blown up the mains!'

'We've smashed the water supply,' Hartman cried excitedly to me.
'If we can do all this in a premature, isolated, abortive attempt,
what can't we do in a concerted, ripened effort all over the land?'

The automobile containing the officer who had asked the question
darted on. Suddenly there was a deafening roar. The machine, with
its human freight, lifted in an upburst of smoke, and sank down
a mass of wreckage and death.

Hartman was jubilant. 'Well done! well done!' he was repeating,
over and over, in a whisper. 'The proletariat gets its lesson
to-day, but it gives one, too.'

Police were running for the spot. Also, another patrol machine
had halted. As for myself, I was in a daze. The suddenness of
it was stunning. How had it happened? I knew not how, and yet
I had been looking directly at it. So dazed was I for the moment
that I was scarcely aware of the fact that we were being held
up by the police. I abruptly saw that a policeman was in the act
of shooting Hartman. But Hartman was cool and was giving the proper
passwords. I saw the levelled revolver hesitate, then sink down,
and heard the disgusted grunt of the policeman. He was very angry,
and was cursing the whole secret service. It was always in the
way, he was averring, while Hartman was talking back to him and
with fitting secret-service pride explaining to him the clumsiness
of the police.

The next moment I knew how it had happened. There was quite a
group about the wreck, and two men were just lifting up the wounded
officer to carry him to the other machine. A panic seized all
of them, and they scattered in every direction, running in blind
terror, the wounded officer, roughly dropped, being left behind.
The cursing policeman alongside of me also ran, and Hartman and
I ran, too, we knew not why, obsessed with the same blind terror
to get away from that particular spot.

Nothing really happened then, but everything was explained. The
flying men were sheepishly coming back, but all the while their
eyes were raised apprehensively to the many-windowed, lofty buildings
that towered like the sheer walls of a canyon on each side of
the street. From one of those countless windows the bomb had been
thrown, but which window? There had been no second bomb, only
a fear of one.

Thereafter we looked with speculative comprehension at the windows.
Any of them contained possible death. Each building was a possible
ambuscade. This was warfare in that modern jungle, a great city.
Every street was a canyon, every building a mountain. We had not
changed much from primitive man, despite the war automobiles that
were sliding by.

Turning a corner, we came upon a woman. She was lying on the pavement,
in a pool of blood. Hartman bent over and examined her. As for
myself, I turned deathly sick. I was to see many dead that day,
but the total carnage was not to affect me as did this first forlorn
body lying there at my feet abandoned on the pavement. 'Shot in
the breast,' was Hartman's report. Clasped in the hollow of her
arm, as a child might be clasped, was a bundle of printed matter.
Even in death she seemed loath to part with that which had caused
her death; for when Hartman had succeeded in withdrawing the bundle,
we found that it consisted of large printed sheets, the proclamations
of the revolutionists.

'A comrade,' I said.

But Hartman only cursed the Iron Heel, and we passed on. Often
we were halted by the police and patrols, but our passwords enabled
us to proceed. No more bombs fell from the windows, the last pedestrians
seemed to have vanished from the streets, and our immediate quietude
grew more profound; though the gigantic caldron continued to bubble
in the distance, dull roars of explosions came to us from all
directions, and the smoke-pillars were towering more ominously
in the heavens.

SUDDENLY A CHANGE CAME over the face of things. A tingle of excitement
ran along the air. Automobiles fled past, two, three, a dozen,
and from them warnings were shouted to us. One of the machines
swerved wildly at high speed half a block down, and the next moment,
already left well behind it, the pavement was torn into a great
hole by a bursting bomb. We saw the police disappearing down the
cross-streets on the run, and knew that something terrible was
coming. We could hear the rising roar of it.

'Our brave comrades are coming,' Hartman said.

We could see the front of their column filling the street from
gutter to gutter, as the last war-automobile fled past. The machine
stopped for a moment just abreast of us. A soldier leaped from
it, carrying something carefully in his hands. This, with the
same care, he deposited in the gutter. Then he leaped back to
his seat and the machine dashed on, took the turn at the corner,
and was gone from sight. Hartman ran to the gutter and stooped
over the object.

'Keep back,' he warned me.

I could see he was working rapidly with his hands. When he returned
to me the sweat was heavy on his forehead.

'I disconnected it,' he said, 'and just in the nick of time. The
soldier was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't
give it enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now it
won't explode at all.'

Everything was happening rapidly now. Across the street and half
a block down, high up in a building, I could see heads peering
out. I had just pointed them out to Hartman, when a sheet of flame
and smoke ran along that portion of the face of the building where
the heads had appeared, and the air was shaken by the explosion.
In places the stone facing of the building was torn away, exposing
the iron construction beneath. The next moment similar sheets
of flame and smoke smote the front of the building across the
street opposite it. Between the explosions we could hear the rattle
of the automatic pistols and rifles. For several minutes this
mid-air battle continued, then died out. It was patent that our
comrades were in one building, that Mercenaries were in the other,
and that they were fighting across the street. But we could not
tell which was which--which building contained our comrades and
which the Mercenaries.

By this time the column on the street was almost on us. As the
front of it passed under the warring buildings, both went into
action again--one building dropping bombs into the street, being
attacked from across the street, and in return replying to that
attack. Thus we learned which building was held by our comrades,
and they did good work, saving those in the street from the bombs
of the enemy.

Hartman gripped my arm and dragged me into a wide entrance.

'They're not our comrades,' he shouted in my ear.

The inner doors to the entrance were locked and bolted. We could
not escape. The next moment the front of the column went by. It
was not a column, but a mob, an awful river that filled the street,
the people of the abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at last
and roaring for the blood of their masters. I had seen the people
of the abyss before, gone through its ghettos, and thought I knew
it; but I found that I was now looking on it for the first time.
Dumb apathy had vanished. It was now dynamic--a fascinating spectacle
of dread. It surged past my vision in concrete waves of wrath,
snarling and growling, carnivorous, drunk with whiskey from pillaged
warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunk with lust for blood- men,
women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious intelligences
with all the godlike blotted from their features and all the fiendlike
stamped in, apes and tigers, anaemic consumptives and great hairy
beasts of burden, wan faces from which vampire society had sucked
the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with physical grossness
and corruption, withered hags and death's-heads bearded like patriarchs,
festering youth and festering age, faces of fiends, crooked, twisted,
misshapen monsters blasted with the ravages of disease and all
the horrors of chronic innutrition--the refuse and the scum of
life, a raging, screaming, screeching, demoniacal horde.

And why not? The people of the abyss had nothing to lose but the
misery and pain of living. And to gain?- nothing, save one final,
awful glut of vengeance. And as I looked the thought came to me
that in that rushing stream of human lava were men, comrades and
heroes, whose mission had been to rouse the abysmal beast and
to keep the enemy occupied in coping with it.

And now a strange thing happened to me. A transformation came
over me. The fear of death, for myself and for others, left me.
I was strangely exalted, another being in another life. Nothing
mattered. The Cause for this one time was lost, but the Cause
would be here to morrow, the same Cause, ever fresh and ever burning.
And thereafter, in the orgy of horror that raged through the succeeding
hours, I was able to take a calm interest. Death meant nothing,
life meant nothing. I was an interested spectator of events, and,
sometimes swept on by the rush, was myself a curious participant.
For my mind had leaped to a star-cool altitude and grasped a passionless
transvaluation of values. Had it not done this, I know that I
should have died.

Half a mile of the mob had swept by when we were discovered. A
woman in fantastic rags, with cheeks cavernously hollow and with
narrow black eyes like burning gimlets, caught a glimpse of Hartman
and me. She let out a shrill shriek and bore in upon us. A section
of the mob tore itself loose and surged in after her. I can see
her now, as I write these lines, a leap in advance, her gray hair
flying in thin tangled strings, the blood dripping down her forehead
from some wound in the scalp, in her right hand a hatchet, her
left hand, lean and wrinkled, a yellow talon, gripping the air
convulsively. Hartman sprang in front of me. This was no time
for explanations. We were well dressed, and that was enough. His
fist shot out, striking the woman between her burning eyes. The
impact of the blow drove her backward, but she struck the wall
of her on-coming fellows and bounced forward again, dazed and
helpless, the brandished hatchet falling feebly on Hartman's shoulder.

The next moment I knew not what was happening. I was overborne
by the crowd. The confined space was filled with shrieks and yells
and curses. Blows were falling on me. Hands were ripping and tearing
at my flesh and garments. I felt that I was being torn to pieces.
I was being borne down, suffocated. Some strong hand gripped my
shoulder in the thick of the press and was dragging fiercely at
me. Between pain and pressure I fainted. Hartman never came out
of that entrance. He had shielded me and received the first brunt
of the attack. This had saved me, for the jam had quickly become
too dense for anything more than the mad gripping and tearing
of hands.

I came to in the midst of wild movement. All about me was the
same movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that
was sweeping me I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek
and biting sweetly in my lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely
aware of a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-lifting
me and dragging me along. Feebly my own limbs were helping me.
In front of me I could see the moving back of a man's coat. It
had been slit from top to bottom along the centre seam, and it
pulsed rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly with
every leap of the wearer. This phenomenon fascinated me for a
time, while my senses were coming back to me. Next I became aware
of stinging cheeks and nose, and could feel blood dripping on
my face. My hat was gone. My hair was down and flying, and from
the stinging of the scalp I managed to recollect a hand in the
press of the entrance that had torn at my hair. My chest and arms
were bruised and aching in a score of places.

My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and looked at the
man who was holding me up. He it was who had dragged me out and
saved me. He noticed my movement.

'It's all right!' he shouted hoarsely. 'I knew you on the instant.'

I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak I trod upon
something that was alive and that squirmed under my foot. I was
swept on by those behind and could not look down and see, and
yet I knew that it was a woman who had fallen and who was being
trampled into the pavement by thousands of successive feet.

'It's all right,' he repeated. 'I'm Garthwaite.'

He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded in remembering
him as the stalwart youth that had spent several months in our
Glen Ellen refuge three years before. He passed me the signals
of the Iron Heel's secret service, in token that he, too, was
in its employ.

'I'll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance,' he assured
me. 'But watch your footing. On your life don't stumble and go
down.'

All things happened abruptly on that day, and with an abruptness
that was sickening the mob checked itself. I came in violent collision
with a large woman in front of me (the man with the split coat
had vanished), while those behind collided against me. A devilish
pandemonium reigned,--shrieks, curses, and cries of death, while
above all rose the churning rattle of machine-guns and the put-a-put,
put-a put of rifles. At first I could make out nothing. People
were falling about me right and left. The woman in front doubled
up and went down, her hands on her abdomen in a frenzied clutch.
A man was quivering against my legs in a death-struggle.

It came to me that we were at the head of the column. Half a mile
of it had disappeared--where or how I never learned. To this day
I do not know what became of that half-mile of humanity--whether
it was blotted out by some frightful bolt of war, whether it was
scattered and destroyed piecemeal, or whether it escaped. But
there we were, at the head of the column instead of in its middle,
and we were being swept out of life by a torrent of shrieking
lead.

As soon as death had thinned the jam, Garthwaite, still grasping
my arm, led a rush of survivors into the wide entrance of an office
building. Here, at the rear, against the doors, we were pressed
by a panting, gasping mass of creatures. For some time we remained
in this position without a change in the situation.

'I did it beautifully,' Garthwaite was lamenting to me. 'Ran you
right into a trap. We had a gambler's chance in the street, but
in here there is no chance at all. It's all over but the shouting.
Vive la Revolution!'

Then, what he expected, began. The Mercenaries were killing without
quarter. At first, the surge back upon us was crushing, but as
the killing continued the pressure was eased. The dead and dying
went down and made room. Garthwaite put his mouth to my ear and
shouted, but in the frightful din I could not catch what he said.
He did not wait. He seized me and threw me down. Next he dragged
a dying woman over on top of me, and, with much squeezing and
shoving, crawled in beside me and partly over me. A mound of dead
and dying began to pile up over us, and over this mound, pawing
and moaning, crept those that still survived. But these, too,
soon ceased, and a semi-silence settled down, broken by groans
and sobs and sounds of strangulation.

I should have been crushed had it not been for Garthwaite. As
it was, it seemed inconceivable that I could bear the weight I
did and live. And yet, outside of pain, the only feeling I possessed
was one of curiosity. How was it going to end? What would death
be like? Thus did I receive my red baptism in that Chicago shambles.
Prior to that, death to me had been a theory; but ever afterward
death has been a simple fact that does not matter, it is so easy.

But the Mercenaries were not content with what they had done.
They invaded the entrance, killing the wounded and searching out
the unhurt that, like ourselves, were playing dead. I remember
one man they dragged out of a heap, who pleaded abjectly until
a revolver shot cut him short. Then there was a woman who charged
from a heap, snarling and shooting. She fired six shots before
they got her, though what damage she did we could not know. We
could follow these tragedies only by the sound. Every little while
flurries like this occurred, each flurry culminating in the revolver
shot that put an end to it. In the intervals we could hear the
soldiers talking and swearing as they rummaged among the carcasses,
urged on by their officers to hurry up.

At last they went to work on our heap, and we could feel the pressure
diminish as they dragged away the dead and wounded. Garthwaite
began uttering aloud the signals. At first he was not heard. Then
he raised his voice.

'Listen to that,' we heard a soldier say. And next the sharp voice
of an officer. 'Hold on there! Careful as you go!'

Oh, that first breath of air as we were dragged out! Garthwaite
did the talking at first, but I was compelled to undergo a brief
examination to prove service with the Iron Heel.

'Agents-provocateurs all right,' was the officer's conclusion.
He was a beardless young fellow, a cadet, evidently, of some great
oligarch family.

'It's a hell of a job,' Garthwaite grumbled. 'I'm going to try
and resign and get into the army. You fellows have a snap.'

'You've earned it,' was the young officer's answer. 'I've got
some pull, and I'll see if it can be managed. I can tell them
how I found you.'

He took Garthwaite's name and number, then turned to me.

'And you?'

'Oh, I'm going to be married,' I answered lightly, 'and then I'll
be out of it all.'

And so we talked, while the killing of the wounded went on. It
is all a dream, now, as I look back on it; but at the time it
was the most natural thing in the world. Garthwaite and the young
officer fell into an animated conversation over the difference
between so-called modern warfare and the present street-fighting
and sky-scraper fighting that was taking place all over the city.
I followed them intently, fixing up my hair at the same time and
pinning together my torn skirts. And all the time the killing
of the wounded went on. Sometimes the revolver shots drowned the
voices of Garthwaite and the officer, and they were compelled
to repeat what they had been saying.

I lived through three days of the Chicago Commune, and the vastness
of it and of the slaughter may be imagined when I say that in
all that time I saw practically nothing outside the killing of
the people of the abyss and the mid-air fighting between sky-scrapers.
I really saw nothing of the heroic work done by the comrades.
I could hear the explosions of their mines and bombs, and see
the smoke of their conflagrations, and that was all. The mid-air
part of one great deed I saw, however, and that was the balloon
attacks made by our comrades on the fortresses. That was on the
second day. The three disloyal regiments had been destroyed in
the fortresses to the last man. The fortresses were crowded with
Mercenaries, the wind blew in the right direction, and up went
our balloons from one of the office buildings in the city.

Now Biedenbach, after he left Glen Ellen, had invented a most
powerful explosive--'expedite' he called it. This was the weapon
the balloons used. They were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and
hastily made, but they did the work. I saw it all from the top
of an office building. The first balloon missed the fortresses
completely and disappeared into the country; but we learned about
it afterward. Burton and O'Sullivan were in it. As they were descending
they swept across a railroad directly over a troop-train that
was heading at full speed for Chicago. They dropped their whole
supply of expedite upon the locomotive. The resulting wreck tied
the line up for days. And the best of it was that, released from
the weight of expedite, the balloon shot up into the air and did
not come down for half a dozen miles, both heroes escaping unharmed.

The second balloon was a failure. Its flight was lame. It floated
too low and was shot full of holes before it could reach the fortresses.
Herford and Guinness were in it, and they were blown to pieces
along with the field into which they fell. Biedenbach was in despair--we
heard all about it afterward--and he went up alone in the third
balloon. He, too, made a low flight, but he was in luck, for they
failed seriously to puncture his balloon. I can see it now as
I did then, from the lofty top of the building--that inflated
bag drifting along the air, and that tiny speck of a man clinging
on beneath. I could not see the fortress, but those on the roof
with me said he was directly over it. I did not see the expedite
fall when he cut it loose. But I did see the balloon suddenly
leap up into the sky. An appreciable time after that the great
column of the explosion towered in the air, and after that, in
turn, I heard the roar of it. Biedenbach the gentle had destroyed
a fortress. Two other balloons followed at the same time. One
was blown to pieces in the air, the expedite exploding, and the
shock of it disrupted the second balloon, which fell prettily
into the remaining fortress. It couldn't have been better planned,
though the two comrades in it sacrificed their lives.

But to return to the people of the abyss. My experiences were
confined to them. They raged and slaughtered and destroyed all
over the city proper, and were in turn destroyed; but never once
did they succeed in reaching the city of the oligarchs over on
the west side. The oligarchs had protected themselves well. No
matter what destruction was wreaked in the heart of the city,
they, and their womenkind and children, were to escape hurt. I
am told that their children played in the parks during those terrible
days and that their favorite game was an imitation of their elders
stamping upon the proletariat.

But the Mercenaries found it no easy task to cope with the people
of the abyss and at the same time fight with the comrades. Chicago
was true to her traditions, and though a generation of revolutionists
was wiped out, it took along with it pretty close to a generation
of its enemies. Of course, the Iron Heel kept the figures secret,
but, at a very conservative estimate, at least one hundred and
thirty thousand Mercenaries were slain. But the comrades had no
chance. Instead of the whole country being hand in hand in revolt,
they were all alone, and the total strength of the Oligarchy could
have been directed against them if necessary. As it was, hour
after hour, day after day, in endless train loads, by hundreds
of thousands, the Mercenaries were hurled into Chicago.

And there were so many of the people of the abyss! Tiring of the
slaughter, a great herding movement was begun by the soldiers,
the intent of which was to drive the street mobs, like cattle,
into Lake Michigan. It was at the beginning of this movement that
Garthwaite and I had encountered the young officer. This herding
movement was practically a failure, thanks to the splendid work
of the comrades. Instead of the great host the Mercenaries had
hoped to gather together, they succeeded in driving no more than
forty thousand of the wretches into the lake. Time and again,
when a mob of them was well in hand and being driven along the
streets to the water, the comrades would create a diversion, and
the mob would escape through the consequent hole torn in the encircling
net.

'Garthwaite and I saw an example of this shortly after meeting
with the young officer. The mob of which we had been a part, and
which had been put in retreat, was prevented from escaping to
the south and east by strong bodies of troops. The troops we had
fallen in with had held it back on the west. The only outlet was
north, and north it went toward the lake, driven on from east
and west and south by machine-gun fire and automatics. Whether
it divined that it was being driven toward the lake, or whether
it was merely a blind squirm of the monster, I do not know; but
at any rate the mob took a cross street to the west, turned down
the next street, and came back upon its track, heading south toward
the great ghetto.

Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make our way westward
to get out of the territory of street-fighting, and we were caught
right in the thick of it again. As we came to the corner we saw
the howling mob bearing down upon us. Garthwaite seized my arm
and we were just starting to run, when he dragged me back from
in front of the wheels of half a dozen war automobiles, equipped
with machine-guns, that were rushing for the spot. Behind them
came the soldiers with their automatic rifles. By the time they
took position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as though
they would be overwhelmed before they could get into action.

Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle, but this scattered
fire had no effect in checking the mob. On it came, bellowing
with brute rage. It seemed the machine-guns could not get started.
The automobiles on which they were mounted blocked the street,
compelling the soldiers to find positions in, between, and on
the sidewalks. More and more soldiers were arriving, and in the
jam we were unable to get away. Garthwaite held me by the arm,
and we pressed close against the front of a building.

The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away when the machine-guns
opened up; but before that flaming sheet of death nothing could
live. The mob came on, but it could not advance. It piled up in
a heap, a mound, a huge and growing wave of dead and dying. Those
behind urged on, and the column, from gutter to gutter, telescoped
upon itself. Wounded creatures, men and women, were vomited over
the top of that awful wave and fell squirming down the face of
it till they threshed about under the automobiles and against
the legs of the soldiers. The latter bayoneted the struggling
wretches, though one I saw who gained his feet and flew at a soldier's
throat with his teeth. Together they went down, soldier and slave,
into the welter.

The firing ceased. The work was done. The mob had been stopped
in its wild attempt to break through. Orders were being given
to clear the wheels of the war-machines. They could not advance
over that wave of dead, and the idea was to run them down the
cross street. The soldiers were dragging the bodies away from
the wheels when it happened. We learned afterward how it happened.
A block distant a hundred of our comrades had been holding a building.
Across roofs and through buildings they made their way, till they
found themselves looking down upon the close-packed soldiers.
Then it was counter-massacre.

Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the top of the building.
The automobiles were blown to fragments, along with many soldiers.
We, with the survivors, swept back in mad retreat. Half a block
down another building opened fire on us. As the soldiers had carpeted
the street with dead slaves, so, in turn, did they themselves
become carpet. Garthwaite and I bore charmed lives. As we had
done before, so again we sought shelter in an entrance. But he
was not to be caught napping this time. As the roar of the bombs
died away, he began peering out.

'The mob's coming back!' he called to me. 'We've got to get out
of this!'

We fled, hand in hand, down the bloody pavement, slipping and
sliding, and making for the corner. Down the cross street we could
see a few soldiers still running. Nothing was happening to them.
The way was clear. So we paused a moment and looked back. The
mob came on slowly. It was busy arming itself with the rifles
of the slain and killing the wounded. We saw the end of the young
officer who had rescued us. He painfully lifted himself on his
elbow and turned loose with his automatic pistol.

'There goes my chance of promotion,' Garthwaite laughed, as a
woman bore down on the wounded man, brandishing a butcher's cleaver.
'Come on. It's the wrong direction, but we'll get out somehow.'

And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, prepared at every
cross street for anything to happen. To the south a monster conflagration
was filling the sky, and we knew that the great ghetto was burning.
At last I sank down on the sidewalk. I was exhausted and could
go no farther. I was bruised and sore and aching in every limb;
yet I could not escape smiling at Garthwaite, who was rolling
a cigarette and saying:

'I know I'm making a mess of rescuing you, but I can't get head
nor tail of the situation. It's all a mess. Every time we try
to break out, something happens and we're turned back. We're only
a couple of blocks now from where I got you out of that entrance.
Friend and foe are all mixed up. It's chaos. You can't tell who
is in those darned buildings. Try to find out, and you get a bomb
on your head. Try to go peaceably on your way, and you run into
a mob and are killed by machine-guns, or you run into the Mercenaries
and are killed by your own comrades from a roof. And on the top
of it all the mob comes along and kills you, too.'

He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette, and sat down
beside me.

'And I'm that hungry,' he added, 'I could eat cobblestones.'

The next moment he was on his feet again and out in the street
prying up a cobblestone. He came back with it and assaulted the
window of a store behind us.

'It's ground floor and no good,' he explained as he helped me
through the hole he had made; 'but it's the best we can do. You
get a nap and I'll reconnoitre. I'll finish this rescue all right,
but I want time, time, lots of it--and something to eat.'

It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he fixed me
up a couch of horse blankets in the private office well to the
rear. To add to my wretchedness a splitting headache was coming
on, and I was only too glad to close my eyes and try to sleep.

'I'll be back,' were his parting words. 'I don't hope to get an
auto, but I'll surely bring some grub,¹²⁰ anyway.'

And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three years. Instead
of coming back, he was carried away to a hospital with a bullet
through his lungs and another through the fleshy part of his neck.

I HAD NOT CLOSED MY EYES the night before on the Twentieth Century,
and what of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I
first awoke, it was night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had
lost my watch and had no idea of the time. As I lay with my eyes
closed, I heard the same dull sound of distant explosions. The
inferno was still raging. I crept through the store to the front.
The reflection from the sky of vast conflagrations made the street
almost as light as day. One could have read the finest print with
ease. From several blocks away came the crackle of small hand-bombs
and the churning of machine-guns, and from a long way off came
a long series of heavy explosions. I crept back to my horse blankets
and slept again.

When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me.
It was dawn of the second day. I crept to the front of the store.
A smoke pall, shot through with lurid gleams, filled the sky.
Down the opposite side of the street tottered a wretched slave.
One hand he held tightly against his side, and behind him he left
a bloody trail. His eyes roved everywhere, and they were filled
with apprehension and dread. Once he looked straight across at
me, and in his face was all the dumb pathos of the wounded and
hunted animal. He saw me, but there was no kinship between us,
and with him, at least, no sympathy of understanding; for he cowered
perceptibly and dragged himself on. He could expect no aid in
all God's world. He was a helot in the great hunt of helots that
the masters were making. All he could hope for, all he sought,
was some hole to crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp
clang of a passing ambulance at the corner gave him a start. Ambulances
were not for such as he. With a groan of pain he threw himself
into a doorway. A minute later he was out again and desperately
hobbling on.

I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite.
My headache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing.
It was by an effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes
and look at objects. And with the opening of my eyes and the looking
came intolerable torment. Also, a great pulse was beating in my
brain. Weak and reeling, I went out through the broken window
and down the street, seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly,
from the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived nightmare. My
memory of what happened in the succeeding hours is the memory
one would have of nightmare. Many events are focussed sharply
on my brain, but between these indelible pictures I retain are
intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in those intervals
I know not, and never shall know.

I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It
was the poor hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place.
How distinctly do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands
as he lay there on the pavement--hands that were more hoof and
claw than hands, all twisted and distorted by the toil of all
his days, with on the palms a horny growth of callous a half inch
thick. And as I picked myself up and started on, I looked into
the face of the thing and saw that it still lived; for the eyes,
dimly intelligent, were looking at me and seeing me.

After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merely
tottered on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was
a quiet street of the dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer
in the country would come upon a flowing stream. Only this stream
I gazed upon did not flow. It was congealed in death. From pavement
to pavement, and covering the sidewalks, it lay there, spread
out quite evenly, with only here and there a lump or mound of
bodies to break the surface. Poor driven people of the abyss,
hunted helots--they lay there as the rabbits in California after
a drive.¹²¹ Up the street and down I looked. There was no movement, no sound.
The quiet buildings looked down upon the scene from their many
windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that moved in that
dead stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strange writhing gesture
of agony, and with it lifted a head, gory with nameless horror,
that gibbered at me and then lay down again and moved no more.

I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side,
and the panic that smote me into consciousness as again I saw
the people of the abyss, but this time in a stream that flowed
and came on. And then I saw there was nothing to fear. The stream
moved slowly, while from it arose groans and lamentations, cursings,
babblings of senility, hysteria, and insanity; for these were
the very young and the very old, the feeble and the sick, the
helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto. The
burning of the great ghetto on the South Side had driven them
forth into the inferno of the street-fighting, and whither they
wended and whatever became of them I did not know and never learned.¹²²

I have faint memories of breaking a window and hiding in some
shop to escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also,
a bomb burst near me, once, in some still street, where, look
as I would, up and down, I could see no human being. But my next
sharp recollection begins with the crack of a rifle and an abrupt
becoming aware that I am being fired at by a soldier in an automobile.
The shot missed, and the next moment I was screaming and motioning
the signals. My memory of riding in the automobile is very hazy,
though this ride, in turn, is broken by one vivid picture. The
crack of the rifle of the soldier sitting beside me made me open
my eyes, and I saw George Milford, whom I had known in the Pell
Street days, sinking slowly down to the sidewalk. Even as he sank
the soldier fired again, and Milford doubled in, then flung his
body out, and fell sprawling. The soldier chuckled, and the automobile
sped on.

The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep
by a man who walked up and down close beside me. His face was
drawn and strained, and the sweat rolled down his nose from his
forehead. One hand was clutched tightly against his chest by the
other hand, and blood dripped down upon the floor as he walked.
He wore the uniform of the Mercenaries. From without, as through
thick walls, came the muffled roar of bursting bombs. I was in
some building that was locked in combat with some other building.

A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned
that it was two in the afternoon. My headache was no better, and
the surgeon paused from his work long enough to give me a powerful
drug that would depress the heart and bring relief. I slept again,
and the next I knew I was on top of the building. The immediate
fighting had ceased, and I was watching the balloon attack on
the fortresses. Some one had an arm around me and I was leaning
close against him. It came to me quite as a matter of course that
this was Ernest, and I found myself wondering how he had got his
hair and eyebrows so badly singed.

It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in that
terrible city. He had had no idea that I had left New York, and,
coming through the room where I lay asleep, could not at first
believe that it was I. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune.
After watching the balloon attack, Ernest took me down into the
heart of the building, where I slept the afternoon out and the
night. The third day we spent in the building, and on the fourth,
Ernest having got permission and an automobile from the authorities,
we left Chicago.

My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired. I
lay back against Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic
eyes watched the soldiers trying to get the machine out of the
city. Fighting was still going on, but only in isolated localities.
Here and there whole districts were still in possession of the
comrades, but such districts were surrounded and guarded by heavy
bodies of troops. In a hundred segregated traps were the comrades
thus held while the work of subjugating them went on. Subjugation
meant death, for no quarter was given, and they fought heroically
to the last man.¹²³

Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back
and sent us around. Once, the only way past two strong positions
of the comrades was through a burnt section that lay between.
From either side we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while
the automobile picked its way through smoking ruins and tottering
walls. Often the streets were blocked by mountains of debris that
compelled us to go around. We were in a labyrinth of ruin, and
our progress was slow.

The stockyards (ghetto, plant, and everything) were smouldering
ruins. Far off to the right a wide smoke haze dimmed the sky,-
the town of Pullman, the soldier chauffeur told us, or what had
been the town of Pullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had
driven the machine out there, with despatches, on the afternoon
of the third day. Some of the heaviest fighting had occurred there,
he said, many of the streets being rendered impassable by the
heaps of the dead.

Swinging around the shattered walls of a building, in the stockyards
district, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was
for all the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent
to us what had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it
had been swept, at right angles and point-blank range, by the
machine-guns drawn up on the cross street. But disaster had come
to the soldiers. A chance bomb must have exploded among them,
for the mob, checked until its dead and dying formed the wave,
had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living, fighting
slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay together, torn and mangled, around
and over the wreckage of the automobiles and guns.

Ernest sprang out. A familiar pair of shoulders in a cotton shirt
and a familiar fringe of white hair had caught his eye. I did
not watch him, and it was not until he was back beside me and
we were speeding on that he said:

'It was Bishop Morehouse.'

Soon we were in the green country, and I took one last glance
back at the smoke-filled sky. Faint and far came the low thud
of an explosion. Then I turned my face against Ernest's breast
and wept softly for the Cause that was lost. Ernest's arm about
me was eloquent with love.

'For this time lost, dear heart,' he said, 'but not forever. We
have learned. To-morrow the Cause will rise again, strong with
wisdom and discipline.'

The automobile drew up at a railroad station. Here we would catch
a train to New York. As we waited on the platform, three trains
thundered past, bound west to Chicago. They were crowded with
ragged, unskilled laborers, people of the abyss.

'Slave-levies for the rebuilding of Chicago,' Ernest said. 'You
see, the Chicago slaves are all killed.'

IT WAS NOT UNTIL ERNEST and I were back in New York, and after
weeks had elapsed, that we were able to comprehend thoroughly
the full sweep of the disaster that had befallen the Cause. The
situation was bitter and bloody. In many places, scattered over
the country, slave revolts and massacres had occurred. The roll
of the martyrs increased mightily. Countless executions took place
everywhere. The mountains and waste regions were filled with outlaws
and refugees who were being hunted down mercilessly. Our own refuges
were packed with comrades who had prices on their heads. Through
information furnished by its spies, scores of our refuges were
raided by the soldiers of the Iron Heel.

Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they retaliated with
terroristic tactics. The set-back to their hopes made them despairing
and desperate. Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with
us sprang into existence and caused us much trouble.¹²⁴ These misguided people sacrificed their own lives wantonly, very
often made our own plans go astray, and retarded our organization.

And through it all moved the Iron Heel, impassive and deliberate,
shaking up the whole fabric of the social structure in its search
for the comrades, combing out the Mercenaries, the labor castes,
and all its secret services, punishing without mercy and without
malice, suffering in silence all retaliations that were made upon
it, and filling the gaps in its fighting line as fast as they
appeared. And hand in hand with this, Ernest and the other leaders
were hard at work reorganizing the forces of the Revolution. The
magnitude of the task may be understood when it is taken into¹²⁵

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.'