The Iron Heel

ed 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

ed 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 t

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

en 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 cur

was still the custo

rac. They had not d

ms were museums, en

ust-demon was the lo

devices for catchi

for gettin

st 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 h

ew 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

written to me by Ernest twenty years

'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

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 dol

dred 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

e 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 li

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 h

wills was a pecul

cumulation of vast

se fortunes after d

. Will-making and w

s, like armor-makin

ng lawyers were cal

broken. But thes

ten by the very law

ss the delusion per

tely unbreakable wil

rations, clients and

pursuit like unto t

he mediaeval

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 imp

t. 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

ion 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 acce

zing literature tha

y misapprehend the n

as

ion 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 fu

reat 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 heroi

ne 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

t age were phrase s

is incomprehensible

reater than the

c were their minds t

ld negative the g

research and thoug

AN. The mere uttera

ter how sanely con

egeneration. Vast

hrases as "an honest

coinage of such ph

s of g

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, h

rtons* with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting,

ere private detectiv

g men of the capital

he Mercenaries o

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 ce

were patent lies, b

f the Middle Ages

difference lay

more harmful

1912, A.D., the gre

he belief that they

lots. In reality, t

ed POLITICAL MACH

ged the master capi

tion; but in a sh

t cheaper to own th

to hire the m

idity, except for business. I found none clean, noble, and alive, though I found many who were alive-with rottenness. Wha

bored him; morally and spiritually they had sickened him; so that he was glad to go back to

"let me tell you abo

omplacently superior to what he had charged. And I remembered what he had told me: that no indictment of their morality could shake

o 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 internati

ntent 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,

te, 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

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 o

he? Let us see. In the United States to-day there are fifteen million* people living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States to-day, in spite of all your so-called labor legislation,

n 1906, in a book

that time there were

tes living

ates Census of 1900

ere made public),

s placed at

ismanaged. 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 a

s 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

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 laughi

s own face was passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and for a moment could utter only incoherent sounds. The

ere 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

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

ore Colonel Van Gilbert had succeeded in sitting d

ime!" he ro

ominated the human tempest. By sheer compu

Gilbert. After that the rest of you can come at me-but one at a

ay 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 cann

ou cannot have learned anything since. Socialism has no more to do with the state of nature than has differential calculus with a Bi

Miss Brentwood's nerves. Her hysteria became violent, and she was helped, weeping

e 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 so

ds by twisting the law. Very good. Stick to it. You are quite a figure. You are a very good lawyer, but

may say. Such fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard of, undreamed of, impossible to believe-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 t

s face dark and twisted with anger, his panting chest, his writhing

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 specifi

peak. He was on his feet, flinging his arms, his rhetoric, and his control to the winds, alternately abusing Ernest fo

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 hangi

Colonel Van Gilbert cri

tually insulted. Insult, in its very nature, is emotional. Recover yourself. Give me an inte

or expression on his face, such as will appear on the

wered that charge." He turned to the other men who were anxious to speak. "And now it's your chance. Fire away

m. 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

or 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:

poke. He was the only one that was cool, and Ernest tr

u 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

ates. 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 chang

dded to man with indorsement and certitude. Their fac

will hunt the bear. We will not reply to the bear in words. Our reply shall be couched in terms

upon Ernest. The

be couched.* 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 hi

of thought, the fo

nic's Word Book" (1

an avowed and conf

hot, n. An argument

to the demands of

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 y

y?" Mr. Wickson broke in to demand. "Suppose we refuse to turn the

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

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 histo

he night with