CHAPTER II

CHALLENGES
Arrer 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.
“T’ll wager Dr. Hammerfield was never up against anything like it in his life,’”’ he laughed. ‘‘‘ The cour- tesies 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 22
. CHALLENGES 23
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 im- passioned 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 out-
24 THE IRON HEED
come 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 socio- logical 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 ana- lyzed their thoughts on 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
CHALLENGES 25
he was a descendant of the old line of Everhards that for over two hundred years had lived in America.! 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 him- self German and French, and at that time was earning a meagre living by translating scientific and philosophi- cal 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 my- self considering him as a lover, as a husband. I had always heard that the strength of men was an irresist- ible attraction to women; but hewas too strong. ‘‘No! no!” I eried 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 com- placency, shaking them out of their ruts of thinking.
1 The distinction between being native born and foreign born was sharp and invidious in those days.
26 THE IRON HEEL
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 antago- nism between labor and capital, the conflict of interest.
Father reported with glee Dr. Hammerfield’s judg- ment of Ernest, which was to the effect that he was ‘fan insolent young puppy, made bumptious by a little and very inadequate learning.”’” Also, Dr. Hammer- field 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. EHrnest’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
CHALLENGES 27
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 atmospnere of largeness. As he stopped to meet me, he betrayed a certain slight awk- wardness 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.
“‘T have been reading your ‘Working-class Philoso- phy,’”’ I said, and his eyes lighted in a pleased way.
“Of course,” he answered, “‘you took into considera- tion the audience to which it was addressed.”
“T did, and it is because I did that I have a quarrel with you,” I challenged.
“T, too, have a quarrel with you, Mr. Everhard,” Bishop Morehouse said.
Ernest shrugged his shoulders whimsically and ac- cepted a cup of tea.
The Bishop bowed and gave me precedence.
“You foment class hatred,” I said. ‘‘I consider it
2 This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three eenturies of the Iron Heel. ‘There are several copies of various editions in the National Library of Ardis.
28 THE IRON HEEL
wrong and criminal to appeal to all that is narrow and brutal in the working class. Class hatred is anti-social, and, it seems to me, anti-socialistic.”
“Not guilty,” he answered. ‘‘Class hatred is neither in the text nor in the spirit of anything I have ever written.”
“Oh!” I cried reproachfully, and reached for his book and opened it.
He sipped his tea and smiled at me while I ran over the pages.
‘‘Page one hundred and thirty-two,” I read aloud: ‘The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development between the wage- paying and the wage-paid classes.’”’
I looked at him triumphantly.
‘““No mention there of class hatred,’’ he smiled back.
“But,” I answered, ‘‘you say ‘class struggle.’”’
‘fA 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.
“T agree with you heartily,” he answered. “That is what we socialists are trying to bring about, — the
CHALLENGES 29
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 be- tween 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?”
30 THE IRON HEEL
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 working- men and the capital, money is earned.’ They divide between them this money that is earned. Capital’s
share is called ‘dividends.’ Labor’s share is called ‘wages.’””’
* In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the
means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the public
‘CHALLENGES 31
“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. This is the 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 ta walk. There isn’t a street car running.”
“Another strike?’’* the Bishop queried with alarm.
“Yes, they’re quarrelling over the division of the earnings of the street railways.”
Bishop Morehouse became excited. “Tt is wrong!” he cried. ‘“‘It is so short-sighted on
1 These quarrels were very common in those irrational and anarchic times.. Sometimes the laborers refused to work. Sometimes the capitalists refused to let the laborers work. In the violence and tur- bulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and many lives lost. All this is inconceivable to us— as inconceivable as another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the lower classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with
their wives.
32 THE IRON HEEL
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 re- marked 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. ‘‘Lats- sez-fatire, the let-alone policy of each for himself and devil take the hindmost. As Mr. Everhard said the
CHALLENGES 33
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 ob- jected.
“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.”
“‘T 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 pro- letariat.”’ *
“You never had the proletariat,’”? Ernest cried. “The proletariat has grown up outside the Church and
without the Church.’
1 Proletariat: Derived originally from the Latin proletarii, the name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of value to the state only as the rearers of offspring (proles); in other words, they were of no importance either for wealth, or position, or excep- tional ability.
D
34 THE IRON HEEL
“T 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.”
“T 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 capitalists, the Church was dumb. It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest. As Austin Lewis* 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.” The Church was dumb, then, and
* Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in the
fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a writer of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one of the Socialist leaders of the times.
? There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter half of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era. In such industrial hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.
CHALLENGES 35
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.”
“‘T 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 ac- cepted the challenge.
“Allright,” he said. ‘‘Letussee. 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 mo- ment, ‘‘Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you won- der that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your capitalistic congregations at the
36 THE IRON HEEL
working of children in the Southern cotton mills?* 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
1 Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the South- ern Church’s outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is known as the “War of the Rebellion.” Several such illustrations, culled from the documents of the times, are here appended. In 1835 a.p., the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved that: “slavery is recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments, and is not condemned by the authority of God.” ‘The Charleston Bap- tist Association issued the following, in an address, in 1835 a.p.: “The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly recognized by the Creator of all things, who is surely at liberty to vest the right of property over any object whomsoever He pleases.” The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote: “ Hz- tracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to that right. The right to buy and sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish policy instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New Testa- ment and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion that slavery is not immoral. Having established the point that the first African slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the slavery that exists in America was founded in right.”
It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have been struck by the Church a generation or so later in relation to the defence of capitalistic property. In the great museum at Asgard there is a book entitled “Essays in Application,’ written by Henry van Dyke. The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From what we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a Churchman. The