CHAPTER XVI.

THE END

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 22d of April 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. Pocock[1] 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.

[1] Albert Pocock, another of the notorious strike-breakers of earlier

years, who, to the day of his death, successfully held all the

coal-miners of the country to their task. He was succeeded by his son,

Lewis Pocock, and for five generations this remarkable line of

slave-drivers handled the coal mines. The elder Pocock, known as

Pocock I., has been described as follows: “A long, lean head,

semicircled by a fringe of brown and gray hair, with big cheek-bones

and a heavy chin, . . . a pale face, lustreless gray eyes, a metallic

voice, and a languid manner.” He was born of humble parents, and began

his career as a bartender. He next became a private detective for a

street railway corporation, and by successive steps developed into a

professional strikebreaker. Pocock V., the last of the line, was blown

up in a pump-house by a bomb during a petty revolt of the miners in

the Indian Territory. This occurred in 2073 A.D.

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.[2]

[2] These Fighting groups were modelled somewhat after the Fighting

Organization of the Russian Revolution, and, despite the unceasing

efforts of the Iron Heel, these groups persisted throughout the three

centuries of its existence. Composed of men and women actuated by

lofty purpose and unafraid to die, the Fighting Groups exercised

tremendous influence and tempered the savage brutality of the rulers.

Not alone was their work confined to unseen warfare with the secret

agents of the Oligarchy. The oligarchs themselves were compelled to

listen to the decrees of the Groups, and often, when they disobeyed,

were punished by death—and likewise with the subordinates of the

oligarchs, with the officers of the army and the leaders of the labor

castes.

Stern justice was meted out by these organized avengers, but most

remarkable was their passionless and judicial procedure. There were

no snap judgments. When a man was captured he was given fair trial

and opportunity for defence. Of necessity, many men were tried and

condemned by proxy, as in the case of General Lampton. This

occurred in 2138 A.D. Possibly the most bloodthirsty and malignant

of all the mercenaries that ever served the Iron Heel, he was

informed by the Fighting Groups that they had tried him, found him

guilty, and condemned him to death—and this, after three warnings

for him to cease from his ferocious treatment of the proletariat.

After his condemnation he surrounded himself with a myriad

protective devices. Years passed, and in vain the Fighting Groups

strove to execute their decree. Comrade after comrade, men and

women, failed in their attempts, and were cruelly executed by the

Oligarchy. It was the case of General Lampton that revived

crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the

condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl

of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose,

served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household.

She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged

torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the

Pantheon of Brotherhood in the wonder city of Serles.

We, who by personal experience know nothing of bloodshed, must not

judge harshly the heroes of the Fighting Groups. They gave up their

lives for humanity, no sacrifice was too great for them to

accomplish, while inexorable necessity compelled them to bloody

expression in an age of blood. The Fighting Groups constituted the

one thorn in the side of the Iron Heel that the Iron Heel could

never remove. Everhard was the father of this curious army, and its

accomplishments and successful persistence for three hundred years

bear witness to the wisdom with which he organized and the solid

foundation he laid for the succeeding generations to build upon. In

some respects, despite his great economic and sociological

contributions, and his work as a general leader in the Revolution,

his organization of the Fighting Groups must be regarded as his

greatest achievement.

The task we set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from

our circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the

organizing of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general

secret organization of the Revolution. And third, the introduction of

our own secret agents into every branch of the Oligarchy—into the 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.