CHAPTER XVII.

THE SCARLET LIVERY

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 surplus.[1] We called these

wretched people the people of the abyss,[2] 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.

[1] The same conditions obtained in the nineteenth century A.D. under

British rule in India. The natives died of starvation by the million,

while their rulers robbed them of the fruits of their toil and

expended it on magnificent pageants and mumbo-jumbo fooleries.

Perforce, in this enlightened age, we have much to blush for in the

acts of our ancestors. Our only consolation is philosophic. We must

accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par

with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those

stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was

inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not

easily shaken off.

[2] _The people of the abyss_—this phrase was struck out by the genius

of H. G. Wells in the late nineteenth century A.D. Wells was a

sociological seer, sane and normal as well as warm human. Many

fragments of his work have come down to us, while two of his greatest

achievements, “Anticipations” and “Mankind in the Making,” have come

down intact. Before the oligarchs, and before Everhard, Wells

speculated upon the building of the wonder cities, though in his

writings they are referred to as “pleasure cities.”

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.[3]

[3] Avis Everhard took for granted that her narrative would be read in

her own day, and so omits to mention the outcome of the trial for high

treason. Many other similar disconcerting omissions will be noticed in

the Manuscript. Fifty-two socialist Congressmen were tried, and all

were found guilty. Strange to relate, not one received the death

sentence. Everhard and eleven others, among whom were Theodore

Donnelson and Matthew Kent, received life imprisonment. The remaining

forty received sentences varying from thirty to forty-five years;

while Arthur Simpson, referred to in the Manuscript as being ill of

typhoid fever at the time of the explosion, received only fifteen

years. It is the tradition that he died of starvation in solitary

confinement, and this harsh treatment is explained as having been

caused by his uncompromising stubbornness and his fiery and tactless

hatred for all men that served the despotism. He died in Cabañas in

Cuba, where three of his comrades were also confined. The fifty- two

socialist Congressmen were confined in military fortresses scattered

all over the United States. Thus, Du Bois and Woods were held in Porto

Rico, while Everhard and Merryweather were placed in Alcatraz, an

island in San Francisco Bay that had already seen long service as a

military prison.

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.[4]

[4] Avis Everhard would have had to live for many generations ere she

could have seen the clearing up of this particular mystery. A little

less than a hundred years ago, and a little more than six hundred

years after her death, the confession of Pervaise was discovered in

the secret archives of the Vatican. It is perhaps well to tell a

little something about this obscure document, which, in the main, is

of interest to the historian only.

Pervaise was an American, of French descent, who in 1913 A.D., was

lying in the Tombs Prison, New York City, awaiting trial for

murder. From his confession we learn that he was not a criminal. He

was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional. In an insane fit of

jealousy he killed his wife—a very common act in those times.

Pervaise was mastered by the fear of death, all of which is

recounted at length in his confession. To escape death he would

have done anything, and the police agents prepared him by assuring

him that he could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the

first degree when his trial came off. In those days, murder in the

first degree was a capital offense. The guilty man or woman was

placed in a specially constructed death-chair, and, under the

supervision of competent physicians, was destroyed by a current of

electricity. This was called electrocution, and it was very popular

during that period. Anaesthesia, as a mode of compulsory death, was

not introduced until later.

This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close at the

surface of his being, lying in jail and expectant of nothing less

than death, was prevailed upon by the agents of the Iron Heel to

throw the bomb in the House of Representatives. In his confession

he states explicitly that he was informed that the bomb was to be a

feeble thing and that no lives would be lost. This is directly in

line with the fact that the bomb was lightly charged, and that its

explosion at Everhard’s feet was not deadly.

Pervaise was smuggled into one of the galleries ostensibly closed

for repairs. He was to select the moment for the throwing of the

bomb, and he naively confesses that in his interest in Everhard’s

tirade and the general commotion raised thereby, he nearly forgot

his mission.

Not only was he released from prison in reward for his deed, but he

was granted an income for life. This he did not long enjoy. In 1914

A.D., in September, he was stricken with rheumatism of the heart

and lived for three days. It was then that he sent for the Catholic

priest, Father Peter Durban, and to him made confession. So

important did it seem to the priest, that he had the confession

taken down in writing and sworn to. What happened after this we can

only surmise. The document was certainly important enough to find

its way to Rome. Powerful influences must have been brought to

bear, hence its suppression. For centuries no hint of its existence

reached the world. It was not until in the last century that

Lorbia, the brilliant Italian scholar, stumbled upon it quite by

chance during his researches in the Vatican.

There is to-day no doubt whatever that the Iron Heel was

responsible for the bomb that exploded in the House of

Representatives in 1913 A.D. Even though the Pervaise confession

had never come to light, no reasonable doubt could obtain; for the

act in question, that sent fifty-two Congressmen to prison, was on

a par with countless other acts committed by the oligarchs, and,

before them, by the capitalists.

There is the classic instance of the ferocious and wanton judicial

murder of the innocent and so-called Haymarket Anarchists in

Chicago in the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century A.D. In

a category by itself is the deliberate burning and destruction of

capitalist property by the capitalists themselves. For such

destruction of property innocent men were frequently

punished—“railroaded” in the parlance of the times.

In the labor troubles of the first decade of the twentieth century

A.D., between the capitalists and the Western Federation of Miners,

similar but more bloody tactics were employed. The railroad station

at Independence was blown up by the agents of the capitalists.

Thirteen men were killed, and many more were wounded. And then the

capitalists, controlling the legislative and judicial machinery of

the state of Colorado, charged the miners with the crime and came

very near to convicting them. Romaines, one of the tools in this

affair, like Pervaise, was lying in jail in another state, Kansas,

awaiting trial, when he was approached by the agents of the

capitalists. But, unlike Pervaise, the confession of Romaines was

made public in his own time.

Then, during this same period, there was the case of Moyer and

Haywood, two strong, fearless leaders of labor. One was president

and the other was secretary of the Western Federation of Miners.

The ex-governor of Idaho had been mysteriously murdered. The crime,

at the time, was openly charged to the mine owners by the

socialists and miners. Nevertheless, in violation of the national

and state constitutions, and by means of conspiracy on the parts of

the governors of Idaho and Colorado, Moyer and Haywood were

kidnapped, thrown into jail, and charged with the murder. It was

this instance that provoked from Eugene V. Debs, national leader of

the American socialists at the time, the following words: “_The

labor leaders that cannot be bribed nor bullied, must be ambushed

and murdered. The only crime of Moyer and Haywood is that they have

been unswervingly true to the working class. The capitalists have

stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary,

and ridden over us rough-shod, and now they propose to murder those

who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion. The

governors of Colorado and Idaho are but executing the mandates of

their masters, the Plutocracy. The issue is the Workers versus the

Plutocracy. If they strike the first violent blow, we will strike

the last._”