CHAPTER II
CHALLENGES.
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.* 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.
* The distinction between being native born and foreign born was
sharp and invidious in those days.
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."*
* This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three
centuries of the Iron Heel. There are several copies of various
editions in the National Library of Ardis.
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, anti-
socialistic."
"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.* 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.
"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?"* the Bishop queried with alarm.
* 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
turbulence 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.
"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."*
* 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 exceptional ability.
"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 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 before I go on I want you either flatly
to agree with me or flatly to disagree with me. Was the Church
dumb then?"
* 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.
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?* 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."
* Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the Southern
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.D., 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 Baptist Association issued the following, in an address,
in 1835 A.D.: "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: "Extracts 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 Testament 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 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."
"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,"* I answered curtly.
* In that day there were many thousands of these poor merchants
called PEDLERS. They carried their whole stock in trade from door
to door. It was a most wasteful expenditure of energy.
Distribution was as confused and irrational as the whole general
system of society.
"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.
