The Iron Heel

by Jack London

  CHAPTER I

  MY EAGLE

  The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweetcadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine,and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet andpeaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quietthat makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but itis the quiet before the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, forsome betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it may not be premature!That it may not be premature!*

  * The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders. The capture and secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the spring of 1932 A.D. Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the revolt, that his fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or delay, to carry out his plans. It was after Everhard's execution that his wife went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma Hills of California.

  Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannotcease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that Iam oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwellingupon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to burst forth.In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I haveseen in the past,* all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautifulflesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled toGod. Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through carnageand destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the earth.

  * Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.

  And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I think ofwhat has been and is no more--my Eagle, beating with tireless wings thevoid, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal of humanfreedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the great event that is hismaking, though he is not here to see. He devoted all the years of hismanhood to it, and for it he gave his life. It is his handiwork. He madeit.*

  * With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second Revolt. And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can safely say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have been less calamitous in its outcome than it was.

  And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write ofmy husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons living canthrow upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazonedforth too brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love growsunselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witnessto-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built too stoutly and toosurely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon shall it be thrust back fromoff prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the labor hosts of allthe world shall rise. There has been nothing like it in the history ofthe world. The solidarity of labor is assured, and for the first timewill there be an international revolution wide as the world is wide.*

  * The Second Revolt was truly international. It was a colossal plan--too colossal to be wrought by the genius of one man alone. Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world, was prepared to rise at the signal. Germany, Italy, France, and all Australasia were labor countries--socialist states. They were ready to lend aid to the revolution. Gallantly they did; and it was for this reason, when the Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being replaced by oligarchical governments.

  You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and nightutterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind. For thatmatter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of it. He was thesoul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two in thought?

  As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon hischaracter. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and sufferedsore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I well know; forI have been with him during these twenty anxious years and I know hispatience, his untiring effort, his infinite devotion to the Cause forwhich, only two months gone, he laid down his life.

  I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard enteredmy life--how I first met him, how he grew until I became a part of him,and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In this way may youlook at him through my eyes and learn him as I learned him--in all savethe things too secret and sweet for me to tell.

  It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of myfather's* at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot say thatmy very first impression of him was favorable. He was one of many atdinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and waited for allto arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance. It was "preacher'snight," as my father privately called it, and Ernest was certainly outof place in the midst of the churchmen.

  * John Cunningham, Avis Everhard's father, was a professor at the State University at Berkeley, California. His chosen field was physics, and in addition he did much original research and was greatly distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to science was his studies of the electron and his monumental work on the "Identification of Matter and Energy," wherein he established, beyond cavil and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and other students in the new field of radio-activity.

  In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-madesuit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In fact, noready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night,as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat betweenthe shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze ofwrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,* thick and strong.So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father haddiscovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked it with thosebulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him--asort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom** of the working class.

  * In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses of money. They fought with their hands. When one was beaten into insensibility or killed, the survivor took the money.

  ** This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician who took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth century of the Christian Era.

  And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm andstrong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes--too boldly, Ithought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time hadstrong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my ownclass would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not avoiddropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on andturned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a favorite of mine, a sweet andserious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and ascholar as well.

  But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to thenature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of nothing, andhe refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms. "You pleased me,"he explained long afterward; "and why should I not fill my eyes withthat which pleases me?" I have said that he was afraid of nothing. Hewas a natural aristocrat--and this in spite of the fact that he was inthe camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beastsuch as Nietzsche* has described, and in addition he was aflame withdemocracy.

  * Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth, but who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great circle of human thought and off into madness.

  In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my unfavorableimpression, I forgot all about the working-class philosopher, thoug
honce or twice at table I noticed him--especially the twinkle in his eyeas he listened to the talk first of one minister and then of another. Hehas humor, I thought, and I almost forgave him his clothes. But the timewent by, and the dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to speak,while the ministers talked interminably about the working class and itsrelation to the church, and what the church had done and was doing forit. I noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest did not talk.Once father took advantage of a lull and asked him to say something; butErnest shrugged his shoulders and with an "I have nothing to say" wenton eating salted almonds.

  But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:

  "We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that he canpresent things from a new point of view that will be interesting andrefreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard."

  The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest fora statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so broadlytolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And I saw thatErnest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about him, and I sawthe glint of laughter in his eyes.

  "I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy," hebegan, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.

  "Go on," they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: "We do not mind the truththat is in any man. If it is sincere," he amended.

  "Then you separate sincerity from truth?" Ernest laughed quickly.

  Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, "The best of us may bemistaken, young man, the best of us."

  Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became another man.

  "All right, then," he answered; "and let me begin by saying that youare all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing, about theworking class. Your sociology is as vicious and worthless as is yourmethod of thinking."

  It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at the firstsound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was a clarion-callthat thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused, shaken alive frommonotony and drowsiness.

  "What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking,young man?" Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there was somethingunpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.

  "You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; andhaving done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysicianwrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm ofthought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmosof his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You donot know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has noplace in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mentalaberration.

  "Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened toyou talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholasticsof the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbingquestion of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle.Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of thetwentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making incantation in theprimeval forest ten thousand years ago."

  As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, hiseyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent withaggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused people.His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably made them forgetthemselves. And they were forgetting themselves now. Bishop Morehousewas leaning forward and listening intently. Exasperation and anger wereflushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield. And others were exasperated, too,and some were smiling in an amused and superior way. As for myself, Ifound it most enjoyable. I glanced at father, and I was afraid he wasgoing to giggle at the effect of this human bombshell he had been guiltyof launching amongst us.

  "Your terms are rather vague," Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. "Justprecisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?"

  "I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically," Ernestwent on. "Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science.There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything andnothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goesinto his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. Aswell may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explainconsciousness by consciousness."

  "I do not understand," Bishop Morehouse said. "It seems to me that allthings of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact and convincingof all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical. Each and everythought-process of the scientific reasoner is metaphysical. Surely youwill agree with me?"

  "As you say, you do not understand," Ernest replied. "The metaphysicianreasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasonsinductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasonsfrom theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. Themetaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explainshimself by the universe."

  "Thank God we are not scientists," Dr. Hammerfield murmuredcomplacently.

  "What are you then?" Ernest demanded.

  "Philosophers."

  "There you go," Ernest laughed. "You have left the real and solid earthand are up in the air with a word for a flying machine. Pray come downto earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by philosophy."

  "Philosophy is--" (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared histhroat)--"something that cannot be defined comprehensively except tosuch minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientistwith his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy."

  Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point backupon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming brotherliness offace and utterance.

  "Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now makeof philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you to point outerror in it or to remain a silent metaphysician. Philosophy is merelythe widest science of all. Its reasoning method is the same as that ofany particular science and of all particular sciences. And by thatsame method of reasoning, the inductive method, philosophy fuses allparticular sciences into one great science. As Spencer says, the dataof any particular science are partially unified knowledge. Philosophyunifies the knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences.Philosophy is the science of science, the master science, if you please.How do you like my definition?"

  "Very creditable, very creditable," Dr. Hammerfield muttered lamely.

  But Ernest was merciless.

  "Remember," he warned, "my definition is fatal to metaphysics. If you donot now point out a flaw in my definition, you are disqualified later onfrom advancing metaphysical arguments. You must go through life seekingthat flaw and remaining metaphysically silent until you have found it."

  Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was pained. Hewas also puzzled. Ernest's sledge-hammer attack disconcerted him. Hewas not used to the simple and direct method of controversy. He lookedappealingly around the table, but no one answered for him. I caughtfather grinning into his napkin.

  "There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians," Ernest said,when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield's discomfiture complete. "Judgethem by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinningof airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? Theyhave added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible goodhave they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon mymisuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, whilethe scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. Theydeclaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, whilethe scientists were building granaries and draining cities. Theybuilded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, whilethe scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describingthe earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists werediscovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws ofthe stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutelynothing, for mankin
d. Step by step, before the advance of science, theyhave been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science haveoverthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made newsubjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latestascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing tothe end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man.The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-cladblubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years ofascertained facts. That is all."

  "Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries," Dr.Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a metaphysician."

  Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods andsmiles of approval.

  "Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You refer to avery dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the DarkAges. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, whereinphysics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistrybecame alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination ofAristotle's thought!"

  Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:

  "Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess thatmetaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity outof this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeedingcenturies."

  "Metaphysics had nothing to do with it," Ernest retorted.

  "What?" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "It was not the thinking and thespeculation that led to the voyages of discovery?"

  "Ah, my dear sir," Ernest smiled, "I thought you were disqualified. Youhave not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of philosophy. You arenow on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the way of the metaphysicians,and I forgive you. No, I repeat, metaphysics had nothing to do withit. Bread and butter, silks and jewels, dollars and cents, and,incidentally, the closing up of the overland trade-routes to India,were the things that caused the voyages of discovery. With the fall ofConstantinople, in 1453, the Turks blocked the way of the caravans toIndia. The traders of Europe had to find another route. Here was theoriginal cause for the voyages of discovery. Columbus sailed to finda new route to the Indies. It is so stated in all the history books.Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and form ofthe earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering."

  Dr. Hammerfield snorted.

  "You do not agree with me?" Ernest queried. "Then wherein am I wrong?"

  "I can only reaffirm my position," Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly. "Itis too long a story to enter into now."

  "No story is too long for the scientist," Ernest said sweetly. "That iswhy the scientist gets to places. That is why he got to America."

  I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me torecall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my coming toknow Ernest Everhard.

  Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic philosophers,shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he checked them backto facts. "The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!" he would proclaimtriumphantly, when he had brought one of them a cropper. He bristledwith facts. He tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded them with facts,bombarded them with broadsides of facts.

  "You seem to worship at the shrine of fact," Dr. Hammerfield tauntedhim.

  "There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet," Dr.Ballingford paraphrased.

  Ernest smilingly acquiesced.

  "I'm like the man from Texas," he said. And, on being solicited, heexplained. "You see, the man from Missouri always says, 'You've gotto show me.' But the man from Texas says, 'You've got to put it in myhand.' From which it is apparent that he is no metaphysician."

  Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysicalphilosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfieldsuddenly demanded:

  "What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain what hasso long puzzled wiser heads than yours?"

  "Certainly," Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them. "The wiseheads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they went up into theair after it. Had they remained on the solid earth, they would havefound it easily enough--ay, they would have found that they themselveswere precisely testing truth with every practical act and thought oftheir lives."

  "The test, the test," Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. "Never mindthe preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long--the test oftruth. Give it us, and we will be as gods."

  There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and mannerthat secretly pleased most of them at the table, though it seemed tobother Bishop Morehouse.

  "Dr. Jordan* has stated it very clearly," Ernest said. "His test oftruth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?'"

  * A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the Christian Era. He was president of the Stanford University, a private benefaction of the times.

  "Pish!" Dr. Hammerfield sneered. "You have not taken Bishop Berkeley*into account. He has never been answered."

  * An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of that time with his denial of the existence of matter, but whose clever argument was finally demolished when the new empiric facts of science were philosophically generalized.

  "The noblest metaphysician of them all," Ernest laughed. "But yourexample is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his metaphysicsdidn't work."

  Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he hadcaught Ernest in a theft or a lie.

  "Young man," he trumpeted, "that statement is on a par with all you haveuttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption."

  "I am quite crushed," Ernest murmured meekly. "Only I don't know whathit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor."

  "I will, I will," Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. "How do you know? Youdo not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics did notwork. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked."

  "I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work, because--"Ernest paused calmly for a moment. "Because Berkeley made an invariablepractice of going through doors instead of walls. Because he trusted hislife to solid bread and butter and roast beef. Because he shaved himselfwith a razor that worked when it removed the hair from his face."

  "But those are actual things!" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "Metaphysics is ofthe mind."

  "And they work--in the mind?" Ernest queried softly.

  The other nodded.

  "And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle--inthe mind," Ernest went on reflectively. "And a blubber-eating, fur-cladgod can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no proofs to thecontrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live in the mind?"

  "My mind to me a kingdom is," was the answer.

  "That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you comeback to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake happensalong. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in an earthquakethat that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an immaterial brick?"

  Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot up tohis head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened thatErnest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr. Hammerfieldhad been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake* by a falling chimney.Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.

  * The Great Earthquake of 1906 A.D. that destroyed San Francisco.

  "Well?" Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. "Proofs to thecontrary?"

  And in the silence he asked again, "Well?" Then he added, "Still well,but not so well, that argument of yours."

  But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged on innew directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the ministers.When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he told themfundament
al truths about the working class that they did not know, andchallenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts, always facts, checkedtheir excursions into the air, and brought them back to the solid earthand its facts.

  How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-notein his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash that stungand stung again. And he was merciless. He took no quarter,* and gavenone. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at the end:

  * This figure arises from the customs of the times. When, among men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a beaten man threw down his weapons, it was at the option of the victor to slay him or spare him.

  "You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorantstatement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to beblamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class? Youdo not live in the same locality with the working class. You herdwith the capitalist class in another locality. And why not? It is thecapitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the veryclothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return youpreach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especiallyacceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptablebecause they do not menace the established order of society."

  Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.

  "Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity," Ernest continued. "You aresincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength and yourvalue--to the capitalist class. But should you change your belief tosomething that menaces the established order, your preaching wouldbe unacceptable to your employers, and you would be discharged. Everylittle while some one or another of you is so discharged.* Am I notright?"

  * During this period there were many ministers cast out of the church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially were they cast out when their preaching became tainted with socialism.

  This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with theexception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

  "It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign."

  "Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,"Ernest answered, and then went on. "So I say to you, go ahead and preachand earn your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the working class alone.You belong in the enemy's camp. You have nothing in common with theworking class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performedfor you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating." (HereDr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth.It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds arefilled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. Youare as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the menof the Swiss Guard.* Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, withyour preaching, the interests of your employers; but do not come down tothe working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be inthe two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believeme, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore,the working class can do better without you than with you."

  * The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of France that was beheaded by his people.