by Jack London
CHAPTER XVII
THE SCARLET LIVERY
With the destruction of the Granger states, the Grangers in Congressdisappeared. They were being tried for high treason, and their placeswere taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The socialists were in apitiful minority, and they knew that their end was near. Congress andthe Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravelydebated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality allthat was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to themandates of the Oligarchy.
Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in thedebate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of thepreceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath thestarvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had butsunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchsand their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.* We called thesewretched people the people of the abyss,** and it was to alleviate theirawful 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 waspreparing 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 theywere tired of the suspense. They wanted something to happen. They wereaccomplishing nothing, and the best they hoped for was the putting of anend to the legislative farce in which they were unwilling players.They knew not what end would come, but they never anticipated a moredisastrous end than the one that did come.
* 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.
** 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 wasimminent. It was in the air, and its presence was made visible by thearmed soldiers drawn up in lines in the corridors, and by the officersgrouped in the entrances to the House itself. The Oligarchy was aboutto strike. Ernest was speaking. He was describing the sufferings ofthe unemployed, as if with the wild idea of in some way touching theirhearts and consciences; but the Republican and Democratic memberssneered and jeered at him, and there was uproar and confusion. Ernestabruptly changed front.
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you," he said. "You have nosouls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompouslycall yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party.There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats inthis House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of thePlutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your loveof liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the IronHeel."
Here the shouting and the cries of "Order! order!" drowned his voice,and he stood disdainfully till the din had somewhat subsided. He wavedhis 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 glancedexpectantly 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. Everyfighting fibre of him was quivering, and his face was the face of afighting 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 sameproletariat 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 havereceived the command from your masters to vote against it. And yet youcall me anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government of the people,and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet shame in public places, call meanarchist. I do not believe in hell-fire and brimstone; but in momentslike this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this I almost dobelieve. Surely there must be a hell, for in no less place could it bepossible for you to receive punishment adequate to your crimes. So longas you exist, there is a vital need for hell-fire in the Cosmos."
There was movement in the doorways. Ernest, the Speaker, all the membersturned to see.
"Why do you not call your soldiers in, Mr. Speaker, and bid them dotheir work?" Ernest demanded. "They should carry out your plan withexpedition."
"There are other plans afoot," was the retort. "That is why the soldiersare present."
"Our plans, I suppose," Ernest sneered. "Assassination or somethingkindred."
But at the word "assassination" the uproar broke out again. Ernest couldnot 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 exceptthe flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I sawErnest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers rushingup all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger,capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a moment, andwaved his arms for silence.
"It is a plot!" his voice rang out in warning to his comrades. "Donothing, or you will be destroyed."
Then he slowly sank down, and the soldiers reached him. The next momentsoldiers were clearing the galleries and I saw no more.
Though he was my husband, I was not permitted to get to him. When Iannounced who I was, I was promptly placed under arrest. And at the sametime were arrested all socialist Congressmen in Washington, includingthe unfortunate Simpson, who lay ill with typhoid fever in his hotel.
The trial was prompt and brief. The men were foredoomed. The wonderwas that Ernest was not executed. This was a blunder on the part ofthe Oligarchy, and a costly one. But the Oligarchy was too confident inthose days. It was drunk with success, and little did it dream thatthat small handful of heroes had within them the power to rock it toits foundations. To-morrow, when the Great Revolt breaks out and allthe world resounds with the tramp, tramp of the millions, the Oligarchy,will realize, and too late, how mightily that band of heroes has grown.*
* 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 Cabanas 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 andfears and secret plans of the revolutionists, I am fitted to answer, asvery few are, the charge that they were guilty of exploding the bomb inCongress. And I can say flatly, without qualification or doubt of anysort, that the socialists, in Congress and out, had no hand in theaffair. Who threw the bomb we do not know, but the one thing we areabsolutely sure of is that we did not throw it.
On the other hand, there is evidence to show that the Iron Heel wasresponsible for the act. Of course, we cannot prove this. Our conclusionis merely presumptive. But here are such facts as we do know. It hadbeen reported to the Speaker of the House, by secret-service agents ofthe government, that the Socialist Congressmen were about to resort toterroristic tactics, and that they had decided upon the day whentheir tactics would go into effect. This day was the very day ofthe explosion. Wherefore the Capitol had been packed with troops inanticipation. Since we knew nothing about the bomb, and since a bombactually was exploded, and since the authorities had prepared in advancefor the explosion, it is only fair to conclude that the Iron Heeldid know. Furthermore, we charge that the Iron Heel was guilty of theoutrage, and that the Iron Heel planned and perpetrated the outrage forthe purpose of foisting the guilt on our shoulders and so bringing aboutour destruction.
From the Speaker the warning leaked out to all the creatures inthe House that wore the scarlet livery. They knew, while Ernest wasspeaking, that some violent act was to be committed. And to do themjustice, they honestly believed that the act was to be committed bythe socialists. At the trial, and still with honest belief, severaltestified to having seen Ernest prepare to throw the bomb, and that itexploded prematurely. Of course they saw nothing of the sort. In thefevered imagination of fear they thought they saw, that was all.
As Ernest said at the trial: "Does it stand to reason, if I were goingto throw a bomb, that I should elect to throw a feeble little squib likethe one that was thrown? There wasn't enough powder in it. It made a lotof smoke, but hurt no one except me. It exploded right at my feet, andyet it did not kill me. Believe me, when I get to throwing bombs, I'lldo damage. There'll be more than smoke in my petards."
In return it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of thebomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its prematureexplosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was ablunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmenwho testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop the bomb.
As for ourselves, not one of us knew how the bomb was thrown. Ernesttold me that the fraction of an instant before it exploded he both heardand saw it strike at his feet. He testified to this at the trial, butno 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 therewas 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 havefailed to find the man who really did throw the bomb. Undoubtedly he wassome emissary of the Iron Heel, but he has escaped detection. We havenever got the slightest clew to his identity. And now, at this latedate, nothing remains but for the affair to take its place among themysteries of history.*
* 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 the 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."
