The Iron Heel

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE CHICAGO COMMUNE

  As agents-provocateurs, not alone were we able to travel a great deal,but our very work threw us in contact with the proletariat and with ourcomrades, the revolutionists. Thus we were in both camps at the sametime, ostensibly serving the Iron Heel and secretly working with allour might for the Cause. There were many of us in the varioussecret services of the Oligarchy, and despite the shakings-up andreorganizations the secret services have undergone, they have never beenable to weed all of us out.

  Ernest had largely planned the First Revolt, and the date set had beensomewhere early in the spring of 1918. In the fall of 1917 we were notready; much remained to be done, and when the Revolt was precipitated,of course it was doomed to failure. The plot of necessity wasfrightfully intricate, and anything premature was sure to destroy it.This the Iron Heel foresaw and laid its schemes accordingly.

  We had planned to strike our first blow at the nervous system of theOligarchy. The latter had remembered the general strike, and hadguarded against the defection of the telegraphers by installing wirelessstations, in the control of the Mercenaries. We, in turn, had counteredthis move. When the signal was given, from every refuge, all over theland, and from the cities, and towns, and barracks, devoted comradeswere to go forth and blow up the wireless stations. Thus at the firstshock would the Iron Heel be brought to earth and lie practicallydismembered.

  At the same moment, other comrades were to blow up the bridges andtunnels and disrupt the whole network of railroads. Still further, othergroups of comrades, at the signal, were to seize the officers of theMercenaries and the police, as well as all Oligarchs of unusual abilityor who held executive positions. Thus would the leaders of the enemybe removed from the field of the local battles that would inevitably befought all over the land.

  Many things were to occur simultaneously when the signal went forth. TheCanadian and Mexican patriots, who were far stronger than the Iron Heeldreamed, were to duplicate our tactics. Then there were comrades (thesewere the women, for the men would be busy elsewhere) who were to postthe proclamations from our secret presses. Those of us in the higheremploy of the Iron Heel were to proceed immediately to make confusionand anarchy in all our departments. Inside the Mercenaries werethousands of our comrades. Their work was to blow up the magazinesand to destroy the delicate mechanism of all the war machinery. In thecities of the Mercenaries and of the labor castes similar programmes ofdisruption were to be carried out.

  In short, a sudden, colossal, stunning blow was to be struck. Before theparalyzed Oligarchy could recover itself, its end would have come.It would have meant terrible times and great loss of life, but norevolutionist hesitates at such things. Why, we even depended much, inour plan, on the unorganized people of the abyss. They were to be loosedon the palaces and cities of the masters. Never mind the destructionof life and property. Let the abysmal brute roar and the police andMercenaries slay. The abysmal brute would roar anyway, and the policeand Mercenaries would slay anyway. It would merely mean that variousdangers to us were harmlessly destroying one another. In the meantime wewould be doing our own work, largely unhampered, and gaining control ofall the machinery of society.

  Such was our plan, every detail of which had to be worked out in secret,and, as the day drew near, communicated to more and more comrades.This was the danger point, the stretching of the conspiracy. But thatdanger-point was never reached. Through its spy-system the Iron Heelgot wind of the Revolt and prepared to teach us another of its bloodylessons. Chicago was the devoted city selected for the instruction, andwell were we instructed.

  Chicago* was the ripest of all--Chicago which of old time was the cityof blood and which was to earn anew its name. There the revolutionaryspirit was strong. Too many bitter strikes had been curbed there in thedays of capitalism for the workers to forget and forgive. Even thelabor castes of the city were alive with revolt. Too many heads hadbeen broken in the early strikes. Despite their changed and favorableconditions, their hatred for the master class had not died. This spirithad infected the Mercenaries, of which three regiments in particularwere ready to come over to us en masse.

  * Chicago was the industrial inferno of the nineteenth century A.D. A curious anecdote has come down to us of John Burns, a great English labor leader and one time member of the British Cabinet. In Chicago, while on a visit to the United States, he was asked by a newspaper reporter for his opinion of that city. "Chicago," he answered, "is a pocket edition of hell." Some time later, as he was going aboard his steamer to sail to England, he was approached by another reporter, who wanted to know if he had changed his opinion of Chicago. "Yes, I have," was his reply. "My present opinion is that hell is a pocket edition of Chicago."

  Chicago had always been the storm-centre of the conflict betweenlabor and capital, a city of street-battles and violent death, with aclass-conscious capitalist organization and a class-conscious workmanorganization, where, in the old days, the very school-teachers wereformed into labor unions and affiliated with the hod-carriers andbrick-layers in the American Federation of Labor. And Chicago became thestorm-centre of the premature First Revolt.

  The trouble was precipitated by the Iron Heel. It was cleverly done. Thewhole population, including the favored labor castes, was given a courseof outrageous treatment. Promises and agreements were broken, and mostdrastic punishments visited upon even petty offenders. The people ofthe abyss were tormented out of their apathy. In fact, the Iron Heel waspreparing to make the abysmal beast roar. And hand in hand with this, inall precautionary measures in Chicago, the Iron Heel was inconceivablycareless. Discipline was relaxed among the Mercenaries that remained,while many regiments had been withdrawn and sent to various parts of thecountry.

  It did not take long to carry out this programme--only several weeks. Weof the Revolution caught vague rumors of the state of affairs, but hadnothing definite enough for an understanding. In fact, we thought it wasa spontaneous spirit of revolt that would require careful curbing on ourpart, and never dreamed that it was deliberately manufactured--and ithad been manufactured so secretly, from the very innermost circle ofthe Iron Heel, that we had got no inkling. The counter-plot was an ableachievement, and ably carried out.

  I was in New York when I received the order to proceed immediately toChicago. The man who gave me the order was one of the oligarchs, I couldtell that by his speech, though I did not know his name nor see hisface. His instructions were too clear for me to make a mistake. PlainlyI read between the lines that our plot had been discovered, that we hadbeen countermined. The explosion was ready for the flash of powder, andcountless agents of the Iron Heel, including me, either on the groundor being sent there, were to supply that flash. I flatter myself that Imaintained my composure under the keen eye of the oligarch, but my heartwas beating madly. I could almost have shrieked and flown at his throatwith my naked hands before his final, cold-blooded instructions weregiven.

  Once out of his presence, I calculated the time. I had just the momentsto spare, if I were lucky, to get in touch with some local leader beforecatching my train. Guarding against being trailed, I made a rush of itfor the Emergency Hospital. Luck was with me, and I gained access atonce to comrade Galvin, the surgeon-in-chief. I started to gasp out myinformation, but he stopped me.

  "I already know," he said quietly, though his Irish eyes were flashing."I knew what you had come for. I got the word fifteen minutes ago, and Ihave already passed it along. Everything shall be done here to keep thecomrades quiet. Chicago is to be sacrificed, but it shall be Chicagoalone."

  "Have you tried to get word to Chicago?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "No telegraphic communication. Chicago is shut off.It's going to be hell there."

  He paused a moment, and I saw his white hands clinch. Then he burst out:

  "By God! I wish I were going to be there!"

  "There is yet a chance to stop it," I said, "if nothing happens tothe
train and I can get there in time. Or if some of the othersecret-service comrades who have learned the truth can get there intime."

  "You on the inside were caught napping this time," he said.

  I nodded my head humbly.

  "It was very secret," I answered. "Only the inner chiefs could haveknown up to to-day. We haven't yet penetrated that far, so we couldn'tescape being kept in the dark. If only Ernest were here. Maybe he is inChicago now, and all is well."

  Dr. Galvin shook his head. "The last news I heard of him was that he hadbeen sent to Boston or New Haven. This secret service for the enemy musthamper him a lot, but it's better than lying in a refuge."

  I started to go, and Galvin wrung my hand.

  "Keep a stout heart," were his parting words. "What if the First Revoltis lost? There will be a second, and we will be wiser then. Good-by andgood luck. I don't know whether I'll ever see you again. It's going tobe hell there, but I'd give ten years of my life for your chance to bein it."

  The Twentieth Century* left New York at six in the evening, and wassupposed to arrive at Chicago at seven next morning. But it lost timethat night. We were running behind another train. Among the travellersin my Pullman was comrade Hartman, like myself in the secret serviceof the Iron Heel. He it was who told me of the train that immediatelypreceded us. It was an exact duplicate of our train, though it containedno passengers. The idea was that the empty train should receive thedisaster were an attempt made to blow up the Twentieth Century. For thatmatter there were very few people on the train--only a baker's dozen inour car.

  * This was reputed to be the fastest train in the world then. It was quite a famous train.

  "There must be some big men on board," Hartman concluded. "I noticed aprivate car on the rear."

  Night had fallen when we made our first change of engine, and I walkeddown the platform for a breath of fresh air and to see what I could see.Through the windows of the private car I caught a glimpse of threemen whom I recognized. Hartman was right. One of the men was GeneralAltendorff; and the other two were Mason and Vanderbold, the brains ofthe inner circle of the Oligarchy's secret service.

  It was a quiet moonlight night, but I tossed restlessly and could notsleep. At five in the morning I dressed and abandoned my bed.

  I asked the maid in the dressing-room how late the train was, and shetold me two hours. She was a mulatto woman, and I noticed that herface was haggard, with great circles under the eyes, while the eyesthemselves were wide with some haunting fear.

  "What is the matter?" I asked.

  "Nothing, miss; I didn't sleep well, I guess," was her reply.

  I looked at her closely, and tried her with one of our signals. Sheresponded, and I made sure of her.

  "Something terrible is going to happen in Chicago," she said. "There'sthat fake* train in front of us. That and the troop-trains have made uslate."

  * False.

  "Troop-trains?" I queried.

  She nodded her head. "The line is thick with them. We've been passingthem all night. And they're all heading for Chicago. And bringing themover the air-line--that means business.

  "I've a lover in Chicago," she added apologetically. "He's one of us,and he's in the Mercenaries, and I'm afraid for him."

  Poor girl. Her lover was in one of the three disloyal regiments.

  Hartman and I had breakfast together in the dining car, and I forcedmyself to eat. The sky had clouded, and the train rushed on like asullen thunderbolt through the gray pall of advancing day. The verynegroes that waited on us knew that something terrible was impending.Oppression sat heavily upon them; the lightness of their natures hadebbed out of them; they were slack and absent-minded in their service,and they whispered gloomily to one another in the far end of the carnext to the kitchen. Hartman was hopeless over the situation.

  "What can we do?" he demanded for the twentieth time, with a helplessshrug of the shoulders.

  He pointed out of the window. "See, all is ready. You can depend upon itthat they're holding them like this, thirty or forty miles outside thecity, on every road."

  He had reference to troop-trains on the side-track. The soldiers werecooking their breakfasts over fires built on the ground beside thetrack, and they looked up curiously at us as we thundered past withoutslackening our terrific speed.

  All was quiet as we entered Chicago. It was evident nothing had happenedyet. In the suburbs the morning papers came on board the train. Therewas nothing in them, and yet there was much in them for those skilledin reading between the lines that it was intended the ordinary readershould read into the text. The fine hand of the Iron Heel was apparentin every column. Glimmerings of weakness in the armor of the Oligarchywere given. Of course, there was nothing definite. It was intended thatthe reader should feel his way to these glimmerings. It wascleverly done. As fiction, those morning papers of October 27th weremasterpieces.

  The local news was missing. This in itself was a masterstroke. Itshrouded Chicago in mystery, and it suggested to the average Chicagoreader that the Oligarchy did not dare give the local news. Hints thatwere untrue, of course, were given of insubordination all over the land,crudely disguised with complacent references to punitive measures to betaken. There were reports of numerous wireless stations that hadbeen blown up, with heavy rewards offered for the detection of theperpetrators. Of course no wireless stations had been blown up. Manysimilar outrages, that dovetailed with the plot of the revolutionists,were given. The impression to be made on the minds of the Chicagocomrades was that the general Revolt was beginning, albeit with aconfusing miscarriage in many details. It was impossible for oneuninformed to escape the vague yet certain feeling that all the land wasripe for the revolt that had already begun to break out.

  It was reported that the defection of the Mercenaries in California hadbecome so serious that half a dozen regiments had been disbanded andbroken, and that their members with their families had been drivenfrom their own city and on into the labor-ghettos. And the CaliforniaMercenaries were in reality the most faithful of all to their salt!But how was Chicago, shut off from the rest of the world, to know? Thenthere was a ragged telegram describing an outbreak of the populace inNew York City, in which the labor castes were joining, concluding withthe statement (intended to be accepted as a bluff*) that the troops hadthe situation in hand.

  * A lie.

  And as the oligarchs had done with the morning papers, so had they donein a thousand other ways. These we learned afterward, as, for example,the secret messages of the oligarchs, sent with the express purpose ofleaking to the ears of the revolutionists, that had come over the wires,now and again, during the first part of the night.

  "I guess the Iron Heel won't need our services," Hartman remarked,putting down the paper he had been reading, when the train pulled intothe central depot. "They wasted their time sending us here. Their planshave evidently prospered better than they expected. Hell will breakloose any second now."

  He turned and looked down the train as we alighted.

  "I thought so," he muttered. "They dropped that private car when thepapers came aboard."

  Hartman was hopelessly depressed. I tried to cheer him up, but heignored my effort and suddenly began talking very hurriedly, in alow voice, as we passed through the station. At first I could notunderstand.

  "I have not been sure," he was saying, "and I have told no one. I havebeen working on it for weeks, and I cannot make sure. Watch out forKnowlton. I suspect him. He knows the secrets of a score of our refuges.He carries the lives of hundreds of us in his hands, and I think he isa traitor. It's more a feeling on my part than anything else. But Ithought I marked a change in him a short while back. There is the dangerthat he has sold us out, or is going to sell us out. I am almost sureof it. I wouldn't whisper my suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don'tthink I'll leave Chicago alive. Keep your eye on Knowlton. Trap him.Find out. I don't know anything more. It is only an intuition, and sofar I have failed to find the slightest clew." We
were just stepping outupon the sidewalk. "Remember," Hartman concluded earnestly. "Keep youreyes upon Knowlton."

  And Hartman was right. Before a month went by Knowlton paid for histreason with his life. He was formally executed by the comrades inMilwaukee.

  All was quiet on the streets--too quiet. Chicago lay dead. There was noroar and rumble of traffic. There were not even cabs on the streets. Thesurface cars and the elevated were not running. Only occasionally, onthe sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians, and these pedestrians didnot loiter. They went their ways with great haste and definiteness,withal there was a curious indecision in their movements, as though theyexpected the buildings to topple over on them or the sidewalks to sinkunder their feet or fly up in the air. A few gamins, however, werearound, in their eyes a suppressed eagerness in anticipation ofwonderful and exciting things to happen.

  From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of an explosion came toour ears. That was all. Then quiet again, though the gamins had startledand listened, like young deer, at the sound. The doorways to all thebuildings were closed; the shutters to the shops were up. But therewere many police and watchmen in evidence, and now and again automobilepatrols of the Mercenaries slipped swiftly past.

  Hartman and I agreed that it was useless to report ourselves to thelocal chiefs of the secret service. Our failure so to report would beexcused, we knew, in the light of subsequent events. So we headed forthe great labor-ghetto on the South Side in the hope of getting incontact with some of the comrades. Too late! We knew it. But we couldnot stand still and do nothing in those ghastly, silent streets. Wherewas Ernest? I was wondering. What was happening in the cities of thelabor castes and Mercenaries? In the fortresses?

  As if in answer, a great screaming roar went up, dim with distance,punctuated with detonation after detonation.

  "It's the fortresses," Hartman said. "God pity those three regiments!"

  At a crossing we noticed, in the direction of the stockyards, a giganticpillar of smoke. At the next crossing several similar smoke pillars wererising skyward in the direction of the West Side. Over the city of theMercenaries we saw a great captive war-balloon that burst even as welooked at it, and fell in flaming wreckage toward the earth. There wasno clew to that tragedy of the air. We could not determine whether theballoon had been manned by comrades or enemies. A vague sound came toour ears, like the bubbling of a gigantic caldron a long way off, andHartman said it was machine-guns and automatic rifles.

  And still we walked in immediate quietude. Nothing was happening wherewe were. The police and the automobile patrols went by, and once halfa dozen fire-engines, returning evidently from some conflagration. Aquestion was called to the fireman by an officer in an automobile, andwe heard one shout in reply: "No water! They've blown up the mains!"

  "We've smashed the water supply," Hartman cried excitedly to me. "If wecan do all this in a premature, isolated, abortive attempt, what can'twe do in a concerted, ripened effort all over the land?"

  The automobile containing the officer who had asked the question dartedon. Suddenly there was a deafening roar. The machine, with its humanfreight, lifted in an upburst of smoke, and sank down a mass of wreckageand death.

  Hartman was jubilant. "Well done! well done!" he was repeating, overand over, in a whisper. "The proletariat gets its lesson to-day, but itgives one, too."

  Police were running for the spot. Also, another patrol machine hadhalted. As for myself, I was in a daze. The suddenness of it wasstunning. How had it happened? I knew not how, and yet I had beenlooking directly at it. So dazed was I for the moment that I wasscarcely aware of the fact that we were being held up by the police. Iabruptly saw that a policeman was in the act of shooting Hartman. ButHartman was cool and was giving the proper passwords. I saw the levelledrevolver hesitate, then sink down, and heard the disgusted grunt of thepoliceman. He was very angry, and was cursing the whole secret service.It was always in the way, he was averring, while Hartman was talkingback to him and with fitting secret-service pride explaining to him theclumsiness of the police.

  The next moment I knew how it had happened. There was quite a groupabout the wreck, and two men were just lifting up the wounded officerto carry him to the other machine. A panic seized all of them, andthey scattered in every direction, running in blind terror, the woundedofficer, roughly dropped, being left behind. The cursing policemanalongside of me also ran, and Hartman and I ran, too, we knew not why,obsessed with the same blind terror to get away from that particularspot.

  Nothing really happened then, but everything was explained. The flyingmen were sheepishly coming back, but all the while their eyes wereraised apprehensively to the many-windowed, lofty buildings that toweredlike the sheer walls of a canyon on each side of the street. From oneof those countless windows the bomb had been thrown, but which window?There had been no second bomb, only a fear of one.

  Thereafter we looked with speculative comprehension at the windows.Any of them contained possible death. Each building was a possibleambuscade. This was warfare in that modern jungle, a great city. Everystreet was a canyon, every building a mountain. We had not changed muchfrom primitive man, despite the war automobiles that were sliding by.

  Turning a corner, we came upon a woman. She was lying on the pavement,in a pool of blood. Hartman bent over and examined her. As for myself,I turned deathly sick. I was to see many dead that day, but the totalcarnage was not to affect me as did this first forlorn body lyingthere at my feet abandoned on the pavement. "Shot in the breast," wasHartman's report. Clasped in the hollow of her arm, as a child might beclasped, was a bundle of printed matter. Even in death she seemed loathto part with that which had caused her death; for when Hartman hadsucceeded in withdrawing the bundle, we found that it consisted of largeprinted sheets, the proclamations of the revolutionists.

  "A comrade," I said.

  But Hartman only cursed the Iron Heel, and we passed on. Often wewere halted by the police and patrols, but our passwords enabled usto proceed. No more bombs fell from the windows, the last pedestriansseemed to have vanished from the streets, and our immediate quietudegrew more profound; though the gigantic caldron continued to bubble inthe distance, dull roars of explosions came to us from all directions,and the smoke-pillars were towering more ominously in the heavens.