The Iron Heel Page #13

"The Iron Heel" by Jack London, published in 1908, is a dystopian political novel that explores themes of authoritarianism, class struggle, and revolution. It is considered one of the earliest examples of dystopian fiction, influencing later works like 1984 and Brave New World.

• Novel

								

 in 1910. The rise of this vote clearly indicates the swift growth of
 the party of revolution. Its voting strength in the United States in
 1888 was 2068; in 1902, 127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427;
 and in 1910, 1,688,211.

“Yes, but you are not doing that,” I objected.

“It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the mere
wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth, all the
mines, and railroads, and factories, and banks, and stores. That is the
revolution. It is truly perilous. There will be more shooting, I am
afraid, than even I dream of. But as I was saying, no one to-day is a
free agent. We are all caught up in the wheels and cogs of the
industrial machine. You found that you were, and that the men you
talked with were. Talk with more of them. Go and see Colonel Ingram.
Look up the reporters that kept Jackson’s case out of the papers, and
the editors that run the papers. You will find them all slaves of the
machine.”

A little later in our conversation I asked him a simple little question
about the liability of workingmen to accidents, and received a
statistical lecture in return.

“It is all in the books,” he said. “The figures have been gathered, and
it has been proved conclusively that accidents rarely occur in the
first hours of the morning work, but that they increase rapidly in the
succeeding hours as the workers grow tired and slower in both their
muscular and mental processes.

“Why, do you know that your father has three times as many chances for
safety of life and limb than has a working-man? He has. The
insurance[8] companies know. They will charge him four dollars and
twenty cents a year on a thousand-dollar accident policy, and for the
same policy they will charge a laborer fifteen dollars.”

 [8] In the terrible wolf-struggle of those centuries, no man was
 permanently safe, no matter how much wealth he amassed. Out of fear
 for the welfare of their families, men devised the scheme of
 insurance. To us, in this intelligent age, such a device is laughably
 absurd and primitive. But in that age insurance was a very serious
 matter. The amusing part of it is that the funds of the insurance
 companies were frequently plundered and wasted by the very officials
 who were intrusted with the management of them.

“And you?” I asked; and in the moment of asking I was aware of a
solicitude that was something more than slight.

“Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances to the workingman’s
one of being injured or killed,” he answered carelessly. “The insurance
companies charge the highly trained chemists that handle explosives
eight times what they charge the workingmen. I don’t think they’d
insure me at all. Why did you ask?”

My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in my face. It was
not that he had caught me in my solicitude, but that I had caught
myself, and in his presence.

Just then my father came in and began making preparations to depart
with me. Ernest returned some books he had borrowed, and went away
first. But just as he was going, he turned and said:

“Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind and I am
ruining the Bishop’s, you’d better look up Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.
Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal
stockholders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those two
women are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they sit on
top of it.”




CHAPTER IV.
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE


The more I thought of Jackson’s arm, the more shaken I was. I was
confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life. My
university life, and study and culture, had not been real. I had
learned nothing but theories of life and society that looked all very
well on the printed page, but now I had seen life itself. Jackson’s arm
was a fact of life. “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” of Ernest’s
was ringing in my consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based upon
blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from him.
Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the Pole. He
had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been paid for in order
that a larger dividend might be paid. And I knew a score of happy
complacent families that had received those dividends and by that much
had profited by Jackson’s blood. If one man could be so monstrously
treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so
monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest’s women of Chicago who toiled
for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton
mills he had described. And I could see their wan white hands, from
which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which
had been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the
dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my
gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations led me
back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a
precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful
revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over.
There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to
have on him. And then there was the Bishop. When I had last seen him he
had looked a sick man. He was at high nervous tension, and in his eyes
there was unspeakable horror. From the little I learned I knew that
Ernest had been keeping his promise of taking him through hell. But
what scenes of hell the Bishop’s eyes had seen, I knew not, for he
seemed too stunned to speak about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the world
was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and also I
thought, “We were so happy and peaceful before he came!” And the next
moment I was aware that the thought was a treason against truth, and
Ernest rose before me transfigured, the apostle of truth, with shining
brows and the fearlessness of one of God’s own angels, battling for the
truth and the right, and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely
and oppressed. And then there arose before me another figure, the
Christ! He, too, had taken the part of the lowly and oppressed, and
against all the established power of priest and pharisee. And I
remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart contracted with a pang
as I thought of Ernest. Was he, too, destined for a cross?—he, with his
clarion call and war-noted voice, and all the fine man’s vigor of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting with
desire to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid, harsh, and
meagre life it must have been. And I thought of his father, who had
lied and stolen for him and been worked to death. And he himself had

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes