The Iron Heel Page #22

"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

								

with me, and we could see that father was angry—philosophically angry.
He was rarely really angry; but a certain measure of controlled anger
he allowed himself. He called it a tonic. And we could see that he was
tonic-angry when he entered the room.

“What do you think?” he demanded. “I had luncheon with Wilcox.”

Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university, whose
withered mind was stored with generalizations that were young in 1870,
and which he had since failed to revise.

“I was invited,” father announced. “I was sent for.”

He paused, and we waited.

“Oh, it was done very nicely, I’ll allow; but I was reprimanded. I! And
by that old fossil!”

“I’ll wager I know what you were reprimanded for,” Ernest said.

“Not in three guesses,” father laughed.

“One guess will do,” Ernest retorted. “And it won’t be a guess. It will
be a deduction. You were reprimanded for your private life.”

“The very thing!” father cried. “How did you guess?”

“I knew it was coming. I warned you before about it.”

“Yes, you did,” father meditated. “But I couldn’t believe it. At any
rate, it is only so much more clinching evidence for my book.”

“It is nothing to what will come,” Ernest went on, “if you persist in
your policy of having these socialists and radicals of all sorts at
your house, myself included.”

“Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted things! He said it
was in poor taste, utterly profitless, anyway, and not in harmony with
university traditions and policy. He said much more of the same vague
sort, and I couldn’t pin him down to anything specific. I made it
pretty awkward for him, and he could only go on repeating himself and
telling me how much he honored me, and all the world honored me, as a
scientist. It wasn’t an agreeable task for him. I could see he didn’t
like it.”

“He was not a free agent,” Ernest said. “The leg-bar[1] is not always
worn graciously.”

 [1] Leg-bar—the African slaves were so manacled; also criminals. It
 was not until the coming of the Brotherhood of Man that the leg-bar
 passed out of use.

“Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the university needed ever so
much more money this year than the state was willing to furnish; and
that it must come from wealthy personages who could not but be offended
by the swerving of the university from its high ideal of the
passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence. When I tried to pin
him down to what my home life had to do with swerving the university
from its high ideal, he offered me a two years’ vacation, on full pay,
in Europe, for recreation and research. Of course I couldn’t accept it
under the circumstances.”

“It would have been far better if you had,” Ernest said gravely.

“It was a bribe,” father protested; and Ernest nodded.

“Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and so
forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious a
character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university tone
and dignity. Not that he personally objected—oh, no; but that there was
talk and that I would understand.”

Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said, and
his face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in it:

“There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody has
put pressure on President Wilcox.”

“Do you think so?” father asked, and his face showed that he was
interested rather than frightened.

“I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming in
my own mind,” Ernest said. “Never in the history of the world was
society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in
our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our
religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful
revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One
can only dimly feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day.
One can feel the loom of them—things vast, vague, and terrible. My mind
recoils from contemplation of what they may crystallize into. You heard
Wickson talk the other night. Behind what he said were the same
nameless, formless things that I feel. He spoke out of a superconscious
apprehension of them.”

“You mean . . . ?” father began, then paused.

“I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that
even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an
oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What
its nature may be I refuse to imagine.[2] But what I wanted to say was
this: You are in a perilous position—a peril that my own fear enhances
because I am not able even to measure it. Take my advice and accept the
vacation.”

 [2] Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it,
 there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the
 shadow. John C. Calhoun said: “A power has risen up in the government
 greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and
 powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the
 cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” And that great
 humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: “I
 see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
 causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations
 have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow,
 and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign
 by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is
 aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

“But it would be cowardly,” was the protest.

“Not at all. You are an old man. You have done your work in the world,
and a great work. Leave the present battle to youth and strength. We
young fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will stand by my side in
what is to come. She will be your representative in the battle-front.”

“But they can’t hurt me,” father objected. “Thank God I am independent.
Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution they can wage on a
professor who is economically dependent on his university. But I am
independent. I have not been a professor for the sake of my salary. I
can get along very comfortably on my own income, and the salary is all
they can take away from me.”

“But you do not realize,” Ernest answered. “If all that I fear be so,
your private income, your principal itself, can be taken from you just
as easily as your salary.”

Father was silent for a few minutes. He was thinking deeply, and I
could see the lines of decision forming in his face. At last he spoke.

“I shall not take the vacation.” He paused again. “I shall go on with
my book.[3] You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or right, I
shall stand by my guns.”

 [3] This book, “Economics and Education,” was published in that year.

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