The Iron Heel Page #23

"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

								

 Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and one at Asgard. It
 dealt, in elaborate detail, with one factor in the persistence of the
 established, namely, the capitalistic bias of the universities and
 common schools. It was a logical and crushing indictment of the whole
 system of education that developed in the minds of the students only
 such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic regime, to the
 exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and subversive. The book
 created a furor, and was promptly suppressed by the Oligarchy.

“All right,” Ernest said. “You are travelling the same path that Bishop
Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up. You’ll both be
proletarians before you’re done with it.”

The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to explain
what he had been doing with him.

“He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him. I took
him through the homes of a few of our factory workers. I showed him the
human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine, and he listened to
their life stories. I took him through the slums of San Francisco, and
in drunkenness, prostitution, and criminality he learned a deeper cause
than innate depravity. He is very sick, and, worse than that, he has
got out of hand. He is too ethical. He has been too severely touched.
And, as usual, he is unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of
ethical delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured. He
feels it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the
Church and to deliver its message to the masters. He is overwrought.
Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then there’s going to be
a smash-up. What form it will take I can’t even guess. He is a pure,
exalted soul, but he is so unpractical. He’s beyond me. I can’t keep
his feet on the earth. And through the air he is rushing on to his
Gethsemane. And after this his crucifixion. Such high souls are made
for crucifixion.”

“And you?” I asked; and beneath my smile was the seriousness of the
anxiety of love.

“Not I,” he laughed back. “I may be executed, or assassinated, but I
shall never be crucified. I am planted too solidly and stolidly upon
the earth.”

“But why should you bring about the crucifixion of the Bishop?” I
asked. “You will not deny that you are the cause of it.”

“Why should I leave one comfortable soul in comfort when there are
millions in travail and misery?” he demanded back.

“Then why did you advise father to accept the vacation?”

“Because I am not a pure, exalted soul,” was the answer. “Because I am
solid and stolid and selfish. Because I love you and, like Ruth of old,
thy people are my people. As for the Bishop, he has no daughter.
Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless his little
inadequate wail will be productive of some good in the revolution, and
every little bit counts.”

I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the noble nature of Bishop
Morehouse, and I could not conceive that his voice raised for
righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate wail. But I did
not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers’ ends as Ernest had.
He saw clearly the futility of the Bishop’s great soul, as coming
events were soon to show as clearly to me.

It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story, the
offer he had received from the government, namely, an appointment as
United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary was
comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And then it
surely was congenial work for Ernest, and, furthermore, my jealous
pride in him made me hail the proffered appointment as a recognition of
his abilities.

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.

“You are not going to . . . to decline?” I quavered.

“It is a bribe,” he said. “Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson, and
behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old trick, old as
the class struggle is old—stealing the captains from the army of labor.
Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how many of its leaders have been
bought out in similar ways in the past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper,
to buy a general than to fight him and his whole army. There was—but
I’ll not call any names. I’m bitter enough over it as it is. Dear
heart, I am a captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other
reason, the memory of my poor old father and the way he was worked to
death would prevent.”

The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He never
could forgive the way his father had been malformed—the sordid lies and
the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order to put food in his
children’s mouths.

“My father was a good man,” Ernest once said to me. “The soul of him
was good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted by the
savagery of his life. He was made into a broken-down beast by his
masters, the arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your father.
He had a strong constitution. But he was caught in the machine and
worked to death—for profit. Think of it. For profit—his life blood
transmuted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or some similar
sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich, his masters, the
arch-beasts.”




CHAPTER VII.
THE BISHOP’S VISION


“The Bishop is out of hand,” Ernest wrote me. “He is clear up in the
air. Tonight he is going to begin putting to rights this very miserable
world of ours. He is going to deliver his message. He has told me so,
and I cannot dissuade him. To-night he is chairman of the I.P.H.,[1]
and he will embody his message in his introductory remarks.

 [1] There is no clew to the name of the organization for which these
 initials stand.

“May I bring you to hear him? Of course, he is foredoomed to futility.
It will break your heart—it will break his; but for you it will be an
excellent object lesson. You know, dear heart, how proud I am because
you love me. And because of that I want you to know my fullest value, I
want to redeem, in your eyes, some small measure of my unworthiness.
And so it is that my pride desires that you shall know my thinking is
correct and right. My views are harsh; the futility of so noble a soul
as the Bishop will show you the compulsion for such harshness. So come
to-night. Sad though this night’s happening will be, I feel that it
will but draw you more closely to me.”

The I.P.H. held its convention that night in San Francisco.[2] This
convention had been called to consider public immorality and the remedy
for it. Bishop Morehouse presided. He was very nervous as he sat on the
platform, and I could see the high tension he was under. By his side
were Bishop Dickinson; H. H. Jones, the head of the ethical department
in the University of California; Mrs. W. W. Hurd, the great charity
organizer; Philip Ward, the equally great philanthropist; and several

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes