by Jack London
CHAPTER X
THE VORTEX
Following like thunder claps upon the Business Men's dinner, occurredevent after event of terrifying moment; and I, little I, who had livedso placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found myself andmy personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great world-affairs.Whether it was my love for Ernest, or the clear sight he had given me ofthe society in which I lived, that made me a revolutionist, I know not;but a revolutionist I became, and I was plunged into a whirl ofhappenings that would have been inconceivable three short months before.
The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises insociety. First of all, father was discharged from the university. Oh,he was not technically discharged. His resignation was demanded, thatwas all. This, in itself, did not amount to much. Father, in fact, wasdelighted. He was especially delighted because his discharge had beenprecipitated by the publication of his book, "Economics and Education."It clinched his argument, he contended. What better evidence could beadvanced to prove that education was dominated by the capitalist class?
But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew he had been forced toresign from the university. He was so eminent a scientist that such anannouncement, coupled with the reason for his enforced resignation,would have created somewhat of a furor all over the world. Thenewspapers showered him with praise and honor, and commended him forhaving given up the drudgery of the lecture room in order to devote hiswhole time to scientific research.
At first father laughed. Then he became angry--tonic angry. Then camethe suppression of his book. This suppression was performed secretly,so secretly that at first we could not comprehend. The publication ofthe book had immediately caused a bit of excitement in the country.Father had been politely abused in the capitalist press, the tone of theabuse being to the effect that it was a pity so great a scientist shouldleave his field and invade the realm of sociology, about which he knewnothing and wherein he had promptly become lost. This lasted for aweek, while father chuckled and said the book had touched a sore spot oncapitalism. And then, abruptly, the newspapers and the criticalmagazines ceased saying anything about the book at all. Also, and withequal suddenness, the book disappeared from the market. Not a copy wasobtainable from any bookseller. Father wrote to the publishers and wasinformed that the plates had been accidentally injured. Anunsatisfactory correspondence followed. Driven finally to anunequivocal stand, the publishers stated that they could not see theirway to putting the book into type again, but that they were willing torelinquish their rights in it.
"And you won't find another publishing house in the country to touchit," Ernest said. "And if I were you, I'd hunt cover right now. You'vemerely got a foretaste of the Iron Heel."
But father was nothing if not a scientist. He never believed in jumpingto conclusions. A laboratory experiment was no experiment if it werenot carried through in all its details. So he patiently went the roundof the publishing houses. They gave a multitude of excuses, but not onehouse would consider the book.
When father became convinced that the book had actually been suppressed,he tried to get the fact into the newspapers; but his communicationswere ignored. At a political meeting of the socialists, where manyreporters were present, father saw his chance. He arose and related thehistory of the suppression of the book. He laughed next day when heread the newspapers, and then he grew angry to a degree that eliminatedall tonic qualities. The papers made no mention of the book, but theymisreported him beautifully. They twisted his words and phrases awayfrom the context, and turned his subdued and controlled remarks into ahowling anarchistic speech. It was done artfully. One instance, inparticular, I remember. He had used the phrase "social revolution."The reporter merely dropped out "social." This was sent out all overthe country in an Associated Press despatch, and from all over thecountry arose a cry of alarm. Father was branded as a nihilist and ananarchist, and in one cartoon that was copied widely he was portrayedwaving a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired, wild-eyed men whobore in their hands torches, knives, and dynamite bombs.
He was assailed terribly in the press, in long and abusive editorials,for his anarchy, and hints were made of mental breakdown on his part.This behavior, on the part of the capitalist press, was nothing new,Ernest told us. It was the custom, he said, to send reporters to allthe socialist meetings for the express purpose of misreporting anddistorting what was said, in order to frighten the middle class awayfrom any possible affiliation with the proletariat. And repeatedlyErnest warned father to cease fighting and to take to cover.
The socialist press of the country took up the fight, however, andthroughout the reading portion of the working class it was known thatthe book had been suppressed. But this knowledge stopped with theworking class. Next, the "Appeal to Reason," a big socialist publishinghouse, arranged with father to bring out the book. Father was jubilant,but Ernest was alarmed.
"I tell you we are on the verge of the unknown," he insisted. "Bigthings are happening secretly all around us. We can feel them. We donot know what they are, but they are there. The whole fabric of societyis a-tremble with them. Don't ask me. I don't know myself. But out ofthis flux of society something is about to crystallize. It iscrystallizing now. The suppression of the book is a precipitation. Howmany books have been suppressed? We haven't the least idea. We are inthe dark. We have no way of learning. Watch out next for thesuppression of the socialist press and socialist publishing houses. I'mafraid it's coming. We are going to be throttled."
Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even more closely than therest of the socialists, and within two days the first blow was struck.The Appeal to Reason was a weekly, and its regular circulation amongstthe proletariat was seven hundred and fifty thousand. Also, it veryfrequently got out special editions of from two to five millions. Thesegreat editions were paid for and distributed by the small army ofvoluntary workers who had marshalled around the Appeal. The first blowwas aimed at these special editions, and it was a crushing one. By anarbitrary ruling of the Post Office, these editions were decided to benot the regular circulation of the paper, and for that reason weredenied admission to the mails.
A week later the Post Office Department ruled that the paper wasseditious, and barred it entirely from the mails. This was a fearfulblow to the socialist propaganda. The Appeal was desperate. It deviseda plan of reaching its subscribers through the express companies, butthey declined to handle it. This was the end of the Appeal. But notquite. It prepared to go on with its book publishing. Twenty thousandcopies of father's book were in the bindery, and the presses wereturning off more. And then, without warning, a mob arose one night,and, under a waving American flag, singing patriotic songs, set fire tothe great plant of the Appeal and totally destroyed it.
Now Girard, Kansas, was a quiet, peaceable town. There had never beenany labor troubles there. The Appeal paid union wages; and, in fact,was the backbone of the town, giving employment to hundreds of men andwomen. It was not the citizens of Girard that composed the mob. Thismob had risen up out of the earth apparently, and to all intents andpurposes, its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest saw inthe affair the most sinister import.
"The Black Hundreds* are being organized in the United States," he said."This is the beginning. There will be more of it. The Iron Heel isgetting bold."
* The Black Hundreds were reactionary mobs organized by the perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution. These reactionary groups attacked the revolutionary groups, and also, at needed moments, rioted and destroyed property so as to afford the Autocracy the pretext of calling out the Cossacks.
And so perished father's book. We were to see much of the Black Hundredsas the days went by. Week by week more of the socialist papers werebarred from the mails, and in a number of instances the Black Hundredsdestroyed the socialist presses. Of course, the newspapers of theland lived up to the reactionary policy of the ruling class, and thedestroyed socialist press was mis
represented and vilified, whilethe Black Hundreds were represented as true patriots and saviours ofsociety. So convincing was all this misrepresentation that even sincereministers in the pulpit praised the Black Hundreds while regretting thenecessity of violence.
History was making fast. The fall elections were soon to occur, andErnest was nominated by the socialist party to run for Congress. Hischance for election was most favorable. The street-car strike in SanFrancisco had been broken. And following upon it the teamsters' strikehad been broken. These two defeats had been very disastrous to organizedlabor. The whole Water Front Federation, along with its allies in thestructural trades, had backed up the teamsters, and all had been smasheddown ingloriously. It had been a bloody strike. The police had brokencountless heads with their riot clubs; and the death list had beenaugmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun on the strikers from thebarns of the Marsden Special Delivery Company.
In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive. They wanted blood,and revenge. Beaten on their chosen field, they were ripe to seekrevenge by means of political action. They still maintained their labororganization, and this gave them strength in the political struggle thatwas on. Ernest's chance for election grew stronger and stronger. Day byday unions and more unions voted their support to the socialists, untileven Ernest laughed when the Undertakers' Assistants and the ChickenPickers fell into line. Labor became mulish. While it packed thesocialist meetings with mad enthusiasm, it was impervious to the wilesof the old-party politicians. The old-party orators were usually greetedwith empty halls, though occasionally they encountered full halls wherethey were so roughly handled that more than once it was necessary tocall out the police reserves.
History was making fast. The air was vibrant with things happening andimpending. The country was on the verge of hard times,* caused by aseries of prosperous years wherein the difficulty of disposing abroadof the unconsumed surplus had become increasingly difficult. Industrieswere working short time; many great factories were standing idle againstthe time when the surplus should be gone; and wages were being cut rightand left.
* Under the capitalist regime these periods of hard times were as inevitable as they were absurd. Prosperity always brought calamity. This, of course, was due to the excess of unconsumed profits that was piled up.
Also, the great machinist strike had been broken. Two hundred thousandmachinists, along with their five hundred thousand allies in themetalworking trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had evermarred the United States. Pitched battles had been fought with the smallarmies of armed strike-breakers* put in the field by the employers'associations; the Black Hundreds, appearing in scores of wide-scatteredplaces, had destroyed property; and, in consequence, a hundred thousandregular soldiers of the United States has been called out to put afrightful end to the whole affair. A number of the labor leaders hadbeen executed; many others had been sentenced to prison, while thousandsof the rank and file of the strikers had been herded into bull-pens**and abominably treated by the soldiers.
* Strike-breakers--these were, in purpose and practice and everything except name, the private soldiers of the capitalists. They were thoroughly organized and well armed, and they were held in readiness to be hurled in special trains to any part of the country where labor went on strike or was locked out by the employers. Only those curious times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of one, Farley, a notorious commander of strike-breakers, who, in 1906, swept across the United States in special trains from New York to San Francisco with an army of twenty-five hundred men, fully armed and equipped, to break a strike of the San Francisco street-car men. Such an act was in direct violation of the laws of the land. The fact that this act, and thousands of similar acts, went unpunished, goes to show how completely the judiciary was the creature of the Plutocracy.
** Bull-pen--in a miners' strike in Idaho, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, it happened that many of the strikers were confined in a bull-pen by the troops. The practice and the name continued in the twentieth century.
The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets wereglutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumbleof prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land wasconvulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there,and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned outby the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence andblood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot,arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and wellthey performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called thereby the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were likearmed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vastarmy of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and whenthe strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops alwaysappeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. As yet, itwas not necessary to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only theregularly organized militia was out, and it was out everywhere. Andin this time of terror, the regular army was increased an additionalhundred thousand by the government.
* The name only, and not the idea, was imported from Russia. The Black Hundreds were a development out of the secret agents of the capitalists, and their use arose in the labor struggles of the nineteenth century. There is no discussion of this. No less an authority of the times than Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, is responsible for the statement. From his book, entitled "The Battles of Labor," is quoted the declaration that "in some of the great historic strikes the employers themselves have instigated acts of violence;" that manufacturers have deliberately provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock; and that freight cars have been burned by employers' agents during railroad strikes in order to increase disorder. It was out of these secret agents of the employers that the Black Hundreds arose; and it was they, in turn, that later became that terrible weapon of the Oligarchy, the agents- provocateurs.
Never had labor received such an all-around beating. The great captainsof industry, the oligarchs, had for the first time thrown their fullweight into the breach the struggling employers' associations had made.These associations were practically middle-class affairs, and now,compelled by hard times and crashing markets, and aided by the greatcaptains of industry, they gave organized labor an awful and decisivedefeat. It was an all-powerful alliance, but it was an alliance of thelion and the lamb, as the middle class was soon to learn.
Labor was bloody and sullen, but crushed. Yet its defeat did not putan end to the hard times. The banks, themselves constituting one of themost important forces of the Oligarchy, continued to call in credits.The Wall Street* group turned the stock market into a maelstrom wherethe values of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness. Andout of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent Oligarchy,imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude wasterrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power, but it used all thepower of the United States Treasury to carry out its plans.
* Wall Street--so named from a street in ancient New York, where was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of the country.
The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. Theemployers' associations, that had helped the captains of industry totear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam allies.Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business men andmanufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts did more thanstand firm. They were active. They sowed wind, and wind, and ever morewind; for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profitout of it. And such profits! Colossal profits! Strong enough themselvesto weather the storm that was largely their own brewing, they turn
edloose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them. Values werepitifully and inconceivably shrunken, and the trusts added hugelyto their holdings, even extending their enterprises into many newfields--and always at the expense of the middle class.
Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-thrust to the middleclass. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it had beendone. He shook his head ominously and looked forward without hope to thefall elections.
"It's no use," he said. "We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here. I hadhoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong. Wicksonwas right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the IronHeel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolutionof the working class. Of course we will win, but I shudder to think ofit."
And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this he wasin advance of his party. His fellow-socialists could not agree with him.They still insisted that victory could be gained through the elections.It was not that they were stunned. They were too cool-headed andcourageous for that. They were merely incredulous, that was all. Ernestcould not get them seriously to fear the coming of the Oligarchy. Theywere stirred by him, but they were too sure of their own strength. Therewas no room in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy,therefore the Oligarchy could not be.
"We'll send you to Congress and it will be all right," they told him atone of our secret meetings.
"And when they take me out of Congress," Ernest replied coldly, "and putme against a wall, and blow my brains out--what then?"
"Then we'll rise in our might," a dozen voices answered at once.
"Then you'll welter in your gore," was his retort. "I've heard that songsung by the middle class, and where is it now in its might?"