In San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across the bay in Oakland or Berkeley. The effect on one’s sensibilities was weird, depressing. It seemed as though some great cosmic thing lay dead. The pulse of the land had ceased to beat. Of a truth the nation had died. There were no wagons rumbling on the streets, no factory whistles, no hum of electricity in the air, no passing of street cars, no cries of newsboys—nothing but persons who at rare intervals went by like furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed and made unreal by the silence.
And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was taught its lesson. And well it learned the lesson. The general strike was a warning. It should never occur again. The Oligarchy would see to that.
At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the telegraphers of Germany and the United States returned to their posts. Through them the socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum to the rulers. The war should be called off, or the general strike would continue. It did not take long to come to an understanding. The war was declared off, and the populations of both countries returned to their tasks.
It was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between Germany and the United States. In reality, this was an alliance between the Emperor and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting their common foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both counties. And it was this alliance that the Oligarchy afterward so treacherously broke when the German socialists rose and drove the war-lord from his throne. It was the very thing the Oligarchy had played for—the destruction of its great rival in the world-market. With the German Emperor out of the way, Germany would have no surplus to sell abroad. By the very nature of the socialist state, the German population would consume all that it produced. Of course, it would trade abroad certain things it produced for things it did not produce; but this would be quite different from an unconsumable surplus.
‘I’ll wager the Oligarchy finds justification,’ Ernest said, when its treachery to the German Emperor became known. ‘As usual, the Oligarchy will believe it has done right.’
And sure enough the Oligarchy’s public defence for the act was that it had done it for the sake of the American people whose interest it was looking out for. It had flung its hated rival out of the world-market and enabled us to dispose of our surplus in that market.
‘And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that such idiots really are managing our interests,’ was Ernest’s comment. ‘They have enabled us to sell more abroad, which means that we’ll be compelled to consume less at home.’
1 William Randolph Hearst—a young Californian millionaire who became the most powerful newspaper owner in the country. His newspapers were published in all the large cities, and they appealed to the perishing middle class and to the proletariat. So large was his following that he managed to take possession of the empty shell of the old Democratic Party. He occupied an anomalous position, preaching an emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript sort of petty bourgeois capitalism. It was oil and water, and there was no hope for him, though for a short period he was a source of serious apprehension to the Plutocrats.
2 The cost of advertising was amazing in those helter-skelter times. Only the small capitalists competed, and therefore they did the advertising. There being no competition where there was a trust, there was no need for the trusts to advertise.
3 The destruction of the Roman yeomanry proceeded far less rapidly than the destruction of the American farmers and small capitalists. There was momentum in the twentieth century, while there was practically none in ancient Rome.
Numbers of the farmers, impelled by an insane lust for the soil, and willing to show what beasts they could become, tried to escape expropriation by withdrawing from any and all market-dealing. They sold nothing. They bought nothing. Among themselves a primitive barter began to spring up. Their privation and hardships were terrible, but they persisted. It became quite a movement, in fact. The manner in which they were beaten was unique and logical and simple. The Plutocracy, by virtue of its possession of the government, raised their taxes. It was the weak joint in their armour. Neither buying nor selling, they had no money, and in the end their land was sold to pay the taxes.
4 For a long time these mutterings and rumblings had been heard. As far back as A.D. 1906, Lord Avebury, an Englishman, uttered the following in the House of Lords: ‘The unrest in Europe, the spread of socialism, and the ominous rise of Anarchism, are warnings to the governments and the ruling classes that the condition of the working classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a revolution is to be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages, reduce the hours of labour, and lower the prices of the necessaries of life.’ The Wall Street Journal, a stock gamesters’ publication, in commenting upon Lord Avebury’s speech, said: ”These words were spoken by an aristocrat and a member of the most conservative body in all Europe. That gives them all the more significance. They contain more valuable political economy than is to be found in most of the books. They sound a note of warning. Take heed, gentlemen, of the war and navy departments!’
At the same time, Sydney Brooks, writing in America, in Harper’s Weekly, said: ‘You will not hear the socialists mentioned in Washington. Why should you? The politicians are always the last people in this country to see what is going on under their noses. They will jeer at me when I prophesy, and prophesy with the utmost confidence, that at the next presidential election the socialists will poll over a million votes.’
5 It was at the very beginning of the twentieth century a.d., that the international organisation of the socialists finally formulated their long-maturing policy on war. Epitomised, their doctrine was: Why should the workingmen of one country fight with the workingmen of another country for the benefit of their capitalist masters?
On May 21, a.d. 1905, when war threatened between Austria and Italy, the socialists of Italy, Austria, and Hungary held a conference at Trieste, and threatened a general strike of the working men of both countries in case war was declared. This was repeated the following year, when the ‘Morocco Affair’ threatened to involve France, Germany, and England.
Chapter 14
The Beginning of the End
AS EARLY as January, 1913, Ernest saw the true trend of affairs, but he could not get his brother leaders to see the vision of the Iron Heel that had arisen in his brain. They were too confident. Events were rushing too rapidly to culmination. A crisis had come in world affairs. The American Oligarchy was practically in possession of the world-market, and scores of countries were flung out of that market with unconsumable and unsaleable surpluses on their hands. For such countries nothing remained but reorganisation. They could not continue their method of producing surpluses. The capitalistic system, so far as they were concerned, had hopelessly broken down.
The reorganisation of these countries took the form of revolution. It was a time of confusion and violence. Everywhere institutions and governments were crashing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or three countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought bitterly for their possessions. But the governments were taken away from them by the militant proletariat. At last was being realized Karl Marx’s classic: ‘The knell of private capitalist property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.’ And as fast as capitalistic governments crashed, co-operative commonwealths arose in their place.
‘Why does the United States lag behind?’; ‘Get busy, you American revolutionists!’; ‘What’s the matter with America?’—were the messages sent to us by our successful comrades in other lands. But we could not keep up. The Oligarchy stood in the way. Its bulk, like that of some huge monster, blocked our path.
‘Wait till we take office in the spring,’ we answered. ‘Then you’ll see.’
Behind this lay our secret. We had won over the Grangers, and in the spring a dozen states would pass into their hands by virtue of the elections of the preceding fall. At once would be instituted a dozen co-operative commonwealth states. After that, the rest would be easy.
‘But what if the Grangers fail to get possession?’ Ernest demanded. And his comrades called him a calamity howler.
But this failure to get possession was not the chief danger that Ernest had in mind. What he foresaw was the defection of the great labour unions and the rise of the castes.
‘Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it,’ Ernest said.
‘I’ll wager they’ve made a text-book out of his Benevolent Feudalism.’1