‘Thus will the surplus be constantly expended while labour does the work. The building of these great works and cities will give a starvation ration to millions of common labourers, for the enormous bulk of the surplus will compel an equally enormous expenditure, and the oligarchs will build for a thousand years—ay, for ten thousand years. They will build as the Egyptians and the Babylonians never dreamed of building; and when the oligarchs have passed away, their great roads and their wonder cities will remain for the brotherhood of labour to tread upon and dwell within.6
‘These things the oligarchs will do because they cannot help doing them. These great works will be the form their expenditure of the surplus will take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long ago expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the building of temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish, not a priest class, but an artist class. And in place of the merchant class of bourgeoisie will be the labour castes. And beneath will be the abyss, wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself, the common people, the great bulk of the population. And in the end, who knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss; the labour castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away; and then, at last, after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the common man. I had thought to see that day; but now I know that I shall never see it.’
He paused and looked at me, and added:
‘Social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn’t it, sweetheart?’
My arms were about him, and his head was on my breast.
‘Sing me to sleep,’ he murmured whimsically. ‘I have had a visioning, and I wish to forget.’
1 Our Benevolent Feudalism, a book published in A.D. 1902, by W. J. Ghent. It has always been insisted that Ghent put the idea of the Oligarchy into the minds of the great capitalists. This belief persists throughout the literature of the three centuries of the Iron Heel, and even in the literature of the first century of the Brotherhood of Man. Today we know better, but our knowledge does not overcome the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in all history.
2 As a sample of the decisions of the courts averse to labour, the following instances are given. In the coalmining regions the employment of children was notorious. In A.D. 1905, labour succeeded in getting a law passed in Pennsylvania providing that proof of the age of the child and of certain educational qualifications must accompany the oath of the parent. This was promptly declared unconstitutional by the Luzerne County Court, on the ground that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment in that it discriminated between individuals of the same class—namely, children above fourteen years of age and children below. The state court sustained the decision. The New York Court of Special Sessions in a.d. 1905, declared unconstitutional the law prohibiting minors and women from working in factories after nine o’clock at night, the ground taken being that such a law was ‘class legislation.’ Again the bakers of that time were terribly overworked. The New York Legislature passed a law restricting work in bakeries to ten hours a day. In a.d. 1906, the Supreme Court of the United States declared this law to be unconstitutional. In part the decision read: ‘There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of persons or the right of free contract by determining the hours of labour in the occupation of a baker.’
3 James Farley—a notorious strike-breaker of the period. A man more courageous than ethical, and of undeniable ability. He rose high under the rule of the Iron Heel and finally was translated into the oligarch class. He was assassinated in 1932 by Sarah Jenkins, whose husband, thirty years before, had been killed by Farley’s strike-breakers.
4 Everhard’s social foresight was remarkable. As clearly as in the light of past events, he saw the defection of the favoured unions, the rise and the slow decay of the labour castes, and the struggle between the decaying oligarchs and labour castes for control of the great governmental machine.
5 We cannot but marvel at Everhard’s foresight. Before ever the thought of wonder cities like Ardis and Asgard entered the minds of the oligarchs, Everhard saw those cities and the inevitable necessity for their creation.
6 And since that day of prophecy have passed away the three centuries of the Iron Heel and the four centuries of the Brotherhood of Man, and today we tread the roads and dwell in the cities that the oligarchs built. It is true, we are even now building still more wonderful wonder cities, but the wonder cities of the oligarchs endure, and I write these lines in Ardis, one of the most wonderful of them all.
Chapter 15
Last Days
IT WAS near the end of January, 1913, that the changed attitude of the Oligarchy towards the favoured unions was made public. The newspapers published information of an unprecedented rise in wages and shortening of hours for the railroad employees, the iron and steel workers, and the engineers and machinists. But the whole truth was not told. The oligarchs did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth. In reality the wages had been raised much higher, and the privileges were correspondingly greater. All this was secret, but secrets will out. Members of the favoured unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped, and soon all the labour world knew what had happened.
It was merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth century had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time, profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work. But profit-sharing, as a system, was ridiculous and impossible. Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated cases in the midst of a system of industrial strife; for if all labour and all capital shared profits, the same conditions would obtain as did obtain when there was no profit-sharing.
So, out of the unpractical idea of profit-sharing, arose the practical idea of grab-sharing. ‘Give us more pay and charge it to the public,’ was the slogan of the strong unions. And here and there this selfish policy worked successfully. In charging it to the public, it was charged to the great mass of unorganised labour and of weakly organised labour. These workers actually paid the increased wages of their stronger brothers who were members of unions that were labour monopolies. This idea, as I say, was merely carried to its logical conclusion, on a large scale, by the combination of the oligarchs and the favoured unions.1
As soon as the secret of the defection of the favoured unions leaked out, there were rumblings and mutterings in the labour world. Next the favoured unions withdrew from the international organisations and broke off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence. The members of the favoured unions were branded as traitors, and in saloons and brothels, on the streets and at work, and, in fact, everywhere, they were assaulted by the comrades they had so treacherously deserted.
Countless heads were broken, and there were many killed. No member of the favoured unions was safe. They gathered together in bands in order to go to work or to return from work. They walked always in the middle of the street. On the sidewalk they were liable to have their skulls crushed by bricks and cobblestones thrown from windows and housetops. They were permitted to carry weapons, and the authorities aided them in every way. Their persecutors were sentenced to long terms in prison, where they were harshly treated; while no man, not a member of the favoured unions, was permitted to carry weapons. Violation of this law was made a high misdemeanor and punished accordingly.
Outraged labour continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Caste lines formed automatically. The children of the traitors were persecuted by the children of the workers who had been betrayed, until it was impossible for the former to play on the streets or to attend the public schools. Also, the wives and families of the traitors were ostracised, while the corner groceryman who sold provisions to them was boycotted.
As a result, driven back upon themselves from every side, the traitors and their families became clannish. Finding it impossible to dwell in safety in the midst of the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new localities inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were favoured by the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and sanitary, were built for them, surrounded by spacious yards, and separated here and there by parks and playgrounds. Their children attended schools especially built for them, and in these schools manual training and applied science were specialised upon. Thus, and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of this segregation arose caste. The members of the favoured unions became the aristocracy of labour. They were set apart from the rest of labour. They were better housed, better clothed, better fed, better treated. They were grab-sharing with a vengeance.