The Iron Heel

Mr. Wickson offers Avis’s father a position as president of a new college. He repeats the warning that he gave Ernest and tells Dr. Cunningham that if he does not comply, the Oligarchy will walk on the faces of the working class. Cunningham is offended that Wickson has the power to determine university faculty and resists. Sierra Mills, the banks, and the press conspire to ruin Cunningham, and he loses his investments and home and is depicted as a violent radical. Undeterred and invigorated, Avis and her father move into a low-income area of San Francisco, and Avis marries Ernest. She writes down Ernest’s favorite poem about mortality and resilience and characterizes him as a selfless man who never fails to love her despite his travails and exhaustion. Avis believes that he has a divine, immortal soul, while Ernest views himself as a physicalist who believes only in the material world. Avis devotes herself to her husband and the socialist cause and works as his secretary. She finds strength in their love and convictions.

Meredith’s footnote describes the excessive attention that descendants of the first American colonists paid to bloodlines and genealogy and comments that the blood eventually became diffuse and present in almost every American.