The Iron Heel

Ernest tells Avis that the Bishop’s solutions are noble but unrealistic and will lead to his ostracism. At a moral reform convention, the Bishop delivers a sermon about godly duties and recites Oscar Wilde’s poem “Easter Day.” He tells the audience that he has housed two sex workers in his home and entreats the rich to take in the poor as he has done. He envisions churches and prisons converted into hospitals and nurseries and the obsolescence of the police. Some of the audience members leave in disgust, and the Bishop is escorted off the platform. Ernest laughs and tells Avis a story about a washerwoman named Mary McKenna who naively believed that her patriotism would save her from destitution. When her husband fell ill and she was unable to make the rent on her wages alone, Mary hoisted an American flag above her head and believed that it would protect her from eviction. She was arrested and committed to a psychiatric hospital. Ernest contends that both Mary and the Bishop disrupted the status quo and were silenced by those in power. As Ernest predicts, the papers do not print the Bishop’s speech despite the attendance of many reporters at the convention. Several days later, the papers report the Bishop’s leave of absence due to being overworked.

Dr. Cunningham hosts a dinner for middle-class businessmen who feel squeezed out by corporate trusts. Ernest criticizes their hypocrisy for driving out small local shops and then complaining when bigger capitalists do the same to them. Ernest points out the fallacy of their antitrust claims and promotion of fair competition and patriotism since capitalism thrives on concepts of freedom and liberty to make profits. He refers to the men as “machine breakers” (127), a reference to hand weavers during the Industrial Revolution who thought that breaking machine looms could return their control over the mode of production. Ernest considers this another fallacy since the machines are more efficient and productive and since a return to the past is impossible. He does not believe that the antitrust platform of Grange politics will succeed in giving farmers agency. When the businessmen acknowledge that their antitrust legislation is often thwarted by political corruption, they proclaim that they will fight the government and engage in civil war if the trusts take over the country. To the men’s shock, Ernest alludes to the 1903 Militia Bill, which decrees that the government can draft them into the militia to fight against their own insurrection. 

Meredith’s footnotes explain terms like “cut-rates” and “bankruptcy” (123, 126), which are outdated concepts that are foreign to the Brotherhood of Man. Another footnote explains the failure of farmers and the Grange movement to successfully form a political party.

Ernest tells the businessmen that the downfall of the middle class and the trusts is inevitable. He invokes Karl Marx’s theory of surplus value and predicts the eventual demise of capitalism. Ernest argues that the proletariat are stronger than the middle class despite making less money because their value is intrinsic to their bodies and labor, whereas the middle class’s wealth can be stripped from them. He contends that instead of breaking the machines, the proletariat should own them and distribute wealth equally. If the trusts win, then society will be crushed by the “Iron Heel” of the Oligarchy (152), or what the businessmen refer to as the Plutocracy, the titans of industry such as Standard Oil and the railroad, steel, and coal trusts. Ernest argues that the press, religion, and the university uphold the interests of capitalists, and he envisions the middle class joining the proletariat. The businessmen regard Ernest’s socialist revolution as a dream and reject his call for alliance. 

Meredith’s footnotes discuss the history of railroad trusts, Standard Oil, and John D. Rockefeller.

Avis recounts her conversion to socialism and identifies as a revolutionist. The university forces her father to resign, and Dr. Cunningham references his treatment in his book as further evidence of the capitalist grip on higher education. Reports of his forced resignation and his book are suppressed, and the capitalist press libel him as a nihilist and violent anarchist. The socialist publication house agrees to re-publish Cunningham’s book, and Ernest fears retaliation through censorship. A week later, the Postal Service bans the socialist publication Appeal to Reason from circulation for sedition. A flag-waving mob burns down the publication house, destroying reprints of Cunningham’s book. Ernest refers to the mob as “Black Hundreds,” an allusion to reactionaries organized by the autocracy during the Russian Revolution. 

By the summer of 1912, the ruling class swiftly escalates their suppressive tactics by organizing more attacks on socialist publication houses, hiring armed strike breakers, and executing labor leaders and laborers. The press vilifies the revolutionists, and the capitalists profit from the mayhem and fluctuations in the stock market. The Socialist Party nominates Ernest to run for Congress, but Ernest believes that Mr. Wickson was right and that peaceful elections will not deter the rise of the Oligarchy. He puts all his energy into revolution.