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period of three months. When the proclaimed date arrived, half a million
soldiers were sent into the mountainous districts everywhere. There was no
investigation, no trial. Wherever a man was encountered, he was shot down on
the spot. The troops operated on the basis that no man not an outlaw remained
in the mountains. Some bands, in strong positions, fought gallantly, but in
the end every deserter from the militia met death.
A more immediate lesson, however, was impressed on the minds of the people by
the punishment meted out to the Kansas militia. The great Kansas Mutiny
occurred at the very beginning of military operations against the Grangers.
Six thousand of the militia mutinied. They had been for several weeks very
turbulent and sullen, and for that reason had been kept in camp. Their open
mutiny, however, was without doubt precipitated by the agents-provocateurs.
On the night of the 22nd of April they arose and murdered their officers,
only a small remnant of the latter escaping. This was beyond the scheme of the
Iron Heel, for the agents-provocateurs had done their work too well. But
everything was grist to the Iron Heel. It had prepared for the outbreak, and
the killing of so many officers gave it justification for what followed. As by
magic, forty thousand soldiers of the regular army surrounded the malcontents.
It was a trap. The wretched militiamen found that their machine-guns had been
tampered with, and that the cartridges from the captured magazines did not fit
their rifles. They hoisted the white flag of surrender, but it was ignored.
There were no survivors. The entire six thousand were annihilated. Common
shell and shrapnel were thrown in upon them from a distance, and when, in
their desperation, they charged the encircling lines, they were mowed down by
the machine-guns. I talked with an eye-witness, and he said that the nearest
any militiaman approached the machine-guns was a hundred and fifty yards. The
earth was carpeted with the slain, and a final charge of cavalry, with
trampling of horse's hoofs, revolvers, and sabres, crushed the wounded into
the ground.
Simultaneously with the destruction of the Grangers came the revolt of the
coal miners. It was the expiring effort of organised labour. Three-quarters of
a million of miners went out on strike. But they were too widely scattered
over the country to advantage from their own strength. They were segregated in
their own districts and beaten into submission. This was the first great
slave-drive. Pocock1won his spurs as a slave-driver and earned the undying
hatred of the proletariat. Countless attempts were made upon his life, but he
seemed to bear a charmed existence. It was he who was responsible for the
introduction of the Russian passport system among the miners, and the denial
of their right of removal from one part of the country to another.
In the meantime, the socialists held firm. While the Grangers expired in
flame and blood, and organised labour was disrupted, the socialists held their
peace and perfected their secret organisation. In vain the Grangers pleaded
with us. We rightly contended that any revolt on our part was virtually
suicide for the whole Revolution. The Iron Heel, at first dubious about
dealing with the entire proletariat at one time, had found the work easier
than it had expected, and would have asked nothing better than an uprising on
our part. But we avoided the issue, in spite of the fact that
agents-provocateurs swarmed in our midst. In those early days the agents of
the Iron Heel were clumsy in their methods. They had much to learn, and in the
meantime our Fighting Groups weeded them out. It was bitter, bloody work, but
we were fighting for life and for the Revolution, and we had to fight the
enemy with its own weapons. Yet we were fair. No agent of the Iron Heel was
executed without a trial. We may have made mistakes, but if so, very rarely.
The bravest and the most combative and self-sacrificing of our comrades went
into the Fighting Groups. Once, after ten years had passed, Ernest made a
calculation from figures furnished by the chiefs of the Fighting Groups, and
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his conclusion was that the average life of a man or woman after becoming a
member was five years. The comrades of the Fighting Groups were heroes all,
and the peculiar thing about it was that they were opposed to the taking of
life. They violated their own natures, yet they loved liberty and knew of no
sacrifice too great to make for the Cause.2
The task we set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from our
circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the organising of the
Fighting Groups, and, outside of them, of the general secret organisation of
the Revolution. And third, the introduction of our own secret agents into
every branch of the Oligarchy into the labour castes and especially among the
telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into the army, the
agents-provocateurs, and the slave-drivers. It was slow work and perilous, and
often were our efforts rewarded with costly failures.
The Iron Heel had triumphed in open warfare, but we held our own in the new
warfare, strange and awful and subterranean, that we instituted. All was
unseen, much was unguessed; the blind fought the blind; and yet through it all
was order, purpose, control. We permeated the entire organisation of the Iron
Heel with our agents, while our own organisation was permeated with the agents
of the Iron Heel. It was warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and
conspiracy, plot and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death,
violent and terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest
comrades. We saw them today. Tomorrow they were gone; we never saw them again,
and we knew that they had died.
There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The man who plotted beside us,
for all we knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the organisation
of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel countermined with
its secret agents inside its own organisation. And it was the same with our
organisation. And despite the absence of confidence and trust we were
compelled to base our every effort on confidence and trust. Often were we
betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys
and pleasures that waited in the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer
nothing but the satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the
rest, the wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and
death.
Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to make
the only other reward that was within our power. It was the reward of death.
Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For every man who betrayed us,
from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon his heels. We might
fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies, such as the Pococks, for
instance; but the one thing we could not afford to fail in was the punishment
of our own traitors. Comrades turned traitor by permission, in order to win to
the wonder cities and there execute our sentences on the real traitors. In
fact, so terrible did we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to
betray us than to remain loyal to us.
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