The Iron Heel | Page 4

may say, is the one moot question that this new-found
document clears up. Previous to this, the earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the
pamphlet, "Ye Slaves," written by George Milford and published in December, 1912.
This George Milford was an obscure agitator about whom nothing is known, save the one
additional bit of information gained from the Manuscript, which mentions that he was
shot in the Chicago Commune. Evidently he had heard Ernest Everhard make use of the
phrase in some public speech, most probably when he was running for Congress in the
fall of 1912. From the Manuscript we learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private
dinner in the spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest-known occasion on
which the Oligarchy was so designated.
The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and
the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They
were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that
astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without these other
great historical events, social evolution could not have proceeded. Primitive communism,
chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the
evolution of society. But it were ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a necessary
stepping- stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step backward, to the
social tyrannies that made the early world a hell, but that were as necessary as the Iron
Heel was unnecessary.
Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What else than Feudalism
could have followed upon the breakdown of that great centralized governmental machine
known as the Roman Empire? Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly
procedure of social evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary, and it was
not inevitable. It must always remain the great curiosity of history--a whim, a fantasy, an
apparition, a thing unexpected and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those
rash political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of social processes.
Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be the culmination of
bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois revolution. And we of to-day can but
applaud that judgment. Following upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual
and antagonistic giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would come. Out of the decay
of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise that flower of the ages, the
Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those
that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the
Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century divine the coming of
the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the Oligarchy was there--a fact established in
blood, a stupendous and awful reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well

shows, was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its overthrow was a matter of a
few short years, was the judgment of the revolutionists. It is true, they realized that the
Peasant Revolt was unplanned, and that the First Revolt was premature; but they little
realized that the Second Revolt, planned and mature, was doomed to equal futility and
more terrible punishment.
It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during the last days of
preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the fact that there is no mention of the
disastrous outcome of the Second Revolt. It is quite clear that she intended the
Manuscript for immediate publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown, so that
her husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit for all that he had ventured and
accomplished. Then came the frightful crushing of the Second Revolt, and it is probable
that in the moment of danger, ere she fled or was captured by the Mercenaries, she hid
the Manuscript in the hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.
Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was executed by the
Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record of such executions was kept by the Iron
Heel. But little did she realize, even then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee,
how terrible had been the breakdown of the Second Revolt. Little did she realize that the
tortuous and distorted evolution of the next three centuries would compel a Third Revolt
and a Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood, ere the
world-movement of labor should come into its own. And little did she dream that for
seven long centuries the tribute of her love to Ernest Everhard