Wickson Names the Heel

Wickson does not lose the argument at the Philomath Club. He retires it. After Ernest has called the room a shambles of civilization, the coolest head among the masters declines to keep playing philosopher. Shell and shrapnel will be the answer. They will grind revolutionists under a heel and walk upon their faces. The king of words, he says, is Power. London puts that sentence in a monthly club of the rich so you cannot file it under street violence. The heel is spoken in a room that still prints invitations.

The book has already shown the friendlier version. At preacher's night the ministers do not need to grind anyone. They are paid to misunderstand the working class from another neighborhood, in clothes the other neighborhood sewed. Ernest's insult is diagnostic: sincerity is their value to the employer, not their independence from him. Later the university performs the same trick with better stationery. Cunningham's plates are damaged, the resignation is announced as a gift to science, and the letterhead survives. Hearst can be ruined by removing advertisements the trusts never had to buy. None of this looks like a coup. All of it is ownership learning to speak in the old forms.

By the time Congress debates aid for the unemployed, the Grangers are in the dock for treason and their seats belong to creatures of the Iron Heel. The stamp of constitutional procedure is still available. A bomb at Ernest's feet supplies the emergency the forms required. In the refuge Avis will watch the finished product: industrial peace for a labor caste, a mercenary army with its own perks, an abyss kept leaderless because talent is promoted out. Wickson named the heel while the room still thought it was a debating society. The rest of the novel is that heel putting on a university, a pulpit, a newspaper, a ballot, and a raise, and asking to be congratulated for looking like America.