“Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it,” Ernest said.  “I’ll wager they’ve made a text-book out of his ‘Benevolent Feudalism.’"*

* “Our Benevolent Feudalism,” a book published in 1902 A.D., by W. J. Ghent.  It has always been insisted that Ghent put the idea of the Oligarchy into the minds of the great capitalists.  This belief persists throughout the literature of the three centuries of the Iron Heel, and even in the literature of the first century of the Brotherhood of Man.  To-day we know better, but our knowledge does not overcome the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in all history.

Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot discussion with half a dozen labor leaders, Ernest turned to me and said quietly:  “That settles it.  The Iron Heel has won.  The end is in sight.”

This little conference in our home was unofficial; but Ernest, like the rest of his comrades, was working for assurances from the labor leaders that they would call out their men in the next general strike.  O’Connor, the president of the Association of Machinists, had been foremost of the six leaders present in refusing to give such assurance.

“You have seen that you were beaten soundly at your old tactics of strike and boycott,” Ernest urged.

O’Connor and the others nodded their heads.

“And you saw what a general strike would do,” Ernest went on.  “We stopped the war with Germany.  Never was there so fine a display of the solidarity and the power of labor.  Labor can and will rule the world.  If you continue to stand with us, we’ll put an end to the reign of capitalism.  It is your only hope.  And what is more, you know it.  There is no other way out.  No matter what you do under your old tactics, you are doomed to defeat, if for no other reason because the masters control the courts."*

* As a sample of the decisions of the courts adverse to labor, the following instances are given.  In the coal- mining regions the employment of children was notorious.  In 1905 A.D., labor succeeded in getting a law passed in Pennsylvania providing that proof of the age of the child and of certain educational qualifications must accompany the oath of the parent.  This was promptly declared unconstitutional by the Luzerne County Court, on the ground that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment in that it discriminated between individuals of the same class—­namely, children above fourteen years of age and children below.  The state court sustained the decision.  The New York Court of Special Sessions, in 1905 A.D., declared unconstitutional the law prohibiting minors and women from working in factories after nine o’clock at night, the ground taken being that such a law was “class legislation.”  Again, the bakers of that time were terribly overworked.  The New York Legislature passed a law restricting work in bakeries to ten hours a day.  In 1906 A.D., the Supreme Court of the