The iron heel has been a fascinating listen, I will have to review a few times for it all to soak in. I may still have 6 hours of listening left, it seems.

It was shortly
after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story, the offer he had
received from the government,
namely, an appointment as United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed.
The salary
was
comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And then it surely was
congenial work for
​Ernest, and,
furthermore, my jealous pride in him made
me hail the
proffered appointment as a recognition of
his abilities.
Then I noticed
the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.
"You are not
going to ... to decline?" I quavered. "It is a bribe," he said. "Behind it is
the fine hand
of Wickson, and
behind him the hands of greater men
than he. It is an
old trick, old as the class struggle is old — stealing the captains from the army
of labor. Poor betrayed labor ! If
you but knew how many of
its leaders have
been bought out in similar ways in the
past. It is
cheaper, so much cheaper, to buy a general
than to fight him
and his whole army. There was — but I'll not call any names. I'm bitter
enough over
it as it is.
Dear heart, I am a captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other reason,
the memory of
my poor old
father and the way he was worked to death would prevent."
The tears were
in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He never could forgive the way
his father had been malformed —
the sordid lies and the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order to
put food in his children's
mouths.
"My father was
a good man," Ernest once said to me. "The soul of him was good, and yet
it was twisted,
and maimed, and
blunted by the savagery of his life.
He was made into
a broken-down beast by his masters,
​the
arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your father. He had a strong constitution.
But he was caught in the machine
and worked to death — for
profit. Think of
it. For profit — his life blood trans-
muted into a
wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or
some similar
sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich, his masters, the arch-beasts."