Pelle the Conqueror Part 158

Peter Dreyer shrugged his shoulders. The more reason was there, he thought, to help.

"Would you have us sacrifice our great plan of making all want unnecessary, for one meal of food to the needy?" asked Pelle.

Yes, Peter saw only the want of to-day; it was such a terrible reality to him that the future must take care of itself.

A change had taken place in him, and he seemed quite to have given up the development.

"He sees too much," said Pelle to Brun, "and now his heart has dominated his reason. We'd better leave him alone; we shan't in any case get him to admit anything, and we only irritate him. It's impossible to live with all that he always has before his eyes, and yet keep your head clear; you must either shut your eyes and harden yourself, or let yourself be broken to pieces."

Peter Dreyer's heart was the obstruction. He often had to stop in the middle of his work and gasp for breath. "I'm suffocated!" he would say.

There were many like him. The ever-increasing unemployment began to spread panic in men's minds. It was no longer only the young, hot-headed men who lost patience. Out of the great compact ma.s.s of organization, in which it had hitherto been impossible to distinguish the individual beings, simple-minded men suddenly emerged and made themselves ridiculous by bearing the truth of the age upon their lips. Poor people, who understood nothing of the laws of life, nevertheless awakened, disappointed, out of the drowsiness into which the rhythm had lulled them, and stirred impatiently. Nothing happened except that one picked trade after another left them to become middle-cla.s.s.

The Movement had hitherto been the fixed point of departure; from it came everything that was of any importance, and the light fell from it over the day. But now suddenly a germ was developed in the simplest of them, and they put a note of interrogation after the party-cry. To everything the answer was: When the Movement is victorious, things will be otherwise. But how could they be otherwise when no change had taken place even now when they had the power? A little improvement, perhaps, but no change. It had become the regular refrain, whenever a woman gave birth to a child in secret, or a man stole, or beat his wife:--It is a consequence of the system! Up and vote, comrades! But now it was beginning to sound idiotic in their ears. They were voting, confound it, with all their might, but all the same everything was becoming dearer!

Goodness knows they were law-abiding enough. They were positively perspiring with parliamentarianism, and would soon be doing nothing but getting mandates. And what then? Did any one doubt that the poor man was in the majority--an overwhelming majority? What was all this nonsense then that the majority were to gain? No, those who had the power would take good care to keep it; so they might win whatever stupid mandates they liked!

Men had too much respect for the existing conditions, and so they were always being fooled by them. It was all very well with all this lawfulness, but you didn't only go gradually from the one to the other!

How else was it that nothing of the new happened? The fact was that every single step toward the new was instantly swallowed up by the existing condition of things, and turned to fat on its ribs. Capital grew fat, confound it, no matter what you did with it; it was like a cat, which always falls upon its feet. Each time the workmen obtained by force a small rise in their wages, the employers multiplied it by two and put it onto the goods; that was why they were beginning to be so accommodating with regard to certain wage-demands. Those who were rather well off, capital enticed over to its side, leaving the others behind as a shabby proletariat. It might be that the Movement had done a good piece of work, but you wanted confounded good eyes to see it.

Thus voices were raised. At first it was only whiners about whom n.o.body needed to trouble-frequenters of public-houses, who sat and grumbled in their cups; but gradually it became talk that pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth; the specter of unemployment haunted every home and made men think over matters once more on their own account; no one could know when his turn would come to sweep the pavement.

Pelle had no difficulty in catching the tone of all this; it was his own settlement with the advance on coming out of prison that was now about to become every one's. But now he was another man! He was no longer sure that the Movement had been so useless. It had not done anything that marked a boundary, but it had kept the apparatus going and strengthened it. It had carried the ma.s.ses over a dead period, even if only by letting them go in a circle. And now the idea was ready to take them again. Perhaps it was a good thing that there had not been too great progress, or they would probably never have wakened again. They might very well starve a little longer, until they could establish themselves in their own world; fat slaves soon lost sight of liberty.

Behind the discontented fussing Pelle could hear the new. It expressed itself in remarkable ways. A party of workmen--more than two hundred--who were employed on a large excavation work, were thrown out of work by the bankruptcy of the contractor. A new contractor took over the work, but the men made it a condition for beginning work again that he should pay them the wages that were due to them, and also for the time they were unemployed. "We have no share in the cake," they said, "so you must take the risk too!" They made the one employer responsible for the other! And capriciously refused good work at a time when thousands were unemployed! Public opinion almost lost its head, and even their own press held aloof from them; but they obstinately kept to their determination, and joined the crowd of unemployed until their unreasonable demand was submitted to.

Pelle heard a new tone here. For the first time the lower cla.s.s made capital responsible for its sins, without any petty distinction between Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry. There was beginning to be perspective in the feeling of solidarity.

The great weariness occasioned by wandering in a spiritual desert came once more to the surface. He had experienced the same thing once before, when the Movement was raised; but oddly enough the breaking out came that time from the bottom of everything. It began with blind attacks on parliamentarianism, the suffrage, and the paroles; there was in it an unconscious rebellion against restraint and treatment in the ma.s.s. By an incomprehensible process of renewal, the ma.s.s began to resolve itself into individuals, who, in the midst of the bad times, set about an inquiry after the ego and the laws for its satisfaction. They came from the very bottom, and demanded that their shabby, ragged person should be respected.

Where did they come from? It was a complete mystery! Did it not sound foolish that the poor man, after a century's life in rags and discomfort, which ended in his entire effacement in collectivism, should now make his appearance with the strongest claim of all, and demand his soul back?

Pelle recognized the impatience of the young men in this commotion.

It was not for nothing that Peter Dreyer was the moving spirit at the meetings of the unemployed. Peter wanted him to come and speak, and he went with him two or three times, as he wanted to find out the relation of these people to his idea; but he remained in the background and could not be persuaded to mount the platform. He had nothing to do with these confused crowds, who turned all his ideas upside down. In any case he could not give them food to-day, and he had grown out of the use of strong language.

"Go up and say something nice to them! Don't you see how starved they are?" said Peter Dreyer, one evening. "They still have confidence in you from old days. But don't preach cooperation; you don't feed hungry men with music of the future."

"Do you give them food then?" asked Pelle.

"No, I can't do that, but I give them a vent for their grievances, and get them to rise and protest. It's something at any rate, that they no longer keep silence and submit."

"And if to-morrow they get something to eat, the whole turmoil's forgotten; but they're no further on than they were. Isn't it a matter of indifference whether they suffer want today, as compared with the question whether they will do so eternally?"

"If you can put the responsibility upon those poor creatures, you must be a hard-hearted brute!" said Peter angrily.

Well, it was necessary now to harden one's heart, for nothing would be accomplished with sympathy only! The man with eyes that watered would not do for a driver through the darkness.

It was a dull time, and men were glad when they could keep their situations. There was no question of new undertakings before the spring.

But Pelle worked hard to gain adherents to his idea. He had started a discussion in the labor party press, and gave lectures. He chose the quiet trade unions, disdained all agitation eloquence, and put forward his idea with the clearness of an expert, building it up from his own experience until, without any fuss, by the mere power of the facts, it embraced the world. It was the slow ones he wanted to get hold of, those who had been the firm nucleus of the Movement through all these years, and steadfastly continued to walk in the old foot-prints, although they led nowhere. It was the picked troops from the great conflict that must first of all be called upon! He knew that if he got them to go into fire for his idea with their unyielding discipline, much would be gained.

It was high time for a new idea to come and take them on; they had grown weary of this perpetual goose-step; the Movement was running away from them. But now he had come with an idea of which they would never grow weary, and which would carry them right through. No one would be able to say that he could not understand it, for it was the simple idea of the home carried out so as to include everything. Ellen had taught it to him, and if they did not know it themselves, they must go home to their wives and learn it. _They_ did not brood over the question as to which of the family paid least or ate most, but gave to each one according to his needs, and took the will for the deed. The world would be like a good, loving home, where no one oppressed the other--nothing more complicated than that.

Pelle was at work early and late. Scarcely a day pa.s.sed on which he did not give a lecture or write about his cooperation idea. He was frequently summoned into the provinces to speak. People wanted to see and hear the remarkable manufacturer who earned no more than his work-people.

In these journeys he came to know the country, and saw that much of his idea had been antic.i.p.ated out there. The peasant, who stiffened with horror at the word "socialist," put the ideas of the Movement into practice on a large scale. He had arranged matters on the cooperative system, and had knitted the country into supply a.s.sociations.

"We must join on there when we get our business into better order," said Pelle to Brun.

"Yes, if the farmers will work with us," said Brun doubtfully. "They're conservative, you know."

This was now almost revolutionary. As far as Pelle could see, there would soon be no place as big as his thumb-nail for capital to feed upon out there. The farmers went about things so quickly! Pelle came of peasant stock himself, and did not doubt that he would be able to get in touch with the country when the time came.

The development was preparing on several sides; they would not break with that if they wanted to attain anything.

It was like a fixed law relating to growth in existence, an inviolable divine idea running through it all. It was now leading him and his fellows into the fire, and when they advanced, no one must stay behind.

No cla.s.s of the community had yet advanced with so bright and great a call; they were going to put an end forever to the infamy of human genius sitting and weighing the spheres in s.p.a.ce, but forgetting to weigh the bread justly.

He was not tired of the awakening discontent with the old condition of things; it opened up the overgrown minds, and created possibility for the new. At present he had no great number of adherents; various new currents were fighting over the minds, which, in their faltering search, were drawn now to one side, now to the other. But he had a buoyant feeling of serving a world-idea, and did not lose courage.

Unemployment and the awakening ego-feeling brought many to join Peter Dreyer. They rebelled against the conditions, and now saw no alternative but to break with everything. They sprang naked out of nothing, and demanded that their personality should be respected, but were unable as yet to bear its burdens; and their hopeless view of their misery threatened to stifle them. Then they made obstruction, their own broken-down condition making them want to break down the whole. They were Pelle's most troublesome opponents.

Up to the present they had unfortunately been right, but now he could not comprehend their desperate impatience. He had given them an idea now, with which they could conquer the world just by preserving their coherence, and if they did not accept this, there must be something wrong with them. Taking this view of the matter, he looked upon their disintegrating agitation with composure; the healthy mind would be victorious!

Peter Dreyer was at present agitating for a ma.s.s-meeting of the unemployed. He wanted the twenty thousand men, with wives and children, to take up their position on the Council House Square or Amalienborg Palace Square, and refuse to move away until the community took charge of them.

"Then the authorities can choose between listening to their demands, and driving up horses and cannon," he said. Perhaps that would open up the question.

"Take care then that the police don't arrest you," said Pelle, in a warning voice; "or your people will be left without a head, and you will have enticed them into a ridiculous situation which can only end in defeat."

"Let them take care, the curs!" answered Peter threateningly. "I shall strike at the first hand that attempts to seize me!"

"And what then? What do you gain by striking the policemen? They are only the tool, and there are plenty of them!".

Peter laughed bitterly. "No," he said, "it's not the policemen, nor the a.s.sistant, nor the chief of police! It's no one! That's so convenient, no one can help it! They've always stolen a march upon us in that way; the evil always dives and disappears when you want to catch it. 'It wasn't me!' Now the workman's demanding his right, the employer finds it to his advantage to disappear, and the impersonal joint stock company appears. Oh, this confounded sneaking out of a thing! Where is one to apply? There's no one to take the blame! But something _shall_ be done now! If I hit the hand, I hit what stands behind it too; you must hit what you can see. I've got a revolver to use against the police; to carry arms against one's own people shall not be made a harmless means of livelihood unchallenged."

XVII

One Sat.u.r.day evening Pelle came home by train from a provincial town where he had been helping to start a cooperative undertaking.

It was late, but many shops were still open and sent their brilliant light out into the drizzling rain, through which the black stream of the streets flowed as fast as ever. It was the time when the working women came from the center of the city--pale typists, cas.h.i.+ers with the excitement of the cheap novel still in their eyes, seamstresses from the large businesses. Some hurried along looking straight before them without taking any notice of the solitary street-wanderers; they had something waiting for them--a little child perhaps. Others had nothing to hurry for, and looked weariedly about them as they walked, until perhaps they suddenly brightened up at sight of a young man in the throng.

Charwomen were on their way home with their basket on their arm. They had had a long day, and dragged their heavy feet along. The street was full of women workers--a changed world! The bad times had called the women out and left the men at home. On their way home they made their purchases for Sunday. In the butchers' and provision-dealers' they stood waiting like tired horses for their turn. s.h.i.+vering children stood on tiptoe with their money clasped convulsively in one hand, and their chin supported on the edge of the counter, staring greedily at the eatables, while the light was reflected from their ravenous eyes.

Pelle walked quickly to reach the open country. He did not like these desolate streets on the outskirts of the city, where poverty rose like a sea-birds' nesting-place on both sides of the narrow cleft, and the darkness sighed beneath so much. When he entered an endless brick channel such as these, where one- and two-roomed flats, in seven stories extended as far as he could see, he felt his courage forsaking him. It was like pa.s.sing through a huge churchyard of disappointed hopes. All these thousands of families were like so many unhappy fates; they had set out brightly and hopefully, and now they stood here, fighting with the emptiness.

Pelle walked quickly out along the field road. It was pitch-dark and raining, but he knew every ditch and path by heart. Far up on the hill there shone a light which resembled a star that hung low in the sky. It must be the lamp in Brun's bedroom. He wondered at the old man being up still, for he was soon tired now that he had given up the occupation of a long lifetime, and generally went to bed early. Perhaps he had forgotten to put out the lamp.