Pelle the Conqueror Martin Andersen Nexø (readict books TXT) 📖

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 class made capital responsible for its sins, without any petty distinction between Tom, Dick, 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 mass. By an incomprehensible process of renewal, the mass 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 today, 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 tomorrow 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 hardhearted 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 footprints, 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 passed on which he did not give a lecture or write about his cooperation idea. He was frequently summoned into