This is the strain in which Franz writes, and this time he is not so much in the wrong as he usually is.
There is no describing the amount of damage done to material and tools through inattention and carelessness. It would have driven me crazy if, when I was a master, I had been plagued with such a crew of workmen as I now have to work with. The other day it got rather too much for me, and, my patience being exhausted, I made a little appeal to them in these words:
“Colleagues, the Community expects every man to do his duty. We have only eight hours’ work. You are all old Socialists, and you will remember the hope Bebel used to have that, when the new order of things came, the pure moral atmosphere would stimulate every man to excel his neighbour. Only just reflect, comrades, that we no longer toil for capitalists and plunderers, but for the Community. And everyone of us gets back a part of whatever benefit the Community reaps as a whole.”
“Fine preaching!” they said mockingly. “It is a pity we have no longer occasion for parsons. Bebel promised us a four hours’ day, and not an eight hours’ one. The Community is a large affair. Shall I work and slave for the 50 millions whilst the other 49,999,999 take it easy? What could I buy myself with this one fifty-millionth part of the fruit of my additional industry, supposing I were really to get it back?”
And then they all sang in chorus:
“Is our Community not to thy taste?
Get thee gone to another with all possible haste.”
Since that, I have, of course, not said another word. Franz has had experiences similar to mine. The newspaper in their office is hardly ever ready for going to press at the right time, although they have half as many compositors again on it as in old times. The longer the night the greater the quantity of beer which is drunk during work, and the greater the number of printers’ errors.
Lately the foreman was unwell, and Franz had to take his place for a day or two. Franz on one occasion respectfully asked the others to make a little less noise, and upon this the whole body struck up the “Marseillaise,” taking care to especially emphasize the words, “Down with despotism.”
There are still masters and foremen in the workshops just as there were formerly, only with this difference, that they are now chosen by the workmen. When no longer acceptable to the workmen they are deposed. Hence they have to take care to keep in with the leaders in a shop, and with the majority. Those persons who, like Franz and myself, do not altogether go with the masses, are in rather a bad fix. At one time they get badly treated by the masters, and at another by the mates. And the worst of it is, you can no more get away from such a workshop than a soldier can escape from the company in which his drill-sergeant ill-treats him.