OLD BAUMERT
[Sniffing.] Fine as spice, you might say.
ANSORGE
Come, then, Moritz, tell us your opinion, you that's been out and seen the world. Is things at all like to improve for us weavers, eh?
JAEGER
They would need to.
ANSORGE
We're in an awful state here. It's not livin' an' it's not dyin'. A man fights to the bitter end, but he's bound to be beat at last—to be left without a roof over his head, you may say without ground under his feet. As long as he can work at the loom he can earn some sort o poor, miserable livin'. But it's many a day since I've been able to get that sort o' job. Now I tries to put a bite into my mouth with this here basket-mak-in'. I sits at it late into the night, and by the time I tumbles into bed I've earned three-halfpence. I puts it to you as knows things, if a man can live on that, when everything's so dear? Nine shillin' goes in one lump for house tax, three shillin' for land tax, nine shillin' for mortgage interest—that makes one pound one. I may reckon my year's earnin' at just double that money, and that leaves me twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An' there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with my interest payments?
OLD BAUMERT
Some one would need to go to Berlin an' tell the King how hard put to it we are.