[Still chewing; his spirits are rising from the effect of food and drink.] Moritz, you're the very man we want. You can read an' write. You understand the weavin' trade, and you've a heart to feel for the poor weavers' sufferin's. You should stand up for us here.
JAEGER
I'd do that quick enough! There's nothing I'd like better than to give the manufacturers round here a bit of a fright—dogs that they are! I'm an easy-goin' fellow, but let me once get worked up into a real rage, and I'll take Dreissiger in the one hand and Dittrich in the other, and knock their heads together till the sparks fly out o' their eyes.—If we could only arrange all to join together, we'd soon give the manufacturers a proper lesson … we wouldn't need no King an' no Government … all we'd have to do would be to say: We wants this and that, and we don't want the other thing. There would be a change of days then. As soon as they see that there's some pluck in us, they'll cave in. I know the rascals; they're a pack o' cowardly hounds.
MOTHER BAUMERT
There's some truth in what you say. I'm not a bad woman. I've always been the one to say as how there must be rich folks as well as poor. But when things come to such a pass as this …
JAEGER
The devil may take them all, for what I care. It would be no more than they deserves.
[OLD BAUMERT has quietly gone out.
BERTHA
Where's father?