"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'Them bosses are making piles of money,' he explained to me as clear as day; 'they make on the men at least fifty per cent. Look at Kuntzman,' he said. 'He started out with two machines, now he has four hundred. That Socialist is right; the bosses are getting rich.'
"I told him to go to sleep and not bother about other people's fortune, but my Moritz could not sleep the whole night.
"The next evening he went again in the boarders' room to hear the Socialist talk. When he came in to sleep he told me:
"'That Socialist is absolutely right. He proved by his books. Peshe! do you know what I will do?'
"'What?' I asked.
"'Since bosses are getting rich, I will become a boss. The Socialists are right.'
"With the money we had both worked so hard to save, Moritz Rosenberg opened a shop with a partner, also one of our boarders who put in his money. And in one year we lost all we had.
"He had to go and beg Mr. Kuntzman to take him on again. I am again taking boarders.
"But no Socialist liar will ever cross my threshold, and if I lay my hands on that one—if ever I see him, with his flowing necktie and book under his arm, going around to poor people to tell them such lies! Fourteen years of our work gone on account of him—fourteen years."