“How can they live, all those thousands of poor people, if the unemployment is so great?” asked Bjerregrav. “The need is bad enough here in town, where every employer provides his people with their daily bread.”
“Here no one starves unless he wants to,” said Jeppe. “We have a well-organized system of relief.”
“You’re certainly becoming a Social Democrat, Jeppe,” said Baker Jörgen; “you want to put everything on to the organized charities!”
Wooden-leg Larsen laughed; that was a new interpretation.
“Well, what do they really want? For they are not freemasons. They say they are raising their heads again over on the mainland.”
“Well, that, of course, is a thing that comes and goes with unemployment,” said Jeppe. “The people must do something. Last winter a son of the sailmaker’s came home—well, he was one of them in secret. But the old folks would never admit it, and he himself was so clever that he got out of it somehow.”
“If he’d been a son of mine he would have got the stick,” said Jörgen.
“Aren’t they the sort of people who are making ready for the millennium? We’ve got a few of their sort here,” said Bjerregrav diffidently.
“D’you mean the poor devils who believe in the watchmaker and his ‘new time’? Yes, that may well be,” said Jeppe contemptuously. “I have heard they are quite wicked enough for that. I’m inclined to think they are the Antichrist the Bible foretells.”
“Ah, but what do they really want?” asked Baker Jörgen. “What is their madness really driving at?”