On the harbor hill Pelle met Master Jeppe, and farther on Drejer, Klaussen, and Blom. The Iceland boat had kept them waiting for several months; the news that she was in the roads quickly spread, and all the shoemakers of the whole town were hurrying down to the harbor, in order to hear whether good business had been done before the gangway was run out.
“The Iceland boat is there now!” said the merchants and leather- dealers, when they saw the shoemakers running by. “We must make haste and make out our bills, for now the shoemakers will be having money.”
But the skipper had most of the boots and shoes still in his hold; he returned with the terrifying news that no more boots and shoes could be disposed of in Iceland. The winter industry had been of great importance to the shoemakers.
“What does this mean?” asked Jeppe angrily. “You have been long enough about it! Have you been trying to open another agency over there? In others years you have managed to sell the whole lot.”
“I have done what I could,” replied the captain gloomily. “I offered them to the dealers in big parcels, and then I lay there and carried on a retail trade from the ship. Then I ran down the whole west coast; but there is nothing to be done.”
“Well, well,” said Jeppe, “but do the Icelanders mean to go without boots?”
“There’s the factories,” replied the captain.
“The factories, the factories!” Jeppe laughed disdainfully, but with a touch of uncertainty. “You’ll tell me next that they can make shoes by machinery—cut out and peg and sew and fix the treads and all? No, damn it, that can only be done by human hands directed by human intelligence. Shoemaking is work for men only. Perhaps I myself might be replaced by a machine—by a few cog-wheels that go round and round! Bah! A machine is dead, I know that, and it can’t think or adapt itself to circumstances; you may have to shape the boot in a particular way for a special foot, on account of tender toes, or—here I give the sole a certain cut in the instep, so that it looks smart, or—well, one has to be careful, or one cuts into the upper!”
“There are machines which make boots, and they make them cheaper than you, too,” said the skipper brusquely.
“I should like to see them! Can you show me a boot that hasn’t been made by human hands?” Jeppe laughed contemptuously. “No; there’s something behind all this, by God! Some one is trying to play us a trick!” The skipper went his way, offended.