Hansie had hopped onto the table and had made his way to the remainder of the cake. He was sitting on the edge of the dish, cheerfully flirting his tail as he pecked away. Suddenly something fell upon the table- cloth. “Lord bless me,” cried Stolpe, in consternation, “if that had been any one else! Wouldn’t you have heard mother carry on!”
Old Lasse was near exploding at this. He had never before been in such pleasant company. “It’s just as if one had come upon a dozen of Brother Kalle’s sort,” he whispered to Pelle. Pelle smiled absently. Ellen was holding his hand in her lap and playing with his fingers.
A telegram of congratulation came for Pelle from his Union, and this brought the conversation back to more serious matters. Morten and Stolpe became involved in a dispute concerning the labor movement; Morten considered that they did not sufficiently consider the individual, but attached too much importance to the voice of the masses. In his opinion the revolution must come from within.
“No,” said Stolpe, “that leads to nothing. But if we could get our comrades into Parliament and obtain a majority, then we should build up the State according to our own programme, and that is in every respect a legal one!”
“Yes, but it’s a question of daily bread,” said Morten, with energy. “Hungry people can’t sit down and try to become a majority; while the grass grows the cow starves! They ought to help themselves. If they do not, their self-consciousness is imperfect; they must wake up to the consciousness of their own human value. If there were a law forbidding the poor man to breathe the air, do you think he’d stop doing so? He simply could not. It’s painful for him to look on at others eating when he gets nothing himself. He is wanting in physical courage. And so society profits by his disadvantage. What has the poor man to do with the law? He stands outside all that! A man mustn’t starve his horse or his dog, but the State which forbids him to do so starves its own workers. I believe they’ll have to pay for preaching obedience to the poor; we are getting bad material for the now order of society that we hope to found some day.”
“Yes, but we don’t obey the laws out of respect for the commands of a capitalist society,” said Stolpe, somewhat uncertainly, “but out of regard for ourselves. God pity the poor man if he takes the law into his own hands!”
“Still, it keeps the wound fresh! As for all the others, who go hungry in silence, what do they do? There are too few of them, alas—there’s room in the prisons for them! But if every one who was hungry would stick his arm through a shop window and help himself—then the question of maintenance would soon be solved. They couldn’t put the whole nation in prison! Now, hunger is yet another human virtue, which is often practised until men die of it—for the profit of those who hoard wealth. They pat the poor, brave man on the back because he’s so obedient to the law. What more can he want?”
“Yes, devil take it, of course it’s all topsy-turvy,” replied Stolpe. “But that’s precisely the reason why——No, no, you won’t persuade me, my young friend! You seem to me a good deal too ‘red.’ It wouldn’t do! Now I’ve been concerned in the movement from the very first day, and no one can say that Stolpe is afraid to risk his skin; but that way wouldn’t suit me. We have always held to the same course, and everything that we have won we have taken on account.”
“Yes, that’s true,” interrupted Frau Stolpe. “When I look back to those early years and then consider these I can scarcely believe it’s true. Then it was all we could do to find safe shelter, even among people of our own standing; they annoyed us in every possible way, and hated father because he wasn’t such a sheep as they were, but used to concern himself about their affairs. Every time I went out of the kitchen door I’d find a filthy rag of dishcloth hung over the handle, and they smeared much worse things than that over the door—and whose doing was it? I never told father; he would have been so enraged he would have torn the whole house down to find the guilty person. No, father had enough to contend against already. But now: ‘Ah, here comes Stolpe— Hurrah! Long live Stolpe! One must show respect to Stolpe, the veteran!’”
“That may be all very fine,” muttered Albert Olsen, “but the slater, he climbs the highest.” He was sitting with sunken head, staring angrily before him.