“Let him speak!” said the big smith threateningly. “You aren’t big enough to stop his mouth, not by a long chalk!” He seized a hammer and stationed himself at the foot of the anvil.
“Comrades!” Pelle began, in an easy tone, “I have been sent here to you with greetings from those outside there—from the comrades who used to stand next to you at work, from your friends and fellow-unionists. Where are our old comrades?—they are asking. We have fought so many battles by their side, we have shared good and evil with them—are we to enter into the new conditions without them? And your wives and children are asking after you! Outside there it is the spring! They don’t understand why they can’t pack the picnic basket and go out into the forest with father!”
“No, there’s no picnic basket!” said a heavy voice.
“There are fifty thousand men accepting the situation without grumbling,” Pelle earnestly replied. “And they are asking after you— they don’t understand why you demand more than they do. Have you done more for the movement than they have?—they ask. Or are you a lot of dukes, that you can’t quietly stand by the rank and file? And now it’s the spring out there!” he cried once more. “The poor man’s winter is past, and the bright day is coming for him! And here you go over to the wrong side and walk into prison! Do you know what the locked-out workers call you? They call you the locked-in workers!”
There were a few suppressed smiles at this. “That’s a dam’ good smack!” they told, one another. “He made that up himself!”
“They have other names for us as well!” cried a voice defiantly.
“Yes, they have,” said Pelle vigorously. “But that’s because they are hungry. People get unreasonable then, you know very well—and they grudge other folks their food!”
They thronged about him, pressing closer and closer. His words were scorching them, yet were doing them good. No one could hit out like Pelle, and yet at the same time make them feel that they were decent fellows after all. The foreign workers stood round about them, eagerly listening, in order that they, too, might catch a little of what was said.
Pelle had suddenly plunged into the subject of the famine, laying bare the year-long, endless despair of their families, so that they all saw what the others had suffered—saw really for the first time. They were amazed that they could have endured so much, but they knew that it was so; they nodded continually, in agreement; it was all literally true. It was Pelle’s own desperate struggle that was speaking through him now, but the refrain of suffering ran through it all. He stood before them radiant and confident of victory, towering indomitably over them all.
Gradually his words became keen and vigorous. He reproached them with their disloyalty; he reminded them how dearly and bitterly they had bought the power of cohesion, and in brief, striking phrases he awakened the inspiriting rhythm of the Cause, that lay slumbering in every heart. It was the old, beloved music, the well-known melody of the home and labor. Pelle sounded it with a new accent. Like all those that forsake their country, they had forgotten the voice of their mother—that was why they could not find their way home; but now she was calling them, calling them back to the old dream of a Land of Fortune! He could see it in their faces, and with a leap he was at them: “Do you know of anything more infamous than to sell your mother-country? That is what you have done—before ever you set foot in it—you have sold it, with your brothers, your wives, and your children! You have foresworn your religion—your faith in the great Cause! You have disobeyed orders, and have sold yourselves for a miserable Judas-price and a keg of brandy!”