“Yes, it’s a good thing the best can’t be had for money,” said Ellen, tucking the clothes about his feet. He was propped up with pillows, so that he could lie there and work. He had a map of the Hill Farm land beside him, and was making plans for a systematic laying out of the ground for building. He wrote down his ideas about it in a book that was to be appended to the plans. He worked from sunrise until the middle of the day, and during that time it was all that Ellen could do to keep the children away from him; Boy Comfort was on his way up to the old man every few minutes.
In the afternoon, when she had finished in the kitchen, she took the children up for an hour. They were given a picture-book and were placed at Brun’s large writing-table, while Ellen seated herself by the window with her knitting and talked to the old man. From her seat she could follow the work out on the field, and had to give him a full description of how far they had got with each plot.
There were always several hundred men out there standing watching the work—a shivering crowd that never diminished. They were unemployed who had heard that something was going on out here, and long before the dawn of day they were standing there in the hope of coming in for something. All day they streamed in and out, an endless chain of sad men. They resembled prisoners condemned hopelessly to tread a huge wheel; there was a broad track across the fields where they went.
Brun was troubled by the thought of these thousands of men who came all this way to look for a day’s work and had to go back with a refusal. “We can’t take more men on than there are already,” he said to Pelle, “or they’ll only get in one another’s way. But perhaps we could begin to carry out some of our plans for the future. Can’t we begin to make roads and such like, so that these men can get something to do?”
No, Pelle dared not agree to that.
“In the spring we shall want capital to start the tanners with a cooperative tannery,” he said. “It’ll be agreed on in their Union at an early date, on the presupposition that we contribute money; and I consider it very important to get it started. Our opponents find fault with us for getting our materials from abroad. It’s untenable in the long run, and must come to an end now. As it is, the factory’s hanging in the air; they can cut us off from the supply of materials, and then we’re done. But if we only have our own tannery, the one business can be carried out thoroughly and can’t be smashed up, and then we’re ready to meet a lock-out in the trade.”
“The hides!” interpolated Brun.
“There we come to agriculture. That’s already arranged coöperatively, and will certainly not be used against us. We must anyhow join in there as soon as ever we get started—buy cattle and kill, ourselves, so that besides the hides we provide ourselves with good, cheap meat.”
“Yes, yes, but the tannery won’t swallow everything! We can afford to do some road-making.”
“No, we can’t!” Pelle declared decisively. “Remember we’ve also got to think of the supply associations, or else all our work is useless; the one thing leads to the other. There’s too much depending on what we’re doing, and we mustn’t hamper our undertaking with dead values that will drag it down. First the men and then the roads! The unemployed to-day must take care of themselves without our help.”