To this couple came a young laborer, Victor Pratteler, who had but recently stepped out of the narrow, securely guarded realm of hand labor into the open and surging world of the iron proletariat. He completely lacked that personal imagination and that subjective instinct toward his material which make the very soul of the locksmith and the blacksmith, so that their grasp becomes the servant of a sixth sense, the sense of form. Pratteler's hand had not groped its way toward this higher sense, so he employed it where the course of work goes on abstractly without a will of its own and a predestined process is watched by a soulless eye and served by a passionless grip. On the other hand, there survived in Pratteler something of the whimsical mood of that vanishing social type, the journeyman. He had highfaluting ideas and pompous movements, and his speech was bloated with superfluous pathos and personal conceit. His relation to life was a many-linked chain of demands. Neighbors, both men and women, he looked upon from the viewpoint of a young steer; the former were either obstacles or they were bridges and steps leading to the pretty girls, women and other treasures that he would have liked to own all for himself. Thus by a single formula he interpreted the whole world. His manner was violent, combative and absolutely inconsiderate without an inkling of deeper relations. He was a native of Switzerland.
Like a motley calf driven by a storm he stumbled one evening into the garden of the Höflingers. He arrived at the fence on a Wanderer wheel, rather new in its coat of white paint, sharply applied the brake, jumped down before it had worked, threw the wheel with a careless movement against the paling and approached before Spiele's wondering eyes with big important stride. It was a week-day, but he wore his good blue suit. Rakishly perched on his black hair was a sporting-cap with green and brown pattern. Under his Adam's apple, like a burning heart that had been pushed up, was a blood-red necktie, the ends of which flared out from under his turned-back white collar. He had strapped his trousers, so they bulged outward, but Spiele immediately noticed that he had crooked legs and wore tan sandals over gray hose. Out of the collar rose a neck, long, thin and bare as a vulture's, and crowned by a round black wrangler's head of medium size.
In an offhand manner and with slight embarrassment he touched his cap and said that he was Victor Pratteler. When Spiele did not immediately reply, he asked with some discomfort, whether he was at the Höflingers', and frowned. With laughing eyes Spiele answered that he was right and told him to sit down on the garden bench and wait until Höflinger came home. Then she continued to sprinkle the young lettuce plants which she was growing in narrow beds; when she had finished them, she turned her attention to the peas. She did not look at the young workingman again; she had already a colored photograph of him in her head which she could bring to life whenever she wished. When she turned the corner of the cottage with her sprinkler, she began to hum. The gay lad gave her cause for amusement and put her in a merry mood. She read in his frown that attitude of unreasoning resignation without which a waiting heart cannot maintain its elasticity for any length of time.
When the day's work was over, Höflinger arrived on his wheel and took charge of the new guest. He showed him the shed which already housed Spiele's bicycle and which by a clever manipulation would hold all three. At supper it appeared that Pratteler, who was to begin work in the factory the next morning, did not expect his trunk until tomorrow or the day after. So Spiele had to fetch a pair of old trousers and a coat and working-shirt of "the long one," which she did with ever-laughing eyes. In order to avoid all misunderstandings, Pratteler at once declared that he hated all emperors and kings, because they were parasites who sucked dry the German people and were responsible for its poverty and stupidity. They should be smoked out in order to make way for the state of the future, which would establish conditions more worthy of human society. If things had gone right, those conditions might already exist, for after all labor is in the majority; but the leaders and representatives put the workingmen's money into their pockets and cared not for the shrunken stomachs when they were sitting among the fat ones. Reichstag was nothing but a club of heavy-weights. All were eager to have the ministers tickle them under the arms; that meant some service to be rendered, and this again brought marks of honor and perhaps a decoration. Everything was humbug. Workingmen should help themselves and throw out all that reactionary mob, army, clergy and aristocracy; otherwise there could be no change for the better.
Spiele looked frequently at the long one to watch his expression while the savage Swiss was emptying before him his social carry-all. Höflinger said so little that the young man suspected him of being at heart a bourgeois, of having fallen away from the labor cause after he had earned his house and garden. Höflinger noticed that his wife was secretly laughing, and, as he knew that she was sometimes opposed to his well-planned tactics, he let her enjoy the diversion. The more firmly a man is standing on his feet, the more indifferently will he look at the antics of others. Besides, he knew exactly who had furnished her the premises upon which she was now basing her amused opposition to him.
Early in the morning the two workingmen rode together to the iron-works spreading out at the opening of a ravine about an hour from Höflinger's house. Pratteler wore "the long one's" trousers and coat. He had to turn back the sleeves in order to use his hands and the trouser-legs rested in many folds upon his open sandals. Under the blue shirt collar he had again his red tie, so people might see at once what he stood for. He pedaled with full force and frequently had to slacken his speed in order to have Höflinger, who did not seem to be in a hurry, catch up with him. Whenever he saw people on the road he tooted violently, while Höflinger tinkled his little bell. When workingmen greeted Höflinger, Pratteler responded with sombre mien, as if he were going to a battle. When they made a joke, his brow contracted in a frown. What was there to jest and laugh at, where they should rise in revolt against reaction? Everywhere he saw too much peaceful comfort. He was determined to infuse a new spirit into the life in this valley. After the last turn in the road the factory buildings came in sight. Pratteler saw a whole crowd of flues and chimneys in full activity. Behind the iron-works were the woods, almost entirely firs, with only a few beeches between. The water power of the brook which came tumbling out of the forest was used partly for the lighting plant, partly for the works themselves. When Höflinger and his new boarder and fellow-workman rode into the factory courts, they joined a host of other cyclists, and Pratteler's red necktie stood out significantly. Somebody asked Höflinger whether he had caught Garibaldi, and all who heard the remark began to laugh, while Pratteler frowned in silence.
When the siren gave the signal to begin work, Höflinger saw that the newcomer made a good start; and the experience he had had with zealous beginners gave him reason to anticipate that the Swiss youth would become a good workman. So his relation to Pratteler assumed a pleasant form. Like a priest Höflinger served the wheezing and squealing idol which daily swung its high flaming face about itself. Pratteler only picked its teeth and wiped its mouth. His task was not without danger; of three machinists that did the work, one was sure sometime to be carried from his place with maimed limbs or dead. The idol had neither brain nor eyes, and he who served it had to be doubly on his guard. Loaded carts came rolling along tracks and stopped automatically. Pratteler manipulated the crane which seized the iron bars and laid them at the feet of the idol. Then a claw would project itself and draw the bar toward the revolving teeth. The bar cried out like a beast. Behind the disk a whirlpool of fire was set free. The idol screamed and screeched. At the end it whistled, and when it was done, it rang a bell. Then the fragments that had dropped behind were automatically removed and the claw reached out for its next work. Around the idol iron stairs led up and ended in a circular gallery.
When Pratteler stepped up to the monster he scanned it with a quick and hostile glance. For a moment he stopped short and felt disinclined to grapple with it. Then he approached with determination, gritting his teeth as if it were an enemy. After an hour he was familiar with all its secrets. He learned that it was a rather simple idol. Yet its gigantic proportions again and again impressed him, and he could not understand how Höflinger treated it so familiarly and had never mentioned it to him the day before. Nor had he said anything about the masses of workingmen who were here working for the profit of others and among belt-gearings and cables and rows of steel beasts of all sizes and forms were day and night risking their lives. Those workingmen, too, moved about in a self-contained and indifferent manner. They crouched silently behind their machines, carried burdens, spat at intervals, and did not seem to mind that the foremen watched them and the engineers ordered them about. Pratteler hated all foremen, feared the machines with a dangerous destructive fear, and thought the engineers tyrants like Gessler, every man of them deserving to be the aim of a new Tell. They played at being masters, scorned the proletariat, and worked for the profit of the capitalists who paid them.
At noon other masses appeared in the factory courts: the wives and children of the laborers brought the lunch. They waited at the places assigned them until the siren blew. Then the workingmen rapidly left the shops and crowded toward their kin, unless they had brought their food in the well-known blue dinner-pails that were waiting for them on the stoves in the heating-rooms. Such herd-like movements annoyed Pratteler's individual and democratic sense and offended his good old journeyman traditions. Unwillingly he followed Höflinger into the third factory court where Spiele stood beside her wheel. Höflinger had invented a special arrangement for fastening the lunch-basket to the wheel. Thus he could enjoy a freshly cooked meal while the others had to be satisfied with the taste of warmed-up food, and he also had the satisfaction of spending a minimum of time and strength upon what was a necessity. Only in bad weather did the two ride home; but that made the long one lose his noon-hour nap which he never failed to take after lunch in one of the factory sheds.
Pratteler remained in the court, which he surveyed discontentedly, as the women and children slowly retired. Spiele, the tailor's daughter, suspected with her sensitive instinct that he was eager to express some opinion; so she busied herself with her wheel. When she thought it took him too long to say something, she turned around to bid him good-by. Then he shrugged his shoulders and said he would not stay on this job. He had expected to find zealous proletaires who hated capital and fought for freedom, and he had found that everything was very well arranged and trained to carry out the designs of capital. Everything was after all a humbug. Whenever he was dissatisfied, he made a wry mouth, which amused Spiele. But she consoled him. What he had seen that morning was only work-hours on a week-day. After all one had to live, and a small tree was better than none at all for purposes of shade. He should inform himself about the organization; workingmen were wont to awake at nights like bats. As far as she knew, plenty of mosquitoes were swarming about at times. Then she nodded pleasantly, mounted her wheel and rode off.