Thus voices were raised. At first it was only whiners about whom nobody needed to trouble—frequenters of public-houses, who sat and grumbled in their cups; but gradually it became talk that passed from mouth to mouth; the specter of unemployment haunted every home and made men think over matters once more on their own account; no one could know when his turn would come to sweep the pavement.
Pelle had no difficulty in catching the tone of all this; it was his own settlement with the advance on coming out of prison that was now about to become every one’s. But now he was another man! He was no longer sure that the Movement had been so useless. It had not done anything that marked a boundary, but it had kept the apparatus going and strengthened it. It had carried the masses over a dead period, even if only by letting them go in a circle. And now the idea was ready to take them again. Perhaps it was a good thing that there had not been too great progress, or they would probably never have wakened again. They might very well starve a little longer, until they could establish themselves in their own world; fat slaves soon lost sight of liberty.
Behind the discontented fussing Pelle could hear the new. It expressed itself in remarkable ways. A party of workmen—more than two hundred— who were employed on a large excavation work, were thrown out of work by the bankruptcy of the contractor. A new contractor took over the work, but the men made it a condition for beginning work again that he should pay them the wages that were due to them, and also for the time they were unemployed. “We have no share in the cake,” they said, “so you must take the risk too!” They made the one employer responsible for the other! And capriciously refused good work at a time when thousands were unemployed! Public opinion almost lost its head, and even their own press held aloof from them; but they obstinately kept to their determination, and joined the crowd of unemployed until their unreasonable demand was submitted to.
Pelle heard a new tone here. For the first time the lower class made capital responsible for its sins, without any petty distinction between Tom, Dick, and Harry. There was beginning to be perspective in the feeling of solidarity.