The history of Adler was as strange as he himself. After leaving the
elementary school he had learnt weaving, and by the time he was twenty
he was earning quite good wages. He was a strong fellow with a high
complexion, to all appearances clumsy, but in reality shrewd and able
to work like a horse. His seniors were satisfied with him, though
they often found fault with him for being too dissipated. Adler spent
every Sunday enjoying himself with friends and with women; they would
go on merry-go-rounds and see-saws, gorge themselves and drink
together; he was always the leader of the party. He enjoyed himself so
frantically that his companions were sometimes quite taken aback. But
on week-days he worked quite as frantically. His powerful organism
seemed to possess no soul; only nerves and muscles were at play. He
did not like reading or art of any kind; he could not even sing.
No other thought possessed him than that of using his accumulated
animal strength to the full without bounds or limits, except envy for
the rich. He heard that there were large cities in the world, with
beautiful women ready to be loved, with whom one drank champagne in
gorgeously decorated rooms; that rich people rode fast horses to
death, climbed mountains on which one might break one's neck or drop
from exhaustion, and sailed their own yachts--and he longed to do all
these things. He dreamt of scouring the world from pole to pole, of
rushing on to battlefields thirsting for the enemy's blood; besides
these things he meant to drink the choicest wines, eat the richest
food, and travel with a whole harem. But how was all this going to
happen if he spent all his earnings, and even ran into debt? Then
suddenly an unusual thing happened.
A fire broke out on the second floor of one of the factory buildings.
All the workpeople had got away safely except two women and a boy on
the fourth floor. These were only noticed after a time, when the
flames were bursting forth from all parts of the building. Nobody
thought of going to the rescue; this induced the mill-owner to shout
to the crowd: "Three hundred thalers to anyone who rescues them!"
The noise and excitement increased. The people encouraged one another
to the venture, but did nothing, while the victims held out their arms
in despair, entreating for help.
Then Adler stepped forward. He asked for a rope and a ladder with
hooks, tied the rope round his waist, and approached the burning
building. The crowd drew back in astonishment; they wondered how he
meant to reach the fourth floor. He hooked the ladder to the broad
cornices of each floor above him and ran up it like a cat. The flames
singed his hair and clothes, thick smoke enveloped him like a blanket.
But he climbed higher and higher, hanging like a spider over the
flames and the chasm below. When he reached the fourth floor the crowd
shouted and applauded. Adler fixed the ladder to the parapet on the
roof, and, with surprising skill for a youth so clumsy and heavy,
carried the people, who were half dead with fright, one after the
other on to the roof. As one wall of the building had no windows,
Adler let the rescued people down on that side with the help of the
rope, and finally slid down himself. When he reached the ground, burnt
and with bleeding hands, the crowd lifted him upon their shoulders.
As a reward for this almost unparalleled bravery, Adler received the
gold medal from the Government, and a rise in wages as well as the
three hundred thalers from the mill-owner.
This became a turning-point in his life. Finding himself in possession
of such a large sum, a desire for money grew in him. He did not value
it because he had risked his life for it, or because it reminded him
that he had saved the life of others. To him it simply represented a
sum of three hundred thalers. What a time he might have if he spent
three hundred thalers on enjoying himself! But if he first increased
it to a thousand he might have a still better time. Adler gave up his
old dissipated habits and became niggardly and a usurer. He started
lending his friends money for short terms, but at high interest; and
as he worked hard besides, and was getting on fast, after a few years
he possessed, not three hundred, but three thousand thalers. All this
was done with the idea that when he had amassed a considerable sum he
would enjoy himself like a rich man. But--as the sum increased, he
decided on ever new limits, towards which he advanced with the same
determination as before.
While striving towards this "ideal" of the greatest possible
self-indulgence, he lost his sensual instincts, as a matter of fact.
He spent his gigantic strength in hard work, suppressed his dreams,
and fixed his thoughts on one thing only, and that was money. In the
beginning the money had represented the means to another end, but by
degrees even this disappeared, and his whole soul was filled with the
desire for work and money.
When he was forty years old he possessed fifty thousand thalers gained
by real hard work, determination, uncommon shrewdness, meanness and
usury. He then went to Poland, where, he had heard, industry could be
turned to the greatest profit, and started a small cotton-mill. He
married a rich heiress, who died after a year in giving birth to a
son, Ferdinand; and having her money to work with, Adler set out to
become a millionaire. His new home proved a veritable land of promise,
for he was well trained in his exhausting business and in the race for
money, and found himself among people who let themselves be exploited:
some because they had no money; others because they had come by it too
easily and had too much, or they were not shrewd enough, or again
because they tried to be cleverer than they were. Adler despised these
people who possessed neither the most elementary economic qualities
nor the strength to carry through their aims. Having surveyed his
ground thoroughly, he knew how to make capital out of it. So his
fortune grew, and people thought that the successful manufacturer was
backed up by money from Germany.
With the birth of Ferdinand a new feeling awoke in Adler's stony
heart--a feeling of unbounded and eternal love. He carried the
motherless baby about in his arms, and even used to take him to the
mill with him, where the frightened child got blue in the face with
screaming. When he grew bigger, the father satisfied all his wishes,
stuffed him with sweets, surrounded him with servants, and gave him
sovereigns to play with.
The more the child developed, the more he loved him. Ferdinand's games
reminded him of his own childhood, of his own instincts and dreams. He
pictured to himself that it would be his son who would enjoy life and
reap the real benefit of the money. Ferdinand would reach the goal of
his own desires, not yet extinct, for distant travels, dangerous
expeditions and expensive tastes.
"Only let him be grown up," the father thought, "then I will sell the
mill and we will go out into the world together; he will enjoy
himself, and I shall look on and see that he comes to no harm."
As a human being cannot give to others more than he himself possesses,
Adler gave to his son an iron constitution, selfish propensities,
money, and an unbounded desire for enjoyment. He developed no higher
instincts in him. Neither father nor son had any understanding for the
true values of life; they cared nothing for beauty in Nature or in
Art, and they both despised their fellow-men.
In the social life of the community, where every unit is consciously
or unconsciously tied by a thousand bonds of sympathy and
fellow-feeling, these two stood alone. The father loved money above
all things, and his son above money; the son liked his father, but
loved only himself and the things which satisfied his instincts.
The boy had his tutors, and went to school for a few years. He learnt
several languages, was a fair talker and a good dancer, and dressed in
good taste. As he got on easily with people when they put no obstacles
in his way, was witty and spent money lavishly, he was popular; though
Boehme, who looked at things from a different point of view,
maintained that the boy knew very little and was on the wrong track.
Ferdinand was a Don Juan even in his seventeenth year; in his
eighteenth he was expelled from school. A year later he had incurred
debts at cards, and at twenty he went abroad. In spite of large sums
allowed him by his father, he ran into debt to the tune of sixty
thousand roubles. He had thus indirectly brought about the need for
"economy" at the factory, and caused himself and his father to be
cursed by the workpeople.
During his few years' absence from home, Ferdinand had climbed Alpine
glaciers and Vesuvius, had been up in a balloon, and allowed himself
to be bored for a few weeks in London, where houses are built of red
brick and there are no amusements on Sundays. But the longest and
gayest time he had spent in Paris.
He did not often write to his father; only when a stronger impression
than usual touched his iron nerves he reported it to him in detail.
These letters therefore were great events in Adler's life. The old
mill-owner read them again and again, and enjoyed every word of them;
they revived in him the ardent dreams of long ago. To go up in a
balloon or look down into the crater of a volcano; to join in a cancan
or give a woman champagne baths; to lose or win hundreds of roubles at
one throw--had these not been the ideals of his life? Did not
Ferdinand even surpass them? Under the influence of these letters,
sketched in the excitement of first impressions, the habit of dreaming
came back to this sternly realistic mind. At times he distinctly
visualized what he read, investing it with an almost poetic fancy, but
the vision fled before the rhythmic throb of the engines and
power-looms. Adler had only one longing, one hope and faith--to amass
a million, sell his mill, and go away with his son to see the world.
"He will enjoy himself, and I shall look on all day long."
Pastor Boehme was not at all in favour of this programme, worthy of
the corrupt Elders of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Roman Empire.
"When you have come to the end of the money and the pleasure, what
will you do then?"
"Ah, but money like ours does not come to an end," the mill-owner
would reply.