When "The Weavers" first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the
"land of thinkers and poets." "What!" cried Philistia, "workingmen,
dirty, emaciated and starved, to be placed on the stage! Poverty, in all
its ugliness, to be presented as an after-dinner amusement? That is too
much!"
Indeed it is too much for the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to be brought
face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It is too much,
because of the truth and reality that thunders in the placid ears of
society a terrific _J'accuse_!
* * * * *
Gerhart Hauptmann is a child of the people; his grandfather was a
weaver, and the only way his father could escape the fate of his parents
was by leaving his trade and opening an inn. Little Gerhart's vivid and
impressionable mind must have received many pictures from the stories
told about the life of the weavers. Who knows but that the social
panorama which Hauptmann subsequently gave to the world, had not
slumbered in the soul of the child, gaining form and substance as he
grew to manhood. At any rate "The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet
and the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic of the age-long
misery of labor, a profoundly stirring picture.
The background of "The Weavers" is the weaving district in Silesia,
during the period of home industry--a gruesome sight of human phantoms,
dragging on their emaciated existence almost by superhuman effort. Life
is a tenacious force that clings desperately even to the most meager
chance in an endeavor to assert itself. But what is mirrored in "The
Weavers" is so appalling, so dismally hopeless that it stamps the
damning brand upon our civilization.
One man and his hirelings thrive on the sinew and bone, on the very
blood, of an entire community. The manufacturer _Dreissiger_ spends more
for cigars in a day than an entire family earns in a week. Yet so
brutalizing, so terrible is the effect of wealth that neither pale
hunger nor black despair can move the master.
There is nothing in literature to equal the cruel reality of the scene
in the office of _Dreissiger_, when the weavers bring the finished
cloth. For hours they are kept waiting in the stuffy place, waiting the
pleasure of the rich employer after they had walked miles on an empty
stomach and little sleep. For as one of the men says, "What's to hinder
a weaver waitin' for an hour, or for a day? What else is he there for?"
Indeed what else, except to be always waiting in humility, to be
exploited and degraded, always at the mercy of the few pence thrown to
them after an endless wait.
Necessity knows no law. Neither does it know pride. The weavers, driven
by the whip of hunger, bend their backs, beg and cringe before their
"superior."
_Weaver's wife._ No one can't call me idle, but I am not fit now for
what I once was. I've twice had a miscarriage. As to John, he's but
a poor creature. He's been to the shepherd at Zerlau, but he
couldn't do him no good, and ... you can't do more than you've
strength for.... We works as hard as ever we can. This many a week
I've been at it till far into the night. An' we'll keep our heads
above water right enough if I can just get a bit o' strength into
me. But you must have pity on us, Mr. Pfeifer, sir. You'll please be
so very kind as to let me have a few pence on the next job, sir?
Only a few pence, to buy bread with. We can't get no more credit.
We've a lot o' little ones.
"Suffer little children to come unto me." Christ loves the children of
the poor. The more the better. Why, then, care if they starve? Why care
if they faint away with hunger, like the little boy in _Dreissiger's_
office? For "little Philip is one of nine and the tenth's coming, and
the rain comes through their roof--and the mother hasn't two shirts
among the nine."
Who is to blame? Ask the Dreissigers. They will tell you, "The poor have
too many children." Besides--
_Dreissiger._ It was nothing serious. The boy is all right again.
But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of
wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so
thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two
heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would
believe it that hadn't seen it. It simply means that I shall have to
make a rule that no goods brought by children will be taken ever. I
sincerely trust that such things will not occur again.--Who gets all
the blame for it? Why, of course the manufacturer. It's entirely our
fault. If some poor little fellow sticks in the snow in winter and
goes to sleep, a special correspondent arrives post-haste, and in
two days we have a blood-curdling story served up in all the papers.
Is any blame laid on the father, the parents, that send such a
child?--Not a bit of it. How should they be to blame? It's all the
manufacturer's fault--he's made the scapegoat. They flatter the
weaver, and give the manufacturer nothing but abuse--he's a cruel
man, with a heart like a stone, a dangerous fellow, at whose calves
every cur of a journalist may take a bite. He lives on the fat of
the land, and pays the poor weavers starvation wages. In the flow of
his eloquence the writer forgets to mention that such a man has his
cares too and his sleepless nights; that he runs risks of which the
workman never dreams; that he is often driven distracted by all the
calculations he has to make, and all the different things he has to
take into account; that he has to struggle for his very life against
competition; and that no day passes without some annoyance or some
loss. And think of the manufacturer's responsibilities, think of the
numbers that depend on him, that look to him for their daily bread.
No, No! none of you need wish yourselves in my shoes--you would soon
have enough of it. You all saw how that fellow, that scoundrel
Becker, behaved. Now he'll go and spread about all sorts of tales of
my hardheartedness, of how my weavers are turned off for a mere
trifle, without a moment's notice. Is that true? Am I so very
unmerciful?
The weavers are too starved, too subdued, too terror-stricken not to
accept _Dreissiger's_ plea in his own behalf. What would become of these
living corpses were it not for the rebels like _Becker_, to put fire,
spirit, and hope in them? Verily the Beckers are dangerous.
Appalling as the scene in the office of _Dreissiger_ is, the life in the
home of the old weaver _Baumert_ is even more terrible. His decrepit old
wife, his idiotic son _August_, who still has to wind spools, his two
daughters weaving their youth and bloom into the cloth, and _Ansorge_,
the broken remnant of a heroic type of man, bent over his baskets, all
live in cramped quarters lit up only by two small windows. They are
waiting anxiously for the few pence old _Baumert_ is to bring, that they
may indulge in a long-missed meal. "What ... what ... what is to become
of us if he don't come home?" laments _Mother Baumert_. "There is not so
much as a handful o' salt in the house--not a bite o' bread, nor a bit
o' wood for the fire."
But old _Baumert_ has not forgotten his family. He brings them a repast,
the first "good meal" they have had in two years. It is the meat of
their faithful little dog, whom _Baumert_ could not kill himself because
he loved him so. But hunger knows no choice; _Baumert_ had his beloved
dog killed, because "a nice little bit o' meat like that does you a lot
o' good."
It did not do old _Baumert_ much good. His stomach, tortured and abused
so long, rebelled, and the old man had to "give up the precious dog."
And all this wretchedness, all this horror almost within sight of the
palatial home of _Dreissiger_, whose dogs are better fed than his human
slaves.
Man's endurance is almost limitless. Almost, yet not quite. For there
comes a time when the _Baumerts_, even like their stomachs, rise in
rebellion, when they hurl themselves, even though in blind fury, against
the pillars of their prison house. Such a moment comes to the weavers,
the most patient, docile and subdued of humanity, when stirred to
action by the powerful poem read to them by the _Jaeger_.
The justice to us weavers dealt
Is bloody, cruel, and hateful;
Our life's one torture, long drawn out:
For Lynch law we'd be grateful.
Stretched on the rack day after day,
Heart sick and bodies aching,
Our heavy sighs their witness bear
To spirit slowly breaking.
The Dreissigers true hangmen are,
Servants no whit behind them;
Masters and men with one accord
Set on the poor to grind them.
You villains all, you brood of hell ...
You fiends in fashion human,
A curse will fall on all like you,
Who prey on man and woman.
The suppliant knows he asks in vain,
Vain every word that's spoken.
"If not content, then go and starve--
Our rules cannot be broken."
Then think of all our woe and want,
O ye, who hear this ditty!
Our struggle vain for daily bread
Hard hearts would move to pity.
But pity's what you've never known,--
You'd take both skin and clothing,
You cannibals, whose cruel deeds
Fill all good men with loathing.
The _Dreissigers_, however, will take no heed. Arrogant and secure in
the possession of their stolen wealth, supported by the mouthpieces of
the Church and the State, they feel safe from the wrath of the
people--till it is too late. But when the storm breaks, they show the
yellow streak and cravenly run to cover.
The weavers, roused at last by the poet's description of their
condition, urged on by the inspiring enthusiasm of the _Beckers_ and the
_Jaegers_, become indifferent to the threats of the law and ignore the
soft tongue of the dispenser of the pure word of God,--"the God who
provides shelter and food for the birds and clothes the lilies of the
field." Too long they had believed in Him. No wonder _Pastor Kittelhaus_
is now at a loss to understand the weavers, heretofore "so patient, so
humble, so easily led." The _Pastor_ has to pay the price for his
stupidity: the weavers have outgrown even him.
The spirit of revolt sweeps their souls. It gives them courage and
strength to attack the rotten structure, to drive the thieves out of the
temple, aye, even to rout the soldiers who come to save the sacred
institution of capitalism. The women, too, are imbued with the spirit
of revolt and become an avenging force. Not even the devout faith of
_Old Hilse_, who attempts to stem the tide with his blind belief in his
Saviour, can stay them.
_Old Hilse._ O Lord, we know not how to be thankful enough to Thee,
for that Thou hast spared us this night again in Thy goodness ...
an' hast had pity on us ... an' hast suffered us to take no harm.
Thou art the All-merciful, an' we are poor, sinful children of
men--that bad that we are not worthy to be trampled under Thy feet.
Yet Thou art our loving Father, an' Thou wilt look upon us an'
accept us for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. "Jesus' blood and righteousness, Our covering is and
glorious dress." An' if we're sometimes too sore cast down under Thy
chastening--when the fire of Thy purification burns too ragin'
hot--oh, lay it not to our charge; forgive us our sin. Give us
patience, heavenly Father, that after all these sufferin's we may be
made partakers of Thy eternal blessedness. Amen.
The tide is rushing on. _Luise_, _Old Hilse's_ own daughter-in-law, is
part of the tide.
_Luise._ You an' your piety an' religion--did they serve to keep the
life in my poor children? In rags an' dirt they lay, all the
four--it didn't as much as keep 'em dry. Yes! I sets up to be a
mother, that's what I do--an' if you'd like to know it, that's why
I'd send all the manufacturers to hell--because I am a mother!--Not
one of the four could I keep in life! It was cryin' more than
breathin' with me from the time each poor little thing came into the
world till death took pity on it. The devil a bit you cared! You sat
there prayin' and singin', and let me run about till my feet bled,
tryin' to get one little drop o' skim milk. How many hundred nights
has I lain an' racked my head to think what I could do to cheat the
churchyard of my little one? What harm has a baby like that done
that it must come to such a miserable end--eh? An' over there at
Dittrich's they're bathed in wine an' washed in milk. No! you may
talk as you like, but if they begins here, ten horses won't hold me
back. An' what's more--if there's a rush on Dittrich's, you will see
me in the forefront of it--an' pity the man as tries to prevent
me--I've stood it long enough, so now you know it.
Thus the tide sweeps over _Old Hilse_, as it must sweep over every
obstacle, every hindrance, once labor awakens to the consciousness of
its solidaric power.
An epic of misery and revolt never before painted with such terrific
force, such inclusive artistry. Hence its wide human appeal, its
incontrovertible indictment and its ultra-revolutionary significance,
not merely to Silesia or Germany, but to our whole pseudo-civilization
built on the misery and exploitation of the wealth producers, of Labor.
None greater, none more universal than this stirring, all-embracing
message of the most humanly creative genius of our time--Gerhart
Hauptmann.