It often happened that Pelle would look back with longing on his quiet
home-life with Ellen and the child, and he felt dejectedly that they
lived in a happier world, and were on the point of accustoming
themselves to live without him. “When once you have got this out of
hand you can live really comfortably with them again,” he thought.
But one thing inevitably followed on another, and one question arose
from the solution of another, and the poor man’s world unfolded itself
like the development of a story. The fame of his skill as organizer
spread itself abroad; everywhere men were at work with the idea of
closing up the ranks, and many began to look toward him with expectant
eyes.
Frequently workers came to him begging him to help them to form an
organization—no one had such a turn for the work as he. Then they
called a meeting together, and Pelle explained the process to them.
There was a certain amount of fancifulness and emphasis in his speech,
but they understood him very well. “He talks so as to make your ears
itch,” they told one another. He was the man they trusted, and he
initiated them into the practical side of the matter.
“But you must sacrifice your wages—so that you can start a fund,” he
told them continually; “without money nothing can be done. Remember,
it’s capital itself we are fighting against!”
“Will it be any use to understand boxing when the fight comes on?”
asked a simple-minded workman one day.
“Yes—cash-boxing!” retorted Pelle swiftly. They laughed, and turned
their pitiful pockets inside out. They gazed a moment at the money
before they gave it away. “Oh, well, it’s of no consequence,” they
said.
“The day will soon come when it will be of consequence—if we only hang
together,” said Pelle confidently.
It was the dripping they had scraped off their bread—he knew that well,
but there was no help for it! In these days he was no better situated
than they were.
His activities were leading him abroad, in wider and wider circles,
until he found himself at length in the very midst of the masses. Their
number did not astonish him; he had always really been conscious of
that. And he grew by this contact, and measured himself and the
movement by an ever-increasing standard.
At this time he underwent a noticeable change in his outer man. In his
forehead were always those deep creases which in young men speak of a
gloomy childhood; they were the only bitter token of that which he had
taken upon himself, and reminded one of a clouded sky. Otherwise he
looked fresh and healthy enough; his hard life was not undermining his
strength; he thrived on the sense of community, and was almost always
cheerful. His cheeks grew round as those of a cornet-player, and his
distended nostrils spoke of his fiery zeal; he needed much air, and
always wore his clothes open upon his chest. His carriage was upright
and elastic; his whole appearance was arresting, challenging. When he
spoke at meetings there was energy in his words; he grew deeply
flushed, and wet with perspiration. Something of this flush remained in
his face and neck, and there was always a feeling of heat in his body.
When he strode forward he looked like a trumpeter at the head of a
column.
The many—that was his element. There were many who were to be brought
under one hat. Yet most of them lacked a clear understanding; old
suspicions suddenly came to light; and many doubts were abroad among
the masses. Some believed blindly; others said, “It’s all one whether
this party or that does the plucking of us!” Nothing of palpable
importance occurred, such as to catch the eye; but they came to trust
in his personality as the blind man trusts his leader, and they were
forever demanding to hear his voice. Pelle became their darling
speaker. He felt that their blind confidence bore him up, and for them
he gazed far over the hubbub and confusion. He had always been a
familiar of Fortune; now he saw it plainly, far out along the route of
march, and inflamed them all with his enthusiasm.
One evening he was summoned to rouse a calling that was in low water.
It was the dustmen who applied to him. In order to stimulate their
self- consciousness he showed them what a vast power they possessed in
their despised activity. He imagined, as an example, that they refused
to work, and painted, with much humor, the results which their action
would have for the world of rich people. This had a tremendous effect
on the meeting. The men stared at one another as if they had just
discovered themselves, and then sat laughing like one man. To follow up
his effect, he showed how one kind of work depends on another, and
imagined one calling to support another, until a general strike had
laid its paralyzing hand on the city. What a fantastic picture it was!
Pelle knew nothing of the theory of the labor movement, but his energy
and enthusiasm lifted the veil from the remotest consequences.
Stimulated and startled by the terrible power which lay in their hands,
the dustmen went home.
There was something in all this that did not satisfy him; it was in his
nature to create, not to destroy. But if only the poor would, they
could make society all over again—so Morten had one day said, and the
words had never ceased to haunt Pelle’s mind. But he could not endure
the idea of violent revolution; and now he had found a good way out of
his difficulty. He felt convinced that cohesion was irresistible, and
that life would undergo a peaceful change.
He had welded his own Union together so that the members hung together
through thick and thin. He had accomplished something there, but if a
real result were to be achieved the Unions here must work in
conjunction with those of all the cities in the country, and that was
being done to a certain small extent, in his own trade as well as in
others. But all these federations of local Unions must be combined in a
mighty whole, so that the whole country would be of one single mind. In
other countries matters were progressing as here, so why not summon all
countries to one vast work of cooperation?
Before Pelle was aware, he had included the whole world in his
solidarity. He knew now that poverty is international. And he was
convinced that the poor man felt alike all the world over.
The greatness of this idea did not go to his head. It had evolved
naturally on the lines of his own organization—it was just like the
idea at the base of the latter. But he continued to play with it until
it assumed a definite form. Then he went with his plan to his
father-in- law, who was a member of the party executive, and through
him was invited to lay the matter before the Central Committee.
Pelle was a practised speaker by now, but he was feverishly excited
when he stood in the presence of the actual heart of the labor
movement. His words delighted the many, but would he succeed in winning
over these tried and experienced men, the leaders who stood behind the
whole movement, while quietly going about their own business? He felt
that this was the most significant day in his life.
These were men with quieter temperaments than his own. They sat there
immovable, listening with half-closed eyes; his big words brought the
faintest smile to their lips—they had long got over that sort of thing!
They were artisans and craftsmen who worked hard all day for a living,
as did he himself, but several of them had given themselves a
considerable education; they must be regarded as scholarly persons. In
the evening and on Sundays they worked for the Cause, devising
political schemes and devoting themselves to keeping accounts and the
ever- increasing work of administration. They were awkward at these
unaccustomed tasks, which had hitherto been reserved by quite a
different class of society, and had had to grow accustomed thereto;
their heads were gray and wrinkled.
Pelle felt that he was still only at the beginning. These men gave him
the impression of a great secret council; outside they looked like any
one else, but here at the green table they sat creating the vast
organization into which he merely drove the masses. Here high politics
came into play. There was something impious in this—as though one saw
ants making plans to overturn a mountain; and he must do the same if he
wanted to accomplish anything! But here something more than big words
was needed! He involuntarily moderated his tone and did his best to
speak in a dry, professional manner.
He received no applause when he had finished; the men sat there gazing
in front of them with a slightly pondering expression. The silence and
the great empty room had the effect of making him feel dizzy. All his
faculties were directed outward, drawing strength from the echo from
without of the many who had shaped him. But at this decisive moment
they were silent, leaving him in suspense, without any kind of support.
Was the whole stupendous plan of federation a piece of madness, and was
he a fool to propound it? No one replied. The leaders quietly asked him
the details of his plan, and undertook to consider it.
Pelle left in a state of dreadful suspense. He felt that he had touched
upon something on which a great decision depended, and he wanted
corroboration of the fact that he had set about the matter rightly. In
this moment of need he turned to himself. It was not his way to ask
questions of his inner self, but now no other could answer him. He must
look to himself for recognition.
This was the first time that Pelle had sought refuge in his own ego, or
learned to fall back upon it in critical moments. But solitude did not
suit him and he sought it only under the compulsion of necessity. His
heart beat uncontrollably within him when he learned that his plan was
approved. A committee was appointed to put it into execution, and Pelle
was on the committee.
At one stroke the National Federation made a single army of the many
divisions, and was effective merely by the attractive virtue of its
mass. It became a heavy and fatiguing task to organize the swarms that
came streaming in, as water rushes to the sea, by virtue of a natural
law. It needed the talent of a great general to marshal them for a
conclusive battle and to lead them into the line of fire.
Pelle was naturally placed in the front ranks of the organization; his
work was properly that of the pioneer and agitator; no one possessed
the ear of the crowd as he did. He had received regular employment from
one of the larger employers, which amounted to a recognition of the
organization, and the increased rate of wages meant that he earned a
moderate income. He did not object to the fact that the work had to be
done away from home. Life at home had lost its radiance. Ellen was
loving enough, but she had always some purpose in view—and he would not
allow himself to be tied!
When he went home—and as a rule he managed to include a meal—it was
only to make himself ready and to rush out again—to general or
committee meetings. Father Lasse was there as a rule in the evenings,
and he gazed longingly after Pelle when the latter left his wife and
child; he did not understand it, but he did not venture to say anything
—he felt a great respect for the lad’s undertakings. Ellen and the old
man had discovered one another; they were like a pair of horses in
harness; there was a great consolation in that.
Pelle went forward in a sort of intoxication of power, produced by the
sense of the multiplying hosts. He was like an embodiment of those
hosts, and he heard their step echoing in his own; it was natural that
the situation should assume large dimensions. He was a product of an
ancient culture, but a culture that had always dwelt in the shadow, and
was based on stern and narrow tenets, each of which summed up a
lifetime of bitter experience. The need of light and sunshine,
continually suppressed, had been accumulating, through illimitable
years, until it had resulted in a monstrous tension. Now it had
exploded, and was mounting dizzily upward. His mind was reeling in the
heights, in a blinding cloud of light!
But fundamentally he was still the sturdy realist and stood with his
feet on the earth! The generations beneath him had been disciplined by
the cold, and had learned to content themselves with bare necessities;
a lesson which they handed down to him, simply and directly, with no
inheritance of frivolity. In his world, cause and effect were in a
direct line; an obtrusive odor did not translate itself into a spectral
chattering of the teeth. The result was in a direct line with the cause
—but their relation was often that of the match and the bonfire. Herein
lay the strength of his imagination; this was why he could encompass
all things with so simple a preparation.
He was not afraid to consider the fate of the masses; when he could not
see ahead, his old fatalism came to his help. His words flamed high
despite himself and kept the hope alive in many who did not themselves
understand the meaning of the whole movement, but saw that its
adherents grew ever more numerous, and that in other respects they were
just as well off. Where he himself could not see he was like a lens
that collects the half-darkness and gives it out again as a beam of
light.
Morten he preferred to avoid. Pelle had gradually absorbed all the
theories of the labor movement, and they comfortably filled his mind.
And how could one accomplish more than by remaining in harmony with the
whole? Morten had an unfruitful tendency to undermine the certainty of
one’s mind; he always brought forth his words from his inner
consciousness, from places where no one else had ever been, and he
delivered them as though they had been God’s voice in the Bible, which
always made people pause in their designs. Pelle respected his peculiar
nature, which never marched with the crowd, and avoided him.
But his thoughts often returned to him. Morten had first thrown a light
upon chaos—upon the knowledge of Pelle’s world, the poor man’s world;
and when he was confronted by any decisive question he involuntarily
asked himself how Morten would have dealt with it.
At times they met at meetings called together by the workers
themselves, and at which they both collaborated. Morten had no respect
for the existing laws and little for the new. He did not play a very
zealous part in the work of party organization, and was rather held at
arm’s length by the leaders. But his relations with the man in the
street were of the closest. He worked independently; there was scarcely
his match in individual cases of need or injustice; and he was always
laboring to make people think for themselves.
And they loved him. They looked up to Pelle and the rest, and made way
for them with shining eyes; but they smilingly put themselves in
Morten’s way. They wanted to press his hand—he could scarcely make his
way to the speaker’s platform. His pale face filled them with joy—women
and children hung on to him. When he passed through the streets of the
poor quarters in his simple clothes, the women smiled at him. “That’s
him, the master-journeyman, who is so good and so book-learned,” they
would say. “And now he has sold all his books in order to help a poor
child!” And they gave their own children a little push, and the
children went up to him and held out their hands and followed him right
to the end of the street.