At home matters were going badly with Pelle. They had not yet recovered
from the winter when he was drawn into the conflict; and the
preparations for his new position had plunged them into debt. Pelle
received the same relief as the other locked-out workers—ten to twelve
kroner a week—and out of this Ellen had to provide them with food and
firing. She thought he ought, as leader, to receive more than the
others, but Pelle did not wish to enjoy other conditions than those
allotted to the rest.
When he came home, thoroughly exhausted after his strenuous day, he was
met by Ellen’s questioning eyes. She said nothing, but her eyes
obstinately repeated the same question day after day. It was as though
they asked him: “Well, have you found employment?” This irritated him,
for she knew perfectly well that he was not looking for work, that
there was none to look for. She knew what the situation was as well as
he did, but she persistently behaved as though she knew nothing of all
that he and his comrades were endeavoring to achieve, and when he
turned the conversation on to that subject she preserved a stubborn
silence; she did not wish to hear anything about it.
When the heat of battle rose to Pelle’s head, there was no one with
whom he would rather have shared his opinions and his plans of
campaign. In other directions she had urged him on, and he had felt
this as a confirmation and augmentation of his own being; but now she
was silent. She had him and her home and the children, and all else
besides was nothing to her. She had shared the privations of the winter
with him and had done so cheerfully; they were undeserved. But now he
could get work whenever he wished. She had resumed her dumb opposition,
and this had an oppressive effect upon him; it took something from the
joy of battle.
When he reached home and related what had been said and done during the
day, he addressed himself to Lasse. She moved about the home immersed
in her own cares, as though she were dumb; and she would suddenly
interrupt his conversation with the statement that this or that was
lacking. So he weaned himself from his communicative habits, and
carried on all his work away from home. If there was writing to be
done, or if he had negotiations to accomplish, he selected some tavern
where he would be free of her constraining presence. He avoided telling
her of his post of confidence, and although she could not help hearing
about it when away from home she behaved as if she knew nothing. For
her he was still merely Pelle the working-man, who shirked supporting
his wife and children. This obstinate attitude pained him; and the
bitterness of his home life made him throw himself with greater energy
into the struggle. He became a hard and dangerous opponent.
Lasse used to gaze at them unhappily. He would willingly have
intervened, but he did not know how to set about it; and he felt
himself superfluous. Every day he donned his old clothes and went out
in order to offer his services as casual laborer, but there were plenty
of idle hands younger than his. And he was afraid of obtaining
employment that might take the bread out of other folks’ mouths. He
could not understand the campaign, and he found it difficult to
understand what was forbidden ground; but for Pelle he felt an
unconditional respect. If the lad said this or the other, then it was
right; even if one had to go hungry for it—the lad was appointed to
some special end.
One day he silently left the house; Pelle scarcely noticed it, so
absorbed was he. “He must have gone back to the old clothes woman at
the ‘Ark,’” he thought; “it’s by no means amusing here.”
Pelle had charge of the external part of the campaign; he knew nothing
of bookkeeping or administration, but simply threw himself into the
fight. Even as a child of eight he had been faced with the problem of
mastering life by his own means, and he had accomplished it, and this
he profited by now. He enjoyed the confidence of the masses; his speech
sounded natural to them, so that they believed in him even when they
did not understand him. If there was any one who did not wish to follow
where Pelle led, he had to go just the same; there was no time just now
for lengthy argument; where civil words didn’t answer he took more
energetic means.
The campaign consisted in the first place of the federation of the
masses, and Pelle was continually away from home; wherever anything was
afoot, there he put in an appearance. He had inaugurated a huge parade,
every morning all the locked-out workers reported themselves at various
stations in the city, and there the roll was called, every worker being
entered according to his Union. By means of this vast daily roll-call
of nearly forty thousand men it was possible to discover which of them
had deserted in order to act as strike-breakers. A few were always
absent, and those who had a good excuse had to establish it in order to
draw their strike-pay. Pelle was now here, now there, and always
unexpected, acting on impulse as he did. “Lightning Pelle,” they called
him, on account of the suddenness of his movements. His actions were
not based upon long deliberations; nevertheless, he had a radical
comprehension of the entire movement; one thing grew out of another,
naturally, until the whole was more than any conscious intelligence
could comprehend. And Pelle grew with it, and by virtue of his
impulsiveness was a summary of it all.
There was plenty to be done; at the roll-call all those who failed to
attend had to be entered, and those who knew anything about them must
give information. This man had gone abroad; that one had gone into the
country, to look for work; so far, so good. If any fell away and acted
as strike-breaker, instructions were immediately given for his
punishment. In this way Pelle kept the ranks closed. There were many
weak elements among them—degenerate, ignorant fellows who didn’t
understand the importance of the movement, but a strong controlling
hand and unfailing justice made it a serious matter for them to break
away.
At the outset he had organized with Stolpe’s assistance a large body of
the best workers as pickets or watchmen. These were zealous, fanatical
members of the various trades, who had taken part in the organization
of their own professional organization, and knew every individual
member thereof. They stationed themselves early in the morning in the
neighborhood of the various places of employment, marking those who
went to work there and doing their best to prevent them. They were in
constant conflict with the police, who put every possible obstacle in
their way.
Morten he met repeatedly. Privation had called him out of his
retirement. He did not believe that the campaign would lead to better
conditions, and on that account he took no part in it. But want he knew
as did no other; his insight in that direction was mysteriously keen.
The distribution of relief in the form of provisions could not have
been entrusted to better hands. He superintended the whole business of
distribution, but what he liked best was to stand, knife in hand,
cutting up pork for the families of locked-out workers. The portions
were strictly weighed; none the less, the women always thronged about
him. There was a blessing in that faint smile of his—they felt sure his
portions were the biggest!
Morten and Pelle were in disagreement on almost every point. Even now,
when everything depended on a strict cohesion, Morten could never be
trusted to behave with severity. “Remember, they aren’t of age yet,” he
would say continually. And it could not be gainsaid that there were
many to whom the conflict was unintelligible—they understood nothing of
it, although otherwise they were thoughtful and intelligent enough.
These were mostly people who had come in from the provinces at a
somewhat advanced age; indeed some had been small employers there. For
them trades unionism was a sort of lynch law, and they profited by the
strike in all simplicity in order to obtain well-paid employment. When
they were reviled as strikebreakers or “gentlemen,” they laughed like
little children who are threatened with a revolver. Slow-witted as they
were, in this respect, they took the consequences to heart, although
they could not see the reason for them. These must be compelled to
obey.
The iron industry was doing its utmost to keep going, as a trade which
must fulfill its contracted engagements, under penalty of seeing the
business fall into foreign hands. This industry had if possible to be
disabled. The pickets were at work, and _The Working Man_ published the
names and addresses of the strike-breakers. When these left the factory
they encountered a crowd of people who treated them with scorn and
contempt; they had to be escorted by the police. But the resentment
aroused by their treachery followed them home even to the barracks they
lived in. The wives and children of the locked-out workers resumed the
battle and carried on hostilities against the families of the strike-
breakers, so that they had to move. One saw them of a night, with all
their possessions on a handcart, trudging away to seek a new home under
cover of the darkness. But the day revealed them, and again they were
fugitives, until the police took them in hand and found lodging for
them.
One day a large factory by the North Bridge resumed operations with the
help of foreign labor and strike-breakers. Pelle set to work to prepare
a warm reception for the workers when they went homeward, but in the
course of the day a policeman who was friendly to the workers tipped
him the wink that two hundred police would be concealed in a
neighboring school, ready for the workers’ departure.
In the afternoon people began to collect—unemployed workers, poor
women, and children. They came early, for it well might be that the
workers would be released an hour before their time, in order to avoid
a clash, and they were missing nothing by waiting there. Finally
several thousand people stood before the gates of the factory, and the
police were moving to and fro through the crowd, which stood many men
deep, but they had to give up the effort to drive them asunder. The
street urchins began to make an uproar, and to egg the watchers on.
They felt the need of warming themselves a little, so they gradually
began to bait the police.
“Hullo, there!” suddenly shouted a mighty voice. “In the school over
there are two hundred police, waiting for us to make a disturbance, so
that they can come and use their truncheons on us. Hadn’t we better
leave them where they are? I think it’s quite as well they should go
back to school for a time!”
“Hurrah!” they cried. “Hurrah! Long live ‘Lightning’!” A movement went
through the crowd. “That’s Pelle!” The whisper passed from mouth to
mouth, and the women stood on tiptoe to see him.
Pelle and Stolpe were standing against a wall, surrounded by a few
dozen pickets. The police went up to them and reprimanded them. They
had orders to hinder the picketing, but they had no desire to meddle
with Pelle. They lived in the workers’ quarter, were at home there, and
a word from him would make the city impossible for them.
The usual time for stopping work came round, but the workers were not
released from the factory. The crowd used its wits to keep itself warm;
punning remarks concerning strike-breakers and capitalists buzzed
through the air. But suddenly an alarm ran through the crowd. The
street urchins, who are always the first to know everything, were
whistling between their fingers and running down the side streets. Then
the crowd began to move, and the police followed at a quick march,
keeping to the middle of the street. The factory had discharged the
workers by a back door. They were moving down Guldberg Street by now,
disheartened and with never a glance behind them, while a whole escort
of police accompanied them. They were soon overtaken and brought home
to the accompaniment of a sinister concert, which now and again was
interrupted by cries of, “Three cheers for the gentlemen!”
The pickets walked in a long file, close to the procession, zealously
occupied in noting each individual worker, while Pelle moved in the
midst of the crowd, endeavoring to prevent over-hasty action. There was
need to be careful. Several men were still in prison because during the
winter they had come to blows with the strike-breakers, and the police
had received stringent orders from the authorities. The press of the
propertied classes was daily calling for stricter measures, demanding
that every meeting in the streets, and especially before the gates of a
factory, should be broken up by the police.
Now and then a strike-breaker parted from the squad and ran into the
door of his dwelling, followed by a long whistle.
Among the workers was a solitary, elderly man, still powerful, whom
Pelle recognized. He kept at the extreme edge of the police, walking
heavily, with bowed head, along the pavement close to the houses. His
hair was quite gray, and his gait was almost crippled. This was Mason
Hansen, Stolpe’s old comrade and fellow-unionist, whom Pelle had
interviewed in the winter, in the hope of persuading him to refrain
from strikebreaking.
“It’s going badly with him,” thought Pelle, involuntarily keeping his
eyes on him. The results of strike-breaking had dealt hardly with him.
By St. Hans Street he turned the corner, winking at the policeman who
was about to follow him, and went down the street alone, looking
neither to right nor left, embarrassed, and with hanging head. Every
time a child cried aloud, he started. Then he stood as though riveted
to the ground, for in front of his door a heap of poverty-stricken
household goods lay in the gutter. A crowd of gaping children stood
round the heap, and in the midst of the group stood a youngish woman,
with four children, who were keeping tearful watch over the heap of
trash. The man pressed through the crowd and exchanged a few words with
the woman, then clenched his fists and shook them threateningly at the
tenement house.
Pelle went up to him. “Things aren’t going well with you, comrade,” he
said, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder. “And you are much too
good for what you are doing. You had better come with me and re-enter
the organization.”
The man slowly turned his head. “Oh, it’s you!” he said, shaking
Pelle’s hand away with a jerk. “And you seem as cool and impudent as
ever. Poverty hasn’t dealt hardly with you! It’s not at all a bad
business, growing fat on the pence of the workers, eh?”
Pelle grew crimson with anger, but he controlled himself. “Your insults
don’t hurt me,” he said. “I have gone hungry for the Cause while you
have been playing the turncoat. But that will be forgotten if you’ll
come with me.”
The man laughed bitterly, pointing at the tenement-house. “You’d better
go and give them a medal. Three months now they’ve tormented me and
made hell hot for my wife and children, in order to drive us away. And
as that didn’t answer, they went to the landlord and forced him to give
me notice. But Hansen is obstinate—he wouldn’t be shown the door. So
now they’ve got the bailiffs to turn me out, see?” He gave a hollow
laugh. “But these few sticks, why, we can soon carry them up again,
damn it all! Shall we begin, mother?”
“I’ll willingly speak to the landlord. Remember, you are an old
unionist.”
“An old—yes, I was in it from the very beginning.” The man drew himself
proudly erect. “But for all that I don’t let my wife and children
starve. So you want to go begging favors for me, eh? You be gone—at
once, will you? Be off, to the devil, or I’ll beat you to a jelly with
this!” He seized a table-leg; his eyes were quite blood-shot. His young
wife went up to him and took his hand. “Hansen!” she said quietly. He
let his weapon fall. Pelle felt the woman’s pleading eyes upon him, and
went.