"It was too bad. He was a nice fellow. But I, who was I to mourn him? I
paid sixteen dollars rent. So I put out a shingle the same day 'Boarders
wanted.' On the next day I got a new boarder. I was not particular then.
Especially when I saw a nice clean young man, with teeth as white as
grains of polished rice; and a voice he had like silk, like pure silk,
so soft and nice. He did not bargain, he did not talk. Five dollars a
month, five dollars. I asked him what time he had to get up in the
morning, because if he had to get up later than the other bedfellow, he
should sleep near the wall, not to be disturbed, or if he had to get up
earlier the other will sleep near the wall. He did not care. It was all
fixed up and in the evening he brought his trunk. It was as heavy as
stone--full of books.
"After supper my other boarders used to sit at a game of cards. Not that
they were gamblers, but what else should they have done? They drank tea,
soda water, a can of beer sometimes. Sometimes my Moritz sat with them
for a while--just to make them feel at home. Believe me, I did not lose
at them. They paid for tea and sugar. Why shouldn't they? Was I their
mother? In America one has to pay for everything.
"But that new boarder I got, he wouldn't play cards and wouldn't drink
beer. He sat in a corner and read books till late at night.
"Then after a few weeks the others, too, stopped playing cards. They all
sat up late in the night and talked. The new boarder was explaining all
the time how their bosses got richer every day. Every night the same
thing. He was a Socialist.
"My husband was very busy, worked overtime, Sundays, whole nights. It
was already fourteen years that he worked for Kuntzman, and we had put
aside a nice little sum of money.
"One evening my Moritz came home very angry. Kuntzman had engaged a new
foreman, an Italian fellow, and the two of them, my husband and he,
couldn't agree. After supper, I told him to go to sleep, but he did not
want to. He went in to talk with the boarders. I went to bed. Late at
night Moritz came in.
"'You sleep,' he said.
"'What is it?'
"'You know, that new boarder is perfectly right in what he says about
bosses!' Moritz said to me.
"'What do you mean?' I asked.
"'Them bosses are making piles of money,' he explained to me as clear as
day; 'they make on the men at least fifty per cent. Look at Kuntzman,'
he said. 'He started out with two machines, now he has four hundred.
That Socialist is right; the bosses are getting rich.'
"I told him to go to sleep and not bother about other people's fortune,
but my Moritz could not sleep the whole night.
"The next evening he went again in the boarders' room to hear the
Socialist talk. When he came in to sleep he told me:
"'That Socialist is absolutely right. He proved by his books. Peshe! do
you know what I will do?'
"'What?' I asked.
"'Since bosses are getting rich, I will become a boss. The Socialists
are right.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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