There's some truth in what you say. I'm not a bad woman. I've always been the one to say as how there must be rich folks as well as poor. But when things come to such a pass as this ... JAEGER The devil may take them all, for what I care. It would be no more than they deserves. [_OLD BAUMERT has quietly gone out._ BERTHA Where's father? MOTHER BAUMERT I don't know where he can have gone. BERTHA Do you think he's not been able to stomach the meat, with not gettin' none for so long? MOTHER BAUMERT [_In distress, crying._] There now, there! He's not even able to keep it down when he's got it. Up it comes again, the only bite o' good food as he's tasted this many a day. _Re-enter OLD BAUMERT, crying with rage._ OLD BAUMERT It's no good! I'm too far gone! Now that I've at last got hold of somethin' with a taste in it, my stomach won't keep it. [_He sits down on the bench by the stove crying._ JAEGER [_With a sudden violent ebullition of rage._] An' yet there's people not far from here, justices they call themselves too, over-fed brutes, that have nothing to do all the year round but invent new ways of wastin' their time. An' these people say that the weavers would be quite well off if only they wasn't so lazy. ANSORGE The men as says that are no men at all, they're monsters. JAEGER Never mind, father Ansorge; we're makin' the place hot for 'em. Becker and I have been and given Dreissiger a piece of our mind, and before we came away we sang him "Bloody Justice." ANSORGE Good Lord! Is that the song? JAEGER Yes; I have it here. ANSORGE They calls it Dreissiger's song, don't they? JAEGER I'll read it to you, MOTHER BAUMERT Who wrote it? JAEGER That's what nobody knows. Now listen. [_He reads, hesitating like a schoolboy, with incorrect accentuation, but unmistakably strong feeling. Despair, suffering, rage, hatred, thirst for revenge, all find utterance._ 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, Hearts sick and bodies aching, Our heavy sighs their witness bear To spirit slowly breaking. [_The words of the song make a strong impression on OLD BAUMERT. Deeply agitated, he struggles against the temptation to interrupt JAEGER. At last he can keep quiet no longer._ OLD BAUMERT [_To his wife, half laughing, half crying, stammering._] Stretched on the rack day after day. Whoever wrote that, mother, wrote the truth. You can bear witness ... eh, how does it go? "Our heavy sighs their witness bear" ... What's the rest? JAEGER "To spirit slowly breaking." OLD BAUMERT You know the way we sigh, mother, day and night, sleepin' and wakin'. [_ANSORGE had stopped working, and cowers on the floor, strongly agitated. MOTHER BAUMERT and BERTHA wipe their eyes frequently during the course of the reading._ JAEGER