Now I tries to put a bite into my mouth with this here
basket-mak-in'. I sits at it late into the night, and by the time I
tumbles into bed I've earned three-halfpence. I puts it to you as knows
things, if a man can live on that, when everything's so dear? Nine
shillin' goes in one lump for house tax, three shillin' for land tax,
nine shillin' for mortgage interest--that makes one pound one. I may
reckon my year's earnin' at just double that money, and that leaves me
twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an'
shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An'
there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with my interest
payments?
OLD BAUMERT
Some one would need to go to Berlin an' tell the King how hard put to it
we are.
JAEGER
Little good that would do, father Baumert. There's been plenty written
about it in the news-papers. But the rich people, they can turn and twist
things round ... as cunning as the devil himself.
OLD BAUMERT
[_Shaking his head._] To think they've no more sense than that in Berlin.
ANSORGE
And is it really true, Moritz? Is there no law to help us? If a man
hasn't been able to scrape together enough to pay his mortgage interest,
though he's worked the very skin off his hands, must his house be taken
from him? The peasant that's lent the money on it, he wants his
rights--what else can you look for from him? But what's to be the end of
it all, I don't know.
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