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The Weavers 99
"
The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet and
the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic
of the age-long misery of labor, a profoundly
stirring picture.
The background of
"
The Weavers
"
is the
weaving district in Silesia, during the period of
home industry a gruesome sight of human
phantoms, dragging on their emaciated existence
almost by superhuman effort. Life is a tenacious
force that clings desperately even to the most
meager chance in an endeavor to assert itself.
But what is mirrored in
"
The Weavers
"
is so
appalling, so dismally hopeless that it stamps the
damning brand upon our civilization.
One man and his hirelings thrive on the sinew
and bone, on the very blood, of an entire com
munity. The manufacturer Dreissiger spends
more for cigars in a day than an entire family
earns in a week. Yet so brutalizing, so terrible
is the effect of wealth that neither pale hunger
nor black despair can move the master.
There is nothing in literature to equal the cruel
reality of the scene in the office of Dreissiger,
when the weavers bring the finished cloth. For
hours they are kept waiting in the stuffy place,
waiting the pleasure of the rich employer after
they had walked miles on an empty stomach and
little sleep. For as one of the men says,
"
What s
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