Every morning he set out furnished with a brand-new trades-union book,
and went from workshop to workshop. Times were bad for his branch of
trade; many of his old fellow-workmen had been forced to take up other
occupations--he met them again as conductors, lamplighters, etc.;
machinery had made them unnecessary, they said. It was the effect of the
great lock-out; it had killed the little independent businesses that had
formerly worked with one or two men, and put wind into the sails of
large industries. The few who could manage it had procured machines and
become manufacturers; the rest were crowded out and sat in out-of-the-
way basements doing repairs. To set to work again, on the old conditions
was what had been farthest from Pelle's thoughts; and he now went about
and offered to become an apprentice again in order to serve his new
master, the machinery, and was ready to be utilized to the utmost. But
the manufacturers had no use for him; they still remembered him too
well. "You've been too long away from the work," said one and another of
them meaningly.

Well, that was only tit for tat; but he felt bitterly how even his past
rose up against him. He had fought and sacrificed everything to improve
the conditions in his branch; and the machines were the discouraging
answer that the development gave to him and his fellows.

He was not alone in his vain search in this bright springtime. A number
of other branches had had the same fate as his own. Every new day that
dawned brought him into a stream of men who seemed to be condemned to
wear out the pavement in their hopeless search for work--people who had
been pushed out by the machines and could not get in again. "There must
be something wrong with them," Pelle thought while he stood and listened
to always the same story of how they had suddenly been dropped, and saw