Brecht Collected Plays: 3: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the ... St Joan of the Stockyards (World Classics)
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Now you have shown me the baseness of the poor
Let me show you what suffering they endure.
Your tales of their debasement you will see
Refuted by the face of poverty.
5
JOAN INTRODUCES THE POOR TO THE LIVESTOCK EXCHANGE
The Livestock Exchange.
THE PACKERS:
We’ve got canned meat for sale!
Buy canned meat, you wholesalers!
Fresh and succulent canned meat!
Mauler & Cridle’s Leaf Lard!
Graham’s tasty loins of beef!
Wilder’s Kentucky salt pork!
THE WHOLESALERS:
And there was stillness on the face of the waters
And sky-blue ruin among the wholesalers!
THE PACKERS:
Thanks to vast progress in technology
To engineering skill and managerial know-how
We are able to offer you
Mauler & Cridle’s Leaf Lard
Graham’s tasty loins of beef
Wilder’s Kentucky salt pork
At a thirty percent reduction.
Buy canned meat, you wholesalers!
Strike while the iron is hot!
THE WHOLESALERS:
And there was stillness over the mountain tops
And the hotel kitchens covered their heads
And the food stores turned away in horror
And the middlemen paled!
We wholesalers puke at the sight of
A can of meat. The country’s stomach
Has been stuffed too full of meat from cans
And is rebelling.
SLIFT:
What have your friends in New York been writing you?
MAULER:
Theories. If they’re to be believed
The whole meat ring will topple to the ground
And lie there several weeks more dead than alive
And I’ll be left with mountains of meat on my hands!
Blarney.
SLIFT:
Boy, would I laugh if those guys in New York
Really forced down the tariffs
And opened up the south, provoking
Some kind of boom, and we had stayed out in the cold.
MAULER:
Supposing all that happened, would you have
The gall to batten on such misery
When the whole country is watching like a hawk
What goes on here? I wouldn’t have the gall.
THE WHOLESALERS:
Here stand we packers with mountains of canned goods
And cellars full of frozen steers
Trying to sell our canned steer meat
And nobody wants it!
And our customers, the restaurants and stores
Filled to the rafters with frozen meat
Are bellowing for purchasers and diners!
We’re not buying any more.
THE PACKERS:
Here stand we packers with our slaughterhouses and packing plants
Our barns full of livestock, our machines
Day and night under steam, our pickling vats, our rendering tanks, our cauldrons
All raring to transform our bellowing, fodder-eating herds
Into canned meat, and nobody wants canned meat.
We’re ruined.
THE STOCKBREEDERS:
And we the livestock breeders?
Who’s buying cattle now? Our barns are full of
Bovines and hogs, devouring expensive corn.
They’re headed here in trains and in the trains
They eat, and at the stations, waiting
In rent-devouring pens, they go on eating.
MAULER:
And now the knives reject them. Giving
Your livestock the cold shoulder, death
Has shut up shop.
THE PACKERS (shouting at Mauler, who is reading the paper):
Treacherous Mauler, fouling your own nest!
You think we don’t know who’s been knocking the bottom
Out of the market with secret sales of livestock!
Hell, you’ve been selling meat for days now!
MAULER:
Insolent butchers, playing the cry-baby
Because poor persecuted animals
Have stopped their bellowing! Run home and tell your mamma
One of your number couldn’t bear to hear
The bellowing of cattle any longer and
Preferred your bellowing to theirs!
I want my money and my peace of mind.
A BROKER (at the entrance of the Livestock Exchange in the rear, shouting):
Disastrous stock market crash!
Frantic selling. Cridle’s formerly Mauler’s are
Dragging meat prices and the whole meat ring
Down with them.
Uproar among the Packers. They rush at Cridle, who stands there as white as a sheet.
THE PACKERS:
What is this, Cridle? Look us in the eye.
Have you been dumping shares on a falling market?
THE BROKERS:
At one fifteen!
THE PACKERS:
Where are your brains?
You’re not the only one that’s being ruined!
Bastard! Murderer!
CRIDLE (pointing at Mauler):
Ask him!
GRAHAM (placing himself in front of Cridle):
It isn’t Cridle. It’s somebody else.
Somebody fishing and using us for fish!
Somebody out to get the meat ring, and
Stopping at nothing. Speak up, Mauler. What have
You got to say for yourself?
THE PACKERS (to Mauler):
Mauler, the story is you’ve been demanding
Your money from Cridle, who’s on the ropes.
Cridle’s not talking, but he points at you.
MAULER: If I were to leave my money for one more hour with this man Cridle, who told me himself that he was on the skids, would a single one of you take me seriously as a business man? And there’s nothing I want so much as to be taken seriously by you gentlemen.
CRIDLE (to those around him): Just four week ago I made a contract with Mauler. He wanted to sell me his shares, which came to a third of the total capital, for ten million dollars. From that day on, as I’ve just discovered, he has been secretly undermining an already declining market by selling large amounts of livestock cheap. He was entitled to demand his money whenever he pleased. I was planning to pay him by selling some of the shares, which were priced high at the time, and borrowing on the rest. Then came the slump. Today Mauler’s shares are worth not ten but three millions, and the value of the whole plant has fallen from thirty millions to ten millions. The exact same ten millions that I owe Mauler and that he’s demanding without delay.
THE PACKERS:
We’re not in partnership with Cridle, but
You damn well know that if you drive him to
The wall, we too will suffer. You’re wrecking
The whole meat market. It’s your fault
Our cans are cheap as dirt, because it was
By selling canned meat cheap you ruined Lennox.
MAULER:
You should have slaughtered less, you meat-crazed butchers!
I want my money. Even if it beggars
The lot of you, I want my money back
For I have other plans.
THE STOCKBREEDERS:
Lennox KO’d and Cridle on the ropes.
And Mauler pulling out his capital!
THE SMALL SPECULATORS:
Ah, no one gives a hoot in hell for us
Small speculators. Those who scream
As the colossus falls don’t stop to see
Which way it falls and whom it crushes.
Mauler, our money!
THE PACKERS: Eighty thousand cans at fifty. But hurry!
THE WHOLESALERS: Not one single can!
> Silence. The drums of the Black Straw Hats and Joan’s voice are heard.
JOAN’S VOICE: Pierpont Mauler! Where is Mauler?
MAULER:
What’s that drumming I hear? Who’s
Calling my name?
Here where we all
Show our bare fangs, dripping with blood!
The Black Straw Hats enter, singing their battle hymn.
THE BLACK STRAW HATS (singing):
Watchful, be watchful.
Look, there’s a man going down.
Somebody crying for rescue
Some girl about to drown.
Stop all those motorcars, hold up that tram
So many people are sinking, and nobody gives a damn.
Have you no eyes to see?
Why throw a line to your brother and none to humanity?
Stand up and leave your dinner
The poor are getting thinner
How hungry they must be!
So never say that nobody can change things
That inequality is ours from birth.
For we’re telling you it’s time for action
To go ahead and sweep it from the earth.
We’ll order those tanks to move up here
And warships shall mobilise
And bombers shall blacken the skies
Until they’ve won a bowl of soup for every poor man.
Right now is the time to go forward
Let everyone answer our call
And instantly do as we’ve ordered
For the forces of goodness are small.
’Tenshun! Fix bay’nits! Beat the drum!
Courage, all those who were sinking! Look this way! Here we come!
Meanwhile the battle of the Livestock Exchange has been going on. But laughter, provoked by shouted jibes, has spread to front stage.
THE PACKERS: Eighty thousand cans at half price. But hurry!
THE WHOLESALERS: Nary a one!
THE PACKERS: Mauler! That means we’re sunk.
JOAN: Where is Mauler?
MAULER:
Don’t go away now, Slift, Graham, Meyers.
You stand in front of me. I don’t
Want to be seen here.
THE STOCKBREEDERS:
Impossible to sell a single steer in Chicago!
All Illinois is perishing this day.
With rising prices you conned us into raising
Steers. And here we are with steers
And no one buys them.
Mauler, you dog, we’re sunk and you’re to blame.
MAULER:
No talk of business now. Graham, my hat. I must be going. A hundred dollars for my hat.
CRIDLE: Damn your hide! (Cridle goes out.)
JOAN (behind Mauler): You stay right where you are, Mr Mauler, and listen to what I have to say. You can all listen. Quiet! It doesn’t suit you, does it, to have us Black Straw Hats turning up here in the dark and hidden places where you carry on your business! I’ve heard what you do here, making meat more and more expensive with your machinations and oily tricks. If you thought you could keep it secret, you had another think coming, now and on the day of His Judgment, for then it will all be made manifest, and what will you look like when our Lord and Saviour makes you line up in front of Him and glares at you out of His big round eyes and asks: Where are My oxen now? What have you done with them? Did you make them available to the people at reasonable prices, and if not what became of them? And when you stand there wriggling, casting about for excuses like in your newspapers that don’t always tell the truth either, the oxen will set up a bellowing behind you in all the barns where you hide them to drive the prices sky-high, and with their bellowing they will bear witness against you before Almighty God!
Laughter.
THE STOCKBREEDERS:
We stockbreeders see nothing to laugh about!
Summer and winter at the mercy of the weather, we are
Much closer to the old-time God.
JOAN: And now for a parable. Suppose a man builds a dam against the capricious waters and a thousand people help him with the toil of their hands and he gets paid a million for it, but the dam collapses the moment the water rises, and all the people who’d been building it and a lot more drown – what is the man who builds such a dam? You can call him a business man if you like, or a scoundrel if you prefer, but we say unto you, he’s a fool. And you, the whole lot of you, who raise the price of bread and make life such a hell for people that they all turn into devils, you’re stupid; you’re low-down contemptible fools, and nothing else!
THE WHOLESALERS (shouting):
With your unscrupulous profiteering
Driving prices out of sight
You’re ruining yourselves
You blockheads!
THE PACKERS (shouting back):
Blockheads yourselves!
No one’s to blame for crises!
Over us, changeless and inscrutable, rule
The laws of economics.
And natural catastrophes recur
In dreadful cycles.
THE STOCKBREEDERS:
Is no one to blame that you’ve got us by the throat?
It’s wickedness, unadulterated wickedness!
JOAN: And why is there wickedness in the world? What would you expect? If a man has to hit his neighbour over the head with an axe for a slice of ham to put on his bread, for everything he needs to keep body and soul together, if brother has to fight brother over the barest necessities, does it surprise you that all feeling for higher things is stifled in the human breast? Just for a change, why not think of helping your neighbour as waiting on a customer? Then you’ll understand the New Testament in a twinkling and how modern it still is. Service! What does service mean but loving thy neighbour? When you come right down to it. Gentlemen, I keep hearing that the poor are short on morals, and it’s true. Because the slums breed immorality, and immorality breeds revolution. But now let me ask you just this: Where are these people’s morals to come from when they have nothing else? Where are they going to get morals without stealing them? Gentlemen, there’s such a thing as moral purchasing power. If you increase people’s moral purchasing power, you’ll get morality. And by purchasing power I mean something very simple and natural, I mean money, wages. Which brings me to a very practical point: if you meat producers go on like this, you’ll end up having to eat your own meat, because the people out there have no purchasing power.
THE STOCKBREEDERS (reproachfully):
Here we stand with our steers
And nobody buys them.
JOAN: And here you sit, you high and mighty gentlemen, imagining that no one will ever see through your tricks and closing your eyes to the misery all around you. All right, now you can take a look at the people you’ve been abusing and trampling, the people you refuse to recognize as your brothers. Come on out, ye who labour and are heavy laden. Show yourselves. Don’t be ashamed.
Joan shows the gentlemen of the Livestock Exchange the poor whom she has brought with her.
MAULER (screaming): Take them away! (He faints.)
VOICE (in the rear): Pierpont Mauler has fainted.
THE POOR: That’s him. He’s the guilty party.
The Meat Packers come to Mauler’s assistance.)
THE PACKERS: Water for Pierpont Mauler! A doctor for Mauler!
JOAN:
You’ve shown me, Mauler, the
Baseness of the poor. Now I will show you
The poverty of the poor, for, kept at a distance
From you, and hence from life’s necessities
Live the invisible people, whom you
Maintain in such poverty, so weakened and so desperately
Dependent on unattainable food and warmth that they
Can also be kept at a distance from all aspiration
To anything higher than base craving for food and bestial habits.
Mauler revives.
MAULER: Are they still here? Please, p
lease, take them away.
THE MEAT PACKERS: The Black Straw Hats? Take them away?
MAULER: No. Those people behind them.
SLIFT: He won’t open his eyes until they’re gone.
GRAHAM:
Can’t bear to see them, can you? But it’s you
Who got them into this condition.
Closing your eyes won’t make them go away.
Far from it.
MAULER:
Please, please, get rid of them. I’ll buy!
Listen, everybody. Pierpont Mauler is buying!
To give these people work and make them go away.
All the canned meat you turn out in eight weeks
I’ll buy it.
THE MEAT PACKERS:
He’s bought it! Mauler has bought canned meat!
MAULER: At the current price.
GRAHAM (stops him): And what they’ve got in storage?
MAULER (lying on the floor): I’ll buy it.
GRAHAM: At fifty?
MAULER: At fifty!
GRAHAM: He’s bought it. Did you hear? He’s bought it.
BROKERS (in the rear, shouting through megaphones): Pierpont Mauler is propping up the meat market. He has contracted to buy up the meat ring’s entire stocks at the current price of fifty. In addition, he’s buying two months’ output beginning today, also at fifty. The meat ring will deliver a minimum of forty thousand tons of canned meat to Pierpont Mauler on November fifteenth.
MAULER: But now, my friends, I beg you, carry me away. Mauler is carried away.
JOAN:
Sure, let them carry you away.
While we toil like farm horses at our mission work
Look at what you people do up here!
You sent word that I wasn’t to speak
But who are you, trying to muzzle the Lord?
When nobody even has a right to muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
I will speak.
(To the poor:)
There’ll be work for you on Monday.
THE POOR: We’ve never seen anybody like that. The two who were with him are more familiar. They look a lot worse than he does.
JOAN: Now before we go, open your hymn books at: ‘Never will you want for bread.’
THE BLACK STRAW HATS (singing):
Never will you want for bread
If your trust is in your Maker.
In His bosom rest your head
Harm will spare your house and acre.
How should snow and how should sleet
Fall where He has set His feet?
THE WHOLESALERS:
The man is crazy in the head. This country’s stomach
Is glutted with canned meat. It’s in revolt.
And now he’s making them can meat that