The position of the workingman profited by the new condition of things.  Berlin seemed insatiable in her demands for able-bodied workmen.  Hundreds and thousands left the fields and the woods, and taking their strong arms to the labor market of the capital, found employment in the factories and the workshops; and the mighty engines still beat, sucking in as it were the stream of people from the country.  Berlin itself could not contain this influx.  The newcomers were obliged gypsy fashion to put up as best they could in the neighborhood.  In holes and caves on the heaths and commons, in huts made of brushwood, they bivouacked for months, and these men who lived like prairie dogs in such apparent misery were merry over their houseless, wild existence.  As a matter of fact they experienced no actual want, as there was work for every one who could and would labor.  The rewards were splendid, and the proletariat found that its only possession, viz., the strength of its muscles, was worth more than ever before.  The workingman talked loudly, and held his head high.  Was it the result of having served in one or more campaigns?  Had he in the background of his mind a vision of dying men and desolate villages, seen so often on the battlefield?  However it was, he became violent and quarrelsome, indifferent alike to wounding and death, and learned to make use of the knife like any cutthroat townsman.

With this return to barbarism (an unfailing result with the soldier after every time of war) went a degree of animal spirits, which made one ask whether the workman had learned something of epicurean philosophy.  He had the same excited love of tattling as a thoughtless girl, and the animal love of enjoyment of a sailor after a long voyage.  His ordinary life seemed to him so uninteresting, so dull, that he tried to give color and charm to it by taking as many holidays as possible, and making his work more agreeable with gambling and drinking, and going for loafing excursions about the neighborhood.  Visits to wine and beer-houses and dancing-rooms were endlessly multiplied, and everything had the golden foundation which the proverb of an age of simplicity hardly attributed to honorable handicraft.  Profits were squandered in drink; life was a rush and a riot without end.

But curiously, in the same degree in which the opportunities of work were increased and wages became higher, life everywhere easier, and the ordinary enjoyments greater; just so did the workman grow discontented.  Desires increased with their gratification, and envy measured its own prosperity by the side of the luxury of the nouveaux riches.