4. Kings of the Exchange

The reading room of the Commerce Club was quiet. Not a single sound of street noise reached this vast room, covered with thick fluffy carpets. Soft diffused light fell on round tables with magazines and newspapers scattered on them, lit the gold of solid bindings in massive bookcases, sparkled on the glasses of respectable people lounging in deep comfortable armchairs. This silence was broken only by the rustle of newspaper sheets, the musical strike of the clock, and the short phrases that visitors occasionally exchanged. The library hall—“the quietest place in Berlin”—was a favorite corner of the wealthiest aristocracy. Here they came to rest “in the inner circle” from the hectic bustle of the business day; one had to have a capital of at least a million to gain access to this exclusive club.

Rodenstock, a stout, elderly man with sleepy, puffy eyes and lazy movements, the owner of a large agricultural machinery factory, threw aside a newspaper, puffed on his cigar, and languidly asked his neighbor, the thin, sharp-faced banker Kriegman:

“Did you read this?.. ‘New era in human history. Greatest invention. No more hunger.’”

Kriegman silently, with a cat-like movement, grabbed the newspaper and quickly skimmed through the newspaper article. Throwing aside his gold pince-nez, he looked in bewilderment at Rodenstock.

“I don’t quite understand. Is this a joke or another newspaper duck?”

“I’m afraid it’s a bomb. A bomb of terrible destructive power that could blow us all up.”

“But is it conceivable? ‘Eternal bread’ is a chimera.”

“Damn it, after airplanes and x-rays and radios and all, we should be getting used to chimeras by now. Anything can be expected from these scientists. I’ve already made inquiries. Alas, one new chimera has joined the ranks of others: ‘eternal bread’ really does exist …”

Kriegman, with the same movement of a cat, grabbed his pince-nez, threw it on his nose, and exclaimed, breaking the silence of the sacred place:

“But then this is really a coup!.. What will happen to our economic system? If the workers get this ‘eternal bread,’ they will stop working…”

“The workers will not stop working,” Rodenstock interrupted his interlocutor rather rudely. He represented the old, “pre-war” firm, and he despised Kriegman, who had only recently made his fortune trading currencies.

“The workers won’t stop working,” Rodenstock continued. “In addition to bread, they need shoes and clothes. The prices of bread will fall, but the prices of manufactured goods will rise. And this need will make them work. But the perturbations can indeed be terrible. All prices will undergo tremendous changes. Agriculture will be destroyed. The peasants will have nothing to sell to the city, their purchasing power will be decimated. We will lose a huge rural market. This will lead to colossal crises in production, unemployment, workers’ unrest. Entire branches of production serving agriculture will be forced to cease to exist altogether. Who will need tractors, seeders, threshers? Economic upheavals will cause social, revolutionary upheavals. And perhaps our entire civilization will perish in this cataclysm… That’s what ‘eternal bread’ really means!”