A Hundred Clamps
Our four children sleep beside my workbench. When I file iron after dark, I lay a cloth over their blankets to keep off the dust. My wife is carrying our fifth. She watches me sweep the filings from the table before we eat there.
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I have made a clamp that holds a board fast with one turn of the screw. The carpenter has ordered a hundred. If I can buy the iron, I can finish them here and perhaps rent a room that belongs only to the workshop.
The iron merchant offers me credit. My wife asks what happens if the carpenter cannot pay. I tell her I have heard of a new kind of company, a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung. I will ask at the court before I sign anything.
The clerk shows me the new law. It is May 1892. A GmbH needs 20,000 marks of subscribed capital, a formal agreement, paid contributions, and registration. I have my tools and the order in my pocket. Neither will get me through those steps. If I order the iron now, the debt will be mine.
That night my wife stays awake while I count our money. The next morning I sign my name in the merchant’s ledger.
I make sixty-four clamps before the carpenter’s shop fails. He owes me for the work. I owe the merchant for the iron. When he comes for payment, the children are eating at the bench. I have to move their bowls so he can see what I have made.
By winter our savings are gone, and we cannot pay the rent. My wife packs the children’s clothes while I carry the clamps outside. At the carpenter’s sale, a stranger buys them for less than I paid for the iron.
Our youngest asks whether I am coming home with them. I look back at the room, at the clean patch on the floor where my bench stood, and cannot tell him where home will be.