Taistelu

In a sweltering factory dining room, a long table has been repurposed as a makeshift boardroom where the plant’s overseers and managers convene. At the head sits John Anthony, a hulking, white‑haired veteran whose slow movements belie a keen, restless gaze, while his son Edgar pores over a newspaper that chronicles the growing misery among the workers. Around them, the board’s steely members—Wilder, a gaunt, fast‑talking clerk; Scantlebury, a wandering, half‑asleep figure; and the solemn director Underwood—exchange curt remarks as the furnace’s heat threatens to overwhelm the room.

The conversation quickly turns to the intolerable conditions in the Trenathan ironworks, with Wilder railing against the furnace’s “devilish fire” and demanding a protective screen. The atmosphere is charged with barely restrained anger, the men’s polite protocol clashing with the palpable frustration of the laborers outside. As the managers bicker over paperwork and small comforts, the sense of an impending confrontation builds, hinting that the meeting may be the first spark of a larger struggle.