QUOTE : During the building of the railway, the people for the first time felt that the easy, carefree gains of the first years after the occupation existed no longer. For some years past the prices of goods and everyday necessities had been leaping upward. They leapt upward but never fell back and then, after a shorter or a longer period, leapt up again. It was true there was still money to be made and wages were high, but they were always at least twenty per cent less than real needs. This was some mad and artful game which more and more embittered the lives of more and more people, but in which they could do nothing for it depended on something far away, on those same unattainable and unknown sources whence had come also the prosperity of the first years. Many men who had grown rich immediately after the occupation, some fifteen or twenty years before, were now poor and their sons had to work for others. True, there were new men who had made money, but even in their hands the money played like quick-silver, like some spell by which a man might easily find himself with empty hands and tarnished reputation. It became more and more evident that the good profits and easier life which they had brought had their counterpart and were only pieces in some great and mysterious game of which no one knew all the rules and none could foresee the outcome. And yet everyone played his part in this game, some with a smaller some with a greater role, but all with permanent risk.