is.
We'll look out for him till he's on his feet again."

Marchant gave him the best he had. "You're a pretty good Socialist, even
though you don't know it."

"Am I?"

"But you're blind as a bat. The things you fight for in the _World_
don't get to the bottom of what ails us."

"We've got to forge the tools of freedom before we can use them, haven't
we?"

"You're all for patching up the rotten system we've got. It will never
do."

"Great changes are most easily brought about under the old forms. Men's
minds in the mass move slowly. They can see only a little truth at a
time."

"Because they are blinded by ignorance and selfishness. Get at bottom
facts, Farnum. What's the one great crime?"

Without a moment's hesitation Jeff answered. "Poverty. All other crimes
are paltry beside that."

Marchant cocked himself up on the window seat with his legs doubled
under him tailor fashion. "Why?"

"Because it stamps out hope and love and aspiration, all that is fine
and true in life."

"Exactly. Men ought to love their work. But how can they love that which
is always associated in their minds with a denial of justice? Is it
likely that men will work better under a system whereby they are
condemned in advance to failure than under one standing rationally for a
just and fair division of the fruits of labor? I tell you, Farnum, under
present conditions the Juggernaut of progress is forever wasting
humanity."

"I've always thought it a pity that the mainsprings of work should be
fear and greed instead of hope and love," Jeff agreed.

"Why is it that poverty coexists with wealth increasing so rapidly? Why
is it that productive power has been so enormously developed without
lightening the burdens of labor?"

Marchant's eyes were starlike in their earnestness. He had a passion
for humanity that neither want nor disease could quench, and with it
a certain gift of expression street oratory had brought out. Even in
private conversation he had got into the way of declaiming. But Jeff
knew he was no empty talker. All that he had he literally gave to the
poor.

"Because the whole spirit of business life is wrong," Farnum responded.

"Of course it's wrong. It's a survival of the law of the jungle, of
tooth and fang. Its motto is dog eat dog. We all work under the rule of
get and grab. What's the result of this higgledypiggledy system? One
man starves and another has indigestion. That's the trouble with Verden
to-day. Some