And he
would sometimes wonder how much of misery and trouble was being
driven back by that gay blare of wealth, how many men and women
and children were giving their lives to maintain a civilization
that existed by trampling over their broken hearts and bodies.
Preventable poverty stared at him from all sides. He saw that our
social fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion,
without scientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such
a way that non-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do
without. Yet out of this system that sows hate and discontent,
that is a practical denial of brotherhood, of God, springs here
and there love like a flower in a dunghill.
He felt that art and learning, as well as beauty and truth, ought
to walk hand in hand with our daily lives. But this is impossible
so long as disorder and cruelty and disease are in the world
unnecessarily. He heard good people, busy with effects instead of
causes, talk about the way out, as if there could be any way out
which did not offer an equality of opportunity refused by the
whole cruel system of to-day.
But Jeff could be in revolt without losing his temper.
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