Farnum asked questions briefly and pulled out his check book. “Tell Sobieski not to worry,” he said as he handed over a check. “I'll send a reporter out there and we'll make an appeal through the World. Of course his own name won't be used. No one will know who it really 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?”