The wraith of smoke that had appeared when Grant first began speaking personally to the men of Harvey, in a minute had grown to a surer evidence of fire. The smiling ceased. Angry looks began flashing over the faces before Grant, like darts of flame. And after these looks came a great black cloud of wrath that was as perceptible as a gust of smoke. He felt that soon the fire would burst forth. But he hurried on with his message: "Poverty is not the social punishment of the weak, I repeat it. Poverty is a social inheritance of the many, a condition which holds men hard and fast--a condition that you may change, you who have so much. All this coal and oil and mineral have profited you greatly, oh, men of Harvey. You are rich, Daniel Sands. You are prosperous, Ahab Wright. You have every comfort around you and yours, John Kollander, and you, Joseph Calvin, are rearing your children in luxury compared with Dick Bowman's children. Hasn't he worked as hard as you? Here are Ira Dooley and Denny Hogan. They started as equals with you up here and have worked as hard and have lived average lives. Yet if their share is a fair share of the earnings of this community, you have an unfair share. How did you get it?" He leaned out over the chancel rail, pointed a bony, accusing finger at the congregation and glared at the eyes before him angrily. Quickly he recovered his poise but brought his steel claw down on the pulpit beside him with a sharp clash as he cried again, "How did you get it?" Then it was that the flame of indignation burst forth. It came first in a hiss and another and a third--then a crackling fire of hisses greeted his last sentence. When the hissing calmed, his voice rose slightly. He went on: "We of the middle classes--we have risen above the great mass below us: we are permitted to learn--a little--to imitate and expand somewhat. But above us, thank God, is another group in the social organization. Here at the top stand the blessed, privileged few who are the world's prophets and dreamers and seers--they know God; they drink deep of the rising tide of everlasting life that is booming in, flooding the world with mercy and love and brotherhood; and what they see in one century--and die for disclosing--we all see in the next century and fight to hold it fast!" He stood looking at the floor, then opened wide his glaring eyes, a fanatic's mania blazing in them, lifted his arms and cried with a great voice like a trumpet: "You--you--you who have known God's mercy and his goodness and his love--why, in the dead Christ's name do you sit here and let the flood of life be dammed away from your brothers, stealing the waters of life like thieves from your brethren by your cruel laws and customs and the chains of social circumstance!"