Jerry smiled; he knew my ways. “Any time you’re overwhelmed with fear that logic languishes, Steve, start a little argument with him. Now imagine a little boy, like me in my white dress the day you picked me up, walking into hands like his for education.” “Oh, that’s what you’re getting to!” “You’ve guessed it. Soon you’re likely to meet my friend Keeban again--under circumstances which I confess I can’t completely foresee; yet whatever they are, it can’t be anything but a help to better understand his point of view. “Now here we are or were, Steve--my brother and I. I walked into the bean business, with its logic, such as it is. What is the end and aim of Fanneal and Company, Steve?” “Why,” I said, “why to----” “To what?” “To sell good food.” “Why?” “Why, for people to eat?” “Your effort is to increase the consumption of food, isn’t it?” “Of course.” “You do it for profit, don’t you?” “Of course.” “Now which is the fact--that most people, here in this country, eat too much or too little?” “Too much.” “Which is a decided detriment to health and longevity, is it not?” “Yes.” “Then the actual result of your business, which you steadily push for your own profit, is to lessen health and shorten life?” I laughed now. But he was at me. “Why the laugh, Steve?” “That’s bunk and you know it.” “Where’s it bunk, Steve? Where’s the flaw? Where, if anywhere, did the fallacy creep in? Now let us leap to the safe-blowing business. What, my foster-brother Stephen, is the fundamental curse of this country at this time? I’m not asking you a question which seeks any strange or heathen answer. Let us take only the answer that the pulpit itself offers, let us quote not only Christ but the economists and sociologists of our own and other leading conservative universities. What has ruined more families, softened and destroyed the fiber of more individuals, especially the young--who above all should be preserved--than the accumulation of wealth? What else, Steve?” I had no answer. “Now where do men keep their accumulations of wealth?” “In safes.” “Exactly. So, in safes, lies the greatest danger to the individual and to society. Consequently, what else does he do, who removes the contents of the safe and dissipates it, than protect the accumulator and society from the increasing menace of that wealth which, left in the accumulator’s hands, would grow and grow till it destroyed all? Who is the friend of society, Steve--he who confesses to increasing the staggering sum of degenerative diseases brought on by overeating which he encourages for his own profit, or he who, at tremendous risk to himself, and with no hope of public favor when he succeeds, yet sets himself to strike and strike again and again at the very source of danger and decay?” Jerry caught his breath. “Let us remain for a moment, Steve, not in the school of Astor Street but in that of my brother, Keeban.