But Sabinsport had seen without a flicker of conscience the cheapest of cheap hose, the kind that ravels at a first wearing, turned out by the tens of thousands. Somebody had once remarked that the firm must use the fact that its hose could be guaranteed to break the first time worn, with buyers. "The more sold the larger the commission," laughed Sabinsport. It didn't hurt her conscience that there was truth in the remark. It didn't disturb her conscience now as a town that the mills were turning out hundreds and hundreds of spools of a crueller barbed wire than they had ever before seen. It didn't disturb it that around the point a great-scale conversion of the never-very-successful linoleum factory into some kind of a shell factory was going on. But if not conscience stricken, Sabinsport was interested in the discussion. It stirred deeper than Ralph in his disgust with the situation had dreamed. Letters to his _Pro Bono Publico_ column flowed in daily. From the mill came a violent arraignment of capital for making the war in order to make munitions. It was from the leading Socialist of the labor group, an excellent fellow who talked well but difficult to argue with, both Ralph and Dick had found. There was nothing to argue about the ruining of the world, in John Starrett's judgment. His system would remove all evils. His task was the simple one of affirmation. All evils come from capitalism--do away with capitalism, institute socialism, and the machine will run itself. The _Argus_ was right in disapproving of munition making by a neutral country, said John Starrett, but so long as the _Argus_ failed to see that it was the iniquitous system it supported which was to blame, etc., etc. The one always-to-be-counted-on pulpit radical in the town seized the chance for opposition and preached eloquent and moving sermons on the horrors of wars, the gist of which he weekly sent, neatly typewritten, to Ralph for the P. B. P., as it was called in the office. His argument was that this wicked thing could not go on if all men everywhere would refuse to work on guns and shells and powder, that it was the duty of a great neutral country like the United States to head the movement, and why should not Sabinsport start it? She would go down in history as the leader in the most beneficent reform of modern times. The Rev. Mr. Pepper worked himself into a noble enthusiasm over this idea, and spent time and money his family really needed for food and clothes in writing and mailing letters to a long list of well-known radically inclined men and women in various parts of the country, begging them to join the Anti-Munition Making League. Ralph published the digests of the Pepper sermons, printed free his long circulars and listened to his argument, and Sabinsport read and smiled and went ahead with her work.