The air was blue with the smoke from cheap tobacco. More than one of those present carried the marks of poverty. But the note of the assembly was a cheerful at-homeness. James wondered what the devil his cousin meant by giving this heterogeneous gathering the freedom of his rooms. Dickinson, the single-taxer, was talking bitterly. He was a big man with a voice like a foghorn. His idea of emphasis appeared to be pounding the table with his blacksmith fist. “I tell you society doesn't want to hear about such things,” he was declaiming. “It wants to go along comfortably without being disturbed. Ignore everything that's not pleasant, that's liable to harrow the feelings. The sins of our neighbors make spicy reading. Fill the papers with 'em. But their distresses and their poverty! That's different. Let's hear as little about them as possible. Let's keep it a well-regulated world.” Nearly everybody began to talk at once. James caught phrases here and there out of the melee. “... Democratic institutions must either decay or become revitalized....To hell with such courts. They're no better than anarchy....In Verden there are only two classes: those who don't get as much as they earn and those who get more.... Tell you we've got to get back to the land, got to make it free as air. You can't be saved from economic slavery till you have socialism. ...” Suddenly the hubbub subsided and Marchant had the floor. “All of life's a compromise, a horrible unholy giving up as unpractical all the best things. It's a denial of love, of Christ, of God.” A young preacher who was conducting a mission for sailors on the water front cut in. “Exactly. The church is radically wrong because--” “Because it hasn't been converted to Christianity yet. Mr. Moneybags in the front pew has got a strangle hold on the parson. Begging your pardon, Mifflin. We know you're not that kind.” Marchant won the floor again. “Here's the nub of it. A man's a slave so long as his means of livelihood is dependent on some other man. I don't care whether it's lands or railroads or mines. Abolish private property and you abolish poverty.” They were all at it again, like dogs at a bone. Across the Babel James caught Jeff's gay grin at him. By sheer weight Dickinson's voice boomed out of the medley. “... just as Henry George says: 'Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.' We're just beginning to see the effect of private property in land. Within a few years....” “What we need is to get back to Democracy. Individualism has run wild....” “Trouble is we can't get anywhere under the Constitution. Every time we make a move--check. It was adopted by aristocrats to hold back the people and that's what it's done. Law--” Apparently nobody got a chance to finish his argument. The Polish Jew broke in sharply. “Law! There iss no law.”