s that dominate our
cities, the alliance between large vested interests and the powers that
prey. These great corporations were seekers of special privileges.
To secure this they financed the machines and permitted vice and
corruption. He saw that ultimately most of the shame for the bad
government of American cities rests upon the Fromes and the Merrills.

As for the newspapers, he was learning that between the people and
an independent press stand the big advertisers. These make for
conservatism, for an unfair point of view, for a slant in both news
recording and news interpretation. Yet he saw that the press is in spite
of this a power for good. The evil that it does is local and temporary,
the good general and permanent.

Part 3

The spirit of commercialism that dominated America during the nineties
and the first years of the new century never got hold of Jeff. The air
and the light of his land were often the creation of a poet's dream. The
delight of life stabbed him, so, too, did its tragedy. Not anchored to
conventions, his mind was forever asking questions, seeking answers.

He would come out from a theater into a night that was a flood of
illumination. Electric signs poured a glare of light over the streets.
Motor cars and electrics whirled up to take away beautifully gowned
women and correctly dressed men. The windows of the department stores
were filled with imported luxuries. And he would sometimes wonder how
much of misery and trouble was being driven back by that gay blare of
wealth, how many men and women and children were giving their lives
to maintain a civilization that existed by trampling over their broken
hearts and bodies.

Preventable poverty stared at him from all sides. He saw that our
social fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion, without
scientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such a way that
non-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do without. Yet out
of this system that sows hate and discontent, that is a practical denial
of brotherhood, of God, springs here and there love like a flower in a
dunghill.

He felt that art and learning, as well as beauty and truth, ought to
walk hand in hand with our daily lives. But this is impossible so long
as disorder and cruelty and disease are in the world unnecessarily. He
heard good people, busy with effects instead of causes, talk about
the way out, as if there could be any way out which did not offer an