looked picturesque, and others because they didn't own a pair of scissors. Some came because
they wanted an audience, and others because it was a chance to get a meal. But whatever their
reason, nothing could keep them quiet, and nothing could get them to agree. Lanny had always
thought that loud voices and vehement gestures marked the Latin races, but now he decided
that it wasn't a matter of race at all, but of economic determinism. The nearer a country came to a
crisis, the more noise its intellectuals made in drawing-rooms!
Lanny made the mistake of taking his wife to one of these gath erings, and she didn't enjoy
it. In the first place, most of the arguing was done in German, which is rarely a very
pleasant-sounding language unless it has been written by Heine; it appears to the outsider to
involve a great deal of coughing, spitting, and rumbling in the back of the throat. Of course
there were many who were able to speak English of a sort, and were willing to try it on
Lanny's wife; but they wished to talk about personalities, events, and doctrines which were for
the most part strange to her. Irma's great forte in social life was serenity, and somehow this
wasn't the place to show it off.
She commented on this to her husband, who said: "You must understand that most of these
people are having a hard time keeping alive. Many of them don't get enough to eat, and that is
disturbing to one's peace of mind."
He went on to explain what was called the "intellectual proletariat": a mass of persons who
had acquired education at heavy cost of both mind and body, but who now found no market
for what they had to offer to the world. They made a rather miserable livelihood by hack-
writing, or teaching—whatever odd jobs they could pick up. Naturally they were discontented,
and felt themselves in sympathy with the dispossessed workers.
"But why don't they go and get regular jobs, Lanny?"
"What sort of jobs, dear? Digging ditches, or clerking in a store, or waiting on table?"
"Anything, I should think, so long as they can earn an honest living."
"Many of them have to do it, but it's not so easy as it sounds.
There are four million unemployed in Germany right now, and a job usually goes to
somebody who has been trained for that kind of work."
Thus patiently Lanny would explain matters, as if to a child. The trouble was, he had to
explain it many times, for Irma appeared reluctant to believe it. He was trying to persuade her
that the time was cruelly out of joint, whereas she had been brought up to believe that
everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If people didn't get jobs and keep
them, it must be because there was something wrong with those people; they didn't really
want to work; they wanted to criticize and sneer at others who had been successful, who had
worked hard, as Irma's father had done. He had left her secure. Who could blame her for
wanting to stay that way, and resenting people who pulled her about, clamored in her ears,
upset her mind with arguments?
It wasn't that she was hard of heart, not at all. Some pitiful beggar would come up to her on
the street, and tears would start into her eyes, and she would want to give him the contents of
her well-filled purse. But that was charity, and she learned that Lanny's friends all spurned
this; they wanted a thing they called "justice." They required you to agree that the social
system was fundamentally wrong, and that most of what Irma's parents and teachers and
friends had taught her was false. They demanded that the world be turned upside down and
that they, the rebels, be put in charge of making it over. Irma decided that she didn't trust
either their capacity or their motives. She watched them, and announced her decision to her
too credulous husband: "They are jealous, and want what we've got, and if we gave it to them
they wouldn't even say thank you!"
"Maybe so," replied the husband, who had suffered not a few disillusionments himself. "It's no
use expecting human beings to be better than they are. Some are true idealists, like Hansi and
Freddi."
"Yes, but they work; they would succeed in any world. But those politicians, and intellectuals
who want to be politicians but don't know how — Lanny laughed; he saw that she was
beginning to use her own head. "What you have to do," he cautioned, "is to consider
principles and not individuals. We want a system that will give every body a chance at honest
and constructive labor, and then, see that nobody lives without working."
V
The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong,
because her dividends were beginning to fall off. In the spring she had been hearing about the
little bull market, which had sounded fine; but during the summer and fall had come a series
of slumps, no less than four, one after another. Nobody understood these events, nobody could
predict them. You would hear people say: "The bottom has been reached now; things are
