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Intro
Lady Britomart summons her son, Stephen Undershaft, to the library to discuss a family crisis. Stephen’s sisters Sarah and Barbara are both engaged to men who are too poor to support the lifestyles Lady Britomart believes they deserve. The only answer is to ask their father, her estranged husband Andrew Undershaft, for financial help. Stephen recoils at the idea; Undershaft’s wealth comes from making weapons, something Stephen finds abhorrent to his sense of morality. Nevertheless, Lady Britomart has invited Undershaft to visit that evening. Upon arriving, Undershaft scandalizes the family, particularly Sarah’s fiancée Charles Lomax, with his unrepentantly unorthodox views. These include affection for war, abhorrence of poverty, and worship of wealth. He fascinates Barbara, who believes that Christian salvation is available to everyone. She invites him to visit her Salvation Army shelter to see her work, which he agrees to do if she subsequently visits his weapons factory.
On the day of Undershaft’s visit, Snobby Price, Rummy Mitchens, and Peter Shirley all find themselves at the shelter seeking relief from poverty and hunger. Bill Walker appears in search of his “girl” Mog Habbijam. When Mitchens and Salvation Army worker Jenny Hill try to stop him from entering, he hits both. Jenny follows Biblical precepts when she subsequently offers Walker unqualified forgiveness. This makes him more uncomfortable than any other form of rebuke, since without a punishment, he doesn’t know how to get rid of his guilty feelings. Barbara suavely uses his discomfort to encourage him to convert, but the noisy arrival of her fiancée, Adolphous Cusins, interrupts her.
While Barbara attends to her work, Undershaft and Cusins have a philosophical conversation in which Undershaft expands on the views he expressed the previous evening. Cusins finds himself—and his customary acceptance of standard beliefs—shaken. Barbara refuses to take Undershaft’s tainted money for her work, but Mrs. Baines (a higher-ranking Salvation Army officer) willingly accepts it as necessary to the Salvation Army’s work. This shows Barbara that the Salvation Army uses bribes of various sorts to accomplish its mission, whether that’s offering a poor person food and shelter in exchange for their conversion or giving unscrupulous men like whiskey distiller Horace Bodger a veneer of respectability by accepting their money. Her faith shaken, Barbara renounces her membership.
The next day, Lady Britomart, Stephen, Sarah, Lomax, Barbara, and Cusins visit Undershaft’s factory. Despite the unsavory aspects of his trade, the wealth it generates allows Undershaft to create a utopia; his workers all have sufficient resources to live a good and comfortable life. Cusins accepts his offer to become Undershaft’s chosen heir, finally acknowledging that he’s tired of trying to play society’s hypocritical games. Barbara sees that her father’s wealth has done more to improve people’s lives than her work in the Salvation Army. Now committed to spreading Christianity completely free of coercion, she recommits herself to the Salvation Army’s mission, eager to see how many truly free converts she can find among her father’s employees.
