"I will do my best to answer the questions," Paul began. He picked up a paper from the desk before him. "I have here the report referred to. It is a fact that the monetary wage here is slightly lower than in most states. But the purchasing price of money is almost twice that in some Western states." There was some applause at this. Paul went on. "As to safeguards, that bill takes away your chief safeguard--your job." He sat down. The jubilant audience calloused their hands noisily. The district delegate of the miners, Jack Bowden, rose gracefully. "Isn't it also a fact, Mr. Judson, that the Birrell-Florence mines have recently installed safety devices not required by the law?" Paul did not know it, but he bowed agreeably. "So I have understood." Pelham writhed. Even after his father's manifestly unfair speech, he had expected intellectual honesty from him. He had dodged both parts of Jensen's question. Surface brilliancy--but the questions were still unanswered. The intense disappointment in his father wracked him with physical pain. As she felt Pelham's body commence to rise, Jane's hand clenched his arm. "Don't do it; it will only make a scene. Let's leave." Ignoring the pleading grasp, he rose unsteadily. Against the walls of his chest his heart pounded irregularly; he feared for a flashed instant that it would burst its way out, and he would fall dead. Gripping the seat ahead more tightly, he found his voice. "Mr. Speaker----" Paul looked at him, for the moment surprised and displeased. The cautious smile reappeared faintly. "About this question of wages. Isn't it a fact that, the smaller the dividends, the larger the wages? Both come from the same fund, the wealth produced; doesn't the prosperity of one cut against the prosperity of the other? So that, for labor to get its full product, profit must be abolished, and cooperation introduced?" There was a gasp of surprise from the few in the audience who recognized the pale figure as the speaker's son. A scattering rattle of applause shook parts of the crowd. Paul moistened his lips, and explained: "The questioner asks, will not labor's prosperity come when profit has been abolished, and cooperation substituted. There is something to be said for that as an air-spun theory. It has never worked in practice. We--all of us--must feed on our daily bread, not on economic theories," he finished with crisp decisiveness. There was a generous hand at this. Pelham's quiet words to Jane whistled between clenched teeth. "All untrue, all unfair. A thing cannot be good in theory and bad in practice. Something is wrong with a theory, if it does not take into account all facts, all reality. He can't even think honestly!" She squeezed his hand in the darkness.