If Mr Tubes possessed a double qualification he also laboured under a corresponding disability. As the representative of a mining constituency, a practical expert, and a leading member of a Government which existed by the goodwill of the workers--largely of the miners--it would be scarcely to his interest to minimise the gathering cloud. As the Minister for the Home Department, the blacker he made the picture the greater the volume of obloquy he drew upon his head for not having foreseen the danger; the more relief he asked for, the fiercer the opposition he would encounter from hostile sections and from the perturbed heads of a depleted Treasury. "We are still very much in the dark as to what has really happened, is happening, and will happen," he remarked tamely. "An appreciable drop in the demand for coal, whether for home or export, will certainly have a disturbing effect on the conditions of labour in many departments. But the difficulties of estimating the effects are so great----" There were murmurs. Whatever might be the failings of Socialistic oratory, flatness and excess of moderation did not lie among them. "Figures," suggested Tirrel pointedly. "Perhaps Comrade Tirrel will take the job in hand instead of me," said Tubes bitterly, but without any show of anger. "Doubtless he'd get a better hearing." "No," replied Tirrel gravely, "the moment is too critical for recrimination. If the Home Secretary lays the position frankly before us, he will have no cause to complain of an unsympathetic hearing, nor, as far as I can speak, of a whole-hearted support in taking means to safeguard it." It occurred to Mr Tubes then, for the first time in his life--and it was almost like a shock to feel it--that the man who had always seemed to throw himself into sharp antagonism to himself might be actuated by higher motives than personal jealousy after all. He continued his speech. "If we accept the figure of five millions as a correct return of the Unity League membership, and if we assume that they will all obey the boycott, then we are face to face with the fact that on the basis of a four ton per person average, twenty million tons of coal must be written off the home consumption." "But the four tons per head average includes the entire industrial consumption of the country," objected Mr Vossit. "That is so," admitted Mr Tubes, "but it also includes a great many people whose use of coal is practically _nil_. An alternative basis is to assume that two millions of the members are house-holders. Then taking ten tons a year as their average household consumption--and admitting that all the wealthiest men in the country are included the average is not too high--we arrive at just the same result.