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 coöperation 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 coöperation 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.
In dazed agony he sat—his father had left unperceived by the stage exit—while the delegates, their discussion carefully guided by the administration machine, voted, three to one, against the mining law on which he and Jane had built such hopeful fancies.