“The food of the people!” Hatton repeated, uplifted by the applause. “It is to me a sacred thing! My friends, it is to me the Ark of the Covenant. The bread is the life. It should go straight, untaxed, untouched from the field of the farmer to the house of—of the widow and the orphan!”
“Hear! Hear! Hear! Hear!” Then, “What about the miller?”
“It should go from where it is grown,” Hatton repeated, “to where it is needed; from where it is grown to the homes of the poor! And to the man,” slipping easily and fatally into his Sunday vein, “that lays his ’and upon it, let him be whom he may, I say with the Book, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn!’ The Law, ay, and the Prophets——”
“Ay, Hatton’s profits! Hands off them!” roared the bass voice.
“Low bread and high profits!” shrieked the treble. “Hatton and thirty per cent!”
A gust of laughter swept all away for a time, and when the speaker could again get a hearing he had lost his thread and his temper. “That’s a low insinuation!” he cried, crimson in the face. “A low insinuation! I scorn to answer it!”
“Regular old Puseyite you be,” shouted a new tormentor. “Quoting Scripture.”
Hatton shook his fist at the crowd. “A low, dirty insinuation!” he cried. “I scorn——”
“You don’t scorn the profits!”
“Listen! Silence!” Then, “I shall not say another word! You’re not worth it! You’re below it! I call on Mr. Brierly of Manchester to propose a resolution.”