k to your trade, and I'll stick to mine. You
have specialized. When it comes to a knowledge of the law, of how
best to evade the law or make new law for the benefit of thieving
corporations, I am down in the dirt at your feet. But when it comes to
sociology--my trade--you are down in the dirt at my feet. Remember that.
Remember, also, that your law is the stuff of a day, and that you are
not versatile in the stuff of more than a day. Therefore your
dogmatic assertions and rash generalizations on things historical and
sociological are not worth the breath you waste on them."

Ernest paused for a moment and regarded him thoughtfully, noting his
face dark and twisted with anger, his panting chest, his writhing body,
and his slim white hands nervously clenching and unclenching.

"But it seems you have breath to use, and I'll give you a chance to
use it. I indicted your class. Show me that my indictment is wrong. I
pointed out to you the wretchedness of modern man--three million child
slaves in the United States, without whose labor profits would not be
possible, and fifteen million under-fed, ill-clothed, and worse-housed
people. I pointed out that modern man's producing power through social
organization and the use of machinery was a thousand times greater than
that of the cave-man. And I stated that from these two facts no other
conclusion was possible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged.
This was my indictment, and I specifically and at length challenged you
to answer it. Nay, I did more. I prophesied that you would not answer.
It remains for your breath to smash my prophecy. You called my speech
fallacy. Show the fallacy, Colonel Van Gilbert. Answer the indictment
that I and my fifteen hundred thousand comrades have brought against
your class and you."

Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot that he was presiding, and that in
courtesy he should permit the other clamorers to speak. He was on his
feet, flinging his arms, his rhetoric, and his control to the winds,
alternately abusing Ernest for his youth and demagoguery, and
savagely attacking the working class, elaborating its inefficiency and
worthlessness.

"For a lawyer, you are the hardest man to keep to a point I ever saw,"
Ernest began his answer to the tirade. "My youth has nothing to do with
what I have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of the working class.
I charged the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. You have
not answered. You have