em!
How I have longed to do something for them--to change conditions
so that it will no longer be necessary for the children to
toil, to have the playtime of childhood stolen away from them.
Theft--that is what it is, the playtime of the children coined
into profits. That is why I like Howard Knox. He calls theft
theft. He is trying to do something for those children. What are
you trying to do for them?

{Starkweather}

Sentiment. Sentiment. The question is too vast and complicated,
and you cannot understand. No woman can understand. That is
why you run to sentiment. That is what is the matter with this
Knox--sentiment. You can't run a government of ninety millions of
people on sentiment, nor on abstract ideas of justice and right.

{Margaret}

But if you eliminate justice and right, what remains?

{Starkweather}

This is a practical world, and it must be managed by practical
men--by thinkers, not by near-thinkers whose heads are addled
with the half-digested ideas of the French Encyclopedists and
Revolutionists of a century and a half ago.

(_Margaret shows signs of impatience--she is not particularly
perturbed by this passage-at-arms with her father, and is anxious
to get off her street things._)

Don't forget, my daughter, that your father knows the books
as well as any cow college graduate from Oregon. I, too, in my
student days, dabbled in theories of universal happiness and
righteousness, saw my vision and dreamed my dream. I did not know
then the weakness, and frailty, and grossness of the human clay.
But I grew out of that and into a man. Some men never grow out of
that stage. That is what is the trouble with Knox. He is still a
dreamer, and a dangerous one.

(_He pauses a moment, and then his thin lips shut grimly. But he
has just about shot his bolt._)

{Margaret}

What do you mean?

{Starkweather}

He has let himself in to give a speech to-morrow, wherein he will
be called upon to deliver the proofs of all the lurid charges he
has made against the Administration--against us, the stewards of
wealth if you please. He will be unable to deliver the proofs,
and the nation will laugh. And that will be the political end of
Mr. Ali Baba and his dream.

{Margaret}

It is a beautiful dream. Were there more like him the dream would
come true. After all, it is the dreamers that build and that
never die. Perhaps you will find that he is not so easily to be
destroyed. But I can't stay and argue wit