Here Colonel Van Gilbert writhed in his chair.  There was perfect quiet in the room.  Everybody sat fascinated—­paralyzed, I may say.  Such fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard of, undreamed of, impossible to believe—­the great Colonel Van Gilbert before whom judges trembled when he arose in court.  But Ernest never gave quarter to an enemy.

“This is, of course, no reflection on you,” Ernest said.  “Every man to his trade.  Only you stick 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 made no attempt to answer.  Why?  Is it because you have no answer?  You are the champion of this whole audience.  Every one here, except me, is hanging on your lips for that answer.  They are hanging on your lips for that answer because they have no answer themselves.  As for me, as I said before, I know that you not only cannot answer, but that you will not attempt an answer.”