Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it very dull.  These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held her grandfather’s opinions, or because they kept their own convictions to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time.  She did not see in them a safe counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order, was ready to swing to anything that was new.  She saw only a dozen or so elderly gentlemen, immaculate and prosperous, peering through their glasses after a world which had passed them by.

They were very grave that night.  The situation was serious.  The talk turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to a possible attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence.  The older men pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain.  Isolated riotings, yes.  But a coordinated attempt against the city, no.  Labour was greedy, but it was law-abiding.  Ah, but it was being fired by incendiary literature.  Then what were the police doing?  They were doing everything.  They were doing nothing.  The governor was secretly a radical.  Nonsense.  The governor was saying little, but was waiting and watching.  A general strike was only another word for revolution.  No.  It would be attempted, perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of labor.

After a time Lily made a discovery.  She found that even into that carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based on the necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father’s convictions, and went even further.  One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old Anthony’s ears, voiced a belief that before long invested money would be given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the workers, the owners and the government.

“What about the lean years?” some one asked.

The government’s share of all business was to form a contingent fund for such emergencies, it seemed.

Lily listened attentively.  Was it because they feared that if they did not voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from them?  Enough for all, and to none too much.  Was that what they feared?  Or was it a sense of justice, belated but real?

She remembered something Jim Doyle had said: 

“Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united.  But capital has not learned that lesson.  It will not take a loss for a principle.  It will not unite.  It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its individual battles alone, and loses in the end.”

But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said one day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork about with the other.

“Don’t forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy,” he had said.  “Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too.  It’s got a sense of responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but hasn’t got collectively.”