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Jimmy’s good-humored countenance became sober. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it’s pretty fierce.”

But Mr. Carroll had turned again to his son. “The whole country’s full of social unrest,” he went on angrily. “You’ve no idea, Stacey. All the lazy worthless Have-Nots are up in arms against the Haves, and our damned government pets them and plays right into their hands. Not a bit of respect for the men who’ve made the country what it is. You’ll see.”

“I’ve seen something of it abroad,” Stacey remarked. “What do you expect? You have four years and a half of universal war positively guaranteed to turn the world into heaven, and then it ends with the world even less heavenly than before. Of course you get unrest.”

He had spoken idly enough, without much thought as to what he said, save that he exercised care not to plunge into the question truly, but he was not really apathetic; he was curious about the intensity of feeling his father displayed.

“No, but I’m talking about definite, concrete, unjustifiable demonstrations of unrest,” Mr. Carroll continued, shaking off generalities. “Here you have labor, the one real profiteer in the war, getting more and more, more than it ever got, far more than its share, yet always increasing its demands, always doing less work. Why, it takes three men nowadays to get through a piece of work that one man could do a few years ago. Bolshevism! Sheer Bolshevism!”