LUBIN.  Yes.  It occurred quite at the beginning of my career.  I was asked to deliver an address to the students at the Working Men’s College; and I was strongly advised to comply, as Gladstone and Morley and others were doing that sort of thing at the moment.  It was rather a troublesome job, because I had not gone into political economy at the time.  As you know, at the university I was a classical scholar; and my profession was the Law.  But I looked up the text-books, and got up the case most carefully.  I found that the correct view is that all this Trade Unionism and Socialism and so forth is founded on the ignorant delusion that wages and the production and distribution of wealth can be controlled by legislation or by any human action whatever.  They obey fixed scientific laws, which have been ascertained and settled finally by the highest economic authorities.  Naturally I do not at this distance of time remember the exact process of reasoning; but I can get up the case again at any time in a couple of days; and you may rely on me absolutely, should the occasion arise, to deal with all these ignorant and unpractical people in a conclusive and convincing way, except, of course, as far as it may be advisable to indulge and flatter them a little so as to let them down without creating ill feeling in the working-class electorate.  In short, I can get that lecture up again almost at a moment’s notice.

SAVVY.  But, Mr Lubin, I have had a university education too; and all this about wages and distribution being fixed by immutable laws of political economy is obsolete rot.

FRANKLYN [shocked] Oh, my dear!  That is not polite.

LUBIN.  No, no, no.  Dont scold her.  She mustnt be scolded. [To Savvy] I understand.  You are a disciple of Karl Marx.

SAVVY.  No, no.  Karl Marx’s economics are all rot.

LUBIN [at last a little taken aback] Dear me!

SAVVY.  You must excuse me, Mr Lubin; but it’s like hearing a man talk about the Garden of Eden.

CONRAD.  Why shouldnt he talk about the Garden of Eden?  It was a first attempt at biology anyhow.

LUBIN [recovering his self-possession] I am sound on the Garden of Eden.  I have heard of Darwin.

SAVVY.  But Darwin is all rot.

LUBIN.  What!  Already!

SAVVY.  It’s no good your smiling at me like a Cheshire cat, Mr Lubin; and I am not going to sit here mumchance like an old-fashioned goody goody wife while you men monopolize the conversation and pay out the very ghastliest exploded drivel as the latest thing in politics.  I am not giving you my own ideas, Mr Lubin, but just the regular orthodox science of today.  Only the most awful old fossils think that Socialism is bad economics and that Darwin invented Evolution.  Ask Papa.  Ask Uncle.  Ask the first person you meet in the street. [She rises and crosses to Haslam].  Give me a cigaret, Bill, will you?