Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

a shyster, a piker, and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened
Confidence, and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they
didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take
twice the value of a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he
didn't jew you down on the asking-price.
      Babbitt spoke well - and often - at these orgies of
commercial righteousness about the "realtor's function as a seer of
the future development of the community, and as a prophetic
engineer clearing the pathway for inevitable changes" - which meant
that a real-estate broker could make money by guessing which way
the town would grow. This guessing he called Vision
      In an address at the Boosters' Club he had admitted,
"It is at once the duty and the privilege of the realtor to know
everything about his own city and its environs. Where a surgeon is
a specialist on every vein and mysterious cell of the human body,
and the engineer upon electricity in all its phases, or every bolt
of some great bridge majestically arching o'er a mighty flood, the
realtor must know his city, inch by inch, and all its faults and
virtues."
      Though he did know the market-price, inch by inch,
of certain districts of Zenith, he did not know whether the police
force was too large or too small, or whether it was in alliance
with gambling and prostitution. He knew the means of fire-proofing
buildings and the relation of insurance-rates to fire-proofing, but
he did not know how many firemen there were in the city, how they
were trained and paid, or how complete their apparatus. He sang
eloquently the advantages of proximity of school-buildings to
rentable homes, but he did not know - he did not know that it was
worth while to know - whether the city schoolrooms were properly
heated, lighted, ventilated, furnished; he did not know how the
teachers were chosen; and though he chanted "One of the boasts of
Zenith is that we pay our teachers adequately," that was because he
had read the statement in the Advocate-Times. Himself, he could not
have given the average salary of teachers in Zenith or anywhere
else.
      He had heard it said that "conditions" in the County
Jail and the Zenith City Prison were not very "scientific;" he had,
with indignation at the criticism of Zenith, skimmed through a
report in which the notorious pessimist Seneca Doane, the radical
lawyer, asserted that to throw boys and young girls into a bull-pen
crammed with men suffering from syphilis, delirium tremens, and
insanity was not the perfect way of educating them. He had
controverted the report by growling, "Folks that think a jail ought
to be a bloomin' Hotel Thornleigh make me sick. If people don't
like a jail, let 'em behave 'emselves and keep out of it. Besides,
these reform cranks always exaggerate." That was the beginning and
quite completely the end of his investigations into Zenith's
charities and corrections; and as to the "vice districts" he
brightly expressed it, "Those are things that no decent man monkeys
with. Besides, smatter fact, I'll tell you confidentially: it's a
protection to our daughters and to decent women to have a district
where tough nuts can raise cain. Keeps 'em away from our own
homes."
      As to industrial conditions, however, Babbitt had
thought a great deal, and his opinions may be coordinated as
follows:
      "A good labor union is of value because it keeps out
radical unions, which would destroy property. No one ought to be
forced to belong to a union, however. All labor agitators who try
to force men to join a union should be hanged. In fact, just
between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all;
and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every business man
ought to belong to an employers'-association and to the Chamber of
Commerce. In union there is strength. So any selfish hog who
doesn't join the Chamber of Commerce ought to be forced to."
      In nothing - as the expert on whose advice families
moved to new