“’But the way of the righteous is not
all roses. Before I close I must call your attention
to a problem we have to face, this coming year.
The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed
socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover—the
long-haired gentry who call themselves “liberals”
and “radicals” and “non-partisan”
and “intelligentsia” and God only knows
how many other trick names! Irresponsible teachers
and professors constitute the worst of this whole
gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them
are on the faculty of our great State University!
The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be
known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors
there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct
of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts.
“’Those profs are the snakes to be scotched—they
and all their milk-and-water ilk! The American
business man is generous to a fault. But one
thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers
and journalists: if we’re going to pay
them our good money, they’ve got to help us
by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational
prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth,
fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers,
let me tell you that during this golden coming year
it’s just as much our duty to bring influence
to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the
real estate and gather in all the good shekels we
can.
“’Not till that is done will our sons
and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood
and culture isn’t a lot of cranks sitting around
chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs,
but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted
Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and
piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians
or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or
Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations
of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding,
lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard
and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is
a square-toed boot that’ll teach the grouches
and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out
and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!’”
IV
Babbitt promised to become a recognized orator.
He entertained a Smoker of the Men’s Club of
the Chatham Road presbyterian Church with Irish, Jewish,
and Chinese dialect stories.
But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the
Prominent Citizen than in his lecture on “Brass
Tacks Facts on Real Estate,” as delivered before
the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A.
The Advocate-Times reported the lecture so fully that
Vergil Gunch said to Babbitt, “You’re
getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in
town. Seems ’s if I couldn’t pick
up a paper without reading about your well-known eloquence.
All this guff ought to bring a lot of business into
your office. Good work! Keep it up!”
