“Standardization is excellent, per se.
When I buy an Ingersoll watch or a Ford, I get a better
tool for less money, and I know precisely what I’m
getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to
be individual in. And—I remember once
in London I saw a picture of an American suburb, in
a toothpaste ad on the back of the Saturday Evening
Post—an elm-lined snowy street of these
new houses, Georgian some of ’em, or with low
raking roofs and—The kind of street you’d
find here in Zenith, say in Floral Heights. Open.
Trees. Grass. And I was homesick! There’s
no other country in the world that has such pleasant
houses. And I don’t care if they are
standardized. It’s a corking standard!
“No, what I fight in Zenith is standardization
of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition.
The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind,
industrious Family Men who use every known brand of
trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their
cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is
that they’re so good and, in their work at least,
so intelligent. You can’t hate them properly,
and yet their standardized minds are the enemy.
“Then this boosting—Sneakingly I
have a notion that Zenith is a better place to live
in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin or
Turin—”
“It is not, and I have lift in most of them,”
murmured Dr. Yavitch.
“Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer
a city with a future so unknown that it excites my
imagination. But what I particularly want—”
“You,” said Dr. Yavitch, “are a
middle-road liberal, and you haven’t the slightest
idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist,
know exactly what I want—and what I want
now is a drink.”
VI
At that moment in Zenith, Jake Offutt, the politician,
and Henry T. Thompson were in conference. Offutt
suggested, “The thing to do is to get your fool
son-in-law, Babbitt, to put it over. He’s
one of these patriotic guys. When he grabs a
piece of property for the gang, he makes it look like
we were dyin’ of love for the dear peepul, and
I do love to buy respectability—reasonable.
Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank? We’re
safe as long as the good little boys like George Babbitt
and all the nice respectable labor-leaders think you
and me are rugged patriots. There’s swell
pickings for an honest politician here, Hank:
a whole city working to provide cigars and fried chicken
and dry martinis for us, and rallying to our banner
with indignation, oh, fierce indignation, whenever
some squealer like this fellow Seneca Doane comes along!
Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed
of himself if he didn’t milk cattle like them,
when they come around mooing for it! But the
Traction gang can’t get away with grand larceny
like it used to. I wonder when—Hank,
I wish we could fix some way to run this fellow Seneca
Doane out of town. It’s him or us!”
