The chain stores had come to Delafield—­not the “5 and 10” only, but stores which specialized in groceries, tobacco, shoes, dry goods, drugs, and other commodities.  Alongside of them were the locally owned stores.  Altogether, Main Street had far too many stores to afford good service or reasonable prices.  With all this duplication on the one hand, and absentee-control on the other, Main Street was a street of underlings—­clerks and salespeople and delivery men.  That condition produced low wages and inefficient methods, many of the workers being too young to be out of school and too dense to show any intelligence about the work they were supposed to do.  Cheap help was costly, and the efficient help was scarcely to be found at any price.

The investigators were frankly dismayed at the extent and complexity of the situation.  They had thought to find occasional cases calling for adjustment, or even for the law.  But instead they had found a whole fabric of interwoven questions—­amusements, wages, competition, cooperation, ignorance, vulgarity, vice, cheapness, trickery, “business is business.”  True, they had found more honest businesses than shady ones, more faithful clerks than shirkers, more decent people in the pleasure resorts than doubtful people.  But the total of folly and evil was very great; could the church do anything to decrease it?

And that question led the little company of inquisitive Christians into yet wider reaches of inquiry.  J.W. and Joe and Marcia at Mr. Drury’s suggestion agreed to be a sort of unofficial committee to find out about the churches of Delafield.  He told them that this was first of all a work for laymen.  The preachers might come in later.

Joe invited the others to the new Carbrook home on the Heights into which his people had lately moved.  The Heights was a new thing to J.W.—­a rather exclusive residential quarter which had been laid out park-wise in the last four or five years; with houses in the midst of wide lawns, a Heights club house and tennis courts and an exquisite little Gothic church.

“When our folks first talked about moving out here I thought it was all right; and I do yet, in some ways,” explained Joe.  “But the Heights is getting a little too good for me; I’m not as keen about being exclusive as I used to be.  I’ve thought lately that exclusiveness may be just as bad for people inside the gates, as for the people outside.  But here we are, as the Atlantic City whale said when the ebb tide stranded it in front of the Board Walk.  What are we up to, us three?”

“We’re up to finding out about the town churches,” said J.W.  “Maybe they can help the town more than they do, but we don’t know how, and so far we haven’t found anybody else who knows how.”

And Marcia said:  “At least we know some things.  We have the figures.  About one Delafield citizen in seven goes to church or Sunday school on Sunday.  Church membership is one in ten.  And as many people go to the movies and the Columbia vaudeville and the dance halls and poolrooms on Saturday as go to church on Sunday, to say nothing of the crowds that go on the other five days.”