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.”