“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!”