Book 1, Part 3 Summary

The inhabitants of the wealthy, influential Chestnut Street are described, and include Leslie Harrington (wealthy widowed father of the bully Rodney), Doc Swain, Seth Buswell, and others. The men of Chestnut Street are playing a poker game that's interrupted by Seth Buswell announcing his intention to start a campaign in his newspaper to clean up the tar-paper shacks scattered around town. Harrington opposes him, calmly at first and then angrily as Seth insists that healthy standards have apply to the shacks as they apply to other homes. Later, after Harrington leaves, Seth comments that he sometimes wonders whether the town would be better off without the citizens who live in those shacks, Swain comments that "there is nothing dearer than life . . . even the lives being lived in our shacks".

Swain passes the shacks on his way home and is shocked to...