together, and we need your advice."
Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of
bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert
without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic
revolutionist. He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became a
member of the Good Citizens' League.
Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the
wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of
immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than
was George F. Babbitt.
CHAPTER XXXIV
I
THE Good Citizens' League had spread through the country, but nowhere
was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of
Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most
of which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of
cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for
mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery.
To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They
were not all of the kind who called themselves "Regular Guys." Besides
these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the
aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more
generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners,
the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old
men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith,
collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in
Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their
place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply
any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought,
dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.
In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country,
particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous
and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all
classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing.
The longest struggle of the Good Citizens' League was against the
Open Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor.
Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in
English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers,
so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and
one h
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