. Why,
Delafield ought to be a model town, and the country 'round here ought to
be a regular paradise, with all these helpers and uplifters on the job.
But it isn't. Maybe they're not all on the job."

"That's about it, my boy," his father agreed "I sometimes think we need
just one more organization--a society that would never meet, but between
the meetings of all the other societies would actually get done the
things they talk about and pass resolutions about and then go off and
forget until the next meeting."

"Well, dad, what I want to find out," J.W. said, as he started off with
Mr. Drury to the post office, "is where the church heads in. Mr. Drury
is sure it has a big responsibility, and maybe it has. But what is it
willing to do and able to do, and what will the town let it do? It seems
to me that is the question."

J.W. heard his father's voice echoing after him up the street, "Sure,
that is the question," and Mr. Drury added, "Three questions in one."

J.W. found himself taking notice in a way he had not done before through
all his years in Delafield. As might be expected, he had come home from
college with new ideas and new standards. The town looked rather more
sordid and commonplace than was his boy's remembrance of it. Of late it
had taken to growing, and a large part of its development had come
during his college years. So he must needs learn his own town all over
again.

Cherishing his young college graduate's vague new enthusiasm for a
better world, he had little sympathy with much that Delafield opinion
acclaimed as progress.

The Delafield Daily Dispatch carried at its masthead every afternoon one
or more of such slogans as these: "Be a Delafield Booster," "Boost for
more Industries," "Put Delafield on the Map," "Double Delafield in Half
a Decade," "Delafield, the Darling of Destiny," "Watch Delafield Grow,
but Don't Stop Boosting to Rubber."

These were taken by many citizens as a sort of business gospel; any
"theorist" who ventured to question the wisdom of bringing more people
to town, whether the town's business could give them all a decent living
or not, was told to sell his hammer and buy a horn. J.W. said nothing;
he was too young and too recent a comer into the town's business life.
But he could not work up any zeal for this form of town "loyalty."

A big cannery had been built down near the river, where truck gardens
flourished, and there was a new furniture factory at the edge of the