nce hall and the
poolroom and the vile pictures and the loose conduct of the soft-drink
places and Electric Park? Haven't we some sort of duty to see that every
young person in Delafield has a chance at first-hand, enjoyable, and
decent play?"

All agreed that the pastor was right, though they were not so clear
about what could be done.

But commercialized amusement was not all they found in their quiet
voyages of discovery up and down Main Street.

The chain stores had come to Delafield--not the "5 and 10" only, but
stores which specialized in groceries, tobacco, shoes, dry goods, drugs,
and other commodities. Alongside of them were the locally owned stores.
Altogether, Main Street had far too many stores to afford good service
or reasonable prices. With all this duplication on the one hand, and
absentee-control on the other, Main Street was a street of
underlings--clerks and salespeople and delivery men. That condition
produced low wages and inefficient methods, many of the workers being
too young to be out of school and too dense to show any intelligence
about the work they were supposed to do. Cheap help was costly, and the
efficient help was scarcely to be found at any price.

The investigators were frankly dismayed at the extent and complexity of
the situation. They had thought to find occasional cases calling for
adjustment, or even for the law. But instead they had found a whole
fabric of interwoven questions--amusements, wages, competition,
cooperation, ignorance, vulgarity, vice, cheapness, trickery, "business
is business." True, they had found more honest businesses than shady
ones, more faithful clerks than shirkers, more decent people in the
pleasure resorts than doubtful people. But the total of folly and evil
was very great; could the church do anything to decrease it?

And that question led the little company of inquisitive Christians into
yet wider reaches of inquiry. J.W. and Joe and Marcia at Mr. Drury's
suggestion agreed to be a sort of unofficial committee to find out about
the churches of Delafield. He told them that this was first of all a
work for laymen. The preachers might come in later.

Joe invited the others to the new Carbrook home on the Heights into
which his people had lately moved. The Heights was a new thing to
J.W.--a rather exclusive residential quarter which had been laid out
park-wise in the last four or five years; with houses in the midst of
wide lawns, a Heights club hous