Babbitt
number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also
the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world’s highest-paid
singers.
“‘In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby
bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America
the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any
other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man
who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading
matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares
has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle
with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as
big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind
you, it’s the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting
which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him
as to the authors themselves.
“‘Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a
bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone
which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all
the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed
nations of Europe.
“‘I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don’t know
that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there’s our own mighty
cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there
must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the
most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of
one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o’ bonny Scutlond and
all ye bonny braes o’ Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that
distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is
that they’re willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and
politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk
right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he
intends to run the works. He doesn’t have to call in some highbrow
hired-man when it’s necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of
the sane and efficient life. He’s not dumb, like the old-fashioned
merchant. He’s got a vocabulary and a punch.
“‘With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business
man and gently whisper, “Here’s our kind of folks! Here’s the
specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here’s the new
generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in
their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We’re not doing any
boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don’t like us,
look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!”
“‘So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the
fellow with Zip and Bang. And it’s because Zenith has so large a
proportion of such men that it’s the most stable, the greatest of our
cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is
cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh,
we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their
renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap
products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and
Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of
the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent
sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than
sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one
hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and
purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford,
Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with
Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from
Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow
booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa!
“‘But it’s here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and
bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys,
and that’s what sets it in a class by itself; that’s why Zenith will be
remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that
shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day
of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world!
“‘Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of
moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper
credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to
win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every
land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are
known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out
countries that aren’t producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and
booze, that haven’t got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don’t
know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it’s just about time for
some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down!
“‘I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of
civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other
burgs, and I’m darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane
standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and
newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a
type is ours.
“‘I always like to remember a piece that Chum Frink wrote for the
newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of
you, but if you will permit me, I’ll take a chance and read it. It’s
one of the classic poems, like “If” by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s
“The Man Worth While”; and I always carry this clipping of it in my
note-book:
_When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler’s load, I mostly
sing a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out
my samples fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sun-shine, and peddling
optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and
other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis’ Clubs, and feel I ain’t like
other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who’s
always waitin’, he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick
his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the
backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday
when the folks ain’t round. And then b’gosh, I would prefer to
never be a lecturer, a-ridin’ round in classy cars and smoking
fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to
be back home, a-eatin’ flap-jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who
savvy whom I am!_
_But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no
matter in what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington,
Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my
dome that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy
spell in front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers
loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I should
look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I
could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the
same fine sort of jeans they wear at home, and all the queens with
spiffy bonnets on their beans, and all the fellows standing round
a-talkin’ always, I’ll be bound, the same good jolly kind of guff,
’bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that
Nice Guys talk in my home town!_
_Then when I entered that hotel, I’d look around and say, “Well,
well!” For there would be the same news-stand, same_ _magazines
and candies grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I’d find
at home, I’ll tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in
for eats at lunch, and squaring up in natty duds to platters large
of French Fried spuds, why then I’d stand right up and bawl, “I’ve
never left my home at all!” And all replete I’d sit me down beside
some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush, and murmur to
him in a rush, “Hello, Bill, tell me, good old scout, how is your
stock a-holdin’ out?” Then we’d be off, two solid pals,
a-chatterin’ like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home, and wives,
lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan makes you
blue, good friend, that’s what I’d up and do, for in these States
where’er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home._
“‘Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game of
vital living. But let’s not have any mistake about this. I claim that
Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole
caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back
up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of
prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the
ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every
intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk
and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than
any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not
so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of
package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles, and
somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing,
breakfast food, and overalls!
“‘Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but
equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and
brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the
Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city, to
announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by
their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in the
country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the
paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National
Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the
entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles
of paved streets, bathrooms, vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs of
civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and
housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more
than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass, shrubs,
and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all-round unlimited
greatness of Zenith!
“‘I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you
that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in
the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of
progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith!
“‘But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must
call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The
worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot
of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call
themselves “liberals” and “radicals” and “non-partisan” and
“intelligentsia” and God only knows how many other trick names!
Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole
gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of
our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud
to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who
seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes
and roustabouts.
“‘Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their