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
hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for
workmen to trust and love their employers.
The League was more than generous in approving other organizations which
agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M.C.A. to raise a
two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Babbitt, Vergil
Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators
at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the
“good old Y.” had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty
Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the _Advocate-Times_, was photographed
clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that
afterward, when Smeeth lisped, “You must come to one of our
prayer-meetings,” the ferocious Colonel bellowed, “What the hell would I
do that for? I’ve got a bar of my own,” but this did not appear in the
public prints.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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