Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in "developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a steel foundry--one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed as the law allows,--not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew. As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are far worse places in London or New York or Chicago--even in such smaller cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool--for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and all--must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian age,--not from _this_, as his wife had! His two years of foreign rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity and hideousness of detail.