Babbitt, as a representative man, is possible only in America. His gestures, his foibles, his words and phrases, are explained by the country where millions of human beings are cut on the same pattern, made in series like automobiles or harvesters, because it cannot be done otherwise. Quantity _versus_ quality, the masses against the individual,--this is the great American problem and George Babbitt is the half-sarcastic, half-tragic example of it. He is conformism incarnate. The family, the school, the church, the thousand and one associations which he must join manufacture for him his thoughts, his feelings and his speech. They have made him an automaton, leaving him very little personality. A democracy of more than one million citizens produces Babbitts naturally, as apple trees their apples. Babbittry is the inevitable ransom of some of the highest American virtues. A people ceaselessly active, moving and advancing, needs discipline as much as a professional army. Before being an individual, Babbitt is a private in Democracy’s regiment. He wears a uniform; he performs certain duties; he recites from a drill-book. Never mind if he left the best of himself behind. Somebody else will pick it up for him. The triumph of the greater number cannot be insured without the sacrifice of the minority. Hence the tragedy of exceptional people in America, the agony of Poe, the isolation of Whitman, the ordeal of Mark Twain, the exile of Henry James, the sarcasms of Henry Adams. Hence the floating anxiety and soul-fear of the man in the crowd. It was advisedly, I believe, that Sinclair Lewis made Babbitt a real-estate man, or, as he pompously calls him, in Western fashion, a “realtor.” The profession is typically American. Since the closing of the frontier the staking out of one’s claim to a “lot” has been the last romantic adventure left to the pioneer and the conquistador. Speculation is ingrained in Americans and advertising goes along with it. The widespread use of publicity in the United States is interesting, not only to the economist but to the psychologist. Advertising is second nature with Babbitt. Advertising was born in America out of industrial growth, market monopolization, the standardization of products, not to forget competition. In a democratic country where the market is swamped with goods and with manufacturers eager to force their products upon the public, the megaphone and amplifier methods are the only chances of success. But advertising is not only a way of making a fortune in America. It is the most popular form of American self-assertion. The average American has a genius for hyperbole. His country is the land of the superlative. Advertising in the United States is the safest business method, and everything there relies more and more on publicity. The churches, the government, the universities, art, literature and even philanthropy, can no longer do without it.