In the coffee houses and the gigantic loafing lobbies of the motion-picture theatres and over the endless ice cream tables of the drug stores and confectioneries and in the lounging rooms of the dance-halls everywhere the argument roars and rattles and clatters and squeals and shrieks and splutters and swears. Every kind of a skirmish between Catholic and Protestant, aristocrat and democrat, labor and capital, is obliterated or merged into this main war. Springfield is Black Hawk Boone, President of the Board of Education and the World’s Fair of the University of Springfield and editor of the relentless _Boone Ax_:—_versus_ this gang composed of Mayor Kopensky, Sims, his boss, and the laughing, dancing crew led by Drug Store Smith and Coffee Kusuko and Cave Man Thomas. Practically all the religious leaders and all the people with names of real distinction and untainted standing are with Black Hawk Boone. His School Board includes among others Rabbi Terence Ezekiel, Roxana Grey, Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, son of the Senator who represents us in the World Government, St. Friend, the Bread Giver, Rachel Madison, the Christian Science Reader, Mary Timmons and John Emis, representatives of the African Race, Gwendolyn Charles, the Motion Picture Director and scenario writer, Patricia Anthony, Josephine Windom of the Three Color Printing Department. They are a dithyrambic, chanting improvising howling-dervish set, with a local millennial dialect of their own and lacking mainly in that sense of humor and everydayness and that cold political self-control with which the City Hall is fully supplied. CHAPTER VII FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL MACHINERY, INCLUDING THE CITY HALL DRAG NET OF DRUG STORES, COFFEE HOUSES AND DANCE HALLS. April 11, 2018:—Mayor Kopensky is particularly deep in Singapore learning. He conceals his well-beloved studies in public, as senators of old used to conceal their wealth. He must, of course, get his majorities from the University students, who are the majority of the population, so many are studying even after marriage, and so many men continue their studies after entering business. In political hours the attitude even of the older students of the University of Springfield is seemingly ungrateful. It is that of the traditionally impudent college freshman toward the imaginary greasy grind and toward the professor who eggs him on to scholarship. They think the names of these City Commissioners: “Cave Man Thomas,” “Sparrow Short,” “Coffee Kusuko,” “Montague Rock,” “Drug Store Smith,” “Jefferson Radley,” “Mayo Sims,” mean dash and romance. This is the “City Hall” block of seven people in the city commission of eleven. The Mayor is the eighth. He seldom has occasion to use his prerogative of the casting vote, for it is not often five to five on a side. There are only three people in the commission who represent the School Board, one of them is Black Hawk Boone.