George Washington to New Hampshire, 29 December 1777 (Detail, GLC03706) America Between the Wars: Excerpt from Chapter XIV of Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis by Allan J. Ruter The Glenbrook High Schools, Glenview, IL Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt. New York: Random House, Inc. (Modern Library Paperback Edition), 2002. America's first Nobel laureate in literature, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), produced some of the sharpest social criticism of the early twentieth century. In his novel Babbitt, first published in 1922, Lewis skewers American business through the story of George Babbitt, real estate salesman in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. In the following excerpt from George Babbitt's address to the Zenith Real Estate Board, Lewis satirizes the conformity and mediocrity of America's rapidly growing middle class. "'Our Ideal Citizen—I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old ‘bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account. "'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States . . . . 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 . . . . "'Sometime I hope folks will will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps . . . . Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but boot-blacks 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 holder for a show-down! "'I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances beween 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 . . . . "'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! . . . "'Those professors are the snakes to be scotched—they are all their milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault, but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can. "'Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!'" 1. What stereotypical attitudes of the American middle class in the 1920s is Sinclair Lewis satirizing through George Babbitt's comments about art, literature, and European civilization? 2. Contrast Babbitt's description of "American manhood" with his comments about intellectuals. What would an intellectual such as a university professor have to do in order to be judged favorably by Babbitt? 3. Babbitt uses the adjectives "Ideal," "Sane," and "Standardized" to describe his version of the model American citizen. What social and economic developments in the years immediately following World War I contributed to such a model of middle-class citizenry? 4. How does Babbitt's enthusiastic regard for business and businessmen reveal Lewis's criticism of American society in the "boom years" leading up to the Great Depression?