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Earlier in the book we\'ve seen hints of a shady business deal involving Babbitt\'s realty company. Now we learn about it in detail. For aiding Lucas Prout\'s campaign for mayor, Babbitt was illegally rewarded with advance information about the Street Traction Company\'s plans to expand trolley lines and build a repair shop. In chapter 17 we saw him obtaining a secret loan from William Eathorne so he could quietly purchase the land the traction company will need. Now the company finds that Babbitt is demanding an inflated price for the necessary land. They threaten to go to court, until a compromise is reached that seemingly makes everyone happy.
NOTE: BUSINESS ETHICS IN BABBITT Babbitt benefits from illegally obtained information, but it\'s clear that the Zenith Street Traction Company hasn\'t been hurt by the corrupt deal either. Its purchasing agent buys a five-thousand-dollar car; its first vice president builds a home. Who does pay? Babbitt\'s father-in-law puts it bluntly: It\'s the public that gets double-crossed. This is the way politics and business work in Zenith--and, since the traction company president is then appointed ambassador to a foreign country, it apparently works this way on the national level as well. Babbitt is only a small part of a large, corrupt system.
Yet hypocritical Babbitt is \"overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him\": Stan Graff. Graff may be dishonest, but he understands that Babbitt isn\'t any better. \"Well, old Vision and Ethics, I\'m tickled to death!\" he says when Babbitt fires him. He\'d rather work where people are more open about their lack of ethics, and he threatens to tell everything he knows about the Street Traction affair if Babbitt prevents him from getting another job.
Babbitt is enraged but disturbed. We can almost hear him thinking--is he really as bad as Graff says he is? No, he reassures himself. He\'s \"never done anything that wasn\'t necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.\"
But the strain of the Traction deal and Graff\'s dismissal have left Babbitt tense. To recover, he makes a trip to Chicago with his son, Ted. On the train the two joke like old friends, Ted trying to imitate Babbitt\'s air of adult command. In Chicago they enjoy an expensive dinner and laugh at the risque jokes of a musical comedy.
Babbitt is lonely when Ted leaves him and returns to Zenith. This is the underside of the salesman\'s life, the anonymous hotel rooms, the constant telephoning. Then in the hotel lobby, he spots an equally lonely looking man: Sir Gerald Doak, the British millionaire who was the star of the McKelveys\' dinner parties back in Zenith. Babbitt introduces himself, then realizes he has little to say to a British aristocrat. But to his joy he finds that he and Sir Gerald are in fact very much alike. Doak cares no more for culture than does the American realtor, and he\'s had a terrible time in America because society hostesses like Lucile McKelvey insist on talking to him about museums when he\'d rather be talking mortgages.
NOTE: SIR GERALD DOAK With Doak, Lewis is making fun of Americans like Lucile McKelvey who have inflated ideas of the British aristocracy, but he\'s also making fun of the aristocracy itself. George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were two of Lewis\'s favorite writers: when Sir Gerald calls them traitors (and calls Shaw by the wrong first name) Lewis wants us to see that the \"cultured\" English upper class can be as ignorant as the members of the Zenith Athletic Club. Yet Lewis also sees the good side of Sir Gerald, as he does of Babbitt--the unpretentious friendliness.
Babbitt, enormously pleased with himself, plans to let everyone in Zenith know he\'s a pal of Sir Gerald. But he isn\'t able to enjoy his success for long. That evening, at the Regency Hotel, he spots his best friend, Paul Riesling--who is supposed to be in Akron, not Chicago--with \"a doubtful sort of woman.\" Paul, embarrassed, introduces his old friend to the woman (May Arnold) merely as an old acquaintance and tries to talk Babbitt out of coming over to his hotel room that evening. But Babbitt insists.
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