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On the train, Babbitt searches for familiar faces, but he sees only Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer defeated by Lucas Prout. Doane represents everything Babbitt and his conservative business friends oppose. In fact, though, he could easily have been one of them, for he was in Babbitt\'s class in college and started a promisingly lucrative career as a corporate lawyer. Somehow he gave up that career and took what Babbitt considers an almost traitorous path.
Babbitt is hungry enough for companionship that he approaches Doane. The two men talk, a little nervously, Babbitt asking Doane about his political career. Babbitt finds himself warming to Doane. He apologizes for helping Prout\'s campaign against him, but Doane reassuringly tells Babbitt he understands. And Doane flatters Babbitt by saying that Babbitt makes a good spokesman for \"The Organization\"--Doane\'s term for the conservative businessmen who run Zenith--because Babbitt once had a reputation for being a liberal and sensitive young man. In fact, we learn, in college Babbitt wanted to be a lawyer so he could help the poor: he wanted to be the kind of man Seneca Doane eventually became.
Babbitt, proud that someone remembers his past ideals, tries to convince Doane that they haven\'t entirely vanished. He isn\'t like other Zenith businessmen, Babbitt claims; he\'s broad-minded and liberal.
Doane shrewdly takes advantage of Babbitt\'s sudden \"liberalism\" by asking Babbitt to help defend Beecher Ingram, a Congregationalist minister removed from his church. Babbitt is flattered enough to agree. Happily he listens to Doane reminisce about a career that by Zenith standards has been daring in the extreme. Doane lobbied for the single tax (a progressive tax measure much debated in the early 1900s) and attended international labor congresses.
We\'ve already seen Seneca Doane to be one of the most intelligent characters in Babbitt, a man who possesses a real understanding of Zenith\'s problems and who is trying to solve them. His conversation with Babbitt reveals him to be urbane and sensitive. Yet, as Doane says, \"But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten.\" And perhaps he is too urbane and sensitive to be a truly effective fighter against crude, business-mad Zenith.
As for Babbitt, under Doane\'s influence he convinces himself that he too is daring and idealistic. How much of this is real and how much is self-delusion? On the one hand, he is sick of his life in Zenith. On the other hand, he clearly has little understanding of the movements and the people Doane is talking about.
Babbitt\'s beliefs are immediately tested. He goes to visit Zilla Riesling, full of vague plans to help her and Paul as well. But Zilla has changed. The plump, lively woman has become old, bloodless, tired; her shoulder seems permanently crippled.
Babbitt begins to babble cheerfully: Why doesn\'t Zilla ask the governor to pardon Paul? But Zilla isn\'t interested. She\'s \"gotten religion,\" she says icily; Paul should stay in prison as an example to all evildoers.
Babbitt had returned to Zenith determined to transform himself into a new, liberal man. But Lewis says society is usually strong enough to change the people who want to change it. Nor is Babbitt the only one who finds it easier to conform to society rather than to change it. Kenneth Escott (now engaged to Verona Babbitt) gains fame for newspaper articles attacking commission houses (companies that buy and sell commodities)--then is hired by a commission house. This is one of the ways Zenith--and society in general--is able to render powerless the people who want to reform it.
Ted Babbitt, in college now, seems more interested in fraternities than in studies, and wants to transfer to engineering school. But Babbitt insists Ted stay where he is. Babbitt does try out his new beliefs on his son, defending Seneca Doane, but the defense only shows how shallow the new beliefs are. Social status is still all-important to Babbitt. The best reason he can give to become a liberal friend of the working class like Doane is so that he\'ll be invited to parties given by liberal aristocrats like Lord Wycombe.
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