August Turnbull was disturbed by the sudden arrest of his progress, and gazing out saw the insignificant cause of delay. He had again removed his hat and a frown drew a visible heavy line between his eyes.
"More police are needed for these crossings," he complained to the chauffeur; "there is the same trouble every evening. The city shouldn't encourage such rabbles; they give the place a black eye."
All the immediate section, he silently continued, ought to be torn down and rebuilt in solid expensive structures. It made him hot and uncomfortable just to pass through the shabby quarter. The people in it were there for the excellent reason that they lacked the ambition, the force to demand better things. They got what they deserved.
August Turnbull made an impatient movement of contempt; the world, success, was for the strong men, the men who knew what they wanted and drove for it in a straight line. There was a great deal of foolishness in the air at present--the war was largely responsible; though, on the other hand, the war would cure a lot of nonsense. But America in particular was rotten with sentimentality; it was that mainly which had involved them here in a purely European affair. Getting into it had been bad business.
Nowhere was the nation's failing more evident than in the attitude toward women. It had always been maudlin; and now, long content to use their advantages in small ways, women would become a serious menace to the country generally. He had admitted their economic value--they filled every possible place in the large establishment of the Turnbull Bakery; rather, they performed all the light manual labor. There they were more satisfactory than men, more easily controlled--yes, and cheaper. But in Congress, voting, women in communities reporting on factory conditions were a dangerous nuisance.
He had left the poorer part, and the suavity of the succeeding streets rapidly increased to a soothing luxury. Wide cottages occupied velvet-green lawns, and the women he saw were of the sort he approved--closely skirted creatures with smooth shoulders in transparent crêpe de Chine. They invited a contemplative eye, the thing for which they were created--a pleasure for men; that and maternity.