“And what have we left? A few blocks of business houses. A few acres of industrial plants. A city government geared to take care of a million people without the million people. A budget that has run the taxes so high that eventually even business houses will move to escape those taxes. Tax forfeitures that have left us loaded with worthless property. That’s what we have left.
“If you think any Chamber of Commerce, any ballyhoo, any hare-brained scheme will give you the answers, you’re crazy. There is only one answer and that is simple. The city as a human institution is dead. It may struggle on a few more years, but that is all.”
“Mr. Webster –” said the mayor.
But Webster paid him no attention.
“But for what happened today,” he said, “I would have stayed on and played doll house with you. I would have gone on pretending that the city was a going concern. Would have gone on kidding myself and you. But there is, gentlemen, such a thing as human dignity.”
The icy silence broke down in the rustling of papers, the muffled cough of some embarrassed listener.
John J. Webster turned on his heel and left the room.
Outside on the broad stone steps, he stopped and stared up at the cloudless sky, saw the pigeons wheeling above the turrets and spires of the city hall.
He shook himself mentally, like a dog coming out of a pool.
He had been a fool, of course. Now he’d have to hunt for a job and it might take time to find one. He was getting a bit old to be hunting for a job.
But despite his thoughts, a little tune rose unbidden to his lips. He walked away briskly, lips pursed, whistling soundlessly.
No more hypocrisy. No more lying awake nights wondering what to do—knowing that the city was dead, knowing that what he did was a useless task, feeling like a heel for taking a salary that he knew he wasn’t earning. Sensing the strange, nagging frustration of a worker who knows his work is nonproductive.
He strode toward the parking lot, heading for his helicopter.
Now, maybe, he told himself, they could move out into the country the way Betty wanted to. Maybe he could spend his evenings tramping land that belonged to him. A place with a stream. Definitely it had to have a stream he could stock with trout.
He made a mental note to go up into the attic and check his fly equipment.
Martha Johnson was waiting at the barnyard gate when the old car chugged down the lane.
Ole got out stiffly, face rimmed with weariness.
“Sell anything?” asked Martha.
Ole shook his head. “It ain’t no use. They won’t buy farm-raised stuff. Just laughed at me. Showed me ears of corn twice as big as the ones I had, just as sweet and with more even rows. Showed me melons that had almost no rind at all. Better tasting, too, they said.”
He kicked at a clod and it exploded into dust.
“There ain’t no getting around it,” he declared. “Tank farming sure has ruined us.”
“Maybe we better fix to sell the farm,” suggested Martha.
Ole said nothing.
“You could get a job on a tank farm,” she said. “Harry did. Likes it real well.”
Ole shook his head.
“Or maybe a gardener,” said Martha. “You would make a right smart gardener. Ritzy folks that’s moved out to big estates like to have gardeners to take care of flowers and things. More classy than doing it with machines.”
Ole shook his head again. “Couldn’t stand to mess around with flowers,” he declared. “Not after raising corn for more than twenty years.”
“Maybe,” said Martha, “we could have one of them little planes. And running water in the house. And a bathtub instead of taking a bath in the old washtub by the kitchen fire.”
“Couldn’t run a plane,” objected Ole.
“Sure you could,” said Martha. “Simple to run, they are. Why, them Anderson kids ain’t no more than knee-high to a cricket and they fly one all over. One of them got fooling around and fell out once, but –”
“I got to think about it,” said Ole, desperately. “I got to think.”
He swung away, vaulted a fence, headed for the fields. Martha stood beside the car and watched him go. One lone tear rolled down her dusty cheek.
“Mr. Taylor is waiting for you,” said the girl.
John J. Webster stammered. “But I haven’t been here before. He didn’t know I was coming.”
“Mr. Taylor,” insisted the girl, “is waiting for you.”
She nodded her head toward the door. It read:
Bureau of Human Adjustment
“But I came here to get a job,” protested Webster. “I didn’t come to be adjusted or anything. This is the World Committee’s placement service, isn’t it?”
“That is right,” the girl declared. “Won’t you see Mr. Taylor?”
“Since you insist,” said Webster.
The girl clicked over a switch, spoke into the intercommunicator. “Mr. Webster is here, sir.”
“Send him in,” said a voice.
Hat in hand, Webster walked through the door.
The man behind the desk had white hair but a young man’s face. He motioned toward a chair.
“You’ve been trying to find a job,” he said.
“Yes,” said Webster, “but –”
“Please sit down,” said Taylor. “If you’re thinking about that sign on the door, forget it. We’ll not try to adjust you.”
“I couldn’t find a job,” said Webster. “I’ve hunted for weeks and no one would have me. So finally, I came here.”
“You didn’t want to come here?”
“No, frankly, I didn’t. A placement service. It has, well … it has an implication I do not like.”
Taylor smiled. “The terminology may be unfortunate. You’re thinking of the employment services of the old days. The places where men went when they were desperate for work. The government operated places that tried to find work for men so they wouldn’t become public charges.”
“I’m desperate enough,” confessed Webster. “But I still have a pride that made it hard to come. But, finally, there was nothing else to do. You see, I turned traitor –”
“You mean,” said Taylor, “that you told the truth. Even when it cost you your job. The business world, not only here, but all over the world, is not ready for that truth. The businessman still clings to the city myth, to the myth of salesmanship. In time to come he will realize he doesn’t need the city, that service and honest values will bring him more substantial business than salesmanship ever did.
“I’ve wondered, Webster, just what made you do what you did?”
“I was sick of it,” said Webster. “Sick of watching men blundering along with their eyes tight shut. Sick of seeing an old tradition being kept alive when it should have been laid away. Sick of King’s simpering civic enthusiasm when all cause for enthusiasm had vanished.”
Taylor nodded. “Webster, do you think you could adjust human beings?”
Webster merely stared.
“I mean it,” said Taylor. “The World Committee has been doing it for years, quietly, unobtrusively. Even many of the people who have been adjusted don’t know they have been adjusted.
“Changes such as have come since the creation of the World Committee following the war has meant much human maladjustment. The advent of workable atomic power took jobs away from hundreds of thousands. They had to be trained and guided into new jobs, some with the new atomics, some into other lines of work. The advent of tank farming swept the farmers off their land. They, perhaps, have supplied us with our greatest problem, for other than the special knowledge needed to grow crops and handle animals, they had no skills. Most of them had no wish for acquiring skills. Most of them were bitterly resentful of having been forced from the livelihood which they inherited from their forebears. And being natural individualists, they offered the toughest psychological problems of any other class.”