Downstairs he found his father, busy with wrench and screw driver, repairing a kitchen faucet that had begun to leak. Mail that had come in the evening delivery was scattered about upon the dining-room table. A yellow card of some kind was uppermost. George picked it up. It was an unsigned, unfilled application for membership in the Fifth Ward Improvement Association of Northfield.
George called into the kitchen to his father. "How did you get this improvement association application, Pop?"
"Came in the mail. They want me to join."
"Going to?"
"What's the use? We'll get together, and we'll pass resolutions and we'll send letters to the City Hall, and the gang down there will do about as they please. That's how it always runs. If they feel like doing what you ask them to do they'll do it, and then some association goes around making a fool of itself by thinking that it accomplished something. The politicians run things to suit themselves. These associations are all right for men who have nothing else to do with their evenings. I don't mind becoming a member, but I don't want anybody telling me that we're going to get together and have the politicians give us what we want. We'll get it when they
