THE JOB
AN AMERICAN NOVEL
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
AUTHOR OF
MAIN STREET,
BABBITT, Etc.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
The Job
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1917
B-R
to
My Wife
WHO HAS MADE “THE JOB”
POSSIBLE AND LIFE ITSELF
QUITE BEAUTIFULLY
IMPROBABLE
[3]Part I
THE CITY
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN LEW GOLDEN would have saved any foreign observer a great deal oftrouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the pettysmall-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He hadnever been “captain” of anything except the Crescent Volunteer FireCompany, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wroteinsurance, and meddled with lawsuits.
He carried a quite visible mustache-comb and wore a collar, but no tie.On warm days he appeared on the street in his shirt-sleeves, anddiscussed the comparative temperatures of the past thirty years withDoctor Smith and the Mansion House ’bus-driver. He never used the word“beauty” except in reference to a setter dog—beauty of words or music,of faith or rebellion, did not exist for him. He rather fancied large,ambitious, banal, red-and-gold sunsets, but he merely glanced at them ashe straggled home, and remarked that they were “nice.” He believed thatall Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. Hisentire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he neverread, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended; and he desiredno system of economics beyond the current platform[4] of the Republicanparty. He was aimlessly industrious, crotchety but kind, and almostquixotically honest.
He believed that “Panama, Pennsylvania, was good enough for anybody.”
This last opinion was not shared by his wife, nor by his daughter Una.
Mrs. Golden was one of the women who aspire just enough to be vaguelydiscontented; not enough to make them toil at the acquisition ofunderstanding and knowledge. She had floated into a comfortablesemi-belief in a semi-Christian Science, and she read novels with aconviction that she would have been a romantic person “if she hadn’tmarried Mr. Golden—not but what he’s a fine man and very bright andall,