Frank Diamond worked in a store that had been carelessly built and inadequately stocked by businessmen of unremarkable intelligence. The question was whether he would ever recognize the inferiority of his workplace and do something about it. The store, situated on King Street and drawing in irregular crowds of customers, didn’t do much business. Frank knew that his job was in peril, but was too lazy to reach out for another employer. He trusted the future. He was a fool.

The city that had been settled by Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution and random British Isles expats, by 2025 had become a place that few would want to live in. Its name was Hamilton. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Its problems were gigantic, imposed by a culture of mediocrity and stupidity. Men in Hamilton kept ramming their heads against the proverbial brick wall until they bled. Now that they were poor, they seemed to revel in their struggle.

Hamilton and Frank Diamond, two peas in a pod, were part of the same problem: not enough elite men to keep the watches running. The elite men, sensing the depths to which the city was descending, bailed out for nearby Toronto or Burlington. The elite men understood a situation that had been forced on them and exacerbated in large measure by demographics. In truth, people were the problem. Ordinary people. The unknown factor was whether the cheapness of the city would lure the elite back after the high costs of Toronto. The answer was, probably no.

The elite creators, capable of making money and building for the future, wanted to go where their peers were. The vast metropolis to the north (Toronto) that had been colonized first by ambitious men and their straggling-along famlies, by 1970 had overtaken Montreal to become the strongest city in the nation. Toronto was great, comforted by the wealth that it generated.

A struggling businessman in Hamilton could never dream of relocating to richer fields in Toronto. How would he? His insipid, weak business plan — if he even had a plan — would not survive contact with the detailed, magnificent business plans of Torontomen. The Hamiltonian would beg for assistance from the government that had overseen the collapse of Hamilton and done nothing about it. It was a fool’s errand.

What was most unclear was whether Hamilton would be abandoned in its poverty the way downtown Detroit was abandoned. The local economy, based on Tim Hortons and branching out into threadbare convenience stores selling beer and liquor on the cheap, did not have the resilience to withstand another recession. One more domino falling and the whole structure would collapse.

The businessman who had been blessed by fate with brains and willpower in quanties sufficient to survive in a place like New York (“if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”), understood that he owed a system that had been built by capitalists like himself. Money, beautiful in theory but binding the soul to death, motivated him, incentivized him.

All Hamilton stores had sales that might have been good fifty years ago but were inadequate for the present times. The local economy continued to spiral into a nightmare that the citizens could not escape. The government tried to help but only created a heavy dependence on state subsidies and welfare. Frank Diamond was one of the few working people on King Street, and he didn’t have the brains or imagination to make a backup plan for when his store would fail.

When Frank was slow to react, another competitor swooped in and took his job away from him. Beneath the glittering surface of Toronto was a cruel truth, broadcasting that Hamilton didn’t matter and that the only money was on Bay Street. The birth pains of Hamilton had evolved into a city that was shoved around and ruined by the international economy. The prizes of success were a good home, decent paying jobs, many friends, and a stable society that did not crush you underfoot.

The unclear point was whether things would ever get better. When Hamilton was bright, things seemed to get better momentarily. Jammed into the city’s subconscious was the notion that “the Hammer” (as the city was known) was a loser, an all-time loser. The undying question was whether it would ever get out of that mentality. Just below the surface of Hamilton was a struggling underclass, meaning that there were few supports for civil society and that revolution was always possible.

Most politicians suffered taunts that might have been okay in another city but were insufferable coming from lowlifes. The politicos, bound by an oath to serve and practically living in City Hall, tried their best but they could not contain the damage.

Some solutions that came forth might have been successful but were broken in the conception. When the troubleshooters were impatient, mistakes were made. Hamilton’s oldest families, living on Aberdeen Street, and scattered throughout the Mountain, had relinquished their noblesse oblige role to government, ungenerously checking out of the process and spending their money on themselves in shockingly selfish ways.

The salvation of Hamilton was so overdue that many citizens had left for greener pastures. The city that had been lauded as “the Ambitious City” by early-Twentieth Century newsmen and urban boosters, by the 1970s had transformed into a wreck that sucked in souls like a whirlpool.

Now it was too late. The city was irretrievably broken, wickedly unfurnished, and bound to chains of acidic steel.